The Sculptor sm-1

by Gregory Funaro

  Markham typed, Rhode Island funerary monument private memorial public.

  Nothing.

  Funerary, Markham thought frantically. Odd word.

  Impulsively, he changed his search criteria to, Rhode Island cemetery monument memorial public faith.

  Markham clicked on the first of his search results. What he saw next made his breath stop in his throat.

  The first photograph was an exterior shot of a small, circular structure that appeared to be built from marble, and that reminded Markham of the columned temples of Ancient Rome. The columns themselves were situated around an interior wall, through which there appeared to be only a single entrance. Beneath the photograph was the caption:

  The Temple of Divine Spirit is located at the heart of Echo Point Cemetery. Its circular design—inspired by the “round” Temple of Hercules in Rome—is intended to represent an all-inclusive memorial for those who have passed on, as well as a monument to those who have been left behind. It is a place of prayer and contemplation open to the public and people of all faiths. On your next trip to Echo Point Cemetery, please feel free to remember your loved ones in the Temple of Divine Spirit.

  Beneath this text was another photograph—this one of the temple’s interior.

  Markham did not bother to read the accompanying caption.

  No. The single shaft of sunlight streaming down from the oculus in the temple’s ceiling told him everything he needed to know.

  Chapter 35

  As Sam Markham and Bill Burrell scrambled to gather their agents, as Rachel Sullivan frantically alerted both the local and state police to get their asses over to the remote Echo Point Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island, The Sculptor was already installing his Pietà under cover of darkness. The rain had stopped earlier that evening, but the skies remained cloudy—the air humid enough to break The Sculptor’s face into sweat beneath his night vision goggles. The distance he needed to carry his Pietà was much shorter than the distance he’d carried his Bacchus a few weeks earlier—a straight shot of only about twenty-five feet from the back of his van. But his Pietà was much heavier than his Bacchus—was much more awkward and difficult for the muscular Sculptor to maneuver due to the delicacy of the painted starched robes. However, once he managed to carefully load the statue onto a dolly that he constructed over a year ago specifically for this purpose, The Sculptor ultimately had no trouble dragging his Pietà down the flagstone path and up the steps into the Temple of Divine Spirit.

  The Sculptor methodically unloaded his Pietà into place directly beneath the temple’s oculus—that opening in the ceiling which The Sculptor knew would mimic perfectly the original visual dynamic in the catacomb which the Christians had renamed the Chapel of St. Petronilla. The “veil effect” he had created in the Virgin’s forehead with a strand of tightly tied fishing line was breathtaking, but The Sculptor paused only briefly to admire his work—dared to stand only for a minute in the cavernous temple with his night vision goggles and ogle over the aesthetic divinity created by the downcast, cloud-filtered moonlight.

  Yes, the nameless material he had harvested from the streets of South Providence, the whore’s head that he had chosen to be his Virgin’s, had turned out perfectly—her youthful visage sad but serene, full of loving and longing but at the same time at peace with the knowledge that her Son will soon triumph over death. And the RounDaWay17 material had turned out brilliantly, too; it was perfectly proportioned to the Virgin’s body, and, as seen through the night vision goggles, reflected as planned the supernatural luminescence of the falling moonlight—just as Dr. Hildy described in her book.

  Oh yes, The Sculptor could stand there gazing upon his Pietà all night, but The Sculptor knew that that would be foolish, or at the very least would be a waste of time.

  As The Sculptor had hoped, in addition to their regular duties, the local and state police—at the FBI’s request—had been spread out on stakeouts of churches all over Rhode Island—none of which happened to be near Echo Point Cemetery. And so The Sculptor took his time gathering his things back into the van entirely unaware that an FBI agent named Sam Markham had discovered the location for his latest exhibition. Back in the driver’s seat, The Sculptor relaxed for a moment before turning the key in the ignition—was just about to shift into drive when the reflection of flashing blue lights on the headstones caught him completely by surprise.

  Bad luck, he said to himself. Someone must have called the police.

  His heart all at once beating fast, The Sculptor removed his night vision goggles—knew the approaching headlights would temporarily blind him if he didn’t—and reached under the passenger’s seat. The Sculptor’s fingers immediately closed around his Sig Sauer .45, and when he again looked out the windshield, he could see the two police cars winding their way among the headstones from the opposite side of the cemetery.

  Only two, The Sculptor thought. But he knew instinctively that more would follow—knew instinctively that he had only one chance.

  Yes, The Sculptor said to himself. Only one chance to take them by surprise then get out of here.

  The Sculptor climbed out the passenger door and quickly made his way around to the back of the temple, darting behind the headstones as he backtracked his way toward the road. The Channel 9 Eye-Team logo would be the bait—would hopefully lure the policemen out of their cars and thus buy him enough time to sneak up behind them and put a bullet in their heads. The Sculptor hid himself behind a nearby tree and removed a black ski mask from his back pocket, pulling it tightly over his bald head, his sweaty face.

  Then he waited.

  And soon, just as he expected, the two Exeter police cars—locals, thankfully—pulled up in front of the temple. The Sculptor could see from the flashes of light off the van, off the white marble of the temple and surrounding headstones, that each car held only one officer.

  That was fortunate.

  “You guys can’t be here,” he heard one of them shout upon emerging from his car. And as the two officers approached the van—their guns not even drawn—The Sculptor was upon them before they even had a chance to turn around.

  As was the case when he went shopping for his material with the tranquilizer guns, The Sculptor did not pause when he shot them. However, instead of aiming for their necks, he pointed the red dot from his laser sight just underneath their police hats—one silenced bullet in each of their heads, then two more once they hit the ground just to be safe.

  The Sculptor hopped back into his van and drove quickly away from the scene. He did not mourn the fact that he had just wasted good material or whether or not the police dash-cams had recorded the whole event. His face was covered, of course, and he could always repaint the van. He would have it safely hidden away again in the carriage house before the police had time to review the video. And so The Sculptor opted to take his chances on the highway rather than risk being cornered by the police on the back country roads. He had just kicked the van up to sixty-five when he saw the state police cars and the black FBI vehicles speeding past him down Route 95—in the opposite direction, toward the Echo Point Cemetery exit.

  The Sculptor smiled. He had no way of knowing, however, that Sam Markham and Bill Burrell saw him, too—had no idea that they both cursed aloud when they spotted the Channel 9 Eye-Team van whizzing past, both of them furious at the local cop who had rolled this time.

  “Fucking vultures,” the SAC grunted.

  Oh yes, if The Sculptor had heard that little comment, he most certainly would have giggled.

  Indeed, many of the local and state authorities would see The Sculptor’s Eye-Team van that night, but just as The Sculptor had hoped when he first painted the logo on its sides, their only wish had been to avoid it.

  EXHIBIT THREE Toward David

  Chapter 36

  Two weeks later

  Sam Markham sat at his desk in downtown Providence. He felt sick as he watched the police video for at least the hundredth time—pausing, rewinding, and pl
aying in stop motion every move The Michelangelo Killer made. As with the video of Steve Rogers, the team in Boston had immediately set about enhancing the footage, and Markham could see everything that had happened in front of the Temple of Divine Spirit—not only the calm, methodical way in which The Michelangelo Killer slaughtered the two policemen, but also the Channel 9 Eye-Team logo streaking out of camera range.

  Markham remembered seeing the van on the highway that night—oh how he remembered! Felt the urge to vomit every time he thought about how close he had been to the killer—just a few yards across the grassy median. But more than watching over and over again the brutal murders of the two Exeter policemen—murders for which the supervisory special agent felt partly responsible—what really made Markham sick was that, as was the case with the video of Steve Rogers, he could get no clues from it—could not determine anything other than the make of the van and the killer’s size and height.

  Yes, even though The Michelangelo Killer was dressed entirely in black—a black ski mask, black gloves, and a tight fitting long-sleeve black shirt—Markham could clearly make out the killer’s physique against the white of the phony Eye-Team van: about six-five and very muscular—a bodybuilder, just as the celebrated profiler had suspected all along.

  Of course, in the two weeks following the shocking exhibition of The Michelangelo Killer’s Pietà down at Echo Point Cemetery, the ballistics tests on the killer’s .45 caliber bullets and the leads on the van—a Chevy 2500 Express model that most likely was the same one reported stolen three years earlier—had so far turned up nothing. In addition, a still from the police video had been released on the Wednesday following the discovery of the Michelangelo Killer’s Pietà, but the public had given the FBI nothing but red herrings.

  The public.

  Markham sighed and closed his computer’s video player. And just as he expected, when he clicked on the Internet Explorer icon, the first picture on his AOL homepage was of Michelangelo’s Pietà. The media firestorm that followed the discovery of the grisly scene in Exeter made the fallout from The Michelangelo Killer’s Bacchus seem like a snowball fight. Indeed, as soon as the real Channel 9 Eye-Team van showed up outside of Echo Point Cemetery, it seemed to Markham as if a war had broken out—the news choppers hovering above and the media frenzy outside the cemetery gates reminding him of a scene right out of Apocalypse Now. There was no keeping anything from the press this time—not even the most telling details of The Michelangelo Killer’s Pietà, which the killer had actually signed.

  Yes, unbelievably, The Michelangelo Killer had chiseled another message into his work—this time not to Catherine Hildebrant, but to the public in general. Markham remembered from his reading of Slumbering in the Stone that the Rome Pietà was the only work Michelangelo ever signed—the legend of which claimed that, upon overhearing a visitor to the Chapel of St. Petronilla attribute the statue to another artist, Michelangelo returned later that night and chiseled in Latin a message on the sash across the Virgin’s chest: “Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this.” Hildebrant went on to state in her book that the legend was fictional, and that the signature had been there from the beginning. “A bold stab at fame,” she had called it. “Michelangelo’s most blatant attempt ever for public recognition.” And although Sam Markham had since learned from Cathy that there was still much scholarly debate as to the reason why Michelangelo signed his Pietà, both of them agreed that there could be no doubt as to the reason why “The Sculptor” had signed his.

  “The Sculptor from Rhode Island made it.”

  “Just like the legend,” Cathy had said to Markham when she first laid eyes on the inscription. “He’s telling the press what to call him. He’s correcting them.”

  And the press obeyed.

  They called him “The Sculptor” now in the papers and on TV, on the Internet and on the blogs and the sick homepages that had sprouted up in dedication to him since the discovery of Tommy Campbell. Indeed, the media seemed to talk of nothing else; and Markham felt a palpable anxiety every time he turned on his computer and his television. Worst of all was the public’s infatuation with Catherine Hildebrant—the woman Sam Markham now knew he loved; the woman that the public loved for her now indisputable connection to The Sculptor. Yes, once the media got wind that the pretty art history professor’s ex-husband had been used for the body of The Sculptor’s Virgin Mary, the FBI knew they could no longer keep her sheltered from the press, knew they could no longer mask the connection between the killer and her book. And thus, the FBI also knew they could no longer use her effectively as a consultant on the case.

  At least not in public.

  Cathy had recovered quickly from her knock on the head—seemed to awaken with a newfound strength, a newfound understanding of the role she must now play in catching the man who had become so obsessed with her. She had insisted on seeing The Sculptor’s Pietà at the morgue in person, had examined it with an even more discerning eye than she had the Bacchus down at Watch Hill—even though she was well aware it was her ex-husband’s body holding up the Virgin’s flowing robes. Markham was in contact with Cathy a dozen times a day—spoke to her on his cell phone during the countless hours she spent doing research for him on the computer, while he followed up on his leads all over New England. Yes, Cathy seemed to be holding up well, but Markham was very worried about her. She was safe, of course, in protective custody—had been moved immediately upon her release from the hospital to an FBI safe house just outside of Boston. But Markham was afraid of the toll the ordeal was taking on her, was worried about that moment when the totality of what happened to her ex-husband—what happened to the others as a result of her book—really hit her.

  Don’t worry, whispered a voice in his head. She’s a fighter—just like her mother.

  Rachel Sullivan had given a statement to the press in Boston a week earlier, in which she officially released the names of the victims whose body parts The Sculptor had used for his Pietà.

  There were four in all.

  Of course, the FBI knew from the beginning about Rogers, whose headless, handless body—sans breast augmentation—was still awaiting release to be flown back to Chicago for burial by his family. As for the other victims, once the medical examiner removed the paint from the victims’ fingertips and forensics was able to get some solid prints, the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) returned a match on the Virgin’s hands and those of the Christ figure—respectively, Esther Muniz (aka Esther Munroe, Esther Martinez) twenty-eight years of age at the time of her disappearance, a resident of Providence, and Paul Jimenez, eighteen (aka Jim Paulson) from Boston and Virginia Beach.

  Both were known prostitutes.

  The fourth victim was also a prostitute, and after the FBI Forensic Science Unit released a photograph of the Virgin’s head—digitally altered and colored to make the victim appear as she might have been “in life”—authorities quickly confirmed an anonymous tip that the victim’s name was Karen Canfield (aka Karen Jones, Joanie Canfield)—originally from Dayton, Ohio—nineteen years old when she disappeared off the streets of Providence three years earlier. DNA testing matched her head to the breasts found on Steve Rogers’s torso.

  Of the two women, only Muniz had been reported missing by an abusive boyfriend who, shortly after his girlfriend’s disappearance, had died in a botched drug deal. In addition to being a prostitute and a convicted felon, Muniz was also on the books as a habitual drug offender, and had three children by as many fathers.

  All of her children had been in foster care since the day they were born.

  Canfield, aged fourteen at the time she ran away from Dayton, was last seen by her alcoholic mother five years before her disappearance. Canfield’s mother told the FBI that she had no idea her daughter was even missing—and from what Markham could gather, most likely would not have lost any sleep even if she had. As was the case with the movements of Paul Jimenez in Boston, the details of Karen Canfield�
�s life in Providence were at this point still sketchy—the sad but typical nowhere story of a runaway-turned-underage-stripper-turned-crackhead-turned-prostitute—and a week’s worth of investigation had turned up enough for Markham to see the Dead End sign at the end of that street. Indeed, the handful of Canfield’s former acquaintances with whom the FBI had so far spoken claimed that she had often talked about getting clean and going to live with an aunt in North Carolina; and thus, when she stopped appearing on the streets of South Providence, they had just assumed that their friend had moved on—never even thought to report her missing.

  The one bright spot in the tragedy that had been Karen Canfield’s life was that her estranged mother requested her daughter’s head and breasts be sent back to Dayton when the FBI was through with them.

  Paul Jimenez’s family, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with him; and thus, the FBI would hang on to his body and Esther Muniz’s hands indefinitely.

  Markham quickly scanned his e-mails, promising himself he would get to them upon his return from Boston—after the teleconference with Quantico, in which he and Burrell’s team would once again be briefed on the ongoing forensic and coroner’s reports, as well as the joint investigations that had begun into the lives of the latest victims. Yet Markham could not ignore the nagging feeling that it was all a waste of time; he could not ignore that little voice in the back of his head that told him The Sculptor was too smart to allow himself to be caught that way—that is, by allowing himself to be traced to his material. Indeed, it seemed to Markham that The Sculptor had thought of everything: from the phony license plates and the fake satellite dish on his Eye-Team van, to the way he left absolutely no trace evidence in the material he used for his sculptures—other than that of which he was obviously consciously aware.

  But there must be something he’s overlooked, Markham thought. Something that perhaps goes all the way back to the murder of Gabriel Banford, or to the theft of the Pietà at St. Bart’s; something that The Sculptor had done when his plan was not yet fully formed—or perhaps something from the period when he was still experimenting.