The Sculptor

by Gregory Funaro

  TRACKING A KILLER

  “All this is just a precaution, Cathy,” Markham said. “In case he tries to make contact with you, to leave you another note—that is, if the notes you received five years ago are related to Tommy Campbell’s murder to begin with.”

  “They are, Sam. You know they are.”

  “I can’t be sure—might be just a strange coincidence. However, since it’s all we have to go on right now, we’ll see how far that road leads us. But the last thing you want right now is for the press to know the extent to which you’re involved in this. In fact, if my gut is right, I think that’s just what the killer wants to happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s obvious that whoever murdered Tommy Campbell and that boy had been planning this crime for a long time—perhaps even years. And until the autopsy results come back, until we get an idea of exactly how this person murdered and preserved his victims—how he actually created that sick sculpture of his—the only window into his motives right now is you. You and your book.”

  “So you’re saying you think this maniac is using me?”

  “I’ll have a better idea once I read your book. But judging from the great lengths to which the killer went to put his sculpture on display in Dodd’s garden—a display that the killer obviously intended as some kind of historical allusion publicly dedicated to you—well, it’s clear to me that whoever did this thought you of all people would understand his motives…”

  THE SCULPTOR

  Gregory Funaro

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  As always, for my wife and my father; but also for my

  grandfather, whose statue of David in the backyard I was

  sure came alive at night.

  The best artist has that thought alone which is

  contained within the marble shell; only the sculptor’s

  hand can break the spell to free the figures

  slumbering in the stone.

  —Michelangelo Buonarroti

  Contents

  Prologue

  Exhibit One: Bacchus

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Exhibit Two: The Rome Pietà

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Exhibit Three: Toward David

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  “Shake off your slumber, O son of Jupiter.”

  Tommy Campbell, lightning fast wide receiver for the Boston Rebels, opened his eyes expecting to see the end-zone. He could hear the cheers of the crowd—that familiar drone of “Sooooup!” coming from the stands—and his heart was pounding, could feel it pumping in his thighs as he ran. Yes, he was sure that he had caught the ball—his fingertips, the palms of his hands electrified with that familiar sting of “Touchdown!”

  But as the cries of his fans quickly faded, as his vision cleared into a bright ball of light, amidst a milky haze Tommy Campbell understood all at once that he had been dreaming. Yes, he was lying down—could feel something cold, something steel-hard on his back and buttocks. He felt groggy, doped up on something, but at the same time alive with energy. And he thought he recognized the light hovering above him.

  From a movie? Or from that time in the hospital. When they operated on my—

  “That’s it,” said a deep voice to his right. “Come forth from the stone.”

  “Not my knee again, Doc,” said Tommy. His throat was dry, and his words came out in spurts of cracked whispers. “Tell me it’s not my knee…”

  No reply, but instead a dull prick, a tug at the skin on his forearm. His heart was racing now—even more so than before his first start as a freshman at Boston College; even more so than before his first game as a second round draft pick with the Rebels. But this was different. Indeed, Tommy felt as if there was a war raging inside him: one side trying to drag him back down to his dream, to his winning thirty-seven yard touchdown versus the Dolphins; the other, trying desperately to pull him awake, to bring him back to reality—to wherever he was now.

  “Where am I?” Tommy whispered. The light above him solidified into a white rectangle—like a floating movie screen only a few feet from his face, its edges sharp against the surrounding darkness. Yes, his senses were returning quickly now—the blood pumping fast through his veins—and with every beat of his heart the memories came flooding back.

  He had been drinking a beer on the porch, looking out over the water—had made only a brief appearance at the victory celebration that afternoon in Boston; had wanted to spend time with his parents down at Watch Hill in Rhode Island before the big game, before flying off to Tampa to prepare for the Super Bowl versus the Giants. He had been alone—Yes, Vicky is gone now, and Mom and Pop had gone to bed. And it had been cold, the January moon dancing playfully on the frigid waters of Foster Cove—those very same waters in which Rhode Island’s favorite son used to swim with his father as a boy.

  “Pop?” Tommy croaked. “You there, Pop?”

  Then he remembered the wasp—Wasps in January?—the hiss, the sharp pain as if something had bitten him on the neck, right on the jugular. Tommy Campbell had shot up instantly, sure that the top of his six-foot-six frame would crash into the low ceiling of the wraparound porch. But he did not remember coming down, did not remember landing on the wooden planks the way he still remembered landing on the five yard line last season versus the Texans—the now infamous landing that the networks played over and over again; the landing that dislocated his knee and caused him to fumble; the landing that—as those asshole Monday morning quarterbacks put it—cost his team the AFC championship.

  But this was a new season, and the tough-as-nails twenty-six-year-old had healed up quickly. And since his career threatening injury less than a year earlier Tommy “Soup” Campbell had broken the record for most pass receiving yards in a single season. Never mind his personal problems, the split with his fiancée—Hell, in a way I have Vicky to thank for it! No, the beloved wide receiver had defied the odds, had returned to the NFL with a vengeance, and most of all had led his team to the Big One—what those same asshole Monday morning quarterbacks were already calling “The Souper Bowl.”

  But now something was wrong. He could feel it in his chest, in his fingers and his toes—pumping hard, pumping painfully. Tommy tried to get his bearings, tried to turn away from the glowing white rectangle hovering above him, but his head was locked in place—something pinning him down at his forehead, something preventing him from moving side to side. Instinct
ively, Tommy made to reach for it, but realized at once that his wrists were locked down also; and although he could not see his chest, his thighs or his ankles, he suddenly became aware of pressure in those places, too.

  “Pop, you there?” Tommy called out again. “Did I fall on the porch? They got me in traction or something?” His voice was clear now, shaky, and his senses razor sharp, when suddenly the screen above him flickered into life.

  The image was of a statue—dirty white marble against black, so that the figure appeared to be standing, floating in the darkness just inches from his face. The statue was that of a naked man—a Greek god or something, Tommy thought—but he could not be sure, could not remember ever having seen the figure before. At the same time, however, he felt as if he recognized it from some place. It was not the pose itself that struck Tommy as familiar—the awkward way in which the god was standing, the bowl raised in his right hand as if in a toast. And it certainly wasn’t the curly hair—or are they little grapes?—surrounding the god’s face that sparked a memory in Tommy’s feverish brain. No, there was something about the face itself, something about the body…

  As his mind scrambled to remember, to understand, the statue began to rotate as if it were on a turntable. Tommy saw that behind the statue was another figure—a child, perhaps—that came up to the god’s waist. The child—Is it a child? What’s wrong with his feet? His legs?—was smiling impishly with a handful of grapes. It appeared to be hiding behind the god, almost supporting him.

  Yes! Tommy thought. The guy with the bowl looks like a staggering drunk, like he’s having a hard time standing up!

  Incredibly, amidst his confusion, amidst the pounding of his heart, flashed fragmented memories of parties at Boston College; of nights out in Vegas with his teammates; of the time he met Vicky at that posh party in Manhattan…

  Pop didn’t like her from the start. Fucking models. He was right. I must have been out of my mind proposing to that—

  “That’s it,” said the voice again. “Shake off your slumber, O son of Jupiter.”

  Tommy tried in vain to turn his head, to search the darkness out of the corner of his eye, but he could see nothing but the strange image before him. It had morphed into a close-up of the statue’s head. Yes, those had to be grapes, had to be leaves surrounding the god’s face—a face with rolling eyes, a face lolling forward with a half-open mouth.

  “Who are you?” Tommy cried. “What am I doing here?” He began to panic, began to strain against the straps as the image before him moved again. Tommy watched as it slowly panned down over the statue’s chest, over its somewhat bloated belly, and finally to its hairless groin—to the place where its penis should have been.

  Yes, the god before him, whoever he was, was missing his crank—had only a pair of swollen testicles between his legs.

  “What the hell is going on?” Tommy screamed.

  He was sweating profusely now—his heart pounding loudly in his ears, the straps boring into his wrists like string on an Easter ham. Then suddenly the image flickered, and Tommy Campbell saw himself, saw his face on the screen before him—as he was now, lying down, his head strapped to a table. Only Tommy could not see the strap. No, surrounding his head were clusters of grapes and leaves like the face of the nameless god to whom he had just been introduced.

  “What the fuck is—”

  Then Tommy froze—watched in horror as the image on the screen began to pan down over his own body. The camera had to be someplace above him—beyond the screen, to the right a bit from where that voice had come—but Tommy could see no sign of it or the cameraman—just the image of his own muscular physique on the screen before him. Tommy began to tremble violently, thought he could feel his brain squirming behind his eyes, and in a frenzied burst of adrenaline tried desperately to free himself—the body above him writhing as he writhed, jerking as he jerked. Yet as strong as Tommy Campbell was, he could no more break his bonds than if he had been sealed inside a block of marble. Worst of all, Tommy Campbell could not take his eyes off himself, and amidst his panic the young man watched as his tanned, hairless chest—there was the strap!—passed slowly across the screen to his belly.

  Only then did Tommy Campbell understand.

  “This can’t be happening,” he whimpered—the merciless, deafening war drum in his chest a brutal herald of what lay over the horizon, of what he knew he was about to see. “I must be dreaming!”

  “No, my Bacchus,” said the voice in the darkness. “You are finally awake.”

  And as Tommy Campbell began to convulse, upon the terror of his confirmation, the young man’s heart all at once stopped beating forever.

  EXHIBIT ONE

  Bacchus

  Chapter 1

  Furious, Dr. Catherine Hildebrant threw the student’s cell phone out the window—watched it explode in a puff of smoke on the lawn outside the List Art Center.

  “Another cell phone goes off in my class and you’ll be taken out back and shot!”

  Then Cathy stopped.

  There’s no lawn outside my window, she said to herself. No window in my classroom either.

  The cell phone kept ringing—Beethoven, Für Elise.

  “Miss Hildebrant?”

  Cathy turned to face her art history class, who behind her back had changed to her classmates from the third grade at Eden Park Elementary School. Mrs. Miller was staring at her impatiently—show and tell, Cathy’s turn, anger at once replaced by panic. Cathy’s classmates began to snicker at her with whispers of “Ching-chong, ching-chong!” She could feel the fear tightening in her chest as the room brightened, as she stared down at the smooth white blob in her hands.

  What is this? What did I bring for show and tell today?

  Amidst the laughter and the cat-calls, the white blob suddenly burst outward into snow as Cathy’s classroom dissolved into the morning sun of her bedroom—her cell phone Für Elise–ing on the nightstand beside her.

  She opened it.

  “Hello?”

  “Hildy?” It was her boss, Dr. Janet Polk, Chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University—the only person in Providence who dared call Catherine Hildebrant “Hildy” to her face.

  “Hey, Jan,” Cathy yawned. “Christ, what time is it?”

  “Almost eleven.”

  “My God, that wine must have been roofied. Was up late last night grading those final—”

  “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, Hil, but did that FBI guy call you yet?”

  “Who?”

  “I think he said his name was Markham, or maybe it was Peckham. I’m not sure. Was kind of flustered by the whole thing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He just left here not five minutes ago—caught me and Dan turning the flower beds out back. He said that he was looking for information in connection with the disappearance of that football player.”

  “Tommy Campbell?” Cathy asked, sitting up.

  Although she was an attractive woman, Cathy could not deny that she had been a nerd all her life—never had a taste for sports; would much rather have listened to a lecture on Donatello than be caught dead at a football game in college. However, even she had become smitten with Rhode Island’s favorite son—that dashing, blond-haired, blue-eyed lightning bolt that nobody in the NFL could seem to catch. And more and more last season Cathy found herself doing something she had never dreamed of: sitting in front of a television watching football on a Sunday.

  “Yes,” Janet said. “That’s him. Tommy Campbell—the one who disappeared back in January.”

  “Why did the FBI want to talk to you?”

  “He actually wanted to talk to you, Hildy. Said he needed to talk to an expert on Renaissance art—Italian Renaissance, to be exact.”

  “Let me guess. They found him on a beach somewhere with a stolen Botticelli?”

  Since Tommy Campbell had vanished without a trace nearly four months earlier, since the Boston Rebels had los
t the Super Bowl to the New York Giants in early February, theories about what had happened to the wide receiver were as numerous as the Rebel fans themselves—from his drowning in the waters of Foster Cove to his having been kidnapped by the coach of a rival team to his simply disappearing into anonymity à la Elvis Presley. Cathy had always suspected the latter, for she saw something of herself in the modest, soft-spoken “Mama’s boy” who the tabloids claimed still visited his parents whenever he got the chance—that desire not for fame and fortune, but just to live his life with those he loved, in obscurity, doing what made him happy.

  “The FBI agent wouldn’t say anything more about it,” Janet sighed. “When I told him that it wasn’t my area, that you were our go-to-gal for the Italian thing, he said he knew that. He asked me where he could find you. Said he’d been by your office and your house already but you weren’t home. Then I realized he meant your old house.”

  Steve must have spent the night at the slut’s, Cathy thought. Still won’t bang her in our old bed. Fucking actor. Fucking spineless pussy.

  Cathy gazed around the bedroom of her new digs—new to her, but built around the turn of the twentieth century; its architecture, a seamless blend of Victorian elegance and modern practicality characteristic of many of the three-story houses that line the Upper East Side of Providence. Cathy lived on the first floor; had moved in on the very same day the news broke about Tommy Campbell—less than a week after she discovered the e-mails and Steve confessed to her about the affair. And now, three months later, boxes of her former self still littered every room of her two-bedroom, overpriced condominium. She had needed to break it fast and clean from Steven Rogers, and got lucky with a spur of the moment rent-to-own on East George Street—the life she built with her husband down the drain because the childish theatre professor could not keep his dick in his pants, could not keep his hands off the only semi-good-looking graduate student to grace his presence in nearly ten years of marriage. That was the hardest part. Even at thirty-eight Catherine Hildebrant knew she was smarter and better looking than her husband’s mistress, but the little slut had one thing that Dr. Hildy didn’t: youth.