The Sculptor

by Gregory Funaro

  “Hildy, you there?”

  “Sorry, Jan. Did you tell the FBI guy where I am now?”

  “I did. I couldn’t remember the exact address, but I gave him your cell number. I’m sorry, Hildy, but I didn’t know what else to do. You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “Of course not. Let me get a shower and I’ll give you a ring after he calls. And thanks for the heads up, Jan. Love ya.”

  “Love you, too,” Janet said, and Cathy closed her phone. She smiled. Cathy really did love Janet Polk, had thought of her as a second mother ever since she was her teaching assistant at Harvard. Indeed, it was Janet who, only days after she defected to Brown, literally stole Cathy from a junior lecturer position at her alma mater. It was Janet who, for better or worse, introduced Cathy to Steven Rogers; Janet who kept Cathy on track to see that her tenure went through; and, most of all, it was Janet who had been there for Cathy when her real mother died five and a half years ago.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without ya, kid,” Cathy whispered to the boxes in the corner.

  And with that she hopped in the shower.

  Chapter 2

  Pulling her wet, jet-black hair into a ponytail, Cathy Hildebrant despised what she saw in the bathroom mirror that morning. Her skin looked pasty, and her normally bright, brown eyes were puffy—the half-Asian, half-German smile lines in their corners deeper and more pronounced. The wine? she wondered. Or am I just getting old? She did not remember her dream about the third grade, about her botched show and tell assignment, but felt a gnawing anxiety that she had been laughed at nonetheless. Then she thought of Steve, of their first date and the dumb joke he made: “Oh you’re half-Korean? I just thought I was putting you to sleep!”

  I should have asked for the check right then. Thanks a lot, Janet.

  The doorbell rang, startling her, and instinctively Cathy reached for her cell phone on the bathroom sink.

  “Dummy,” she muttered, and donning her black-rimmed glasses, she slipped into her sweatpants and a two-sizes-too-big Harvard T-shirt and made for the front door.

  “May I help you?” Cathy called through the peephole.

  The man on her front porch looked like he just stepped out of a J. Crew catalog—the khakis, the windbreaker, the lightweight sweater underneath—a nice change from all the artsy-fartsies on the east side, Cathy thought. He appeared to be in his thirties, good-looking, with close cropped brown hair and a square jaw. Cathy understood that the man had purposefully stepped back from the door so she could get a good look at him. And just as he was reaching underneath his jacket, Cathy realized that FBI-guy Markham or Peckham or whatever-his-name-was had decided to drop by unannounced.

  “I’m Special Agent Sam Markham,” he said, raising his ID to the peephole.

  So it is Markham, Cathy thought. You ain’t ready for retirement yet, Janet old girl.

  “I’m with the FBI, Behavioral Analysis Unit. I’d like to ask you a few questions, Dr. Hildebrant.”

  Behavioral Analysis. This is serious.

  Cathy had seen The Silence of the Lambs six times; had seen enough of those police dramas on television to know that the Behavioral Analysis Unit was the division of the FBI that handled murders—especially serial murders.

  She opened the door.

  “I’m sorry. Janet told me you were going to call.”

  “Dr. Polk gave me your phone number, ma’am. But we traced your new address before we needed to call it. The Bureau likes to handle this kind of thing in person.”

  The agent smiled thinly.

  “I see,” Cathy said, embarrassed. “Please, come in.”

  Shutting the door behind him, Cathy stood awkwardly for a moment in the tiny entryway. She recognized Markham’s cologne—Nautica Voyage. She had bought a bottle for her husband last fall after smelling it on one of her graduate students—had all but begged Steve to wear it—but the selfish prick never even took the plastic off the box.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” Cathy said. “I’m still unpacking and I don’t have much furniture yet. Why don’t we go into the kitchen—unless you don’t mind sitting on boxes in the living room.”

  “The kitchen’s fine, ma’am.”

  Cathy led him down the narrow hallway to the back of the house. Special Agent Markham took his seat at the table.

  “I was up late last night grading papers. Coffee isn’t on yet, but it’ll only take a couple of minutes.”

  “No thank you, Dr. Hildebrant. I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Some orange juice then? Some water?”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t plan on us being here very long.” Cathy detected a hint of Yankee in his voice—a disarming but relaxed formality that made her like him.

  “Well, then,” Cathy said, sitting down across from him. “What can I do for you, Agent Markham?”

  “I assume Dr. Polk told you why I was looking for you?”

  “Yes. Something about the Italian Renaissance and the disappearance of Tommy Campbell?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.” Markham produced a thin stack of Polaroids from his jacket pocket. “What I’m about to show you is confidential, though probably not for long. The Westerly Police were called to the scene first—early this morning, before the state police arrived and our Field Office in Boston was notified. Even though Campbell disappeared down at Watch Hill, given his public profile, his celebrity, the case has been ours from the beginning. We’ve been able to keep things quiet thus far, but now with the locals involved, there’s always more of a chance of details leaking out to the media before we give the go ahead. Most likely the story will break this afternoon, but can I have your word that, until then, you’ll keep what I’m about to show you between us? Meaning, you won’t repeat our discussion to anyone, including your boss, Dr. Polk?”

  “Yes, you have my word.”

  Agent Markham peeled off a Polaroid and slid it across the table.

  “Do you recognize the figure in this photograph?”

  “Of course,” Cathy said immediately. “It’s Michelangelo’s Bacchus.”

  “Are you sure? Please look closer, Dr. Hildebrant.”

  Cathy obliged, although she did not have to look a second time; for even though the photograph was a full body shot—taken somewhat at a distance and from the side—Dr. Catherine Hildebrant, perhaps the foremost American scholar on the works of Michelangelo, could have described the details of Bacchus with her eyes closed. There before her once again was Michelangelo’s controversial but ground-breaking sculpture of the Roman god of wine—drunk, unsteady, almost staggering off his rocky base. There was the bowl of wine raised in his right hand, and the tiger skin, the cluster of grapes by his side. Cathy could also see the goat-legged satyr behind him, smiling as he munches on the fruit which slips from the god’s left hand. Cathy knew the sculpture of Bacchus as intimately as her own body—had taught a whole unit on it at Brown; had traveled to Italy to study it for part of her dissertation on Michelangelo at Harvard. Yes, if Special Agent Markham wanted to know anything about good ol’ boy Bacchus, he had certainly come to the right place, for Dr. Catherine Hildebrant had written the book on Bacchus—literally.

  “I can tell you that this is a reproduction, however,” Cathy said finally. “The background, the bushes behind the statue—this picture was taken outside. The original now lives in the Bargello National Museum in Florence. It’s a fantastic copy, I’ll give you that—right down to the coloring. But I don’t see what this has to do with the disappearance of Tommy Campbell.”

  Special Agent Markham was silent for a moment, then slid another Polaroid across the table. This one was of a close-up of the statue’s head—the crown of grapes, the mouth ajar, the eyes rolling backward as the head slumps forward. However, unlike the first photograph, Cathy noticed immediately that something was off.

  Then like a slap on her heart it hit her.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped. “It’s him! It’s Tommy Campbell!”

  �
��Yes. He was found this morning down at Watch Hill, in the garden of an investment CEO not half a mile from his parents’ house. They’ve already given a positive ID. It appears that whoever killed Campbell somehow preserved his body and articulated it into the pose you see now—right down to the coloring, as you said.”

  Cathy felt the shock washing over her, the words sticking in her throat, but knew she had to push through it.

  “Who? I mean, who would do something like this?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping you’ll help us find out, Dr. Hildebrant. We’ve got a forensic team down there now doing a preliminary investigation, but we need you to take a look at the crime scene before we move the bodies.”

  “Bodies? You mean the satyr? It’s a real person, too?”

  “A young boy, yes,” Markham said weakly. “The top half, that is. The bottom appears to be the hindquarters of a goat.”

  “Dear God,” Cathy groaned. And despite a subtle wave of nausea in her throat, despite the tears welling in her eyes, she managed to ask, “Who is it?”

  “We can’t be sure—got an agent working with missing persons as we speak, but it might take some time before we get a positive ID. You see, unlike Campbell, the child’s face seems to have been significantly…altered—contorted to duplicate the expression of Michelangelo’s satyr.”

  Cathy felt her stomach drop, felt herself go numb.

  “Would you like to change before we leave?” Markham asked. “It’s a bit cold for April, a bit cooler down by the water.”

  “Why me?” Cathy said suddenly. She was in a daze, her voice not her own. “You obviously have your own experts on the subject—people who recognized the statue, who knew it to be a Michelangelo. I mean, what could I possibly tell you that one of your agents couldn’t find on the goddamn Internet?”

  Without a word, Special Agent Markham slid the last of his Polaroids across the table. Cathy gazed down in horror at a close-up of neatly chiseled letters—an inscription at the base of the outcropping on which the mummified body of Tommy Campbell was standing. It read simply:

  FOR DR. HILDEBRANT

  Chapter 3

  The outer shell of the carriage house was still the original brick—built in the 1880s by a wealthy textile family in what was then a more rural part of East Greenwich, Rhode Island. It sat back about thirty yards off of the main house and could be accessed either by a flagstone path leading from the back porch, or by a dirt driveway that veered off its paved sister and cut through the trees at the western edge of the heavily wooded property.

  The house itself was a rambling, three-story affair graced by a long, circular driveway with a waterless fountain at its center. The “front door” was actually located around the side of the house, facing a line of trees to the east. Hence, most visitors (although there were very few nowadays) climbed the steps leading up to the mud room, which was located just past the library windows that overlooked the driveway.

  The Sculptor, however, almost always used the back door; for The Sculptor almost always had business to attend to in the carriage house before joining his father in the home of his youth. The Sculptor’s family had lived there since 1975—moved there just after The Sculptor was born. By that time, the carriage house had long since been converted to a two-car garage with a room above it in which the previous owner’s caretaker had lived. And as a boy, The Sculptor would often play alone in the empty loft for hours. Most of the time, however, he would just hide out there when his parents fought, or when his mother got drunk and hit him.

  The Sculptor’s mother hit him quite a lot as a boy—when his father was away on business or playing golf at the country club. And when he was super naughty, sometimes his mother would fill the bathtub with ice water and hold him under until he started choking. Sometimes she would lock The Sculptor in the bathroom and pour bleach on the floor and make him breathe the fumes. Most of the time, however, she just hit him—always on the back of the head, so the bruises and lumps beneath his curly mane of dark brown hair would not show. The Sculptor’s mother told him that if he ever squealed to anyone she would die and his father would kill himself. And for a long time The Sculptor believed her—after all, The Sculptor loved his mother and his father very much and would do anything to protect them. The Sculptor’s father called him Christian back then—had no trouble remembering his name. But that was a long, long time ago, and now Christian’s father never called him Christian.

  Christian almost never called himself Christian now either; hardly ever thought of himself as having been anything other than The Sculptor—only when it could not be avoided, in public, when he signed for his father’s prescriptions or when he had to purchase medical supplies over the Internet. The Sculptor hated the Internet, but had long ago resigned himself to accepting it as a necessary tool to accomplish his work. And as long as it stayed out back in the carriage house he could tolerate it—for out back in the carriage house was where the technology lived; out back in the carriage house was where all the work was done.

  The Sculptor’s father did not know about his son’s work in the carriage house—did not know much of anything anymore. He spent most of his time in his bedroom—on the second floor, directly above the kitchen—looking out the window at the bird feeders his son had installed many years ago in one of the large oak trees. Sometimes The Sculptor would play music for his father on the old record player—mostly crackly 33–1/3s of classical music, the kind of stuff his father had been fond of before the accident. The Sculptor also installed a CD player inside the shell of an old Philco, jury-rigging it to play recordings of vintage radio shows from the 1930s and ’40s. This seemed to please his father greatly, who in turn would sit smiling at the radio for hours.

  Mostly, however, The Sculptor’s father just sat motionless in his wheelchair by the window. He still could turn his head, still had use of his right hand, but he rarely spoke except now and then to ask for someone named “Albert.” For the first few years after the accident, The Sculptor had no idea who Albert was. But after digging into his family’s history, The Sculptor discovered that his father had an older brother named Albert who had committed suicide when his father was just a boy.

  As Cathy Hildebrant and Agent Markham turned onto Route 95 on their way to Watch Hill, miles away, The Sculptor was removing an intravenous line from his father’s wrist. He usually fed his father by hand—a mixture of oatmeal and other ingredients that he had researched for optimum nutrition—but found over the years that after a night of barbiturates, this method was more effective to stabilize his father’s system. He had been out for nearly sixteen hours—had been intravenously fed a steady dose of mild sedatives while his son had been away—and now all his father needed was just a little extra TLC to bring him back around.

  “That’s it,” said The Sculptor, wiping off the spittle from his father’s chin. He threw the rag into a white bin marked LINENS and with one arm lifted his father from his bed to his wheelchair. He turned the steamer beside the bed on to low, for sometimes his father’s nostrils dried out and his nose bled. Indeed, almost everything The Sculptor needed to care for his father was at hand in his father’s bedroom: boxes upon boxes of medical supplies; an adjoining bathroom that had been outfitted with a sit-down shower; a small refrigerator in the corner for his father’s medicines; and three intravenous units—each holding different bags of different liquids for different purposes. And were it not for the red wallpaper, the richly stained woodwork, and the four-poster bed, his father’s bedroom would have looked no different than a hospital ward.

  “Time to watch the birdies,” The Sculptor said, parking his father before the large bay window. The Sculptor dropped a record on the turntable—Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in D Minor—and as the first strains of Baroque guitar washed over the room, The Sculptor headed down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen. There he rinsed his hands and fixed himself a protein drink, gulping it down with a handful of vitamins and supplements. He was hungry, ravenous
from his work the night before, but resisted the temptation to eat more and stepped out onto the back porch. Yes, he must stick to his diet, must be in tip-top condition for all the hard work ahead of him.

  Even back when he was known as Christian, The Sculptor always kept himself in good shape. Six-foot-five since the age of seventeen, before the accident he had lettered in both football and lacrosse for Phillips Exeter Academy. Since the accident, however, he had focused only on building up his body—what he saw from the beginning as a necessary component of caring for his father. The accident had been his mother’s fault. Christian would never know the exact details—had been away at boarding school when it all happened. But from what he could gather, there had been an incident at the country club. His father’s lawyer told Christian a week after the funeral—the same week he turned eighteen and became legal custodian of his family’s fortune—that his mother had been cheating on his father with a young tennis pro not much older than Christian himself. There had been a scene, a fist fight at the country club—Christian’s father laying out the tennis pro and dragging his wife out by the hair. They had just turned onto Route 95 when the semi broadsided them. His mother died instantly, but his father survived—paralyzed from the waist down, his left arm useless, his brain a vegetable soup.