The Sculptor

Indeed, for all his intellect, for all his self-awareness, the young man named Christian never quite understood why-when he was younger, when he was away at Phillips Exeter-he had never shown much interest in girls. He would not get hard when he looked at them in class and would certainly not “jerk off” like his classmates did to the pornographic pictures that were so often passed around. True, sometimes he found his hands absently wandering to his groin late at night when he thought about his mother, but the only time he really got hard was when he thought about his male classmates, when he would see them with their shirts off or coming out of the shower stalls, upon which Christian would quickly avert his eyes so as not to become aroused in front of them.

There was only one other boy at Phillips that Christian knew felt the same way-an “experienced” boy who took Christian under his wing, and with whom he would sometimes sneak away to places hidden; places where they could kiss and be naked against each other; places where they could take each other’s penises in their mouths, or insert them in each other’s behinds. With the death of Christian’s mother, however, all that stopped; and long after Christian moved back to Rhode Island, the young man struggled with his desire for male company and the guilt that somehow his homosexuality had contributed to both his mother’s death and his father’s vegetative state.

Yet with the murder of Damon Manzera, Christian found himself getting hard when he thought about that, too; and thus he understood that fate had directed him to channel his desire into something much more productive. He began fantasizing, began researching and experimenting with different methods. The idea of epinephrine had appealed to him from the beginning because he knew it would mimic his heart-pounding revelation before the Pietà at St. Bartholomew’s. And when he was ready, when he finally succeeded in producing a highly concentrated solution of the drug himself, the young man named Christian set about finding a proper candidate.

Gabriel Banford was always to have been the first victim of this new method. Christian had followed him for weeks after spotting him at Series X and planned on waiting for him in the dark of his bedroom. But on the evening that he should have killed him, when he stumbled upon Banford’s copy of Slumbering in the Stone, when fate directed him right then and there to flip to the chapter on the Pietà, the man who would from that day forward call himself The Sculptor wept under the weight of his divine revelation-a revelation that surpassed the one at St. Bartholomew’s. Yes, through this woman Catherine Hildebrant’s analysis of Michelangelo’s Holy Mother and Son-her brilliant articulation of what she called that “parallel trinity” as embodied in the artist’s portrayal of the Virgin herself-the boy, the young man named Christian not only finally understood his love of the Pietà, but also his mother’s love for him.

So overcome was The Sculptor by his revelation that he left Banford’s apartment in shock. He left the young man alive only to return a week later-after he had purchased his own copy of Slumbering in the Stone and read it cover to cover ten times, after he finally understood the totality of his purpose-that is, why fate had led him to Banford, to Dr. Catherine Hildebrant, and to Michelangelo, that man whose work was to become a template for The Sculptor’s destiny.

Everything is connected.

And now, six years later, as he followed the black Trailblazer on Route 95 toward downtown Providence, The Sculptor grinned widely beneath his fake moustache. Yes, even though the FBI was getting close to him, even though they had made the connection between the stolen Pietà and the Manzera family, The Sculptor knew deep down that fate had once again interceded on his behalf. And although he dared not get too close, The Sculptor also had a feeling that behind the tinted windows of the black Trailblazer sat the person for whom he had been searching all morning.

Yes, something deep down told The Sculptor that he had finally found Dr. Hildy.

Chapter 44