The Sculptor

Bill Burrell sat with Thomas Campbell Sr. in his den, their coffee long gone cold. Neither of them had drunk much, for their cups were only props in a scene they had played many times over the last three months. The set was the same-the comfy leather chairs, the bookcases, the warm paneled walls peppered with family photographs. Today, however, the mood, the color of the scene was different, for today the wealthy businessman had finally learned what had become of his only son. And as Special Agent Rachel Sullivan concluded her press conference on the television in the corner, as if on cue a thud was heard above Burrell’s head.

“She’ll be fine,” said Campbell, clicking the remote. “Her sister is up there with her. Probably dropped something is all.”

In the awkward silence that followed, Burrell took a sip of his cold coffee. Instant. Bitter. Maggie Campbell did not make it for him today; did not brew her special blend of Sumatra as she usually did on the SAC’s visits. No, Burrell had learned from Agent Sullivan that, upon identifying her son, upon seeing him frozen white in the horror that was Bacchus, Maggie Campbell had gone first into shock, then into a fit of inconsolable hysteria-so much so that by the time Burrell arrived at the house on Foster Cove later that afternoon, Tommy Campbell’s mother had since collapsed into her bed upstairs, exhausted from her bout with borderline madness. And save for the handful of reporters that still lingered at the end of the driveway, the house in which Rhode Island ’s favorite son grew up was as quiet as a tomb.

“Someone was found dead on this property, too,” Campbell said. “Did you know that, Bill?”

Burrell looked up from his coffee. Thomas Campbell was staring back at him blankly-his eyes like slits, red from weeping; a haggard shell of the man standing with his son in the photograph on the bookshelf behind him.

“In the summer of 1940,” Campbell continued. “Out on the front lawn, a caretaker for the family who owned the house before us. Story goes he was attacking their boy, and a couple of strangers just happened to be passing by. Stabbed the guy dead and then took off. The boy was there the whole time-saw the whole thing. Went on to become a famous movie director-made all those horror pictures in the sixties and seventies. Died last year. Remember him?”

Burrell nodded vaguely.

“Saw a bunch of his movies when I was a kid-scared the hell out of me. We bought the house from his uncle-gosh, going on almost thirty years ago now. Nice old fella-his uncle, I mean. A lot of those old-timers around here still remember all that-the story about the murder and all. Tommy had heard that story, too. When he was a kid. And for years he used to swear that there was a ghost in this house. You know how kids are. But you know what, Bill? I remember him telling me, even when he was little, that he wasn’t afraid-that he hoped they could be friends someday, he and the ghost. Isn’t that something? A little kid not being afraid of ghosts?”

Burrell nodded, looking down again at his cup.

“That’s the kind of boy my Tommy was,” Campbell said, his voice beginning to break. “A good friend to everybody. Not afraid to love even a ghost.”

“I know, Tom. He was a good kid. The best.”

“It’s why they took advantage of him out there in that world of his-those people, that slut model he asked to marry him. He was so trusting. He just thought that everybody who smiled at him meant it the same way he did when he smiled back-that’s why that whoring cunt was able to break my boy’s heart.”

Burrell was silent. They had been over it before-had long ago exhausted the possibility that Tommy’s ex-fiancée, Italian supermodel Victoria Magnone, was somehow involved in the star Rebel’s disappearance. Even before Burrell had met Tommy Campbell’s father, even before the wide receiver had gone missing, the SAC had followed the young couple’s very public romance and breakup in the media-couldn’t help but hear about it every time he turned on the TV or clicked on his goddamn Yahoo! homepage to check his stocks. But what the media hadn’t told him, what Burrell hadn’t learned until he met Tommy Campbell’s father, was the degree to which the ending of their relationship had broken the boy’s heart. Only after spending time with the Campbells at their house on Foster Cove, only after learning about the loving son behind the image portrayed of him in the media did Bill Burrell begin to feel guilty. For as many times as he had watched him play for the Rebels on TV, as many times as he had seen his image splattered across the Internet and on the covers of magazines, only after Bill Burrell met the missing footballer’s grieving parents did he start to think of Tommy Campbell as human.

“Tell me, Bill-tell me you know why somebody would want to hurt my boy.”