The Sculptor

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 playing 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.