The Sculptor

Cathy tried not to think of her ex-husband-tried not to think about the images from The Sculptor’s DVD that had been branded into her brain. She knew deep down that it was not her fault and that The Michelangelo Killer had begun hunting victims even before he’d ever heard of Dr. Catherine Hildebrant. But more than the degree of her culpability in her ex-husband’s death, Cathy tried not to think about the mixed feelings she had now that he was gone. No, she would never have wished what The Michelangelo Killer had done to him even on her worst enemy; but what chewed away at Cathy’s guts was the feeling that she had lost him twice, and that, as much as she hated to admit it, the first time around had been harder than the second.

There’ll be time to sort it out later was her mantra-the same one she had repeated to herself over and over during her mother’s battle with breast cancer. Yet instead of following up with encouraging words to stay focused, to finish her book and secure tenure, Cathy now had a new tagline: after I catch The Michelangelo Killer.

Cathy stood before the bathroom mirror and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She did not like how she looked with blond highlights. They made her look cheap, she thought, like a porn star. But it had to be done as part of the deal with Burrell and Boston. What would take more getting used to would be the contact lenses-she had never liked those; they always felt dry and made her eyes look puffy. Again, another necessity, but she would take along her black-rimmed glasses with her just in case. The worst, however, was when she donned her sunglasses. She thought she looked silly. Like a porno-Asian La Femme Nikita.

“You ready?” asked Markham, his head poking through the bathroom door. His presence calmed her, grounded her, but at the same time made her feel ashamed. Yes, despite everything that had happened since she met him, Cathy actually felt happy to finally be alone with him again.

“Yes,” she said. “If you don’t mind being seen with me.”

Markham kissed her neck and left her at the sink. They had spent the night in each other’s arms-made love like a pair of adulterers into the wee hours of the morning-and Cathy’s nostrils were still filled with the strange scent of her hair coloring and Sam Markham’s cologne.

As Cathy brushed her teeth, she suddenly had the impulse to call Janet Polk-to open her cell phone and leave her surrogate mother a quick message saying she was okay. But that’s a no-no, Cathy thought. Yes, Cathy knew damn well that she was not supposed to talk with anyone other than the FBI until Bill Burrell gave the go ahead-another part of her agreement with Burrell which, like her hair, she regretted. Cathy had not spoken to Janet and Dan since she left the hospital; she had gotten messages to them through Rachel Sullivan, but still she felt guilty, for Cathy knew how worried Janet was since learning about the murder of Steve Rogers.

There’ll be time to sort it out later.

Cathy emerged from the bathroom to find Markham standing in the middle of the common area-his copy of Slumbering in the Stone open before him as if he were an actor about to give a reading.

“What is it?” Cathy asked.

“Nothing, really. Just trying to gather myself before we go-overtired, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, ever since the teleconference with Quantico yesterday, there’s a quote in your chapter on the Pietà that’s been bothering me-a quote attributed to Michelangelo himself, and related by his contemporary biographer, Ascanio Condivi.”

“You mean the quote regarding the Madonna’s youthful appearance?”

“Yes. In your discussion of the various reasons as to why Michelangelo might have sculpted his Pietà with the Virgin Mary as a young woman, you say that the artist himself told Condivi, ‘Don’t you know that chaste women stay fresh much longer than those who are not chaste? How much more so then with the Virgin, who never had even the slightest lascivious desire that might alter her appearance?’”

“Why should that bother you?”

“Well, as we saw with his Bacchus, The Sculptor is well aware of the baggage the contemporary context of his Pietà would carry along with it-that is, how our knowledge of where the pieces came from would affect our perception of it. As we learned with Bacchus-where we, the viewer, see both the mythology of the Roman god and the satyr wound up into the lives of Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick-when we look at The Sculptor’s Pietà, we see the story of the Virgin and Christ, but we also see the stories of the prostitutes-the lascivious desires of their lives. Our minds see the contradiction of the holy and the impure all at once.”

“So you think the message in this case is ultimately one of blasphemy?”