The Sculptor

Chapter 6

Special Agent in Charge William “Bulldog” Burrell had mixed feelings about the hand that fate had dealt him. As the newly appointed SAC of the FBI’s Boston Field Office, the Tommy Campbell case had been his baby from the beginning—one that he had seen to personally. A twenty-two-year veteran of the FBI, Bill Burrell knew his way around an investigation. He had served in the Washington, Chicago, and Dallas Field Offices, as well as held a number other of high-profile SAC positions, including section chief of the Strategic Information and Operations Center at FBI Headquarters, before landing the gig in Boston. The six-foot-three former Marine with the buzz cut had been called “Bulldog” since his football days at the University of New Hampshire—not only because of his hulking frame, his heavy jowls, his menacing stare, and his hot temper, but also because of the way he always tore into his opponents: straight ahead for the red until he ripped his man to shreds.

However, in the three months since Tommy Campbell’s disappearance, Bulldog had not a shred of evidence to show for himself. He had long ago exhausted his leads, had long ago begun to feel desperate, and had since lost countless hours of sleep over what had been sizing up to be his first big failure since he took over the Boston Office the previous November—the first big failure of his career. What a mixed bag it was then that the kid’s body should have turned up on the very same weekend Supervisory Special Agent Sam Markham had arrived in preparation for a three-day seminar on the latest forensic and profiling procedures at Quantico; what a mixed bag that Markham had gotten to the crime scene before he had; and what a mixed bag that Markham should be the one to jump on their very first lead now that the disappearance of Tommy Campbell had been deemed a homicide.

Yes, now that they had two bodies and a serial killer on their hands; now that it was clear that they were dealing with something much, much bigger than just a murder or a suicide, Burrell, whether he liked it or not, would need Sam Markham. And although it had not yet been six hours since the horrific white sculpture had been discovered down at Watch Hill, already Special Agent in Charge William “Bulldog” Burrell was not happy about the way the investigation was moving ahead.

It was not that Bulldog had anything personal against Markham. On the contrary, Bulldog actually admired the legendary “profiler,” the man who had brought down Jackson Briggs, aka “The Sarasota Strangler”—that son of a bitch who killed all those old ladies in Florida. And then, of course, there was that nasty little business in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yeah, no one would ever forget what happened there.

Indeed, word on the street said that it was only a matter of time before Markham took over as chief for the Behavioral Analysis Unit-2 at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. However, Bill Burrell knew such a position was not one the forty-year-old Markham was gunning for. No, Markham was like him—happier with his boots on the ground, slugging it out in the trenches himself. And now that the Tommy Campbell disappearance had been deemed a homicide, if Burrell had to work with somebody from Quantico, he was glad that it was Sam Markham.

Nonetheless, the fifty-year-old lifer could not help but feel cheated that the first and only break in the biggest case of his career had fallen into Markham’s lap, for no matter how much he admired Markham, Bill Burrell was instinctively territorial. Like a bulldog. And this was his junkyard.

It was for this reason that the phone call from Special Agent Rachel Sullivan, Burrell’s NCAVC coordinator, went right up his ass. His technician had briefed him on their conversation as soon as Burrell arrived at the crime scene—a scene that had pulled him away from a visit with his sick mother in New Hampshire; a scene that demanded the hardnosed SAC show up at Watch Hill in person. And although Bulldog was pleased with the way his forensic team had secured the site, that Markham should have given orders to his men was simply unacceptable.

Burrell stood at the bottom of the gravel driveway, frowning over a Marlboro. He dared to smoke only on a case—when he knew he would not be home for a while and his wife would not be able to smell it on him.

But how the hell did he get them in here? Burrell asked himself, gazing out over the impeccably landscaped property.

The mansion belonged to a wealthy investment CEO by the name of Dodd, who had been sleeping soundly with his wife when his caretaker discovered the statue in the southeastern corner of the topiary garden. A row of high hedges separated almost the entirety of Dodd’s estate from his neighbors on either side—except for the eastern stretch, which sloped down toward the beach. It was in this area that, upon their initial sweep of the crime scene, Burrell’s team discovered a set of fresh footprints running back and forth in the sand from the property next door. The neighbors on this side were summer folk—not “year rounders” like Dodd and his wife—and consequently the house remained unoccupied in the off-season. The man who made the footprints in the sand had known this. However, the man who made the footprints in the sand had also known to wear something—probably plastic bags—over his shoes; for in all the prints not a single tread could be found.

“Yes,” Burrell whispered in a plume of smoke. “He had to have parked next door. But then that means he also had to carry Campbell and that boy around the back, across that narrow span of beach and up the grassy slope. Now that’s one strong, one determined son of a bitch.”

Burrell heeled his cigarette into the gravel and crossed the large expanse of lawn to the entrance of the topiary garden. He looked at his watch: 12:58 P.M.

Where the hell is Markham? he thought, scanning the sea of blue FBI jackets.

The topiary garden was roughly a thirty-by-thirty-meter courtyard divided into quarters by a brick path with a marble fountain at its center. And save for the wall of twelve-foot high hedges that separated Dodd’s property from his neighbors, a series of arched “windows” and “doors” had been cut into the remaining three sides, giving people inside the garden a lovely view of Dodd’s property—including the beach and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it—while at the same time enclosing them in a separate space altogether. In addition to the classical marble sculptures that occupied the arched windows, the interior of the garden was peppered with a number of exquisitely trimmed topiary sculptures, including a bear, an elephant, a giraffe, and a horse.

It was in the farthest corner of the garden that the killer had mounted his exhibit, an exhibit that, despite its gruesomeness, Burrell thought looked strangely at home among its marble and spring-green companions—knew instinctively that the killer wanted everyone to see not just Tommy Campbell, not just his statue, but the totality of its context as well.

“She’s here, Bill,” said a voice behind him.

It was Sam Markham.

Turning, Burrell’s gaze fell upon a petite, attractive young woman shivering beside the Quantico profiler. He right away pegged the eyes behind the black-rimmed glasses to be Korean—the same as his wife’s.

“Can I have one of my people get you a cup of coffee, Dr. Hildebrant?” he said, dispensing with the formalities of an introduction. Bill Burrell knew his team well; knew that Special Agent Sullivan, who was now speaking with their tech guy by the fountain, had already briefed the art historian as to who he was.

“No thank you. I’d like to see the sculpture.”

“This way,” said Burrell, leading her across the courtyard. If it had been unclear to Cathy Hildebrant who was in charge of this shindig, the way the sea of blue jackets immediately parted to let Bill Burrell pass left no room for doubt.

Upon the FBI’s arrival, the forensic team had quickly set about erecting a bright blue canopy over Tommy Campbell and his young companion, and thus Cathy did not have a clear view of the sculpture until she was directly upon it. And for all her anxiety leading up to this moment, despite the reality of the tableau of death before her, Cathy felt numbly detached and analytical, while at the same time overcome with a buzzing sensation of awe—a feeling eerily reminiscent of the first time she encountered the original Bacchus in Florence nearly fifteen years earlier.

Indeed, the reproduction of Michelangelo’s marble sculpture was even more—oh God, how Cathy wished she could think of another word for it!—impressive than in Markham’s Polaroids. The pose, the attention to detail—the lion skin, the cup, the grapes—were nearly flawless, and Cathy had to remind herself that she was looking at a pair of bleached dead bodies. Nonetheless, she automatically began to circle the sculpture as she knew Michelangelo had intended viewers of his Bacchus to do—an ingenious artistic ploy woven into the statue’s multiplicity of angles that subliminally transmitted the dizzy unsteadiness of the drunken god himself. Cathy’s eyes dropped to Bacchus’s half-human counterpart, the as-of-yet nameless little boy who had been mercilessly contorted into a satyr. Here, too, the creator of this travesty had captured the essence of Michelangelo’s original—that mischievous, goat-legged imp who smiles at the viewer while imitating the god’s pose and stealing his grapes.

Cathy continued around the statue, glancing quickly at the dreaded inscription to her at its base, until her eyes came to rest on Bacchus’s groin. Beneath the marble-white paint—if in fact it was paint—Cathy noticed the vague outline of what appeared to be stitches where Tommy Campbell’s penis had been removed. However, as her eyes traveled up his torso to his face, what disturbed Cathy the most was how accurately Tommy Campbell’s killer had captured even the subtlest nuances of the original. It was clear to Cathy that whoever had made this heinous thing had gone to great lengths not only to murder Campbell and that poor little boy, but also to transform them into the very essence of Michelangelo’s Bacchus.

“You see, Dr. Hildebrant,” began Burrell. “Our preliminary analysis indicates that the killer somehow preserved the bodies and mounted them on an internal metal frame. This means that whoever did this not only has a working knowledge of taxidermy, of embalming and such, but also knows something about welding. This sound like anybody you know? Maybe one of your students who was also involved in metalworking?”

“No,” said Cathy. “I don’t know anyone who could do this.”

“And you have no idea why someone would want to dedicate this statue to you specifically?”

“No. No idea.” In the awkward silence that followed, Cathy suddenly became aware that the entire FBI team—what had to be two-dozen of them—was staring at her. She felt her face go hot, felt her stomach leap into her chest, and then a flash of memory, a dream—the third grade, show and tell, and distant taunts of “Ching-chong! Ching-chong!” echoing in her head.

It was Sam Markham who stepped in to save her.

“Dr. Hildebrant, is there anything else you can tell us about the statue before the forensic team removes it? For instance, why Tommy Campbell should be missing his…well, why he’s missing his penis?”

Cathy had the vague suspicion that Markham already knew the answer to his question—that he was trying to get her to talk about Bacchus the same way she talked about Michelangelo in the car in order to calm her. And, for the briefest of moments, Cathy Hildebrant loved him for it.

“Well,” she began. “There’s some debate about this, but the original is also missing its penis. We know that at some point Bacchus’s right hand, the one holding the bowl of wine, was broken off to give the sculpture the appearance of antiquity—as for a time it lived among a collection of Roman artifacts belonging to a man named Jacopo Galli. The hand, however, was restored by about 1550 or so, but the penis, well, some scholars believe that it was never there to begin with, or that it was chiseled off by Michelangelo himself soon after the statue was completed.”

“Why?” asked Markham.

“Both the Roman and Greek mythological traditions—the Greeks called their version of the god Dionysus—held that Bacchus was not only the god of wine and excess, but also the god of theatre, and thus possessed all powers apropos to early Greek theatre’s original ritual and celebratory purposes. Although scholars still debate the true nature of these early rituals, given that sex was part of the excess over which Bacchus reigned supreme, some scholars conclude that there was a sexual component to these early theatrical rituals as well. Hence, in both Roman and Greek mythology we often see Bacchus represented with both male and female genitalia, and thus the ability to govern the excesses of both male and female sexual desire. It has long been believed that Michelangelo purposely sculpted his Bacchus’s body with a fleshy, almost androgynous quality—the swollen breasts, the bloated belly—and some scholars suggest that Bacchus was purposely completed without a penis to represent this. I tend to disagree with them, however.”

“You ever seen anything like this, Sam?” asked Burrell.

“No. Serial killers sometimes pose their victims—put them on display, if you will—either for their own sick benefit or for the others who come afterward. But no, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“And the missing penis? That mean anything to you, Sam? Killer’s got a problem with his gender? Wants to be a woman or something?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he’s just trying to make the sculpture look authentic like the one in Florence.”

“That would explain why the killer put the sculpture on display here,” said Cathy.

“What do you mean?” asked Burrell.

“Agent Markham, you told me that the owner of this property is the CEO of an investment firm?”

“That’s right. His name is Dodd. Earl Dodd.”

“Michelangelo’s Bacchus was originally commissioned in 1496 by a cardinal named Riario, who intended to install it in his garden of classical sculptures. The cardinal ended up rejecting the statue—thought it distasteful—and we know that by about 1506 or so it had been given a home in the garden of Jacopo Galli, a wealthy banker.”

Burrell and Markham exchanged a look, and Cathy suddenly felt self-conscious again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Forgive me if I’m playing detective. Too many nights alone watching CSI, I guess.”

“What are you thinking, Sam?” asked Burrell.

“Dr. Hildebrant,” Markham said, “was Bacchus Michelangelo’s first statue?”

“Heavens no. He was only twenty-two when it was completed, had sculpted a number of others, but Bacchus was indeed Michelangelo’s first life-size statue—the sculpture that really thrust him into the public eye and garnered him recognition as a talented marble carver.”

“Then you’re thinking this is an introduction, Sam?” asked Burrell. “The first of more to come?”

“Perhaps.”

“But why Campbell?” countered the SAC. “And why this boy?”

“I’m not sure,” said Markham, squatting by the inscription at the base of the statue. “But I suspect that’s something the killer wants Dr. Hildebrant to tell us.”