“There’s a very high probability of that, yes.”
“So you’re telling me the fella who did that to those boys was here? On my
property?
”
“We won’t know for sure until I send a team here to get some DNA samples from Gamble’s offspring. We’re also going to need to question your grandson.”
“What’s he got to do with any of this?” asked the old man, his voice trembling.
“He was the last one to see Gamble alive. And the one who subsequently discovered him to be missing. He might be able to tell us something the police overlooked.” Markham had no intention of telling Louis Hill that his grandson could be a suspect in the case. No, he would let Rachel Sullivan and her team handle that; let them spring the search warrant on the old man if he refused to cooperate.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” said Louis Hill.
Markham left the farmer staring blankly into Gamble’s empty stall. But more than being disturbed at the incredible amount of strength it would have taken The Michelangelo Killer to rip the gate off its hinges—if in fact it
was
The Michelangelo Killer who had done so—what
really
bothered Sam Markham as he sped away down the shady country road was the date when the crime occurred.
November
, Markham said to himself over and over again.
The killer acquired the bottom half of his satyr
after
he already had the boy. That means the killer was confident enough in his technique for preserving humans
before
he murdered Michael Wenick. That means Michael Wenick might not have been his first. That means I was wrong about the timeline
.
That means I was wrong.
It was after she hung up with Sam Markham on Wednesday, May 6th—the afternoon on which she learned she would be accompanying him to the Boston Field Office the next day—that Cathy also received word that her divorce from Steven Rogers was official. Cathy took the news with no more emotion than if she had been listening to the morning weather report—a forecast that called for cloudy skies but with only a twenty percent chance of precipitation. And be it due to the previous week’s events, or that she had long ago exhausted any love she had left for her ex-husband, Cathy closed the book on her ten-year marriage to Steven Rogers with a sense of numb resignation.
Her ex-husband, on the other hand, seemed to have had a last minute change of heart. On the Friday before their divorce was to be final, Rogers showed up on the Polks’ doorstep virtually in tears, demanding to see his wife. And after a quick back and forth between Janet and the man to whom she would always regret introducing her best friend, Cathy emerged onto the Polks’ front porch.
“Can we talk, Cat?” Steve shouted over Janet’s shoulder. “Please?”
“It’s all right, Jan,” Cathy said, and Janet scowled her way back into the house.
“I’ve been following that story all week on TV,” Steve began. “Been worrying about how you’ve been holding up through it all. I begged Janet for your new cell number, but she wouldn’t give it to me.”
“That’s the point of the unlisted number. We agreed that any communication between us would go through our lawyers.”
“You wanted that, not me. I wanted to work things out but you didn’t want to deal with it. You wanted this divorce, Cat. Remember that.”
“What are you doing here, Steven?”
“Well—it’s just that—they talked to me, too, you know. The FBI. The day after it all happened. They asked me if I had any students that might fit the profile of the guy they were looking for. Christ, I couldn’t give them anything—don’t know why the fuck they’d want to talk to me, other than my association with you. Is there something I should know about, Cat? Some other reason why you’re involved with this bullshit?”
“They’re probably just covering their bases,” Cathy lied—it hadn’t occurred to her that the FBI might question her ex-husband.
But he’s still in the dark. They must not have mentioned the notes
.
That was good.
“Christ, Cat. It’s been a pretty fucked-up week. I’ve been seeing all that stuff on TV, been hearing about what happened to Soup and that little boy and…well…being sort of involved in a way, and hearing your name all the time mentioned in that context—well, it’s really been messing with my head, Cat. Made me realize how foolish I was to let go of the person that meant the most to me in this world. And, I don’t know, with the finality of it all, our divorce staring me right in the face, I just thought that maybe—”
“She dump you, Steven, your little graduate student?”
“Catherine, please,” said Steve with a hand through his thick curly hair. “This has nothing to do with her. You know I’ll never feel the same way about her, about
anybody
, as I felt, as I
still feel
about you.”
“You should have thought about that before you got your dick stuck in her thesis. I have nothing more to say to you. Good-bye, Steven.”
Only after she was back inside, only after she heard the sound of Rogers’s BMW Z4 roadster speeding off into the distance, did Cathy realize how much the events of the previous week had changed her. For the first time in their twelve-year relationship, Cathy had not the slightest impulse to give in to Steve Rogers—not the slightest. That meant that it was truly over; she had grown stronger—so much so that when she hung up with Sam Markham the following Wednesday, Cathy felt secure enough to resign herself to the feelings for him that had already begun to blossom in her heart.
Of course, Cathy knew very well that her interest in Markham began with their first encounter; but Cathy was also smart enough to realize that her feelings toward him had been confused not only by the overwhelming totality of the previous week’s events, but also by her acute self-awareness of her still-vulnerable broken heart. But while Markham had been pursuing leads all over New England, after quietly finishing up the spring semester at Brown, after dealing with her ex-husband and retreating with the Polks to Bonnet Shores for the weekend to help them ready their beach house, despite a somber self-consciousness that her actions were playing out in the shadow of the murders of Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick—murders that, still unbeknown to the general public, had been dedicated to
her
—Cathy also felt a gnawing premonition that a door to a new life had been opened, and that it was Sam Markham who would carry her over the threshold.
In addition to speaking with Markham only twice since telling him about the opening quote to
Slumbering in the Stone
, Cathy received a telephone call from Special Agent Rachel Sullivan the morning after she arrived at Janet’s. Sullivan advised Cathy to make an official statement to the Associated Press telling them she could offer nothing more than confirmation that the bodies of Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick had indeed been found posed like Michelangelo’s
Bacchus
. Sullivan also advised that Cathy stay clear of any interviews—not only to maintain the integrity of the investigation, but also in the event the information about the inscription was ever leaked to the press. Cathy heeded Sullivan’s advice, and by Friday of that first week, the messages on her voice mail had dwindled down to one.
And so, with the worst seemingly behind her, on the morning after her divorce from Steve Rogers—a bright May morning that whispered of the coming summer, her first as a single woman since her midtwenties—Cathy sat waiting on the Polks’ front porch amidst a haze of dread and excitement. Yes, now that the semester was over, now that Rogers was out of her life for good, the void that should have been the beginning of her new life was overwhelmed by a constant preoccupation with two people: The Michelangelo Killer and Sam Markham. That both of them should be inextricably tied together was to Cathy Hildebrant both a blessing and curse. Although she could not rid her mind of The Michelangelo Killer’s
Bacchus
, of the terror of knowing that her book had been the inspiration for that heinous crime, by that same token such thoughts invariably brought with them the presence of Sam—a presence far away but at the same time close to her in the dark, a presence that helped her through those long nights alone in the Polks’ guest room.
“Nice to see you again,” said the FBI agent as Cathy climbed into his Trailblazer. Cathy smiled—the residue of her daydream on the porch making her blush. “You’re holding up okay, I take it?”
“All right, I guess. And yourself?”
“I’ll brief you in a bit.”
Markham drove off.
Cathy thought the FBI agent seemed chipper, more at ease than during their trip from Watch Hill, when the sudden awkwardness between them had taken Cathy completely by surprise. But today, rather than second guess herself, Cathy knew at once that Sam Markham really did think it was nice to see her. And being in his presence again, Cathy was suddenly filled with a buzzing sense of gratitude and guilt at the thought of the circumstances, of the man who had brought them together.
“Sorry I’m late, by the way,” Markham added. “But I had to pick up some documents at the Providence office and got caught up for a sec.”
“Probably a good thing. We should be past all the traffic by now.”
“Yes, I’ve become quite the regular in that mess this past week.”
“So where exactly are you now, Sam? I thought you were working in Boston.”
“I am. The Boston Division oversees FBI operations in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire, but we have smaller satellite offices scattered about in every state. These are called Resident Agencies. We’ve got one in Providence, and they’ve set me up with a computer and my own office there so I can be local—easier for me to get somewhere fast if I need to. However, I still answer to Bill Burrell in the Boston office, and have been traveling back and forth this past week for meetings and to go over evidence.”
“I see.”
“The Boston office is located right in the heart of downtown, and the facilities are much bigger and more high tech than what we have in Providence. The totality of our operations there demands it—everything from public corruption and organized crime divisions to fraud and counterintelligence. Burrell was reassigned there last fall as the special agent in charge, and also to assist in the restructuring of their Violent Crime Division. I was sent up from Quantico to run a seminar on the latest research and forensic techniques being developed at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.”
“So that’s where all the profilers hang out?”
“Actually, there’s no such thing. The FBI does not have a job called a profiler—just a term that has sort of evolved in popular culture.”
“Forgive me. My television education, I’m afraid.”
“No, no,” Markham smiled. “Don’t feel silly—just one of the many public misconceptions about the Bureau. The procedures commonly associated with what has come to be known as ‘profiling’ are performed by supervisory special agents like myself back at the NCAVC in Quantico, so it was really only a coincidence that I was nearby when this Michelangelo Killer made his spectacular entry into the public eye.”
“Yes. He really has thrown us for a loop, hasn’t he? The whole country. Can’t turn on the television or even check my e-mail without seeing a picture of
Bacchus
in the headlines—can’t even look at it now without thinking of Tommy Campbell and that poor little boy. So does that mean The Michelangelo Killer has gotten what he wants, Sam? Does that mean in a way he’s won?”
“As far as turning people on to the works of Michelangelo? I would say yes. Yes he has.”
Cathy was silent, lost in thought as Sam Markham pulled onto the Interstate.
“I know what a strain this has been on you,” Markham said, glancing toward the Providence skyline. “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you agreeing to join me today for this teleconference.”
“I just hope I can be of some help,” Cathy sighed. “Like I told you on the phone, I’ve been wracking my brain this past week trying to come up with more insight into
Slumbering in the Stone
, but I feel like I’ve come to a dead end.”
“The insight you’ve given me so far has been invaluable in helping me get a bead on this guy, Cathy. Also, the way you’ve handled yourself with the press has been more than admirable. It’s why I’m taking you to Boston today. It’s why I’ve asked Bill Burrell to bring you in as an official consultant on this case.”
“What?” Cathy said—her heart dropping into her stomach. “You mean you want me to work for the FBI?”
“That’s exactly what I mean, Cathy. And not for free, either. The Bureau is ready to negotiate a consultant’s salary with you.”
“But Sam, I—”
“A lot has happened in the eleven days since we first drove together to Watch Hill, Cathy—specifically with regard to the developing profile of our killer. I told you on the phone about the goat—about how The Michelangelo Killer obtained the bottom half of his
Bacchus
’s satyr.”
“Yes.”
“Well, since our conversation about
Slumbering in the Stone
, and since concluding that The Michelangelo Killer most likely used your book as a springboard for his murders, Rachel Sullivan and her squad have been following up on those class rosters. Now, even though you can’t recall any of your former students who fit the physical and psychological profile we’ve identified for the killer thus far, from the outset Sullivan and her team have been working from the premise that the killer may have been associated with you indirectly—that is, perhaps via one of your students. She thus focused her attention first on all the male students that were listed on your rosters for the three years leading up to the publication of your book and, shortly afterward, your receipt of the anonymous notes—the latter of which, and you’ll forgive me, you told us happened shortly after your mother passed away, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you told Sullivan that you did not start requiring your book for your classes until the year after it was published—the following fall, right? Almost a year after you received the quotes and the sonnet?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“That means that, even though the killer had to have read your book in a context outside of the classroom, back then he still had to be a local—a student or otherwise—and familiar enough with the campus to be able to drop off the anonymous notes undetected. Just to be safe, Sullivan took into account your class rosters for the following two years as well—which, in theory, would give us the most practical cross section of male students from which to begin drawing a link to potential suspects. As your classes during this time frame were comprised only of majors and graduate students, and as you were teaching only two classes per semester, the actual pool of potential suspects who might have had direct contact with you is quite small. The fact that the vast majority of these students, both undergraduate and graduate, have been
female
, only whittles this number down even further.”
“Sam, please don’t tell me that this psychopath actually sat in front of me in one of my classes.”
“No, no,” said Markham with a raise of his hand. “But most likely someone who knew him did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Does the name Gabriel Banford mean anything to you, Cathy?”
“Gabriel Banford? Yes, of course, Gabe Banford. I remember Gabe. He was an undergraduate with us for a time—gosh, going back about seven or eight years now. I don’t really remember him other than his jet black hair and his clothes—a little bit more extreme than the usual Goths that sometimes litter the List Art Center. One of those lost soul types—bright from what I heard, but no direction. I had him briefly in class when he was a freshman but he ended up dropping out and transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design the following fall. His parents were not happy about it—that I
do
remember. Janet told me about it later—said they were trying to blame the department or something. I guess he had a lot of psychological issues, and later a drug problem from what I heard. I got all this secondhand, of course, from Janet. I hate to say this, but the only reason I remember him is because of what she told me happened to him afterward—after he dropped out of RISD and got involved with the wrong crowd.”