The unidentified man off camera mumbles something inaudible. And with the sounds of partygoers, of happy children echoing off in the distance, just as the camera begins to zoom in on the boy named Christian and his blue-green Play-Doh sculpted man, the home movie of The Sculptor’s fifth birthday party abruptly cuts to black.
Cathy Hildebrant and Sam Markham sat in silence outside her East Side condo—the intermittent sound of the windshield wipers swiping in time to the dull
tick-tick
of the Trailblazer’s idling motor. Since his return from Quantico, they had been in this position many times—sitting like teenagers in the car outside the Polks’ in what Cathy had come to think of as their stereotypical “awkward end of the date scene.”
Unlike the afternoon two weeks earlier when she had kissed him on the cheek, Cathy had yet to make such a bold move again. Upon his return from Quantico, Markham seemed distant—much more professional and much less apt to reveal anything personal. Even on the handful of occasions when they had been alone in his tiny office in downtown Providence, working on his computer and studying the printouts from Boston late into the evening, Special Agent Sam Markham always made sure that he was occupied away from her, always made sure that he did not get physically too close to his new partner. And on the one occasion when he accidentally brushed up against her—the only time their eyes met and their faces were so close that Cathy was sure he’d kiss her—instead, Markham only smiled and turned his flushed cheeks away from her.
But worse than anything, Cathy thought, was that in all their interviews, in all their trips around New England in the Trailblazer to question this person or that, Special Agent Sam Markham had yet to reach for her hand again.
Something was wrong; something was holding him back.
Deep down Cathy understood this—could feel it in a way that she had never felt before—but her conscious, rational side simply could not sort it out, did not know what to do with this knowledge, this newfound perception into a man’s heart—a man who seemed at once so close but yet still so distant from her.
“You’re going to be all right staying alone now?” Markham asked finally.
“Yes. Janet and Dan are leaving for the beach tomorrow. They want me to go with them, of course—and I will visit this summer—but I need to cut the cord and get back on my own. I’ll call them once I get inside and let them know I’ll be staying here tonight. After all, this is my home now.”
“I don’t want you to be afraid of anything, Cathy. We’ll still have people watching you around the clock. I’ll make sure they know you’re back here. And you know you can always call me, too.”
“I know.”
The awkward silence again.
“What is it, Sam?” The question had fallen from Cathy’s lips before she realized she was speaking, and Markham looked taken aback.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that, well, I thought—” As she met his gaze, when she saw behind his eyes what she knew to be his feelings for her retreating once again, suddenly Cathy felt foolish—felt like she wanted to cry, like she had to get out of there.
“I’m sorry,” she said, gathering her things. “It’s just me being stupid. Just give me a call when you need me again.”
“Cathy,” Markham said, “Cathy, wait.”
But she had already slammed the door—her heels clicking noisily on the cement walkway as she made her way to the porch. Markham sat frozen, helpless behind the wheel. Then, in a flash of impulse, he was out—caught up to her just as she stepped inside. The bundle of mail fell to the floor; and when Cathy turned to him, when Markham saw the tears in her eyes, he finally gave over to his heart and kissed her.
There, into the evening, they made love amidst a sea of cardboard boxes—all the while oblivious to the muted phone calls that went on
Für Elise
–ing in Cathy’s handbag.
If Steve Rogers had known that the two Cranston Police detectives had missed his ex-wife at her East Side condo by only a matter of minutes, had he known that Janet Polk had unintentionally misinformed them that her best friend would be staying with her in Cranston that night, the vain and self-centered theatre professor most certainly would have thought that fate had gotten the best of him once again. His only consolation might have been the pretty redhead who—albeit with selfish motives herself—had inadvertently taken up his cause. Meghan O’Neill—chief of the newly appointed, three-man WNRI investigative team whose sole purpose was to look into leads and develop stories in connection to The Michelangelo Killer—got an unexpected break that evening. Her team had been patiently monitoring the police bands for weeks now with the hopes of hearing one of two words: Michelangelo or Hildebrant. And so, when news came across the wire that the Cranston police were having a hard time locating the latter for questioning in the disappearance of her ex-husband, O’Neill scrambled her three-man crew into the Eye-Team van and headed for the East Side.
“If Hildebrant is home,” she told them, “we’ll shoot the segment there. If not, we’ll move to Cranston and use Rogers’s house as a backdrop.”
Either way, O’Neill’s team understood:
she
would be the one to break the story.
The house was dark, and Cathy—lying naked on the sofa in Markham’s arms—was just drifting off again when the doorbell startled her awake. Markham put his finger to his lips and, reaching for his gun, moved silently out into the hall. The doorbell rang again, but even before the FBI agent reached the peephole, the light filtering through the blinds told Cathy who was standing on her front porch.
Spotlights
, she thought, covering herself with a blanket.
Another news crew. What do they want now?
“Reporters,” Markham whispered, and signaled for Cathy to stay put. He stood leaning in the archway to the hallway with his back to her—his gun at his side as if he were considering whether or not to ambush them. Cathy smiled—
wished he would
—and despite the interruption, despite the sudden longing for the sanctuary that had been the Polks’, Cathy could not help but be aroused at the sight of Markham’s muscular physique—the back and shoulders, the buttocks and thighs that looked to her in the milky gloom like nothing less than sculpted marble.
The spotlight went out and Markham again disappeared into the hallway. Cathy heard the sound of a car starting, then speeding off outside. And after a moment, the FBI agent returned with their clothes. He placed Cathy’s handbag and the bundle of dropped mail on top of a cardboard box.
“They’re gone,” he said. “What they could want from you at this point is beyond me.”
“Maybe they wanted to know what kind of lover you are.”
Markham laughed, embarrassed, and the two of them got dressed in the dark—silently, a bit awkwardly, but with the unspoken certainty of a long-awaited love affair just begun. And soon they were in the kitchen, sipping tea at the table in the warm glow of the stove light. Markham held Cathy’s hand, but they spoke to each other only in spurts—funny stories and details about their lives separated by long periods of silence—neither of them really knowing what to say, but nonetheless content simply to be in each other’s presence.
“I should probably get going,” said Markham when he saw the clock on the stove tick past nine o’clock. “Will be in Boston all day tomorrow to brief Burrell and to coordinate our findings with Sullivan’s team and my people back at Quantico.”
“On Saturday?”
“Sucks, huh?”
“You can spend the night here if you like,” she said, the words coming from her like another language—the first time in twelve years that she had invited a man to spend the night at her place. “Is that proper etiquette? You’ll have to forgive me, Sam. I don’t usually do this.”
“Neither do I,” said Markham. And then he did something unexpected. The FBI agent took her hands and kissed them. “I’m sorry about before,” he said. “About closing off from you. I know you noticed. I know you felt it, and it wasn’t fair of me—to pretend like that or to make you feel vulnerable and silly. That’s not me, Cathy. I don’t play games. It’s just that, well, this kind of thing is hard for me—it’s just so new and out of the blue. I’ll tell you about it another time, but know that, despite the circumstances in which I found you, and no matter what happens and how stupid I may act, all this is real—you and me, Cathy, and the way you know I feel about you, it’s real. Just be patient with me, okay?”
Cathy’s heart skipped a beat, and then she kissed him—long and passionately—and when they parted, Markham smiled.
“I could do this all night. But if I were you, I’d call your Auntie Janet. It’s getting late and she’s probably worried sick about you.”
“Shit,” said Cathy, her eyes darting around the kitchen. “I forgot all about her—thinks I’m staying there tonight. My bag. Where’d I put my bag?”
“Relax. I put it in the living room. First cardboard box on the right.”
In a flash, Cathy disappeared out into the darkened hallway and was back with her handbag, her cell phone already at her ear. She plopped her bag and the banded bundle of mail onto the table.
“Five missed calls from her. And looks like two voice mails. She’s got
me
worried now.”
Markham finished his tea and placed his cup on the table—noticed right away the curious-looking parcel sticking out part way from the Pottery Barn catalog.
“Hey, Jan, it’s me,” said Cathy behind him, drifting back out into the hallway.
It was not the plethora of stamps that caught the FBI agent’s attention, but the partially visible handwriting—the familiar, flowery, and precise way the sender had written
Providence, Rhode Island 02912
.
“I know, Jan, I’m sorry. I’m at my place. Was working late and—”
Markham snapped off the elastic band and removed the brown paper wrapped parcel from the bundle of mail.
“What?” he heard Cathy say from the hall.
Markham rose from the table—studied the handwriting in the light from the stove:
“Especially for Dr. Hildebrant.”
“When was the last time she heard from him?”
Markham removed from his back pocket the envelope that had been given to him by the Reverend Bonetti. He compared it to the brown paper wrapped parcel—the handwriting was identical.
“All right, all right,” Cathy said, returning to the kitchen. “Don’t worry, Jan, I’m fine—yes, will call them right now. Okay. I’ll let you know. Love you, too.” Cathy closed her cell phone. “It’s Steve, Sam. My ex. Janet said the police want to talk—”
The look on Markham’s face told her everything—stopped her cold like a slap. And as the FBI agent held up the brown paper wrapped package—when Cathy saw the envelope from the Reverend Robert Bonetti in his opposite hand—all at once the pretty art history professor knew something very, very bad had happened to her ex-husband.
Her heart beating wildly, the opening of the DVD player sounded to Cathy like thunder—the Sony logo on the television screen casting the darkened living room in the light blue wash of a gathering storm. Markham had opened the brown paper package in the kitchen—used a paring knife to slice the tape and handled the bubble wrapped contents carefully with a paper towel. The DVD case, like the disc inside, was eerily blank—no writing or any other distinguishing marks—and still carried with it the scent of newly minted plastic. Markham placed the disc into the DVD player and took his seat next to Cathy on the sofa.
The screen dimmed, went black for a moment, and then a countdown began—four seconds, grainy black and white in the style of an old film countdown. Black again, and then a gentle whisper in the darkness of:
“Come forth from the stone.”
Cathy’s heart dropped into her stomach when she saw Steve Rogers’s face fade into the frame—a strap across his forehead and what appeared to be two stubby leather pads by his ears holding his head in place. He was sweating badly, his eyes blinking hard.
“Oh my God, Sam,” Cathy cried. “It’s Steve.”
“What the fuck?”
said her ex-husband on the television screen before them—his voice hoarse and gravelly.
“That’s it,”
said a man’s voice off camera.
“Shake off your slumber, O Mother of God.”
“What the fuck is—”
Cathy and Markham watched like gaping zombies as Rogers struggled then abruptly stopped with a look of confusion across his face. The light on his shiny cheeks had changed ever so slightly, and he seemed to be watching something above him—his eyes widening and narrowing in an eerie silence.
“That’s it,”
said the man’s voice again.
“Shake off your slumber, O Mother of God.”
Rogers attempted to turn his head toward the voice.
“Who are you? What the fuck you want?”
The light on Rogers’s face changed again, and he stopped straining. In their stunned silence, Cathy and Markham could tell that something had caught the man’s eye. Rogers’s breathing seemed to quicken all at once, when suddenly the camera angle shifted—a bit jumpy now, filmed directly above him.
“He’s using two cameras,” Markham said absently. “One stationary, the other handheld.”
The continuity of the cut was seamless as the camera began to pan slowly down from Rogers’s face to his neck. And just as the first of the bloody stitches scrolled upward from the bottom of the screen, Steve Rogers began to scream.
“What the fuck! What the fuck you do to me!”
“Dear God, no,” Cathy gasped when she saw the breasts—plump and white and stitched like eggs at awkward angles onto her ex-husband’s muscular chest. She cupped her hand to her mouth as Steve Rogers went on screaming on the screen.
“I’m sorry, Cathy!”
she heard him yell.
“I’m sorry!”
And as the camera continued to pan down over her ex-husband’s stomach, over the thick leather strap which held him down to the steel table, Cathy felt like her head would explode. It was as if she had already seen in her mind what was coming next—knew deep down that she couldn’t bear the sight of it. And in a flash she was up off the sofa and vomiting in the hall as Markham, frozen in horror, watched the bloody stitches where Steve Rogers’s penis
should have been
rise onto the television screen.
The screaming stopped for a moment. Another edit. Then the last part of the scene played again from the angle of the stationary camera—the screams of her ex-husband echoing once again through the walls of Cathy’s East Side condo; the soul of Steve Rogers taking flight before Sam Markham’s eyes just as Cathy fainted into black.