Chapter 32

Sam Markham’s brain sizzled like a slab of bacon-his thoughts sputtering and popping inside his skull with the panic of what to do next. Cathy had suffered a mild concussion, but would be okay-he knew that deep down. But as he sat beside her hospital bed, his anxiety fired back and forth between his need to go looking for The Michelangelo Killer, and his concern, his gnawing guilt for the woman he loved.

Sullivan’s team would be the ones to scramble on the information he’d gleaned from the DVD, for Markham knew he had to be there when Cathy woke up. He had heard the smack of her head on the hardwood floor when she fainted-a dull thud out in the hallway that could have been prevented had he been there to catch her, had he not been so transfixed by the horrible DVD death of Steve Rogers. But worse for Cathy than the fall was when Markham revived her-the shock at first, then the hysterics that followed when her mind attempted to wrap itself around what she had just witnessed.

“Mother!” she had screamed in the ambulance. “You were right, Mother! You tried to warn me but I didn’t listen! I’m sorry, Steven!”

The EMTs had to strap Cathy to the gurney and administered a sedative on the ride over to the hospital. And as Markham held her hand, as she started to calm, Cathy whispered to him what he already knew.

“The Pietà, Sam. The breasts. He used Steve for the body of his Pietà.”

From his reading of Slumbering in the Stone, Sam Markham knew all about the Rome Pietà-knew that Michelangelo had ingeniously sculpted the Virgin Mary out of proportion to Jesus in order to get the correct visual relationship between the two figures. He also knew right off the bat that the real Rome Pietà was still on display in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, and thus instinctively ordered Sullivan to mobilize the local police forces outside of every church named St. Peter’s in Rhode Island, southern Massachusetts, and northern Connecticut. But deep down Markham knew it wouldn’t be that easy-knew that The Michelangelo Killer wouldn’t tip his hand to Dr. Hildebrant and the FBI just like that.

Perhaps he was even trying to throw them off the trail.

Nonetheless, before climbing into the ambulance with Cathy, Special Agent Sam Markham had the good sense to grab from the Trailblazer his now ragged copy of Slumbering in the Stone. He had pored desperately over the chapters on the Rome Pietà at Cathy’s bedside while she slept-learned that the statue was originally commissioned as a grave marker by the French cardinal Jean de Billheres. Its first home had been the Chapel of St. Petronilla, a Roman mausoleum located in the south transept of St. Peter’s which the cardinal had chosen for his funerary chapel. There it had lived for a short time until the chapel was demolished. The Pietà occupied a number of locations around St. Peter’s when finally, in the eighteenth century, it came to rest in its current location in the first chapel on the right of the Basilica. Markham relayed all this information to Sullivan, but her subsequent Internet search came up empty. She could not with any certainty link these details (St. Peter’s, St. Petronilla, funerary chapels, Cardinal Billheres, etc.) to any specific site in Rhode Island-in all of New England for that matter.

And so Sam Markham felt helpless. He felt that he could see the future rolling, unstoppable, toward him in his mind-could see so clearly The Michelangelo Killer’s upcoming Pietà: a heinous sculpture with a woman’s head and hands and breasts sewn onto Rogers ’s body à la Frankenstein. As a result of his research into the Plastination process, Sam Markham’s rational side told him that-even if The Michelangelo Killer had already murdered his Mary and his Jesus long ago-the killer would not have had nearly enough time to preserve Rogers ’s body. His gut, however-that intuition that all the best “profilers” learn to follow despite “the facts”-told him otherwise.

Yes, Markham knew in his gut that not only was he missing something very important, but that he was also running out of time.

He needed Cathy-needed her to wake up and to talk to him calmly.

An agent from the Resident Agency poked his head into the room. “Burrell is on his way,” he said, and Markham nodded. There were two Providence agents posted outside the door, and Markham knew Burrell would square the FBI protective custody for Cathy himself. That was good; it would be much better than the surveillance they had placed on her-the depth of which Cathy had no idea. Yes, although the FBI had watched Cathy’s every move now for almost a month, although she was most certainly never in any real danger, Markham felt nonetheless ashamed that Cathy had been used involuntarily as bait.

That couldn’t be avoided.

But now things had to be different; now The Michelangelo Killer had killed for her personally-murdered her ex-husband, used him specifically for his Pietà in what was undoubtedly a gesture of gratitude to Dr. Hildebrant for all her help. Hence, Markham understood there was no other way now except for Cathy to go into hiding. But for how long? And would Cathy even want to once the reality of what had happened sank in? How many times, Markham wondered, had she secretly wished for Steve Rogers to get run over by a truck or to slip on the ice and split his head open? And now, would she ever be able to forgive herself? Would she ever be able to get over the guilt that she was somehow responsible for her ex-husband’s death?

As Markham studied Cathy’s face in the dim light of the hospital room, he thought of Michelle. He wanted to spare Cathy that pain; he wanted to untie the canvas straps that held her down and just carry her away from it all.

Then Markham thought of Steve Rogers strapped down to his bed-the steel table on which The Michelangelo Killer had most likely operated on him, the steel table on which he filmed Rogers ’s last breath.

The epinephrine, Markham thought. The killer gives them a heart attack while they stare at themselves-at the statue they are about to become, above them on a television screen. It’s important they understand-just like Gabriel Banford had to understand way back when. And through the terror of that understanding, the terror of being born again, they awake from their slumber and are freed from the stone-just as Cathy and I suspected.

Markham ’s mind began to wander.

There were chains running up from the side of the table. Looked as if it was suspended from the ceiling-perhaps so it could be raised and lowered like in those Frankenstein movies. A high ceiling. Yes. A winch system-would have to be hooked on a ceiling too high for a cellar. A garage or a warehouse maybe. Money. The killer has money. Lots and lots of money-twenty-five G to blow on a statue.

The Pietà.

“Exactly like the one that was taken three years ago,” he heard the Reverend Robert Bonetti say in his mind. “That one had been donated by a wealthy family a number of years before I arrived here at St. Bart’s.”

A wealthy family…

“We used to have quite an extensive picture gallery on our Web site…One of them, of course, was of our Gambardelli Pietà. Perhaps your man simply recognized it and targeted us that way.”

Markham looked at his watch: 1:03 A.M. Too late to wake up the old priest on a hunch-not even a hunch. A long shot. And a desperate one at that. And besides, he was running out of time; he knew instinctively that something was going to happen this weekend, maybe even tonight-if it hadn’t happened already. If only he knew where.

Where, where, where!

“Cathy,” he whispered in her ear. “Cathy, I need you now.”

Her eyes fluttered, and Markham ’s heart leapt into his throat.