And just as the young man named Christian understood that fate had brought his mother and the tennis pro together at the country club in some divine connection to the Pietà-a divine connection that had to do with him, with a mother’s love for her son-the young man named Christian also understood that fate had now brought him and the tennis pro together, too.
Oh yes. Christian understood all too well what he had to do next.
And so, after he finished up at Phillips Exeter, between visiting his father at the care facility and going full time to nursing school, the young man named Christian began building up his body-first at the gym, then in the cellar of his parents’ home-all the while his mind focused clearly on the duality of his purpose: the caring for his father and his revenge on Damon Manzera. And after the former was safely back at home, for years Christian followed the latter, learning his movements and waiting patiently for a sign from fate that it was time.
Ironically, it all came together so quickly in the end. Damon Manzera, who was still teaching tennis at the country club-and who himself had become quite the drinker after a failed marriage-had moved back temporarily with his parents on Love Lane, where he spent many a warm summer evening in the backyard drinking beer and swimming in the Manzera’s in-ground pool. If Damon Manzera ever thought about his former mistress, if he ever felt guilty about the part he played in her death, he gave no sign of it to Christian, who for four years had spied on him nearly every day with his binoculars.
And so, with the permission of fate, the young man named Christian snuck into the Manzeras’ backyard through the woods, hopping the high stone wall just after dark and waiting among the trees until Damon Manzera was good and drunk. He did not yet have the night vision goggles or the tranquilizer rifle that he would later use on Tommy Campbell; he did not even have to wrestle the tennis pro under control as he had done when he dragged poor Michael Wenick down the drainpipe. No, for the young man who would soon become The Sculptor, his first murder was somewhat anticlimactic; and in the end he simply lifted the unconscious Manzera off his lounge chair and drowned him with no more effort than it would have taken him to wash the dishes.
Christian was able to hop from the diving board and into the woods without leaving even a single footprint on the cement. When in the weeks that followed it became apparent that he had actually gotten away with his murder of Damon Manzera, the young man named Christian began to feel empty. Yes, the man who was to become The Sculptor wanted to kill again; he wanted to kill more Damon Manzeras-so much so that he actually got an erection when he thought about it.
Indeed, for all his intellect, for all his self-awareness, the young man named Christian never quite understood why-when he was younger, when he was away at Phillips Exeter-he had never shown much interest in girls. He would not get hard when he looked at them in class and would certainly not “jerk off” like his classmates did to the pornographic pictures that were so often passed around. True, sometimes he found his hands absently wandering to his groin late at night when he thought about his mother, but the only time he really got hard was when he thought about his male classmates, when he would see them with their shirts off or coming out of the shower stalls, upon which Christian would quickly avert his eyes so as not to become aroused in front of them.
There was only one other boy at Phillips that Christian knew felt the same way-an “experienced” boy who took Christian under his wing, and with whom he would sometimes sneak away to places hidden; places where they could kiss and be naked against each other; places where they could take each other’s penises in their mouths, or insert them in each other’s behinds. With the death of Christian’s mother, however, all that stopped; and long after Christian moved back to Rhode Island, the young man struggled with his desire for male company and the guilt that somehow his homosexuality had contributed to both his mother’s death and his father’s vegetative state.
Yet with the murder of Damon Manzera, Christian found himself getting hard when he thought about that, too; and thus he understood that fate had directed him to channel his desire into something much more productive. He began fantasizing, began researching and experimenting with different methods. The idea of epinephrine had appealed to him from the beginning because he knew it would mimic his heart-pounding revelation before the Pietà at St. Bartholomew’s. And when he was ready, when he finally succeeded in producing a highly concentrated solution of the drug himself, the young man named Christian set about finding a proper candidate.
Gabriel Banford was always to have been the first victim of this new method. Christian had followed him for weeks after spotting him at Series X and planned on waiting for him in the dark of his bedroom. But on the evening that he should have killed him, when he stumbled upon Banford’s copy of Slumbering in the Stone, when fate directed him right then and there to flip to the chapter on the Pietà, the man who would from that day forward call himself The Sculptor wept under the weight of his divine revelation-a revelation that surpassed the one at St. Bartholomew’s. Yes, through this woman Catherine Hildebrant’s analysis of Michelangelo’s Holy Mother and Son-her brilliant articulation of what she called that “parallel trinity” as embodied in the artist’s portrayal of the Virgin herself-the boy, the young man named Christian not only finally understood his love of the Pietà, but also his mother’s love for him.
So overcome was The Sculptor by his revelation that he left Banford’s apartment in shock. He left the young man alive only to return a week later-after he had purchased his own copy of Slumbering in the Stone and read it cover to cover ten times, after he finally understood the totality of his purpose-that is, why fate had led him to Banford, to Dr. Catherine Hildebrant, and to Michelangelo, that man whose work was to become a template for The Sculptor’s destiny.
Everything is connected.
And now, six years later, as he followed the black Trailblazer on Route 95 toward downtown Providence, The Sculptor grinned widely beneath his fake moustache. Yes, even though the FBI was getting close to him, even though they had made the connection between the stolen Pietà and the Manzera family, The Sculptor knew deep down that fate had once again interceded on his behalf. And although he dared not get too close, The Sculptor also had a feeling that behind the tinted windows of the black Trailblazer sat the person for whom he had been searching all morning.
Yes, something deep down told The Sculptor that he had finally found Dr. Hildy.
Chapter 44
It was just after 5:00 P.M. when Markham and Cathy emerged from the Providence Public Library-their heads hung low, their faces drawn. They had spent over an hour searching the periodical databases for information on the death of Damon Manzera. There wasn’t much-the obligatory newspaper blurbs, the obituaries-but nothing that listed the death as suspicious, no evidence of foul play. Indeed, a spokesperson for the medical examiner was quoted many times as being very clear to the contrary, and stated that, at the time of Manzera’s death, the young man’s blood alcohol level was found to have been “dangerously high.” And thus, the coroner had concluded that most likely Manzera either fell asleep in the pool or somehow staggered off its edge into the water. Either way, the official cause of death was listed as accidental drowning; either way, end of story.