The Sculptor by Gregory Funaro Page A

the transport van that had been pulled up on the lawn outside the garden.
    Damn, Burrell thought. Whoever did this really is one strong son of a bitch.
    And as the heavy metal doors slammed shut, as the van started on its way across the lawn, Bulldog heaved a sigh of relief that he had been able to get the bodies off-site before the vultures started swarming overhead. Yes, that really was his only break in the case thus far. That meant the medical examiner could work in peace, and that Burrell’s office would not have to comment on any press footage of the scene until the official cause of death had been determined.
    Burrell lit a cigarette and telephoned his wife—told her not to expect him home until late that evening, perhaps even tomorrow morning. She responded like she always did—an empty, Korean-flavored “I’ll leave the light on” that had been hardened by two kids and twenty-five years of marriage to “the life.” And as he joined Markham and Cathy in the back of the FBI surveillance van, when he saw the pretty professor’s half-Asian features in the soft light of the computer screens, the guilt Bill Burrell had felt for abandoning the Campbells all at once transformed into a longing for his wife.
    Yes, at fifty years old, the Bulldog was getting soft.
    “Tell me what we got,” Burrell exhaled in a plume of cigarette smoke.
    “Well,” Markham began, “our agents were able to track down a collection of Michelangelo’s poetry at the Westerly Library, as well as a copy of Dr. Hildebrant’s Slumbering in the Stone. ”
    “And?”
    “I haven’t had a chance yet to go over her book, but Dr. Hildebrant has identified the poem and the quotes.”
    “The ones Sullivan told me about? The ones that were slipped under Dr. Hildebrant’s office door almost six years ago?”
    “Yes, sir,” said Markham, looking down at a sheet of paper. “We found the three quotes online. And at first glance, they appear to be what Dr. Hildebrant took them as—words of wisdom and support in the wake of her mother’s death. This at the very least tells us that whoever gave them to her was aware of her personal life. The quotes arrived in the following order. ‘If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master,’ ‘The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms,’ and finally, ‘To confide in one’s self and become something of worth and value, is the best and safest course.’”
    “So what’s your take on them, Sam?”
    “A definite attempt at intimacy, I’d say, as well an implied understanding by the writer of the grief that Dr. Hildebrant was going through at the time. In this light then, the last quote seems somewhat odd, given that the first two deal with death and the afterlife, and actually contrast this world with the next. Upon further research, however, Dr. Hildebrant and I have found that the third quote is often cited as a continuation of the second. I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but taking it into context with the sonnet, which was the last note she received, perhaps it signifies not only advice on how she should deal with her loss, but also a change of focus—both with regard to where Dr. Hildebrant should now focus her energy, and where her admirer should now focus his. ”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “The sonnet that came next,” said Markham, thumbing through the book of poetry. “The one that was originally written to the youth Tommaso Cavalieri, is a much more intimate correspondence than the previous notes. Yes, like the first two quotes, it implies an unspoken and private knowledge of the other—but this time the sender seems to be speaking from both his and Dr. Hildebrant’s point of view.”
    “How so?”
    “The first four lines read as follows:
     
    We both know, my lord, that you know I come near to have my pleasure with you; And we both know that you know my name; So why do you