The Sculptor's Grace

CHAPTER ONE: PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Podcast transcript: THE SCULPTOR'S GRACE - EPISODE ONE

[Voice: female, digitally altered]

"The gods are returning to walk among us. Not with thunder and lightning, but with blade and blood. This is The Sculptor's Grace, an exploration of mythology in murder. I'm your host, and I'm here to tell you about a killer who hasn't been caught yet—but they will be. Because I'm the one hunting them.

"Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. For this transgression, Zeus chained him to a rock where an eagle would tear out his liver each day, only for it to regenerate each night so his torture could begin anew with the dawn. Eternal punishment for the crime of enlightenment.

"Before we begin this journey together, I should warn you: nothing is what it seems. Not the killer. Not the victims.

"And certainly not me."

***

When I think of mythological punishments, I always think of the livers. Prometheus and his daily extraction. Tityos with birds perpetually feasting on his. The Greeks had a fixation with that particular organ—seat of emotions, container of life. They would have loved Richard Lawson's liver, the way it gleamed wetly under the portable lights, repeatedly pierced by a mechanical eagle's beak with the dedication of the criminally underpaid.

Twenty-two stab wounds, my ex-husband had once told me, is the number that indicates personal rage. Twenty-three is overkill. How poetic that Dean Lawson's torment had been programmed for exactly twenty-two extractions per hour. Someone had done the math on hatred.

"Detective Pierce?" Ramirez's voice pulled me from my reverie. He stood beside me at the university crime scene, that wrinkle between his eyebrows deepening—the one that always appears when he catches me observing instead of detecting. Three weeks as partners and he still doesn't understand that to me, they're the same activity.

"Yes?" I smoothed my expression into appropriately professional concern, like applying concealer over a tattoo.

"You're doing that thing again." He gestured vaguely at my face. "The thing where you look like you're appreciating a painting at a museum."

Because I am, I didn't say. Instead: "I'm analyzing the staging. It's thoughtfully planned. Ritualistic."

"No shit. The whole Prometheus eagle liver thing kind of gave that away." Ramirez gestured at the mechanical device extracting tissue from our victim. Dean Lawson hung suspended against the marble wall of the Psychology building's atrium, the contraption inserted into his meticulously sectioned thoracic cavity moving with pneumatic precision. Each extraction released a soft hiss—the sound of divine punishment delivered on schedule.

But it was the reflecting pool beneath the body that captured my attention—my manuscript had never included that element. When the first rays of dawn penetrated the skylights thirty minutes ago, the oil ignited, casting twin images of the suspended corpse in rippling flame. The symmetry of reflection doubling the visual impact. An improvement on my design. A thoughtful editorial suggestion.

I felt something dangerously close to professional admiration and quickly locked it away in the box where I keep all my inappropriate responses. That particular box is getting crowded these days.

"Not just mythology," I clarified, stepping closer to the body. "This isn't random. This is academically informed. The killer understands the philosophical underpinnings of eternal punishment."

"You're saying we're looking for a professor?"

"Or someone with equivalent knowledge." I studied the precision of the incisions. Methodical. Almost loving. Like someone who has rehearsed this moment countless times in their imagination. The smell hit me then—copper-penny blood and scorched oil, overlaid with that distinctive early-decomposition sweetness. Like a pot of honey accidentally left on a hot stove. My stomach didn't turn. It should have. Normal people's stomachs turn at death. Mine simply catalogs and files the information away.

One more entry in the growing list of ways Charlotte Pierce fails at being human.

"Dr. Lawson was the psychology dean, right?" Ramirez consulted his little notebook—the only anachronism in his otherwise contemporary detective ensemble. He insists it's more reliable than phones. I've never had the heart to tell him how endearingly twentieth-century that makes him.

"Yes," I confirmed. "Behavioral psychology, specializing in memory and cognition."

"Any connection to Greek mythology?"

"Not directly," I answered, omitting the fact that Richard Lawson had helped my husband steal my research five years ago. That my work on mythological punishment narratives—specifically my unpublished manuscript—had been quietly incorporated into their grant-funded memory manipulation studies without attribution. That I had imagined Lawson suffering precisely this fate more than once during late-night revenge fantasies.

That's the thing about revenge fantasies—they're supposed to stay fantastic. No one expects to walk into work and find them realized in exquisite, three-dimensional detail.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. A text from Olivia: Coming home tomorrow. School situation. Will explain in person.

My daughter. Five months of near-silence from boarding school, and now this cryptic announcement. The timing felt significant, though I couldn't articulate why. My hand trembled slightly, and I slipped the phone away before Ramirez could notice. I curled my fingers into fists, nails pressing half-moons into my palms until the tremor subsided.

"You know this guy, Pierce?" Ramirez was watching me, head tilted. After just three weeks together, he had already developed an irritating ability to sense when I'm not being entirely forthcoming.

"As a colleague of my husband's, yes." The lie tasted like a nickel held too long in my mouth—metallic, slightly bitter, vaguely contaminating. "But we weren't close."

Ramirez's eyes lingered on me for a moment too long, then returned to his notebook. "Campus security's pulling his files now. They're also checking the camera feeds, but apparently the system was down for maintenance in this section last night."

How convenient. Someone had done their research. Someone with access to university systems, maintenance schedules, security protocols. Someone on the inside.

Someone, perhaps, not unlike myself.

I circled the tableau once more, absorbing every detail. The exact positioning of the body. The careful surgical precision around the liver. The way the flames from the oil pool licked upward, creating dancing shadows that made the dead dean seem almost alive in his torment.

"I need to make a call," I said, already moving toward the exit. "Have CSU document everything exactly as is. Every component of that device, every angle of the tableau. Nothing gets moved until I've reviewed it all." I felt Ramirez's eyes on my back as I left the atrium. He was still adjusting to what he calls my "control-freak tendencies." He doesn't understand that precision matters, that details are sacred. Not yet.

Outside, the campus was waking up. Students drifted between buildings, their laughter carrying across the quad with obscene normality. I'd taught here for eight years before becoming a detective. Ancient Literature and Mythology, specializing in punishment narratives. Professor Charlotte Pierce, with my office in the west wing of Hadley Hall and my husband running the Psychology Department from the east wing. The perfect academic power couple. Until we weren't.

My phone vibrated again. Another text from Olivia: Got kicked out. Long story. Need place to stay. Sorry.

Expelled. My nineteen-year-old daughter with her father's brilliant mind and my lack of ethical guardrails had managed to get herself thrown out of one of the most tolerant universities in the country. I could guess the scenario—Olivia challenging a professor beyond the bounds of academic decorum, crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed. She'd written a paper in high school once analyzing how Medea's infanticide represented a rational response to patriarchal property laws. Her teacher had called me, concerned. I'd been secretly proud.

Dread coiled in my belly like a cold snake waking after hibernation. Olivia sees too much. Always has. Even as a child, she'd watch me with those searchlight eyes, cataloging my inconsistencies. If anyone could detect the hairline fractures in my carefully constructed identity, it would be her. Daughters are archaeology students, forever digging up the bones of their mothers' secrets.

We'll talk when you get here, I texted back. Your room is ready.

Her room had been ready for five months. Since the last time she'd stayed with me and accused me of caring more about my cases than her grief. She wasn't wrong. That's why compartmentalization works so well for me. Detective Charlotte in one box. Grieving widow in another. Failed mother in a third. The Voice in a locked vault beneath them all.

Each identity sealed off from the others like warring siblings that can't be allowed in the same room. It's a system that allows me to function when most people would have collapsed. Most people aren't me.

Most people didn't find their husband murdered in their home office, surrounded by papers he'd stolen. Most people don't lose thirteen minutes of memory at the exact time they discovered the body. Most people don't transform themselves from classics professor to homicide detective over a single summer.

***

That night, I set up my recording equipment. Voice modulator purchased with cash from four different electronics stores three years ago. Mixing board ordered online through a series of proxies. Laptop dedicated solely to podcast production, never connected to my home network or police devices. The tools of my other identity. I'd been preparing The Voice for years, waiting for the right case. Waiting for someone to bring my theoretical punishments to life.

The apartment was too quiet—the kind of silence that feels like pressure against your eardrums. Soon Olivia would be here, filling the space with her keen observations and pointed questions. For now, though, I was alone with my equipment, my thoughts, my fascination with a killer who had reached into my mind and improved upon what he found there.

I adjusted the microphone and began recording, letting The Voice emerge from behind her compartment door:

"The gods are returning to walk among us. Not with thunder and lightning, but with blade and blood. This is The Sculptor's Grace, an exploration of mythology in murder. I'm your host, and I'm here to tell you about a killer who hasn't been caught yet—but they will be. Because I'm the one hunting them."

I paused, considering my next words carefully. The Voice needed to be erudite but accessible, scholarly but not pedantic. She needed to fascinate, to captivate an audience with the dark beauty of mythological punishment brought to modern life.

"The first tableau appeared this morning. Prometheus chained to stone, an eagle at his liver, suspended above a pool of fire that ignites with the dawn. The precision of this tableau deserves our analytical attention. The victim—a university dean whose name authorities haven't released—arranged with surgical precision to recreate eternal punishment."

Another pause for dramatic tension.

"What was his crime? What forbidden knowledge did this modern Prometheus possess? The ancient Greeks understood something we've forgotten—that knowing too much can destroy you. That some secrets demand payment in flesh."

I leaned closer to the microphone, my voice dropping to an intimate whisper.

"Before we begin this journey together, I should warn you: nothing is what it seems. Not the killer. Not the victims. And certainly not me."

I ended the recording and sat back, examining the audio waveform on my laptop screen. It would need minor editing before uploading through the TOR network to servers I'd paid for with untraceable cryptocurrency. By morning, Episode One of The Sculptor's Grace would be available on every major podcast platform.

And Detective Charlotte Pierce would be leading the investigation into the very murders she was documenting.

My reflection caught in the black mirror of the computer screen after it went dark—a woman I barely recognized anymore. I sometimes wonder if I died too, that day with my husband, if the Charlotte that emerged from those missing thirteen minutes is just a sophisticated impostor wearing my skin. Without my compartments, I'd be a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, a creature cobbled together from contradictory impulses.

My head throbbed suddenly, a sharp pain behind my right eye. These headaches had been coming more frequently lately, little stabs of discomfort whenever I thought too hard about the boundaries between my selves. Ignore it. Keep the boxes intact. Do not let light between the compartments.

In Greek mythology, the gods were constantly transforming humans into other things—trees, constellations, streams, spiders. Always without consent. No one asks if you want to become a laurel tree before your fingers start sprouting leaves. No one checks if you'd prefer to remain human before you find yourself with feathers instead of arms. The gods just do it, and suddenly you're something else entirely.

Sometimes I wonder if that's what happened to me in those thirteen minutes. If some unseen hand reached down and transformed me while I wasn't looking. If the real Charlotte Pierce is trapped somewhere, screaming silently behind bark or feathers while this new creature walks around in her shape, solving crimes, recording podcasts, wondering why nothing feels quite real anymore.

I smiled in the darkness of my studio. The Greeks had a word for this kind of narrative technique: dramatically ironic. The audience knows what the characters don't. They can see the disaster coming, can scream warnings that will never be heard.

So what was my disaster? What would the audience see coming if they could see me now?

I thought of Olivia, returning home tomorrow with her observant eyes. Her methodical mind. Of Ramirez, watching me at the crime scene with growing suspicion. Of Richard Lawson, displayed as Prometheus for crimes I didn't yet understand—but perhaps, in some locked compartment of my mind, had cataloged in vivid detail.

And whoever had taken my private manuscript—my theoretical formulations of perfect mythological punishments—and turned them into bleeding reality.

The pieces were moving into position. The play was beginning.

And I was both director and unwitting actor in whatever was about to unfold.