Page 93 of The Sound of Silence

“My team was able to reconstruct the behavioral sequence for each homicide, trying to understand the modus operandi or method of committing the crime. The only reason we were able to connect the dots was because of Cynthia Dufresne, an attorney in Cincinnati. Ethan nearly killed her. She tried to tell the police what happened to her, but it fell on deaf ears. I can see why Gianna harbors so much mistrust,” she added with a hint of distain. “Ms. Dufresne contacted her local FBI field office. I routinely read reports from other offices. When I read her case, the pieces started to fall into place, and I knew we finally had our guy. The crime signatures were exactly the same. Each woman was severely beaten with a club or cane of some sort, tied down, and branded with the emblem of a serpent. Then he strangled to them death. The only difference was that Cynthia lived, whereas the others did not. Her statement allowed us to get a search warrant for his home in Indian Hill. During the raid, we found paperwork showing he also had two other places of residence. These other pictures are from a raid we conducted on one of those residences.” The look on her face was somber as she pushed aside the gruesome pictures of the dead women and turned the computer toward me.

The images on the screen were of rooms with painted black walls, decidedly gothic, and decorated with all kinds of instruments designed to inflict pain. The walls had been written on with red spray paint, the markings similar to what had been scrawled on the walls in The Mill. I couldn’t help but recall what Pete Milano said about it being a sadist’s delight as Agent Gregory clicked through image after image.

My eyes widened in shock when I saw the multiple corkboards, each one designated for pictures of at least ten different women. It was obvious the pictures were taken with a telephoto lens from a distance, signaling none of the women knew the shots were being taken. One of the boards was filled with images of Gianna.

“Four of these women have been found dead. They were the victims in the photographs I showed you. Other than Gianna, I can’t say for certain if any of these other women are still alive. We’re still trying to identify them,” Agent Gregory said, pointing at the corkboards for each deceased woman. She continued to click through the images and showed me one where a shrine to the Virgin Mary had been erected. The small table on which the statue sat was littered with odd paraphernalia—a framed photo of an older woman, perfume bottles, candles, rosary beads, and scraps of paper. There was a large, fifty-gallon fish tank along the wall of what I presumed to be a living room of sorts. Inside the tank was a large snake.

“What’s with his snake obsession?” I asked, remembering what she’s said about the women being branded with a serpent.

“If I had to take a guess, based our profiling, Ethan is a radicalized Catholic who is obsessed with the seven deadly sins—lust, pride, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony, and sloth. While the cow traditionally symbolizes lust, in Catholicism, the serpent was the reason for the destruction of the Garden of Eden. The snake brought lust into the Garden when it tempted Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and most likely reminds him about that. When he gives in to the temptation of lust, he punishes himself.” Pausing, she clicked on another image. “This is a cattail whip found in the apartment. We believe he used it to flog himself as an act of penance.”

“I can’t believe this,” I whispered as a chill raced down my spine. I sat back in my chair, horrified to know Gianna had been married to this man.

“Believe it,”she said and reached into her briefcase to pull out another folder. “This is Ethan’s file of employment from the Cincinnati Police Department. Everything in it has been fabricated, going all the way back to his degree from Bowling Green. We checked with the college. No one by the name of Ethan Walker ever attended there. He’s a master manipulator—a sociopath in every sense of the word. So, do you see now why we need to find your girlfriend?”

“There’s no way Gianna knew anything about this,” I vehemently stated, but as I said the words, I remembered all of the questions I’d had on the day Gianna took off. I never completely understood the level of fear in her eyes. Too many things hadn’t quite added up. Suddenly, everything calculated to one horrifying sum.

Gianna had kept so many secrets tight to her chest. It was possible she did know but was too embarrassed to tell me.

As soon as the thought entered my mind, I dismissed it. Every bone in my body was telling me she never knew. She may have thought she knew him—enough so that she trained hard in case she was ever forced to handle him on her own—but she would never deliberately face him alone.

Or would she?

Just the idea of her facing this sadistic fucker one-on-one made my blood run cold. She needed to know exactly who her husband was before it was too late.

Grabbing my phone, I dialed Gianna’s number. She had to know what she was up against. Maisie began to whine on my lap as I impatiently waited for Gianna to pick up. I rubbed the top of her head, not sure if I was trying to soothe her anxieties or my own.

The phone just rang and rang. And again, there was no answer.

42

Gianna

“Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine—”

The sound of my cell phone vibrating interrupted my nightly regimen of two hundred crunches. In the shelter’s shared bunk room, other women always eyed me curiously when I did these, but nobody asked questions. If they did, it would break an unspoken code. We all had our story, and not one of us owed another an explanation.

Reaching over to the small table next to my bed, I looked at the vibrating screen of the phone. Derek was calling.

“Hey, you,” I greeted. “What’s up?”

“Gianna, finally! Are you all right?” The alarm in his tone was apparent.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be? Are you? What’s going on?” A worrying silence fell on the other end of the line. “Derek?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you all night. Why didn’t you answer any of my calls?”

I ignored the accusatory tone and focused on the underlying panic I heard in his voice.

“I left my phone in my room while I was…” I trailed off, unable to tell him that I was helping the other women in the shelter clean the common room. If I did, I’d reveal my location. “Does it matter? Derek, what’s wrong?”

“There was a break-in at the gym tonight, probably right after we closed. Whoever broke in managed to bypass the alarm system. Club Revolution has some high-profile DJ there tonight and there was a huge line to get in—one that extended to the front of the gym. They saw something was up and called the police.”

“Did they catch the person?”

“No. I’m here at The Mill with the police now. They’re just wrapping up. The FBI just left.”

“The FBI?”

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