She stopped long enough to gulp down some air and stroke the cat behind an ear.
They got married six months after that first date. It was a small wedding. Ethan just had the few cousins in Nevada as family and only one of them showed up, a guy named Mike Durrant. Marianne’s mom and dad were there, her brother, a bunch of people from school, some friends. Her dad and brother didn’t like Ethan right from the get-go but she figured that was because he wasn’t their kind of guy, the jock or whatever.
‘I thought I knew better. Even when the wedding night didn’t go the way I expected, I still thought it was all okay. Or would be.’
‘Not as you expected?
‘Nope.’
‘Can I ask why that was?’
‘Well it wasn’t down to me, Detective. The only thing I’d liked about the football guys and that type was the sex. They were pigs and they were all about them and they couldn’t form a coherent sentence, but they knew how to use their bodies. Let’s just say I liked that. Ethan and I’d never had sex before we got married and I guess I thought that was how he was. Religious or whatever. Waiting till it was right. But that wasn’t it at all.’
They were married six months and beyond some kissing, he barely touched her. She tried to talk to him about it, but he didn’t want to know. She was sure that he masturbated, but not enough to call him on it. She hoped he’d change, or she’d change him, but every time she tried to touch him, to encourage him, he’d get mad, shout at her, storm out of the room or throw things. It got so she just stopped trying.
She stopped, rubbing at reddening eyes, and having to look away from them. She resumed, telling them that Ethan had always been odd but that she just hadn’t seen it at first. He was cold, never really loving or caring, just cold. He just didn’t care enough about people and he certainly didn’t care enough about Marianne, spending hours on end working in his office in the cellar, never explaining what he was doing or why.
‘I wanted to know though, so I kept at him. I nagged at him till he snapped. He was across the room and had his hands around my throat before I knew it. He was strong, much stronger than me. I remember his fingers digging into my neck, squeezing my windpipe, choking the life out of me. I was sure I was going to die.
‘I can’t say exactly why he stopped except that I saw something change in his eyes. It was like he woke up, suddenly realised what he was doing and quit. He looked at me for a few moments as if he didn’t know who I was then let me go.’
Marianne closed her eyes, screwed them tight shut. Her head bobbed up and down.
For the first time in their marriage, for the first time since they met, Ethan wanted sex. Right there and then. She didn’t, but she didn’t have any say in it. When it was over, he just got up and left the room. Hours later he said he was sorry but that she shouldn’t have pushed him. She somehow convinced herself he hadn’t raped her, that it was all her fault.
Two months later, she was reading when he emerged from the cellar in a vile mood. He barged into the kitchen and came back out demanding to know why there was nothing to eat. She said she’d made food earlier but that he’d been in his office and she’d make him something else. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to the stairs, saying he’d show her his office if she was that desperate to see it. She got no further than the door. He pulled it back as if to let her inside but forced her arm into the gap and slammed the door closed on it. Repeatedly. Only the noise of the bone breaking made him stop.
There was a hush in the room. O’Neill bristled with anger while Salgado did his best not to breathe.
When there were items on the news about something terrible, a murder maybe or a school shooting, Ethan would just sit very quietly and intently and not take his eyes off the screen. Marianne learned not to interrupt and just let him watch. If there was a multiple pile-up with fatalities or maybe a natural disaster, then he’d go from channel to channel devouring it all.
‘Did he ever talk about any murders in particular?’ Salgado asked.
Marianne’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my God.’
‘We’re not assuming anything here,’ O’Neill rushed in to reassure her. ‘We’re at a very early stage of the investigation.’
‘But that’s what you think, isn’t it? You think Ethan killed someone.’
‘We think it is possible that he has. Or at the very least that he was involved in something connected to a killing. Marianne, do you think that is something he was capable of?’
No hesitation. ‘Yes.’
*
In the end, Marianne ran.
*
Ethan was watching a news item on TV, a murder story. She talked over the show and he went crazy. He threw things around, told her how the victim on television had had his throat and wrists cut and was left to bleed to death. He asked if she wanted the same. She said she wanted a divorce and he backhanded her hard till she fell to her knees. He stormed out of the room towards the kitchen and she knew he was going for a knife. As soon as he was out of the room she made for the front door and ran. She didn’t stop running till she got to Thousand Oaks.
‘Marianne, do you remember that news story on TV? The one Ethan had been watching when you interrupted.’ Salgado held his breath. ‘Do you remember who it was that had been killed?’
She looked up at him, momentarily surprised.
‘No. I’m sorry.’ She looked distraught. ‘I hadn’t been watching it, I only saw a headline about a man’s body being found.’
Salgado and O’Neill felt the lead slip through their fingers.
‘But I do remember the date that I ran from that house,’ Marianne added. ‘Like it’s engraved on my heart. Would that help?’
‘That would help a lot.’
*
The one cousin of Ethan Garland’s that had turned up at his wedding to Marianne Ziegler, Mike Durrant, turned out to be a retired mechanic living outside Carson City. O’Neill got his address from Marianne and had the Carson City sheriff’s department call on him.
A few hours later, Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Kearney phoned her back with a report on the conversation. Durrant had been surprised and upset by the news of Garland’s death but said he hadn’t seen his cousin in six years and hadn’t spoken to him in four. He’d explained that although his mother and Ethan Garland’s father had been brother and sister, an eleven-year age gap meant the two cousins weren’t particularly close.
‘He says that his family went down to LA every summer for a few years and he regularly got stuck with Ethan. He remembers him as a slightly strange kid, dark and brooding is how he describes him, a bit of a loner. He says that Ethan wasn’t the kind of kid who would sit around and chat about sports or movies, but if you found a dead bird he’d want to poke it with a stick and see what was inside.
‘He says the last time they met was in 2016 when Mr Durrant was in LA for a funeral. He gave Ethan Garland a call and they met up for a beer. His memory is that Ethan was very distracted and regularly drifting out of the conversation. Mr Durrant finally challenged him on it and Garland said it was because he’d got involved in some new partnership and it was playing on his mind a lot.’
‘A partnership?’