Not wasting time, Agent Gregory removed a laptop from her briefcase, fired it up, and turned the screen to face me. A picture of Ethan Walker stared back at me.
“Do you know this man?” she asked.
“Not really. I only met him once briefly three years ago, although we were never formally introduced.” Before I could elaborate further, she clicked a button on the keyboard, and another image appeared. This one was of Gianna. The picture must have been an older one because her hair was still blond when it was taken.
“What about her?”
“That’s the woman I’m seeing.” The agent nodded her head knowingly as if pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. “What is this all about? What does she have to do with the break-in.”
“So, Gianna is still alive. Good. That gives me some relief, at least.”
“Still alive?” I stared incredulously at Agent Gregory, waiting for her to elaborate.
“Yes. I think your girlfriend was the motive,” she explained before turning the computer back toward her and clicking away on the keyboard again. “I’ve been profiling Ethan Walker for some time now, although I never had a name for him until now. He is the suspect in four homicides in Cincinnati, Cleveland, New York City, and Niagara Falls.”
“Homicides?”
“Mr. Mills, I believe your girlfriend is in very real danger,” she told me as she continued to type. “I need you to tell me everything you know and anything she might have told you about Ethan Walker. I’m also going to need to question her but I’ve been unable to locate her. I’m hoping you can help me with that.”
“Look, Agent Gregory, I already told you I don’t personally know Ethan. The only time Gianna ever really spoke of him was a couple of days ago when she told me her history with him. He abused her terribly. She’s terrified of him.”
“She should be. He’s a dangerous man.”
“She also told me because of his influence, she’s terrified of the police,” I said pointedly. “She doesn’t trust them to protect her. I understand why you want to talk to her, but when I consider her feelings about law enforcement, I’m hesitant to betray her trust. If what you suspect is true, and Ethan really did kill those other women, I need more assurances from you before I lead you to Gianna. What makes you so sure you can protect her?”
“I don’t think you understand how dangerous Ethan Walker is. In all four homicide cases, the women went missing for long periods of time. Eventually, their bodies were found.” Reaching down into her briefcase, she procured four pictures, each of a badly beaten woman. Purplish-black marks ringed their necks, showing clear evidence of strangulation. Unconsciously, I brought my hand to my throat and recalled Gianna’s fear of having her neck touched on the first day she took my self-defense class.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.
“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.