AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“There’s no point in hiding it,” Faith said softly. “You’re going away for a long time. There’s no getting out of that. Telling me what they were looking for won’t make things any more difficult for you.”
Ethan’s shoulders slumped. He let his head drop forward onto his chest. “You won,” he said miserably. “I can’t believe you won.” He took a deep breath and said, “I killed her. Okay? It was me.”
Faith and Michael shared a look. “Killed who?” Faith asked.
“Cherry. I killed her. I caught her sleeping with another guy, and I followed her home, and I knocked her over the head and threw her in my truck and dragged her to the forest to that old hunting lodge where no one knew about or ever went anymore, and I hit her and I stabbed her and I cut her up and I took pictures and then I buried her.”
He began to rock again as he spilled the details of the horrific crime to the stunned agents. Faith was so shocked that she had to gather her thoughts for a moment before she spoke again. “You’re saying you killed another woman before Maria Gonzalez?”
He bobbed his head up and down again, still rocking. “Yep, she cheated on me, so I killed her and cut her up and buried her. I told the guy I did it. I sent him a letter and said, “Your cheating whore is dead. I cut her into itty bitty pieces because she was mine, not yours, and you took her from me. Now you have to live knowing you fucked a dead whore.’”
“Jesus,” Michael exclaimed. “You killed Cherry Waterson.”
"Mmhmm," Ethan said. "Killed her and chopped her up. The police couldn't find her, so the… the… the… the government… the… the… the… FBI and the Navy SEALs and the Army, they… they… they made people with super hearing to find me because the police couldn't. But I'm sorry for killing her. I… I'm really sorry, and I never killed anyone again, and… and… and I just read books for a living now. You know those books they put on tape? I read them and they pay me, and that's what I do now. I'm a good person now. I became a good person, and… and… and she was a cheating whore, so why should I go to jail for killing her? But they found me, and they were listening to my thoughts to prove that I killed her, and I… I… I just didn’t want to go to jail. But I’m here now.”
He closed his eyes and slumped further in his chair. Then he burst into tears and sobbed, “Please. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just mad. Please don’t send me to jail!”
Faith didn’t reply. She didn’t know what to say. Part of her wondered if Ethan was faking his insanity. She guessed the judge would order him to be examined by a psychologist to see if he was fit to stand trial, but if she had to guess, she would say that his mind was truly gone.
She pitied him.
She hated that she pitied him.
He was a killer. Even before Maria, he had murdered an innocent girl in a horrifically brutal way. He might have been insane then, but that didn’t justify his actions. He wasn’t innocent.
But was he guilty?
She wanted desperately to believe that he was. But she didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that what happened to those women was tragic. Maybe what happened to Ethan was tragic too. Sometimes the killers were clearly evil, the Wests and Trammells and Bundys of the world.
And sometimes, they were just tragic.
Faith stood and walked wordlessly from the room. Michael and Turk followed her. Behind them, Ethan wept and begged and promised to be good, to never do anything wrong again, just please don’t send him to jail.
When the door closed behind them, Faith sighed. She put her hands to her temples and pressed down until the pain brought her back to focus. When she opened her eyes, Michael stared at her with concern. “You all right?”
She considered lying but decided she was too tired to pretend. "No," she replied. "No, I'm not."
Michael nodded. “Me either.”
The two agents stood where they were for several more minutes before Turk nudged Faith and led his two human companions from the precinct.
***
Faith sipped her coffee and closed her eyes, allowing the warm brew to permeate her body and release the tension she carried. It was the morning after Ethan’s arrest, but Faith still felt uneasy. No, not uneasy. Unsatisfied. Usually closing a case brought a sense of accomplishment. This time, it just brought… well, nothing.
Turk nudged her, and she opened her eyes and lowered a hand to scratch him behind his ears. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes. “I wish I could let things go as easily as you do, boy,” she said wistfully.
Michael returned to the table a moment later. “Sorry about that,” he said. “That was Wanda. She wanted to know what I did with the search report from Ethan Marlowe’s apartment.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I gave it to the detective from Seattle. I forget his name. Randish or Standish or something.”
Faith chuckled. “How’d she take it?”
Michael shrugged. “I hung up on her. I swear to God, I’ve never seen a detective so desperate to take credit before.”
“She’s near the end of her career. Thirty years plus with a small police department in a quiet town. She probably saw this as her last chance at a legacy. Instead, the FBI caught her crook in spite of her mistakes, and then Seattle gets credit for the other cold case. I can’t imagine that feels good. Did you find evidence?”
