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CHAPTER SIX honeyed words ᴏᴄᴛ. 16ᴛʜ, 9ᴀᴍ.
THE NEWS IMMEDIATELY swept the FBI, and they had to take a new perspective on the whole case. The night truly was just like a broken mirror. Nothing but long shards of glass that originally began to seem like they were fitting together only to turn out too small or too rugged. No matter how the detectives tried to place their gathered information together, it ended up looking all totally and indisputably wrong.
Mrs Jane Miller was pulled into the station the morning the initial shock of Anne's scandal subdued. 16th October, the day after the Blanchard sisters were declared dead on sight.
Jane Miller was a pretty woman, slim and willowy with lips forever wearing red lipstick. She walked into the station as if she were arriving to a funeral, and perhaps in some macabre way, she was. A mesh headscarf covered her brunette hair that had been pulled taut back into a bun, and a long coal-black dress hung glumly all the way down to her feet. A pair of thin, cat-eye sunglasses perched still on her face, though it was raining outside. Not for a moment did she let her neck bow, and her jaw clenched right as she was guided to her questioning room.
David Rossi and Emily Prentiss sat in front of her. Miller made no noise as she lowered herself into her seat. Leather gloves cloaked her hands and she placed them atop her knee as she crossed one leg over the other. Despite her composure, when she finally removed the sunglasses, the ring of red that tenaciously clung to her waterline was unmissable. No doubt about it, she had spent her night crying. Afterwards, she would visit Anne's body. After all the questions had been answered, she would say goodbye, and alone, she would run away to Paris.
"Hello, Mrs Miller," Prentiss started, straightening out the file she had in front of her. A foul, cold feeling soaked in the air. All the guilt from Bernadette seeped through the walls, and the aching silence of grief clouded up the corners of the room, hardening into tension. So thick, one could cut it with a knife. "I believe you already know why you've been called in here today."
Jane Miller was a young woman, much too young for her husband who had started to grow a soft belly and sprout grey hairs like a charred plant. She casted a look to her side and licked her teeth.
"I do," she replied. "It's about Anne Blanchard. My . . ."
"Your?" Rossi started, but when Miller's eyes narrowed, he nodded and lifted a hand as if to surrender. "We're not here to talk about the origins of the relationship. We're here to talk about the last day of Miss Blanchard's life."
Miller's nose curled upwards with disgust. "Say her name," she snapped, "not Miss Blanchard." Her nostrils flared and her upper lip snarled meanly, "when you say Miss Blanchard, she is just another sister. Another dead girl. She's reduced to nothing but the title of someone else. When you say Miss Blanchard, it sounds too much like that wretched old hag."
