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CHAPTER NINE mother and father ᴏᴄᴛ. 17ᴛʜ, 7ᴀᴍ
TRIGGER WARNING!
MOMENTS BEFORE BERNADETTE had asked for a lawyer, in an interrogation room not far from where her daughter was sobbing, Wilhelmina Blanchard sat stone-cold and silent.
It was the way she carried herself that freaked Emily Prentiss out the most. There was no softness that a mother usually had, and though mother's were never soft and hardly weak, there was an indifference about Wilhelmina. One of her legs rested on the other, hands gently on her knees, and her wicked gaze rested on the edge of her index finger where the nail had fractured and remained jagged. She had a sharp, cutting severity about her that authors and directors feasted on for their horror books and movies. She, alone in the interrogation room, was coldly cut into the silhouette of a monster.
"What do you think?" Prentiss said quietly, as if Wilhelmina had some sort of beastly ability to hear life beyond the walls.
Rossi shook his head. "There's one thing I don't understand about this." He took a deep breath and swiped a tongue across his mouth. "How come Wilhelmina only heard Bernadette scream? If what she claims is true, that Bernadette killed them all, why would Bernadette scream when she stabbed Anne, and why didn't the others make a noise?"
"You're not with Morgan and Hotch on this?"
Rossi tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips. "There's no compelling reason as to why Bernadette didn't kill her sisters, with the nails and DNA, and the fingerprints on the knife, but . . . There's something very off about this."
"Off? This is a mess."
"Police say she did it. Reid says she didn't. And meanwhile, Bernadette says nothing and her mother says everything. This isn't a mess, this is a headache and I think everyone involved is lying."
"It's entirely possible that both Bernadette and Wilhelmina are lying, but why would they? Bernadette isn't trying to pin it on her mother unlike Wilhelmina trying to pin it on Bernadette. Bernadette is claiming her sisters killed themselves. Why would Wilhelmina give up the only thing she has left? Do you want to take this or should I?"
Rossi nodded his head at her. "You take it. She might be kinder with you."
"Why?"
"Whatever happened, she's lost all her daughters." Rossi looked away from Prentiss, back to Wilhelmina, and sighed. "She'll confide in somebody who could remind her of them."
Wilhelmina was boastful in her age, she demanded the full use of the eye. Unlike her daughters, who wore golden crucifixes around their necks, Wilhelmina had silver, and she wore crosses in her ears, and two rings on one finger. A wedding ring and what looked like a much daintier, thinner band beneath. There was a cross engraved on that one. Married to God before she was married to her husband, before anybody else.
