Chapter 6 - EVELYN’S VERSION
Evelyn Miller lived in a brick house on the west side of Springfield, twelve miles from Maplewood Drive.
Her lawn was immaculate.
Family photographs filled the front room. Thomas appeared in school uniforms, work clothes, and wedding pictures. Emily appeared in holiday dresses and on a bicycle.
No photograph showed Anna.
Evelyn was sixty-eight, silver-haired, and precise in every movement. She invited Detective Ortiz and Daniel inside only after her attorney arrived.
“Anna died when she was seventeen,” Evelyn said.
“How?”
“She ran away. We later received information that she had died.”
“What information?”
“A letter.”
“Do you have it?”
“No.”
“Was a death certificate issued?”
“I don’t remember.”
Ortiz already knew no Illinois death record matched Anna Miller’s identity.
“Why was her number saved in Sarah’s phone?”
Evelyn’s face did not change.
“It wasn’t.”
“We have the phone.”
“Then Sarah entered a false name.”
“What did Anna say about your husband?”
Evelyn looked toward the family photographs.
“My husband is dead.”
“That was not my question.”
Evelyn’s attorney objected to the direction of the interview. Ortiz clarified that Evelyn was not under arrest and could end the conversation.
Evelyn remained seated.
“Robert Miller was strict,” she said. “People used different words for discipline then.”
“Did Anna ever accuse him of hurting her?”
“No.”
“Did she use the word snake?”
Evelyn’s hand tightened around the arm of the chair.
Daniel noticed.
Ortiz did too.
“I don’t remember.”
The interview ended minutes later.
As the officers stood, Daniel saw a framed photograph partly hidden behind a lamp. It showed Thomas at approximately twelve years old beside a younger girl.
The girl held a stuffed rabbit.
One ear was torn.
The rabbit looked remarkably similar to Mr. Buttons.
Daniel asked about it.
Evelyn stood so quickly that the chair legs scraped the floor.
“That belonged to Anna.”
“Did Emily inherit it?”
“Thomas must have kept it.”
“Why did you tell investigators it was Emily’s toy?”
“I said no such thing.”
She had not.
Daniel had allowed the question to contain an assumption, and Evelyn corrected only the ownership.
The rabbit had passed from Anna to Thomas, then to Emily.
At the hospital, Julia was completing background forms for a possible kinship placement. She lived in a small apartment, worked as a dental assistant, and had no criminal record. However, she had once allowed Sarah to stay with her during a period when Sarah violated a treatment plan.
Child-protection officials needed to determine whether Julia could maintain boundaries and comply with safety rules.
Julia found the process humiliating.
Then she remembered Emily checking the hallway before hugging her.
She answered every question.
When asked whether she would permit Sarah into the home if Sarah were alive and using drugs, Julia said, “Three years ago, I might have. Today, no.”
The evaluator wrote down the answer.
Emily remained in temporary care with a licensed foster family experienced in emergency placements. Julia received supervised visits.
During the first visit, Emily did not ask about Thomas.
She asked whether her bedroom still existed.
“Yes,” Julia said.
“Did they take the blue blanket?”
“The police are keeping some things safe.”
Emily looked at the visitation supervisor.
“Daddy says police steal children’s stuff.”
Julia wanted to tell her Thomas was a liar.
Instead, she said, “Sometimes police keep things because they may help explain what happened. They have to write down where everything goes.”
“Will I get Mr. Buttons back?”
The rabbit had been temporarily retained for examination because of its connection to the phone and the family photograph.
“When they are finished,” Julia said.
Emily stared at the empty space beside her.
Without the rabbit, she seemed smaller.
At the forensic laboratory, a technician examined Mr. Buttons without cutting more than necessary. The seam along its back had been opened and resewn several times.
Inside the stuffing was a narrow cloth pocket.
The prepaid phone had fit inside it.
So had a folded strip of paper.
The paper contained Sarah’s handwriting:
Anna said the word began with Robert. Thomas knows what it means.
Below the sentence was an address in Decatur.
Ortiz drove there with a local detective.
The address belonged to a vacant house.
A neighbor remembered a woman who had rented it under the name Anne Mercer.
May you like
She moved out fourteen months earlier.
On the same day Sarah Miller died.
