chapter word count: 568

noir heart: one hundred and one

"I'm sorry about my husband," Leah Mills murmurs apologetically, eyeing the same door Jack is. "Aurora was our only child, and he doted on her. She was his little princess."

The hotel room Stefan and Leah Mills hired is the stereotypical, middle-class abode. White vertical blinds on the windows overlooking the buzzing rush-hour streets from ten storeys up, a pleasant beige carpet with furniture a shade lighter, and a large white king-size divan bed opposite the main window. Jack gets the sense that they hired any old hotel room just so they could be in the city. Predictably, however, Stefan became irate and indignant, blaming Captain Moors for her failure to protect Aurora from all the evils in the world. It's understandable and classic father behaviour, but not conducive to the situation, so the only option for Jack was to ask Aster to escort Stefan out of the room and interview him separately.

He could have done without Aster being so distracted, though. Halfway through the interview and all of the questions had been asked solely by Jack, with his partner completely lost in anxious thought. "It's alright, Mrs Mills," he says softly. "You are both in a terrible situation, it's natural for him to react in such a way."

Her eyes return to him, and they're numb. Empty. The death of their daughter has caused her to collapse in on herself, and with her being the spitting image of her daughter...it's like interviewing someone about their own death. "Maybe so," she says in a voice nearly too quiet to hear, "but it isn't fair to blame Jane."

Jack says nothing on the subject - he shares the same opinion, but it would be inappropriate to voice it. He takes a breath and gears his mind; the usual questions have been asked - what was Aurora's feelings on moving into the city; did she have any enemies; had she mentioned anything about being followed, or unwanted attention, so now it's the next set of usual questions: relationships.

After all, a third of women murdered, met their ends at the hands of their intimate partners. It's worth either ruling it out or confirming it.

"Was your daughter in a relationship at all?" he asks, pen poised over the notepad in his left hand.

Leah's eyes fall to the table, and her brows knit themselves together. "She told me a few weeks ago that she'd started dating somebody."

Jack notes it down. "Do you know the name of this person?"

She tilts her head to the side and frowns in recollection. "I think his name was Phillip." She nods in agreement with her own memory. "She said he was in the same lectures as her."

The name Phillip finds its way onto his notepad, and is underlined. So that's the death-by-partner theory out of the window, then, given that he's the second victim. The one that's holier than Swiss cheese.

There's a niggling itch in the back of his mind, accompanied by a faint impatience as he exhales through his nose; the feeling there's not much else he can learn from Aurora's parents. "Thanks for your time, Mrs Mills," he says in a soft, regretful voice as he rises from the chair. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Well, your reviews have been a real confidence boost. Been chuckling at a few of them, too. Looking at you, oninoko, maravillakatana, jpbake and doomstone. Anyway, a few more of Jack, then Elsa's back in the game - and she should hopefully kick off something cool I've been planning in terms of narrative storytelling, as we're about to delve into Jack's backstory, and a surprise new character's gonna pop up. I'm also trying to build up a buffer, so OGaV may be slightly delayed.

special thanks to: doomstone, snowfire12345, last future of embryo, lunasnoir, maravillakatana, oninoko, jpbake, stefalove and hornedgoddess for the reviews!