Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [12]
“As you want to punish Gregg Aldrich?” Emily asked.
“I want to punish her murderer, whoever he is.”
Emily averted her eyes from the naked pain on the other woman's face. This was the part of her job that she dreaded. She realized that the empathy she felt when she saw the anguish of a victim's fam?ily was what drove her to present the best possible case in court. But today, for some reason, more than ever before, the grief she was wit?nessing touched her to her very soul. She knew it was useless to try to assuage this mother's grief with words.
But I can help her by proving not only to a jury but to her that
Gregg Aldrich was responsible for Natalie's death and deserves the harshest sentence the judge can give him —life in prison without parole.
Then she did something she had not expected to do. As Alice Mills got up to leave, Emily stood up, hurried around her desk, and put her arms around the heartbroken mother.
Just Take My Heart
9
Michael Gordon's desk in his office on the thirtieth floor of Rockefeller Center was heaped with newspapers from all over the country', a usual sight in the morning. Before the end of the day, he would have scanned all of them looking for interesting crimes to cover on his nightly program, Courtside, on channel 8.
A former defense attorney, Michael's life had changed dramatically at age thirty-four, when he had been invited to be on that same program, one of a panel of experts analyzing ongoing criminal trials in Manhattan. His perceptive comments, quick wit, and black Irish good looks had ensured his frequent invitations to be a guest on the show. Then when the longtime host retired, he was asked to take over, and now, two years later, it was one of the most popular pro?grams in the country.
A native of Manhattan, Mike lived in an apartment on Central Park West. Though a sought-after bachelor, and despite the many invitations that were showered on him, he spent many nights quietly at home working on the book he had contracted to write, an analysis of great crimes of the twentieth century. He planned to open it with Harry Thaw's killing of the architect Stanford White in 1906 and end with the first O. J. Simpson trial in 1995.
It was a project that fascinated him. He had come to believe that most domestic crimes were rooted in jealousy. Thaw was jealous that
White had been intimate with his wife when she was a very young woman. Simpson was jealous that his wife was being seen with someone else.
What about Gregg Aldrich, a man he had admired and liked? Michael had been a close friend of both Gregg and Natalie even before they were married. He had spoken eloquently at Natalie's memorial service and had frequently invited Gregg and his daughter, Katie, to his skiing lodge in Vermont on weekends during the two winters since Natalie's death.
I always believed that the cops rushed to judgment by publicly referring to Gregg as “a person of interest,” Michael thought, as he absentmindedly glanced at and pushed aside the newspapers on his desk. What do I believe now? I just don't know.
Gregg had called the same day he was indicted. “Mike, I assume you'll be covering the trial on your program?”
“Yes.”
“I'm going to make it easy for you. I'm not going to ask you if you believe Easton's story. But I think it best if we avoid each other until after the trial.”
“I think you're right, Gregg.” An uncomfortable silence settled between them.
They had not seen each other much in these past six months. Occasionally they'd been in the theatre or at a cocktail party and had only nodded in passing. Now the trial was scheduled