Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [63]
It's a pretty believable excuse, he decided nervously—anyway, it was the best he could do.
On Tuesday morning he watched Emily having breakfast just before seven a.m. As usual, she was talking to Bess. The recording device he had planted over the refrigerator was acting up, but he could still hear most of what she was saying.
“Bess, after the judge instructs the jury this morning, then they start to deliberate. I'm fairly certain that they're going to convict him, but I wish I could feel good about it. For some reason I keep thinking about the other side of the picture. I hate knowing h much depends on Jimmy Easton's testimony. I wish I had one speck of DNA to prove that Gregg Aldrich is guilty.”
If I ever come to trial, the prosecutor won't have that problem. Zach thought, as he remembered the Fugitive Hunt episode. The host had talked about the DNA that connected him to the murders of his three wives.
As Emily's voice began to crackle and fade, he fiddled with the volume on his receiver. I'm losing her, he thought, frustrated. I'm going to have to get back in there somehow and adjust the micro?phone.
He waited until seven forty, when Emily left for court, before he got into his own car to drive to work. Madeline Kirk, the elderly woman who lived directly across the street from him, was sweeping her walk. He gave her a friendly wave as he backed out of his driveway.
She did not return it. Instead she turned her head and looked away.
Another woman rejecting him. They're all alike, Zach thought bitterly. That old bag wouldn't even give me the time of day. The couple of other times he had seen her outside, he thought she had at least nodded in his direction.
He pressed his foot on the accelerator, and the cat roared past her. Then a chilling possibility occurred to him. Maybe she saw that show? She's certainly got nothing else to do. She lives alone and never seems to have any visitors. Maybe she noticed the mums when I planted them, and wondered why they were gone.
Would she call in a tip to the show? Or would she think about it before she did it? Does she talk to anybody on the phone? Would she bring it up?
He was driving too fast. All I need is to be stopped by a cop, he thought nervously. As he slowed to the twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit, he was going over and over the way Madeline Kirk had rebuffed him.
And deciding what to do about it.
Just Take My Heart
42
On Tuesday morning at nine a.m. Judge Stevens began his leg instructions to the jury. He explained, as he had done when the jury was initially being selected, that Gregg Aldrich was charged with the burglary of Natalie Raines's home, the murder of Natalie Rail and possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose. He instructed them that in order to convict Gregg Aldrich, they must be unani?mously convinced that the prosecutor had proven his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I will define for you what we mean by the phrase 'beyond a rea?sonable doubt,' ” the judge continued. “It means that in order to convict, you must be firmly convinced that the defendant is guilty. If you are not firmly convinced of guilt, then you must find him not guilty.”
Emily listened as the judge explained this burden of proof.
You must be firmly convinced that Gregg Aldrich is guilty, Emily thought. Am I firmly convinced? Do I have a reasonable doubt? I have never felt this way trying a case. I have never argued to a jury to convict someone when I wasn't completely sure myself. But the truth here, she thought, is that sometimes I have a reasonable doubt about Aldrich, and sometimes I don't.
She looked over at him. For a man who had been so distraught yesterday, and who was facing the possibility of being in a jail cell tonight if there was a quick verdict, he seemed remarkably com?posed. He was wearing a jacket and slacks, with a blue shirt and a striped blue and red tie, a somewhat more casual outfit than he had been wearing during the trial. It becomes him, she thought reluc?tantly.
Judge Stevens continued to address the jurors: