Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [66]
“But, Alice, didn't all that happen under very different circum?stances? Wasn't that before Natalie separated from him and then filed for divorce?”
“Gregg never stopped loving Natalie and never stopped trying to protect her. The Gregg that I saw on the witness stand yesterday is the Gregg that I have always known. Emily, I have thought this whole thing through until I almost can't think anymore. There is absolutely no way that Gregg could have ever hurt Natalie and then left her to die. I will go to my grave believing that.”
“Alice,” Emily said, gently, “I'm going to say this with the deepest respect for you. When a tragedy like this happens, and a family member is accused, it is often almost impossible to accept that the family member could be responsible. In a terrible and sad sort a way, in a crime like this, it is more merciful if it had been committed, by a stranger. At least then the victim's family endures it together.”
“Emily, I don't care about other cases. I beg you, if Gregg is found guilty, to investigate this further. Can't you see for yourself what can so plainly see? Jimmy Easton is a liar.”
Alice stood up defiantly and glared at her.
“And why do I think that you know that, too, Emily?” she asked.
Just Take My Heart
43
On Tuesday night, Michael Gordon opened the discussion on Courtside by indicating that the jury had completed its first day of deliberations without reaching a verdict. “We're now going to reveal the results of the voting on our Web site and where our viewers stand on whether Gregg Aldrich is guilty or not guilty.”
He looked around at the other members of the panel. “And quite frankly, I think we are all surprised. Last night after Aldrich was cross-examined, and we believed that he had stumbled badly, we fully expected that the poll numbers would weigh heavily for a guilty verdict.”
Clearly buoyed by what he was saying, Gordon announced that forty-seven percent of the four hundred thousand respondents had actually voted not guilty. “Only fifty-three percent are ready to convict,” he said dramatically.
“After all these years in the business, you think you have a pretty good feel for how people are reacting and then you get a result like this,” Judge Bernard Reilly said, shaking his head. “But there's an?other thing being in the business a long time also teaches you: You just never know.”
“If the prosecutor, Emily Wallace, happens to be watching, she can't be too thrilled. A bare majority doesn't cut it in the criminal courts,” Michael Gordon said. "Any verdict, guilty or not guilty, must be unanimous, twelve to zero either way.
“If the jurors are thinking like our viewers, we are headed hung jury and a retrial.”
Just Take My Heart
44
The jurors resumed their deliberations at nine o'clock on Wednesday morning. Emily tried to concentrate on some of her other files but could not. Her exchange with Alice Mills yesterday had caused her a troubled night's sleep.
At noon, she went to the courthouse cafeteria to pick up a sandwich and bring it back to her desk. But when she got there she was sorry she had not asked someone else in the office to go for her. Gregg Aldrich, his daughter, Katie, Richard and Cole Moore, and Alice Mills were seated at a table she had to pass to get to the lunch counter.
“Good afternoon,” she murmured quietly as she went by. She tried to avoid making direct eye contact with them but could not help but see the tearful anguish on young Katie's face.
She doesn't deserve this, Emily thought. No fourteen-year-old does. She's smart enough to