Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [74]
The panelists —retired judge Bernard Reilly, former prosecutor Peter Knowles, and criminal psychologist Georgette Cassotta—all expressed surprise that the jury had been able to reach a unanimous verdict. Cassotta acknowledged that she had not thought that una?nimity was possible, given all of the problems with Jimmy Easton.
Dorothy Winters, the disappointed alternate, did not wait for an invitation to speak. “I am furious,” she said. “This would never have happened if I had been in there. There's nothing that anybody could have said that would have changed my mind. I think the judge let the prosecutor badger Mr. Aldrich when that poor man was trying to explain why he went to Cape Cod. If you ask me, he was too good to Natalie. I didn't think she treated him very well. It was always all about her career, but he was still devoted to her and always trying to take care of her.”
Juror number three, Norman Klinger, a civil engineer in his mid-forties, shook his head. “We examined this case from every angle,” he said flatly. “Whether or not Mr. Aldrich was too good to Natalie is not the bottom line. Jimmy Easton is what he is, but everything he said was corroborated.”
Suzie Walsh had been thrilled to receive the phone call asking her to be on the program. She had rushed out to get her hair done and even paid to have her makeup put on at the beauty parlor. She had learned only when she arrived that there was a hair and makeup person in the studio. I could have saved the money, she thought, wistfully, especially since the lady here rebrushed my hair and toned down the makeup.
Michael Gordon then asked her a question. “Ms. Walsh, you were the last person to see Natalie Raines alive. What are your thoughts about this verdict?”
“At first I thought he was definitely guilty,” she said earnestly. “But then I realized that something has been bothering me all along. You see, she was still alive when I found her. She didn't open her eyes but she was moaning. I think she understood that I was calling to get help for her. If she knew who had shot her, and by that 1 mean her husband, why didn't she whisper that to me? In my opinion she knew she was dying. Wouldn't she want the person who did this to her to get caught?”
“Exactly,” Dorothy Winters chimed in.
“Ms. Walsh, you must understand that all of this was thoroughly discussed in the jury room,” Klinger told her. “You say yourself that Natalie Raines was dying. You said she never opened her eyes. The fact that she was moaning does not mean that she had any ability to communicate with you.”
“She was aware of me. I'm sure of it,” Suzie insisted. “And any?how, I didn't think people could moan when they were uncon?scious.”
“I am not saying she was necessarily completely unconscious. But she was gravely injured, and again, we did not think that she had any ability to communicate.”
“They were separated for over a year. Maybe there was another boyfriend in the picture nobody knew about,” Dorothy Winters said stubbornly. “Don't forget she had hinted to Gregg Aldrich there someone else. That's why he went to Cape Cod to check it out. Or maybe it was some crazy fun? She may have had an unlisted tele?phone number, but anybody could have gotten her address and a map to her house off the Internet. Just look it up. It's the easiest thing in the world to do.”
“The defense attorney didn't talk much at all about the possibil?ity of another boyfriend,” Donald Stern, the other alternate juror, pointed out. “If there was such a guy, even if he wasn't at Cape Cod, it still doesn't mean that he didn't know his way around the house in New Jersey. Frankly, I was still leaning to a guilty vote, but if I'd been in the deliberations with Mrs. Winters, I might have been