Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [89]
“Emily, the murderer who shot and killed Natalie Raines is in that cell two blocks away, and his name is Gregg Aldrich. Thanks to the fact you apparently did not make it clear to Easton that he was going away, the media is going to be ranting about what else he may have to say.”
Ted Wesley picked up the phone, a sign that the meeting was over.
Emily went back to her office. The file she had been studying most of the morning contained the initial report of the police in Old Tappan, where Jimmy Easton had been arrested in the burglary. It was brief. The burglary had occurred at nine thirty p.m. last February 20th. As he was being processed in the police station, Easton had volunteered that he had information about the Raines murder.
And that was when Jake Rosen and Billy Tryon rushed over to interview him, Emily thought. It certainly was a break that Easton ended up talking. It had been an embarrassment for this office that Raines's murder was still unsolved after two years. If Easton read the papers at all, he would have known that Aldrich was the only sus?pect. He had met him at a bar. Could he have pieced together the rest of that story, maybe with some help from Billy Tryon?
Jake would never be part of helping Easton to fabricate evidence, but Tryon might. Jake had said he was there for that first interview in the police station, but he had also said that he arrived there after Billy Tryon did.
I don't care if Ted Wesley fires me while he still has the chance, Emily thought. I'm going to see this through. Then she said aloud what she had been trying to deny. “Gregg Aldrich is innocent. I did everything I could to convict him and I knew he was innocent while I was doing it.”
The words Alice Mills had screamed at her echoed in her mind: “You know that this is a travesty and in your heart you're ashamed to be part of it.”
I am ashamed, Emily thought.
I am ashamed.
She was startled by how certain she was.
Just Take My Heart
61
Belle Garcia could not get over the fact that Gregg had been con?victed. She had hardly slept on either Friday or Saturday night. Last year she had watched a late-night documentary about prisons, and the thought of Gregg being locked up in a cage was simply awful.
“Even Natalie's mother believed in him, so why did those stupid jurors take the word of that horrible crook? If I had been on that jury, he'd be home with his child,” she said not once but over and over again to Sal.
On Saturday evening he finally exploded. “Belle, can't you get it straight? I'm sick of hearing about it. No more. Get it? No more!” Then he stormed out of their apartment to take a long walk.
On the other hand, Belle's eighty-year-old mother, Nona 'Nonie' Amoroso, wanted to hear everything about it. On Sunday morning, her cruise ship docked in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Belle picked her up and on the way home that was all they talked about. When Belle dropped her at her apartment, around the corner from theirs, she said, “Mama, I know you're a little tired, but come over to dinner to?night. We've missed you so much. But, remember, don't bring up the trial. Like I said, Sal has gotten downright surly at the mention of it.”
Seeing the disappointed look on her mother's face she added, hastily, “I have it all planned. Sal has a big moving job tomorrow. He'll be leaving really early in the morning, so he'll want to go to bed pretty early tonight. I'll call you after he's asleep, probably around ten o'clock. Get comfortable