Just Take My Heart Read online

  He drove the short distance home, reflecting that in the couple of weeks since it had been clear that Emily had rejected him, he had begun his preparations to leave New Jersey.

  As soon as he had killed her.

  His house was a month-to-month rental. He had informed the owners he would be moving out on November 1st. He had also given notice at work that he would be leaving at the end of October. His story to all of them was that his elderly mother who lived in Florida had serious health problems, and he needed to be with her.

  Zach knew he had to disappear right after Emily died but before her body was found. He was sure that the cops would investigate all of her neighbors, and that he had undoubtedly been seen walking her dog. And it was always possible that Emily had commented to her family or friends that she thought the guy living next door to her was strange and made her feel uncomfortable. You can bet that they would tell that to the police, he thought.

  He thought about how Charlotte, his third wife, had thrown him out of his own house. Afterwards she had told her new boyfriend that he was weird and that she was afraid of him. You were right to be afraid of me, sweetheart, he told himself with a chuckle. I'm only sorry I didn't take care of my former good buddy, who became your boyfriend, at the same time.

  In total he bought twenty-six flats of mums. He really enjoyed spending the rest of the afternoon planting them. Just as he expected. Emily came home around five o'clock. She waved to him as she got out of her car, but quickly hurried into her house.

  He could see she looked tired and stressed. He was pretty sure that she'd be in for the night and fix her own dinner. He hoped so. But at twenty after six he heard the sound of her car engine starting through the open side window. He got to the window in time to see her backing out of the driveway and caught a glimpse of the silk blouse, pearls, and big earrings that she was wearing.

  All dolled up, he thought bitterly. She was probably meeting friends for dinner. At least no one picked her up, so she probably didn't have a date. He could feel his anger growing. I don't want her to have anyone else in her life. Not anyone!

  He felt himself getting very upset. He knew it wouldn't take him a minute to cut out a windowpane and be waiting in her house when she got home. Her alarm would be no problem. It was a cheap basic system. He could easily disarm it from the outside.

  Not yet, he warned himself. You're not ready yet. You need to get a different car, and rent a little place in North Carolina. A lot of people were relocating there all the time and with a new identity, he was sure he could blend in easily.

  Determined to take his mind off what Emily was doing, he went into his kitchen, took out the packet of hamburger he had bought for tonight's supper, and turned on the television. He liked several Saturday-night programs, particularly Fugitive Hunt, which came on at nine p.m.

  Twice in the last couple of years they'd presented a segment on him. He enjoyed watching them and mocking the computer images that they said might look like him today.

  Not even close, he had snickered.

  Just Take My Heart

  30

  Ted Wesley had invited Emily to have dinner at his home on Sat?urday evening. “We're just having a few friends in,” he explained. “We want a chance to be with people we really care about before we move.”

  He would be starting his new job in Washington on November 5th. Emily knew that the house in Saddle River was already on the market.

  It was the first time she had received a dinner invitation from Ted and Nancy Wesley. She knew it was a reaction to the favorable pub?licity she'd generated in the media during the trial. Ted liked to be associated with people in the limelight. Successful people!

  Win or lose, the newspapers with my pictures plastered all over them will be lining next week's garbage pails, she thought, as she drove through Saddle River and turned onto Foxwood Road. If I lose, it'll be an awfully long time before I'm invited back, she warned herself wryly.

  Ted's house was one of the largest of the mini-mansions on the winding street. He certainly didn't buy this on a prosecutor's salary. Emily thought. Of course before he became prosecutor, he was a partner in his father-in-law's prestigious law firm, but the real money, she knew, came through his wife, Nancy. Nancy's maternal grandfa?ther had founded a chain of upscale department stores.

  Emily parked the car near the house's rotunda at the end of the driveway. The evening had turned cool and as she got out of the car, she inhaled several deep breaths of fresh air. It felt good. I've barely been outdoors often enough to clear my lungs, she thought. Then she quickened her step. She had not bothered to bring a jacket and could have used one.

  But she was glad that she had decided to wear the silk blouse with the splashy print. She knew the fatigue, caused by the long hours she was putting in, showed on her face. Carefully applied makeup helped to somewhat conceal it. So did the vivid colors in the blouse. After this trial is over, no matter how much is piled up on my desk, I'm taking a few days off, she decided, as she rang the bell of the house.

  Ted answered the door himself, let her in, then said admiringly, “You're looking very glamorous tonight, Counselor.”

  “I agree,” Nancy Wesley said. She had followed her husband to the door. A slender blond in her late forties, she had the unmistak?able stamp of someone who was born to privilege and wealth. But her smile was genuine, and she took Emily's hands in hers as she placed a fleeting kiss on her cheek. “We've invited just three others to be with us. I know you'll enjoy them. Come in and meet them.”

  Emily managed a quick glance around the foyer as she followed the Wesleys. Very impressive, she thought. Marble double staircase. Balcony. Antique chandelier. And I did dress properly. Like her, Nancy Wesley was wearing black silk pants and a silk blouse. The only difference was that her blouse was a pastel shade of blue.

  Three other people, Emily thought. She was afraid that the Wes?leys might have invited a single man as a sort of dinner companion for her. In the past year, that had occurred several times in other cir?cumstances. Since she still missed Mark so much, it had not only been annoying, but painful. I hope I'll be ready again someday, she mused, but not yet. She tried to stifle a grin. Even if I had been ready, she told herself, the jokers they've trotted out for me so far have been pretty bad!

  She was relieved to see that the three people in the living room were a man and woman, who both appeared to be in their early fif?ties, sitting on a couch by the fireplace, and another woman who appeared to be in her late sixties, seated in a wing chair. She recog?nized the man, Timothy Moynihan, as an actor in a long-running evening television show. He played the chief surgeon in a hospital drama.

  Ted introduced him and his wife, Barbara, to Emily.

  After greeting his wife, Emily, smiling, asked Moynihan, “Should I call you 'Doctor'?”

  “I'm off duty, so Tim will do.”

  “The same with me. Please don't call me 'prosecutor.' ” Ted then turned toward the older woman, “Emily, this is another dear friend, Marion Rhodes—and she's a real-life doctor, a psychol?ogist.”

  Emily acknowledged the introduction and in a moment was seated with the group and sipping a glass of wine. She felt herself beginning to unwind. This is so civilized, she thought. There really is life outside the Aldrich case, even if only for an evening.

  When they went into the dining room and Emily saw the beauti?fully set table, she thought briefly about the soup or sandwich at her desk for lunch, or the take-out food for dinner that had pretty much constituted her haute cuisine for the past few months.

  The dinner was delicious and the conversation was both pleasant and amusing. Tim Moynihan was an accomplished raconteur and shared stories of what went on behind the scenes of his show. As she listened and laughed, Emily commented that this was even better than reading the gossip columns. She asked how he and Ted had first met.

  “We were college roommates at Carnegie Mellon,” Wesley explained. “Tim majored in drama, and believe it or not I
was in a few plays myself. My parents wouldn't let me become an actor because they thought I would end up starving to death. I was planning on law school, but I do think the little bit of acting I did helped me in the courtroom as a trial lawyer and also as the prosecutor.”

  “Emily, we were warned by Nancy and Ted that this is your night off from talking about your case,” Moynihan said. “But I have to tell you, Barbara and I have been following it closely on Courtside. The clips I've seen of you in the courtroom tell me you could have been a very successful actress. You have tremendous presence and poise and there's also something else —the way you ask the questions and your reactions to the answers you get convey so much to the specta?tors. I'll give you one example: The withering look you gave Gregg Aldrich several times during Easton's testimony spoke volumes.”

  “I don't know if Ted will bite my head off if I bring this up,” Bar?bara Moynihan said, somewhat hesitantly. “But, Emily, you couldn't have been happy about Michael Gordon announcing that he thinks Gregg Aldrich is innocent.”

  Emily could sense that Marion Rhodes, the psychologist, was awaiting her answer with intense interest. And she was acutely aware that while this was a social setting, her boss, the county prosecutor, was also sitting at the table.

  She chose her words carefully. “I would not, and could not, be prosecuting this case if I didn't believe strongly that Gregg Aldrich killed his wife. The tragedy for him and his daughter and Natalie Raines's mother is that he probably did love Natalie very much. But I am sure Dr. Rhodes has seen many times over the years that people who are otherwise very decent can do terrible things when they're very jealous or sad.”

  Marion Rhodes nodded in agreement. “You're absolutely right, Emily. From everything I have heard and read, Natalie Raines prob?ably still loved her husband. If they had gone to counseling, and had really talked out the problems caused by the frequent separations when she was on the road, things really might have turned out differ?ently.”

  Ted Wesley looked at his wife and, with surprising candor, said. “Thanks to Marion, that's the way it worked out for us. We got the help we needed from her when Nancy and I hit a rough patch many years ago. If we had broken up then, look at everything we would have thrown away. Our boys never would have been born. We wouldn't be about to move to Washington. And after the counseling. Marion became our cherished friend.”

  “Sometimes, when people experience emotional trauma or con?flict in an important relationship, it can be very helpful to work with a good therapist,” Rhodes said quietly. “Of course not all problems can be solved and not all relationships can be, or should be, sal?vaged. But there are happy endings.”

  Emily had the uncomfortable feeling that Marion Rhodes was directing those comments at her. Could it be that Ted was setting her up to meet not a man, but a therapist? Surprisingly, she did not feel resentment. She was sure that Ted and Nancy had told the others about Mark's death and her surgery. She recalled that Ted had once asked her if she had ever seen a therapist to talk about all she had been through. She had responded by saying she was very close to her family and had plenty of good friends. She told him that the best therapy for her, like so many who experienced loss, was work. Hard work.

  Maybe Ted has also told Marion that both my father and my brother and his family have moved away, Emily thought. And Ted also knows that with the work schedule I've had, there's been very little time to spend with friends. I know that he has been sympathetic about everything that has happened. But, as I was thinking when I arrived here tonight, if I lose this case there will be plenty of Monday-morning quarterbacking about him assigning it to me. Let's see how much he cares about me if that happens.

  The evening broke up at ten o'clock. By then Emily was more than ready to go home. The brief escape she had enjoyed for the last few hours was over. She wanted to get a decent night's sleep and be in her office early Sunday morning. After the favorable impression Gregg Aldrich had made so far on the stand, she was again feeling deep anxiety about the cross-examination.

  Or was it more than that? she asked herself as she drove home. Am I really worried about the cross-examination and the verdict?

  Or is it that I am terrified that we have made a terrible mistake and that someone else killed Natalie?

  Just Take My Heart

  31

  At nine p.m. Saturday night, Zach, settled in the small living room of his rented house, and sitting where he could see Emily's driveway, switched the channel so that he could now watch Fugitive Hunt. A couple of beers had helped to quiet his nerves, and he was physically tired from all the yard work and planting the mums. He wondered if Emily had noticed when she came home from work or when she went out again a little bit later how nice the yellow mums looked along his walkway.

  The background music for Fugitive Hunt came on. “Tonight we will have three segments on old cases, the host, Bob Warner, began. ”Our first segment is an update on the two-year-old search for the man last known as Charley Muir. You may recall our prior two seg?ments on him—one right after the multiple murders in Des Moines. Iowa, two years ago, and another follow-up segment last year.

  "The police allege that Muir was very bitter about the divorce, and was incensed when the judge awarded their home to his wife. They say that was the motive for the murder of his wife, her chil?dren, and her mother. By the time the bodies were found, he was gone and has not been seen since.

  “The continuing investigation has uncovered startling new evi?dence that he is responsible for the murders of two other women, whom we now know were his first and second wives. The first one, Lou Gunther, died in Minnesota ten years ago. The second one, Wilma Kraft, died in Massachusetts seven years ago. During each of his three known marriages, he used a different identity and continuously changed his appearance. In Minnesota he was known as Gus Olsen, and in Massachusetts he was known as Chad Rudd. We don't even know what his real name is.”

  Warner paused, the tone of his voice changing. “Stay with us for the rest of this incredible story. We'll be right back after these messages.”

  They're still at it, Zach thought, scornfully. But give them credit—they've now connected me to the other two. They didn't have that last time. But let's see how I'm supposed to look at this point.

  As the commercials were playing, Zach got up to get another beer. He was all set to get a laugh at the upcoming pictures, but he couldn't help feeling uneasy. The fact that they had linked him to both Minnesota and Massachusetts worried him.

  Beer in hand, he sat down again in front of the television. The program was coming back on. Warner began by showing pictures of Zach's third wife, Charlotte, with her children and her mother, fol?lowed by pictures of Lou and Wilma. He described the brutal nature of their deaths. Charlotte and her family had been shot. Lou and Wilma had both been strangled.

  To Zach's growing dismay, Warner displayed pictures of him that had been provided by family members of his victims. The pictures over the ten-year span, between Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Iowa, demonstrated that at various times he had been bearded or clean-shaven, and had worn his hair long or in a crew cut. He was pictured wearing thick glasses, granny glasses, or no glasses at all. The pictures also revealed that his weight would fluctuate from very thin to chubby, then back again to very thin.

  Warner continued by exhibiting computer age-enhanced images of Zach, which interchanged the various potential differences in his head and facial hair, weight, and glasses. To Zach's horror, one of them substantially resembled the way he looked now. But anyone watching the show is looking at all of those pictures at once, he tried to reassure himself—they'd never recognize him.

  “FBI profilers believe that, based upon his known prior employ?ment, he could be working in a warehouse or a factory,” Warner continued. “He also worked briefly as an electrician's helper. His only known hobby is that he enjoyed working in his yard and took pride in maintaining a garden. We have been provided pictures of his homes and will show them to you now
. All three pictures were taken in autumn and as you can see, he was very partial to bright yel?low mums. He always lined his driveway or walkway with lots of them.”

  Like a shot out of a cannon, Zach leaped from his chair. Frantic, he raced outside, grabbed a shovel, and began digging up the plants. Realizing that the porch light substantially illuminated the walkway area, he hurried to turn it off. Working in near darkness, his breath coming in short gasps, he clawed at the plants, tossing them into heavy plastic bags. He realized that Emily could be turning into her driveway at any moment and he didn't want her to see him doing this.

  He also realized that she must have noticed the plantings this af?ternoon and would wonder why they were gone. The first thing to?morrow morning he would buy different beds of flowers to replace them.

  What would be going through Emily's head? Would she hear anybody in her office talking about this program? Would they talk about the mums? Would anybody at his job, or on this block, notice that one lousy picture and think about the fact that he had lived and worked here for two years — exactly the right time frame for leaving Des Moines?

  Zach had just finished pulling up the last of the flowers when Emily's car came up her driveway. He crouched down in the dark shadow of the house and watched as she got out of the car, hurried to her front door, and went inside. Is there any chance, wherever she had been, that she had seen this program? Even if she had only glanced at it, at some point her professional instincts would be bound to kick in. If not right away, then soon.

  Zach knew that he had to step up his preparations and be ready to leave much sooner than he had planned.