Just Take My Heart Read online

  In response to Emily's questions, Suzie explained that she had gone into the garage, seen Natalie Raines's pocketbook and suitcase in her car, then knocked on the door. Realizing it was unlocked, she then opened it and went into the kitchen. Suzie was about to ex?plain that it wasn't her habit to walk into people's homes uninvited but this time, because of what she had seen, it was different. But she stopped herself. Just answer the questions, she thought.

  Then Emily Wallace asked her to describe in her own words what she found in the kitchen.

  “I saw her right away. If I'd taken two more steps, I'd have tripped over her.”

  “Who did you see, Ms. Walsh?”

  “I saw Natalie Raines.”

  “Was she alive?”

  “Yes. She was moaning like a hurt kitten.”

  Suzie heard someone begin to sob. Her eyes flew to the third row, where a woman, whom she recognized from newspaper pic?tures as Natalie Raines's aunt, grabbed a handkerchief from her purse and pressed it against her lips. As Suzie watched, the expres?sion on the elderly woman's face became agonized, but she did not utter another sound.

  Suzie described calling 911 and then kneeling beside Natalie. “There was blood all over her sweater. I didn't know if she could hear me but I know sometimes people who seem to be unconscious really aren't and are aware if someone talks to them, so I told her she'd be all right and that an ambulance was coming. And then she just stopped breathing.”

  “Did you touch her?”

  “I put my hand on her forehead and stroked it. I wanted her to feel that she wasn't alone. She must have been so frightened, I mean lying there, hurting so much, and knowing she was probably dying. I tell you, I'd be scared.”

  “Objection.” Richard Moore jumped from his seat.

  “Sustained,” the judge ordered. “Ms. Walsh, please just answer the question without additional comment. Prosecutor, repeat the question.”

  “Did you touch her?” Emily asked again.

  “I put my hand on her forehead and stroked it,” Suzie said care?fully now, frightened by the defense attorney. But then when it was Moore's turn, he only asked her a few more questions and acted very friendly. It was a little embarrassing to admit to him that she almost always drove by Natalie Raines's house in the afternoon when she left work even though it meant going all around the block to get to the parkway. But then she noticed that some people in the court?room smiled when she said she was such a fan of Natalie's that she loved to catch any possible glimpse of her.

  “When was the last time you saw Natalie Raines before you en?tered her house?” Moore asked.

  “Like I said. I saw her getting out of the car that morning.”

  “No more questions,” Moore said crisply.

  It was almost disappointing to be finished. As she left the stand Suzie made it her business to get a good look at Gregg Aldrich. He's a fine-looking man, she thought. I can understand why even some?one as beautiful as Natalie Raines could fall in love with him. His eyes have such a sad expression. What a phony he is. It's enough to make a person sick.

  She hoped he caught the contemptuous glance she shot at him as she exited the courtroom.

  Just Take My Heart

  15

  Because of his long friendship with Gregg, and because Katie's comments had stung him, Michael Gordon had expected to be drawn emotionally into the trial of the State of New Jersey versus Gregg Aldrich. However, he had not expected to feel an almost fa?talistic sense that Gregg was not only guilty, but that he was going to be convicted of Natalie's murder.

  As he had expected, the trial attracted national attention. Natalie had been a major Broadway star and an Academy Award nominee. Gregg, a regular at star-studded events, was a familiar figure to the avid tabloid readers whose lives revolved around those of celebrities. After Natalie's death, Gregg had been a particular target of the pa?parazzi. Every time he escorted an actress to an event, it was rumored that he was involved with her.

  The headlines in the gossip magazines had also kept front and center the fact that he was a “person of interest” in Natalie's death.

  Michael knew Gregg was carrying a lot of baggage into the trial. But added to that was an unexpected element: The news stories were also focusing on the young, beautiful prosecutor Emily Wallace, and the skillful manner in which she was building up the case against Aldrich.

  As a former defense attorney, Michael recognized that Emily was closing the doors to the possibility that Natalie's death had been a random crime. The detectives from her office, Billy Tryon and Jake Rosen, were good witnesses, articulate and prompt in their answers to her questions.

  They testified that there had been no break-in at the home of Natalie Raines. The security system had not been tampered with. A professional thief could have opened the small safe in Natalie's bed?room closet with a can opener, but there was no sign it had been touched. Evidence seemed to indicate that the perpetrator had ex?ited by the back door and run through the yard and the wooded area behind it to the next street. It had rained during the night and they believed he might have had some kind of plastic covering over his shoes since it was impossible to get a useful cast of a footprint, even though there were two specific indentations where the grass was par?ticularly soft. The shoe size ranged between a ten and a twelve.

  Gregg Aldrich wore a size eleven shoe.

  The security system log was entered into evidence. The last time it was turned on was at four o'clock Friday afternoon, March 13th. It was disengaged at eleven thirty that same evening, the security in?staller testified, and was never reset, indicating the house was not armed over the weekend nor on the Monday morning Natalie Raines was murdered.

  When she was on the stand, Natalie's mother, Alice Mills, testi?fied that Natalie kept a spare key inside a fake rock in the backyard of the Closter house. “Gregg knew about that rock,” she swore. “He bought it for Natalie. When she lived with him, she was always los?ing or forgetting her apartment key. That was why when she moved to Closter, he told her she'd better have a spare key around, or she'd find herself locked out on a cold night.”

  Alice Mills's next remark was stricken from the record but it had been heard by everyone in the courtroom. She had started sobbing and, looking at Gregg, had cried: “You were always so protective of Natalie! How could you have changed so much? How could you have hated her enough to do that to her?”

  The next witness was a clerk from Brookstone with a copy of the sales slip showing that Gregg had paid for the rock with his credit card.

  The medical examiner's testimony was unemotional and specific. From the position of the body, he believed that Natalie Raines was attacked as soon as she walked in the door. A lump on the back of her head suggested she had been grabbed and thrown down on the floor, then shot at close range. The bullet just missed her heart. The cause of the death was internal bleeding.

  “If she had received immediate help after she was shot, could she have been saved?” Wallace asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  That night the panel discussion on Courtside centered on Emily Wallace.

  “The look she gave Aldrich after that last question to the medical examiner was pure theatre,” Peter Knowles, a retired prosecutor, commented. “What she was telling the jury was that after Aldrich shot Natalie, he could still have saved her life. Instead he left her to bleed to death.”

  “I don't buy that,” Brett Long, a criminal psychologist, said force?fully. “Why would he take a chance that somebody else might hap?pen to come in after he left and get help for her? Aldrich or whoever shot her thought she was finished.”

  That was exactly what Michael had been thinking. Why didn't I say it first? he asked himself. Was it because I don't want to offer Gregg even the slightest support? Am I that sure he's guilty? Instead of agreeing with Brett Long, he said: “Emily Wallace has the gift of making every juror feel as though she's in an intimate conversation with him or her. We all know how effective that is.”


  At the end of the second week of the trial, viewers were invited to register their opinions of Gregg's guilt or innocence on the Court-side Web site. The number of hits was overwhelming and seventy-five percent of them voted for a guilty verdict. When a panelist on the show congratulated him on the response, Michael remembered Katie's bitter comment that he would probably get a bonus for his coverage of the trial.

  As each day seemed to tighten the web around Gregg, Michael felt a deepening sense of having abandoned his friend and even helping to sway public opinion against him. How about the jurors? he asked himself. Members of the jury were supposed to avoid news coverage of the trial. Michael wondered how many of them watched his show every night and if they would be influenced by the polls.

  Was Gregg watching Courtside after he got back to his apart?ment? Somehow Michael was sure that he was. And he also won?dered if by any wild chance Gregg was having the same reaction he was to Emily Wallace—that in an unsettling way, there was some?thing about her that reminded him of Natalie.

  Just Take My Heart

  16

  Zach knew he had made a mistake. He should never have been sitting on Emily's porch watching television when she got home that night. Immediately, a worried look had come into her eyes, and she'd been very cool when she thanked him for taking care of Bess.

  He knew that the only reason she hadn't changed their arrange?ment yet was because of her trial, but he was certain that very soon she would find some excuse to get rid of him. Even worse, would she run some kind of check on him? She was a prosecutor after all. She must not get suspicious.

  Zachary Lanning had been the name he'd picked for his new identity in the months that he planned his revenge on Charlotte, her mother, and her kids. He tried never to think about his other names, even though sometimes they bubbled to the surface in his sleep.

  In Des Moines he'd been Charley Muir, and in that life he had been an electrician and volunteer fireman. Charlotte was his third wife, but he didn't tell her that. He used his savings to buy her a house. Charley and Charlotte, it sounded so warm and cozy. Then in two years, she kicked him out. Her mother moved in with her and the kids. She camped in my house, he thought, even though when I lived there, she never even came to visit. Charlotte sued him for di?vorce and the judge awarded her the house and alimony because she claimed she had given up her good job to stay home and cook meals for him. Charlotte was a liar. She had hated that job.

  Then he found out that she was dating one of the other guys in the firehouse, Rick Morgan. He overheard Rick tell someone that Charlotte had split because she was afraid of him, that he was creepy . . .

  It had been a treat watching Emily Wallace spend her whole summer pulling a case together to convict a guy for killing his wife. And she's going to do it, too, Zach thought, that's how smart she is. But she's not smart enough to know I killed five people at once! He took pride in the fact that Emily's name and face were all over the media —it was almost as though they were complimenting him, too.

  No one is closer to her than I am, he thought. I check her e-mails. I go through her desk. I touch her clothes. I read the letters her hus?band wrote to her from Iraq. I know Emily better than she knows herself.

  For now he had to do something to quell her suspicions, how?ever. He scouted around the neighborhood and found a high school kid who wanted some kind of after-school job. Then Friday evening of the second week of the trial, he watched for Emily coming home and stopped her as she was getting out of the car.

  “Emily, I'm so sorry, I've been switched to working the four-to-eleven shift in the warehouse for awhile,” he lied. “That doesn't do you much good with Bess.”

  He really resented seeing that this time the expression in Emily's eyes was one of pure relief. Then he told her about the kid down the block who was willing to take over walking and feeding Bess at least until Thanksgiving, when she'd start rehearsals for the school play.

  “Zach, that is very sweet of you,” Emily told him. “Actually, I'll be keeping more reasonable hours, so I won't need any help.”

  She might as well have added the word “ever.” Zach could tell that Emily wouldn't be letting anyone in and out of her house again.

  “Well, here's her number, just in case, and here's your key,” Zach said, then not looking at her, his tone shy, added, “I watch that Courtside program every night. You're doing a great job. I can't wait to see how you treat that guy Aldrich when he gets on the stand. He must be a terrible person.”

  Emily smiled her thanks and tucked the key in her pocket. That's a happy ending, she thought as she walked up the steps to the front door. I was trying to figure out how to cut off this situation and the poor guy did it for me.

  Zach watched her go with narrowed eyes. As surely as Charlotte had put him out of his house, Emily had put him out of her life. It wouldn't be the way he had hoped, that she'd let the kid down the block help out with that dog of hers, then be glad to have him take over again. That wasn't going to happen.

  The fury that had washed over him at other times in his life en?gulfed him again. He made his decision. You're next, Emily, he thought. I don't take rejection. I never have and I never will.

  When she was in the house, for some inexplicable reason, Emily felt uneasy and double-locked the door behind her. Then, when she was on the back porch, letting Bess out of her crate, the thought crossed her mind that it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a bolt for the porch door.

  Why am I getting all these feelings of apprehension? she asked herself. It has to be the trial.

  I've talked so much about Natalie that I feel as though I've be?come her.

  Just Take My Heart

  17

  Since the trial began it had become a pattern for Gregg Aldrich to go directly to his lawyer's office from the courthouse and spend a couple of hours going over the testimony of the prosecutor's wit?nesses who had been on the stand that day. Then a car would drive him home. Katie, adamant in her need to be with him in the court?room, had agreed that she would go home when the court recessed around four p.m. and meet her tutor there.

  She had also agreed, at her father's insistence, that at least some evenings would be spent with friends who attended school with her in Manhattan before she became a boarder at Choate in Connecticut.

  The nights she was home they watched Courtside together. The inevitable result was that seeing the highlights of the trial and hear?ing the panel discussion brought Katie to a state of anger and tears.

  “Daddy, why doesn't Michael ever stand up for you?” she would demand. “He was so nice when we used to go skiing with him, and he was always saying how much you helped Natalie's career. Why doesn't he say it now, when he could do you some good?”

  “We'll show him,” was typical of Gregg's replies to his daughter. “We'll never go skiing with him again.” He would shake his fist at the television in mock indignation.

  “Oh, Daddy!” Katie would laugh. “I mean it.”

  “So do I,” Gregg would say, quietly now.

  Gregg admitted to himself that the evenings Katie went out for a few hours with friends gave him a needed break. During the day, the love he felt emanating from her as she sat a few rows behind him in court was as welcome as a warm blanket would be to someone in the throes of hypothermia. But sometimes he simply needed to be alone.

  This was one of the evenings Katie had gone out to dinner. Gregg had promised her that he would order room service from the club in the building, but after she left, he poured himself a double scotch over ice and settled down in the den, the remote television clicker in his hand. He intended to watch Courtside, but before then he needed to search his memory.

  At their meeting a few hours earlier, Richard and Cole Moore had warned him that Jimmy Easton would be on the witness stand tomorrow and that the whole case hung on his credibility as a wit?ness. “Gregg, the crucial, absolutely crucial statement he'll make is when he talks about meeting with you in the apartment,” Richard had warned. “I'l
l ask you again. Is there any chance he was ever there?”

  Gregg knew his response had been heated. “I never had a meet?ing with that liar in my apartment and don't ask me about it again.” But he was haunted by the question. How could Easton possibly claim he was here? Or am I going crazy?

  Now, as he took a sip of the scotch, Gregg found himself bracing for his nightly viewing of Courtside, but when it came on, the sooth?ing effect that the fine single-malt scotch had offered vanished. Seventy-five percent of the viewers who had responded to the Court-side Web site poll thought he was guilty.

  Seventy-five percent! Gregg thought incredulously. Seventy-five percent!

  A clip from the trial showing Emily Wallace looking directly at him came onto the screen. The expression of disdain and contempt she conveyed made him cringe now as it had in the courtroom. Everyone watching this program was seeing it, too. “Innocent until proven guilty,” he thought bitterly. She's doing a mighty good job of proving I'm guilty.

  Aside from the obvious, there was something about Emily Wal?lace that was unsettling him. One of the panelists on Courtside had called her performance “pure theatre.” He's right, Gregg thought, as he closed his eyes and lowered the volume of the television. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded sheet of paper that was like so many others he had scribbled on during the day in court. He had been doing some calculation. The rental car had 15,200 miles on it when he picked it up, and when he returned it 680 miles had been added. Five hundred and forty would account for the round trip from Manhattan to the Cape. He'd driven back and forth between the motel in Hyannis and Natalie's home in Dennis five times between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening. About 20 miles each round trip. At the most that would use up another 100 miles or so.