Just Take My Heart (26 page)

The inmates at the state prison filed into breakfast on Tuesday morning at seven a.m. Jimmy Easton had not slept well. He had already been hassled by some of the other inmates about being a snitch. "You'd sell out your mother, Jimmy," one of them had shouted to him.

"He already did," another one yelled back.

I'll call Moore this morning as soon as they let me get to a phone, Jimmy thought. When I spill the beans to him, I know they'll try to bring me up on perjury charges. They'll want to bury me, but they still need my testimony. Moore will tell them to give me a good deal. So when I make the prosecutor's office look dumb, the guys here will get a laugh out of it and get off my back.

He wasn't hungry, but he ate breakfast anyhow. Oatmeal, toast, juice, and coffee. He didn't talk to the guys on either side of him at the table. Or they didn't talk to him. No problem.

Back in his cell he started to feel lousy. He lay down on his bunk but the burning feeling in his gut wouldn't go away. He closed his eyes and drew up his knees as the burning became hot coals ripping up his insides. "Guard," he called, feebly. "Guard."

Jimmy Easton realized he had been poisoned.

His final thought was that his prison term had been shortened.

On Tuesday morning, a nine o'clock meeting took place in Prosecutor Ted Wesley's office. Richard and Cole Moore had brought along Sal and Belle Garcia to repeat their story. Richard had presented the receipt and the phone book to Wesley and Emily.

"We will also obtain the sworn affidavits of a couple who live in Yonkers, Rudy and Reeney Sling," Richard Moore said. "When Jimmy Easton was helping to move them into their residence in Yonkers nearly three years ago, Mrs. Sling found him going through the dresser drawers, obviously looking for something to steal."

The people on the panel at Courtside last night had been so kind, Belle thought, but it had been a shock to learn that Reeney had tried to cash in on the fact they knew Jimmy Easton worked for Sal. Some friends! she sniffed. When I think of how Sal moved them for free when they had to get out of their apartment and couldn't afford to pay him! And Mike told me Reeney will get some of the reward because it's important that Jimmy Easton tried to steal from them. He said that it shows a pattern.

Emily Wallace was even prettier in person than on television, Belle decided. When you think of all the trouble she's had, poor thing. Being a war widow. The heart transplant. Living next door to a serial killer who was spying on her. She must be very strong. I hope she gets a break. It's not her fault she worked so hard to convict Gregg. That was her job. And she's been so nice to us. Someone else would be furious that all that work she did at the trial was wasted.

But someone is furious about it, she decided: the prosecutor. She didn't like him at all. He'd hardly even acknowledged Sal and me when we got here. You'd think we were the criminals. She'd heard that he was going to be appointed attorney general of the whole country. Now he was glaring at Emily when she said she wanted his okay to go to Judge Stevens and get Gregg Aldrich released on bail.

I'd love to meet Gregg, Belle thought. But he'd probably be mad at us, even though we finally spoke up. Maybe I should write him a letter of apology? Or send him one of those nice "Thinking of You" cards?

Prosecutor Wesley was saying, "We will consent to having bail reinstated. However, Richard, even if Jimmy Easton lied about hav-ing access to the Aldrich apartment, it doesn't mean that Gregg Aldrich did not solicit him to kill Natalie Raines."

That's ridiculous, Belle thought. She could see that remark made Richard Moore really angry because his face got all red. Then Moore said, "I doubt any thinking person would believe that Jimmy Easton delivered a lamp to the Aldrich apartment at three p.m. and was back an hour later to get a down payment on a murder contract."

"Maybe not," Ted Wesley snapped. "But don't forget that before Easton came forward, Gregg Aldrich was the only suspect in this case, and for my money he still is the only suspect, and the right one."

He's not going to admit how wrong he's been, Belle decided, then watched as Emily Wallace stood up. She's so graceful, Belle thought. That red jacket is so nice with her dark hair. She's wearing a turtleneck under it. I wonder if the heart surgery left a big scar?

Emily looked at Belle and Sal. "I know it took courage for you to come forward. I'm very glad you did."

She turned to Richard. "I'm sure Judge Stevens is in. We can walk down to his chambers and talk to him. I'll call the jail and tell them to bring Mr. Aldrich right over. Then we can go on the record about the bail."

Her tone changed as she addressed the prosecutor. "As you know, I'm taking a couple of days off. I'll be home most of the time if you need to contact me. Or you can always call my cell phone."

Belle noticed that the prosecutor acted as though he hadn't heard her.

Boy, I'd hate to work for him, she thought.

At ten thirty a.m., Judge Stevens reinstated bail for Gregg Aldrich.

Forty-five minutes later, after phoning Alice and Katie, Gregg was having coffee with Richard Moore in a diner near the courthouse. "How long was I there, Richard? About ninety hours? I don't even remember the weekend, but it was still the longest ninety hours of my life."

"I can understand that. But you won't ever be there again, Gregg. You can count on that."

Gregg looked tired. "Can I? That's the trouble. I'm back to being the chief suspect in Natalie's death. I'll always be the 'person of interest' to the police. What's to keep somebody else from coming up with some wild story? Remember I still can't account for those two hours when I was out jogging the morning Natalie died. I don't have a witness who saw me in the park. Suppose someone in New Jersey comes up with the story that they saw me in Natalie's neighborhood in Closter that morning or in her driveway. What happens then? Another trial?"

Alarmed, Richard Moore stared across the table. "Gregg, are you suggesting you might have driven to New Jersey that day?"

"No, of course not. My point is that I'm still so vulnerable. I must have seen someone I knew that day when I was jogging, but I was sick with worry about Natalie. I think that's the reason I was so tuned out."

"Gregg, don't torture yourself thinking that someone is going to appear out of the blue and say they saw you around Natalie's house that morning." Richard Moore sounded unconvincing even to his own ears. Not likely, but it could happen, he thought.

"Richard, hear me out. On the witness stand I testified that when I looked in the window of the Cape Cod house I could tell that Natalie was terribly upset. She was practically in a fetal position on the couch. On the drive home I was desperately worried about her even though I had begun to realize that I was ready to let her go. I was tired of the drama. On that drive from the Cape, I was even remembering how much fun I had with Kathleen and thinking I wanted that kind of relationship again."

"Maybe you should have said that on the stand," Richard said quietly.

"How would that have sounded? Richard, I had a lot of time to think sitting in that cell yesterday. Suppose Natalie was afraid of someone? No one ever saw the man she had hinted she was seeing and maybe he doesn't exist. Maybe she said that to get me to stop calling her. But suppose she really was seeing someone, and that someone was lying in wait for her when she got home?"

"Gregg, where are we going with this?"

"I'll tell you where. I'm not made of money, and with all due respect you didn't come cheap. But you have that private investigator, Ben Smith, who works for you, don't you?"

"Yes, I do."

"I'll pay him, or someone else you hire, to open up this case and start from scratch. I've been the 'person of interest' long enough. I'll never be free until Natalie's killer is found and I'm exonerated."

Richard Moore took the last sip of his coffee and signaled for the check. "Gregg, everything you said about being vulnerable is absolutely true. When Ben was investigating to try to find whoever Natalie may have been seeing, he came up blank. But just the way the Garcia couple was sitting out there on this lifesaving information, so may somebody else. We start searching today."

Gregg stretched his hand across the table. "Richard, I'm glad you agree with me. If you hadn't, this would be the last coffee we'd share. And now I want to get home, kiss my kid and Alice, and take the longest shower of my life. I feel as if the smell of that jail cell is sticking to my skin."

I know I should feel tired but I don't, Emily thought as she drove down the West Side Highway in Manhattan. There's probably no connection between Natalie's death and the fact that her roommate, Jamie Evans, was murdered in Central Park nearly twenty years ago. The police believe that Jamie was the victim of the same mugger who assaulted three other women in the park around that time.

But she was the only one who was murdered.

Alice Mills has never believed there was even the possibility of a connection between the two murders, and there probably wasn't. Natalie never even met the guy Jamie was dating. She only saw his picture once and wasn't even sure if it was still in Jamie's wallet when she was killed.

Two and a half years ago, in the early stages of the investigation into Natalie's murder, Billy Tryon had gone to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to review the reports in the Evans case and determine if there could be even a remote connection. He had cop-ied the major reports and had brought them back to New Jersey. Included had been a police artist's sketch of a possible suspect, which had been drawn from Natalie's description of the picture she had seen in Jamie's wallet.

The sketch depicted a white male in his midthirties with longish blond hair. He was attractive in a scholarly way, with thick brows and rimless glasses covering oval-shaped brown eyes.

The District Attorney's Office was located in lower Manhattan at 1 Hogan Place. Emily parked in a garage nearby and walked through the crowded streets to that address. She had phoned ahead to the Captain of Detectives, who had assigned veteran Detective Steve Murphy to retrieve the Jamie Evans file and assist Emily when she arrived.

In the lobby, a clerk called up to Murphy, who verified the appointment. Emily was then permitted to pass through security. The detective was waiting for her when she got off the elevator on the ninth floor. A pleasant-faced man of about fifty with close-cropped hair, he greeted her with a warm smile.

"Haven't you got enough crime in New Jersey without coming over here to solve our twenty-year-old cases?" he asked genially.

Emily liked him immediately. "We've got more than enough crime in New Jersey," she agreed. "Feel free to solve ours anytime."

"I have the Evans file in one of our offices near the squad room."

"Fine."

"I took a look at it while I was waiting for you," Murphy said, as they walked down the hall. "We figured it was a robbery gone wrong. She probably resisted giving him anything. Three other women were mugged in the park around that same time. Evans was the only one killed."

"That's what I understand," Emily told him.

"Here we are. Not the most palatial surroundings."

"I assure you, neither are ours." Emily followed Murphy into a small room furnished with only a battered desk, two unsteady-looking chairs, and a file cabinet.

"The Evans file is on the desk. Take your time. We can copy anything you want. I'll be back in a minute. I need to make a couple of calls."

"Of course. I promise I won't be too long."

Emily didn't know quite what she was looking for. I'm like the judge who was trying to decide a pornography case, she thought. He said, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

She read quickly through the stack of detective reports in the file. She had already seen a number of them, since they had been in the packet that Billy Tryon had brought back.

Jamie Evans had been attacked early in the morning and strangled. She had been dragged from the jogging path to an area behind thick bushes. Her watch, pendant, and ring were gone. Her wallet was emptied of cash and credit cards, and was discovered on the grass beside her. Her credit cards have never been used.

At the time of her roommate's murder, Natalie Raines gave the police a physical description of the man in the picture she had seen only once in Jamie's wallet. She told them that Jamie had confided to her that the man she was secretly seeing was married, but had promised to get a divorce. Natalie had indicated that she believed the man, whom she had never met and whose name she didn't even know, was stringing Jamie along.

Natalie had suspected so strongly that Jamie's death may have been caused by this mysterious boyfriend that the detectives had taken her down to the District Attorney's Office so that they could do the sketch.

So far, nothing, Emily thought. I've seen all this before. But then when she got to the police artist's sketch, her mouth went dry. The sketch in the folder Billy Tryon had brought to New Jersey was not the same as the one in the New York file.

This man was handsome, about thirty years old with blue eyes, a straight nose, a firm mouth and a full head of charcoal brown hair.

This was the picture of a man with a distinct resemblance to a younger Billy Tryon. Emily stared at it, stunned. Noted on the sketch was one sentence. "May be known by the nickname 'Jess.' "

Steve Murphy was back. "Find any good clues we can work on?"

Emily tried to keep her voice steady as she pointed to the sketch. "I hate to say it, but my files may have gotten mixed up. This isn't the one I have in my file. I'm sure that the original your artist made is kept somewhere."

"Sure. You know the system. The sketch is made and copies are rolled off. We can check against the original. No problem. But I have to tell you, my guess is that if there's been a mixup it happened in your office. I was around when that girl was killed. This is definitely the one I remember being in the file. Is there anything else you want to copy?"

"The whole file if you don't mind."

Murphy looked at her. His voice crisp, he asked, "Are you seeing something that might help us to solve this case?"

"I don't know," Emily said. But as she waited for the file to be copied, she wondered what else is in the Evans file that Billy didn't bring back. Could Billy have been the mysterious boyfriend that Natalie suspected of murdering her friend? Had Billy Tryon ever met Natalie Raines?

And if so, was that why he may have been eager to piece together Jimmy Easton's story and have Gregg Aldrich convicted of Natalie's murder?

Everything is beginning to make sense, Emily thought.

It's not a pretty picture but the parts may be falling into place.