Just Take My Heart Read Online Free PDF

through Emily's mind. "I wish I could bring her back," Emily replied, hoping that the catch in her throat was not apparent.
    For the next hour, her voice conversational, her manner unhurried, Emily reviewed the statements that Mills had given two years before. To her dismay, it soon became clear that Natalie's mother still was torn about whether Gregg Aldrich could have committed the crime. "When they told me about Easton, I was stunned and devastated, but at least it was a relief to know the truth. But the more I read about this fellow Easton, the more I wonder."
    If the jury thinks like that, I'm cooked, Emily thought, and moved on to the next area she wanted to discuss. "Mrs. Mills, Natalie's roommate, Jamie Evans, was killed in Central Park many years ago. I understand that Natalie thought that the mystery guy she was see-ing might be responsible?"
    "Jamie and Natalie both gone," Alice Mills said, shaking her head as she tried to blink back tears. "And both murdered . . . Who could possibly have imagined such unspeakable tragedy?" She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and then continued.
    "Natalie was wrong," she said. "She saw that man's picture in Jamie's wallet once, but that was at least a month before Jamie was killed. For all Natalie knew, Jamie might have thrown it out herself. I think Natalie's reaction was like what I feel right now. She and Jamie were so close. She needed to blame someone, to punish someone for her death."
    "As you want to punish Gregg Aldrich?" Emily asked.
    "I want to punish her murderer, whoever he is."
    Emily averted her eyes from the naked pain on the other woman's face. This was the part of her job that she dreaded. She realized that the empathy she felt when she saw the anguish of a victim's fam-ily was what drove her to present the best possible case in court. But today, for some reason, more than ever before, the grief she was witnessing touched her to her very soul. She knew it was useless to try to assuage this mother's grief with words.
    But I can help her by proving not only to a jury but to her that Gregg Aldrich was responsible for Natalie's death and deserves the harshest sentence the judge can give him --life in prison without parole.
    Then she did something she had not expected to do. As Alice Mills got up to leave, Emily stood up, hurried around her desk, and put her arms around the heartbroken mother.

9
    Michael Gordon's desk in his office on the thirtieth floor of Rockefeller Center was heaped with newspapers from all over the country', a usual sight in the morning. Before the end of the day, he would have scanned all of them looking for interesting crimes to cover on his nightly program, Courtside, on channel 8.
    A former defense attorney, Michael's life had changed dramatically at age thirty-four, when he had been invited to be on that same program, one of a panel of experts analyzing ongoing criminal trials in Manhattan. His perceptive comments, quick wit, and black Irish good looks had ensured his frequent invitations to be a guest on the show. Then when the longtime host retired, he was asked to take over, and now, two years later, it was one of the most popular programs in the country.
    A native of Manhattan, Mike lived in an apartment on Central Park West. Though a sought-after bachelor, and despite the many invitations that were showered on him, he spent many nights quietly at home working on the book he had contracted to write, an analysis of great crimes of the twentieth century. He planned to open it with Harry Thaw's killing of the architect Stanford White in 1906 and end with the first O. J. Simpson trial in 1995.
    It was a project that fascinated him. He had come to believe that most domestic crimes were rooted in jealousy. Thaw was jealous that
    White had been intimate with his wife when she was a very young woman. Simpson was jealous that his wife was being seen with someone else.
    What about Gregg Aldrich, a man he had admired and liked? Michael had been a