Where Are the Children? Read Online Free PDF Page B

Knowles goes shopping.'
    'It's your fault,' she'd retorted. 'You're always telling me to spend your money.'
    'I like spending it on you,' he'd told her, 'and I have no complaints. I've been lucky.'
    If only they'd had even a few years up here together . . . Jonathan sighed and hung up the dish towel. Seeing Nancy Eldredge and her children framed in the window this morning had vaguely depressed him. Maybe it was the weather or the long winter setting in, but he was restless, apprehensive. Something was bothering him. It was the kind of itch he used to get when he was preparing a brief and some facts just didn't jibe.
    Well, he'd get to his desk. He was anxious to start working on the Harmon chapter.
    He could have taken early retirement, he thought, as he walked slowly into his study. As it turned out, that was just what he had done anyway. The minute he lost Emily, he'd sold the New York apartment, put in his resignation, pensioned off Bertha and, like a dog licking its wounds, had come here to this house that they'd picked out together. After the first bleak grief, he'd found a measure of contentment.
    Now writing the book was a fascinating and absorbing experience. When he'd gotten the idea for doing it, he had asked Kevin Parks, a meticulous free-lance researcher and old friend, to come up for a week-end. Then he had outlined his plan to him. Jonathan had selected ten controversial criminal trials. He'd proposed that Kev take on the job of putting together a file of all available material on those trials: court transcripts; depositions; newspaper accounts; pictures; gossip - anything he could find. Jonathan planned to study each file thoroughly and then decide how to write the chapter - either agreeing with the verdict or rejecting it, and giving his reasons. He was calling the book Verdict in Doubt.
    He'd already finished three chapters. The first was called "The Sam Sheppard Trial'. His opinion: not guilty. Too many loopholes; too much suppressed evidence. Jonathan agreed with the Dorothy Kilgallen opinion that the jury had found Sam Sheppard guilty of adultery, not murder.
    The second chapter was "The Cappolino Trial'. Marge
    Farger, in his opinion, belonged in a prison cell with her former boy-friend.
    The just-completed chapter was 'The Edgar Smith Trial'. Jonathan's view was that Edgar Smith was guilty but deserved his freedom. Fourteen years constituted a life sentence today, and he had rehabilitated and educated himself in a grisly cell on Death Row.
    Now he sat down at his massive desk and reached into the file drawer for the thick cardboard folders that had arrived the previous day. They were labelled THE HARMON CASE.
    A note from Kevin was stapled to the first envelope. It read:
    Jon, I have a hunch you'll enjoy getting your teeth into this one. The defendant was a sitting duck for the prosecutor; even her husband broke down on the stand and practically accused her in front of the jury. If they ever locate the missing prosecution witness and try her again, she'd better have a stronger story than last time. The District Attorney's office out there knows where she is, but I couldn't get it from them; somewhere in the East is the best I can do.
    Jonathan opened the file with the accelerating pulse that he always associated with the beginning of an interesting new case. He never allowed himself to do much speculating until he got the research all together, but his memory of this case when it was being tried six or seven years ago made him curious. He remembered how at that time just reading the trial testimony had left so many questions in his mind . . . questions he wanted to concentrate on now. He recalled that his overall impression of the Harmon case was the Nancy Harmon never had told all she knew about the disappearance of her children.
    He reached into the folder and began to lay out the meticulously-labelled items on the desk. There were pictures of Nancy Harmon taken during her trial.   She
    certainly was a