You belong to me by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

"that poor woman-"; "terrible that people are allowed to drive like that-"; "they've got to do something about the traffic in the city." Then an elderly woman shouted, "You're all blind. She was pushed!"
    Pamela stared as the reporter rushed a microphone to that woman. "Would you give us your name, ma'am?"
    "Hilda Johnson. I was standing near her. She had an envelope under her arm. Some guy grabbed it. Then he pushed her."
    "That's crazy; she fell," another bystander yelled.
    The announcer came on again. "You have just heard the testimony of one eyewitness, Hilda Johnson, who claimed she saw a man push Carolyn Wells in front of the van just as he yanked what appeared to be an envelope from under her arm. While Ms. Johnson's report varies from the observations of all others at the scene, the police say they will take her statement into consideration. If her story holds up, it would mean that what seems to be a tragic accident is in fact a potential homicide."
    Pamela ran for her coat. Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting beside Justin Wells in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit of Lenox Hill Hospital.
    "She's in surgery," Justin said, his tone flat and emotionless.
    Pamela slipped her hand into his.
    Three hours later a doctor came in to speak to them. "Your wife is in a coma," he told Justin. "It's simply too soon to tell if she's going to make it. But when she was in the emergency room, she seemed to be calling for someone. It sounded like 'Win.' Who would that be?"
    Pamela felt Justin's hand grip hers violently as in an anguished voice he haltingly whispered, "I don't know, I don't know."
    15
    Eighty-year-old Hilda Johnson liked to tell people that she had lived on East Eightieth Street all her life and could remember when the smell of Jacob Ruppert's brewery on Seventy-ninth Street had permeated the air with the pungent aroma of yeast and malts.
    "Our neighbors there thought they were moving up in the world when they left Manhattan and relocated their families in the South Bronx," she would reminisce with a rumbling laugh. "Oh well, everything changes. The South Bronx was country then, and this place all tenements. Now this area is toney and the South Bronx is a disaster. But that's life."
    It was a story her friends and the people she met in the park heard time and again, but that never deterred Hilda. Small, bony, with thinning white hair and alert blue eyes, she liked to talk.
    On brisk days, Hilda enjoyed walking to Central Park and sitting on a sunlit bench. A people-watcher, she was remarkably observant and did not hesitate to comment on anything she felt needed correction.
    She had been known to sharply reprimand a gossiping nanny whose charge was wandering from the playground. She regularly lectured children who dropped candy wrappers on the grass. And on frequent occasions she stopped a policeman to point out men who she thought were up to no good, as they hung around the playground, or wandered aimlessly along the paths.
    With weary patience the police always listened politely, noting Hilda's warnings and accusations and promising to keep an eye on her suspects.
    Her keen powers of observation certainly had served her well that Monday. A little after four o'clock, on her way home from the park, while standing in the crush of pedestrians waiting for the light to change, she happened to be to the right of and just slightly behind a smartly dressed woman with a manila envelope under her arm. Hilda's attention was attracted by the sudden movement of a man who reached for the envelope with one hand, and with the other, shoved the woman forward into the path of a van. Hilda had started to shout a warning, but there was no time. At least she had gotten a good look at the man's face before he had disappeared through the crowd.
    In the wild confusion that followed, Hilda was jostled and propelled backwards as an off-duty cop took charge, shouting, "Police. Get back."
    The sight of the crumpled, bleeding