Hard as I try, I can’t think of anyone in Llanview who doesn’t want to kill Mitch Laurence. I wish them all luck! We found out last week that the idiots in California won’t be holding Mitch over for trial for killing Jared. Sure, that makes sense. There were only four people who stood there and watch him shoot the guy. But of course, the police in Napa made some idiotic mistakes with the evidence and they couldn’t charge Mitch.

Oh, and he claimed he shot Jared in self-defense. Yeah, right! Forgive me for making the mistake of being realistic here, but if there are witnesses to a murder, shouldn’t Mitch at least get to court before the case gets thrown out?

So, Mitch gets hauled into John’s office for a nice little interrogation where he proceeds to taunt John with as much garbage as he can dream up, especially when it comes to Natalie. Marty chooses an inopportune time to walk in and Mitch is delight to see her. She is one more person he can torment. Of course I could say that Mitch crossed the line with Marty, but let’s face it; there are no lines where Mitch is concerned. He knows that John and Marty are involved and since Mitch knows every sordid detail of everyone’s life in Llanview, he knows exactly where to attack when he says to Marty, “I don’t know what you see in him; he didn’t even rape you.” At least Marty has the good sense to ignore Mitch’s taunts and knows not to give him what he wants by reacting.

She leaves, but John doesn’t let go so easily. John pulls up a chair and sits himself down behind Mitch and says in his very low, serious voice, “If the law fails to protect the people I care about, I’ll kill you myself.” Fish is outside the door and hears John threaten Mitch so as in all soap operas, if Mitch gets killed, there will be many suspects and John will be one. Big surprise!

Over at Buchanan Enterprises, Natalie has arrived to go through Jared’s office and finds Kim behind the desk making herself at home. She tries to tell Natalie that she is working there but Natalie is furious that she is even touching Jared’s things and wants to throw her out. Nat doesn’t believe that Jared hired Kim, but Clint walks in and says that Jared didn’t actually hire Kim, but he did. (We won’t even get into the fact that Clint let himself be manipulated by Kim in about five seconds. The way she got that job was ridiculous.) Clint sees how upset Natalie is and gets Kim to leave, sending her to the house to pick up a file. (We’ll get to that fiasco later).

Clint informs Natalie that the Napa police have released Mitch and that there is a chance he won’t even be charged in Llanview for killing Landers and Pamela. Natalie can’t believe it and she is furious. She tells Clint she wants to be alone and she proceeds to trash Jared’s office in a rage. Who could blame her? The saddest part and the thing that pushed Natalie over the edge was finding the Christmas gift Jared had bought for her. The card said that he wanted to give her a real wedding, to see her walk down the aisle in a beautiful white dress and his gift was a honeymoon in Hawaii where he hoped they would conceive their first child. A book about babies was in the gift box. How sad was that? Poor Natalie; it was like she felt her whole life go down the drain at that point and everything she hoped to have in her life with Jared was gone with one gunshot. She looked up, her eyes landed on Jared’s letter opener and she grabbed it and ran out. Uh-oh!

Clint comes back to Jared’s office and sees the mess all over the place and then his eyes land on Jared’s desk and he knows the letter opening is missing. Oops!

Natalie didn’t waste any time getting over to the police station and she barges in while John is still with Mitch. Mitch makes some inane comment about John threatening to kill him and Natalie tells him that she wouldn’t let John do it because he has too much to lose, but she has nothing to lose. While John is talking to someone outside the door, Natalie walks right over to Mitch and jams the letter opening right into his gut. I should be sorry to say I enjoyed that moment, but I’m not.