...And Never Let HerGo

appointment with Michelle was hard and in depth today, and quite frankly it drained all my energy. I really do appreciate you offering me the Phillies tickets, but right now I am going to focus on trying to get better. Sorry for being such a Doggy Downer today. Take care, Annie.
    6/26/96, 6:19 PM Thomas Capano at Sera-Wilmington
    Subject Lo Siento Mucho [Spanish: I’m very sorry.]
    I didn’t get a chance to read this until after 6:00 and I assume you’re gone and won’t see this until tomorrow. I hope your sister went easy on you last night. I appreciate the apology but you don’t need to worry about it. I just hope you know that all I want to do is help in any way I can. I promise to make you laugh tonight at Panorama, to order calamari and to surprise you with something that will make you smile. Please call when you get a chance.
    He must have been picturing Anne Marie’s face when he gave her the outfit from Talbot’s.
    6/27/96, 11:30 AM Thomas Capano at Sera-Wilmington
    To: [email protected] Internet
    Good Morning,
    Called you at 11:45. Hope your day is better than yesterday. I’m crazy again today, but winding down. I left a message for you so hope to talk to you soon. Please call when you can.
    It was a Thursday again—the night that Tom kept trying to designate as their regular night to dine out together. He knew Anne Marie wasn’t going to work on Friday; she told him she was taking the day off to be kind to herself. Everyone in her office would be down in Dover, anyway, for the windup of the legislature, up to all hours as state senators and representatives fought to get their bills passed before they all went home until autumn.
    If Anne Marie called or E-mailed him back, and if she agreed to go to Philadelphia with him for dinner, Tom vowed he would make it such a perfect night that she would forget all about Michael Scanlan.

PART THREE
    And he that does one fault at first,
And lies to hide it, makes it two.
    W ATTS , Song 15

Chapter Twenty-one
    A S THE OFFICERS from the Wilmington Police Department and the Delaware State Police looked around Anne Marie’s tiny apartment in the wee hours of Sunday, June 30, they had only the information they could glean from her sister, her boyfriend, and her other friends. Except for the hang-up on the fourteenth call on her answering machine, the messages there were all from her family and very close friends.
    Any investigation into Anne Marie’s disappearance was in the most embryonic state. It might not even be necessary to go further with it. She could be home by morning. Still, cops tend initially to accept the darkest explanations. Mark Daniels, Steve Montague, and Bob Donovan weren’t about to wait until Monday to look for her.
    They were hampered, however, by the absence of some vital details. If she had planned to accept Tom’s E-mailed dinner invitation, Anne Marie had told no one. Tom had told Debby that he had a meeting in Philadelphia on the evening of Thursday, June 27, and that he would probably drop by her house around 9:30 P.M.
    And yet it was clear that sometime between Thursday afternoon when she walked away from the Carvel building and Saturday night when Mike and her family went to her apartment and checked on her, Anne Marie had disappeared. If she had been scheduling secretaryfor an insurance executive or someone in management at the Hotel du Pont, there would have been concern, of course—but not something akin to panic. Anne Marie was the person responsible for organizing the details of the life of the governor of Delaware. If she was truly missing, it might be because of something that involved the state of Delaware. This was not a missing persons report that would routinely be put on hold until the missing adult had been gone forty-eight hours. This might very well be something else entirely, something that could impact the security of the top office in the state.
    After they had listened to Anne Marie’s phone messages, the state and local investigators looked through the rooms of her small third-floor apartment, nodding as the people who had called them explained which things were the way they should be and which were atypical of Anne Marie Fahey.
    They talked to the landlady. They looked at the green 1995 Volkswagen Jetta parked across the street where Anne Marie usually left it. They paced the sidewalk in front of the white house that was now broken into separate apartments, the night brightened a little by