...And Never Let HerGo

”
    Sullivan had asked her, “Who would do this?”
    “Probably a third party.”
    “What do you mean—that somebody would
hire
a third party?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Who would do that?”
    “Tom Capano.”
    Even before this conversation, Anne Marie had told Sullivan about Capano’s stalking behavior and his incessant phone calls. Michelle Sullivan had been trying to get her to contact the Attorney General’s Office or go to the police. But Anne Marie had been adamant that she couldn’t do that; it would be too embarrassing, especially because she worked in the governor’s office. She feared the press might find out. But she told Sullivan that she had gone so far as to contact an acquaintance in the Attorney General’s Office and pretended she was asking for advice for a friend.
    “Anne Marie asked her friend, ‘Somebody I know is being harassed. What would you tell her to keep herself safe?’ And then she wrote down the answers,” Sullivan told the police.
    It was apparent to the detectives who were looking for her that Anne Marie had been worried about a number of things, and most of them could be linked to Tom Capano.
But why would she think he would have her kidnapped?
    And had he? They couldn’t ask him at the moment. Since Sunday afternoon, he had made himself unavailable to them.
    O N July 1, Mark Daniels had driven to the Ristorante Panorama in Philadelphia and asked to speak to the waiters who had been onduty on June 27. It was fairly easy to establish from a credit card receipt that Tom Capano and a companion had eaten at the Panorama that night. Jacqueline Dansak’s initials were on the check, designating her as their server.
    Daniels soon found that Dansak had an excellent memory. She said she remembered the couple well; they were distinctive in several ways. “They were unusually dressed for the atmosphere,” she explained. “And this couple—especially the female—she was wearing a flower-printed dress. Most of our clientele are from the Main Line . . . very fashionably dressed, bedazzled and bedecked and whatnot. Most women [who come in] wear black or something a little more jet-setty looking.”
    Jacqueline Dansak had always liked to figure out couples’ relationships to each other, but she had been at a loss with this pair. They gave her so little to go on. They didn’t seem like a dating couple, nor did they look married. They clearly weren’t there on business. The man was considerably older than the woman, but not quite old enough to be her father. And there was virtually no interaction between them; it was as if they were trapped in the same elevator together, staring glumly ahead.
    “They didn’t speak to each other at all,” Dansak said. “This man—the gentleman—ordered everything for the woman without even consulting her. They started off with cocktails. They had a three-course meal. I sold the special to the woman—she had swordfish. The gentleman had veal or chicken.”
    Looking at the check, which had come to a total of $154, she could tell that the man had ordered a Myers’s rum and tonic for himself and a Sea Breeze (vodka and cranberry juice) for the woman.
    Aside from their not speaking, Dansak noted that the woman was very quiet—“somber. She looked haggard and gaunt. Her hair was unkempt. She was very thin.”
    They had barely touched their food, she reported. “They picked at it. I had to wrap it up. I asked the woman if she wanted something else—because she wasn’t eating it.”
    But the woman had only shaken her head. She hadn’t seemed angry—or frightened, for that matter. She had seemed more depressed or sad, as if she wasn’t at all happy to be there.
    Dansak explained the Visa receipt to Lieutenant Daniels. It indicated that Thomas J. Capano had begun to run a tab at 7:10 P.M. , and the final amount was run through the credit card machine at 9:12. There was a generous tip included in the receipt.
    “The gentleman pushed the check and the credit card receipt towardthe woman,” Dansak recalled, also an unusual circumstance. The woman had apparently figured up the check and added the proper tip. The receipt was signed “Thomas J. Capano.”
    The couple would have left shortly after nine-fifteen, although Dansak said she hadn’t actually seen them go. But she had remembered them even after they left because their demeanor was so odd; the woman looked so unhappy, and the man seemed so bossy to her. The waitress could not tell Mark