...And Never Let HerGo

that she couldn’t imagine life without him. It wasn’t that she believed even for a second that he could have done anything to the girl; Tomwouldn’t hurt anyone. Debby’s pain came from his cheating on her and telling her lies.
    Finally she told him that she could take anything as long as they were truthful with each other. “No more lies, please,” she said. “OK? Let’s put it all out on the table, here. You said you wouldn’t tell me because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings. You’ve hurt me more than you know by
not
being up front with me. Please, from now on. Please promise. Please don’t lie to me anymore. If there is somebody else, please tell me. I’d rather know than have it this way.”
    Tom promised. “So I thought everything was fine and wonderful,” Debby recalled. “From that point on, I never knew there was anyone else. I believed him.”
    Tom had been anxious to get away from Wilmington for the Fourth of July holiday because he didn’t particularly want to talk to any more detectives until he and Charlie Oberly established some ground rules. Although he had evinced interest in helping them find out what had happened to Anne Marie, he was not about to have them declare open season on his personal affairs. There were aspects of his life and his family’s life that were none of their business.
    His whole family would be at the shore for the long holiday weekend, and he suggested to Debby that she might want to get away for a while too. The press was going to have a field day with this thing. He had to tell Kay, too. He wanted her to round up the girls and head for the shore as soon as possible. Otherwise they would probably have reporters
and
police making their lives miserable.
    T OM ’ S name did hit the papers on July 3, although the coverage was more subdued than it might have been:
    Anne Marie Fahey . . . was last seen by Wilmington attorney and political insider Thomas J. Capano when the two had dinner Thursday night in Philadelphia, according to friends and sources close to the investigation. . . . Police said they do not consider Fahey’s dinner companion, whom they did not identify, to be a suspect and said he had been cooperative with investigators.
    It was the first breath of scandal ever to touch Tom, and everyone who knew him was surprised. But he was separated from his wife, and there was no indication in the article of what his relationship with Anne Marie might have been. It wasn’t a crime to take a pretty woman out to dinner.
    Back at Anne Marie’s apartment, which her family had set up as a headquarters in the search for her, Brian didn’t comment to the press on Capano’s possible involvement in the case. “Her disappearance is so seamless,” he said quietly. “It’s not that the trail’s run out. There
is
no trail.”
    On Wednesday, July 3, the Faheys began passing out hundreds of flyers bearing Anne Marie’s picture to businesses that promptly taped them up in prominent spots or in their front windows. They were offering a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to finding Anne Marie. She had been missing six days now, and her face was rapidly becoming familiar around Wilmington. Soon the flyers would cross the Pennsylvania and New Jersey state lines. Newspaper articles and television and radio coverage of her disappearance were growing exponentially, and lots of tips and suggestions were coming in to the investigators—but as in most high-profile cases, virtually all of them were useless. Because people wanted to help, they tended to imagine that the young women they saw alone in bus stations, grocery stores, and airports were Anne Marie. But none of them was.
    At noon on that first Wednesday, a mass was held for Anne Marie at St. Joseph’s. Three dozen of her friends and family prayed for her safe return, and then her brothers and sister took up their quiet vigil on the broad white porch of the house where she had lived. They still hoped that she might come back to them, although their spirits sank lower with every passing day. But they were positive of one thing: if she was able, Anne Marie would either call them or find a way home. And when she did not, they had to accept that she could not. That left a number of possibilities—all of them bleak: she was being held somewhere against her will; she had amnesia; she was ill or injured; or she was dead. That last possibility was too terrible to contemplate, and yet their minds sometimes