...And Never Let HerGo

went there, in thoughts that skittered like mice over a gravestone.
    The next day was the Fourth of July. It was to have been a day of celebration for the Fahey family, who had planned a barbecue. Instead, they would spend the day in a massive search for their sister. Anne Marie’s family and friends asked for help from the public to search Wilmington’s Brandywine Park and canvass her neighborhood for any possible clues to her disappearance. Volunteers were asked to come to the Baynard Stadium at 8 A.M.
    Three hundred people—friends and strangers—showed up. With police assistance, they were split into search groups, working in assigned areas so that the same places wouldn’t be searched twiceand others missed. They spread out, only an arm’s length apart in the park itself, looking under trees and bushes and along the banks of Brandywine Creek. On the city streets and alleys of Wilmington, they looked into garbage cans, empty garages, anyplace where a person, a body, a weapon, clothing, or some other physical evidence might be hidden.
    Police helicopters equipped with infrared devices had scoped out the huge park earlier in the week. With infrared film, freshly turned dirt and decomposing bodies of humans and animals glow red, something that cannot be detected by the human eye. Nothing had shown up. But now, one of the search teams found a small area of fresh dirt that was hidden from the air. Grimly, the police began to dig with shovels. There was nothing buried there. Some women’s clothing turned up; it wasn’t Anne Marie’s size or recognizable as anything she had ever worn.
    The Faheys continued to make themselves available to reporters and used the vast resources of the media to help find Anne Marie. They knew when they made that decision that they would lose any vestige of their privacy and be subjected to endless interviews and speculation. But it was a very pragmatic choice. “We knew we could speak out well,” Robert recalled, “and we were fairly photogenic. It was the best way we knew to find our sister.”
    The long day ended and still there was not even a trace of Anne Marie. If she was dead, the police investigators didn’t know where she had died. The putative crime scene would be the last place she was said to have been—her apartment—but they had found no sign of a struggle there. The last person she was known to be with—Tom Capano—had been questioned and his house briefly examined. Nothing there seemed out of the ordinary. In order to get a search warrant, the investigators would have to establish a probable cause to indicate that a crime had been committed and that there might be evidence in a house, a yard, or a vehicle. They did not yet have that probable cause.

Chapter Twenty-three
    W HILE THE OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION of Anne Marie’s disappearance was hampered by a complete lack of evidence of foul play, one of her friends was able to contribute a few more provocative details.Kim Horstman told Bob Donovan that she had spoken to Anne Marie on Wednesday night, the night before she vanished, and it had been a very upbeat conversation. Kim had been one of the first of Annie’s friends to learn that she was missing. Susan Fahey, who had gone to high school with Kim, called her at her brother’s house shortly after Anne Marie had failed to show up for dinner on Saturday night.
    “She asked me if I knew where Annie was,” Kim said, “and I didn’t know where she was.” But her first thought was that Annie might be with Tom. She wasn’t going to give that deep secret away to Susan, so Kim decided to call Tom herself. She got two numbers from information. When she dialed the first number, a young girl answered, so Kim hung up, believing it was Tom’s family’s house. But when she called the second number, Kay answered. She hung up again. But Kay, suspicious, pressed *69 and called her back.
    Kim didn’t say anything. If Annie was OK, she didn’t want to make things worse. To be on the safe side, Kim had her brother call Tom’s house this time and ask for him.
    When Tom came on the line, Kim asked, “Where is Annie?”
    “What do you mean?” he asked.
    “Where is Annie? She is missing. Do you know where she is?”
    Tom seemed confused and upset at the news that Anne Marie was missing. “Where are you?” he asked Kim.
    “I’m at my brother Michael’s house,” she said.
    “I thought you were supposed to be at the shore this weekend,” Tom said with surprise