...And Never Let HerGo

he had any information or knew anything about the whereabouts of Anne Marie,” he recalled, “and he said he didn’t.”
    Bud suggested that Tom might talk to the police anyway and Tom replied that he already had—twice. “I answered their questions,” Tom said. “I let them search my car. I don’t know what else I can do.”
    The two men talked for three hours, going over scenarios of what might possibly have happened to Anne Marie. But first, Tom tried to convey to Bud how good he had been to her. He said he had always thought only of what was best for Annie. But he was not as reluctant as Kim was to reveal the private secrets of their relationship. He told Bud they had once been lovers, but now they were only very good friends—he had become Anne Marie’s best friend.
    “All the police were interested in,” Tom complained, “were all the dirty little details—how often we had sex, and where we had sex, and they wanted to know all the intimate things she told me. Bud,” he said in an anguished voice, “I can’t violate her trust like that.”
    “Tommy,” Bud said earnestly, out of his own concern for what might have happened to Anne Marie, “just go back and sit down with them. You answer their questions—and the ones you don’t want to answer, you tell them you’re not going to. This thing is going to steamroll—it’s an interesting story for the media, her being the scheduling secretary for the governor. This isn’t going to stop, and before you know it, we’ll have
Hard Copy
here in Wilmington, Delaware.”
    Tom sat in an overstuffed chair, his legs crossed, as they talked. He smoked a number of cigarettes, but he seemed calm as he explained to Bud that he too was “pretty upset.” Still, he didn’t think letting the police have at him was the answer. He turned their conversation back to the reasons why Annie might have left. Maybe she’d just gone to the beach for a whole week. Maybe she’d just wanted to get away by herself. Maybe she’d decided to go to the eating disorder clinic he’d told her about.
    “We would explore each one of them,” Bud Freel recalled, “and in the case of the first two—why would you go away and not takeyour money and your credit cards? And in the last one, I said—even though those places have rules of confidentiality, if they saw her picture in the paper, wouldn’t they have contacted a family member?”
    Tom would then agree that Bud was probably right. But they were going round and round about his coming back and cooperating with the investigators. When Bud finally left to drive back to Wilmington, he didn’t feel that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.
    Tom called the next morning—July 4—and asked Bud what was going on. Bud told him what was in the
News-Journal,
about the massive search of Brandywine Park with all of the people who had turned out to help.
    Then Tom got around to the main reason for his call. He said that Charlie Oberly was not happy with him for talking to Bud. His lawyer was upset.
    “Why would he be upset if you’re talking to
me?”
Bud asked, perplexed. They were old friends, searching for a way to find another friend.
    “He wants me to ask you if you were wired,” Tom said.
    Bud erupted, insulted that Tom would even think of such a thing. “I did a lot of shouting and cussing,” he admitted. “I summarized everything I told him the day before. He was hurting himself, hurting his kids, his family, if he didn’t get his butt back to Wilmington and talk to the police.”
    Bud finally calmed down and asked Tom what he could do to help him. “It was at that point,” Bud would recall, “that he asked me if I would talk to the Faheys about talking to him. It was important, he said, for them to know how good he had been to their sister.”
    Tom wanted to talk to Robert Fahey, but he asked Bud to act as an intermediary. And Bud did, calling Robert on July 5. Robert told Bud that he did not want to meet with Tom, but he would take a phone call from him. He said he would be home from five to five-thirty that night, waiting for Tom’s call.
    It never came. After three calls to Tom in one day, Bud finally heard from him at 9 P.M. “I’m not going to call Robert at this time,” Tom said, “because I’m going to come back on Monday and talk with the police.”
    Bud believed him. He spoke with Tom again sometime over the long Fourth of July weekend. For some reason, Tom hadn’t gone out to buy a