...And Never Let HerGo

Clinton
had
called to talk with Governor Carper, but not to offer federal aid in the probe. It was a call about a friend. Whenever the White House wanted to talk to Carper, it was Anne Marie who was contacted to schedule conferences. The president—who had shaken Anne Marie’s hand only three months earlier—phoned Carper to offer his sympathy to the Fahey family. And his promise of federal aid in the search for Anne Marie was couched in politically savvy terms. He had added the phrase “should that [federal aid] be necessary or appropriate.”
    It wasn’t really up to the president. In truth, the federal government routinely assists state and local law enforcement agencies in a variety of ways. And the reverse is also true. It isn’t necessary tohave a presidential proclamation to bring federal law enforcement into the picture—but Clinton’s offer made a great news lead for the media that were following the case avidly.
    Still, when he read the news about Clinton’s call to Carper, Tom was unnerved. He didn’t know Robert Donovan, but Donovan was at least a Wilmington Police detective. And Mark Daniels was a longtime State Police detective. Tom knew Ferris Wharton to speak to, and they sometimes made small talk when they met in checkout lines. The men who were investigating Anne Marie’s disappearance were all known entities to Tom, part of the fabric of Wilmington, where he felt comfortable.
    In fact, Tom rarely left Wilmington, except to go to Philadelphia. A circle drawn on a map would show the remarkably small confines in which he operated. Occasionally he made a trip for law seminars, or went down to Boca Raton for vacations—but Wilmington was a place he had always been able to count on, a city with no unsettling surprises. With tact, diplomacy, and mediation, Tom had worked out all manner of problems to his satisfaction. He could not understand the need for the federal government to enter into what was, at heart, a local concern.
    As it was, anyone living outside Delaware would be easily confused by the interweaving of state and local government. The state Attorney General’s office is in Wilmington, and since there are only three counties in all of Delaware, the senior deputy attorneys general act as county prosecutors would in most states, but they reported to Delaware attorney general Jane Brady. Ferris Wharton, for instance, had prosecuted cases all over Delaware.
    For a while, word that the feds were coming into the case was only a rumor. On July 8, it became a reality, but it was still a secret. And they would have come in on any baffling case where local authorities asked for help. The fact that Anne Marie was the governor’s secretary made headlines, yes, but for the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office, all that mattered was that a young woman was missing and her family was in agony. It would have been the same if she had been a secretary at DuPont or a waitress at Galluccio’s.
    A T forty-three, Eric Alpert had been an FBI special agent for fourteen years. He had earned his law degree from the Cumberland School in Birmingham, Alabama, and had served in New York City, Buffalo, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., before being assigned to the Wilmington office. In February 1996, Alpert had been honored at the Philadelphia City Hall for his work as the coordinator of theViolent Crime Fugitive Task Force; his team had been successful in bringing in cop killers. That operation had meant long hours away from his wife, Lisa, and their children (who were five and two), and he wasn’t particularly anxious to jump into another high-pressure investigation. Still, as he read about Anne Marie’s disappearance in the papers, Alpert thought it sounded like an interstate kidnapping. Wherever she was currently, she had obviously been in Pennsylvania early in the evening of June 27 and had been taken back to Delaware.
    On Tuesday, July 2, Alpert had called Bob Donovan at Wilmington Police headquarters and asked, “Is there anything we can do to help?”
    There was. Donovan said the police were hoping to get pen registers on phone lines of people closely connected to Anne Marie Fahey. The devices note the time, date, and numbers called from designated phones. To obtain pen registers, the U.S. Attorney’s office would have to participate.
    Another man who worked for the federal government had offered assistance to the local investigators. He was to become the prime mover in solving the seemingly