...And Never Let HerGo

Avenue. Once they had the search warrant in hand, Tom could not refuse them entrance.
    Federal magistrate Mary Pat Trostle approved the warrant, which was immediately sealed.
    The FBI trains special teams to carry out searches, teams skilled in retrieving and preserving evidence. They were authorized to search both the Grant Avenue house and Kay Capano’s Chevrolet Suburban (the vehicle that Kay told the investigators Tom had borrowed early on June 28, saying it was because he would have the girls with him for the weekend). An evidence response team from the Baltimore FBI office was on hand at eight-fifteen in the morning of July 31, 1996. Two evidence vans parked in the driveway at Tom’s house. At least two dozen expert searchers were ready to check every room, corner, and closet. Tom was present to accept the search warrant, but he soon left.
    For the moment, they had all avoided the media, which was getting precious little information from official sources. If reporters found out that something interesting was happening at Capano’s house, they would descend in droves.
    Special Agents David Roden, John Rosato, and Chris Allen went first to Kay’s house to process her vehicle. It had been five weeks since anyone had seen Anne Marie. The Suburban almost certainly had been cleaned since then—but they knew that valuable evidence can sometimes be so infinitesimal that the human eye fails to see it.
    When vehicles are processed, they are divided into sections and then vacuumed thoroughly. Filters are attached to the end of the hose so that whatever is retrieved from a particular section can be isolated and bagged into evidence. Often, evidence teams also take carpet samplings.
    When the three special agents began work on Kay’s Suburban, they found two plaid blankets in the rear compartment. These were taken into evidence, along with sweepings from the floor and seats. All of it would be hand carried to the evidence lab so that the chain of evidence would be unbroken. When they were finished, the searchers didn’t know if they had hit the jackpot or not—but they had gleaned dozens of hairs and fibers.
    Back at Grant Avenue, the FBI searchers, Wilmington Police officers, and Delaware state troopers swarmed over Tom’s rental house and his 1993 Jeep Cherokee. Kathleen Jennings and Bartholomew J. Dalton, two of the attorneys on the growing staff of lawyers who represented Tom, stood by to observe the search.
    Timothy Munson, the Supervising Resident Agent of the Wilmington FBI office, was there. So were Eric Alpert, Colm Connolly, and Bob Donovan. Before the sun set, they intended to search every inch of the house and property.
    Agents and police moved over the somewhat ragged yard. There were no flowers there beyond a few perennials that had come up without nurturing. They dug nine holes, prodded the lawn with metal poles in spots that seemed too high or too low, and moved a metal detector slowly over the grass. Two black Labradors, necrosearch dogs, had been brought up from Milford, Delaware, and their handlers led them around the property.
    The dogs, trained to detect the odor of decomposition, showed no interest. The human searchers found nothing.
    The day promised to be hot and sultry—and crowded. By ten-thirty, word of the search had gone out to radio, television, and newspaper reporters. Neither the FBI searchers nor the reporters planned to give in to the sun beating down. Kentmere Park was not a neighborhood used to police activity, and the rows of official cars and those with logos of television and radio stations looked alien along the pretty curving street. Some of the residents kept their drapes closed; others passed out iced tea and lemonade.
    It was an awkward search, with reporters peering at the officers and agents over the backyard fence. If they found some sign of Anne Marie, virtually the whole world would know about it within fifteen minutes. The FBI searchers tried to ignore their audience, shaking their heads as one reporter or another called out a question. A television station’s helicopter circled overhead, its rotors making a thrub-thrub-thrubity sound that seemed to bounce off the three-story houses along the street.
    Special Agent Kenneth Dougal, with twenty-eight years in theFBI, was the evidence response team leader. He entered the house first for a walk-through to see what was there. Then he assigned specific personnel to designated areas. Everything seemed very neat, but they