...And Never Let HerGo

very tired.”
    Debby recalled that Tom had berated her over something about Tatnall, growing so angry that he hung up on her. When she tried to call him back, there was no answer—and she didn’t leave a message. Within a few minutes, he had *69’d, calling back to ask her why she had hung up on him. Of course, she hadn’t. “Then we both calmed down and said good night,” she said.
    Debby described the events of the next day, June 28, pretty much as she had told Bob Donovan, but she added a few details. She’d seen Tom walking at the track early and didn’t see him again until he showed up unexpectedly at eleven that night. He had come to bed with her and stayed at her home until about noon the next day. “I think he went to do some errands, then,” Debby said, “because he was going to have his kids that night—Saturday.”
    On Sunday? Tom had come to her house at one in the afternoon, upset because the police had wakened him in the middle of the night. He had been so disturbed, in fact, that he had put his hands on his head and she could see him trembling. But she had not questioned him. She never questioned him.
    At five that afternoon, Debby said, Tom came back to her house—in even worse shape—because the police had actually come into his house and searched through it. She had no idea what for. She didn’t dare ask.
    Debby told the three investigators that she hadn’t known Tom had had dinner with the girl who was missing until the following Tuesday—when Tom told her. They could see that she was very supportive of Tom and that they were lovers, but Debby said firmly thatshe was sure he had had nothing whatever to do with the girl’s disappearance. Could she really be so in the dark about his life when he was away from her?
    “When you visit Tom,” Connolly asked, “do you go in the front door?”
    “No,” Debby said. “He leaves the garage door open for me and I drive in and go up the stairs—or rather I did, before he moved to his mother’s.” He had always known she was coming, she said, but he had never given her a key to his house.
    “Do you know why he got a new rug in the den—that room off the kitchen?”
    “Oh, he spilled wine,” Debby said. “I asked him about it—probably sometime in July. He told me that he’d spilled wine on the carpet, and on the sofa, too.”
    She also mentioned seeing a hole in the wall, where Tom said a picture had fallen down. The investigators already knew about the hole in the great room wall. They’d examined it during the July 31 search and found nothing revealing. It was just a hole in the wall behind a picture. Beneath the plaster, the bricks had no nicks in them, no tool marks. No gun barrel debris.
    At this stage in the investigation, Connolly, Donovan, and Alpert were inclined to think that Tom Capano had erupted into a sudden and violent rage when Anne Marie tried to break up with him. The most likely weapon would have been his hands; she had probably succumbed to being beaten or strangled. She had undoubtedly bled a great deal, enough to leave such visible stains on Tom’s carpet and couch that he’d been forced to get rid of them. But no one really knew what had happened.
    Debby MacIntyre testified before the federal grand jury on September 10, giving the same information she gave Connolly, Donovan, and Alpert. No one asked her about a gun, and she certainly didn’t mention one. On a conscious level, Debby had still not connected the gun she purchased to the disappearance of Anne Marie. She still believed Tom’s characterization of the Fahey girl as an unpredictable airhead who was as likely to leave town without an explanation as anyone he’d ever known.
    Debby had managed to slip into the grand jury room without the media seeing her. No one in Wilmington linked her to the proceedings—which was a great relief for her. A few weeks later, she left for several weeks on a guided tour of the Italian and French Riviera with her church group from St. Ann’s. She had always loved totravel; it was a respite from her job and her life. The problems in Wilmington were, quite literally, half a world away.
    Back in Wilmington, the investigative team still wasn’t sure what to make of her. Was Debby part of what had happened to Anne Marie, or was she a woman deluded by love?

Chapter Twenty-eight
    A UTUMN CAME to Delaware as swiftly as every season does, without any warning; the sweet pungent smell of burning leaves filled the chill