...And Never Let HerGo

got to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, correct?”
    Gerry said yes to all the stipulations. He gave Tom’s address—which was Marguerite’s Weldin Road home—and his own on Emma Court. He was ready now to tell them of how Tom had come to him in trouble long before Anne Marie Fahey disappeared, about how he was worried for Tom and his family.
    “Now,” Connolly said, “isn’t it true that sometime around February of 1996, your brother, Thomas Capano, asked you to borrow some money?”
    “Yes, he did . . . $8,000.”
    “Did he tell you why he needed to borrow that money?”
    “Yes, he said that two people were extorting him . . . a girl and a guy.”
    “OK. And the girl—did he say that he had had a relationship with her?”
    “No.”
    “Did he describe her as crazy or anything?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did he have any subsequent conversation with you in which he told you what this woman and her boyfriend were attempting to do to him?”
    “To ruin his career.”
    Gerry explained that he had lent Tom the $8,000, and that sometime between February and June, Tom had asked to borrow a gun. Gerry had first offered him a shotgun. “He told me he was afraid for his life,” Gerry said; “that he was afraid he was gonna get beaten up by this girl’s boyfriend if he didn’t pay them the money.”
    “Did he take a gun from you?”
    “Yes . . .”
    “What kind of gun?”
    “It was a ten-millimeter.”
    Gerry said he had shown Tom how to use the handgun, which he had given to him unloaded. But when Tom gave it back to himsometime later, it hadn’t been fired. It was in the same condition it had been when he’d taken it.
    “Now,” Connolly asked, “during this conversation when he asked you to borrow a gun, isn’t it true that he also asked you if you knew a person that could ‘help him out’? Didn’t he ask you if you knew anybody who could break somebody’s legs?”
    “Yes . . . I told him yes, that I might. I talked to a friend of mine and nothing ever came out of it.”
    “Now, isn’t it also true that sometime between February 1996 and June 28, 1996, your brother Thomas told you that if this woman—this woman he had spoken about—hurt his kids, he was going to kill her?”
    “Yes, because she had threatened him several times about hurting the kids at the bus stop or doing something else to them.”
    “Isn’t it also true that during this time frame he made a request to you about using your boat?”
    “He said that if this girl or this guy hurt his kids, and he killed them, could he use the boat? And I didn’t—I just blew it off ’cause I didn’t think he was serious. I just thought he was blowing off steam.”
    “And that’s why you never went to law enforcement authorities?”
    “That’s right.”
    Asked to recall the circumstances at 6 A.M. on June 28, Gerry said he had walked out of his house on Emma Court that morning to find his brother’s black Jeep parked in his driveway. Surprised, he had walked up to the passenger-side window and peered in. Tom was sitting there, reading the morning paper.
    “What did your brother say to you?”
    “He said, ‘Can you get hold of the boat?’ ”
    “And what did you say?”
    “I said, ‘Did you do it?’ ”
    “And by that, what did you mean?”
    “He’d either killed the girl or the guy who was threatening to hurt his kids.”
    “And what did your brother Thomas say in response?”
    “He nodded.”
    “Did he ask if you could help him?”
    “Yes he did . . . I told him I didn’t want to get involved, that I had a beautiful wife and kids and a great life and I didn’t want to ruin my life.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He said, ‘Don’t leave me cold—don’t leave me flat. I need you, bro.’ Stuff like that.”
    Tom had suggested that he could use Gerry’s boat by himself, but Gerry said he’d refused. Tom didn’t know anything about boats. “No way” did he have the experience to do that. So Gerry had agreed to help Tom get rid of the body of the “extortionist” he had killed. They agreed to meet at Tom’s house on North Grant Avenue.
    “When you went into the garage at Grant Avenue, what did you see?”
    “I saw a cooler and a rolled-up rug.”
    The rug had been long, Gerry recalled, about three-quarters the size of the garage, and the cooler was big. “It looked to be about four feet long by two feet wide,” Gerry said.
    “Was there anything unusual about the