...And Never Let HerGo

it—so I got rid of it. And I updated my alarm system instead.”
    Connolly had a way of asking, “Are you certain?” about the dates she gave and the things she said about the gun. She stumbled over whether it had been January or June, or 1994, 1995 . . . 1996.
    “I got rid of it June—say the tenth—because that was the last day of school,” she said through numb lips. “And I took it apart. There’s a piece that comes out of the bottom of it and I took it apart and I put them [the two pieces] in separate bags. Trash bags.”
    Debby said she’d thrown the gun parts and the bullets into the garbage can on Friday, June 10. (That would have been two and a half weeks before Anne Marie vanished.) She didn’t know what kind of gun it was, but she told Connolly about the gun store out on Route 13. “I just asked for a small gun that would be easy and comfortable and not intimidating.”
    With every lie she told, Connolly came back with another question that she couldn’t really answer. “When you bought the gun,” he asked, “had you ever discussed your intention to buy a gun?”
    “I had talked about it with Tom.”
    “Was he with—”
    “He thought it was a bad idea,” she said quickly.
    She said she couldn’t remember what color the gun was—maybe silver, maybe black—or how much it cost, how she’d paid for it, or exactly how long she’d had it.
    “How long do you think you owned this gun?” Connolly pressed.
    “Three to five months.”
    “When you bought it, what season was it?”
    “Winter . . . spring . . .”
    “You’re very certain [you got rid of it] on the second Friday in June?”
    Debby got in deeper and deeper. No, Tom had never seen the gun. He didn’t know she’d thrown it away in the garbage. Not until the next day, “Say Sunday,” she said.
    “And what was his reaction?”
    “‘Good. Update your security system.’ ”
    “Did you ever lend him the gun?”
    “No.”
    At that point, Eric Alpert quietly set a .22 caliber Beretta on the table in front of Debby, and she froze.
Had they found her gun someplace?
    “Was that the type of gun?”
    “Uhhhh . . . I don’t think it was that big.”
    Now Connolly showed her a copy of the receipt for the gun she’d purchased. “Does this help refresh your recollection of when you bought the gun?”
    Debby could see the date. “In May,” she said, her own voice echoing in her head. “I thought I bought it well before that.”
    Connolly wanted to know the time of day and the day of the week that she had bought the gun. And she kept remembering Tom taking her to the gun shop—even as she lied to protect him, and didn’t know why. Tom was innocent.
She knew he was innocent . . .
    “And you’re certain the only person with whom you discussed your intention to buy the gun, prior to the date you purchased it, was Tom Capano?” Connolly had a way of asking the same question three different ways.
    “Yes . . . yes.”
    “But you’re also certain that Tom Capano never touched the gun?”
    “To the best of my knowledge.”
    “Well, if the gun was in your exclusive custody from the date you purchased it up to the day you got rid of it, how could Tom Capano touch the gun?”
    “I put it in the trash.”
Why had she said it that way?
    “So he didn’t,” Connolly said. “So if his fingerprints are on the gun with the serial number that you purchased . . . how would you account for that?”
    Connolly hadn’t said Tom’s prints
were
on the gun. He had said
if,
but Debby was floundering.
    “He took it out of the trash?” she asked.
    “So, did he know ahead of time when you were throwing it out?”
    “No, I told him after I put it in the trash.”
    “Well, how soon after?”
    “Saturday or Sunday. The trash is picked up on Tuesday.”
    “Are you certain of that?”
    Debby wondered if they thought
she
had done something to Anne Marie. Her head was spinning with all the questions about the gun. Connolly kept asking her if she was
certain
about when she had put the gun parts and the bullets in the trash. And she wasn’t because it was all a lie. She had seen that gun for only five minutes after she bought it. Then she had given it to Tom.
    “So you could have told him before the trash was picked up by the city?”
    “Yes . . .
yes.”
    Apparently satisfied, Connolly then asked her if Tom had ever told her about somebody who was trying to extort money from him.
    “Yes . . . He told me that somebody was trying to get