...And Never Let HerGo

money from him. That’s it. I can’t even tell you the guy’s name.”
    “Has he ever discussed with you anything about someone trying to extort money from him after Anne Marie Fahey’s disappearance?”
    “No.”
    “Has he told you whether or not he’s ever given money to somebody who tried to extort money from him?”
    “No.”
    “Have you ever had any conversation with Tom Capano since June 27, 1996, about the gun you purchased on May 13, 1996?”
    “No,” Debby said. And then she reversed her answer. “That’s probably not true. I probably alluded to the fact that ‘I got it and I don’t know what I was thinking—I’m glad I got this new security system or I’m getting this new security system . . .’ ”
    The interview was over. Of course, the .22 caliber Beretta they showed Debby wasn’t the gun she had purchased. Nobody knew where that gun was. But Debby had the impression that they knew more about the gun than she did, and that Tom knew a lot more than he was telling her.
    “T HE volcano erupted on January twenty-eighth,” Debby said. “There was a flash in my head halfway through that interview. That’s the only way I can describe how I felt. The Tom that I knew wasn’t this man who could kill this woman. But once I betrayed him or rejected him—so to speak—I woke up and I realized the position I was in because I loved him and believed him and trusted him. I was compromising myself, my safety, and that of my children. It
was
like a volcano erupting.”
    Adam Balick, Debby’s attorney, wasted no time in calling Charlie Oberly to tell him what had happened. When Tom heard about it, he immediately attempted damage control in a letter to Debby. First, he pointed out how incredibly stupid she had been to suggest he might have taken the gun out of her trash can. How could she have said such a thing? He criticized the lawyer he’d chosen for her for not telling Colm Connolly to “go to hell,” and said Balick should have filed a motion to quash.
    “I keep saying they cannot be trusted,” Tom wrote, as he virtually spelled out what Debby should have said. Too late now. He wrote as if he hoped a prison censor would read the letter and report to the state.
    And, unfortunately, I’m always right. I told Charlie that I knew you had bought it, why you got rid of it—because of Steve and his friends. Hey, that’s not the first time nor will it be the last time you made an impulsive purchase—just remember the house fiasco last year—and then [you] realized it was a mistake. Apparently, you used your credit card so it’s not like you were trying to hide anything. And, as for having the actual gun—which we doubt—so what? They’ve got to connect it somehow and Charlie doesn’t think—and I agree—they can’t, even if it does have my print on it someplace. So what if I touched it when you showed it to me?
    It was clear that Tom wasn’t going to admit in writing that he was the one who had insisted that she buy the gun for him. He was putting it all in Debby’s ballpark. The gun was her problem.
    Tom was even more intent on Debby’s testimony for the defense in his upcoming bail hearing. He reminded her that she was
not
under his “spell.” And he was emphatic that she search her memory about a cooler. “As for that damn cooler, you couldn’t have forgotten it,” he wrote forcefully. “It was in the crawl space behind the mirrored, louvered doors and we opened them to look for screens inlate April. Or right after I bought it, you came over and couldn’t pull all the way in the garage because it took up too much room and the garage was tight anyway. Maybe you didn’t pay attention, but when you said, ‘What the hell is that?’ I told you what it was—a fish cooler for Gerry’s new boat.”
    Debby had absolutely no recollection of seeing a fish cooler either in Tom’s garage or in the crawl space. But she knew he expected her to repeat what he’d told her about it in the proof positive hearing.
    Tom also set down a blueprint of exactly what she was to do on that day in court. First of all, he wanted her to march in with her head held high, with her attorney on one side of her and Stan, a male friend from Tatnall, on the other. He warned her that she would be overwhelmed if she didn’t have two strong men to cling to. She was not to drive herself to the courthouse; she would be too nervous.
    “Be sure you swim the day you testify,” Tom ordered. “You will