...And Never Let HerGo

wait in an airport-like line to go through a metal detector. Adam will decide whether you will wait just outside the courtroom or go to the witness room.”
    Tom described the courtroom to Debby, cautioning her that it would be intimidating because it was so big. “Yes, I will be there at the table with my guys,” he wrote. “A bailiff will escort you to the witness box where you will be sworn in. The Judge will be next to you. Whichever side calls you asks questions first; then the other side gets to ask questions. When the questioning is over, Judge Lee will tell you you’re excused.”
    And then, fearing he hadn’t been explicit enough, Tom gave Debby a short course in courtroom law. She might have been ten years old from the way he lectured her. “My guys will certainly be nice to you,” he promised.
    Try to answer most questions either “yes” or “no,” but sometimes you’ll have to explain things. Connolly will try to put words in your mouth, so don’t let him.
    You will run into the cameras and reporters as soon as you leave. Let Adam just keep saying “no comment” as the three of you push your way through them. They won’t follow you to Adam’s office. Once there, relax and then leave with Stan to get a drink at Pala’s. I’m serious. If you don’t go back to Adam’s office, just walk into the lobby with him, say goodbye, and go through the lobby and out onto Shipley Street and to thegarage. Walk briskly to the garage while holding Stan’s arm. You must not drive out of the garage at Pala’s. Do go to Baltimore later and do not work the next day. I still think you should take the rest of the week off and go to Boston.
    It was Tom’s usual puppeteer routine, only more so. Debby’s testimony at his bail hearing meant so much to him that he wanted to be sure she didn’t goof it up. As an afterthought, he told her not to wear her glasses when she testified. That way, she wouldn’t be able to see anyone in the courtroom—especially the Faheys. They would surely be there, and he didn’t want her looking them in the eye and getting confused.
    Tom needed her at the hearing to reflect well on him. What was important was how she came across to Judge Lee. She was going to be his ticket out of Gander Hill.
    Tom continued to go to a great deal of effort to make sure Debby knew exactly what to do, just as he had done with Anne Marie, trying to orchestrate her life to suit him. He wrote to Debby on January 29, January 30, February 1, and February 2, repeating his instructions over and over, always reminding her how stupid she had been with her whim to buy a house and then backing out. That was his way of telling her how to explain her silly idea about buying a gun, only to throw it in the garbage.
    He might have saved himself the trouble.
    Debby had hit the wall. She could deny only so much and then she began to doubt. It was not that she had stopped loving Tom. “I wanted so much to believe him,” she recalled, “but there were things I had to question.”
    Debby dismissed her attorney, and with her ex-husband advising her, she approached another attorney about representing her. Perhaps for the very first time, Debby was taking charge of her life. In a rush of pain, she had moments of wondering if Tom might be throwing her to the wolves. He wanted her to lie, but he would not tell her the truth. She had suppressed that realization again and again, only to have doubts sneak back in.
    Wednesday, February 4, 1998, came and went, and Debby was not at the bail hearing to testify for Tom. He was thunderstruck. He had been so certain that he would get out of jail that he had packed his clothes before leaving his cell. “I’ll send someone to pick that up,” he told the jailers.
    Indeed, he had heard rumors from his family that Debby wasn’t going to testify for him, and he had laughed at them. When his attorneys broke the news to him, he looked at them in disbelief andtold them they were wrong. Belatedly, he got the note Debby wrote to him, telling him she couldn’t do it.
    Judge Lee’s decision at the end of the proof positive hearing on February 6 went against Tom. He would continue to be held without bail, awaiting trial, which was tentatively set to start in October 1998. In Ferris Wharton’s considerable experience, most proof positive hearings took only a few hours. Tom Capano’s had taken five days.
    “It was a mini trial,” Connolly commented. So much information had been