...And Never Let HerGo

this mission had to be accomplished perfectly.
    M ARCH 18–M ARCH 28
    EARLIER IS BETTER
    1. SHOULD ENTER AND EXIT BACK DOOR.
    2. ALARM PANEL ON SHORT WALL TO LEFT GOING FROM KITCHEN INTO DEN.
    3. UPON ENTRY ALARM WILL EMIT QUIET, STEADY TONE. 60 SECOND DELAY TO ENTER CODE. MUST FLIP DOWN COVER ON PANEL. RED LIGHT—ARMED AND GREEN LIGHT—DISARMED. ENTER 43391.
    4. HOUSE IS HEAVILY SHRUBBED ON THREE SIDES. NO OBSTRUCTED VIEW FOR/FROM HOUSE BEHIND GARAGE SO ONLY VIEW. PARK ON STREET.
    5. RESET ALARM WHEN LEAVING. (ALL DOORS MUST BE SHUT TO RESET). ENTER 43392.
    6. NO MOTION DETECTORS ANYWHERE SO COULD ENTER THROUGH SLIDERS GLASS.
    7. DIAGRAMS FAIRLY ACCURATE AND IDENTIFY POTENTIAL VALUABLES.
    8. CAR KEYS SHOULD BE ON RACK IN KITCHEN OR IN PANTRY CLOSET WITH OPENER.
    9. TOTAL OF 5 TVS. BEST ONE IN MASTER BEDROOM.
    10. MUST SHATTER FLOOR TO CEILING MIRROR ON WALL IN MASTER BEDROOM. ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED.
    11. MUST LOCATE AND REMOVE PLASTIC BAG WITH SEX TOYS AND VIDEOS IN A CLOSET IN MASTER BEDROOM SUITE OR UNDER BED.
    12. ALL ART IS VALUABLE. MUST REMOVE ALL OR SLASH AND DESTROY.
    13. JEWELRY IN TOP DRAWERS OF FURNITURE IN DRESSING ROOM OF M.B.R. BUT MAY BE HIDDEN IN CLOSETS OR BUILT-INS.

    Only ten days earlier, Tom had written Debby a stack of love letters. “Never ever forget that I love you now and forever,” he said. “My silly fantasy was to believe your promise that you’d be waiting for me whenever I got out and we’d have the rest of our lives together.” Maybe it was a silly fantasy; or maybe it was a fatally misguided smugness that Debby would believe anything he told her.
    At this point, Tom didn’t insist that Debby be physically hurt; he wanted Perillo to find burglars who would destroy those possessions she loved the most and that were reminders of their lovemaking. And he wanted her to be so frightened that she would never consider giving the slightest degree of comfort or information to the enemy camp.
    Perillo turned Tom’s maps and instructions over to the prosecutors.
    On March 13, Debby and Tom Bergstrom met with the state’s team in Ron Poplos’s office in the IRS building. Poplos was helping them investigate the Capano brothers’ tax records. The media seemed to know whenever something momentous was about to happen in the Capano case, and the prosecutors were now taking special pains to avoid reporters. One thing that seemed to work was to vary their meeting spots from Connolly’s office to Wharton’s to Poplos’s.
    They had to tell Debby about the diagrams that showed every room of her house and Tom’s plan to find someone to burglarize it. As Connolly set down the pages in front of her, she stared at them uncomprehendingly at first, and then felt a sense of chilling recognition. “Everything was there,” she recalled. “I could not have told you where the words and the numbers were on my alarm system, but Tom had remembered them all. It was obvious he had worked for a long time on those drawings. And I knew that I couldn’t stay in the house that meant so much to me. I would never feel safe there again.”
    Every interview with the prosecuting team peeled away another layer that had been private for Debby. Sitting in a room full of men, she admitted that Tom was a voyeur who frequently urged her to date other men and tell him about any sexual encounters that might occur. She told them of the night she had gone to her twentieth high- school reunion, where she had met an old boyfriend and they talked about how they had never consummated their relationship when they were teenagers. They were both single now. Tom had been excited about the prospect that that might happen. “He called when he knew we were home,” she said with embarrassment. “He watched us through the windows.”
    She told them then about Keith Brady and what had happened the day Tom brought him to her house. That could prove to be sticky; Brady was Ferris Wharton’s boss in the Delaware Attorney General’s office. It seemed that Tom Capano’s excesses were going to bring down half the state before the investigation was over.
    If it had to be, it had to be. What mattered was bringing some justice to Anne Marie Fahey, the girl who had written about Tom in her diary four years earlier, “We have built an everlasting friendship. I feel free around him, and like he says, he ‘makes my heart smile’! He deserves some happiness in his life, and it makes me feel good to know that I can provide him with such