...And Never Let HerGo

right. Neither side acknowledged the other, except at the times the push of the crowd jostled them together in the aisle or doorway. Then, they were civil.
    Members of the working press quickly chose their seats, and only then was the public allowed in. Many of them had never been in a courtroom before. They rushed in to find a good seat. The massive courtroom was actually designed to hold only 122 people, although there would be many times in the weeks ahead when spectators would make room for as many bodies as the long benches could possibly hold.
    There was an air of expectation when Tom’s trial began, even though nothing much was going to happen until a jury was picked—and that could take a long time. With the proliferation of pretrial publicity, it might not be easy to find prospective jurors who had no opinion about the innocence or guilt of Thomas Capano.
    The cast of characters who took the stand would change continually; the prosecution expected to call more than a hundred witnesses, and the defense team hinted that it had almost as many. The constants would be Judge William Swain Lee, who looked more than a little like Robert Redford; Ferris Wharton, Colm Connolly, Bob Donovan, and Eric Alpert, the prosecutors and investigators; and for the defense, lead defense attorney Joe Oteri, Charlie Oberly, Gene Maurer, and Jack O’Donnell.
    They were all top criminal defense attorneys, but very different from one another. Oberly was avuncular and quiet spoken, solidly versed in the law and a detail man; “the bookkeeper,” some called him. Gene Maurer was slender and intense, with a Beatleish haircut,and often wore a worried look. Tall with gray curly hair, Jack O’Donnell was an old friend of Tom’s who usually practiced law in Florida. It was O’Donnell who would frequently hug Tom’s daughters or pat Marguerite’s shoulder during breaks. He smiled easily. O’Donnell had bailed Gerry out of trouble years before. And when Joe Oteri signed on to defend Capano, wags called Tom’s four attorneys the “dream team.” And they were a million dollars’—or more—worth of lawyers.
    At sixty-seven, Oteri had proved that a poor boy from south Boston could one day be a highly successful attorney. The ex-marine was living on borrowed time, however, and not from scrapes in the Korean War. When he was in his twenties and still handling divorce cases, he encountered a Boston police officer who had just lost a child support case to his estranged wife, whom Oteri, to his regret, represented. The enraged cop shot his wife and then wounded Oteri in the knees, back, and head. Scrambling under a car, he realized dully that the shooter was coming to finish the job. But at that moment the injured wife made a noise and the maddened man turned back to shoot her in the head. Forgetting Oteri, he swallowed his gun and fell dead beside her.
    Emerging alive from beneath the car, Oteri decided that being a divorce lawyer was far too risky, and his practice through the years since had become heavily weighted with safer clients—defendants who had drug or murder charges hanging over their heads. He was good at winning acquittals and was not the favorite attorney of the DEA. Handsome in a dangerous way and dapper with his snow white hair, mustache, and beard, and his dark eyes, Oteri had graduated from Boston College and Boston College Law School, just as Tom had. In fact, Tom had attended his lectures, and he selected Oteri from a roster of high-profile criminal defense attorneys.
    Joe Oteri had a sense of humor, a lightning-quick intelligence, and didn’t mind the media at all, cheerfully wading through reporters. He was a showman and a scrapper. His failings were his tendency to shout at a jury to emphasize his points and his condescension to witnesses who were obviously a few steps down the social ladder from himself or elderly. These elements of his style were annoying but apparently unconscious on his part.
    No one yet knew what Tom Capano’s defense would be. In the summer just past, his attorneys had filed more than two dozen motions asking for the obvious—to disqualify Gerry, Louie, and Debby as witnesses and to ask for a change of venue—or the ridiculous: They wanted Judge Lee to forbid the Fahey family and their friendsfrom sitting in view of the jury or showing emotion in the courtroom. They asked to have Connolly removed as a prosecutor, claiming his federal grand jury investigation was tainted, and they