...And Never Let HerGo

and the scientists testified next. Painstakingly, Wharton and Connolly elicited the explanations about how the flecks of blood found in Tom’s great room had been matched to Anne Marie Fahey’s plasma. How carpet fibers found in Kay’s Suburban matched the carpet Tom had removed from the great room. The cooler . . .
    T HERE had been a large white Styrofoam cooler near the prosecution table for the entire trial. It wasn’t
the
cooler. Connolly and Wharton had planned all along to end the state’s case with the introduction of the cooler during Ken Chubb’s testimony. On December 2, the actual cooler that had been found floating so close to the Delaware coast sat, finally, under the evidence table. Connolly asked questions of Ron Smith, the man who had called Eric Alpert to tell him about the cooler his friend had found over the Fourth of July weekend. Smith was a perfect witness and things were going well.
    Next, Wharton questioned an FBI firearms and tool-mark expert, Michael Ennis, about the two holes that were blasted in the Igloo cooler. Although the holes had been filled with an epoxy material, Ennis said he had been able to detect the presence of lead particles. “Anytime you have the bullet fired from a firearm, you also get any debris that might be in the barrel. . . . The chemical test [on the cooler] was positive for lead behind the hole number 1 on the backside of the piece of plastic and also on the piece of insulation between hole numbers 1 and 2 and hole numbers 3 and 4.”
    Connolly, sitting at the prosecution table, heard whispering from the defense attorneys. He followed their eyes and saw they were looking at the Igloo cooler—the
real
cooler. They were planning to find a way to bring the cooler out on cross-examination so they could lower its impact on the jury.
    When Wharton finished his questioning of Ennis, he turned back, as always, to Connolly, asking the judge, “May I have a moment?” It was the way all the attorneys made sure they hadn’t missed something before they dismissed a witness. “I told him what I’d heard,” Connolly recalled. “We had no choice—we had to introduce the cooler with the witness on the stand. Ennis wasn’t expecting it but he could deal with the surprise.”
    In one of the most dramatic moments of the trial, albeit previously unplanned, Connolly and Wharton reached under the evidence table and picked up the cooler that had borne Anne Marie to her ocean grave. The courtroom was silent as they carried it—like pallbearers—to a spot in front of the jury box. As they set it down, the wooden handles snapped and vibrated, raising goose pimples on the arms of the watchers in the gallery.
    As big as it was, everyone wondered how in God’s name Tom Capano could have forced Anne Marie’s five-foot ten-inch body into its confines. Someone whispered in a voice that carried down the row, “He must have broken her feet to put her in there.”
    “Mr. Ennis,” Wharton asked his startled witness, “state’s exhibit 235—is that the Q79 cooler which you examined?”
    “Yes sir, it is.”
    “The one in which you found the lead in the holes?”
    “That’s correct.”
    After Kenneth Chubb testified that he and his son had found the cooler with blood still inside, the state rested its case. Charlie Oberly rose to assert that the state had failed to prove how Anne Marie Fahey had died and asked Judge Lee for a directed verdict of acquittal.
    Lee refused, saying that was for the jury to decide. Court adjourned at 2:40 P.M. on Wednesday, December 2. The defense would present its case beginning Monday, December 7.
    In his opening statement, Joe Oteri had claimed that Anne Marie died as the result of a horrible accident and hinted broadly that he would produce a surprise witness. Perhaps on Monday he would say what that accident was and explain why Tom had notcalled for help from the police and paramedics instead of attempting to cover up all traces of Anne Marie’s death.
    A S the courtroom emptied of spectators, Anne Marie’s brothers and sister stepped quietly to the area beyond the rail and stood near the cooler. For all its fragile, eggshell-like construction, it had been their sister’s coffin, the last place she was known to have been. Understanding how important it was for them, Connolly and Wharton turned away to allow the Faheys their moment of prayer and meditation.
    It might well be that that battered cooler was the piece of evidence that would