...And Never Let HerGo

imperious with Connolly. He had given his version of Anne Marie’s fatal shooting to Oteri. But now, Connolly began to question him about
everything,
beginning with his appearance in Gerry’s driveway on June 28.
    “It’s five forty-five and you’re sitting in this driveway and reading the sports page?”
    “Trying to.”
    “You’re reading the sports pages seven hours after Anne Marie Fahey died in your great room at Grant Avenue, correct?”
    “I was attempting to distract myself,” Tom said stiffly, “since I had already tried very hard to bury my emotions.”
    “This is seven hours after Debby MacIntyre, so you say, threatened to kill herself in your great room on Grant Avenue?”
    “Yes—which I knew was not going to happen.”
    “Oh, you knew when she put that gun to her head she wasn’t going to kill herself?”
    “I never said she put the gun to her head,” Tom said. “I said I
thought
she was going to put the gun to her head, and I also knew that Debby wouldn’t do that.”
    “And yet you reached out to stop her?”
    “Well, just in case . . . The Debby I knew I did not think [would kill herself] but I wasn’t going to take any chances.”
    Tom had begun to differentiate between “the Debby I knew” and a kind of half woman, half she-devil he felt Debby had become under the control of the federal government and her attorney, Tom Bergstrom.
    Connolly asked questions about every moment of Friday, June 28, and predictably perhaps, Tom became confused. He could not remember how many times he had seen Kay. But he was sure he had had a “pleasant” conversation with Keith Brady’s secretary when he tried to arrange a golf game with Brady. It was “normal,” he said.
    “And this ‘normal’ conversation took place less than ten hours after the woman you deeply loved, as you say, was—”
    “No, no, no, no, no, no.” The more agitated and annoyed Tom became, the more “no’s” he strung together.
    “—was contemplating suicide?”
    Tom had misunderstood the reference. “No, no, no, no, no, no. I’ll play your game,” he sniffed. “I
did
deeply love Anne Marie Fahey. You never even knew her.”
    “This conversation you characterized as normal occurred lessthan ten hours after Debby MacIntyre, a woman you have testified you deeply loved, was talking about suicide, correct?”
    “Yes.”
    “This normal conversation is less than nine and a half hours after Anne Marie Fahey, a woman you testified you deeply loved, died in the great room?”
    “Yes.”
    Connolly asked Tom where he had purchased the chain and lock he’d mentioned. He thought it was at the Brosius-Eliason store, but would not say definitely. Too bad. Ron Poplos had checked and found that Tom hadn’t bought either one at Brosius-Eliason.
    The questions hit Tom like so many rubber-tipped darts, cumulatively annoying. But Connolly led him into a minefield when he asked for specifics about the last moments of Anne Marie’s life. How had they been sitting? Were their legs pointed straight out from the love seat when Debby surprised them?
    “At one point we were,” Tom said carefully. “I’m trying to get my timing straight. At one point she had pulled her legs up onto the love seat and sort of bent them.”
    Tom said neither of them had jumped up when Debby came screaming through the kitchen.
    “It was such a surprise that somebody was yelling in another room in your house that you both stayed on the couch?” Connolly asked.
    Tom stuck by his story that he and Anne Marie had remained seated until Debby was right next to the love seat.
    “How long transpired before she entered the great room and put a gun in her left hand?”
    “I can’t answer that,” Tom said. “Seconds seemed like minutes; minutes seemed like hours. I was all just—this whole nightmarish scene just happened so quickly.”
    But he was sure that Anne Marie had been angry and started to put on her panty hose because she wanted to leave. “She wants out. She wants to leave. She wants me to take her home.”
    Women in the courtroom looked at one another. Panty hose are not easy to put on, particularly on a hot, sticky night. Why would Anne Marie have bothered? She could have left them behind and made a run for it.
    “Do you recall testifying that Anne Marie saw the gun and was making fun of it?”
    “Making fun of it might not have been the right word. She was just, you know . . . ‘Nonsense.’ ”
    Tom was gradually backing down