...And Never Let HerGo

the gun . . . but the important point is that the gun was disposed of. We don’t have the gun. If we had the gun, it would be a lot easier case.’ ”
    Tom was clearly unnerved that Connolly had come up with a case he’d prosecuted twenty-two years earlier. “Perhaps I can end this nonsense,” he said, fixing the prosecutor in his steely gaze, “by telling you that I remember next to nothing about this case, and it certainly has no connection whatsoever to this case or to the events of June twenty-seventh.”
    That was for the jurors to decide.
    Connolly asked Tom about the $8,000 and $9,000 checks he had cashed in February—and then the $8,000 he had borrowed from Gerry to make a total of $25,000. “This was the twenty-five thousand dollars you wanted to give to Anne Marie Fahey?”
    “That’s absolutely correct and the truth.”
    “You had a hundred fifty-six thousand dollars in your checking account on February 8, 1996, didn’t you?” Connolly asked.
    “I find that difficult to believe.”
    “Let me show you your bank statement,” Connolly said, moving toward Tom. It was obvious that Tom particularly hated having Connolly come close to him to hand him documents; his loathing was palpable. And it was just as apparent that Connolly deliberately invaded some invisible personal space of Tom’s when he approached him.
    “And you said you needed twenty-five thousand to shock Anne Marie?”
    “Yes, I was using it for that purpose.”
    Tom said he had been distressed when Joe Oteri mentioned the money on direct examination. “I did want it to be confidential,” he said. “I figured showing Anne Marie a check for twenty-five thousand dollars—I just figured the hospital is so many bucks a day, but I thought it would, you know, shock her and let her know how serious it was.”
    “So you testified twelve days ago a check would shock her?”
    “I misspoke,” Tom said. “A check would not have shocked her—it’s a simple piece of paper. Dumping twenty-five thousand dollars on her kitchen table would at least get her attention, if not her agreement or her gratitude.”
    But Tom said that Anne Marie had been angry at his gesture, so he had taken the money back and put it in his bedroom closet. However, the prosecution and those who were following the case closely wondered why Tom had
really
wanted that much money in cash.Had he offered it to Anne Marie—who made only $30,000 a year—in a grand gesture to coax her to come back to him? Perhaps she had never seen that money at all. Had he stockpiled it to hire someone who would punish or destroy her for rejecting him? Or, as he testified, had he only wanted her to get well and been so unselfishly concerned for her that he was willing to pay $25,000 to a clinic?
    W HEN Tom resumed his testimony the next day, two days from 1999, the courtroom heated up along with Connolly’s cross-examination. It was apparent to everyone that Tom’s life had been consumed with women. He spoke freely about Anne Marie’s life, letters, fears, hopes, and menstrual problems, and Connolly reminded him about Debby’s belief that she and Tom would marry one day. Tom was also voluble about Debby’s life, letters, fears, and, especially, her stupid mistakes.
    “You believed Debby wasn’t very intelligent?” Connolly asked.
    “Debby was not very academic,” Tom replied. “She was intelligent in some ways. In book learning, she was not.”
    More of Tom’s letters to and about Debby were read into the record. Where Tom was concerned, she had been “submissive.” He used the word often, reminding her that she had no backbone and that everyone pushed her around. Connolly asked Tom about the “buttons” he pushed to manipulate Debby. His letters proved that he had known exactly what to say to her to achieve a desired response. He had known all the things she held dear as well as those that upset her: the gold necklace he gave her for Christmas 1996 (his very first gift of jewelry), her father, her children,
his
children, her home, her sister, Tatnall, the memory of Montreal.
    The jurors had heard Debby testify and knew she wasn’t stupid; she had been a woman in love who was trying to believe in Tom. Even locked up, he had obviously pushed buttons and pulled strings.
    Tom had a hot button, too, and Connolly knew just how incendiary it would be to mention Tom’s daughters. In their very first meeting, Tom had lashed out at Connolly because one of his daughters had