And Never Let Her Go (52 page)

Debby could see the date. “In May,” she said, her own voice echoing in her head. “I thought I bought it well before that.”

Connolly wanted to know the time of day and the day of the week that she had bought the gun. And she kept remembering Tom taking her to the gun shop—even as she lied to protect him, and didn't know why. Tom was innocent.
She knew he was innocent . . .

“And you're certain the only person with whom you discussed your intention to buy the gun, prior to the date you purchased it, was Tom Capano?” Connolly had a way of asking the same question three different ways.

“Yes . . . yes.”

“But you're also certain that Tom Capano never touched the gun?”

“To the best of my knowledge.”

“Well, if the gun was in your exclusive custody from the date you purchased it up to the day you got rid of it, how could Tom Capano touch the gun?”

“I put it in the trash.”
Why had she said it that way?

“So he didn't,” Connolly said. “So if his fingerprints are on the gun with the serial number that you purchased . . . how would you account for that?”

Connolly hadn't said Tom's prints
were
on the gun. He had said
if,
but Debby was floundering.

“He took it out of the trash?” she asked.

“So, did he know ahead of time when you were throwing it out?”

“No, I told him after I put it in the trash.”

“Well, how soon after?”

“Saturday or Sunday. The trash is picked up on Tuesday.”

“Are you certain of that?”

Debby wondered if they thought
she
had done something to Anne Marie. Her head was spinning with all the questions about the gun. Connolly kept asking her if she was
certain
about when she had put the gun parts and the bullets in the trash. And she wasn't because it was all a lie. She had seen that gun for only five minutes after she bought it. Then she had given it to Tom.

“So you could have told him before the trash was picked up by the city?”

“Yes . . .
yes.”

Apparently satisfied, Connolly then asked her if Tom had ever told her about somebody who was trying to extort money from him.

“Yes . . . He told me that somebody was trying to get money from him. That's it. I can't even tell you the guy's name.”

“Has he ever discussed with you anything about someone trying to extort money from him after Anne Marie Fahey's disappearance?”

“No.”

“Has he told you whether or not he's ever given money to somebody who tried to extort money from him?”

“No.”

“Have you ever had any conversation with Tom Capano since June 27, 1996, about the gun you purchased on May 13, 1996?”

“No,” Debby said. And then she reversed her answer. “That's probably not true. I probably alluded to the fact that ‘I got it and I don't know what I was thinking—I'm glad I got this new security system or I'm getting this new security system . . .' ”

The interview was over. Of course, the .22 caliber Beretta they showed Debby wasn't the gun she had purchased. Nobody knew where that gun was. But Debby had the impression that they knew more about the gun than she did, and that Tom knew a lot more than he was telling her.

“T
HE
volcano erupted on January twenty-eighth,” Debby said. “There was a flash in my head halfway through that interview. That's the only way I can describe how I felt. The Tom that I knew wasn't this man who could kill this woman. But once I betrayed him or rejected him—so to speak—I woke up and I realized the position I was in because I loved him and believed him and trusted him. I was compromising myself, my safety, and that of my children. It
was
like a volcano erupting.”

Adam Balick, Debby's attorney, wasted no time in calling Charlie Oberly to tell him what had happened. When Tom heard about it, he immediately attempted damage control in a letter to Debby. First, he pointed out how incredibly stupid she had been to suggest he might have taken the gun out of her trash can. How could she have said such a thing? He criticized the lawyer he'd chosen for her for not telling Colm Connolly to “go to hell,” and said Balick should have filed a motion to quash.

“I keep saying they cannot be trusted,” Tom wrote, as he virtually spelled out what Debby should have said. Too late now. He wrote as if he hoped a prison censor would read the letter and report to the state.

And, unfortunately, I'm always right. I told Charlie that I knew you had bought it, why you got rid of it—because of Steve and his friends. Hey, that's not the first time nor will it be the last time you made an impulsive purchase—just remember the house fiasco last year—and then [you] realized it was a mistake. Apparently, you used your credit card so it's not like you were trying to hide anything. And, as for having the actual gun—which we doubt—so what? They've got to connect it somehow and Charlie doesn't think—and I agree—they can't, even if it does have my print on it someplace. So what if I touched it when you showed it to me?

It was clear that Tom wasn't going to admit in writing that he was the one who had insisted that she buy the gun for him. He was putting it all in Debby's ballpark. The gun was her problem.

Tom was even more intent on Debby's testimony for the defense in his upcoming bail hearing. He reminded her that she was
not
under his “spell.” And he was emphatic that she search her memory about a cooler. “As for that damn cooler, you couldn't have forgotten it,” he wrote forcefully. “It was in the crawl space behind the mirrored, louvered doors and we opened them to look for screens in
late April. Or right after I bought it, you came over and couldn't pull all the way in the garage because it took up too much room and the garage was tight anyway. Maybe you didn't pay attention, but when you said, ‘What the hell is that?' I told you what it was—a fish cooler for Gerry's new boat.”

Debby had absolutely no recollection of seeing a fish cooler either in Tom's garage or in the crawl space. But she knew he expected her to repeat what he'd told her about it in the proof positive hearing.

Tom also set down a blueprint of exactly what she was to do on that day in court. First of all, he wanted her to march in with her head held high, with her attorney on one side of her and Stan, a male friend from Tatnall, on the other. He warned her that she would be overwhelmed if she didn't have two strong men to cling to. She was not to drive herself to the courthouse; she would be too nervous.

“Be sure you swim the day you testify,” Tom ordered. “You will wait in an airport-like line to go through a metal detector. Adam will decide whether you will wait just outside the courtroom or go to the witness room.”

Tom described the courtroom to Debby, cautioning her that it would be intimidating because it was so big. “Yes, I will be there at the table with my guys,” he wrote. “A bailiff will escort you to the witness box where you will be sworn in. The Judge will be next to you. Whichever side calls you asks questions first; then the other side gets to ask questions. When the questioning is over, Judge Lee will tell you you're excused.”

And then, fearing he hadn't been explicit enough, Tom gave Debby a short course in courtroom law. She might have been ten years old from the way he lectured her. “My guys will certainly be nice to you,” he promised.

Try to answer most questions either “yes” or “no,” but sometimes you'll have to explain things. Connolly will try to put words in your mouth, so don't let him.

You will run into the cameras and reporters as soon as you leave. Let Adam just keep saying “no comment” as the three of you push your way through them. They won't follow you to Adam's office. Once there, relax and then leave with Stan to get a drink at Pala's. I'm serious. If you don't go back to Adam's office, just walk into the lobby with him, say goodbye, and go through the lobby and out onto Shipley Street and to the
garage. Walk briskly to the garage while holding Stan's arm. You must not drive out of the garage at Pala's. Do go to Baltimore later and do not work the next day. I still think you should take the rest of the week off and go to Boston.

It was Tom's usual puppeteer routine, only more so. Debby's testimony at his bail hearing meant so much to him that he wanted to be sure she didn't goof it up. As an afterthought, he told her not to wear her glasses when she testified. That way, she wouldn't be able to see anyone in the courtroom—especially the Faheys. They would surely be there, and he didn't want her looking them in the eye and getting confused.

Tom needed her at the hearing to reflect well on him. What was important was how she came across to Judge Lee. She was going to be his ticket out of Gander Hill.

Tom continued to go to a great deal of effort to make sure Debby knew exactly what to do, just as he had done with Anne Marie, trying to orchestrate her life to suit him. He wrote to Debby on January 29, January 30, February 1, and February 2, repeating his instructions over and over, always reminding her how stupid she had been with her whim to buy a house and then backing out. That was his way of telling her how to explain her silly idea about buying a gun, only to throw it in the garbage.

He might have saved himself the trouble.

Debby had hit the wall. She could deny only so much and then she began to doubt. It was not that she had stopped loving Tom. “I wanted so much to believe him,” she recalled, “but there were things I had to question.”

Debby dismissed her attorney, and with her ex-husband advising her, she approached another attorney about representing her. Perhaps for the very first time, Debby was taking charge of her life. In a rush of pain, she had moments of wondering if Tom might be throwing her to the wolves. He wanted her to lie, but he would not tell her the truth. She had suppressed that realization again and again, only to have doubts sneak back in.

Wednesday, February 4, 1998, came and went, and Debby was not at the bail hearing to testify for Tom. He was thunderstruck. He had been so certain that he would get out of jail that he had packed his clothes before leaving his cell. “I'll send someone to pick that up,” he told the jailers.

Indeed, he had heard rumors from his family that Debby wasn't going to testify for him, and he had laughed at them. When his attorneys broke the news to him, he looked at them in disbelief and
told them they were wrong. Belatedly, he got the note Debby wrote to him, telling him she couldn't do it.

Judge Lee's decision at the end of the proof positive hearing on February 6 went against Tom. He would continue to be held without bail, awaiting trial, which was tentatively set to start in October 1998. In Ferris Wharton's considerable experience, most proof positive hearings took only a few hours. Tom Capano's had taken five days.

“It was a mini trial,” Connolly commented. So much information had been presented: the records from Tom's phones, the picture of him at the ATM machine on the morning of June 28, receipts for the fishing cooler and for gasoline bought by two boaters in Stone Harbor on June 28, the receipt for the Beretta, all the interviews with Anne Marie's friends and coworkers. It seemed that there could be no secrets about Anne Marie Fahey or Tom Capano left.

But there were secrets still. And Debby, like many others, dreaded October 6 and what promised to be endless weeks of trial. Tom returned to his cell and unpacked his belongings, fuming that Debby's failure to testify for him had cost him his freedom.

B
UT
he didn't give up. Within days, Tom began to bombard Debby with letters that would fill an entire book, letters designed to evoke guilt, love, despair.

Dear Deb,

So. I did open the envelope and I read it because I did not believe what I had been told. I am beyond shocked. The one thing I always thought, believed, loved, was that I could always rely on you and your unconditional love. To have that yanked away from me this week is almost too much to bear. And it was done coldly and with finality. I guess I always knew that this day would come but knowledge has not dulled the pain. I am, quite literally, numb with that sinking feeling in my stomach. I've been abandoned in my time of need by most of the people I cared about and who I thought cared about me. I would have bet my life on your unlimited devotion and loyalty. Perhaps that's exactly what I have done—at least my freedom—and find that I have lost.

And that was only the first paragraph in a letter that went on for many more pages. Tom wrote again the next day to chastise Debby about her gun statements to Colm Connolly. He said that she had missed her chance to vindicate herself in the media when she refused to testify at his bail hearing. “It was crucial Judge Lee heard
and saw you instead of allowing Connolly to paint you as a liar and an adulteress. You chose not to allow that to happen. We will both have to live with the consequences. Good luck. I wish you happiness. Perhaps I'll see you in October, but I doubt it.”

Tom had controlled Debby for seventeen years. Now he used every manipulative trick he knew to bring her back to his side and his defense. With his written words, he pulled her closer, berated her, pushed her away, and then attempted to reel her back in. It was a hellish thing because she had loved him for a very long time, and she still did.

Beyond making her feel guilty for betraying him, Tom set out to frighten her.

They can still charge you with conspiracy or whatever if they really believe you are involved—which, of course, you are not. If they believe they have a weapon used to commit murder and can prove that,
and
they can also
prove
you bought the weapon to help me commit murder, then they will charge you with a crime. . . . Because Connolly is ruthless, he will threaten you with charges at some point to get you to change your story and testify against me at trial. He's bluffing. Let's suppose for the sake of argument they can prove the gun they showed you at the interview was the one you bought and has my fingerprints on it. Juicy, yes. But how can he prove it was used to commit murder? They don't have a body to examine for gunshot wounds.