And Never Let Her Go (68 page)

From time to time, he reminded the jurors: “I've tried very hard not to trash people.”

On December 21, Joe Oteri had finally moved through Tom's tedious asides and comments to the evening of June 27. Tom confirmed that he and Anne Marie had gone to the Ristorante Panorama. They had gone there, he said, to discuss her problem with anorexia—over dinner. “And so we weren't yucking it up,” Tom explained. “The atmosphere was serious but not any worse than that.”

Then he went on to say that “something serious” had occurred regarding the menu, however. “Panorama has two types of calamari on the menu; one is breaded and deep fried and the other is not—it's sautéed in a garlic sauce and it's terrific,” Tom told the jurors. “Well, she brought us the wrong calamari dish. And Anne Marie was quite upset—she had worked so many years in restaurants that she had no patience for people who make mistakes like that. . . . She had the idea most of the day in her head she was going to eat one of her favorite dishes that night and the waitress screws it up . . . so she was very upset about that.”

Otherwise, Tom said, their meal had been pleasant. They had drinks and wine, and they had discussed leaving more than a 20 percent tip even though “the waitress was a klutz.”

They had left Panorama about nine-fifteen. “We talked mostly about the Olympics on the way home.” Tom said he'd told Anne Marie he could get tickets for her, “and she got all animated . . . and said, ‘You lie!' She was quite excited.”

He thought it had taken them about half an hour to get to Wilmington, driving down I-95 and exiting at 202 southbound. They had gone to Anne Marie's apartment first. “We had talked about if she was awake enough—[so] we decided to watch
ER
together . . . at my house because my house was cool and her house was hot as blazes. . . . So she ran upstairs, took the doggie bag from the restaurant with her—I want to mention that. She said she was probably going to change. She was used to me every week giving her her food supply, the things I learned she would eat. And so I think I had a little Acme bag with some soups and grains and things like that that she brought up as well.”

Tom added that the perishables he had for her were in his refrigerator on Grant Avenue. “The apartment was so hot she came right back down again.”
ER
was about to start, he said, and she kept clothes at his house she could change into; he had T-shirts and small-size men's gym shorts there.

“Did she turn on the air conditioner in her apartment?” Oteri asked.

“I don't believe she did.” She hadn't been up there more than ten minutes, Tom said.

“What time did you arrive back at your house on Grant Avenue?”

“ER
had started—but just barely.”

“So that would place it at shortly after ten o'clock?”

“That is correct.”

“Where did you park your car?”

“In the garage—and on that point,” Tom added, “my garage was so narrow that if I pulled in, it was impossible for somebody on the passenger seat to get out, so Anne Marie would get out. . . . I pulled in and she walked in after me.”

Tom recalled that it was very cool in the great room because his air conditioner had been on all day. “We watched
ER.”

“Did anyone change their clothing—?” Oteri began to ask.

“Actually, Anne Marie took off her panty hose just for the sake of being more comfortable. . . . She did not bother changing into any other clothes. . . . I just took off my suit coat and tie. We both took off our shoes.”

“Where were you situated while you were watching
ER?
Who was where?”

The courtroom was hushed, waiting to hear what would come next. Tom's answers were growing more lengthy and complex, and it took a careful ear to extract the kernel of an answer to the question that Oteri had asked from all the words, words, words.

“I typically would sit in the daddy chair—the recliner. And Annie would stretch out as best she could on the love seat. It was a love seat—it was not a sofa. It was not a sleeper couch as some people have said. It was not—it was big enough for her to lie down on but only with her knees pulled up. . . . Now, during the course of the TV show, at one point I went off and sat on the couch with her and she might lay her head on my shoulder or something like that. And we definitely did do that. It was pretty much how it was going at the end of the show.”

“And you watched the entire show with her?”

“Yes. Although Anne Marie—as Anne Marie always did—well, most of the time did—Anne Marie often falls asleep in front of the television and never sees the end of an eleven o'clock show because she wakes up so early in the morning. At one point Anne Marie fell
asleep and I didn't wake her up. So I saw the entire show and she did not. I did wake her up for the end.”

Tom's words flew together, but haltingly and repetitiously. It almost seemed as if he was viewing another scene in his head, one he was hesitant to describe.

“Could you move without waking her up? Could you get up or down without waking her?” Oteri asked.

“Yes. Yes.”

“The show ends at eleven o'clock. After the show ends, what did you do?”

“Well, I heard the phone ringing sometime during the show. I didn't bother answering. I suspected it was Debby because I had told Debby I would probably see her later that evening. And it was not at all unusual for Debby to come over, say eleven o'clock at night, and spend the night, especially during the summer, when her kids were out of school. I remember how the show ended but at the end of the show, I got up to use the powder room, so I checked my voice mail, and sure enough, there was a message from Debby.”

“Were you concerned she would come over?” Oteri asked.

“No. Because I think—I mean, what I figured was that, you know, Anne Marie and I might, you know, hang out to the end of the news. Then I might take her home. Sometimes we would both fall asleep. There were literally times when she would wake up at one-thirty, two o'clock in the morning, and we were both sound asleep, and she would come over and kick me and say, ‘Come on, Capano, you got to drive me home.' Sometimes she did spend the night.” Tom blinked at Oteri and asked, “Where was I?”

“Talking about the phone call. You went into—”

“As I suspected, it was a call from Debby, and I did call her back from the study.” Tom seemed back on track now. “And we had a brief and pleasant conversation. She started on her normal Tatnall subject, which was always a red flag before my eyes. And she said, ‘Can I come over now?' And I said, ‘Not right now, you know. I've got company. It will have to be later,' or something like that. And I just hung up.”

Tom said it was about eleven then. He said he'd gone back to the great room to be sure that Anne Marie hadn't fallen asleep again. “We had both sort of stretched out on the love seat, talking. . . . I knew we both had the next day off . . . and she really did tell me she might be going to the beach with Kim or going to the outlets and [we were] talking about my potential golf game. I figured I'd be taking her home—probably by the end of the news, or she might decide
to stay as long as the beginning of Letterman. We were winding down the evening.”

Tom went on for some time about the golf game he had hoped to play on Friday and some in the gallery sighed. What did that have to do with anything?

“You said you stretched out on the love seat?” Oteri asked, bringing Tom back to the vital night.

“No. Well, we didn't lie down next to each other. I don't mean to give that impression. We were sitting right next to each other . . . our legs were stretched out straight.” He explained that Anne Marie was to his left, and “adjacent to my body.”

“Any parts of her body touch your body?”

“Pretty much her entire right side.”

“Were you engaged in any form of—”

“No, no.”

“—kissing or anything?”

“No. No. Not that way.” There was, at times, a certain prissiness about Tom; it was hard to picture him as the man who had bragged about having so many mistresses. When he was disturbed with a question, he bubbled out a string of “No, no, no, no, no, no, no's,” as if he were truly shocked.

“All right,” Oteri said, “what happened next, sir?”

“Well, the next thing I knew,” Tom answered in a rush, “Debby MacIntyre was in the room. She must have entered the front door. She had a key to my house and I had a key to her house. I even had a garage door opener for her house. And she was pretty ballistic at the time.”

The courtroom buzzed. Although Gene Maurer had hinted at it when he cross-examined Debby, this was the first outright testimony that put her in Tom's house on the last night Anne Marie was seen.

Tom testified that Debby had used her key to come through his front door. She would have to have entered at his front door, walked down a few steps, turned left through a narrow hallway to the kitchen. A few steps more and she was in the great room.

“We didn't hear her come in because of the noise of the air conditioner,” Tom said. “And Debby also has a very soft tread. She's a very small lady, and we didn't realize she was there until she started yelling. I heard her before I saw her. She was yelling as she got closer to the love seat. And then I saw her standing more or less at the end of the love seat. And yelling.”

Tom said Debby had been on the right side of the love seat, a
woman furious. “She was yelling, ‘Who's this? What is this all about? Is this why you couldn't see me?' ”

And suddenly, Tom detoured to editorialize on Debby's work pressures, his “red flags” when the Tatnall School was mentioned. He wanted the jurors to know that it was not strange that Debby had snapped.

“As far as she was concerned, basically I was spending all my romantic time with her. So all of this is sort of coming out and I'm trying to say, ‘Relax. Let's slow down. I mean, Anne Marie and I are friends—' ”

Oteri interrupted to ask what Debby had been wearing.

“I know she had on a T-shirt and some kind of shorts and carrying a little something—”

“Was that ‘something' a purse—or do you know what it was?”

“Something a woman might carry around in the summertime for personal stuff.”

Tom testified that he had been caught between two angry women. “I was listening to Anne Marie saying, ‘Capano, what the hell is this?' And I was turning to Anne Marie to try to explain, to say, you know, ‘Hold up,' ” Tom said, speaking faster with remembered emotion. “And I got up. I stood up to face Debby. And Anne Marie is in the background muttering, ‘I don't want to put up with garbage like this.' And she actually had gotten her panty hose from wherever she had thrown them or put them on the table, and she said, ‘I want to go and I want to go now.'

“And she started to put—I was glancing back and forth between Anne Marie and Debby. And Annie was in the process of pulling her panty hose up and getting her shoes—”

“You were standing?” Oteri rushed to say.

“Yes.”

“And Annie was—”

Colm Connolly objected to the leading question. Oteri was trying desperately to help Tom get his story out in a way that made some kind of sense. Judge Lee sustained the objection.

“I was standing.”

“Where was Anne Marie in relation to you?”

“. . . to my right, and Debby was more or less in front of me. As I said, Anne Marie was pulling on her panty hose, and you know, she wasn't screaming at me but she was making it quite clear whatever was going on here was ridiculous and [she] wanted no part of it and she wanted to go home immediately.”

“What was Debby doing?”

“Debby was off the wall,” Tom said, his face expressing shock. “Debby—I had known Debby a long time. Debby was completely snapped. She was all red from the neck up. She was not coherent. I'm trying to explain to her that ‘This is not what you're trying to make it out to be. Anne Marie and I are friends. You know, I have female friends.' ”

Tom testified that Debby wasn't even listening to him. “She was starting to cry and she was saying, ‘All these years I've waited for you,' and things that just didn't need to be said.”

“How long did this incident take?”

“Which incident?” Tom had been so caught up in his own words. “I mean, what part of the incident?”

“From the time she came in until the time you're telling us about—the hollering, and . . .”

Tom could not give an estimate.

“All right,” Oteri said evenly. “Did something happen after you stood up?”

“Yes.”

“Tell the jury what happened.”

“Debby shot Anne Marie,” Tom said flatly. “And it was absolutely, positively, and certainly accidental.”

So there it was. The terrible accident. Tom stared ahead and stopped in the middle of his long explanation, seemingly unable to pick up the thread of his thoughts.

“Tell the jury what happened, Tom,” Oteri urged.

“She had bought this gun,” Tom said, now incorporating a number of elements that touched on previous testimony, “which she claims she gave to me, but she had bought this gun in May for self-protection. And she particularly made a point of having it with her if she went anyplace at night. Debby frightens very easily. And so she must have had the damned thing in her little carry thing, and the next thing I know I see the gun in her left hand—Debby is left-handed.

“And Anne Marie even saw it and said, ‘Oh, my God,' like making fun of it.
I
couldn't even take it seriously. She never threatened me; she never threatened Anne Marie. She basically said things that were suicidal. You know, ‘After all this time, if I can't have you and if you want somebody younger and prettier,' and all that sort of stuff. She said, ‘I have nothing to live for. I might as well shoot myself.' This is all the talk of somebody who had lost it,” Tom said confidently. “So—”