And Never Let Her Go by Ann Rule Read Free Book Online Page B

they could count on. Marian was in college, studying to be a psychologist, but she was only a girl, after all, and it was to his sons that Lou looked for his immortality.
    For some reason, perhaps by their own private agreement, Tommy always drove a black sports car and Louie had a white one.Everyone who lived in Brandywine Hundred hung out at the Charcoal Pit on the Concord Pike. It was a hamburger joint not unlike any other teenage hangout in America, but the charcoal-grilled burgers and the fancy ice cream floats, and most of all the ambiance, packed it every night and especially on weekends. When the Capano boys drove up in their new cars, young hearts beat a little faster. The Capano brothers cruised the boardwalk and the strip at the shore when the family summered in Wildwood, so tanned and good looking and sure of themselves.
    In prep school, Tommy seemed unattainable for most girls. He was polite and friendly enough, but it seemed a given that he would choose a girl that everyone wanted. “I remember him in his black convertible,” a Wilmington woman recalled. “He was dating this really rich girl—beautiful, of course—but I can’t even remember her name. She lived in a house that was basically Tara, with the white pillars and all. Tommy’s car would be parked out in front. I knew then that he was kind of—well, when you were around Tommy, you thought you were in the presence of a god. None of the rest of us could ever hope to actually
date
him.”
    Tommy Capano was just under six feet tall, not as handsome as Joey or as dynamic as Louie, but he
did
have the full lips and classic nose of an Italian statue. More than that, he was such a nice guy with a wonderful soft voice. “When Tommy talked to you,” a woman who met him at a party said, “you had the feeling that you were the only person in the room. He focused
entirely
on you—no eyes darting around the room or over your shoulder.”
    Even the guys his own age who were jealous of Tommy because of his wealth and popularity, and because his father had bought him a sports car, admitted that he had earned his popularity. No one ever said he was less than kind to everyone. He was the leader, the one who would keep them together for reunions for decades to come. One of Tommy’s classmates was a diabetic who sometimes went into a coma. It was Tommy who kept the syringe of insulin just in case, and Tommy who didn’t hesitate to use it to bring his friend around.
    â€œYou could literally trust him with your life,” a man who graduated from Archmere with Tom said. “He was always more mature than we were.”
    Joey, three years younger than Tommy and a year younger than Louie, attended Brandywine High School rather than Archmere. He was the huskiest of the brothers and the least academically inclined,but he was an outstanding wrestler in high school, competing in the 185-pound class.
    During the time that his big brothers were at Archmere and Brandywine High, Gerry Capano was still a little kid, in kindergarten when Tommy was about to graduate from Archmere in 1967. Tommy, Louie, and Joey were like three extra fathers to him, and he adored them. He still got pretty much everything he asked for. Nobody saw any reason not to spoil Gerry.
    Tom graduated from Archmere in 1967 and was accepted at Boston College. Louie, graduating in 1970, went to the University of Delaware in Newark. Joey went a year after that. Tom would remember his little brother, Gerry, sitting on his chest and begging him not to go away to college. It was a wrench for him, too; he considered himself as much Gerry’s father as Lou was.

Chapter Three
    R OBERT F AHEY S R . failed to get himself together when he was widowed. “After my mom died,” Brian remembered, “the family situation deteriorated—slowly at first, but completely after a while. My father eventually stopped working, and he had been a heavy drinker