Everything She Ever Wanted (101 page)

to tell a lie, but she couldn't take two steps to tell the truth.
 
.

.

. Maybe I shouldn't say that, but she is a habitual liar."
 
Stoop began

his next question carefully.
 
"Do you think she's crazy, or do you

think she is calculating every move that she does?
 
.
 
. . Do you feel

that she thinks everything out .
 
. . that she calculated your

reaction-that she knew how to manipulate you?
 
.
 
. . Correct me if I'm

wrong.
 
I think her main goal was to keep you in prison, to keep you

shut up as long as you were there.

"Like I said," Tom sighed, "she didn't care whether I was living or

dying in there.
 
. . . I don't think she cared'two hoots and a holler

about me getting out or anything else."

Asked about any insurance he might have had on his life, Tom recalled

that he had some-New York Life, he thought-but he had no idea what had

happened to it.

When he married Pat, Tom said, he could never have foreseen that his

problems with his parents would end in violence.
 
"I thought it was

just going to be separation from the family.
 
Our family goes through

these separations.
 
. . . You know, they [my parents] were upset about

the divorce, but I didn't ever think it was going to go this far."

As for his father's supposed threats.
 
Tom said they all came down to

him through Pat or Boppo.
 
That was how he learned it t,was all going

to be over by the weekend."

"In your belief.
 
. . . do you think Pat helped kill your parents?"

There was a long silence.
 
Tom looked down at his hands, debating.
 
"I

wouldn't say that she helped kill them, because the only way they died

was in a case of about thirty seconds of selfdefense.

Stoop explained that he was speaking in the broader sense.

"I think," Tom said slowly, "that if she had never been in the picture,

they would still be alive.
 
Put it that way.
 
I mean, if I never got

involved with her, dated her, or anything like that .
 
. . I think my

father and I probably could have worked out our differences.
 
. . . I

just wish I'd never met her.
 
I'd be a lot better Off.

Tom still wasn't ready to talk about the shooting.
 
The investigators

could sense that.
 
After all these years, it remained a source of

intense pain, and why wouldn't it be?
 
He did, however, reveal a bit of

information that was highly intriguing.

Pat had always insisted that she had never seen Tom on July 3, 1974

-not after he said goodbye to her at her doctor's office.

In his panicked state after the shootings, Tom told Stoop and Berry, he

had run toward the freeway, toward the King Building.

"Pat had parked in the parking lot of the King Building," Tom said,

unaware of the surprised looks on his interviewers' faces.
 
"I told her

what had happened, and I said, 'I've got to go home."
 
And she said,

'My parents are coming."
 
She called them or something, and I don't

know what she had called them for."

"Okay," Stoop said, struggling to keep the excitement out of his

voice.

"This is important.
 
Let me back up.
 
You are telling us now that once

you ran, you did, in fact, find her parked at the King Building?"

"Yeah."

"How did you happen to find her at the King Building?"

"I went right by it."
 
tiyou just went by it.
 
And you looked up and

you sawer.

What was she doing when you went up to her?"

"Sitting in the jeep."

"What did she say to you.

"I was telling her what had happened.
 
I said, 'I got to go.

I don't know what to do.
 
I'm scared and I'm going home."
 
And she just

said, 'Well, I called my parents."
 
I don't know why she called her

parents.
 
She said they were on the way, and I said, 'I ain't

waiting.

I'm gone."
 
.
 
. . I don't know what reason she had to call them.
 
Far

as I knew, she already knew about it [the murders] when I got there.

From the way it sounded.
 
And so I left and hitchhiked home and I did

not go down Cleveland Avenue.

I went home and my grandfather called me and told me that these four

police had come over and had a warrant for my arrest.
 
I said, 'Well,

call them and tell them where I'm at."
 
And I didn't give them any

problems and Sheriff Riggins called me-Mr. Riggins and I was good

friends-and he said, 'I don't want any problems,' and I said, 'I will

not cause you no problems.
 
Come over here."
 
I just more or less gave

myself UP."

There was an electricity in the room.
 
Perhaps Tom had never before

allowed himself to recognize all the careful planning that must have

gone into the apparently spontaneous shoot-out.
 
He had done a lot of

thinking in prison.
 
Fifteen and a half years of thinking.
 
And that,

combined with Stoop's and Berry's questions, had sifted stark truths

out of all of Pat's lies and diversionary techniques.

Slowly, Stoop began to list the "coincidences" involved in Tom's

burgeoning troubles.
 
First, there had been the formaldehyde in Tom's

baby's milk.
 
Pat hated Little Carolyn and anything that connected her

to Tom.
 
"We know that Pat works with horses, like you," the detective

pointed out to Tom.
 
"We know she had access to formaldehyde because

you had it to treat your horses.

"Then," Stoop continued, "she tells you your father I drove all the way

down there [to Zebulon] and exposed himself.
 
. . . Whether you liked

your father or disliked him, you know he would never do anything like

that anyway.

Eventually it was proven he was still working in his office.
 
You were

going to go resolve this with your mother because you knew your father

was working, so you felt that was the best time.
 
But Pat didn't want

you to resolve anything.

Correct?"

"I assume so."

"You both parked at the doctor's office.
 
You go one way.
 
She goes the

other.
 
You show up at your parents' house .
 
. . the basement is

unlocked.

Correct?"

Tom nodded.

"Little Carolyn with the kids comes home.
 
Your mother comes home.

You're stuck in the basement, and suddenly your father shows up.

Testimony shows that some woman called your father.
 
. . . All of a

sudden, the shooting occurs.
 
You run by the King Building.
 
Pat is

sitting there, and you tell her what happened, and she says, 'Don t

worry about it.
 
I already called my parents, and they're on their way

up here."
 
She stays and you leave.
 
What do you think all this means

to you, now that you're looking at it?"

In spite of all the thinking Tom had done on the tragedy that had

changed his life forever, it was apparent that for the first time it

had all come together with a terrible atonal clang in his mind.
 
"It

sounds," he said, "like something she had sat down and planned out, you

know-but I don't know how you could do that as far as the other people

involved."

Clearly, Tom saw the tragedy from the viewpoint of a man who had never

deliberately set out to hurt anyone.
 
He was not a devious man.
 
He was

not a man who understood willful cruelty to other human beings.

Don Stoop pointed out all the antagonizing, all the real or imagined

slights aggravated to major proportions-just as Pat had exacerbated the

terrible wound in her own buttock.
 
She had been brilliant at driving

the wedge between Tom and his father, and then at setting the little

fires of worry and rage that would certainly grow to a conflagration no

one could stop.

Quietly, Don Stoop wondered aloud if maybe Pat hadn't believed that she

had seen her husband alive for the last time when she kissed him

goodbye at the doctor's office.
 
"She could have possibly watched you

walk away, given you ten or fifteen minutes, called, and all of a

sudden, your father showed up-knowing good and well how you and your

father were getting along.
 
And then.
 
. . .

boom.

"BOOMI" The three of them sat there in silence, the two detectives and

the very tall man who had given Pat Taylor Allanson two decades of his

life.
 
The clock on the wall ticked so loudly that it too might have

been going, "Boom BOOM!"

+ + + Finally, Tom was ready to talk about what had happened in the

basement.

He began by saying that he had told Pat exactly what had happened, and

he had explained the layout of the basement.
 
Against Pat's wishes, he

had told Ed Garland too, but by then it was far too late for his

attorney to change his defense tactics.
 
No one would have believed

that the man on trial wasn't a liar-a man who had lied once might lie

again.
 
Tom and Ed Garland were trapped in the legal maze Pat had

forced them into.

Tom's deep, pleasant Georgia voice began the story, and Stoop and Berry

listened.
 
Tom hadn't been much of a talker until 'i now, but his mind

had temporarily stepped out of this interview room into the dampness of

an old basement in a time long gone by, and his words continued in a