Everything She Ever Wanted (14 page)

wallet in his pocket.
 
. . . He had his jeans on."

"Were there any guns with him or anything?"
 
Zellner asked.

"He didn't have any guns with him.
 
. . . Tom couldn't kill anybody."

Pat explained that Tom's parents and maternal grandmother lived very

close to her doctor's office.
 
"Tom .
 
. . told me he was going to talk

to them one more time: 'I am going to beg and plead with them,' the

said].
 
I said, 'Don't beg and plead with your father.
 
just leave him

alone.
 
Maybe if we just leave them alone, they will leave us

alone."All we were trying to do was just start over again.

Pat said she had called everyone she could think of-Tom's parents'

house, his mother's office-but she didn't know Mae Mama's number, so

she had gotten in the jeep and driven around looking for Tom, becoming

more and more concerned.
 
She called her own house in Zebulon, although

Tom would scarcely have had time to travel all the way to Pike

County.

She even called Liz Price and told her Tom was missing.
 
Pat said she

had finally called her mother and father to come and help her.

Zellner noted that Pat Allanson was highly dramatic as she described

her terror.

"I sat there and started working on the skirt .
 
. . out in the open

lot.
 
I didn't want to get too close to the building.
 
I knew it would

get dark up there, and I didn't know anything about who might be

hanging around up there."

"You never did actually go to his mother and father's house?"

"No.
 
I drove into his grandmother's drive.
 
. . . I was gong to try to

talk to her but I chickened out at the last minute.

I thought, No, this is stupid.
 
They won't talk to me anyway.

They will probably just shoot me because they have threatened to kill

us both."

The picture Pat painted was of two young people in love, besieged by

wicked in-laws and a vindictive former wife.

Zellner heard at least a half-dozen times about the "excessive"

alimony, the lecherous exposing father-in-law, the threats and the

strange calls in the middle of the night.

It sounded as if she had been living in hell.
 
She appeared to be a

helpless, ill, and inured woman who had spent hours gripped by anxiety

when her husband failed to meet her at her doctor's office.

"Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"
 
Zellner asked about

Tom.

"I don't know unless he has gone home.
 
But how could he go home.
 
I

don't know how-" "Where are you-all living now?"

"We have a farm in Zebulon.
 
I bought a farm down there.

When Tom and I were married, we moved out there.
 
. . .

Everybody knows it by 'the Pat Allanson farm."
 
I have had a Morgan

farm for over fifteen years in Georgia and I am known for my horses.
 
I

moved down there to get away from up here for us to start again."

"Is anybody at home now?"

"No.
 
In fact, the farm is unlocked.
 
Everything is wide open because

we expected to come right on back.
 
We have horses that haven't been

fed, cows-or anything."

"Did you say you don't think Tom would be capable of anything like

that?"
 
he asked, meaning murder.

"Listen to me, " Pat said fervently.
 
"The only way Tom could hurt

anybody is if they tried to hurt him first.
 
Tom couldn't go in there

and do something to somebody just out of the clear blue sky.
 
No way.

Not Tom."

"Even if all this back pressure had built up on him?"

Pat shook her head impatiently.
 
The police were wasting time by not

questioning Tom's ex-wife Carolyn Allanson further.

"Tom wouldn't have gone off and left me there unless it was vitally

important or unless he wasforced to go .
 
. . or they did something to

him.
 
I don't know.
 
But if he went back to their house with them, I'll

guarantee Carolyn would not have wanted them to talk.
 
. . . If they

listened to Tom, then they would have found out that she parties and

that she leaves those childrenand all kinds of things that she didn't

want them to know.
 
. . . Tom didn't shoot anybody unless somebody

tried to hurt him first, and I still don't believe he even shot anybody

then."
 
But she said she would not put-it past Carolyn to use a gun.

She has shot at Tom before-when they were living together.
 
. . . I

still remember him being late to shoe horses at my place because of

that.
 
. . . But if he was caught in the middle of it-if everything has

tried to be pinned on him-" Pat drew herself up as if she were about to

make a most important pronouncement.
 
"If he is running, he is running

because he is scared because somebody is going to try to put it on

him.

" "Would you have any idea where we might find him?"

"Where would a man go with no money-if he even has a dollar?

He would listen to me, but I don't know where to look for him.
 
Do you

think I don't want to find him?"

"If you should hear from him, be sure and let us know."

"Listen," Pat said earnestly.
 
"Is there any way?
 
I don't know if he

is near a radio or television.
 
Isn't there any way?
 
If I could just

tell him to come in "We'll see what we can work out," Zellner said.

"If we can do it."
 
Pat Allanson was eager to go on television to give

a dramatic plea to her fugitive husband-if that was what it would take

to get him back.
 
"If they haven't killed him," she said bitterly, and

Zellner wasn't sure whether she was referring to his parents or the

police.

"No," Zellner assured her.
 
"Nothing like that-yet.
 
But it could come

to that if we don't get him."

Pat, supported tenderly by the Radcliffes, was allowed to leave the

East Point police station after Colonel Radcliffe posted a

thousand-dollar bond.
 
She would be staying with her parents at their

Tell Road stables until Tom was found.

Zellner interviewed Carolyn Allanson next and failed to make much sense

out of her story.
 
She was still in shock.
 
She kept repeating that

Daddy Allanson had been searching for a burglar in the house, that he

had gone down to the cellar and called to Mother Allanson to bring down

his new rifle.
 
Through tears, Carolyn told Zellner that Daddy had

saved her life and her babies' lives by ordering them out of the

house.

She did not mention a shooter-or shooters-by name.
 
Zellner decided to

talk with her again when she had regained a modicum of control.

Chief Deputy Billy Riggins of the Pike Count Sheriff's 0

e was at home late in the evening of July 3, 1974.
 
Five days before,

he had shown a panicky Pat Allanson how to load a gun to protect

herself from further sexual advances from her father-inlaw.
 
Her

complaint was certainly peculiar, but it hadn't seemed to be a major

incident, and Riggins hadn't expected to hear from the Kentwood Morgan

Farm again soon, although the sheriff's office had received an

inordinate number of calls from the Allansons in the short time they

had occupied the property.
 
Riggins had half a suspicion that the lady

was one of those nervous types.
 
For all he knew, she'd seen a stalk of

corn waving in the wind and imagined an ear of corn right into a man's

pecker.

But then it had been the very next day, just four days ago, when

Riggins went out to Kentwood again at the request of the Forsyth County

Sheriff's Office.
 
Walter O'Neal Allanson, the alleged exposer, and his

wife had been ambushed near Lake Lanier in that county.
 
Riggins had

checked out the Allanson farm on June 29 and reported back that no one

was home.

The new residents were proving to be anything but boring.

Nevertheless, Riggins was shocked on this rainy Wednesday night when he

got a call forwarded by the Pike County dispatch center.

The East Point police wanted him to send deputies out to Kentwood Farm

and see if there was any activity there.
 
Most particularly, they asked

him to be on the lookout for Walter Thomas Allanson, the owner, who was

being sought for questioning in the murder of his parents.

Riggins sent deputies out to sit on the place, and they waited in the

drizzling rain.
 
They reported back that the house and barn were

apparently empty, and that there were no vehicles on the premises.

Riggins asked them to call him back the minute they caught sight of Tom

Allanson.

Sometime after 2:30 A.M Riggins's phone rang.
 
Deputies had just seen

Tom walking into his house.
 
Riggins called the GBI (Georgia Bureau of