Everything She Ever Wanted (104 page)

"she may be honest with you.
 
If my mother is there, Debbie will say

whatever Mom wants her to.

It was five minutes to eleven on the morning of April 17, when the

D.A."s investigators drove up to Dr. Villanueva's office in Riverdale,

Georgia.
 
They found Debbie at work, standing at a file, dressed in

shorts and a halter.
 
Michelle Berry noted that Debbie was very thin;

she had huge dark circles under her eyes and a large purpling bruise on

one thigh.
 
She didn't resist arrest.

Rather, she seemed chastened and frightened.
 
Stoop read the charges

against her and advised her of her rights under Miranda.

Debbie immediately blurted, "The nursing idea was my mothens!"

"Are you a registered nurse?"
 
Berry asked.

"No.
 
I never have been."

One of the charges noted the missing Rolex watch, and Debbie said that

she had, in fact, picked up the watch.
 
She refused to say where the

late Mr. Crist's watch was presently.
 
She denied administering any

drugs to Mrs.
 
Crist.

"Mrs. Crist was an alcoholic," she said.
 
"She took all that medicine

herself.

Besides, my mother was in charge of that.
 
I only gave Mr. Crist his

medicine."

Deborah Taylor Cole Alexander was booked into the Fulton County jail.

They found her mother at the Henry County Courthouse in McDonough, a

historic red brick building that had stood there on the town square

since 183

1. Ironically, Pat had gone to testify in Magistrate Court as a

complaining witness in a case against a shoplifter at Golden

Memories.

As Stoop and Berry approached, she turned to look at them without

interest, with no sign of recognition of why they were there.
 
The

colonel and Margureitte Radcliffe were with their daughter in the

courthouse.
 
They recognized the two detectives instantly and watched

them warily.

Again, Don Stoop read the charges and the Miranda warning.
 
Pat stared

at him blankly, then quietly asked him to reread the charges, feigning

shock.
 
She told him she knew why she was being arrested; it was all

because of Susan and Bill Alford.
 
"Susan is mentally ill, you know.

She needs psychiatric care.

Both of them have been making threatening phone calls to me.
 
Bill and

Susan are sick people.
 
Bill called Mrs. Crist, and he has threatened

my life-I can't tell you how many times."

Debbie had paid no attention to the part in the Miranda warning about

remaining silent.
 
Nor did Pat.
 
She, however, was much more indignant

and considerably more talkative than her daughter had been.
 
"Mrs.

Crist was an alcoholic, you know," she told Stoop.
 
"They wanted me to

sign the insurance claim documents as though I was a registered

nurse.

I could not do that-I would not do that; that would be wrong, wouldn't

it?"

With Boppo hovering nearby, Pat sat down and stared out the window,

silent for a moment or two.
 
She had already slipped and didn't realize

it.
 
Neither Berry nor Stoop had mentioned anything at all about

insurance forms being signed by "Pat Taylor, RN."
 
Pat herself had

brought it up.
 
"But, gosh," Pat said, almost childlike as she turned

to Boppo, "that was three or four years ago, wasn't it, Mom?"

The past had always been negligible to Pat; she erased yesterday

continually, save for slights or imagined assaults on herself.
 
Stoop

and Berry had not been surprised to see that Pat was accompanied by her

parents.

Margureitte and Clifford Radcliffe stood beside their daughter, the

expressions on their faces almost identical, a subtle blend of

indignation and concern.

How many years had they done this, Stoop wondered, how many decades of

being there for Pat?

"I am not well, Mr. Stoop," Margureitte said, "and Mrs. Taylor is

under a physician's care.
 
She is being treated for hypertension and

heart complications and she is on medication."

The two investigators had heard this script before, again and again as

they pored over the records of Pat's earlier troubles with the law.

She had been "terminally ill" since 1972.

"My mother is dying of cancer," Pat added, "and I am not well."

Stoop thought she looked remarkably well.
 
The pictures he had seen of

Patricia Taylor Allanson had shown a willowy, beautiful young woman who

might well have been in fragile health.
 
The woman he had just arrested

must weigh over 250 pounds, her features suffused in fat.
 
Her once

exquisitely chiseled jawline hung like a turkey's wattle, and the neck

that "Scarlett" had circled with a ribbon and a cameo was fissured and

corrugated with heavy flesh.

"How is Mrs. Crist?
 
How is her health?"
 
Pat asked, with seemingly as

much genuine concern as Michelle Berry had ever heard.

"She's fine."

"The Crists are very wealthy and influential," Pat said plaintively.

"They can do anything.
 
They have lots of money.
 
I don't have that

kind of money.
 
What are we going to do, Mom?"

"We'll manage somehow," Margureitte said, squeezing her daughter's

hand.

Pat's hands were cuffed behind her and she was led to the government

vehicle for transportation to the Fulton County jail.

Michelle Berry got into the backseat with Pat, and Don Stoop drove.

Pat complained that she was very uncomfortable.
 
She asked Michelle to

remove her handcuffs.

"I can't do that.
 
They're for your protection and ours."

"But my back hurts," Pat whimpered.
 
"And I'm , in pain.
 
I don't have

my heart medicine with me."

Nevertheless, Pat answered their first questions easily enough: her

age, the number of her children.
 
Stoop asked her what her legal name

was.

"Patricia Radcliffe Taylor."

"Not Allanson?"

41 No."

He asked her how she had acquired the military ID card she carried for

the PX and commissary, and she explained that she had been married for

twenty-two years to a man who was in the service.
 
She had added three

and a half years to her burdensome marriage to Gil Taylor.

"Were you ever a nurse in the military?"

I I 'I did some practical nursing assistance during those twenty-two

years."

"You're not a registered nurse?"

"No."

"Ever?"

"No.
 
Never."

But when Don Stoop asked Pat about the circumstances of her 1976 arrest

and conviction for the poisonings of Paw and Nona Allanson, she stared

out the window at a Waffle House and said, "I think you know all the

answers to your questions.

From that point on, the three rode toward Atlanta in silence.

Pat joined Debbie in the Fulton County jail.
 
It was the second time

each had been booked into that facility.
 
Once the two women were

together, neither had anything further to say to the investigators.

Margureitte Radcliffe knew who had caused all the trouble for Pat.
 
It

was Susan, of course-Susan, whose sense of loyalty to family seemed to

be completely absent.
 
There was no telling what harm she might cause

next.

Margureitte called her sister Liz's son, Bobby, in Warsaw, North

Carolina.
 
She wanted to be sure that no one up there had complained to

the authorities about Pat's care of her aunt Lizzie.

Bobby Porter said he didn't feel he could complain to the D.A. in

Duplin County, Nort Carolina, because he hadn't actually been in the

house while his cousin was taking care of his mother.
 
However, he

would not go so far as to write a letter to the Fulton County D.A.

extolling his cousin Pat as a nurse second only to Florence Nightingale

and praising her wonderful care of his mother.
 
Nor would Aunt Lizzie

herself go so far.
 
Boppo would never be close to Liz again; her sister

had refused to come to Pat's rescue.

Shocked and hurt, Boppo also called Bill Alford.
 
"Why in the whole

wide world would you talk to the district attorney's office I you tell

about Pat?"
 
she demanded to know.
 
"Whatever did them?"

"I answered the questions "I talked to them," Bill replied.

they asked."

"You had no right, Bill-not after all that the district attorney's

office has done to the family.
 
They had absolutely no right to know

about Pat's life or about Debbie's life.
 
You know as well as I do that

Pat and Debbie never went over to the Crists to kill them.
 
The only

thing they did wrong was pretend to be registered nurses."

"Did you condone that, Boppo?"
 
Bill asked bluntly.
 
"Didn't you know

that was wrong?
 
That was a very sick old man, and he needed a real

nurse."

There was a very long silence, and finally Boppo said, "I can't talk to

anyone else in the family tonight."

The phone went dead.

. . .

On May 13, Bill and Susan received what was inten e as an official

communique "from the desk of Clifford B. Radcliffe."
 
It was from