Everything She Ever Wanted (98 page)

Tom's voice was deep and concerned, and Pat's was alternately girlish

and seductive.
 
Stoop had not yet spoken to Pat Taylor, but the woman

on the tapes sounded nothing at all like the charge nurse he had come

to know through others' descriptions.
 
Almost every call had a single

theme: Tom trying to cheer and placate his distraught wife.
 
Tom

forcing down his own concerns to keep Pat serene.
 
Tom agonizing over

he mysterious infection he was told would soon take Pat's life.
 
Tom

refusing to give up as Pat predicted only doom and despair.
 
And,

finally, on one wrenching tape, Tom breaking down at last into sobs

that still held so much raw pain this long after.

Pat's manipulation was skilled, honed, and absolute.

There were other conversations that only pointed up further how she had

used Tom.
 
Stoop's eyes widened as lfe heard how entirely changed her

voice was when she jousted with attorneys one moment imperious, the

next ever-so-slightly flirtatious.
 
He heard Pat veto the possibility

that Tom might become a teacher in prison and avoid hard time at

Jackson.
 
Voices of the dead were there too: Paw Allanson, who sounded

like an aged Tom, calling to inquire about Pat's health; and then Nona,

her speech impaired but sounding worried about Pat.

Stoop knew how Pat's "fatal" infection had occurred; he had read

Boppo's testimony in her appeal, her description of how Pat herself had

continually opened and irritated the wound in her hip.

She had used the emotions of all these people who feared for her life;

she had bent them and twisted them and squeezed bloody anxiety from

them.

She had orchestrated it all.

d Pat's voice threatening Tom's ex-wife and won Stoop hear dered why

she hadn't bothered to erase the damning evidence.

Stoop knew that Little Carolyn Allanson had been scheduled to be one of

the strongest witnesses against Tom.
 
It would have been shortly before

the trial when Pat dialed the drugstore where Carolyn worked and asked

in a light, sexy voice to spea to someone in the hair dye department,

Carolyn's section.
 
Stoop heard Carolyn answer and Pat's voice drop as

she hissed, "Be careful."

Then she slammed the phone down.

This woman had hurt other human beings physically, and Stoop listened

to the way she worked insidiously to erode their last vestiges of

serenity.
 
He wondered which was worse.

The most devastating tape of all included several twenty-fiveminute

conversations between Tom and Pat when he was about to be transferred

from the Fulton County jail to Jackson Prison.
 
He had borrowed and

bought time from the other prisoners so that he could talk longer to

his wife.
 
And what did he get in return?
 
A woman who whined, wept,

accused, and predicted nothing but doom.

She timed her responses meticulously.
 
It was so obvious to a detached

listener.
 
When Tom was beaten down and he managed to too low, she

whispered, "I love you, Sugar, come back.

She was like a cat.
 
She let the mouse go just far enough, and then she

pounced and impaled her prey on the unsheathed claws of her words.
 
On

the rare, rare occasions that Tom spoke firmly or harshly to Pat,

reacting to too much jabbing, she burst into sobs and said that he

didn't love her, she was worthless, and she had just wanted him to be

proud of her.
 
And he was abjectly apologetic.

Despite her tears, one thing was patently clear.
 
She was enjoying

herself.
 
The Pat on the tapes reveled in every minute of her

conversations with her husband, listening to him twist in the wind,

hearing his voice drained of power.
 
These weren't phone conversations;

they were contests.
 
And she always won.
 
She was Delilah and Tom was

Samson.
 
Each day she rendered this man of such strength helpless with

her words.

Tom came close to the real truth once, although he was speaking

metaphorically.
 
So close that Pat gasped.

"Tom, when they take you away, I won't know if you're alive or dead."

"Pat," he pleaded, "[in your letters] you're just so eaten up with

hate.
 
You're just so bitter.........

"Tom!"
 
she sobbed.
 
"Can't I do anything right anymore?
 
You won't

love me-" "Pat, you've got to keep digging at it like a sore; you'll

just make it worse-" "Mat?"
 
Pat's voice was shocked from its petulant

whimper.

Stoop, knowing what he now knew, realized that Tom had inadvertently

made Pat believe he had somehow found out about her self-mutilation.

"Sugar," Tom soothed, unaware.
 
"I mean it isn't gonna get any better

by your hating everyone."

Stoop could hear Pat release her pent-up breath in relief.

She hadn't been caught at all.
 
Stoop also realized that there must

have been secrets that Pat wanted Tom to keep.
 
But what were they?

If Tom mentioned anyone but her, Pat grew petulant and gave orders.
 
"I

love you, Tom.
 
I love you, Sugar.
 
I don't want anyone else in our

lives."

Clearly she did not, Stoop realized.
 
If Tom had no one but Pat, then

he would do exactly what she instructed.
 
If he believed she alone

loved him and was working desperately to set him free, even though she

was "near death" herself, then he would do anything she asked.
 
But

what did she want him to do-or not do?

Stoop realized, too, that if there were secrets that were dangerous to

Pat, an isolated Tom would be less likely to give them away.
 
And if he

had agreed to her suicide pact and carried out his part, then a dead

Tom would have given away no secrets ever.

At some point, Don Stoop knew he would have to talk with Tom.

He wondered what the man was like now.
 
He had been locked up for more

than fifteen years, and free for only a little over a year.

Had prison crushed him?
 
Of one thing Stoop was fairly sure.
 
Tom

Allanson wasn't going to relish talking about Pat and the decade of the

seventies.

And who would blame him?

When Don Stoop questioned Debbie Cole Alexander's exhusband, Gary, he

didn't care to discuss Pat either-beyond describing his former

mother-in-law as a "vicious, scheming, evil bitch."
 
He recalled all

too well when he had been informed that Pat had hired a hit man to kill

him.
 
He had believed it at the time, and he still half believed it.

Gary Cole wanted nothing to do with Pat and Debbie.
 
He was still

afraid of Pat, and he made no excuses for it.

. . .

By March of 1991, Pat and Debbie were aware that they were being

investigated.
 
They were uneasy, apprehensive about someone unseen

retracing their lives, and had angrily accused Susan of "betraying"

them.

And Boppo, of course, rose up to defend her daughter.
 
She ran into

Bill Alford at the riding stable where Ashlynne and Courtney took

lessons.
 
Although she had come to think of Susan as the pariah of the

Siler clan, and an ultimately evil person, Boppo still looked upon Bill

as someone she could count on.
 
While Susan gave away her every emotion

in her face, in Boppo's eyes, Bill was the opposite.
 
His slight,

sardonic smile betrayed nothing.

Boppo suggested to her grandson-in-law that he hook up a tape recorder

to the Alfords' phone-his own phone-so that she could keep track of

what Susan was doing.
 
She reminded Bill that Susan was undoubtedly

crazy; she would have to be to turn on her mother the way she had.

Poor Pat.
 
Everyone knew, Boppo said, that Pat had suffered so all her

life, and now she had to deal with an ungrateful and treacherous

child!

Bill solemnly promised Boppo that he would hurry home and hook up a

tape recorder under the house to monitor Susan's phone conversations.

He had no intention of doing any such thing, but he did not want the

Radcliffes to become aware of how comprehensive the Fulton County

district attorney's investigation was, or that both Bill and Susan were

cooperating with Don Stoop and Michelle Berry.
 
If there was any

evidence left, any of the items missing from the Crists' house, Stoop

wanted it left right where it was.

By the end of March 1991, Stoop had proved to his own satisfaction

several of the possible charges against Pat and Debbie in the Crist

case, but he ached to connect Pat once and for all to the shooting

deaths of Walter and Carolyn Allanson.
 
There was no statute of

limitations on murder.

Rounding up witnesses from seventeen years before was not easy.

Michelle talked to Jean Boggs, whose memory of Pat was as lucid as if

she had seen her only the day before.
 
Jean was very helpful in giving

background information, but she had avoided contact with the

Radcliffes-and even her nephew Tom-for years.

She had no current knowledge of their activities.
 
No one had ever

convinced her that Pat was not in some way part of a conspiracy that

had ended in the murder of her brother and sister-in-law.

Stoop found the receptionist who had worked for Pat Allansons doctor in

East Point in July of 1974.
 
In fact, she still worked there, and she

promised to check the appointment book for July 3.

She remembered seeing Pat that day.
 
It was, after all, a day to

remember.
 
Pat had been in the office, just as she told the East Point

police the night of the shooting.
 
] However, the appointment book