Everything She Ever Wanted (102 page)

stream of consciousness, remembering.

"He came down with the pistol to look around in the basement, and he

went over to this area .
 
. . where he stored all his camping stuff,

and he just kind of stepped off and walked in there.
 
And there is one

light in there-which didn't work-and I guess I might have been standing

there breathing hard or something, and he comes over and hollers

upstairs, 'I got him cornered in the hole!"

"And he sticks the pistol in that little area, which is not much bigger

than a walk-in closet, and starts shooting all the way around the wall,

and not far from me.

And he starts over here, and the next one is over here, and the next

one is over here, and he ran out of bullets before he got completely

around.
 
Pieces of concrete and pieces of bullets were flying and

everything.
 
I'm thinking all this stuff hit, plus I'm looking at this

gun, and he honers to my mother to bring down the rifle.
 
Right before

the steps, there is a big light bulb-two-hundred-watt light bulbthat

hangs down.

If you look when you come down the steps, you can see it across the

room.
 
And I had no idea where he was at or anything, and I just

stumbled across this shotgun in there [in the hole] in the

meantime-that he had reported stolen and it was just sitting up against

the wall.
 
It was a single-shot shotgun-" "Was it loaded?"

"Yeah, he always kept it loaded in the house."

"Even with the grandchildren aroun "Well, he always had this shotgun in

his closet-even with me around when I was a little kid."

"Why did it all of a sudden end up in the basement?"

"Well, he reported it stolen along with his other pistol."
 
Tom had no

idea why it had ended up in the hole in the basement.

"Okay," Tom went on, putting his memories into a flood of words.
 
"So

he had emptied his pistol right in there, and by this time it's like

being in a barrel and somebody shooting in a barrel, you know, and I

stumbled across the shotgun, and I said, 'Man, it's time for me to get

out of here, 'cause he done called for that rifle."
 
My mother never

shot a rifle in her life.
 
So she comes down the steps panicking and

everything-'cause she hears the shooting down there-and she runs down

there and she throws the rifle up just as I'm coming out the door, and

I got the shotgun down here, not shooting or anyth' g. Just as I come

out the door [the hole entrance], this bIg flash roes and I jump back

and (my] shotgun goes off.
 
I had no idea that I even hit them.
 
I

surely wasn't shooting at her.
 
. . . Evidently, she [shot] something

and it hit my daddy, because there was blood from right there at the

door and around the basement.
 
I didn't shoot him.
 
. . . And [my]

shotgun didn't hit him, because he was not standing in front of the

door.
 
[And at that range, the shotgun Tom found in the hole would have

literally blown Walter Allanson apart.] So evidently she hit him.
 
And

so everything is ringing up here [Tom tapped his head].
 
I just reached

down on the floor and picked up another shell, and loaded back, and

poked it out the door.
 
I don't know how long this was.
 
It may have

been a minute; it might not have been that long.

And just as I started out the door, he was standing up, throwing the

rifle up over there, and I just shot in that direction.
 
Then, at the

same time, when I looked out the door, I saw my mother laying on the

step, .
 
. . and I see the movement of him over there.

Again the room was silent.

Finally, Don Stoop asked Tom if he had ever heard his father mention

his name.

"All I heard was, 'I got him cornered in the hole."
 
t in my mother

knew I was down there."

"Do you think your father knew .
 
. . ?"

"Yep.
 
'Cause that is what he told the police-that he knew hat broke

into his house and he was going to take care of it."

Stoop asked Tom several times, in several ways, why he thought his

father's shotgun and the shells had been down in that basement

cubbyhole.
 
And he had no idea, no explanation.
 
His grandfather had

called him two weeks before the shoot-out and asked him if he knew who

had stolen his father's shotgun and pistol, and he had been just as

bewildered then.
 
He had I a whole rack of his own guns; Tom had no

interest in his father s guns.

Don Stoop switched back to Pat s adamant refusal to let Tom tell his

attorney about the way the shootings had really happened.
 
"Did you

ever ask her why she was upset about the truth?"

"Well," Tom said, "because it was contradicting to the story she

told.

I mean, she started building the lies from that night, and once you

build, you can't remember every lie.
 
You forget it.
 
Of course, I

don't think she ever forgot anything.
 
But, you know, if she is telling

one thing to the lawyers and everything, and I'm coming up telling them

something else, then the lawyer's gonna say, 'Wait a minute."
 
A

lawyer's got any sense, he would sit there and figure out who was

behind all this stuff.
 
And I guess you could say that's why she didn't

want it brought out."

But Tom had never betrayed Pat.
 
He had taken the whole punishment.

Until this interview, he had never told anyone that I don't he had

talked to his wife moments after the shoot-out, and she certainly had

told no one.
 
Pat had not offered to drive him home -Or anywhere.
 
She

had let him run, alone, through the rainy Georgia night, to make his

way home sixty miles away, any way he could.
 
And she had waited for

her mother and father, for Boppo and Papa, to come pick up the pieces

just as they always had.

Don Stoop and Michelle Berry were quite sure that for Pat the sight of

Tom running toward her in the rain must have seemed like a ghost

materializing through the twilight.
 
They both believed that she had

set him up to be shot dead.
 
She had never expected to see him again

that night.

Or any other.

There were still unanswered questions, even after the interview with

Tom Allanson.
 
There always would be.
 
Stoop had his own theories on

how Walter Allanson's shotgun and shells got in the hole in his

basement.
 
He knew Tom hadn't carried them with him on that July day as

he went to try to work things out with his mother.
 
The East Point fire

fighter who knew Tom well had seen him walking down the street toward

his parents' home.
 
He had seen no shotgun.

It was possible that Walter Allanson himself had put the old shotgun in

his basement.
 
He was a man running scared, just as his son was-each of

them convinced that the other was plotting bloody murder.
 
Walter could

have stashed the gun in the hole so that it would be handy if he were

attacked while he was in the basement.

It could have been his "downstairs gun" and the new high-powered rifle

his "upstairs gun."
 
The borrowed pistol would have been a gun to carry

with him at all times.

Why then would Walter have reported the pistol, shotgun, and a suitcase

as missing in a burglary?
 
That was a hard one.
 
He was so bitterly

angry at Tom.
 
Would he have reported him as a burglar out of

revenge?

Stoop even pondered the possibility that Walter Allanson had cut his

own telephone line and thrown the circuit breaker.
 
If he then called

the police about Tom, as he had, it would have given him some concrete

example of Tom's culpability, perhaps assuring that he would be thrown

in Jail and would no longer be the threat his father believed him to

be.

It was just as possible that someone outside the home had stolen the

guns and the suitcase.
 
The same person or persons might have cut the

phone line and thrown the circuit breaker.

Pat?
 
Hardly.
 
In all the mysterious fires-conflagrations that in some

way benefited Pat-she had been able to prove that she was nowhere near

the house and barns when they burst into flames.
 
She was far away when

the ambush at Lake Lanier occurred.
 
It had not been Pat herself who

placed harassing phone calls to Hap Brown's wife, but rather a

friend.

The purported plan to have her son-inlaw killed was by contract.

Pat did not get her own hands bloody, or dirty or sootstained, Stoop

figured.
 
But she certainly had had a number of people who had

practically turned themselves inside out to "help" her.
 
The woman

could be charismatic, seductive, threatening, or pathetic-whatever it

took to get her way.
 
But no one would be able to prove at this late

date that her fine hand had ordered ambushes, burglaries, line cutting,

or anything else.

The times that Pat had carried out her own plans, she had been

caught.

The arsenic poisonings of Paw and Nona had netted her a long prison

term.
 
And if Stoop had his way, her machinations at the Crist estate

were about to net her another; that crime he could prove.
 
But he

wasn't as solidly grounded trying to prove her involvement in the

Allansons' murders-although he didn't believe for one moment that their

deaths had surprised her.

Her only surprise had been that Tom hadn't died too.

They were getting close to going to the grand jury for an indictment.

They knew where their quarry was.
 
Pat was still selling old brooches

and necklaces at Golden Memories, and Debbie was working in Dr.

Villanueva's office.