Everything She Ever Wanted (13 page)

Lynn, who listened quietly to her concerns.

"Ma'am, all I can tell you is that he [Walter] has been shot."

"Shot?
 
.
 
. . What about Carolyn-Carolyn, Walter's wife?"

"She has been shot too."
 
Jean Boggs's knees buckled as she heard Lynn

say, "They have been carried to South Fulton Hospital and I would

recommend that you go there."

Jean didn't get much more information at the hospital, which was only

two blocks away.
 
The receptionist summoned a nurse and Jean begged,

"Please tell me something.
 
Just not knowing is killing me."

The nurse turned and went down a corridor, and another nurse

appeared.

"Could I see my brother and sister-in-law?"

"No.
 
Two bodies are just arriving back there and they have not been

identified, and that is all I can tell you.
 
You'll have to wait for a

detective to get here."
 
Both nurses seemed upset, and they evaded all

Jean's desperate pleas for information.

It was a nightmare.
 
Jean demanded to see Lieutenant Thornhill, who she

had been told was in charge.
 
She knew Gus Thornhill.
 
Surely he would

be straight with her.
 
She would identify her brother and

sister-in-law.

Who else was there?
 
Her parents were too old to go through this, and

she didn't even know where her nephew Tommy lived now.

Thornhill hurried over, and when Jean saw him he was holding Carolyn

Allanson's driver's license in his hand.
 
Her heart turned over.
 
"Are

Walter and Carolyn back there dead?"
 
she breathed.

"Yes."

"Can I see them?"

"Mrs. Boggs."
 
Thornhill looked away from her and took a deep

breath.

"I have known you a long time, and I feel like a friend of yours.
 
I'm

going to ask you out of friendship not to go and look."

"IV'hat haPPened?"

"Tom killed them.

No.
 
NO!
 
Tommy wouldn't do that.
 
It didn't make any sense to jean.

Vaguely, she was aware of a television set in the background.
 
The

shootings were already on the news.
 
Everyone was looking for her

nephew, Tommy, who was believed to be wounded.
 
All Jean could think

was, My Lord, I will have three to bury instead of two.

And then jean realized that she had to get to her parents and tell them

before they turned on the television.
 
It would kill Paw and Nona to

hear it like that.
 
Gus Thornhill said he would drive her to the elder

Allansons'.

As Thornhill and Jean Boggs left the hospital, they passed an ambulance

parked at the ER doors.
 
One of the two back doors was open.and Jean

saw a body covered by a bloodied sheet.
 
One bare foot stuck out.

Transfixed with horror, she was drawn toward the ambulance.
 
It took

both Thornhill and her neighbor to pull her away.
 
"Gus, I want the

truth," Jean said.
 
"Is that Walter?
 
Is that my brother?"

"Yes, ma'am, but I must still ask you not to look."

When jean and Gus Thornhill reached the elder Allansons' place on

Washington Road, she asked her father to sit down, but he stood,

resolute, braced, an old man who had known tragedy before and survived

it.

"Paw," Jean said softly.
 
"Walter and Carolyn have been killed -1 don't

know any way to break this to you any gentler-and they're looking for

Tommy, Paw."

Paw's first words were hollow.
 
"Well, I have been expecting something

like this."

When they told Nona, she began to scream and scream.
 
Her physician,

Dr.
 
Lanier Jones, came over to give her a shot so she could sleep.

Paw was worried sick about what might have happened to "the boy."
 
He

called down to Kentwood and the phone rang twenty times, an empty sound

in an empty house.
 
He would keep trying until he got Tommy on the

line.
 
When jean finally got home, she realized that she was still

clutching an envelope they had given her at the hospital.
 
She stared

at it blankly, wondering what it could be.

"I dumped the contents of the package I had into my hand," she later

recalled, "and it was my sister-in-law's rings and they were just

coated with blood, and with that I said, 'Oh my God, I just can't stand

any more!"
 
Gus Thornhill called Detective George Zeliner at home at

9:30

P.m. on the night of July 3 and asked him to come in to the station to

interview two subjects: Carolyn Allanson the younger and Patricia

Taylor Allanson.
 
When Zeliner arrived at East Point police

headquarters, he was given a rundown on what was known so far about the

double murder which wasn't much.
 
Zellner had been with the East Point

department for two and a half years, and he had been a detective for

only a year.
 
He was a thin-but muscled-young man.

It was ten minutes to eleven before Zellner could turn his attention to

Patricia Allanson, who was waiting nervously on one of the station's

long oak benches.
 
He saw a very attractive woman with startling green

eyes.
 
She wasn't crying; she looked exhausted and apprehensive.

The older couple with her were being very solicitous.

Zellner explained to Pat that under the Miranda decision he had to read

her her rights as she was-at least nominally-a suspect and/or a

material witness in the shooting deaths of her husband's parents.
 
Pat

signed the waiver with only a trace of concern.

With Detective Lambert standing by as a witness, Zellner began to

interview Pat.
 
"Mrs. Allanson, I wonder if you would start with this

afternoon?"
 
he asked.
 
"What happened leading up to your husband's

disappearance?"

Pat spoke rapidly and breathlessly; she had waited so long to talk to

someone.
 
Zellner had only to ask a short question here and there to

keep the flow of her thoughts channeled into some sort of order.

She began with her own numerous physical problems, her sleep

deprivation, and Tom's absolute insistence that she see a doctor.

"We finished shoeing horses in the morning.
 
. . . Then Tom brought me

in and took me to Dr. Thompson's office like he always does, 'cause I

can't drive without it hurting me.
 
. . . He walked up to the door with

me like always.
 
. . . It must have been threethirty-something like

that.
 
I got through at the doctor's and Tom still wasn't in the

waiting room, so I went outside and the jeep was there.
 
. . . When he

left me, he walked in the opposite direction toward the C&S Bank.
 
I

thought he was going up there to talk to them about a loan he has

there.
 
He was trying to get an extension on it because he had been

having to pay so much alimony and so much court costs and all and his

father had made him lose a couple of jobs he had, and he had been

begging and pleading with his father to leave us alone.
 
His father

would call and make threats and his father came out to our house last

Friday when I was cutting grass .
 
. . and exposed himself.7 .
 
. .

Then he [Walter] called and told my mother to tell Tom that he was

going to kill him.
 
. . . Tom had said several times he was going to

see him, and I said, 'No, just leave him alone.

Pat shifted gears suddenly.
 
"I waited and waited for Tom and he didn't

come, and he has never left me like that."

"What time did you come out of the doctor's office?"

"They took me so soon .
 
. . they weren't very busy today.
 
I went in

and he took the X ray of my shoulder.
 
I don't think I was in the

doctor's office over an hour at the very most.
 
. . . I went outside

and Tom wasn't in the jeep .
 
. . and I had the skirt for the costume

and I started working on it.
 
I kept looking at my watch and I went

back in the office and asked if I could use the phone.
 
I was going to

call over to my daughter's.
 
. .

. It wasn't like him at all and I was beginning to get worried about

him because of the threats his father had made to him.
 
The first thing

that entered my mind was that just maybe .
 
his mother and father had

driven by and maybe he was talking to them, or maybe he had gone to

talk to them.
 
. . . I waited and waited and waited.

Then I really started getting nervous.
 
. . . It was really getting

late.
 
. . . It must have been six because all those cars from across

the street in the professional buildings-everybody was coming out of

there.
 
I was trying to figure where there was a telephone.
 
. . . The

only telephone I knew of was in the King Professional Building.
 
I got

in the jeep and drove there.
 
. . .

Tom knew I couldn't drive that thing any great distance without it

hurting me.
 
So I tried to call his mother's office and there was no

answer-" "Where does she work?"

"At Dr. Tucker's office.
 
I looked that number up.
 
I had to go into

that chicken place and get some change.
 
. . . I was so nervous .
 
.

.

I didn't know whether he got run over by a car or something!
 
I started

thinking, Now just stop and think.
 
I called the hospital first to see

if there had been anybody hit by a car or anything.
 
I knew he had his