Everything She Ever Wanted (64 page)

counts of criminal attempt to commit murder.
 
At 4:15 that afternoon,

Bob Tedford and Richard Daniell from the D.A."s office drove to the

Tell Road horse ranch to arrest Pat.

She was not at home, nor was she there when they returned at 5:00

P.m. Would she run?
 
Had she already left the Atlanta area?
 
She must

have known that she was the main target of their investiption, that

something was going to come down.
 
Still, the detectives reasoned that

Pat Allanson's whole world was contained in Georgia and North

Carolina.

She had her mother and stepfather, her doting aunts, her three

children, her grandchildren, and, of course, her husband, Tom.
 
No, she

wouldn't leave.

They didn't realize how right they were.
 
Pat had never been on her

own.
 
She had to be close to her parents.
 
Even though she was nearly

forty, she still needed them to be there, to straighten things out

whenever they got out of control.
 
But now her life had finally spun

completely off its track and her machenations would not be easy to

smooth over and deny.

At 7:00 P.m Tedford and Daniell drove slowly down Tell Road, turned

right onto the rutted drive, and passed Fanny K.

Cash's cabin.
 
They drove by the empty stables on the left, and then

headed down past the.show ring toward the two conjoined houses that Gil

Taylor had once tried to make into a grand plantation for Pat.

Margureitte and Clifford Radcliffe stood in the front yard.

They stared coldly at the two investigators but grudgingly accepted the

warrant Tedford held out.
 
"We are here to arrest your daughter on two

charges of criminal attempt to commit murder.
 
Is she here?"

Colonel Radcliffe led Daniell and Tedford into the house and pointed

toward Pat's bedroom.
 
She was home.
 
She listened sullenly as the

charges against her were read.

"May I call my attorney?"
 
Pat asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

Pat's bubble-cut hair was as carefully coiffed as always.

Her makeup was in place.
 
She wore a short pink-and-black plaid

sundress, a necklace, and hoop earrings.

While Tedford radioed for a female officer to accompany them on the

ride to jail, Pat phoned Dunham McAllister.
 
She spoke to him for about

fifteen minutes, and then Daniell and Tedford and Officer Bebe Mozeman

left the Radcliffes'house at 7:35 and proceeded to the Fulton County

jail, where Pat was fingerprinted, photographed, searched, and

booked.

She looked straight ahead defiantly as she faced the jail camera, ut

she ent her hea an appeared ready to cry when she was instructed to

"look at the wall to your left."
 
The woman who had wanted so much, who

had aspired to a life of perfect love, gracious living, wealth, and

social acceptance, was-at least for the moment-Prisoner No.
 
10747 in

the Fulton County jail.

She would not stay in jail long.
 
Already her mother and stepfather

were rallying around her, arranging for money to bail her out, to bring

her back to her room in their home.
 
She was their child, their

precious daughter, the focus of their lives.

It was unthinkable that she should be exposed to the sort of women who

ended up in jail.
 
She was a special person.

Pat didn't even spend the night in jail.
 
She was released on twenty

thousand dollars'bond that evening.
 
Somewhere, Boppo and Colonel

Radcliffe had found the two thousand dollars necessary to guarantee

that amount.

His wife's arrest came as a tremendous shock to Tom.
 
She was his sole

source of information about the outside world, and Pat had continued to

assure him that she was moving heaven and earth to free him.
 
He had

been relieved and proud that she had taken over the care of his

grandparents.
 
From all her reports, things were going as well as they

could hope for, considering how old Paw and Nona were.
 
Tom had been

told about Paw's supposed overdose, but not about the crime lab's

findings.
 
Pat had convinced him that it was not unusual for an old

man, depressed by his diminishing strength after a heart attack, to

turn to liquor and pills.

Tom loved his grandparents; at the same time, he was compelled to see

them as his sole source of financial rescue.
 
Given Pat's illnesses and

inability to work and the Radcliffes' near bankruptcy, there was no one

else with financial assets who might help him.
 
Tom had written Paw and

Nona scores of letters urging them to trust Pat and to put all their

affairs into her hands.
 
He had trusted Pat, and he had survived in

prison by dreaming about the time they would all live together on a

good farm.
 
He had needed his grandfather's backing-but he had every

intention of paying him back.

Pat had assured him she felt the same way.

Tom was doing well in prison.
 
Everybody liked him, and he was much in

demand as a clerk.
 
He was college educated, smart, and never

complained about the work load.
 
He needed the work.
 
He had lost damn

near everything in his life-except for Pat and his grandparents.

If Tom believed that the charges against Pat were true, it would mean

the end of all his dreams.
 
He would be left with no one.
 
He tried to

find some other reason for what was happening to her.
 
It was hard

going.

Tom had written to his uncle Seaborn and begged that Pat at least be

allowed to see his children whenever she could; she was Tom's only link

to them.
 
He didn't know that he had already lost his children, perhaps

forever.
 
Seaborn had realized he was too old to raise young children,

and Little Carolyn refused to conform to the state's requirements for a

custodial parent.
 
Pat didn't want the children, and she had already

used Tom's power of attorney to sign away all his links to Russ and

Sherry.
 
She had convinced him that they were being placed only

temporarily in a good Christian home-"for their sake."
 
But she had

really agreed to put them out for permanent adoption.

All he had left was Pat.
 
From the moment he first became intimate with

her, Tom had committed himself to her, to her beliefs, her advice, her

plans and dreams.
 
But by the late summer of 1976, even Tom saw that

her perfect facade had begun to erode.

Resolutely, he fought his doubts back.
 
If Pat was not his one true

love, he would have to admit that he had let his whole life slip away

for nothing.

Tom had quickly realized that nobody in Jackson-from the guards to the

administrative staff-liked Pat.
 
He loved her enough that he could

ignore the snide remarks and the smirks when he received her daily

letters.
 
He took the lacy, fancydecorated envelopes in his big hands

and hurried to read his mail in privacy.
 
But later he would remember

that her letters caused him all manner of problems.
 
"We were allowed

to get legal mail uncensored, so Pat would get some lawyer's letterhead

envelopes and then she'd put personal mail inside.
 
They caught onto

that quick enough, and they'd call me in and say, 'This is marked legal

mail, but we're going to open it in front of you."
 
Sure enough, there

would be personal mail inside, and I'd get chewed out.

Pat's visits were even more difficult for Tom.
 
She wore her skirts cut

up to here, and her blouses cut down to there, and no man in the area

could resist swiftly turning his eyes in her direction.
 
She was as

inappropriate as she was beautiful.
 
It was agoh for Tom to be shut off

from her; her provocative nizing enough clothes and her jungle Gardenia

perfume about drove him nuts.
 
And then she always had stories to tell

him about men who were bothering her.
 
He questioned

her-gently-suggesting that a woman as attractive as she was had to be

careful of even the appearance of availability.
 
That only made her

angry.
 
She dee that she cared one manded to know how he could even

imagin fig for any other man?
 
Was he trying to say she was a slut?

Tcim sighed.
 
Pat never saw anything in gradations of meaning; she saw

white or black-more often black-and was quick to take offense.

He didn't believe that she would deliberately hurt Paw and Nona.
 
He

couldn't believe that.
 
The police had been quick enough to jump on

him, and he remembered how he had been a free man one day and a convict

the next.
 
He knew what had really happened that July night two years

ago-or he thought he did.
 
The law could twist things and make them

seem more menacing than they really were.
 
Pat was only one frail,

little woman.
 
She had a temper and she sure wasn't the most reasonable

woman in the world, but he could not visualize her really hurting

anyone.
 
He did not want to think of her actually putting poison in his

own grandparents' food.
 
That was a scenario that shut itself off in

his mind the moment he tried to visualize it.
 
He was barely

maintaining his equilibrium as it was, and the rush of guilt that came

with thinking about Pat hurting Paw and Nona almost knocked the wind

out of him.

As Pat awaited her own trial, free on bail, she grew more frenetic and

querulous.
 
Her prison visits to Tom always meant trouble of one kind

or another.
 
Tom both longed to see her and dreaded what she might do

next.
 
She wasn't helping his case.

Even the warden at Jackson took an interest in Tom and his incorrigible

wife.
 
Tom remembered one day when the warden was leading a tour