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the Crists? She didn't know them. And she and Bill at the
time. weren't even living in the Atlanta area. The more Susan thought about
Debbie's phone call, the more she felt an ominous sense that a
Pandora's box had been opened and she didn't want to know what was
inside. When she told Bill, he stared back at her, puzzled. Susan
wanted to forget it, but she knew that if Bill were pushed, he wouldn't
look away.
He would find out what the hell was going on. One thing they Iled the
Cristsboth knew. Neither of them had ever ca Iled Dawn Slinkard, On
December 26, all unaware, Bill ca Debbie's daughter, to ask that an
antique crib that the Alfords had lent her be returned. Debbie
answered the phone, and she s was still furiou with her sister. She
told Bill never to call again.
"You and Susan have ruined my life. Susan made the Crists fire my
I'fe." us. Susan has always ruined ists' listing and punched Bill
looked in the directory for the Cr in the number.
Elizabeth Crist answered the phone. Bill didn't know that the date was
special to her; if her husband had lived, it would have been his
ninetieth birthday.
"Mrs. Crist," Bill began, "have you ever received a phone ca from my
wife, Susan Alford?"
"I've never heard the name.17
"Well, let me explain. My wife's mother and sister worked for you a
few years ago. What I really wanted to ask was whether my wife ever
called you iabout her mother, Pat Taylor Allanson.
You may know her as Pat Taylor?"
There was a long silence at the end of the line, and then Betty Crist
began to tell Bill Alford "things I didn't want to hear."
When Bill told Susan what Mrs. Crist had said, she was sick at
heart. Despite the way her mother had treated her, she still hoped the
"trouble" was all over.
sometimes," she recalled, "
But "there had been things said over the past few years my grandmother
would jokes
that Sean made, or some question ask-and in spite of myself, I would
wonder if my mother was still dangerous. I'd wanted so much for her to
be normal that I overlooked a lot of things. But I had told myself-and
my mother and my grandmother-that if I ever felt my mother was hurting
someone else, maybe even trying to kill someone else, I would have to
go to the authorities. I swore that before she killed somebody, I
would stop it-even if I was disowned from the P A R T family, with
nobody wanting anything to do with me. I guess I always knew that it
would blow the family completely apart."
Susan placed a call to the Fulton County District Attorney's Office.
I G H T Don Stoop got all the oddball cases in Fulton County. He was
the only investigator in the D.A."s office eager to dig into cases that
seemed, at the outset, to be fairly routine, but m' lit take ig
interesting detours. He was remarkably adept at exposing what lay
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under the surface.
Stoop was a walking paradox. Nobody ever ew exactly what he was
thinking at any given moment. He was a wiseass with a sentimental
streak. Most of the time, he appeared to be the ultimate macho cop-and
yet, he knew exactly when to stop pushing and the precise moment to
listen attentively. An irrepressible tease, he knew when to quit.
Stoop was anathema to crooked cops on the take; he had cleaned out a
half-dozen corrupt police departments around Atlanta. His office was
upstairs over a restaurant, kitty-corner from the Fulton County
Courthouse; nobody could find it without a map and an invitation. It
was just large enough to hold a desk and a bookcase, but he was never
there, so it didn't matter. A connoisseur of beer, he also kept a
candy dish on his desk for his sweet tooth, but he jogged calorie for
calorie and never had a spare inch around his middle. He sported a
mustache that would be the envy of any member of a barbershop quartet
and his ties were hardly inconspicuous.
Don Stoop was born in 1952. He was an army brat and he never really
grew up in one place. The closest thing he had to a hometown was the
area around Red Bank, New Jersey. As a towheaded youngster, Donnie
Stoop spent vacations there with his favorite uncle, "Fritz" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]