Dance of Death (12 page)

But he still couldn't tie her to anything incriminating.

“You know, to take somebody's life is the worst thing you can do to somebody,” Altman just had to say. “And people will do that to get things out of their way. To get things that they want. Maybe this wasn't planned, but somebody followed through with what they wanted to do. There are two people, right now, that know who was there.”

Renee purposefully didn't respond.

“And what you're saying could be true,” the detective continued, “but when we dig more and more into this, and we find out there's a boyfriend—an ex-boyfriend—who's not happy with you going back to your husband, then the ax is going to fall. And if you're not careful, it's going to fall right on your head.”

Altman constructed one last-ditch effort to solicit a confession. Hoping this one would stick against the wall, he inched steadily toward her and threw out, “Are you sure you didn't shoot him and just make this thing up about this guy dressed in all black?”

“No,” Renee said, never flinching. “I couldn't shoot my husband.”

“Maybe you shot him and then threw the gun out in the ocean?”

She didn't fall for that one, either.

Altman finally backed off. He and Sergeant King were both done for the night. They guessed the gun and the answer as to who killed Brent had probably been tossed in the ocean and was resting on the bottom among the myriad of sea urchins by now.

In spite of the detectives' grueling and intense interrogation, “It could have been John Frazier, but I'm not sure” was as far as they could get with Renee. And that was certainly nothing to write home about. After Renee had been escorted out of the interview room and back to the victim's advocacy office, the two detectives emerged with faces of battle-laden warriors. Although they believed their witness wasn't a genius by any definition of the word, she was feisty. And tough. And they were convinced she was very savvy and had street smarts. A valiant effort against a stubborn opponent, but they had come up empty-handed, they informed Captain Hendrick and Lieutenant Frontz immediately afterward. If they were going to prove Renee Poole was involved in any way with this murder, they would have to do it the old-fashioned way. They'd have to go out and beat the bushes. Interview witnesses and find someone who had seen the couple or the killer on the beach. Talk to everyone who knew anything about their relationship and somehow prove she and her lover were involved, beyond a reasonable doubt.

But the day was young. And the investigation still fresh on the table.

Detective Altman believed, although he had not been able to tighten the noose around Renee this time, he knew they would do battle again. Before she left the interview room, he made himself a promise. If she had anything to do with her husband's murder, he swore, they would meet again.

And, the next time, he
would
take her down.

Captain Hendrick walked into the interrogation room where Detectives King and Altman sat relaxing at the table. Renee was with Mary Stogner in the victim's advocacy office.

“John Boyd Frazier was at home when the WSPD checked his residence about five-thirty this morning,” Captain Hendrick said with a bit of disappointment. “We received word of this while you both were in the interviewing room with Renee. It's best we not give her or anyone else that information at this time.”

The detectives nodded their heads in unison.

Detective Altman reached over and grabbed a fresh bottle of water, twisted it open and poured the contents into a Styrofoam cup. He drew in a quick breath, then took a few hurried sips just as fast. Trying not to show his frustrations, he piped in, “I hope this doesn't mean we've lost John Frazier as a promising suspect and quickly erase him from suspicion.”

Captain Hendrick assured him it had not. There were numerous ways to check on Frazier to determine if he had been home all night. There were phone records to check, friends and neighbors, who could have remembered him coming and going, and outside witnesses who might have seen him or his car at the beach that night. In addition, they could drive the route from the crime scene to his house and develop a timeline. Just because he was home at the precise moment the police checked his home didn't prove he wasn't involved in the murder. Even if he didn't kill Brent Poole, it was certainly possible he could have hired someone else to do it. Hendrick emphasized John Frazier was still the man with the greatest motive, thus their primary suspect. And he would remain so until proven otherwise.

Victim's advocate Stogner had offered Renee a ride from MBPD headquarters back to her hotel.

“My parents are coming to get me and take me and Katie back home,” Renee told her, smiling for the first time.

Stogner could see there was a sense of relief in Renee that she finally had made it over this hurdle and was going home. It was 7:30
A.M
. Renee told Stogner she felt like she had just been put through the wringer and was eager to see her parents.

Just as Renee and Stogner stepped out the door and were greeted by the first shafts of daylight, they heard the echoes of a man's hoarse voice from outside the building. The boisterous man was pointing at Renee, but yelling at Stogner in an unfriendly manner. “You best get her away from us,” he shouted. “I'm telling you, you better take her away, and now!”

It was Brent Poole's father, his mother and his sister. This was not the warm reception Renee had hoped for. The homicide detectives saw what was happening, ran to the front door and got between Renee and the Pooles, then hurried the in-laws inside the building. They led them through the hall and into the interrogation room, where they had just finished almost seven hours interviewing Renee. The Pooles sat down at the table and tried to calm themselves.

Bill Poole was a small, thin man with gray hair combed across his balding head. With wrinkles stretched across his forehead and all around his blue eyes and graying mustached mouth, he was the picture of what Brent Poole would have looked like, had he lived to be an older man.

Brent's mother, Agnes, was much taller than her husband. She was thin, with pallid cheeks and an ashen complexion, and eyebrows that seemed permanently squinted, as if she had been straining all her life to see something more clearly. Her partially graying hair revealed she was a week or two past-due on her last coloring.

Brent's sister, Dee, looked to be in her late thirties. But with her short blond hair, a cute, round face and her trim figure, she could easily have been mistaken—under any other circumstances—for a high-school cheerleader. This time, a frown replaced a smile across her face.

“Are you folks the Pooles?” Hendrick asked as he introduced himself.

They nodded in unison. Bill politely stood up and introduced his family to the chief and Detectives King and Altman.

“We're sorry to meet you under these circumstances,” Hendrick stated genuinely. “I know this is not a good time for you. Please believe we're going to do all we can to help solve Brent's murder and find the killer who did this.”

As King and Altman took a seat across from the Pooles, Hendrick made his apologies and excused himself from the room. Bill Poole took a couple of quicksteps toward them, as if he were too angry to stand still. Altman invited him to take a seat and Poole finally sat down beside his wife.

“I hate to see you folks have to come down to Myrtle Beach for these circumstances,” Altman began in his usual manner. “And it's unfortunate to meet you like this. But we're gonna be as honest as we can on most things. It's not that we're trying to hide anything from you; of course, some of the details we're not gonna be able to tell you—but there are certain things that our investigations are gonna be able to reveal to the person that we believe was involved in Brent's murder.”

The Pooles nodded. They wanted Altman to know from the start that they would cooperate in any way.

Altman slowly blew out the breath he had been holding.

“I can tell you up front,” he said, thinking they would want to know, “your son, and your brother, was shot. He died instantly and probably didn't feel a thing. Speaking with the physicians up at the emergency room tonight, it was very quick. From what they're saying and from the things they have dealt with, it was very painless because it just happened so fast.”

Brent's mother gasped. “Was it in the head?” she asked. Her bottom lip quivered as if she had been standing in subtemper-ature weather.

Altman arched a brow. “I can tell you it was a head shot. I can't tell you where in the head.”

“Do you know if his face is disfigured?” Agnes needed to know.

“No,” the detective answered flatly. He hesitated, then offered, “When I saw him, of course, there was blood. When you have a head wound, it does bleed a lot. So there was a lot of blood on him.”

When Bill asked if his son was facing down or standing up, Altman declined to answer, for fear those details would somehow become public. That was information that would be privy to the killer and couldn't be leaked for obvious reasons. Altman quickly moved the grieving trio from questions concerning the details of Brent's murder to information regarding Renee and John Frazier's relationship. The family eagerly furnished dates, times and events from when Renee had moved in and out of John's home.

“She moved everything out, all of our granddaughter's clothes and furniture,” Brent's parents said, almost in unison. Detective Altman noted how one would start a sentence, mainly Brent's father, then the other, routinely his mother, would always finish it. Brent's sister, Dee, sat quietly at the table, supporting her parents while they did most of the talking.

“She did it while our son was at work,” Agnes said, cutting Bill off. “So, he had no idea she was moving out. We accidentally came across her with John at a service station that night, not knowing that she had moved out.”

“So, there's not a joint relationship that had been worked out between John and Brent for Renee's affection every day?” Altman asked, believing he already knew the answer.

The Pooles looked back at him, stupefied, as if his inquiry had been telephoned from the planet Venus. They all three sat back in their seats, glanced at each other, shook their heads, then stared at Altman. Their blank faces conveyed to him this was a game Renee had been playing with him. They cautioned him when dealing with someone like Renee, her deceptive maneuvers and lies were as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun.

“Then, in your opinion, how was the relationship between Brent and Renee?”

“He loved her with all his heart,” Agnes said through her tears. “But he also wanted this to stop. He just found out last week that she was having contact with John again on the Internet and through phone calls. It just about blew him away. And one night—”

“He called us one night,” Bill said, this time finishing his wife's sentence, “one Saturday night, and said, ‘Can I come home?' Said this is not working out, that she can't make up her mind who she wants. And in my mind, that's not an agreeable joint relationship.”

Agnes picked up where Bill left off. “And the next day, she showed up. Dee had her little girls over that night, and Brent was just in a really low mood.” She turned toward her daughter and tilted her head for confirmation. “Wasn't he?”

Dee agreed.

“He was very down,” Agnes elaborated. “Just really like his heart was broken. But Renee was all cheery and everything, like nothing had happened. I kept saying, ‘Brent, have I done something. Is everything all right?' And he said, ‘Everything is not all right, but it will be.'”

Altman glanced at Sergeant King, who sat next to him, quietly taking notes.

“Renee was real smiley,” Agnes continued, dabbing at her moist eyes with a crumpled tissue. “And he kept on being downcast, so I asked him, ‘Brent, honey, what's wrong? What's wrong with you?' Renee then grabbed his arm and took him in the back bedroom and had a talk with him. And when he came back out, she said they were going to shoot pool and then they went home. I think something was going on that day between Renee and John, and Brent found out about it.”

Dee cleared her throat then and everyone in the room turned toward her, waiting to hear what she had to say.

“When Brent called me that night on the phone, I had a long talk with him. And he said, ‘Isn't this something? Renee wants to have another child with me, but she can't decide whether she wants to be with me or John.' When I asked Brent, ‘I thought you were going to the beach,' he responded, ‘Well, we're gonna go.' But he kept saying, ‘Isn't that funny that she can't decide who she wants to be with?'”

The homicide sleuths were intrigued. It looked as if their hunches had been right all along.

Dee shared more of the same.

“I asked him if he wanted to come over and he put Renee on the phone. ‘I'm trying to work on my feelings for Brent,' Renee told me. When I asked her, ‘Are you telling me that John is interfering with your feelings for my brother?' she said, ‘Yeah, it's confusing me.' I then asked Renee if she was seeing John. She denied it, of course, but did admit she was talking to him.”

Agnes colored in the rest of the picture, connecting the dots.

“We found out later that was not true, because my son's best friend called up and told my husband that he had seen Renee and John at a shoe place right after they had had that conversation. Then, the first week after Renee came back home, Brent couldn't find her for about three hours and he called our house looking for her. She finally showed up at ten o'clock that night and said she had been at a shoe place that we knew closed at five-thirty or six. It was just that kind of thing all the time. And this is her second affair. He found out after he was married one month that she had started having an affair when she was pregnant with Katie. This one lasted for two years, so it just didn't start—”

Altman interrupted Agnes before she caught her breath. “Was that with John also, or somebody else?” She shook her head no.

“Well, when she moved out, Brent was working on getting an attorney and getting ready to get involved in the legal aspects of separation. I think a few things influenced her to come back. Her mother went over there and got the baby's clothes and said the baby is not living in this environment. So, I think she realized she didn't have anybody but her and John. But to say this was an agreement between all three of them was the furthest thing from Brent's mind.”

The detectives looked at each other, then shifted in their seats. The information Renee had given them did not jive with the Pooles'. They wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it appeared as if there were far too many discrepancies between her and her in-laws' stories.

While the detectives compared impressions, the Pooles tried to deal the best they could with what had happened. But what they really wanted to know was how the murder had happened and if there were any other witnesses. Altman told them Renee had been the only witness, besides the shooter.

Bill Poole was curious as to why only Brent had been shot and why there was no blood on Renee's shirt and pants when Altman had told them there had been a lot of blood on Brent's head. The distraught father stated he was suspicious of the people that Renee had been associating with. He admitted he didn't personally know them, but he was still very suspicious of them.

Dee then suddenly turned to her mother and asked, “Who was the guy that sent you the videotape?” To which, Agnes replied, “Oh, that was the guy she had the first affair with.”

Altman was stunned. “Wait a minute,” he said, suddenly focusing on Agnes. “Somebody sent you a videotape?”

Agnes nodded.

“And what was on the videotape?”

She dropped her eyes, then answered disgustedly, “Them having sex.”

Altman sat up in his seat and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “I can't believe it,” he said incredulously. “He sent that to you folks?”

Agnes lifted her head, then slowly cut her eyes at her husband. Altman sensed this tape could have been a source of tension between the couple.

“Actually, the tape had been sent to Brent in care of his father,” Agnes said, still looking at her red-faced husband. “Bill was out of town, and after looking at that package for three days, I decided I was going to open it.” Agnes turned from her husband and looked at Altman. “I just knew if Brent saw this visual, it would devastate him.”