Dance of Death (4 page)

Supervising officer Aiossa began collecting a few of the fifty-five-gallon drums that were being used as garbage cans and taped off a fifteen-by-fifteen perimeter around the crime scene. While the others were taking care of the crime scene, he walked back to where the six people whose cars had been blocked, and now were sitting at the Eighty-second beach access, waited to be interviewed. The frustrated bystanders told him in colorful language they didn't recall seeing anyone coming out or going on the beach or any vehicles leaving suddenly, but thought they had heard something that sounded like fireworks on the beach.

While the crime scene technicians waited to work the murder scene, the Horry County tracker and his dogs continued to work the area around the beach access and in the dunes in hopes the dogs would be able to pick up the scent of the killer. There was also a very narrow window of opportunity for the tracker's hounds to locate and capture the perpetrator, but they would utilize any and all attempts.

Perhaps,
the tracker shrugged to the officers standing nearby,
this just might be our lucky night
. If this mysterious killer—this man dressed in black—was somewhere in the area, he wanted to make sure the dogs found him and put him away before he killed again.

“You guys continue to keep a close watch out for the killer,” Corporal Kalkwarf admonished his men. “We've already got one innocent victim dead, we don't want to make it two.”

Renee Poole never remembered getting in the police car. She was still dazed and unbelieving at what had taken place on the beach.

“Ma'am, are you okay?” The voice was sympathetic. “We're here at the police station.” A tall, thin and dark-haired man opened her door.

Renee nodded and stepped out of the car. His voice sounded like it was coming from a fog. She couldn't escape the image of her husband being shot. She remembered the shooter as his finger tightened over the trigger, the jerk of his hand when the bullet exploded, the roar of the gun as it left the muzzle and blasted into Brent's head, and the thud of Brent's body falling onto the sand. She gagged as she thought about the raw scent of blood that spilled from his head wounds and pooled onto the sand. She remembered these things, but knew she couldn't do anything to change them.

Renee desperately needed someone to hold her close. To tell her she was safe. To say that everything was going to be okay.

Detective Jim Joyce escorted his key witness out of the car and into the Myrtle Beach headquarters on Oak Street. Over the years, there were several incidents along the Grand Strand where a couple had been robbed and/or assaulted. The MBPD particularly frowned on incidents that involved tourists visiting. It wasn't beneficial to the city and to the businesses in the area. Any news reports of such incidents were certain to frighten other tourists. Detective Joyce was aware that although this crime was committed in a remote area of the beach, the implications would be the same. No one wanted rumors circulating that the beach was no longer a safe place to visit.

More important though, Detective Joyce focused on the fact that Renee and her husband had been victims of a serious crime. Although he had not received the official word from the hospital, he sensed from the talk at the crime scene that Brent Poole was probably not going to survive his injuries.

Joyce contacted Mary Stogner, the MBPD's victim's advocate on call. The police department had just implemented the advocacy program and Stogner was one of three staff members. Their primary function was to console the victim, assist them with any paperwork and provide them with general information on counseling and other services available to them as a victim. Renee Poole was just the type of person who needed their help.

“I'm sure she's frightened,” Joyce told Stogner as he walked her to the room where Renee was sitting. “This is not a good situation for her family. She and her husband are both in their early twenties and they've got a little girl.”

Stogner sympathized with Renee Poole, virtually a stranger in town, now the victim of a violent crime. Thinking she needed someone to talk to, she pulled up a chair and sat across from Renee. She introduced herself and calmly asked, “Is there anything I can get you?”

Renee nodded. “Yes, I need a cigarette. I think I left mine on the beach.”

“I'll see if I can bum a few from the officers. What kind do you smoke?”

“Marlboro Lights. But I'm so desperate, I'll smoke about anything you can find.”

Stogner talked with Renee for about thirty minutes. When she was certain she was strong enough to provide a statement, she notified Detective Joyce.

“He's just going to ask for some general information about you and your husband and the crime,” she assured her.

“Thank you. You've been very pleasant,” Renee said flatly.

“That's what we're here for.” Stogner reached under her desk, pulled out a small stuffed animal and handed it to Renee. “Please let me know if we can be of further assistance.”

Renee managed to smile. She wasn't sure if the stuffed animal was for Katie or for her to keep for comfort. But she did need something real to hold on to since everything else at that moment seemed make-believe.

Renee's interview with Detective Joyce began at 12:45
A.M
. When the detective asked where she was staying, she stated again that she needed to call the hotel and speak to her baby-sitter. Joyce then stopped the interview and requested that someone call the hotel and check on the situation.

Renee had stopped crying and was relatively calm when the interview resumed. Speaking very softly, she explained slowly what had happened earlier on the beach.

Joyce eased forward in his chair and took notes on a yellow legal pad, not wanting to interrupt her as she talked. She told him all about the man dressed in black and how they had been robbed. The silence stretched out afterward. The slight tremor in Renee's voice returned.

“And he went back over to my husband, and my husband said, ‘Please, don't shoot me.' And he said, ‘Why shouldn't I?' My husband said, ‘Because I have a daughter that I love very much.' Then I heard the gun go off.”

Joyce groaned. He uncrossed his legs underneath the table and sat up straight in his seat. “Do you know how many times it went off?” he interjected.

“I heard it click a couple of times. I think there were two shots.”

“Did it click
more
than two times?”

“Yes, I think I heard it click a few times before I heard the actual shots.”

Renee described what exactly had been stolen and provided a description of the man dressed in black. He then asked her, “And when he was talking to you, could you tell if he had any type of accent? Or maybe a deep voice?”

“I don't remember. I don't think it was very deep, though.”

“Was he taller or shorter than you?”

“Taller. I think I'm five three. He was a lot taller than me, but not taller than you.”

Joyce stood up and turned to the side, then sat back down. He was taller than the man she had remembered seeing. “And that's all he said to you, ‘Get down on the ground and give me everything'?”

“Yes, everything. Money, jewelry, wallet, everything.”

Joyce laid his pen down on the yellow pad.

“Okay. Uh . . . do you have someone else here that you're staying with?”

“No, but I need to speak with the baby-sitter at the hotel.”

Joyce stood up slowly. “What time were you expected back?”

“We were supposed to be there at twelve
A.M
., so she needs to be relieved,” Renee pleaded.

Joyce planted his hands on the table. He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before 1:00
A.M
.

Thirty-one-year-old Terry Altman had been working with the Myrtle Beach Police Department for seven years. Altman was a local boy, having graduated from Socastee High School in 1985. Like most teenagers who live in and around Myrtle Beach, he had worked part-time after school in the food-and-beverage industry. It had helped pay for his education at Coastal Carolina University, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, in 1991. A few months later, he applied and was accepted as an auxiliary officer with the Myrtle Beach police force. In November 1992, he was hired as a full-time police officer, assigned to the traffic division, working five-day ten-hour shifts.

Altman had found his niche and went on to graduate from the eight-week officer's training at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy. In February 1993, he was reassigned to a patrol shift. For three years, he alternated from a uniformed patrol officer, back to the traffic division, until finally being promoted to the investigative division with the Myrtle Beach Police Department.

Detective Altman had been assigned to the homicide-investigative division for only two years the night he drove to the hospital to investigate the robbery and shooting of Brent Poole. If he had to guess, he'd say he had already investigated anywhere from twenty-five to thirty dead-body calls. That was the one part of the job he disliked the most, and probably the reason why he had not chosen a career in medicine. He made no bones about it. He wasn't fond of dead bodies.

Altman walked through the electric doors at the Grand Strand Regional Medical Center (GSRMC) emergency room and turned into the emergency room's lobby. A few people were sitting in chairs and couches, idly reading magazines or watching the wall-mounted television. He smiled at an elderly couple standing at the nurse's desk and waiting to be processed, then eased around them to the trauma unit, where he believed Brent Poole would have been taken. To the right of the nurse's station in the trauma unit, he recognized several personnel from the fire department, who were retrieving their equipment and completing the last of their paperwork. From the grim look on their faces, it was apparent the situation for their patient looked hopeless.

Don Askey, the emergency responder from Unit #121, had already completed his paperwork and was leaning against the nurse's station. His body was washed in sweat and the gritty sand from the beach still clung to his clothes and skin liked yellow mud. He looked as if he'd just lost his best friend.

“How's it going?” Altman anxiously asked.

“Not so good.” Askey shook his head, then rolled his eyes toward the trauma unit. “They're still working on him.”

The rooms in the trauma unit were petitioned on the side and front by cloth curtains. In an opening between the curtains, Altman could see Brent's lifeless body lying on the table in the middle of the room with the team of five nurses and doctors surrounding him. They were working on him, frantically trying to bring him back to life. Plastic tubes protruded from the young man's mouth. Blood covered his face and dripped down onto the table and fell to the floor.

Altman stepped toward the nurse's station and stood by Askey. He could always count on Don for an honest opinion. He whispered, “So, what's your assessment of this situation?”

Askey gazed at the detective with a bewildered look on his face. He hadn't realized until now the significance of what he had overheard the young girl say on the beach. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then leaned in toward the detective. “I'm not sure what she told you about how this happened, but it didn't happen the way she said it did.”

Altman shifted his feet and turned his head slightly toward the fireman to make certain he didn't miss a word. Through the opening in the curtain, he could see the trauma team was still busy working on the victim. He guessed they had been successful in keeping him alive.

Askey continued: “I'm telling you, man, there's just something not right about this situation.” He lifted his hands, palms upward, in front of his chest, and shrugged. “A young couple is robbed on the beach. He gets shot twice. In the head and at close range. But nothing happens to the girl? Maybe it's just me, man, but this whole thing doesn't make sense.”

Over the years, Altman had learned to listen to the opinions of other professionals when he investigated a case. Every discipline had its own way of looking at things. Their own perspective. Even still, each individual approached things differently and had his own opinions. But he'd learned first impressions were almost always correct. He always made it a point to tell Askey and the others how much he appreciated their insight.

Altman talked to the other paramedics before they left the hospital. He thought about what Askey and the others had told him. They had confirmed some of what he had recognized earlier back at the crime scene. Their feelings about this case were nearly the same as his and their suspicions as contagious as the common cold.

After the emergency responders exited, Altman stood alone at the nurse's desk and stared at the heart monitor through the opening in the curtains. In just the few minutes while he was there, there had been the trace of a slight bounce flowing across the gray screen. That had changed. Now he watched as all the life seemed to flow out of the victim—eventually changing the fluttering beep to one single, flat line. Brent Poole was dead.

Altman sat down in a chair and took a deep breath. Although the trauma team had refused to give up and continued working on their patient, he realized Brent probably wasn't going to be revived.

At 12:21
A.M
., the emergency surgeon, Dr. James Duffy, decided there was nothing more the trauma team could do. Duffy took a deep breath, waved his hands out in front of his chest and signaled them to stop. After halting his team's efforts, Duffy made one more last assessment, then pronounced their patient dead.

Altman stood at the nurse's desk and watched the members of the despondent emergency trauma team, RN Barb Plaxco and RN Ronnie McDonald, as they filed out of the petitioned room. The other trauma nurse, Rose McKay, had already started completing the charts at the nurse's desk, and she leaned over to Altman and whispered, “This is a terrible shame. It hurts me so much to see something like this. He was so young and such a good-looking man. Makes you wonder, who would want someone like him dead?”

Altman nodded. She was as right as rain.

As the trauma unit dispersed from the room, Altman reached for the phone at the nurse's desk and called Detective Len Sloan at the crime scene. It was important when there was a murder case for Altman to follow protocol and contact everyone who was needed to respond. His call to Detective Sloan would be the first of many he would have to make that night to get all the responsible persons in the right places to investigate this case. He asked Sloan to contact Sergeant John King, who was the supervising detective on duty.

“You can pass the word that Brent Poole just died,” Altman said over the phone. “You might want to notify the county coroner as well.”

Officially, the Poole case had just been updated from a shooting to a homicide. From Altman's previous experiences of working murder cases, he knew the implications of losing Brent Poole. Brent had been his only other witness. Not only was it going to make his job more difficult, now that half of his sources were gone, but it would be the beginning of another all-night ordeal of tracking down leads, interviewing, and seeking information that would escalate into a marathon of full proportions. Altman had already worked his eight-hour shift, and he called his wife to warn her he might not be home to see her again until the next day.

Altman's stomach tightened in knots.

As Altman watched and waited from the nurse's desk, Corporal David Grazioso, the crime scene specialist with the Myrtle Beach Special Operations Section (MBSOS) for the night shift, stepped into the room. He spoke with Altman, then followed him to the petitioned room where Brent's body still lay on the gurney.

“Graz,” as he was known to his fellow officers, had been called out at midnight and arrived at the crime scene at 12:15
A.M
. Asked to stand by and wait until the dog team had finished tracking the area, he had begun processing the crime scene some fifteen minutes later. At approximately 12:30
A.M
., he had started snapping pictures, drawing charts, and examining the crime scene for potential evidence. He then drove the short distance to the GSRMC for the purpose of photographing the body and collecting further evidence.

When Altman was certain the room had been vacated, he and Grazioso entered through the partitioned curtains. As was the standard procedure with all gunshot incidents, any person present at the crime scene would be tested for the presence of gunpowder residue. Grazioso had already swabbed the hands of the victim's wife back at the crime scene, and was there to perform an Atomic Absorption Analysis kit on Brent. The results would determine if he had fired a handgun in defense or taken his own life.

Both samples from Brent and Renee Poole would be sent the next day to the forensics lab at the State's Law Enforcement Department (SLED) and tested for the presence of gunpowder residue. If either of the fatal wounds had been the result of a weapon fired from the victim or his wife, or the tests proved they had fired a weapon, then the case would abruptly take on new proportions.

Grazioso was also there to collect and bag the victim's clothing for evidence, but until he found a couple of nurses to help him, that would have to wait. A fourteen-year veteran of the MBPD, he knew all too well how difficult it was for one person to remove the clothing from a dead person. When he found out from Altman that the nurses were busy with another emergency in the trauma room, and it would be about an hour before they could send someone to help him, Grazioso became concerned.

“I really need to get back to the beach,” he told Altman.

As a crime scene specialist, Grazioso had covered the waterfront and Ocean Boulevard section of the beach and responded to calls for service where the crime scene had simply vanished. Washed away by the rising ocean tides. And there was that same risk with this case. He knew it was his responsibility to remove and bag the clothing, but under the circumstances, he needed to return back to Eighty-second Avenue as quickly as possible. Fortunately for Grazioso, Detective Altman was there to assist.

“Go ahead, Graz,” Altman told him. “As soon as I finish talking with the doctor, I'll get a few of the nurses to help me and we'll get it for you.”

Altman sat at the nurse's station and waited until Dr. Duffy had cleaned up, then asked for a few minutes of his time.

Duffy discussed the severity of the victim's wounds as Altman followed him in the curtained room. “There are two gunshot wounds.” A frown stretched across Duffy's tired face. He looked beat. “One just inferior to the left ear, which was a close-range or loose-contact-type wound.”

Altman slid a pair of latex gloves over his hands. He sidestepped a pool of blood that had dripped on the floor and moved in to take a closer look at the wounds.

Duffy pointed to a hole on the side of the head, to where there was soot, carbon fragments and pieces of skin tissue clinging to the entrance site. “There is a projectile found in this area, the parietal occipital or posterior aspect of the head,” he said in anatomical terms. “The other one is a wound under the chin. This, of course, is a contact wound, as you can see the muzzle of the gun was in direct contact with the skin.”

Altman could see the muzzle imprint in the skin. He winced at the thought.

“There is no powder residue around this wound site,” Duffy continued. “Probably an indication that all of the residue had gone into the wound when the bullet passed through his chin and into the top of the head.”

Duffy placed Altman's gloved fingers on Poole's scalp. Altman could feel the fragment of a bullet underneath.

This was the first time Altman had ever touched a dead body. A few years ago, he would have never imagined himself being asked to touch a bullet lodged beneath someone's scalp and above his brain. As he massaged Brent's scalp and felt the lead underneath, he was queasy at the thought of what damage the bullet might have done on the underside of Poole's skull.

Duffy held up the X ray of Brent's skull and pointed to where the two bullets were lodged in the brain. As he explained the significance of the small white spots against the black of the negative, Altman grimaced at the estimated number of fragments of bone that had been shattered upon impact and the delicate tissues ripped by the path of the speeding bullet.

The doctor shifted his weight. “As you can see, there are no exit wounds.” He continued tracing with his finger the pro-jectory angles of the bullets through the brain, which ended in two star-shaped patterns where they both were lodged.

Altman felt faint, but quickly shook it off. “Which one of the bullets do you think killed him?”

“Well, either one of them would have been enough to have killed him. In fact, after seeing this X ray, you wouldn't think that anyone would have ever lived after suffering a gunshot wound through the head like this. Even if it was just for a moment, there was just no way he could have survived those bullets.”

Altman took a few steps backward away from the body and started peeling the gloves off his hands. He'd hoped Dr. Duffy was about to confirm his suspicions.

“So, what do you make of all this, Doc?”

Duffy looked at the X rays for a second time and, without hesitation, answered, “I think this kid got executed.”

Atlman affirmed that was what he needed to know.