Dance of Death (8 page)

“So, you met this friend when?” King asked.

“I met him March of last year,” Renee said. “We were friends and so I moved in with him for five days.”

“Okay, there was no doubt that this guy, John, had some interest in you?”

“Yes.”

“And the feelings were mutual?”

“Right.”

King was quiet. He wanted Renee to tell him what she thought this relationship meant to her. If she got off-course, he would steer her back.

“Well, we were friends to begin with,” Renee rambled on. “And I guess once I moved in with him, I kind of changed.”

“What do you mean by ‘I kind of changed'? Was it a change in you, your husband or your friend?”

“No, what I mean was that there was a change in our relationship,” Renee clarified. She didn't appear too shocked by her own revelation, and quickly blurted out, “It became a sexual relationship.”

King thought about what Renee had told him. If he understood her correctly, she meant the relationship had become something very serious. He always understood a relationship with a friend as someone you could sit down and talk with about your problems. But when she confessed they had had a sexual relationship, for him that meant something more in depth than sharing a Happy Meal at McDonald's.

“Now, you said the relationship had gotten physical and that the feelings were mutual between you and John?” King asked, wanting Renee to confirm that fact a second time.

“Yes.”

“And you two had a brief affair, where you left your husband, moved out of your home and lived with John for five days before returning to your husband?”

“That's right.”

“And your husband knew about this affair and was okay with it?” he asked doubtfully.

Renee thought about if for a moment, then laid out the whole scenario. She and John had been communicating just about every day while she was still living with her husband. She admitted even though they lived forty miles away from each other, that never stopped them from being together.

“Even before I moved out, I would go over to John's house and take my daughter with me. We'd just kinda hang out, watch movies and do other things.”

King suddenly felt a cold knot growing in the pit of his stomach. He asked her, “Did you ever tell your husband you were leaving?”

“No, I didn't tell him I was leaving,” Renee said, void of any emotion.

“What did you do? Just pack up and leave?”

“Yep. And he had no idea what I was doing.”

“Did he have any idea what was going on between you and John? I mean, did he have any idea that there was . . . maybe someone else?”

“Nah,” Renee said, her voice a kind of verbal shrug. “Well, I think maybe he thought it, but he never said anything to me. And when I told him, you know, he was a friend, ah, he kinda . . . He talked to John and then we all three got together on the phone and talked about it.”

“This was afterward or was this before you moved in with John?”

“After I moved in.”

“And you'd call back and talk with your husband, and then John would get on the phone, too?”

“Yeah. All three of us would be on the phone. And, ah, we would—would solve a lot of . . . ah . . . solve a lot of our problems that way. You know, just kinda getting everything out in the open.”

The whole idea was becoming a little too bizarre for King. He liked and had dated hordes of women—by the skin of his teeth, he had managed to remain single. Although he was certainly not an expert on the female psyche, he did recognize men and women didn't always see eye-to-eye on different issues, especially when it came to sex, love and romance. He guessed it was the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” type of thing. But Renee's version of her marital relationship was starting to sound a little too kinky, even for King's taste. Of course, in his line of work, he had heard and had seen worse.

“So, how did he feel about you sleeping with John?”

“He didn't like it very much, but, ah, he . . . he said that he loved me and he wanted our marriage to work. And I told him, ‘Yeah, that I did, too.' That our daughter needed us.”

“How did John feel about that?”

“Ah, he wasn't delighted with it, but he knew that—that Brent was my husband and we had had seven years together.” Renee paused, then almost offhandedly in her sexy country-girl accent, she stretched out the words: “Almost seven years together. Katie did need her father. She, you know, needed us to be together.” She then assured King she and Brent had been able to work through it all and came to the beach for romance and to revive their once-broken relationship.

King kept his eyes glued on her. Her striking eyes appeared more rounded than before. He sat staring silently at them. But it was really her voice he had noticed the most. Her voice was as cold as a Thanksgiving turkey frozen in a Frigidaire freezer.

“I did the wrong thing by leaving,” she said. “What we really needed was just some time apart. To really think about what was going on.”

Renee also admitted after she and John Boyd Frazier severed their relationship, they had stayed in touch and remained friends. She said John was there to help counsel her through her separation. She had planned to get a job and save up enough money to rent an apartment, hoping to earn enough income to live on her own, and that most of the times when John called her, he would just be asking her how everything was going.

“And he wasn't trying to get you to come back?”

“No. No. He—he knew that once I decided to go back home to my husband, he'd leave well enough alone.”

King was astonished. “He wasn't trying to get you to sleep with him again?”

“No.”

“Did he just cut that out completely or did that come after a period of time?”

“Uh, he never really wanted me to come back. He—he, more or less, respected my decision, and I told him, you know, that we could remain friends because that's what we had started out as.”

“And he was happy with that?”

“Yeah, I just told him I'd talk to him when I needed friendly advice, and if I needed someone to talk to.”

King pursued the matter a few minutes longer, then abruptly changed directions. “Any other problems you and your husband ever had, other than that?”

“No,” she replied without any emotion, confident she had nothing to hide. “No. I think that was really about it.”

“How about his parents? Did y'all get along?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did they know about you and John?”

“Yeah.”

“What were their feelings about that?”

“Disappointment, disappointment,” Renee said in her little girl's voice. “Uh, it's just that his parents are Christian people, and, uh, they forgave me for it and, uh, I forgave them for judging me. You know, about what I did. And, uh, we—my husband and I—started going to church. Uh, pretty much as soon as I moved back home. And, uh, his mom bought me a Bible. She treats me like her daughter. Uh, they forgave me for it, and, uh, it doesn't come up in conversation. We just kinda really don't talk about it.”

“Do you think John would do something like this to your husband?” he asked darkly.

Renee froze like Bambi caught in high beams. “Oh, no. He, uh, he knew how well we were getting along. Uh, my husband and I actually—we're trying, uh, we were trying to have another baby. And, uh, you know, I told John, you know, that we were gonna get remarried and, uh, that my husband was wanting to have another baby. And, uh, he was happy that I was happy, you know that—that we were actually making things right. Because when we got married, it was, uh, I was three months pregnant and it was kinda rushed. And we just wanted to do things right. To start over.”

It was obvious Renee had some hidden secrets and King was digging them up as fast as he would have dug clams at a clambake. He looked at his watch. It was 4:40
A.M
. He debated the pros and cons of continuing, but could feel his own legs and back begging for a rest, so he ended the interview.

Renee stood up slowly, as if the motion weren't easy, then stretched her tired body. She closed her eyes and tried to think of Katie. Walking over to the window to get a better look, she could see the moon had completely disappeared behind a layer of clouds. The shadowy fears of night held her eyes open as her brain attempted to corroborate parts of the blurry night. She stuck her face against the window and sank into a low and lonely depression. She wanted to throw up, but there was nothing left inside her.

As Renee thought about her situation, the facts were becoming more and more alarming. She blinked her eyes. This was worse than a dream. This was a nightmare.

Detective Jim Joyce telephoned the Winston-Salem Police Department (WSPD) sometime around 3:00 a.m. and requested an officer to be dispatched to the home of John Boyd Frazier. Joyce told the desk sergeant that Frazier was a white male, stood approximately six feet one and weighed 225 pounds, and lived at Kingswell Drive in “Old Town.” He was a suspect in the Brent Poole murder.

The desk sergeant dispatched the information through the department's mobile data terminal. Officer Darrell Mills, a seven-year veteran, received the request from the communications center at approximately 5:00
A.M
. Unfortunately, when the call appeared on the computer terminal in Mills's car, there was just a written report with instructions to attempt to verify Frazier was at home. There was no indication of urgency. Thinking he had received a routine call, he didn't hesitate to stop the driver of a vehicle who nearly collided with his police vehicle after running a red light. While Mills was writing the citation, the desk sergeant contacted him again.

“What's your estimated time of arrival?” the dispatcher asked him.

Mills completed the transaction, then took the extra time to admonish the reckless driver prior to returning the call on his cell phone to headquarters.

“I've been delayed with a vehicle committing a seven twenty-six,” he answered. “I just finished the citation and on my way to the location now.”

“You need to get over there ASAP,” the dispatcher urged. “We've got a possible murder suspect and we need to verify his whereabouts.”

Mills shoved his foot down on the gas pedal and proceeded immediately. He arrived at Frazier's neighborhood somewhere between 5:20
A.M
. and 5:25
A.M
. Driving slowly through the community of homes, he spotted the number of Frazier's house on the mailbox and stopped his car.

A concrete driveway led from the street and continued inside a Cyclone fence area behind Frazier's house. Mills cautiously got out of his car and eased toward the fence to get a better look. A gray Acura Integra was parked inside the fence, some forty feet away. The gate was locked.

The officer had no way of knowing if the Acura had recently driven inside the fenced area. It hadn't occurred to him at the time to check it for dew or to see if the engine was still warm. Knowing that Frazier could have been somehow involved in a murder, Mills had decided it was best to downplay his visit. To make as little hoopla as possible. It not only reduced his personal risks, but it decreased the chances of frightening or alarming Frazier. The last thing he wanted was to become engaged in an early-morning shoot-out with some frightened suspect scared out of his wits.

Frazier's neighborhood was very quiet in the early hours of that Wednesday morning. It would still be a while before his neighbors awoke and started their day. Mills stood on the front porch, seemingly unnoticed, and peered in through a small side window next to the front door. Uneasiness still hung heavily in the air. The air caught like a pair of fists in Mills's lungs, then slowly slipped out between his teeth. He knocked firmly on the door and waited a few minutes. No one stirred. He looked through the window again. Still pitch-black inside. Either John Frazier was sound asleep or he was nowhere to be found. Mills knocked a second time, only harder this time. Still no response.

Just as Officer Mills had decided no one was home and was heading toward his car, a light came on in one of the back bedrooms and he heard footsteps pounding down the hall. The officer stopped a few feet from his car and waited for the door to open. When it did, Mills found himself staring at a large Caucasian male with tousled, thin black hair and eyes too large and too black.

Dressed in a bathrobe and a T-shirt, John Frazier stared back at the uniformed police officer standing in his yard, unflinching, as if there were nothing left inside to shine outward. He seemed startled and even a little nervous. Maybe even a little flustered.

Mills eased back toward the front porch, then apologized for his intrusion at such an odd hour.

“Are you John Boyd Frazier?”

John nodded. He looked like a bear who had just been awoken from his hibernation.

Frazier's appearance, however, didn't mean anything to Mills, since there's never been a laundry list of rules on how someone should react when a police officer shows up at one's house, unannounced, at 5:30
A.M
. He had seen the same look many times before when he had awaken others at such odd hours. Some expressions were valid, as Mills was often called upon to deliver alarming or heart-stopping news. But not always. It wasn't unusual for him to field a request that later proved to be initiated by a prankster or an angry lover with nothing better to do than waste police time and disturb someone's early-morning REM sleep.

“There's been a missing person's report filed on you in South Carolina,” Mills announced, offering John a little more information. “I'm just trying to find out if you're at home.”

The two men exchanged glances.

Mills kept his face blank of expression and tried to relax. He couldn't tell if John was alone, and he didn't appear to be drunk or under the influence of drugs. The only sign of emotion he could see in John was a slight nervousness. He hadn't expected him to open the door and invite him in for a cup of coffee, but most people in this situation would want to explore if further.

“I have a cousin that lives in Myrtle Beach,” John offered, straightening his robe. “His name is Mike Frazier. Maybe it's him they're talking about. But as you can see, he's not here.”

“Is that your car parked in the back?” Mills asked, hoping to secure additional information.

John shrugged rather smugly. “No, that belongs to a friend of mine, Kayle Schettler. I loaned my car to him and he let me borrow the Acura.”

“Can you give me an address on your friend?” Mills inquired, reaching for a notepad in his front pocket.

“Um, well, uh, that would be difficult to say.” John looked away from the officer as if his memory banks had closed and were not scheduled to reopen until later that day. “I can tell you how to get there,” he said, shaking his head as if trying to kick start his brain. “He lives a few miles down the road from here, but I can't for the life of me tell you the address.”

“Okay, if you could give me his name again and I'll see if I can't locate an address.”

“Kayle Schettler,” John said softly, spelling out each letter in his friend's name. “It's spelled: K-A-Y-L-E. S-C-H-E-T-TL-E-R.”

After jotting down Schettler's name, Mills didn't ask John for any further details concerning the whereabouts of his car or why he was driving someone else's car. Had he asked, Frazier would have told him that he and Kayle had been friends since high school and it wasn't out of the ordinary for the two of them to switch cars. Kayle was a crackerjack mechanic and worked at Cloverdale Shell on Cloverdale Shell Avenue in Winston-Salem. He had worked on John's car before, and on several previous occasions had offered to loan him his Acura to drive until he returned John's Blazer.

On Monday, June 8, John had driven up to the service station around noon and asked if Kayle could work on his car. The front end of his Blazer had been making a noise and he wanted Kayle to see if he could fix it. Since they had switched cars in the past, John then asked if he could borrow Kayle's car. Even when he told Kayle he would need to borrow his car through Thursday, Kayle never hesitated. After all, what are friends for if not to help out when one was in a bind?

But Mills never asked for an explanation about John's car and he never offered. He apologized again to John for disturbing him then excused himself. He wasn't there to harass or accost him, and accepted the fact that he had accomplished his mission. John was at home so he left it at that. Unfortunately, he still hadn't thought about walking to the car and placing his hand on the hood to feel if the engine was still warm—a sure sign that the car had been driven recently.

Inside his patrol car, Mills telephoned communications at headquarters and told them he had found John Frazier, at home. Several minutes later, he received another request from the MBPD. They wanted him to locate Frazier's car, described as a black Chevrolet Blazer with a personalized tag. The tag was a North Carolina plate with a “first in flight” airplane insignia and had the word “NERVUS” blazoned across it.

Mills telephoned the name of John's friend he had written down and asked the dispatcher to verify an address. He was given Schettler's address at Brandemere Lane Apartments and drove straight to the adjacent parking lot and located John Frazier's vehicle. Since he had been told there had been a shooting last night in Myrtle Beach and that John was a suspect, there was a good possibility this black Blazer had been there also. But when he checked it out, he found the vehicle to be cold and John's friend at home and asleep in bed.