Dance of Death (10 page)

Altman's head shot forward as he started applying pressure. “And what would you say, it seems just a little strange that you're calling your husband when you're living with somebody else just to let him know what you're doing?”

Renee didn't say anything. She didn't have to. The detective's chagrin told her what he was thinking.

“And when you decided to move back in with Brent, how did John feel about that?”

“He wasn't really happy about it.” Renee's lips started trembling. “But he just told me, ‘Well, you know, that's your decision. I hope everything works out, you know.' And we agreed to remain friends, 'cause that's how we originally started out.”

He stared at her expressionless. Unsmiling, in a far seeing place.

“We're
friends,
” Renee quickly corrected. She could feel her legs starting to tremble. “And, uh, I talked to my husband about him and he talked to John about it. Everybody agreed, you know, that was fine. As long as everybody knew what was being said, that was fine.”

Altman didn't believe her. “And at no time did Brent ever get jealous over John?” he asked.

“He was upset that I slept with him, yes. But he didn't get jealous over him.”

“I don't understand it,” the detective shouted suddenly, his arms flailing about. “Brent was twenty-four, and you're twenty-one. You've only been out of high school a few years, still pretty young age to handle an open marriage like that. I remember how jealous kids are in high school. If your boyfriend even sees somebody else even looking at you, usually they're going to flip off the handle or want to fight this other guy.”

Renee assured the detective that John and Brent were never like that.

“No. Brent's not a violent person. He had a really bad temper at one time, but he's gotten over that. We've talked about [it] and we had been going to church and everything. He's really not a jealous person. He knows I don't have a lot of friends.”

Renee whined to the detectives that she only had one friend, Cynthia Hanson, the girl who had introduced her to John. Altman asked for her phone number and Renee gave it to him, even though she said Cynthia wasn't up to date on her relationship with John. Renee drew in a quick breath, then let it out slowly. “I've been pretty much a loner all my life,” she wanted the detectives to know. “I've never really had any friends. Even in high school, I didn't have any friends.”

Given Renee's looks, the detectives didn't believe that was true. Altman tried not to show his frustration and asked, “Doesn't it seem a little strange that you're carrying on a relationship with another guy and you're living with your husband and child?”

“Right.” Renee felt helpless.

“I mean, don't you think that's strange?”

“To an extent, yeah, but we were friends to begin with and my husband knew that,” she tried to say convincingly. “I think the only reason it bothered him is that I slept with him. Brent would listen to our conversations and he knew what was being said, so he really didn't get too upset about it. He knew what all we talked about.”

When pressed, Renee said that Brent was ecstatic when she came back home for good. John wasn't very happy about it, though. He even told her to get somebody to move herself, that he wasn't going to do it. But she said John did respect their decision and that he had only been over twice. The invitations for him to come over and see her had been at Renee's request. Brent didn't know John had been over, because she didn't tell him. She said she was afraid he'd think something was going on.

Renee claimed she'd only been at John's house once since she had moved back home, and only to pick up her things. She claimed John was not mad that she had gone back to Brent. She swore nothing was going on, that they would just talk about her and Brent's relationship. She did admit that John had been calling her daily since she moved out of his house, but insisted that Brent didn't have a problem with that.

The seasoned detective found her story hard to believe, so he took aim and attempted to shoot it full of holes. “What would you talk about with John in relation to your relationship with Brent?”

“Well, John knew that we were going to church,” Renee said, her red eyes now glistening. “That we were going to church and that we were gonna start going to counseling.” She quickly corrected herself. “Uh, my husband was gonna set up an appointment for us to go to counseling.”

“So when did Brent find out that you were sleeping with John?”

“Uh, while I was still living with John, I told him.”

“So, he really found out about it then.”

“Yes, and, uh, he and—he and . . . Brent would stay home from work because he was so upset about it.”

When Altman asked Renee if she thought John was really in love with her she shook her head no. She said she thought he was probably getting attached, but he wasn't in love with her.

“How did you feel about him getting attached to you?”

Renee grew silent, then answered, “It bothered me.”

“How come?”

“Because I'm . . . I was still married.”

Detective Altman glanced at his partner, then rolled his eyes again. Kings sat quietly, without expression, and continued watching her.

“Did you ever think about getting divorced from Brent to go with John?”

“Not to be with John, no,” she snapped back in a voice unbelievably cold and hateful.

“So you had thought about divorcing him.”

Her face tensed suddenly, but her manner remained stern. “I had thought about it, yeah.”

“And what was your reason?”

“Uh, because he didn't spend the time with us. That was the reason I left him. 'Cause he didn't spend the time with us.”

Up until this point, no one at the MBPD, including Captain Hendrick, Detectives Joyce, King and Altman, as well as advocate Mary Stogner, had directly accused Renee Poole of any deliberate involvement in her husband's murder. But all that was about to change. Her clever attempt to confuse the detectives with a little bit of truth and a whole lot of lies was about to end. Detective Altman pulled his chair in closer, put on his boxing gloves, and went to work on his prima donna.

“Did you tell John Boyd Frazier that you were coming to Myrtle Beach?”

The sudden change in the detective's intonation startled Renee. She sat up in her seat, then responded nervously, “I don't think that I did tell him. Uh, I did tell him that it was our anniversary. I think the last time I talked to John was before we came to Myrtle Beach. Maybe the beginning or middle of last week. But he was all for us getting back together.”

Altman nodded vigorously. Slowly and methodically he took her back over the last two days that she and her husband had spent at the beach and asked her to describe once again in detail how they had been robbed and her husband murdered.

Both Altman and King already had made up their minds what had happened, but they listened this time as Renee described the events and studied her carefully, noting every grimace and twitch in her face, diversion in her eyes, wrinkle in her brow, bite of her lip, hesitation in her voice and movement of her hands. They both bore into her with no other thoughts in mind, as if they had no single purpose in life or no other interests but this single homicide investigation.

It was an attitude Renee greatly resented. She had already been through several lengthy interviews. She wasn't involved in Brent's murder and she had nothing to fear, but it was late and she was exhausted. She had been as forthright and honest as she knew how to be—what more did they want from her? Her lips now trembling, she took a deep, shaky breath, and braced herself for the onslaught.

The detectives centered their attack on Renee's inability to remember certain fine points about the shooter and the particulars of how her husband had been executed. During their lengthy interview, Renee had added a few variations to her story, including the disclosures about the shooter. When asked, “Could you tell if the shooter was black or white?” Renee said she couldn't.

“What?” Altman shouted. “You mean to tell me you were a hundred feet from this guy, it was a full moon, and you couldn't tell?”

“I just . . . I—I glanced at him,” Renee said sheepishly.

“I mean, you guys were pretty scared that this guy was starting to follow you. You didn't really take a good look around and see what he looked like?”

Renee said she thought the shooter must have put the mask on at this point. “He must have had it on before he turned around to come back in the opposite direction.” It was when she and her husband turned around and saw that mask that they looked at each other and sped up.

“So, why didn't you start running?” Altman asked.

She said she didn't know why. They just sped up. But they didn't start running, even though they saw the man had a mask on.

“So, he's dressed all in black and he's got a ski mask on, and you didn't run away?” Altman asked, as if he and Detective King were the only ones who were speechless by that remark.

Renee admitted she just started walking fast.

“Then how did he catch up to you guys if you guys started walking real fast?”

She said she didn't know, the shooter must have run, obviously. She didn't know which side he came up or how he got in front of them, even though they were walking toward the lights in front of them and there was a full moon, but this guy got in front of them somehow. Said she didn't see him run by, she didn't hear him running, no thumping or kicking sand out, no little noise of squishing sand. But somehow he just caught up to them.

Altman imagined it must have been easy for Renee to visualize how all this had happened, but he was having a very hard time believing it had actually occurred as she said it did. Then Renee told him the shooter made a strange request in asking them to lie not on their stomachs, but on their backs. In fact, he believed it was so bizarre that he asked her to draw out on a piece of paper exactly how he had told them to lie down. She described how they were lying, Brent facing with his feet toward the hotel, feet close, two feet apart from each other. His feet toward the south and her feet toward the ocean. They instantly lay down when the shooter told them and then he proceeded to rob them of everything they had on them, including Brent's wallet. She gave him her wedding rings and a diamond engagement ring.

Altman glanced at Renee's neck and hand. He then pointed, as if her eyes had been shrouded by a blindfold, and asked, “But you still got a bracelet and another ring on?”

“Oh, uh, I didn't realize I had this on at the time,” she replied. “I was just trying to do what he said and obviously didn't see it.”

Detective King kept his eyes stuck on Renee.

“So, by this time,” Altman continued, “you guys are a couple feet apart. This guy is right in between you and you're close to him. Now you're probably as close as the three of us are. Right?”

“Right,” Renee said nonchalantly.

“And you're looking over at the suspect and he's all in black. And he's got a ski mask on. Can you tell if this guy is white or black?”

“No. I was scared to death.” Renee said the man had a deep voice and that he had a ski mask covering his face. When she told Altman she didn't recall if it had anything covering the mouth or nose, he made her draw a picture of it on paper. “It looked like something cut out around the eyes,” she mumbled as she sketched out the image. “Maybe at the top of the mask. One hole. Like one big eye.” When asked to describe the shooter's eyes, Renee said she didn't see his eyes at all.

Altman was a man on fire, clearly obsessed with getting at the truth. He knew he had grabbed a tigress by the tail, but this didn't stop him from going after her.

“And what was Brent doing all this time? Was he just lying there?” Altman leaned back in his chair. He started waving his hands again, pleading with her. “Didn't he tell this guy to leave you guys alone or anything like that? Didn't he make any comments to him at all? I mean, this guy is kneeling over him and he doesn't do anything. Nothing?”

“No,” Renee told him quite calmly. She shook her head. The only thing she could remember were his words when the shooter asked why shouldn't he kill him. Brent begged for his life and said, “Because I have a daughter that I love very much.”

Renee said she then heard a click that sounded like the gun was shot, but there was nothing in it. Said she knew a little about guns. She could see this one was black. It wasn't a revolver, but a semiautomatic. The shooter was holding it in his right hand, and it sounded to her like he was messing with the gun trying to get a bullet in the chamber.

Altman sat silent for a moment. He deliberately phrased his question so that it would be impossible for her to misinterpret his inference. “And you didn't decide at that time you needed to get out of there?”

“I was afraid he was gonna shoot me.”

“I mean, he's already tried to shoot Brent once and it didn't go off,” Altman countered. “Didn't it click in your mind that this is it? It's time to run or die? I mean, you're just gonna lay there and let him shoot you?”

“Well, I—I was scared. I didn't know what he would do.”

She sounded frazzled and flighty, but Altman couldn't seem to break her. Like a heavyweight fighter who had suddenly tied his opponent against the ropes, he went in with the knockout punch.

“What about Brent? I mean, he's laying over there?” He jabbed at her again. “This guy's got a gun on him and it's misfired. He didn't decide, ‘Hey, it's time to get the hell out of here'?”