Dance of Death (11 page)

Then, with his best one-two combination, Altman moved in closer.

“He never tried to fight this guy off? He just laid there? Where did this guy have this gun pointed?”

“I didn't see,” Renee answered as a matter of fact. She looked beat, but was still determined to put on her best performance.

“You're only . . . ,” Altman started, then backed up. “This space between us is maybe—what—four feet?”

“I . . . I—”

The detective cut her off. “I mean, across this table right here. That's how close you are and you don't see where he pointed that gun?”

“I had my eyes closed at that point.”

Renee could feel the pressure building. Her head pounded every second like the hands on an old antique clock. Hot, dank air filled the room. She lowered her head and closed her eyes.

“So, you're just sitting there waiting for him to shoot you?”

“Pretty much.”

Altman demanded to know what she had heard. Her stomach rumbled. For a moment, she felt sick. She closed, then slowly opened her eyes. She spoke without looking at him.

“I heard the gun misfire once and heard the shooter clicking it around again. I kept my eyes closed the whole time. When he got the gun cleared, he then shot my husband. I put my hands over my eyes and just started shaking. I didn't see what was going on. Just heard two shots. Didn't look over. Didn't look up to see what was going on. I did see the guy run away. I leaned up and looked at my husband, then looked up to see where the man was running.”

“Then how come he didn't shoot you?” Altman barked. His voice sounded too harsh to be anything but a nightmare.

“I don't know,” Renee said through trembling lips. “Maybe he saw somebody or heard something.”

“Do you know where your husband got shot?”

Renee lowered her head again.

“In the head,” she answered softly. “The blood was coming from the side of his head.”

Altman leaned forward. He was only inches away from her face. She could feel his breath. It smelled like day-old cat food.

“Now, don't you think that's kind of unusual?” he began slowly, working his way to a fevered pitch. “That he shoots your husband, twice, and just lets you lay there and takes off. I mean, I don't know if you know about Myrtle Beach too well—you've probably only been here a couple of times—but this place . . . this residential area you're in is high-dollar district. We got nice, wealthy people living there.”

Renee looked up and forced a smile. “Yes, my husband and I were noticing the houses.”

Altman ignored her attempt to be cordial. He didn't hesitate. He was on a roll.

“These—these things don't happen up there, okay? We don't have robberies on the beach up in that area. You might have a few alternative-lifestyle people that hang up in the dunes, but we just don't have robbers pop out of the dunes with a gun and shoot somebody twice. Who shoots somebody and leaves that other person there. Can you see what I'm saying?”

“Yeah,” Renee answered grimly.

“I mean, you see where none of this makes any sense?” the detective pleaded. “Or, why he would shoot your husband twice. Your husband, the father of your child, and leave you there. Doesn't say a word to you. I mean, can you explain this?”

“No, I can't,” Renee responded curtly. What did he think she was? A fucking detective?

“Then let me ask you something. Do you know who shot your husband?”

“No,” she answered emphatically.

“This is your time, right now, to come clean on this,” Altman said in a patronizing voice. “Because your husband's dead.”

Renee shook her head. “I know that.”

Altman continued pressuring her.

“The father of your child is dead. These things don't happen in Myrtle Beach like this. Especially in that neighborhood. I've worked here for six years. Sergeant King has worked here going on about fifteen. And we can both tell you from our experiences, things just don't happen up there. You're sure not gonna get one person shot up there and leave a witness wide open. Without shooting at you once. Maybe trying to shoot you in the stomach. The way your husband was shot, it could almost be considered an execution. I think somebody intentionally shot your husband to get rid of him. Now, he's the father of your child. And you say you love him?”

“I do love him,” Renee shot back.

Altman was merciless. “Then maybe you just loved him a little bit too much, where you couldn't decide which way you were gonna go?”

She shook her head. “No.” That wasn't the way it was.

“Because, like I said, to leave somebody, a solid witness like that, without even taking a pop shot at them.” Altman let that thought sink deep before driving a second stake. “You know your husband was shot point-blank. Twice. You know, somebody's gotta live with this the rest of their life.”

Renee's stomach tightened. She felt scared and confused. Her stomach came up, but an hour without food or water hadn't changed anything. There was still nothing there left for her to throw up.

Altman didn't stop his relentless grilling. He believed he had her back against the wall. As he thought about it, she had never behaved like a woman who was struggling with dreadful emotional trauma. She had never acted like a woman who had just seen her husband brutally murdered. At least, she hadn't shown any signs of stress that in his experience he normally expected a woman would. He wanted to ask the question he had been holding back for the longest time, but before he asked it, he went on to say, “I mean, you say you've been going to church and stuff with Brent. Do you know anything about this murder? You know, we've been sitting here talking with you about a good forty-five minutes and you've talked to Sergeant King for about an hour before this, and you're really showing no emotion at all about this.”

Renee heard her teeth grinding. She looked Altman straight in the eyes, then told him, “I've already done my crying.” Her eyes told him to kiss off.

“I understand that, but to have somebody murdered, this is some pretty serious stuff. We called Brent's parents and the first words out of their mouth were about all this fussing and fighting that's been going on between you two.”

“Like I've told you, we had our arguments, but we had everything worked out before we even left. I took him shopping. I bought him all kinds of church clothes. I bought him brand-new clothes, underwear, socks. Because I wanted him to look nice.”

If that was all true, Altman thought, it was understandable why she should be furious with his accusations. It was obvious in her face and in her razor speech that his name would not be included on her Christmas mailing list this year. But as he belatedly realized, it was impossible to miss that to which he was referring. Not once had he seen a tear mist in her eyes or trickle down her cheeks. The detective was determined not to let Renee off the hook.

“Yes, I understand,” he continued. “I saw him at the hospital and I'll admit he looked like Tommy Hilfiger. But how are you gonna explain this to your daughter when she's old enough to understand this stuff?”

Altman immediately recognized the anxiety in her face. He had finally touched a sore spot in her heart and it burned.

“I been trying to think of that all night,” Renee said, for the first time looking as if she were going to break down. “'Cause I know when I walk in that hotel room, she's gonna ask me, ‘Where's my daddy?' I don't know what to tell her. I don't know what to tell her.”

Altman leaned back in his chair and signaled for Sergeant King to jump in. He had pinned her to the canvas. It was time for his partner to take over.

It was time now to end this match.

When Sergeant King pulled his chair in closer to Renee, it finally dawned on her what was happening. She had seen enough police shows on television and watched enough crime movies to recognize this was going to be a tag-team match. This oldest trick in the book. Good cop versus bad cop.

Sergeant King, the quiet and unassuming one, through his slow, easy style, had appeared sympathetic to Renee's unfortunate plight. He was tall and lean, a clean-cut black man who reminded her of Denzel Washington. She had thought the two of them had developed a good rapport. But now, she could see the world was his stage, and he, like Denzel, was just acting out the part of a good cop.

Sergeant Altman was the bad cop. Even though he, too, was clean-cut and handsome, with his closely cut dark black hair—the Ben Affleck type, she surmised—he came off as very arrogant and aggressive.

The way she saw it, Altman had been nothing like King. From the start, he had treated her like some child who had gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar. He was rude, had yelled at her and, at times, had resorted to bullying her. There was a bead of sweat tracing his upper lip—why he kept insisting she knew more about Brent's murder than she was telling them, she never would know. She guessed he played the role of the bad cop admirably, and as well as anyone, but she'd be the first to tell him she didn't appreciate the way he was treating her. It was like she was some kind of common criminal.

At first, Renee had believed the Myrtle Beach police were as determined as she to find out who had killed her husband. But she now realized that had been her fatal error. In retrospect, she now felt like they had all been wearing blinders by focusing totally on her. There was a point during her first interrogation, when the police had told her they had used tracking dogs, that she had asked him to turn off the recorder for a second. She could then see it in their faces, that they were bound and determined to think she had something to do with Brent's murder. That she was going to offer them at that moment some incriminating information against John Boyd Frazier.

But she let them know she was good and tired of all their questions. Fed up with their bullshit. She was agitated at them for trying to implicate she was somehow involved in any of this. She made it clear it was time for them to stop
accusing
her and to start
giving
her some answers. After all, had it not been
her
husband who had been unexplainably murdered on their beach? And didn't she deserve the same consideration as any other victim whose husband had just been brutally murdered before her very eyes?

“Tell me, then,” Renee said to the police with renewed courage, “if your dogs are supposed to be so goddamned good, why haven't they found anything yet?”

“We were hoping you could tell us that,” she was told.

The tedious and tiring wrestling match between the interviewers and the interviewee continued for another hour or more, covering much of the same ground. Renee knew she was being double-teamed. The only problem was, when she had last looked in her corner, there was nobody there for her.

“Renee, do you understand the problems we are having with this?” Sergeant King began slowly. “The main problem I have is the ski mask and how you have drawn this design.” He pointed at the sheet of paper lying in front of them on the table. “If that mask had that much of a gap in it around the eyes, you could see if that person's black or white.” He pointed at Renee's drawing again. “And if he's that close to you, and there was a full moon out there, then you could see that.”

“I wasn't paying attention to him,” Renee said, waiting to catch her breath. “I looked at his build; I looked at his height. I mean, that was obvious because he was, he was bigger than we were, but we're small people. He was taller than we were.”

Detective King dug in again. When he asked Renee if John knew she and her husband were coming to Myrtle Beach, she said she hadn't told him—that she could recall. Then again, once she thought about it, she may have told him. But she was definitely sure she hadn't told John where they would be staying.

King was unimpressed, but inquired patiently, “John really didn't like this too much about you going back to your husband, did he? One thing you told me that stands out is when you told him that you were moving back, he said, ‘Well, you need to get somebody else to help you pack.' He said he wasn't going to help. He helped you pack to move in with him, but he wasn't going to help you pack to move out.”

Renee tried to focus harder. She squinted her eyes, but her pupils refused to cooperate. She didn't bother looking up at the detective.

King lifted his head condescendingly.

“You see, that is kind of odd there.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against his chair as if he had just figured out the missing part to this riddle. “Something just ain't right here. It's just not adding up. Something's wrong.”

The back of her neck suddenly turned red and her eyes looked as if they were ready to shoot fire. “Then, why don't you pick up the phone and call him?” she said gamely, shifting her gaze from King to Altman.

King arched a brow at her unexpected barb, then glanced at his partner. “Call who?” he said stiffly, squaring his shoulders.

“John,” she answered calmly.

King shook his head, then gave her his best scowl. “Okay, what's his number?” He had called her bluff.

Renee's heart began beating rapidly. “I have his pager number, but I don't have his house number.” A few volleys were launched between her and the detectives as to why she didn't have his home number. “Both numbers had been changed because John and I were both getting hang-ups. In all honesty, I really didn't want to have it anyway, because the month before I had gotten a three-hundred-dollar phone bill.”

“Somebody's been doing a lot of talking,” King couldn't resist saying.

When Renee finally scribbled the pager number on the paper with her drawings that still sat in front of them, the detective asked, “You think if we call this number right now, do you actually think he'll call back?”

“He may.” Renee shrugged. Then, quickly changed her mind to: “No, I'm pretty sure he will. He always did his best to call me right back.”

Sergeant King stared long and hard at Renee. He smiled wanly at her, then snorted. “Was it John that did this?”

“I don't know,” she said quickly, glancing at the detectives to see if they believed her or not.

King shook his head, this time in disgust. “You don't know?”

Renee felt as if she had spoken too quickly. She fell silent, before offering, “I don't know if John was here or not.”

“Did John do this?” King said abruptly.

“I don't know if John was here and I don't know if that was John,” she said quietly.

King tapped the tip of his finger on the desk. He began to grin smugly. “Now, I really find that hard to believe.”

“I don't know if he was here.”

“Come on, Renee,” he muttered fiercely. “Was this John?”

Frustration animated her body, bringing up her chin. “I don't know if that was John.” She shrugged.

King looked away from Renee and nodded at his partner.

“Renee . . .” Altman leaned in, as if he were hurtling his full weight against her.

“I really don't know.” Renee winced. When she looked at him, her eyes still shot fire.

“But John loves you so much,” he supplied as an explanation.

“He's not that stupid,” she said flatly.

“But he killed your husband 'cause he loves you!” Altman shouted, asking her to try that one on for size. When she didn't say anything, he thrust a finger at her and roared, “Now tell us what happened out there!”

“I told you what happened,” Renee shouted, still seeing red. “I don't think that John could do that.”

Altman backed off and King stepped back up to the plate. Renee noticed King always tried to console her when Altman got outraged and couldn't get anywhere with her. “Renee,” he said her name gently but firmly, as a father would have, “he asked you if that was John.”

She could feel her chest tighten again. “I don't know if it was John,” she whimpered. “I don't know who it was.”

“Now, you've talked with John plenty of times,” King continued to coax in the voice of a loving parent. “You got a three-hundred-dollar phone bill to back that up. You could recognize John's voice in this room, but you're telling me you don't know if this was John or not.”

“No,” she swore again.

“So it could have been John?”

She shook her head lightly, then whispered at last, “Could have been.”

“Ah, come on now. . . .”

“But I don't know if it was him.”

King paled. “Renee, don't get yourself in big trouble here,” he admonished.

She didn't say anything.

Altman leaned back in.

“You don't need to die in a death penalty case because of something that he did because he loves you,” he growled. “We already know John's not home. We've already had the police go to his house and he's not there. Now tell us what happened on the beach tonight.”

Renee closed her eyes. Everything started spinning sickeningly around her. Her brain suddenly felt pickled, like it had been sealed in a Mason jar and had sat on a dusty shelf in somebody's basement.

“I told you exactly what happened,” she snapped. “I really don't know if it was him.”

“Renee,” King addressed her again, “why don't you know if it was him? Tell us, why don't you know if this was John?”

“Because I don't think John would be that stupid.”

“You don't think John would be that stupid,” the detective acknowledged. “But tell us, why you don't know that?”

Renee sat silent.

“Was it him? Or not?”

Renee took a deep breath. “John sounded like he was happy for my marriage to work. He was being that friend who . . . who was proud of me for going back to my husband and making my family work.”

“But deep down, there was something else there,” King chided her.

“He never portrayed it to me.” She fell back against the chair and shook her head slowly. She felt the instinctive need to breathe. “I don't know.”

“Here's your chance,” King urged, trying to pin her with his bleary gaze. “The door is wide open.”

Renee didn't hesitate. “I don't know.”

“Don't let it close.” King feigned reluctance. “Don't let the door close. Help yourself.” Before she had a chance to respond, he reminded her again, “Don't let the door close, Renee.”

“I don't know anything,” she insisted. “I really don't.”

For another hour, the homicide detectives grilled Renee, asking, time and time again, if the shooter had been John Boyd Frazier. But Renee's response was the same after each challenge: “It could have been, but I really don't know.”

The detectives told her clearly and firmly they found it hard to believe that someone who had been around John as long as she had, and who had been involved with him sexually, would not have been able to recognize his voice, his build and his mannerisms, especially at that close of a range and in the full light of the moon.

Altman and King started pulling every rabbit out of the hat to try and discredit Renee's story. Utilizing almost every strategy in the training manual, they told her someone had recognized John's car at the beach last night; they talked with her about a gun, she said, she thought he owned; they debated with her all the good reasons—right or wrong—John Boyd Frazier had for killing her husband.

“I would say he had good reasons to,” Sergeant King emphasized, trying to convince Renee that John had a strong motive to see her husband dead. To see her husband lying on the beach with his baby blue eyes wide open and chunks of his brain blown away.

King's statement didn't appear to shock Renee at all. She immediately blurted out, “Why? Because he was a friend of mine?”

“Because he was in love,” King added, as if he were surprised that she didn't already know that.

Renee stared at the detective with an expression that struck him as if she thought that was the most ridiculous statement she had heard all morning. “I don't think John was in love with me. I didn't live with him but a week. I only slept with him a couple of times.” She continued to look at King as if his questions were immaterial to her present situation.

“People fall in love overnight,” he sneered.

“But he knew I loved my husband,” she argued. “He knew that he couldn't have me—”

King cut her short. “But it happened. You take your husband out of the picture, there's nobody left in his way. You think we're making all this up. But the puzzle fits, Renee. It fits in every way.”

Renee closed her eyes as she listened. “No. I don't know who killed my husband. There has to be fingerprints or something somewhere.”

King glanced at Altman. He shook his head lightly, then turned back to Renee. “So, you had nothing to do with this. You have no knowledge whatsoever?”

“No,” she drawled in her deep Southern accent.

Altman gestured to his partner to back off. Tossing a net over her was beginning to get as difficult as trying to squeeze an elephant into a pair of Spider-Man pajamas. It was something clearly within the realm of possibility, but tough to do. He'd give it another try.

Altman slowly and meticulously spelled it all out for Renee one last time. He provided her the motive, a timeline, and an opportunity. Applying everything, from God to fate, reason to conscience—and throwing everything in to boot, but the American flag—he officially accused Renee of knowing the time, place and how the murder had gone down.