Dance of Death (13 page)

Altman looked at Bill, then back at Agnes. His heart ached for them.

“But what really made up my mind was that one night Renee called me and
griped
for forty-five minutes about what Brent did and didn't do.”

Agnes paused. She looked down nervously at her hands in her lap. Visibly upset, she bit down on her bottom lip, fighting back her tears, then continued weakly, almost apologetically.

“You know, I never came down on Renee for this, and when she called to gripe about Brent, I would sit with the phone held out and just listen. But it suddenly dawned on me that Renee had been coming by our house every day, about the same time the mailman came to deliver our mail. I remembered noticing Renee was always looking, checking the box and seeing what was in our mail. One day, I quickly ran out to the mailbox before she got there and saw that package. I put it under my arm and ran back to the house. Renee arrived a minute later. Too late to see what I had found.”

Agnes sat at the table with her fists clenched. As she talked, she pounded them lightly on the table. Altman swallowed hard, gladly knowing Agnes was not his mother-in-law and mad at him.

“That night, she called again, about eleven-fifteen, and infuriated me with her complaints about my son. I was so angry at Renee that when we hung up, I got that package and immediately opened it. Inside was a videotape and I shoved it in the television.”

Agnes slowed down. She lowered her eyes, then blew out a deep breath, as if expelling years of deeply buried pain. “It was a tape of Renee and a boy named Danny having sex,” she said in a low voice, a little below a whisper.

Detective Altman leaned forward to hear her. Agnes cleared her voice, then looked up at him.

“In vivid color, I saw my daughter-in-law and a stranger having sex,” she said, getting teary-eyed again. “I watched as she and this stranger demonstrated the finer techniques of a vibrator.”

Brent's mother paused, then turned toward her husband, who had reached out and held her hand.

“There were also additional footage of Renee and this guy when she graduated from night class and received her GED. As I watched this, I hung my head in disbelief when Renee was presented an engagement ring. There, on the video, he gave her this ring and she accepted it.”

Bill Poole shook his head in agony. Dee lowered her head and started to cry.

“There was a big poster board on the TV screen and it read, ‘Renee, will you marry me? Will you be my wife?' Then Renee accepts the ring, looks into the camera and says, ‘Yes, I'll marry you.'”

Altman was confused. He looked at Sergeant King for help. King shrugged.

“Wait a minute”—Altman held out his hand, palms up—“is this while she is still married to Brent?”

“Yes, this is while she is still married to our son,” Agnes acknowledged.

Bill started squirming in his seat, as if he had just realized he had been sitting on a tack all this time. He looked at the detectives and shook his head.

“I didn't see this video,” he protested, holding up both his hands.

Agnes turned and apologized to her husband that she had kept it from him for about a year. “I was just too ashamed to show it to you.”

Bill tilted his head slightly, then said to Altman, “This girl is bad . . . bad news.”

Altman thought about his own mother and how she would have reacted if she had received a tape like that. Stunned by the thought, he asked Agnes, “So, why would this guy send this tape to you, of all people?”

“Because he thought she was having an affair with somebody else and that was his way of getting back,” Agnes said, without having to think about it. “Brent and Renee lived with us when they got married, and I think until Katie was about three months old. And she had been having an affair the whole time and we didn't know it. She was even bringing him into our home and having sex with him there. He called Brent at work and told him about it. ‘I have been in your home,' he said. ‘Your parents are remodeling.' He even described our home.”

Altman rolled his eyes and smirked. Renee's in-laws were peeling away the layers of her life like an overripe banana. She was rotten to the core.

“We learned later Renee had met this guy Danny at the Home Depot when she was working there while she was pregnant.” Agnes kept on exposing her daughter-in-law's unscrupulous behavior. “One time, when Katie had eye surgery, she told me not to come to the hospital unless I checked with her. But I went one morning anyway to carry her breakfast, and this guy was there. I was suspicious at the time, but I let it go, 'cause I didn't know anything. Then Brent started getting phone calls at work, and the guy would ask him, ‘Do you want to know who your wife is screwing? She is screwing everybody in town.' And Brent would say, ‘No, I don't want to know'; then he changed his mind and said, ‘Yeah, go ahead and tell me.' ‘Well, she is f-ing everybody in town,' the guy told him. And that is when Brent started coming home from work and checking on her.”

Agnes wiped her eyes again, but there was nothing there. She was beyond the point of tears.

“Brent has really put up with a lot. And we have loved Renee, we have encouraged her. Brent just started back in church three Sundays ago. He'd been out for quite a while.”

It was time for Dee to play the drums, and she didn't miss a beat.

“When Renee finally agreed to move back home,” she chimed in, “Brent asked her if she would come over and help clean the house and get it ready for her return. She was supposed to have been back that Saturday night, but didn't show. But when we paged her, John called and cussed me out one side and down the other.”

She made a contorted face. She pretended she was holding a phone away from her ear.

“He said, ‘I mean you f-ing this and your family is f-ing this and you're a G.D. this and your f-ing brother is this.' When I asked to speak to Renee, that I understood she was on her way back, John screamed again, ‘That's what you think. She's not coming back.' For about five minutes more, John rambled on until he finally put Renee on the phone. I asked her, ‘Can you hear how he's talking to me?' ‘Yeah, but I didn't hear what you said to him.'”

Dee said the hair on her head stood on end and she started spitting fire.

“‘Renee, I asked to talk to you. Don't you understand, I'm here trying to get this house ready for you to come back home.' At that point, and after talking with Brent for an hour and a half, Renee finally said she would come, but she didn't. She called Brent the next day and admitted that she'd had sex again with John and wasn't coming back. And the sad thing is, her daughter was with us.”

Altman thought he had heard it all, but apparently not. “Do you think it's possible she's still carrying on a relationship with this Danny guy?”

“I think it is possible she could be carrying on a relationship with three or four guys,” Agnes said in sarcasm, before exclaiming, “And that's the truth!”

Bill shook his head, then jumped on the bandwagon. “Yes, I believe that based on a phone call that Brent received at work. And also based on the first affair . . . you know, she's married and she's having an affair, and this guy is jealous because she is having another affair . . . but that's what initiated this tape. So I don't think there is any limit to what Renee might be capable of when it comes to affairs.”

Agnes agreed. “Her own mother will tell you.” She sighed. “It sounds like we are coming down hard on her, but we have loved that girl. And I have. I have. I really have.” She shook her head slowly, then glanced at her husband and daughter. “They have been upset with me for giving her as many chances as I did.”

“The only thing we want,” Bill pleaded, suddenly changing the subject, “and she may be as much a victim as Brent or we are. I don't know that. But if she has any part in this, she needs to pay for it.”

“Yes,” Agnes and Dee stated, almost at the same time. They looked at each other and would nod in agreement each time Bill said something significant they wanted to emphasize.

“And I don't want her to have a part in it. If she's a victim, then I'll apologize to her,” Bill said more than once. He wanted the detectives to know exactly where they were coming from. “The hurt is real, and if she's a victim, it's real on her side. If it's not, then it's not real. But you need to turn over every stone you can to see if she had anything to do with it, because the kind of people she is involved with think they can do anything.”

“Knowing Renee's past,” Altman concluded, sensing he needed to wrap it up, “what is your gut feeling on what has happened tonight?”

Bill was the first to offer his opinion. “My gut feeling is that this is no coincidence. This is not an accident. This is not a random act. That is my first feeling.”

“Do you think she played a part in it?” Altman asked him curiously.

“I don't want to be wrong, I mean, I'm judging and that's not for me to do. That's just my initial feeling. She could have been a victim, just like everybody else in this situation.”

Agnes verbalized her husband's utmost fear. “That's what is so scary. What if we are wrong and judging her? That's where we're at. What if we are wrong?”

“But the way she has treated our son . . .” Bill argued his case with great fervor. “The way she respects herself—her marriage and her vows—and her daughter. I just wouldn't put it past her. I mean, I really wouldn't. You know he wouldn't give up and that maybe was the only out for John. He wouldn't give up, he wouldn't let go . . . I don't know. I just don't want to think she couldn't be involved, but justice has got to be done.” Bill looked toward the detectives with hopeless eyes and begged them for justice. “Y'all just do everything you can,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Just be assured that we're gonna look at everything we can on this,” Altman promised him. He questioned the family about a life insurance policy on Brent and was told there was one with his employer. Brent had worked as a mechanic for a Mack Truck dealership in Charlotte, North Carolina, and had taken out a life insurance policy. They thought Renee was the sole beneficiary, but didn't know the face value of the policy, but thought it was around $100,000.

The Pooles suggested further that if Altman needed more information on Renee's scruples, he could contact Brent's good friend Brad Williams. As a favor to Brent, Brad had been spying on Renee and John, and the Pooles were confident he could provide additional insight into their affair.

“Well, the answers will come when she finally sees it in the picture,” Bill encouraged the detectives. “I don't think Renee pulled the trigger. I don't believe it's in her nature. But there is an individual, I really believe, there's somebody else who did pull it.”

“Do you think she would cover up for someone?” Altman asked, testing his theory. “I mean, would she be the type of person to continually stick to her story? Or do you think there's a breaking point?”

Bill provided a most helpful insight into Renee's character. “I think there's a breaking point,” he advised truthfully. “Because when she got into the conversation about these affairs, there would be all kinds of discrepancies in her stories. If there were any discrepancies in her story about this, then they will eventually come out.”

“And her mother will also tell you Renee's a liar,” Agnes added. “She has told us this on many occasions. Her mother has said, ‘Even as much as her dad loves her, he, too, will admit to you that Renee's a liar.'”

“I really think she doesn't know what the truth is,” Bill said adamantly.

When the Pooles asked if there was a chance they could see Brent's body, Detective Altman deferred the question to the more experienced officer. Sergeant King spoke up, saying, “If that's something you truly want to do, we'll talk to the coroner. He has to approve it, but I want you to know it's not a pretty sight. I wouldn't want you to remember him that way, but if you insist.”

Agnes clutched at her throat, then gasped. “What do you mean ‘it's not a pretty sight'?”

King explained. “The injuries Brent sustained were from a large-caliber gun. Either a nine-millimeter or a three-eighty. He was shot twice. And in the head.”

Dee leaned into her father, then clutched his arm. “Oh, God,” she cried.

“Are you saying it messed up his face?” Agnes asked hesitantly.

King paused. “Yes, to see him the way he is right now. I think it would be safe to say that.”

Bill looked at his wife and daughter. Both of them were already in tears. He shook his head and looked at the detective bravely. “No, I don't think we could handle it, 'cause I . . .” Brent's father stumbled on his words. His felt his heart drop to his feet. His lips started trembling and tears brimmed in his blue eyes. He put his arms around his wife and daughter. “Oh, my God, they wanted to be sure he didn't have an opportunity to say anything, didn't they? If . . . if you shoot a guy twice”—Bill tried to go on, his voice cracking—“If . . . if you shoot a guy twice in the head . . .” But he broke down, never finished his sentence.

The two hardened detectives were as tough as old hunting boots, but they, too, nearly broke down and cried with the family. It was as if they and the Pooles' lives had intertwined somehow and were now bonded in cement.

Before their conversation ended, the Pooles asked again what Renee had said about the murder. They wanted to know if she would be required to take a lie detector test, or was that just something seen on television?