Dance of Death (6 page)

Detective Altman left the hospital, then drove back to the crime scene to meet with Lieutenant Frontz and Captain Hendrick. This was the first murder on the beach they had ever worked.

“Good to see you back, Altman.” Frontz chuckled when he saw Terry walking toward him. “The chief's got some news for you.”

Thinking there had been some new development in the case, Altman felt his hope rise. He quickened his pace and headed toward Hendrick, who was still talking with Sergeant King. Maybe he would say they had found the killer and they could all go home and get some sleep. But that was not to be.

“At this point and time,” Hendrick stated, “it's crucial that we put our best foot forward and assign who we think is the best person for the job of lead detective. Unfortunately, we've got to play the hand we've been dealt. We have one living witness—the widow—and she's the only person we have to tell us what happened. Now, that's scary.”

“Yes, sir, I agree,” King added.

“It looks like her story might be all we've got, so we've got to get her to show us the hand she's playing. I'm telling you, solving this case is going to depend solely on the person we choose to get information from that lady sitting in our office. And it's going to take someone like Altman to get the truth out of her.”

King nodded.

When Hendrick informed Altman he had been appointed the lead detective on this case, he responded jokingly, “Oh, crap, that's all I need.”

For the next thirty minutes, Altman briefed Hendrick and Frontz and shared what he had learned at the hospital, especially that of Dr. Duffy's candid opinion. They, in turn, provided him additional information they had garnered from the crime scene. By now, the crime scene evidence team had completed their search, and the three detectives were able to walk through and examine the bloodied area. They studied the scene and discussed the found evidence and the “how's and why's” this murder could have occurred.

“We found two spent nine-millimeter cartridges,” Hendrick told Altman. “There was one on top of the sand to begin with. Then we found another one when we brought in Officer Mayer, who skimmed the sand with a metal detector. He is the expert at finding things buried beneath the ground. I don't think anything else was there or he would have found it.”

Altman pictured in his mind's eye the shapes and casts of a 9mm cartridge—silver casing and copper jacketed with hollow expansion points. A chill suddenly passed over his body. These were synonymous with the two bullets the killer had fired directly into Brent's head that shattered his brain.

“Another four live cartridges were found,” Hendrick continued. “All of these I believe came from the same nine-millimeter gun. Three were found on top of the sand by Grazioso when he processed the crime scene. The fourth one had been hidden under the sand and was found by Mayer and his metal detector.”

Corporal Grazioso walked over to the group, holding an evidence bag.

“Good so far, Graz,” Altman chimed in. “What else you got for us?”

“We found a beach towel, a button, some loose change and a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes near the bloodstain on the beach,” Grazioso reported.

“All these probably belonged to the victim,” Altman speculated.

Grazioso dug down deeper in his bag and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. “One silver knife,” he said as he held it out in front of Altman for examination. “It was closed when we found it, so I doubt it was used at the crime scene.”

Altman watched the knife as Grazioso turned it over in his gloved hands. He wondered if there had been a struggle. If the knife belonged to Brent, then why hadn't he used it. Remembering the gunshot wounds to Brent's head, Altman wondered if he had had time to defend himself at all.

Grazioso reached down in his bag again.

“Oh, and most important, when we were digging in the sand, we found this buried along beside a penny.” Grazioso dropped a small gold wedding band into Altman's open hand. “We believe it belonged to the victim's wife.”

Altman stared at the wedding band resting in his palm. He thought about the value of his and his wife's own wedding bands. They were certainly worth more than a penny each, and he would at the drop of a hat fight anyone who attempted to wrestle it from his or her hand. But, he wasn't too sure he would be willing to give up his life in exchange for their rings.

After talking with Grazioso, Altman did his own bit of canvassing through some of the blue garbage cans that were down in the area. He hoped he might find anything that would provide a clue to this murder. Of course, that had already been done by the other officers, but he went through them again anyway. He wanted to make certain nothing had been overlooked.

It was important for Altman to get into the right frame of mind and begin formulating his own thoughts and perspective about this case. He had, for all intents and purposes, just been named the lead detective.

While Renee Poole continued talking with victim's advocate Mary Stogner, Detective Joyce called Don Myers. Myers was working the security division of Nations Bank and gave him the name of George Ross. He was in charge of the central office and supervised the persons that handled debit and credit cards. Ross made several calls and finally connected Joyce with their Charlotte, North Carolina, office, which was tracking any activity of the Pooles' stolen plastic cards. There was a flag on any card activity, but so far the cards had not been used.

Detective Joyce thought it odd that the robber hadn't used the debit card or a single credit card. In nearly all of these type cases, the robber tries to access the card as quickly as possible to avoid eventual detection.

“Are you sure there's been no report on any of these cards?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. I've checked it twice,” the cordial lady in the Charlotte office confirmed.

Joyce hung up the phone and had just started walking back toward the interview room when he was called back. It was Detective Altman calling to tell him Brent Poole had died at the hospital. The long and thin man hung up the phone and slowly walked to Stogner's office. He looked as burdened as an old plow horse.

Renee must have recognized the glum in Joyce's sullen cheeks when he walked in and closed the door behind him. “How's Brent doing?” she asked apprehensively. Joyce shook his head, then answered softly, “He didn't make it.”

Renee's stomach tightened. She felt her body begin to shake and heard a voice trying to comfort her. Her head dropped. She hadn't been told anything about Brent. She knew nothing about what hospital he had been transferred to or that he had been in surgery. Fighting to contain her tears, she didn't want to believe what she was hearing. It was all still like a bad dream. From the outside, she saw someone that resembled herself sitting in that chair and listening to these people trying to tell her something, but she couldn't comprehend what it was.

Renee got sick again and had to go to the bathroom. When she came back to the office, she took a seat in the same chair and found herself staring across the desk at a large, red-faced man with a permanent scowl. She swallowed hard.

“Mrs. Poole, I am the Myrtle Beach captain of investigation, Sam Hendrick,” the burly man said quietly, looking at her through rose-tinted glasses. “Is there anyone you need to call?”

Renee cleared her throat. “I need to call Brent's parents.” Mary Stogner handed her a pencil and a piece of paper and Renee wrote down the number, then slid it across the desk. “They live in Clemmons, North Carolina.”

Hendrick dialed the numbers, then patiently waited until he heard a female answer on the other end. He identified himself and asked if this was the home of Bill and Agnes Poole. It was. “Ma'am, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but I have some bad news about your son. He's been in a terrible accident here at the beach.”

Dead silence. Hendrick thought he did hear her eyelids blink.

Law enforcement officials normally try to be very sensitive when notifying the victim's family members of an impending death. It's common knowledge that bad news always seems to come unexpectedly by phone in the middle of the night. And when that happens, the police believe it is easier to receive disturbing news from a known person rather than a complete stranger. Captain Hendrick believed Brent's parents would prefer hearing the account of their son's death from their daughter-in-law rather than the police.

Hendrick handed the phone to Renee and whispered, “Why don't you tell your mother-in-law what happened.”

Renee took a deep breath, grabbed the phone, and proceeded to tell Agnes how they had been robbed and Brent had been shot.

Agnes listened for a few minutes, then started screaming, “What do you mean? How can my son be dead?”

Renee's contorted face turned blood red. She gritted her teeth, then pursed her lips and handed the phone back to Hendrick without looking at him.

Hendrick closely observed the naive-looking girl sitting before him in blue jeans and a T-shirt; she could pass for sixteen. He and Brent's mother continued talking a few minutes about her son's murder.

“If my son is dead,” Renee overheard her mother-in-law shout, “then you need to look at his wife.”

Renee cocked her head like one of the gray squirrels that scampered along the power lines from the tall oak trees to the police station. When Agnes mentioned John Frazier's name, Renee looked down and stared at the floor with the face of someone who had just grabbed the shit end of the stick.

Hendrick offered his sympathy to Mrs. Poole, then hung up the phone. The room was so quiet one could have heard a mouse pissing on cotton.

“I need to call my parents,” Renee quickly blurted out. She recited the phone numbers and the chief slowly punched them in. Her parents also lived in Clemmons, a small town nine miles southwest of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

When the phone rang at the home of Jack and Marie Summey, it was two o'clock in the morning. Marie answered the phone, then woke her husband from a deep sleep. There was an emergency and it was their daughter Renee calling.

“Now, calm down,” Marie told her hysterical daughter. “I want to make sure I heard you correctly.”

“Mama, something terrible has happened!” Rene exclaimed. “Brent has been shot!”

“What do you mean shot?” Marie mouthed the words to her husband, who had sat up in bed. He was still half-asleep.

“We were robbed by somebody on the beach and he shot Brent,” Renee cried.

“Oh, no!” Marie exclaimed. “Is he okay?”

Renee hung her head. She couldn't answer.

At the very time Marie was waiting for an answer, the call waiting signal beeped. Knowing it had to be in reference to this same incident, Marie told Renee she was putting her on hold and took the call. It was Agnes Poole. And she was as furious as a howling northern wind.

“Have you talked to Renee?” Agnes shouted.

“Yes, I have heard some of it,” Marie answered, trying to keep her sanity. “I have Renee on the other line.”

“Well, don't you think something is going on?” Agnes's voice blasted through the receiver.

Jack got out of bed and started getting dressed. When he saw the color and expression in his wife's face change, he took a deep breath. It was going to be a long night.

“I don't know what you mean,” Marie answered. “In fact, that is what I am trying to find out right now.”

“You know very well what I am talking about,” Agnes fired back.

“I am telling you I don't know what in the hell is going on, Agnes.”

“Well, you don't seem too upset about it,” Agnes said sarcastically.

The accusation rubbed Marie the wrong way. “Let me find out what's going on and then I'll call you back.” She clicked the phone once and was beeped back to Renee. “That was Brent's mother on the other line.” She paused and tried to catch her breath. “Please tell me what in the hell is going on!”

“Mama, Brent is dead!”

“I don't believe it. That sounds like a sick joke to me.”

“He is, Mama! He's dead!”

Marie nearly dropped the phone. It couldn't be true, she thought. She did not want to believe what she was hearing. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. Anxiety crawled across her body and started stinging her like a swarm of backyard fire ants. She thought about it, then decided she wasn't going to believe it until she heard it from another party.

“I still don't believe it, Renee. It's not true,” she insisted. “Put someone else on the phone.”

Renee handed the phone back to Captain Hendrick, who calmly relayed the news of Brent's death to Marie. After talking a few minutes with the detective, Marie asked him to put Renee back on the phone.

“Where is Katie and who has her?”

“She's at the hotel with a baby-sitter.”

“Well, your father and I are going to drive to Myrtle Beach. We'll go to the hotel, relieve the sitter, and wait for you there. You and Katie can ride with us back to North Carolina. And until everything is settled, you two can stay at home with us.”

Renee agreed to meet them. “Katie's at the Carolina Winds Hotel, Mama. Room six-oh-four. The baby-sitter's name is Mrs. Murphy.”

After Marie finished talking with Renee, Jack picked up the phone and called the Pooles' residence. Bill answered the phone. In the background, Jack could hear Bill's distraught wife crying and screaming, “Oh, my God, no! Oh, my God, no!”

“Bill, we are so sorry to hear about Brent,” Jack said. “He was like the son we never had. We all loved him and are just as hurt as anyone by this.”

Bill was so grief-stricken that he could hardly respond. He thanked Jack for his call.

“I want to apologize to the both of you,” Jack told him. “When your wife called us a little while ago, we had no earthly idea what had happened. If there is anything we can do, please let us know.”

He promised he would.

After speaking with the Summeys, Bill Poole called his son, Craig, who lived in nearby Lewisville, and his daughter, “Dee.” He could barely get the words out of his mouth before his two children gasped in horror.

The bond between thirty-five-year-old Craig Poole and his younger brother was very strong. It had grown even stronger when their daughters were born within fifteen hours of each other 2½ years ago. When his father told him what had happened, Craig dropped the phone in great anguish and collapsed against the back of the bed. His brother's death hit him like a ton of bricks—it didn't make sense. “Why would someone want to shoot Brent?” he cried out to his wife, Amy.

Craig couldn't control his emotions. All he could think about was Brent's daughter. Little Katie was his heartbeat, his little princess.

For Brent's older sister, Deanne Mishler, the tragic news was worse than anything she could have ever imagined. There was a ten-year difference between Dee and Brent; and even today, she still doted on him like he was her baby. As she fell into her husband's arms and sobbed, she suddenly realized how unprepared she was to grieve. She started thinking of all the neat little letters Brent had sent her after she had married and moved away from home.

“This little boy would write me letters”—Dee sobbed—“He would say, ‘And Ginger (their dog) says ‘ruff-ruff.' He would send me three dollars in the envelope with a note: ‘This is for you to play Ms. Pac-Man,' he'd write.”

Dee was absolutely convinced that this would be the ultimate test of her family's love and faith in God. She called her parents back on the phone and learned they were going to drive to Myrtle Beach and find out for themselves exactly what had happened to Brent. When she arrived, the pain that ripped through her parents' home was more than she could stand. Her mom and dad sat across their bed, weeping, trying to understand how this could have happened. They were clutched in an iron fist of trauma.

The three of them agreed that Bill should call the Myrtle Beach police and make certain they knew all the facts. Detective Joyce took their phone call. “Has Renee told you everything that's been going on with their marriage?” he asked curtly.

“I'm not sure, what do you mean?” Joyce asked.

“Well, there had been some trouble with their marriage for a long time. Brent and Renee had just gotten back together. She was seeing a guy by the name of John Boyd Frazier. We think he or his friends might have something to do with our son's death.”

“That certainly is very useful information. We appreciate you calling us.”

“And I think if you push her hard enough, she could possibly tell you who killed Brent,” Poole added before hanging up the phone.

“If there's any truth to that,” Joyce assured him, “then we'll get to the bottom of it.” Too early to tell, but the detective believed the information could be very useful in solving this case.

When Detective Joyce walked back into the interview room and asked Renee to explain what her father-in-law was referring to, she said without great concern, “Oh, I moved out of the house for a week and stayed with a friend named John. That's all that's been going on.” It was nothing significant.

Joyce asked Renee for John's full name and address, then excused himself from the room. Just in case, he phoned the police in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, while Renee talked with Mary Stogner and Captain Hendrick and completed the last of the paperwork.

“Can you have someone do a check on a Caucasian male, six feet one, two hundred twenty-five pounds, by the name of John Boyd Frazier? We want to make certain he has been home all night.”

Shortly after 2:15
A.M
., Jack and Marie Summey threw a few things in a overnight bag and left for Myrtle Beach immediately. In their haste, they had forgotten to brush their teeth or comb their hair. During the drive, they talked about the possibility of Renee being involved with John Boyd Frazier, but didn't see how she was involved in all of this.

“My throat and stomach are so raw,” Marie said. “They couldn't hurt any worse than if I'd swallowed a handful of double-edged razor blades.”

Jack told her he felt some of the same pain. “We'll just have to straighten it out when we get there,” he said, attempting to calm his wife. “We've always taught our daughter to tell the truth and we have to trust she will do just that.”