by Dale Hudson
Askey gazed at the detective with a bewildered look on his face. He hadn’t realized until now the significance of what he had overheard the young girl say on the beach. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then leaned in toward the detective. “I’m not sure what she told you about how this happened, but it didn’t happen the way she said it did.”
Altman shifted his feet and turned his head slightly toward the fireman to make certain he didn’t miss a word. Through the opening in the curtain, he could see the trauma team was still busy working on the victim. He guessed they had been successful in keeping him alive.
Askey continued: “I’m telling you, man, there’s just something not right about this situation.” He lifted his hands, palms upward, in front of his chest, and shrugged. “A young couple is robbed on the beach. He gets shot twice. In the head and at close range. But nothing happens to the girl? Maybe it’s just me, man, but this whole thing doesn’t make sense.”
Over the years, Altman had learned to listen to the opinions of other professionals when he investigated a case. Every discipline had its own way of looking at things. Their own perspective. Even still, each individual approached things differently and had his own opinions. But he’d learned first impressions were almost always correct. He always made it a point to tell Askey and the others how much he appreciated their insight.
Altman talked to the other paramedics before they left the hospital. He thought about what Askey and the others had told him. They had confirmed some of what he had recognized earlier back at the crime scene. Their feelings about this case were nearly the same as his and their suspicions as contagious as the common cold.
After the emergency responders exited, Altman stood alone at the nurse’s desk and stared at the heart monitor through the opening in the curtains. In just the few minutes while he was there, there had been the trace of a slight bounce flowing across the gray screen. That had changed. Now he watched as all the life seemed to flow out of the victim—eventually changing the fluttering beep to one single, flat line. Brent Poole was dead.
Altman sat down in a chair and took a deep breath. Although the trauma team had refused to give up and continued working on their patient, he realized Brent probably wasn’t going to be revived.
At 12:21 A.M., the emergency surgeon, Dr. James Duffy, decided there was nothing more the trauma team could do. Duffy took a deep breath, waved his hands out in front of his chest and signaled them to stop. After halting his team’s efforts, Duffy made one more last assessment, then pronounced their patient dead.
Altman stood at the nurse’s desk and watched the members of the despondent emergency trauma team, RN Barb Plaxco and RN Ronnie McDonald, as they filed out of the petitioned room. The other trauma nurse, Rose McKay, had already started completing the charts at the nurse’s desk, and she leaned over to Altman and whispered, “This is a terrible shame. It hurts me so much to see something like this. He was so young and such a good-looking man. Makes you wonder, who would want someone like him dead?”
Altman nodded. She was as right as rain.
As the trauma unit dispersed from the room, Altman reached for the phone at the nurse’s desk and called Detective Len Sloan at the crime scene. It was important when there was a murder case for Altman to follow protocol and contact everyone who was needed to respond. His call to Detective Sloan would be the first of many he would have to make that night to get all the responsible persons in the right places to investigate this case. He asked Sloan to contact Sergeant John King, who was the supervising detective on duty.
“You can pass the word that Brent Poole just died,” Altman said over the phone. “You might want to notify the county coroner as well.”
Officially, the Poole case had just been updated from a shooting to a homicide. From Altman’s previous experiences of working murder cases, he knew the implications of losing Brent Poole. Brent had been his only other witness. Not only was it going to make his job more difficult, now that half of his sources were gone, but it would be the beginning of another all-night ordeal of tracking down leads, interviewing, and seeking information that would escalate into a marathon of full proportions. Altman had already worked his eight-hour shift, and he called his wife to warn her he might not be home to see her again until the next day.
Altman’s stomach tightened in knots.
As Altman watched and waited from the nurse’s desk, Corporal David Grazioso, the crime scene specialist with the Myrtle Beach Special Operations Section (MBSOS) for the night shift, stepped into the room. He spoke with Altman, then followed him to the petitioned room where Brent’s body still lay on the gurney.
“Graz,” as he was known to his fellow officers, had been called out at midnight and arrived at the crime scene at 12:15 A.M. Asked to stand by and wait until the dog team had finished tracking the area, he had begun processing the crime scene some fifteen minutes later. At approximately 12:30 A.M., he had started snapping pictures, drawing charts, and examining the crime scene for potential evidence. He then drove the short distance to the GSRMC for the purpose of photographing the body and collecting further evidence.
When Altman was certain the room had been vacated, he and Grazioso entered through the partitioned curtains. As was the standard procedure with all gunshot incidents, any person present at the crime scene would be tested for the presence of gunpowder residue. Grazioso had already swabbed the hands of the victim’s wife back at the crime scene, and was there to perform an Atomic Absorption Analysis kit on Brent. The results would determine if he had fired a handgun in defense or taken his own life.
Both samples from Brent and Renee Poole would be sent the next day to the forensics lab at the State’s Law Enforcement Department (SLED) and tested for the presence of gunpowder residue. If either of the fatal wounds had been the result of a weapon fired from the victim or his wife, or the tests proved they had fired a weapon, then the case would abruptly take on new proportions.
Grazioso was also there to collect and bag the victim’s clothing for evidence, but until he found a couple of nurses to help him, that would have to wait. A fourteen-year veteran of the MBPD, he knew all too well how difficult it was for one person to remove the clothing from a dead person. When he found out from Altman that the nurses were busy with another emergency in the trauma room, and it would be about an hour before they could send someone to help him, Grazioso became concerned.
“I really need to get back to the beach,” he told Altman.
As a crime scene specialist, Grazioso had covered the waterfront and Ocean Boulevard section of the beach and responded to calls for service where the crime scene had simply vanished. Washed away by the rising ocean tides. And there was that same risk with this case. He knew it was his responsibility to remove and bag the clothing, but under the circumstances, he needed to return back to Eighty-second Avenue as quickly as possible. Fortunately for Grazioso, Detective Altman was there to assist.
“Go ahead, Graz,” Altman told him. “As soon as I finish talking with the doctor, I’ll get a few of the nurses to help me and we’ll get it for you.”
Altman sat at the nurse’s station and waited until Dr. Duffy had cleaned up, then asked for a few minutes of his time.
Duffy discussed the severity of the victim’s wounds as Altman followed him in the curtained room. “There are two gunshot wounds.” A frown stretched across Duffy’s tired face. He looked beat. “One just inferior to the left ear, which was a close-range or loose-contact-type wound.”
Altman slid a pair of latex gloves over his hands. He sidestepped a pool of blood that had dripped on the floor and moved in to take a closer look at the wounds.
Duffy pointed to a hole on the side of the head, to where there was soot, carbon fragments and pieces of skin tissue clinging to the entrance site. “There is a projectile found in this area, the parietal occipital or posterior aspect of the head,” he said in anatomical terms. “The other one is a wound under the chin. This, of course, is a contac
t wound, as you can see the muzzle of the gun was in direct contact with the skin.”
Altman could see the muzzle imprint in the skin. He winced at the thought.
“There is no powder residue around this wound site,” Duffy continued. “Probably an indication that all of the residue had gone into the wound when the bullet passed through his chin and into the top of the head.”
Duffy placed Altman’s gloved fingers on Poole’s scalp. Altman could feel the fragment of a bullet underneath.
This was the first time Altman had ever touched a dead body. A few years ago, he would have never imagined himself being asked to touch a bullet lodged beneath someone’s scalp and above his brain. As he massaged Brent’s scalp and felt the lead underneath, he was queasy at the thought of what damage the bullet might have done on the underside of Poole’s skull.
Duffy held up the X ray of Brent’s skull and pointed to where the two bullets were lodged in the brain. As he explained the significance of the small white spots against the black of the negative, Altman grimaced at the estimated number of fragments of bone that had been shattered upon impact and the delicate tissues ripped by the path of the speeding bullet.
The doctor shifted his weight. “As you can see, there are no exit wounds.” He continued tracing with his finger the pro-jectory angles of the bullets through the brain, which ended in two star-shaped patterns where they both were lodged.
Altman felt faint, but quickly shook it off. “Which one of the bullets do you think killed him?”
“Well, either one of them would have been enough to have killed him. In fact, after seeing this X ray, you wouldn’t think that anyone would have ever lived after suffering a gunshot wound through the head like this. Even if it was just for a moment, there was just no way he could have survived those bullets.”
Altman took a few steps backward away from the body and started peeling the gloves off his hands. He’d hoped Dr. Duffy was about to confirm his suspicions.
“So, what do you make of all this, Doc?”
Duffy looked at the X rays for a second time and, without hesitation, answered, “I think this kid got executed.”
Atlman affirmed that was what he needed to know.
The detective thanked the doctor, walked out of the room and turned down the hall. He felt light-headed. He needed a stiff drink of water. On the way back from the water fountain, he noticed Robert Edge, the county coroner, standing in the hall talking with Dr. Duffy. The doctor had also briefed the coroner on Brent’s injuries and showed them to him.
“Is it okay to remove the victim’s clothing for evidence?” Altman asked Edge after he had finished talking with the doctor.
Edge nodded his approval.
Altman had never before taken the clothes off a dead body. And he wasn’t too thrilled about having to do it this time. “I’ll have to borrow a couple of hospital nurses and ask them to do it,” Altman mumbled as he walked away from the coroner. He wished now he hadn’t been so quick to volunteer his services.
Altman found RN Mary Ellen Darragh in the hall and asked her if she would assist him in removing Brent’s clothes. Darragh wasn’t aware of the detective’s revulsion for dead bodies. She did not know it was his first time to undress a body.
“I will get his clothes off for you, but you will have to help me,” she told him.
Altman was eager to get back to the crime scene and share the information he had learned from the emergency responders and the confirmation he’d received from the doctor. But he couldn’t until Brent’s clothing had been collected and his body settled in. He could have waited until another nurse was free, but if it had to be done and he had to help do it, then he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
“Okay. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it now before I change my mind,” Altman reluctantly agreed.
Darragh grinned at the detective, whose face had quickly turned the color of a red plum.
Altman pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket and nervously swiped it across his brow. “I’ll be in the trauma room waiting for you.”
Darragh shook her head and smiled.
Altman walked into the trauma room and stood over the body a second time. Recalling the doctor’s information about the wounds, he stared at Brent’s head, cringing at his bloodied and bruised face. The blood had coagulated on both sides of his face in splotches and was a sharp contrast with the young man’s thick brown, curly hair and against his fair complexion. His mouth was open; his white teeth separated by the plastic endotracheal tube. An IV of saline solution was still stuck in his arm. His lifeless eyes were an astonishing crystal-clear blue.
If only Brent’s lips could have moved, Altman knew he could have told him a lot of things. He just wished Brent would have lived long enough to tell him what had happened. It would have made his job a lot easier and explained a lot of unanswered questions.
But there were answers that no one, including Brent, would ever be able to give him. That was his job. He would have to find out those answers on his own. That was what he got paid for.
“Okay, Detective, we’re ready,” Nurse Darragh announced as she entered the room. She had several other nurses, Patty Rathner and Maureen McGinty with her. As they began removing the clothes from the body, a striped shirt, trousers, socks, underwear, and tennis shoes, Altman collected them and dropped them in bags. Those that had any blood on them were placed into a biohazard bag, which was a red plastic bag designed to prevent the blood from seeping out.
Altman handled Brent’s clothing very carefully. He realized the potential of obtaining these items for the forensic team and not wanting to destroy any evidence that could later match the killer. There was a lot of blood on Brent. His shirt was soaked in blood and the blood from his head had seeped onto the gurney.
Altman didn’t know how much, if any, debris from the killer had stuck to the victim’s bloody clothing. If he had struggled at all, it was possible that a hair, a fiber or a piece of flesh that belonged to the shooter may have bedded itself in the blood. If that was the case, then it would be one of the clues they would be looking for to pinpoint the murderer.
When they finished undressing Poole and packing his clothing away, Altman noticed the hair on Poole’s legs and pubic area had been shaved. Must have been a racing cyclist, he thought. Looking at his taut body, he guessed Brent would be the type that rode at least one hundred miles per day.
Altman had been a cyclist at one time and knew why a rider would want to shave his body hair. It made it easier to apply ointments and medicine to the body after a hard race and also eliminated the possibility of “road rash.” When a biker takes a fall, the hair on the body will get caught between the skin and the asphalt, and will literally be pulled out by the roots, resulting in an even deeper and more abrasive skin tear.
He made a mental note to ask Brent’s wife about this. Perhaps her husband rode cycles as well, and he’d learn that the two of them had something in common after all.
Darragh and the other nurses draped a white sheet over Brent, then notified the county coroner that the victim was ready to be pronounced dead. Altman called Lieutenant Bill Frontz, who had since responded to the scene and advised that he was still at the hospital with the coroner.
“Do you want the autopsy to be performed at the Medical University in Charleston or here at Grand Strand Regional Medical Center?” Altman asked.
“Here at the Grand Strand Hospital,” Frontz responded. “You’ll have to ask him to call Dr. Edward Proctor, the forensic pathologist, and schedule an autopsy.”
Altman waited with the others for the coroner to examine Brent’s body, then pronounce him dead. After he finished his business, Altman gave him the instructions for the autopsy. The coroner called Dr. Proctor and learned the autopsy would be scheduled for 1:30 P.M. that same day.
Altman helped the nurses wheel the body out of the trauma room. They rolled Brent’s body down the hall, behind the cafeteria and into the refri
gerated morgue, where the autopsy would be performed. As Brent Poole’s body was being transported down the hall, Altman looked back behind them. A trail of blood followed behind them every five to ten feet. One of the nurses alerted a maintenance man and he shadowed them, the entire 150 feet to the morgue, with a mop and bucket and cleaned up the blood along the way. Once inside the morgue, the gurney carrying Brent’s body was placed alongside several other bodies covered in white sheets.
Altman’s stomach churned. No one said a word.
Altman felt a chill running up and down his spine, like the brain freeze he got as a little boy when he ate his ice cream cone too quickly. He casually passed it off to the nurses as the temperature in the morgue, but privately knew better.
Having completed his job at the hospital, Altman thanked the nurses for their help in disrobing and securing Brent’s body. He said his good-byes, then went outside and stood in the parking lot in the night air. The sky looked like an ocean of black and deep purple. The moon looked as if it was hiding its face behind a cloud, perhaps ashamed of what had been witnessed earlier on the beach.
CHAPTER 8
Captain Sam Hendrick was accustomed to his phone ringing late at night. A light sleeper by design, he rolled over in his bed to answer the phone.
“Sorry to wake you, sir,” Sergeant John King drawled, “but there’s been a shooting at the beach we think needs your attention.”
King was the on-duty supervisor at the MBPD Investigation Division. It was his responsibility to notify the higher-ranking detectives about a serious case or a shooting. He had been a policeman for fourteen years, inching his way up from a detention officer to sergeant in the investigative unit. Ten of those years, he had worked under Hendrick’s command. In fact, the two had been working together so closely that King had developed a sense of when he thought Hendrick needed to be called in on a case. He was convinced this shooting was definitely one of those times.