Dance of Death

by Dale Hudson

  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.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Earlier in the night, Captain Hendrick had established a temporary command post at Eighty-first Avenue. It was there, near the crime scene, where he had huddled with his men to remind them of the urgency for gathering all the information they could on this homicide. In 1993, when Hendrick attended the FBI Academy, he had been trained for similar situations, which required the teamwork and cooperation of multiple officers to finalize an outcome. He had already experienced many complex investigations whereby his management and coordination skills had been tested to the max. Once again, he knew it would require his best efforts in managing his personnel to solve this case.

  “We have a difficult situation here,” Hendrick had cautioned his right-hand man, Sergeant King. “I am afraid the crime scene isn’t going to give us much; so when you finish up here, I want you to go back to the police station and interview the Poole girl. I am certain she has already given her account of what happened by now, but I want to make certain we don’t miss anything.”

  In the few short hours Renee Poole had been at the Myrtle Beach police headquarters, she had alternated her time between the interview room, the bathroom, and outside the building when she insisted she needed a cigarette. So far, the police had gotten little information from her. If this was a cat-and-mouse game she was playing, she was coming off curiously reticent and seemingly gentle as a week-old kitten.

  Detective Jim Joyce had been the first to interview her, then carefully listened to her story a second time after he had confronted her with the information passed on to him from her in-laws about her liaison with another man. One thing he noticed early in their conversations was that when he asked about her marriage and the trip to Myrtle Beach, Renee’s speech was even and spontaneous. But when it came to specifics about the shooting and the shooter, she’d hesitate and stammer before she replied. It was almost as if he had asked questions she wasn’t prepared to answer and was searching to find the answers. And the way she shifted her body uneasily in the chair when asked about John Boyd Frazier convinced him he was getting the runaround. He had a hunch her relationship with her husband wasn’t all peaches and cream.

  “I think she’s holding back, Chief,” Joyce said to Hendrick while Renee was taking a smoke break. The two men readily agreed. For some reason, she was unwilling to give up detailed information about her affair with Frazier and they wanted to know why.

  “I’ve asked Sergeant King to interview her as well,” Hendrick said in a low voice. “We really need to know what happened last night on the beach. I hope she understands how crucial it is that we get that information back to the other units who are still out in the field and working on the case. How does she expect us to find her husband’s killer if she doesn’t tell us the truth about what happened?”

  It was 3:00 A.M. when King first arrived at the police station. Renee Poole was still talking with Detective Joyce and victim’s advocate Mary Stogner. King tapped on the door and called Joyce out of the room.

  “How is she doing?” King asked.

  Joyce looked through the glass window at Renee, then answered, “She’s calm and seems to be holding up okay.”

  “Is there anything I need to know before I talk with her?”

  “Yes,” Joyce said, quickly reviewing his notes. “There was some information given by Brent Poole’s family about her having an affair. You might want to mention that.”

  Always the meticulous dresser, Sergeant King looked at his reflection in the glass door and straightened his tie before going in to interview Renee. For as long as he could remember, there had always been a strict dress code with the Myrtle Beach detectives. It didn’t matter whether it was twelve noon or three o’-clock in the morning, every detective was to be dressed in a coat and tie whenever he went out to investigate a crime. King accepted the fact that it might appear to some that he was out of place—and to others, it looked awkward or unusual, especially on the beach in the summer months. But the dress code distinguished them as professionals and projected an appearance that they knew what they were doing. King believed all those officers in suits reflected the professional image they were trying to project.

  King chuckled at some cases where people even made the comment afterward that they knew they were in trouble when they saw all these men in suits. They mistakenly imagined the FBI was after them.

  At three in the morning, such as was in this case, King believed this dress code gave him the edge he needed. To him, it conveyed the right impression to be sitting in front of this witness polished down and dressed in a starched shirt, a tie and a sports jacket rather than sitting there in blue jeans and a T-shirt.

  The detective’s GQ image was of little significance to Renee Poole when he stepped in the room at 3:37 A.M. and introduced himself to her. She had been at the police station for almost three hours now and wanted to go home. She wanted to check on her daughter and take her home with her. She needed to see her parents.

  “Mrs. Poole, I know you have talked with several other officers tonight,” King began, dismissing both Joyce and Stogner from the room. “But I would like to talk with you about last night.” He pulled out a chair and sat down directly in front of her. “I want to talk to you so that I can get a feel for what has happened to you and your husband.”

  Renee sat rigidly in the chair, staring straight ahead, unsmiling, with big brown eyes and the slender, tanned body of a teenager. In her lap sat a small stuffed animal.

  King never apologized for her having to stay at the police station all this time. He had been told that other than her daughter, she was alone and was waiting for her parents to pick her up. The drive from Clemmons, North Carolina, he calculated, was a good four hours away. He guessed she had no choice either way but to sit and wait.

  King listened as Renee began to tell her story. He told her he’d do his best to understand all the facts and would only interrupt her for clarification when it was necessary. Throughout the interview, she remained very calm. She was never hysterical, but at certain points within her story, she wou
ld pause, then cry for a few seconds before continuing on. Even though King saw Renee as “nonemotional,” her demeanor didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. In his years as a police officer, he had seen it both ways. Some victims he had interviewed were very quiet and seemed to be in shock, while others were hysterical and emotionally beyond themselves.

  King had tried long ago to stop assessing people by their emotions. He wanted to be fair to Renee. To give her the benefit of the doubt. She was a total stranger. He had never seen her nor had he been exposed to any previous behavior prior to this interview, and he had no comparison between her past and present behavior. He had no idea of what was “out of character” for Renee and did not want to judge her prematurely.

  King asked Renee to go through her story a second time before he started pressuring her for more information. When she finished, his eyes moved reflexively toward her and he shook his head uncomprehendingly. Wanting her to know he didn’t buy her story, he asked insistently, “When you and your husband went to this bar, did you have anything to drink?”

  Renee was caught off-guard. “He had a Lynchburg lemonade and I drank two margaritas,” she said weakly.

  “Then, you went to the beachwear store and bought a beach towel?”

  “Yes, a beach towel. It was a good-size towel, with an aqua-color design on it.”

  “And on to the ATM machine at Nations Bank to draw out some money? How much did you get?”

  “Fifty dollars. It was so we could pay the baby-sitter.”

  “But you didn’t go directly to your room, but instead went for a walk on the beach heading north?” King asked with a hint of sarcasm.

  “We walked for about a half-mile, walked up a little ways, just kind of looking around, having conversation. Walked past, I guess, it was the last house on the left before you come to the wooded area. We found a spot, then laid the beach towel down.”