Dance of Death

by Dale Hudson

  Brent Poole’s family had insisted against the detectives and Dr. Duffy’s advice that they see their son in the morgue. But the Pooles had to do it for their own peace of mind. To lessen the shock, Duffy had pulled one of the nurses aside and asked her to do the best she could to prepare the victim’s body for viewing.

  The sorrowful mourners were led through a door into a smaller room, where Brent’s body had been relocated. The blinds were closed and the lights turned down low. A stainless-steel gurney sat in the middle of the room. The outline of Brent’s body could be seen underneath a white cover sheet. It was just like a scene from some murder mystery on television. The only problem was, this was their own true-to-life show they were watching.

  Bill Poole’s face grew tighter and redder as he waited with his family to see his son’s body. Small white lines appeared at both corners of his mouth. Renee and her mother stood behind them, crying and holding on to each other. Out of the corner of her eye, Renee watched Brent’s mother. Her jaw was set in permanent scorn and she was staring at her with a cold, hardened look. It was as if her eyes were saying that Renee was the reason they were all here.

  Duffy waited until everyone had entered the dimly lit room, then shut the door behind them. When everyone was still and settled, he took a deep breath, then stepped up to the stainless-steel gurney and slowly uncovered Brent’s naked body.

  “Oh, my God,” Duffy heard the family members behind him gasp, as if they had all whispered it at the same time.

  The body of Brent Poole was lying on its side and on top of sheets covered in blood. He still had the tubes protruding from his mouth and his arm that Duffy and his team of nurses had used during surgery to help sustain him. The greater portions of his head on both the right and left sides were covered in dried and caked blood. Due to internal cranial pressure, his head was swollen and larger than its normal size.

  As the family inched closer, they looked at Brent’s face. It was titled backward, all swollen and puffy. The muzzle imprint of the gun was easily noticeable underneath his chin. Inside the imprint, there was a hole like a bull’s-eye in a shooting target. Traces of black soot were recognizable above the hole in his left ear. Sticky, bright red blood had discharged from his mouth and both his ears.

  Bill Poole fought hard to control his emotions. He took a closer look at the ample amount of blood still on Brent’s body and the sheets underneath him. He remembered what the police had told him earlier and silently wondered if Brent had bled on the beach, bled on the operating table—and still had all this blood on him and the sheets—then why was there no blood on Renee, who had reached down and picked up his head? If she was that close to Brent and the robber, then why hadn’t blood splatter gotten on her, too? For Christ’s sake, she was wearing a white T-shirt. He looked at Renee, who was still wearing the same clothes she had on the night before, and felt a cold tremor crawl down his spine like a black widow spider.

  Agnes stood limply beside her husband. She felt numb, no longer capable of feeling anything in her body. It was as if someone had suddenly ripped her heart from her chest and all the blood had drained from her body. She stared at Brent’s body, reflexively holding her hands out firmly in front of her, wishing she could somehow reach out and take all her son’s pain away.

  Dee took another look at her baby brother and turned her head. She couldn’t stand to look at him in that condition for a second longer.

  Renee and Marie stood behind the Pooles, looking at the body from over their shoulders. They held on to each other and continued crying, then slipped out and walked back into an adjoining conference room to wait on the Pooles.

  As the Pooles stood silently together, the tears rolling off their cheeks and their gazes locked onto Brent’s tattered body, Bill could see the darkness rolling upon them. Finally, in a brusque voice, he announced it was time for them to leave. Bunching the muscles in his neck and rounding his shoulders, he directed Agnes and Dee out of the room and to where Renee and Marie were waiting. As they stepped out of the dark room and into the larger one, the bright lights washed over their faces, but it couldn’t penetrate the shuttered look masking their sentiments. Walking toward a corner in the room, they collapsed against each other and pleaded to God for the strength they needed to get through this terrible ordeal.

  Renee watched from across the room. She was hurting, too. She had hoped she could have stayed with Brent’s body a little longer, wanting so badly to reach out and touch her husband to see if he was as cold as he looked. She still couldn’t believe he was dead and thought it would help if she touched his body. But she never got the chance. She believed the Pooles had deliberately stood in front of her and shut her out so she couldn’t get a clear view of Brent’s body.

  Renee had been so careful in studying her mother-in-law’s face while she looked for the sympathy that eluded her, but there was none. True, Agnes had lost her son. But did she not realize that Renee had lost her husband? Had it not dawned on her that she would be the one who would sleep alone tonight? Had she once asked Renee how she was holding up?

  Ten minutes passed and the Pooles were still huddled in the corner. When Marie realized she and her daughter were not going to be invited, she told Renee it was time for them to leave.

  “We don’t have to put up with this,” Marie had said crisply, suddenly beginning to feel out of place. She motioned for Renee to follow her. Didn’t their feelings matter at all? Did anyone ever think they needed prayers, too? On the way out of the hospital, she told Renee she had seen how the Pooles had acted toward her and they had no clue as to what really had happened with Brent on the beach. The only thing they knew was what the police had told them and what they had told the police.

  Jack Summey had wisely chosen to remain outside the hospital and stay with Katie. When the two families emerged from the emergency room a few minutes later, he could tell there had been words. It was disheartening for him to see how much pain everyone was in and their relationships had become so strained that they couldn’t comfort each other.

  The sky overhead was beginning to darken and turn black. The ambiance outside reflected the emotions of the two families as they stood and stared accusingly at each other in the parking lot. All their best-laid plans for Brent and Renee’s marriage had now crumbled before their very eyes—whether they were victims of circumstance, fate, poor decisions or malicious evil remained to be seen. All that could be said and proven at this point and time was that the battle lines had been drawn by an unfortunate incident that would separate the two families and change their lives forever.

  CHAPTER 20

  Renee Poole had wanted to get herself and Katie back to Mocksville as soon as possible, back to their lives, to feel the safety of her home and their own beds. But the thought of returning to her home—once filled with such life and love—was too much for her. Besides, she was still in shock and in no shape to be caring for anyone. She and Katie would live in Clemmons with her parents until she was able to recover.

  Renee knew how well-liked Brent was at his job and how much his friends cared for him. Like any thoughtful wife, as soon as she arrived home that day, she called Brent’s employer and contacted many of his coworkers and friends just to let them know what had happened and to ask for their prayers and support.

  If there had been some strains in the Pooles’ marriage, Brent Poole had never let if affect his job as a diesel mechanic at Mack Trucks in Charlotte, North Carolina. Brent repaired tractor-trailer engines and electronics systems from 2:30 P.M. to 1:00 A.M., four days a week.

  One of Brent’s coworkers, who identified himself as Ronnie, told reporter Lauren Leach of the Sun News that whatever happened at the beach, Brent didn’t deserve it. “The shooting has stunned us all,” he said. “He was a supernice guy who would do anything in the world for you. He loved his child and he loved his wife.”

  Dealership owner Pat McMahon was saddened to hear the news about Brent, whom he called a “superior” employee. McMahon s
aid when he had received the phone call from Renee, she had seemed like a grieving wife.

  Renee may have been acting like the prototypical grieving widow, but Brent Poole’s family was not buying it. From the first moment they spoke with the police about Brent’s murder, they had begun doubting her story and feared she was somehow involved. When they tried to talk with her about what had happened, they said Renee wouldn’t even look them in their eyes. They were hoping that it wasn’t so, but they were afraid it was. They alerted the Myrtle Beach detectives, who had already found her statements full of inconsistencies and were way beyond suspicions.

  That Wednesday afternoon, Renee had remembered the photos from their Myrtle Beach vacation were still in her bag. There were several good photos of Brent in the bunch and she thought the Pooles would appreciate her furnishing them with copies of those. When two friends of Brent’s, Vincent Moore and Tony White, stopped by her mother’s house to pay their respect, Renee asked if she could ride over with them and visit the Pooles.

  Vincent and Tony were struggling with the same issues as the Pooles. “I just don’t want to believe she could have something to do with this,” Vincent confided to his friend. “I’m really trying not to think about it, but it keeps going through my mind.”

  Although Renee denied the incident ever occurred, Bill Poole told police that same day he had cornered his daughter-in-law in the bedroom and just asked her to tell him what happened. She told him the same story she had told the police, and when she got through, he asked her whether it was possible that anybody could have followed them to the beach.

  Bill said he was trying to keep an open mind. Although he hadn’t told Renee, he was thinking if somehow the evidence proved she wasn’t involved in Brent’s murder, then maybe some of her friends were. Maybe it was some of those men she had been having affairs with. That was why he asked her, “Is it possible anybody followed you guys to the beach?”

  Renee chose her words carefully. “Well, on the way down, Katie got kinda irritable and we had to stop two or three times. But I never saw anything that would lead me to believe that.”

  “Do you think that John could have anything to do with this?” Bill asked candidly.

  Renee shook her head. She didn’t think so.

  “Do you understand why I’m asking you these questions?”

  She said she did.

  Bill wanted to let her know that he was concerned that some of the parties she had had an affair with could have been a part of this. “You know, Renee, when people get into relationships and in lust, all of this comes into play. They do crazy things.”

  “Yeah, I understand that,” Renee answered.

  Bill Poole didn’t think she did. His family was suspicious and saw the worst-possible scenario. The way he saw it, Renee’s behavior from the beginning was disturbingly out of kilter with someone who claimed to have loved her husband. Bill could look at Renee and see it in her face and in her fractured emotions. To him, there hadn’t been much change in her emotions from when he had seen her the day before. Maybe a few tears had misted in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks, but it still appeared the motivation was the same. The only thing he saw in her was pure fear.

  Renee would say later that she didn’t remember any conversation with Bill. But she did recall the moment when his preacher asked everybody to sit in a circle that evening and asked them to say something about Brent.

  “Nobody really knew what to say,” she would comment afterward. “Everybody was just hurting so bad.”

  But that wasn’t the way Bill perceived it. He said when they went around the circle, he looked at Renee and she reminded him of Susan Smith, that lady from Union, South Carolina, who had let her car slip into a murky lake with her two kids still inside.

  “Everybody around my house, you know, was crying and hugging each other. But she never looked up. Her eyes were down the entire time. Not once would she look you in the eye.”

  When asked if Renee cried at all, he replied, “She had brought over some pictures for us of her, Brent and Katie that they had taken at the beach. She cried some then, in the hall. But when my preacher asked her to say something, she said very calmly, ‘I hope you know that—that we did love him, that Katie loved him, and I just hope that he knows that.’”

  While Renee stood outside and smoked a cigarette, Vincent and Tony stood near the back porch and talked with Craig Poole. Craig was giving them the lowdown on Renee and John’s affair and what he thought had happened in Myrtle Beach.

  “I don’t believe a word Renee’s said about what happened,” he said.

  “She’s the one who set this whole trip up. She called in the reservations, got the baby-sitter, and did everything she needed to get my brother there. At the same time, John had already asked for time off at work.”

  It was all a shock to Brent’s friends. Brent had told them all about Renee’s affairs, but they never imagined she would play a part in his murder.

  “I don’t even want to be in the same room as her,” Craig said disgusted, glancing toward Renee. “I have no doubt that John did murder Brent and she had something to do with it.”

  After Renee finished her cigarette, she stepped back inside the Pooles’ home and started looking for her two friends. She and Brent’s parents had discussed what clothing they wanted him to be buried in. She asked Tony and Vincent if they would drive her to her house on Blue Bonnet Court to pick up his burial clothes.

  As the Pooles became even more suspicious of Renee and her involvement in Brent’s murder, their relationship with her and her parents, Jack and Marie, began to sour. At a time when families needed to make peace and draw strength from one another, the growing rift between the Pooles and the Summeys placed an even darker cloud over an already tragic and difficult situation.

  Detective Terry Altman talked with Renee later that day. She told him she remembered the man’s voice sounded black and that he used slang words that resembled a black man’s speech.

  Here we go again, Altman thought. In 1994, the description Susan Smith had used to describe the man who had supposedly kidnapped her children was a black man in a toboggan-type hat. It sounded as if Renee had taken a page right out of that crime story.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Myrtle Beach Homicide Division team was gathering momentum and obtaining a lot of incriminating information that pointed toward John Frazier as Brent Poole’s killer. All their bells and whistles had been put in place. Rather than casting a wide net to see what they could haul in, the detectives were focusing on their most likely suspect—who had motive, means and opportunity—and working to eliminate him first. This made sense, of course, since it was the most time-efficient way of solving a murder.

  Detective Altman had continued his steady pressure on Renee Poole and she was beginning to bend. In several phone calls from her home, she confessed Brent was not only insured for $100,000 but would receive a generous employee benefit package upon his death. She also had begun to soften on the idea that John Frazier had been the killer.

  To help solve the case, Captain Hendrick had requested additional assistance from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations (SBI). Special Agents James R. Bowman and H. G. Pendergrass had interviewed Frazier at his home in Winston-Salem. He admitted he had borrowed his friend’s gray 1990 Acura the week the Pooles had been at the beach. He also acknowledged ownership of a Glock, model 19, 9mm handgun, and that he had previously owned an Italian-made TZ-75 9mm pistol. He had forgotten who had purchased the TZ-75.

  John Boyd Frazier’s dilemma was beginning to look dimmer by the moment. Thomas Pedersen, one of his best friends in Winston-Salem, told him the MBPD had been calling his house and were talking with his girlfriend about John. Cynthia knew all about John and Renee’s affair and had spoken with them about it.

  Thomas urged John to phone Detective Altman and try and straighten out the mess he had gotten himself into. John called the MBPD and spoke with Lieutenant Bill Frontz, who informed
him that Brent Poole had been murdered and he was a suspect. John was not laughing when he called Thomas back to say his name was being mentioned in connection with Brent’s murder. He had been Renee’s most recent lover and came unglued after the police told him they were looking at him as a suspect.

  When Thomas got home from work that night around six o’clock, John was waiting on him. He looked like death warmed over. Cynthia told her boyfriend John had only stayed awake for twenty minutes, then fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up, he looked kind of pale and sounded really rough—kind of like he was drunk. Said John wasn’t clear and logical about everything that was going on, but she figured he probably had a lot to think about. Thomas didn’t waste any time in asking him if he had anything to do with Brent’s murder.

  “Man, I swear I wasn’t in Myrtle Beach,” John assured his friend. He not only proclaimed his innocence, but insisted he had been sick and was at home in bed the entire time. “I was taking NyQuil all night just to get by.”

  “Well, did you talk to anybody?” Thomas asked in a panic. “Anybody that could verify you were at home?”

  “No, nobody’s seen me,” John said in a low voice. “I worked that past weekend, so I was beat. Sick and pretty much asleep the whole time.”

  Even though John had been off from work the same three days the Pooles had vacationed at the beach, he still told Thomas he had been too sick to go anywhere. Nobody had called him and nobody had come over to see him.

  Thomas had been John’s friend for almost a year and one of the things he appreciated about him was his not getting wild and into crazy stuff. He had never known John to do a lot of drinking or drugs—nothing like that—and he was very close to his family. Thomas’s own gut feeling told him that John didn’t have anything to do with Brent’s death, but his lack of an alibi definitely caused him to question whether John was telling him the truth or not.