Dance of Death (7 page)

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 would 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.”

“How long did y'all stay there doing that?” King asked.

“Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Just talking?”

“Well, we made love,” Renee blurted out. “It was something he wanted to do. And with it being our anniversary.”

Renee slumped in her chair. The words flowed as easily as syrup from King's mouth, making her feel all the more comfortable. She let her guard down.

While the witness relaxed, King continued to probe, asking for specific details about the robber and the shooting of her husband. She told him again about the man dressed in black and how he had attacked them. Said she couldn't tell if the man was white or black.

Renee said she had heard two shots and thought the shooter had sort of a deep voice, but King sensed her statements lacked the normal general convictions that conveyed truth. He had a feeling she was making it up as they went along.

Near the end of the interview, King looked at Renee accusingly, then asked, “Is there something you're not telling me that you think I would find out later and would want me to know about it now?”

Renee's face tensed. She shifted uneasily in her chair. She hesitated, then decided to give him the whole song and dance about her affair with John Boyd Frazier.

“Uh, I know that when the other detective . . . ,” Renee sputtered, “when he called my mother-in-law, I don't know what she said to him, but he asked me if there was something, you know that—that I was leaving out . . . and, uh, my husband and I did have problems a little while ago. I moved out and moved in with a friend for about a week. And, uh, it was a male friend.”

King grew silent and listened intently as Renee continued to explain about her affair. She was clearly nervous and it showed.

“And my husband accepted the fact that I moved in with him, you know. He knew he was a friend . . . but I had slept with the guy and I told my husband that I had.”

King faked a surprised look. “This is the friend you're talking about?”

Renee nodded vigorously.

“And, shortly after that, I moved out and moved back in with my husband. And he accepted it. We agreed to work everything out. We were gonna go to counseling. I talked to this guy a few times since then, and my husband told me, well, you know, I don't have a problem with you being friends, just—you know—just don't see each other.”

King's mannerisms and voice remained stern. “What type of problems did you and your husband have?”

“My husband and I?”

“Yeah.”

“I left him because he didn't pay me enough attention,” she said emphatically. She looked down at the floor, then glanced nervously back at King. He kept staring at her like she was lying. “I didn't feel like he paid our daughter enough attention. And he realized that and wanted me to move back home.”

“How long did y'all have this problem before you actually left?”

“My husband works second shift and he was hardly ever at home and we had just gotten a computer. And he was on it, you know the time he was at home.” She shrugged indifferently. “A few months . . . for a while . . . we just never really talked about it.”

“How long were y'all married?”

“We've been married three years.”

“Three years . . . and when did the problem start?”

“I guess when I got the computer or shortly after.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I think we got it a little over a year ago.”

“A year ago?”

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully, staring at the floor again. Then with renewed interest as if she had just gotten a sudden burst of energy, she looked up and rushed ahead with words shooting out like rapid fire from an automatic pistol. “He just started playing on it a lot in the past few months. But once I brought it to his attention and I left and we talked out our differences and everything, I went back home and he didn't mess with it anymore.”

When King asked her pointedly if Brent had ever gotten physical with her, she said, “No. Not once. Yes, Brent had only gotten upset a few times, overreacted and started throwing things, but other than that, [we] were always able to work things out.”

King was surprised that she was babbling and running off at the mouth like she couldn't stop. But he wasn't going to correct her.

“I talked to John about mine and Brent's problems. I told him I was gonna leave my husband. I was gonna move out. And I told him I didn't have anywhere to go and he told me I could come home with him. He said he worked third shift and that he would never really be there anyway. So, if I took a job during the day, we would never really see each other. We both agreed to do that and I moved out and he helped me move in with him. I called my lawyer and told him what I had done. He said, ‘Well, you know maybe that wasn't such a good idea.' I said, ‘Yes, well, I really didn't have anywhere to go.'”

“How about a girlfriend?” King asked, encouraging her to continue. “Couldn't you have called her?”

“Uh, yeah, I called her and told her the day I left.”

“No, I mean, any reason why you didn't move in with her?”

Renee wrinkled up her nose and lightly shook her head from side to side, as if a foul odor had just permeated the room. King continued to watch her closely. It seemed to him as if she were feeding off her own excitement and fear. The more she talked, the more she got wrapped up in telling her story. She acted like she couldn't stop herself from talking.

“She and her fiancé . . . She works at a dance club . . . an adult entertainment club.... He works in Virginia and has a small son that stays with him. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment. There really wasn't a lot of room there. My friend has a decent-size house and lived by himself, so I just moved everything in there.”