“We'll certainly offer,” King explained, “but we can't force her to take one. And even if she agreed, then we couldn't use it against her in court.”
For one of the only times in her life, Agnes Poole was outside herself. For a woman who had always seemed to be pretty much in control of her life, she couldn't think of anything to ask. She drew in a deep, trembling breath. She didn't know what to ask, but, after all, this was her son's murder they were talking about. She had to ask something. Finally she blurted out, “Would you have to see something in your investigation to warrant any charges before anything like that could be done?”
“Well, we're looking at it from all aspects right now, and she is our key witness.” King corrected himself and quickly substituted “key suspect” in place of “key witness.” He continued, “She's the only one right now that can tell us something. Whether she's telling us the truth, we really don't know at this point. We have some concerns about what happened, how she said it happened, the whole nine yards. We've been talking with her seriously since about three this morning. As you can see, she just left, so we're not just taking her story at face value. We want you folks to know this will not be the last time we talk with her. We even gave her the residue test to make sure she didn't fire the gun.”
“One more question,” Bill said before he stood up. “What is the frequency of murders in Myrtle Beach?”
“Uh, this is actually our first murder this year,” Altman told him. “We count them per year. I think last year we might have had . . . maybe five?”
“And last year, that was a whole lot for us,” King added.
Bill stood up slowly, as if getting to his feet were difficult. “You know, it's my son here and I can get . . .” His voice broke again. He took a short breath, then said as he exhaled, “I'm trying not to be too emotional about this, but what happened here . . . This was no robbery; this was a murder. And I believe that with all my heart.”
The detectives couldn't have agreed with him more. The greatest task they now faced was gathering enough evidence against Brent's killer, get him arrested, and off the street before he hurt anyone else.
“Could you show us where it happened?” Bill Poole asked on the way out. Dee wanted to know if it was okay to put some flowers on the beach, while Agnes inquired as how to make contact with the coroner and get permission to view Bent's body.
“I want to go and see Katie,” Dee said slowly, as if the thought of seeing her and knowing that she would ask for Brent suddenly pained her greatly.
Sergeant King volunteered to call the coroner and ask for a viewing of the body, and Sergeant Altman agreed to lead them to the crime scene. It was 8:24
A.M
. when they walked out of the interview room with the Pooles. Both men had been up all night and their bodies were running on four cylinders.
However, seeing the soft, sticky brains of someone lying on the beach hardens a man and sends determination through his veins like very few things can. When a detective sees a family like the Pooles going through the pain and misery of losing a loved one, it changes something inside him. Grief runs through a man's soul like a small rabid animal and is as contagious as a virus. It causes a good cop to deny himself all necessities of life: sleep, food, nourishment and companionship. And if he's not careful about it, he can end up making it personal and spending every waking minute craving justice and seeking closure for the family. A homicide detective can at the drop of a hat become delusional and obsessed in thinking if only he could solve this murder, then somehow that would finally end the family's pain and suffering.
Men like that, Altman was well aware, who often find themselves bound by a silent inward promise, find themselves shot, through and through, with adrenaline at every turn in the case, regardless of how big or small, until the case is finally solved. He'd heard of men like that spending a lifetime, sacrificing all health, family, friends, sanityâwhatever it tookâin pursuit of cases that, for whatever reason, could never be solved.
Altman's stomach tightened in knots like tree roots from a large oak, tightly gnarled. He asked himself,
What if we never solve this case? What happens if we don't find out who murdered Brent Poole?
Then he quickly dismissed the thought.
The detective reached for his keys from the top of his desk. He grabbed his water and his sunglasses, then headed out the door after the Pooles.
Altman knew better than to think negatively. It just wasn't his style.
CHAPTER 16
Renee Poole and the female police officer walked across the parking lot to the blue-and-white Myrtle Beach police squad car that was to take her back to her hotel. “As you may have detected, Brent's family isn't very fond of me,” she said disappointed as she climbed into the backseat of the car.
The officer smiled and nodded, but didn't comment. She twisted the key in the ignition and the big engine roared. Before pulling out of the parking lot, she fastened her seat belt and reminded Renee to do the same.
“On my husband's senior-prom night,” Renee began, erroneously thinking her driver was as eager to hear the rest of the story as she was to share it, “his parents walked in on us having sex.”
She paused as if her relationship with Brent's parents had always been a taboo subject, then added, more so for her benefit than anyone else's, “I don't know what the fuss was all about. We'd been dating for over a year by that time. But obviously they were totally unaware of the intimacy between us.” Another long pause before she concluded: “Since that day, my mother-in-law has never cared for me.”
Renee laid her head against the back of the seat and closed her tired eyes. She snickered silently. The memory of Brent's parents catching them having sex was very funny, now that she thought about it.
Growing up in Winston-Salem, Renee's childhood hadn't been anything like Beaver Cleaver's, but it wasn't anything like Kelly Osbourne's either. Renee supposed it was something that fell in between the two. Her mother and father, Jack and Marie Summey, had met at Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1974, where Jack was working as a finish carpenter. The two started dating, eventually moved in together, then got married a year later. When Jack moved his family back to North Carolina in 1977, he and Marie were the proud parents of two little girls, Brandy and Renee.
The Summey girls grew into their own personalities. The oldest of the two, Brandy, was always content and never cried. While Renee was a loving and very smart child, she was feisty and independent. Renee was forever wanting to do everything for herself, but the two sisters developed a strong bond and fortunately never fought or argued. Brandy didn't mind being the quiet one and would always bow out to her younger, gregarious sister.
For some reason, Renee didn't remember a lot about her childhood other than her father was the permissive, easygoing and laid-back parent. Her mother was the one who had to discipline her and her sister. Jack was self-employed by then and owned his own paint-and-body shop, while Marie worked mostly in clerical positions for physicians and health clinics. In 1990, her parents bought land in Clemmons, North Carolina, and Jack built a new body shop, then constructed his family's log cabin home.
Renee's most vivid memories in her life began when she was twelve years old and had just gone through puberty. She was attending Wiley Junior High, in Winston-Salem, and always had been a motivated student who did very well when she applied herself. With a natural ability for drawing she had inherited from her father, she excelled in art. Several of Renee's art projects were sent off to art shows and to scholastic events and came back with high praise from the judges.
But Renee never felt comfortable around the other kids in her school. It was as if she never felt good enough, rich enough or privileged enough as the other children. She remembered other kids in the neighborhood began teasing her when she was in the fourth grade. Because she and her family lived in a mobile home, she said, her schoolmates would laugh at her for being poor. Said they'd call her and her sister, “white trailer trash.”
Renee had always been thin and small, which gave her classmates even more fodder for jokes. The other kids in school called her “Ethiopian” and taunted her about being skinny with names like “beanpole” or “light pole.”
After all this teasing, Renee started feeling insecure about who she was and where she lived. In order to compensate for her low self-esteem, she began hanging out with the wrong crowdâa bunch of misfits, just like her, from lower-class families and poor neighborhoods. She figured since her peers were already labeling her an outcast, she might as well be like them. Renee grew up thinking the rebellious crowd was where she really belonged.
One weekend, Renee was spending the night with a friend. She felt safe with this family, for they were friends with her parents, and one of their sons had visited Renee's dad at his auto body shop from time to time. She didn't know it, but the young man smoked pot, and since his sister was Renee's friend, she felt that if she didn't try it, then they would make fun of her. Renee smoked cigarettes, but this was the first time she had ever tried pot.
After they had smoked a joint, Renee's friend left to go to the bathroom and never came back. Being so high from the pot, Renee wasn't sure what was going on and ended up having sexual intercourse with her friend's brother. She knew she didn't like what was happening, but was confused. She couldn't think straight. He had hurt her, but she didn't know how to stop him. If she yelled, she might get into trouble for the pot they had just smoked, so she just let it happen. She prayed for it to be over with, but never said another word about it.
Renee was young and didn't have the interpersonal skills to get out of the situation with her girlfriend's brother. She thought she had done something wrong and she would ultimately get into trouble for it. A couple of times, the boy showed up at her dad's shop when he wasn't there, and he'd call for Renee to come out and he'd have sex with her. She was scared to say anything about it and afraid to tell on him, so she just went along with it.
It was then that Renee became very depressed and started skipping school. She started hanging out with the wrong crowd, drinking, smoking pot and sneaking out of the house to meet her friends. Usually she would ride around and get high or drunk with a few friends or meet her boyfriend in the park and make out for a little while.
Renee's parents had no idea what had happened to their daughter and attributed her bad grades and behavioral changes to “teenage problems” and her new set of friends. Renee said it was no big deal and claimed all the “cool kids” she knew were behaving the same. It was common to just hang out, rarely do any kind of homework and routinely fail tests. Renee never told her parents she did it because she didn't want to seem like a nerd and be an outcast from the in crowd.
Renee and her parents had many discussions about her behavior and they administered many types of discipline to try and correct the problems. Renee would always promise to do better, but never did. But neverâby any stretch of the imaginationâdid she see herself as a bad girl. After all, it was the 1990s. There were much younger girls at her school that were already having sex and doing drugs. She only had smoked pot a few times and limited her sexual activities to only the boys she dated.
When Renee first met Brent seven years ago at RJ Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, she was a thin, mousy fourteen-year-old. She and a friend needed a ride home from school, and they were bumming a ride for another student as well. At the last moment, their friend saw Brent getting into his blue-and-white S15 pickup truck and asked if he would give them all a ride. Brent agreed, and the four of them found themselves crammed inside the cab of Brent's pickup.
Renee thought Brent was cute and learned they had a lot in common. He, too, had grown up in a family whose men shared a love for motorcycles and cars and was obsessed with anything mechanical. The youngest of three children, he got along well with his older brother and sister. Renee thought he was adorable with his big, beautiful eyes, his full, soft lips and great smile. He had braces on his teeth and wore those little blue rubber bands on them. But all the kids did that; it was the popular thing to do. When Brent agreed to give them a ride home, she was as excited as a first grader with a new bicycle.
At age seventeen, Brent was so much more mature than the boys in her class and the next day he found her in the hall at school and asked her out. Their relationship took off like a rocket. They were so affectionate and drawn to each other that they couldn't keep their hands off one another. It took only a week of dating before they had engaged in their first sexual experience.
Renee recalled the first time she and Brent made love was kinda funny, because they were so nervous. It was Brent's first time and he was a little anxious about that. He had had a girlfriend prior to her and admitted they had attempted to have sexual intercourse, but had only gotten as far as oral sex.
Renee didn't care whom Brent had been with or what they had done. She was just excited about holding and kissing him. She had known from the very first kiss that she'd fall in love with him. And after they had made love the first time, she was convinced she'd met her soul mate for life. It was so perfect. No awkwardness at all. It was like their bodies just fit together perfectly.
Renee and Brent's first sexual experience actually occurred at the Pooles' home on Kerstmill Road. They lived in a ranch-style brick house across from the rock quarry and asphalt plant owned by Vulcan Materials, where Brent's dad was employed. Renee and Brent jokingly referred to him as “Barney Rubble.” While Brent's parents were upstairs, they were downstairs in the basement, watching a movie they had rented. But before long, they started kissing and petting, until finally things got out of control and the movie was long forgotten.
For Renee, everything had been storybook perfect. She and Brent were young and made love every chance they got. Their passion was so strong they never missed an opportunity to be together. Brent went to work after school, so he would have Renee meet him at his truck. He had tinted the windows in his truck so no one could see what they were doing. Before he went to work and she to her next class, they would disrobe in the cab and make love. When that got too cramped, Brent lined the bed of his truck with carpet and they'd climb back there and make love.
Sometime afterward, Brent's classmates started kidding him about the “rocking and knocking” truck in the parking lot. And when Renee started complaining about the carpet burns, he took some of his money he earned working at the bus station and rented a room at the Innkeeper Motel on Peter's Creek Parkway.
Renee confided to her friends that she didn't know why they always went to the same motel, but it sure beat doing it in the truck. Brent said he couldn't help but feel like Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate.
All the employees at the Innkeeper Motel had grown accustomed to him, his blue-and-white pickup truck and his mysterious lover. But he didn't care. Some days he even went by early to pay for the room and pick up the key so he wouldn't have to waste time on the trivial things.
The in crowd Renee used to hang out with quickly became the out crowd after she started dating Brent. She abruptly ditched her old friends, believing he was all she ever needed to make her life complete. After Brent graduated from high school, he chose to attend diesel school in Tennessee. Renee saw no need to continue school if Brent wasn't going to be there and dropped out in the tenth grade. That year, she had a disagreement with the assistant principal and got expelled for using the “N” word. Her father found out what had happened and took her back to school to apologize, but the die had already been cast.
Renee had been working as a cashier in the cosmetics department at the Drug Emporium since she was fourteen. Living at home, and with no real expenses, she used most of her money to buy presents for Brent. While he was away at school, they maintained their relationship, calling one another regularly and writing letters. He came home every other weekend and would sometimes spend the night with Renee at her parents' home.
One day, out of the blue, Brent confessed to Renee that an ex-girlfriend of his lived in Tennessee and he had looked her up. Said she had wanted a ride back to North Carolina to visit her friends, and since Brent was coming home that weekend, he agreed to give her a lift. In return, she had given him a blow job.
Renee was furious. How could he let something like that happen? She decided the only way not to let that happen was to make sure Brent wasn't lonely and to find out what was going on at his school. She started visiting him in Tennessee, one time agreeing to stay with him for several months. While she was there, she found out about a girl he
claimed
he had taken to the hospital. Or, at least that was his story and he was sticking to it. He told Renee she had come to his door selling magazines and he innocently had given her a ride to the hospital, and that was why she had his leather jacket. Brent swore he loved Renee more than anything in the world and promised never to let anyone come between them again.
Like all relationships, Brent and Renee's always had its ups and downs. Although Renee continually seemed to be at odds with Brent's mother, she was beginning to feel somewhat comfortable around his family. She had forgiven his parents for calling her a “whore” and a “slut” the night they caught her and Brent naked, and she didn't put up a fuss whenever he asked her to do something for their sake. There were times when he would take her out for a date, then drive her back home to change clothes before she went to his house. Brent would never admit his mother had said anything about the way she dressed, but Renee knew she would always have to be mindful of what she wore around her.
Renee fondly remembered a particular day when Brent and his parents came to visit her dad at his shop next to their house. She was sick with a cold and went to Brent's truck to get her cough drops. When she reached in the door pocket of his truck, to her utter surprise, she found a little box with a diamond inside. She was so excited, she had to tell someone and later confided to Brandy that Brent had bought her a diamond. She swore her sister to secrecy, but Brandy let it slip out. Brent was angry at Brandy when she ruined his surprise, but not deterred. That night, he came back over to their house and phoned her from her dad's shop. He asked her to come out of the house, that he wanted to talk with her about something.