Dance of Death by Dale Hudson

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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œGraz,” 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