Practice to Deceive

with a thin mattress and no privacy, eating bland prison food, and wearing a drab uniform while she scrubbed floors and did dishes or some other onerous prison assignment.
    Most of all, she would hate having someone control everything she did for forty-eight months.
    And so there was no trial for Peggy Sue Thomas. There was only a sentencing, set ironically for the day after Valentine’s Day 2013.
    * * *
    F EBRUARY 15 IN COUPEVILLE, WASHINGTON, was one of those late winter days in the Northwest where the day dawns inexplicably with azure blue, cloudless skies, and sunshine beams down on every street, every budding crocus. It was a perfect day and the historic houses built in the 1800s looked brand-new again.
    Courtroom number 2 in the Island County Justice Center opened early that morning so video cameras could be placed to focus on Peggy Sue Thomas. Reporters and still photographers—not jurors—now found spots in the jury box.
    There had been a few court days during all the trials and hearings concerning Peggy Sue Thomas and Jim Huden when the courtroom in Coupeville had many empty seats—but not now. While the long benches on the left side of the courtroom filled up quickly, and those on the right were reserved for Peggy Sue’s family and friends, court house employees stood against the back wall.
    I wondered if Peggy Thomas had looked out the windows of the vehicle bringing her here and realized that she was about to be separated from the world she knew, shut off from true fresh air for sixteen seasons to come.
    She had been free on bail until she got to court. When she walked in with her daughters, Peggy looked great, with her thick hair falling below her shoulders, and bangs swept to one side of her forehead. Her makeup, of course, was tattooed on.
    She wore a beige unconstructed jacket with large buttons over a gray top and dark slacks.
    Peggy Sue took her place at the defense table next to her attorney, Craig Platt. Kelvin Thomas and her daughters, Taylor and Mariah, sat in the row behind her. Doris Matz wasn’t there. Whether she was ill or simply could not bear hearing her precious daughter sentenced to prison, no one knew.
    Kelvin had Peggy Sue’s back—as he always had. He would be the sole parent to their two daughters over the next four years. That wasn’t unusual; Kelvin had always shared raising the girls. That was one thing she wouldn’t have to worry about while she was in prison. If they needed someone to turn to, they had their dad.
    * * *
    T HIS WAS ONE OF the strangest sentencing events I’ve ever observed. Greg Banks told the court that Peggy Thomas was prepared to plead guilty to rendering criminal assistance in the first degree, explaining that this was the same terminology that was used in other jurisdictions as a defendant “knowingly being an accessory after the fact of a crime.”
    Platt gave Judge Allen Hancock about twenty letters written in support of Peggy’s character.
    Everyone involved, in whatever way, in the long-unsolved murder of Russ Douglas was in this courtroom. Everyone—except for Russ, of course, and Peggy Sue’s mother, Doris—and Jim Huden and Brenna Douglas.
    During a break, I found myself standing in the central aisle next to Mark Plumberg, who was standing within inches of Peggy Sue and her daughters. She didn’t acknowledge Plumberg—or me—as she seemed to clasp every minute with her girls she could get. So much would change in the next four years, but Peggy would be on the inside looking out as Mariah and Taylor became mature women.
    I wondered if she was finally accepting the truth about what she threw away because of Russ Douglas’s murder.
    Russel Douglas’s family appeared to feel more enmity toward Peggy than they had toward Jim Huden. Jim Douglas was once again in the courtroom via Skype and he said he was speaking for both himself and his son Matt.
    “This was a cold and premeditated act,” he said. “I hope she won’t hurt anyone else. Her short sentence is a travesty. She lured Russ to his murder, and Jim Huden is also a victim. This isn’t justice, but it does bring finality. You used your feminine wiles with utter callousness. You’re not a victim [of anything]. You are a predator.”
    Bob O’Neal, Russ’s stepfather, stood about eight feet away from Peggy. “You took my son, a part of my life. I don’t believe your apologies. You played them as you’ve played people all your life. You sullied my son’s