Practice to Deceive

pornography she found on his computer in September.
    “For Christmas, do you know what he gave me? Lingerie, flavored condoms, and a sex swing! We agreed to take it slow, and I asked him if that was his idea of ‘slow.’ ”
    Plumberg asked her if Russel had tried to get her to engage in any unusual sex since he’d been home for Christmas, and she shook her head.
    “No, he’s been on his best behavior. We did have very protected sex. I guess I just wanted to feel loved.”
    Brenna was a study in ambivalence. One minute she characterized her late husband as gay, and the next she talked about his lust for her and other women.
    More confusing, the Christmas she described sounded like any happy family’s, although Russel was a “little upset” because she changed their usual Christmas morning. He had wanted their children to wait while he had breakfast before they opened their presents.
    “I told him that now the kids were coming first, and he could just wait for his breakfast.”
    Brenna’s stepfather, who had been widowed a year earlier, came over to have dinner with them and left between five and six. Then Russel had played Xbox with Jack, while she and Hannah watched a movie in her room.
    “Russel came into my bedroom later and we watched Bad Boys II and then we went to sleep.”
    On December 26, she had stayed at home after Russel left, although she was upset because she had wanted to go to the “eye doctor.” She had called Russel’s cell phone a few times to see where he was, but he didn’t answer.
    “Were you worried about your husband?” Plumberg asked.
    “A little—because we hadn’t been fighting or anything so I didn’t know why he wouldn’t come back. Then I got mad because I thought he was back to his ‘old routine’ of only being concerned about himself.”
    With no word from him, she had gone to the mainland—as she said before—eaten at the Red Robin restaurant, shopped at Penney’s and some “video game place,” and then gone to the movie. She had receipts and ticket stubs that verified this.
    Brenna Douglas’s description of Russel’s alleged “abuse” indicated that it was more verbal than physical. He had taken their children to visit his lover, Fran, at Thanksgiving and unplugged the phone there so she couldn’t talk to them.
    “He never went places with me. Oh, once we went to a game and there were these two women sitting in front of us. I simply commented about how ‘trashy’ they were dressed, and he turned on me and in a real loud voice, he said I was just jealous because I was the ‘fattest woman in a stadium of thirty thousand people!’ ”
    Brenna’s complaints might have been justified in other circumstances, but they sounded weak and selfish when compared to the unsolved homicide of her husband who had a bullet in his brain.
    She was a big woman, but in an attractive, buxom way, and she was also pretty with long, luxuriant hair. And there was no way she could have been the “fattest woman” in the stadium. She appeared somehow stronger than the photos Plumberg had seen of Russel Douglas. In a physical fight—if, indeed, they ever engaged in one—Brenna would have had a good chance of winning.
    Plumberg tried again to get any information Brenna might have on who hated Russel enough to kill him. Was there anyone he seemed afraid of?
    She had no idea. Then she remembered that he had told her about a man who was a “headhunter” who was looking for him the week before Christmas. She hadn’t known what a headhunter was until Russel told her they were people who tried to steal employees away from other companies and offer them jobs.
    “This guy told Russel he would have to sign a secrecy thing. They had to meet at night and no one was supposed to know. We were having dinner at his mother’s house just before Christmas when he said that. Gail will remember that, too.”
    Gail O’Neal, Russ’s mother, did recall a discussion about a “headhunter.” That holiday dinner in 2003 was the last time she saw her son alive.
    Brenna seemed to be on good terms with her mother-in-law, even though Russel had told any number of people that he disliked his mother because of the strict and punitive way she had raised him.
    Asked about that later, Gail O’Neal, who has a PhD in nursing and teaches at Washington State University, nodded. She knew that Russ had blamed her for some of his misfortunes.
    “He always blamed someone else for the unhappiness in