Practice to Deceive

shooter was probably still at the scene when they passed by.
    And it was fortunate that they hadn’t approached the vehicle. Perhaps the killer had subsequently shut the door next to the steering wheel, gone around the SUV to search for something on the passenger side, and left that door open when he left.
    If so, what was he—or she—looking for? And had he found and removed it?
    Russel Douglas’s father, Jim, flew down from Juneau, Alaska, and he and other members of his family met with Mike Birchfield on December 30 at Brenna’s house in Langley. Birchfield’s interviews with the Douglas side of the family were private.
    Jim said he and Russel were as close as a father and son could be, considering that Jim lived far away in Alaska. “We would talk on the phone about once a month.”
    Jim Douglas was aware of his son’s bouts with depression; Russ had suffered with periods of sadness for most of his life. He was probably bipolar. When he was up, he was way up—but when he was down, he sometimes threatened suicide.
    “Russel was a loner,” Jim said. “He never seemed to have a lot of friends.”
    “Did he like his job? How about his marriage?” Birchfield asked.
    “Yeah, I think he did like his job. He was really excited about getting his master’s degree in business.”
    As for Russel and Brenna’s marriage, his father acknowledged that they were having trouble, but he didn’t know the specifics beyond arguments over money.
    “You know of any physical abuse?”
    “No—I wasn’t aware of anything like that.”
    Jim Douglas knew that Russ and Brenna had split up for a while, but he had never heard anything about Russel having a girlfriend. He hadn’t known anything about a divorce—but his ex-wife, Gail, said that Brenna told her they were going to start divorce filing as soon as she could get health insurance.
    “Brenna told my ex-wife they were trying to stay friends, but that they were getting a divorce as soon as they could.”
    “Did he ever talk to you about someone being mad at him, or who he might be having trouble with?”
    Douglas shook his head.
    He had sent his son a hundred-dollar check for Christmas, and his bank said that it had been cashed at the Bank of America in Renton on December 23.
    Matthew Douglas, Russel’s brother, was a U.S. Army captain stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. He and his fiancée, Tracy Harvey, had been in Washington State during the Christmas holidays. On the weekend his brother was killed, Matthew and Tracy were in British Columbia, Canada. Now, they, too, were at Brenna’s house to talk to Mike Birchfield.
    Captain Douglas told the detective that he and Russel weren’t close, mostly because Russel kept to himself, especially while they were growing up in Coupeville on Whidbey Island. He agreed that sometimes his brother and his mother, Gail, didn’t get along very well.
    “He resented what he considered very strict rules in our house.”
    Matthew recalled Russel as a good student, a man who had strived to get a superior education. He was also into physical fitness and worked out three or four days a week.
    When Russ was born, he had severely crossed eyes, and it took several operations to fix the problem. As an adult, his eyes could still seem off kilter when he was tired. That may have had something to do with his overweening desire to succeed.
    “He could be eccentric in his lifestyle and the way he dressed,” Matthew said. “When he began a hobby, he would immediately go to extremes. Like learning to play the guitar or surfing. He wasn’t very good at either, but he spent a lot of his time and money trying.”
    Captain Douglas said he’d never known his brother to have a drug or drinking problem, allowing that if he had, he would be more likely to go to their dad to talk about it.
    “I don’t think Russel liked being married,” Matthew said. “But he was a good father. He and Brenna argued a lot, and she kicked him out of the house last May sometime.”
    “Was he ever abusive to her—or the kids?”
    “No, not that I ever heard of. I knew he had a girlfriend who was a lot older than he was.”
    “He into anything weird—or could he have been gay?”
    Matthew shook his head. “I’d have a hard time believing any of that.”
    * * *
    W HILE BRENNA TOLD DETECTIVES about all of Russ’s faults, she said the opposite to her friends and acquaintances. “Russ was my best friend. How am I going to go on without him?”
    Which