Practice to Deceive

was it? Brenna was all over the emotional map.
    Neither Mike Birchfield nor Mark Plumberg had located another witness who had disparaged Russel Douglas the way his estranged wife had. Russel’s brother, who would keep in close touch with Birchfield for months as he hoped to hear that the person who shot Russel had been arrested, would be back and forth about whether Brenna was sincere in her protestations of grief.
    “After staying with Brenna,” Matthew wrote, “and watching her fear and frustration, I ultimately can’t find anything that would have me question her grief as anything other than genuine.”
    * * *
    O N JANUARY 2, 2004, a memorial service for Russel Douglas was held at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Clinton, the small town on the south end of Whidbey Island where the Mukilteo ferry docks.
    Most savvy detectives attend the funerals and memorials held for the victims of the crimes they are working on. Both Mark Plumberg and Mike Birchfield were at the church. As mourners and the curious arrived, Birchfield sat in his car in the church parking lot, while Plumberg parked in the driveway of an apartment complex that was right across the street from the church entrance. They observed people and vehicles, jotting down license numbers.
    It is not at all unusual for killers to go to the funerals of their victims. They may mimic arsonists who mingle with the crowd at buildings they have torched; it is an extra element of the thrills they seek, gloating in their belief that they have fooled everyone. And then again, in some cases, murderers close to the deceased may risk waving red flags if they stay away from memorials and funerals.
    Plumberg observed two white males who drove up in green pickup trucks, one brand-new and one somewhat battered. As he watched, the driver of the older truck retrieved something from the new truck, put it into his vehicle, and drove away.
    Did this mean anything? Birchfield said no. He had seen that the cargo consisted only of fishing poles.
    Birchfield went into the church, while Mark Plumberg stayed outside, taking pictures of vehicles in the parking lot and watching for any activity or emotional outbursts that might be significant.
    As people left St. Peter’s after the memorial service, he walked over to a group of men and asked if they might be Russel Douglas’s coworkers.
    They nodded, but turned away. One man glared at the sheriff’s detective and said, “Yeah—but I don’t want to talk to you!”
    “Why is that?” Plumberg asked.
    “I think it’s really inconsiderate of you to approach us at our friend’s memorial service.”
    “I’m only trying to identify people who may have known Russel so we can do a better job of investigating this homicide.”
    “Well, we still don’t want to talk to you!”
    The man beside him nodded in agreement and they hurriedly got into the same car and drove away. Later, Russ’s coworkers would be more agreeable to the detectives’ questioning.
    Aside from the shock and grief Russel Douglas’s mother, father, stepfather, and brother had displayed when they were told he had been killed, his coworkers were the first people who seemed truly saddened.
    Still, the investigators had met very few of the many people with whom the dead man had interacted. They soon learned that despite his widow’s insistence that he had few friends, that wasn’t true. Not at all.

C HAPTER S IX
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    O NE OF THE PEOPLE who was rumored to have been closest to Russel Douglas in recent months was Fran Lester.* Fran was old enough to be his mother, but Brenna and others close to Russel thought he and Fran had had an intimate relationship. Russel apparently told his wife that he had broken off the affair three weeks before Christmas. It might have ended or it might have continued to the day of his death.
    Fran Lester was a genuine person, not some nameless man or woman he was seeing secretly, or a member of a swingers’ group. Mark Plumberg and Mike Birchfield had no trouble finding her address in Tacoma, and they went there after Douglas’s services, arriving about 4:30. She was quite willing to talk with them, and asked only that her friend Cynthia Corning* be allowed to sit in.
    “Cynthia knew Russel, too,” she explained.
    Fran Lester was earthy, frank, and she was clearly a nice woman. She appeared to understand Russel Douglas well, and had wanted the best for him—even if he did succeed in mending the gaping holes in his marriage. She knew