Practice to Deceive

emotionally. He would never be physically or sexually aggressive. He wouldn’t even do minor playful, physical stuff during sex.”
    Fran’s view of Russel Douglas seemed diametrically opposed to his widow’s. As far as Fran knew, he wasn’t into pornography, swinging, or heavy drinking. She had once offered to get some porno movies, but he turned down her offer.
    She had never seen him intoxicated, but she had suspected that he’d done drugs one night when he kissed her and she had a metallic taste in her mouth.
    Russel had told her that he and Brenna sometimes fought physically, although he was the one who got hit. Brenna could defend herself.
    Fran Lester said that she knew Russel was still sleeping with Brenna. “Every time he got his hair cut.”
    That didn’t seem to bother Fran. Nor was she disturbed about how he spoke of Brenna. She knew he was proud of his wife, and how well she ran their beauty salon, Just B’s.
    As long as he did the books.
    “The worst thing he ever said about her was that she was not good with money,” Fran said. “He said that Brenna was ‘the one’ for him, and he called his kids at least every other day.”
    Birchfield asked a vital question: “Was Russel bisexual?”
    “I don’t think so. He told me about a guy at Gold’s Gym who hit on him. He told the guy that he was ‘taken,’ by a girlfriend. I guess that would be me.
    “I asked him once if he was ever interested in homosexual relations, and he said he’d thought about it—but he hadn’t done it.”
    Russel had also thought about a threesome, but that never happened. Indeed, his most adventurous lovemaking had been with his wife. He told Fran that he and Brenna had “done it” on the ferry, and almost everywhere else, tantalized by the danger of getting caught.
    “Could you trust him?”
    “Yes!” she answered emphatically, but then quickly added, “but I wouldn’t trust him to be faithful.”
    Russel had told Fran once that “some woman” was stalking him, but she had no details about who that woman might be. He hadn’t mentioned anything about a “headhunter” to her.
    Fran Lester pondered Birchfield’s question about what might have gotten Russ into a position of vulnerability.
    “His mouth—his mouth could get him into trouble because he didn’t think about what he said before he said it.”
    Russ Douglas had never had a problem with strangers, she said, because he was a “hermit” who avoided strangers. But she said he was a “whiner” and a “spoiled brat” who sometimes made a big fuss about nothing. Once, he’d even thrown a hissy fit because a store didn’t have the kind of pop he wanted, an incident his mother had also referred to.
    “He was a ‘whiner’?” Birchfield repeated.
    “All men are,” she said with a laugh.
    Fran was not a shrinking violet, either, in what she said or what words she used to say something. Although she loved Russel Douglas, she had grown tired of how spoiled he acted at times. They had tried to preserve the feeling of fun they had on the night they met, but it was hard for her to ignore his pettiness.
    “We broke up on December 6,” she said. “I was upset with him and I did call him a spoiled brat, and I hurt his feelings. That ended our relationship.”
    Fran wasn’t aware that his own mother and sister had often told him the same thing—that she had hit a tender nerve. Of all things, Russ Douglas didn’t want to be seen as a “spoiled brat,” although his very behavior at times showed that he was.
    Fran Lester said she had last heard from Russ on Christmas Eve. He was trying to decide if he should spend Christmas with his wife and children. She told him he had to make up his own mind about that. The Friday after Christmas, she opened a last email from him that he had sent on Christmas Eve.
    “I sent him an answer,” she said. “It’s probably in his computer, but I don’t think he ever got it.”
    The two women with whom Russel Douglas had been involved had given such different opinions. Fran Lester had pooh-poohed the idea that he was ever drawn into swinging with strangers, assuring both detectives he was much too shy and anxious to do that.
    And yet his wife described him as almost maniacally involved in aberrant sex.
    Was it possible he was both personalities? He seemed to be bipolar, but it was doubtful that he was a true Jekyll and Hyde combination.
    Surprisingly, Russ’s mother, Gail, and his sister, Holly, felt no