Practice to Deceive

surfaced in the early part of the investigation.
    * * *
    M IKE BIRCHFIELD TALKED TO the manager of the Gold’s Gym franchise in Renton. The logbook there showed that Russ’s last workout ended at 9 P.M. on December 23. He asked if it was true that Douglas had been at the gym so often, lifting weights in particular, because he was going to enter a bodybuilding contest.
    The manager said he doubted that.
    “We have two members who may be doing that, but he wasn’t one of them. You have to follow a very strict routine to do that, and the club usually gets involved. Russ’s workout routine was nowhere near the competitive level.”
    Even at Gold’s Gym, the homicide victim had been a loner; he had no workout partners, and only casual acquaintances there.
    “He was very friendly and outgoing with our staff,” the manager said, “but the interesting thing about him was how flamboyantly he dressed. I’m talking pink spandex stretch shorts, gold chains, and wild shirts.”
    Birchfield asked if Douglas had ever mentioned that someone was stalking him or trying to hurt him.
    “No way.”
    Even though each day’s detective work was filling in the profile of Russel Douglas, changing it from a “stick drawing” to the image of man of many facets, Mark Plumberg was aware that his investigation had a ways to go. Just as he had with other cases, he expected to come to know Russel Douglas, a man he had never met and would never meet, far more than most people the investigator knew in his own life.
    That wasn’t going to be easy, given the indications that the victim of a case that grew colder as the days passed hadn’t appeared to know himself. Russel Douglas had frantically plunged from one activity into another, seen at least two women during the same period, sought therapy, and spent much time in introspection.
    Mark Plumberg studied the series of scratchy notes that Russ had written to himself, possibly as a part of his therapy. Most of the sentences were in question form. He’d clearly been a man consumed with angst. Indeed, if they had found a gun near the death car at the Wahl Road crime scene, Plumberg realized that they almost certainly would have written off the case as a suicide and never second-guessed their conclusions.
    But the gun was missing. With a sinking feeling, the detective believed that this case might turn out to be the perfect murder—if the shooter had already pitched it off a ferry on his or her trip off-island.
    Once again, he read Russ’s notes, which began with his sense that his troubles had started with his childhood:
“Question: Where is your focus? Why is your focus?”
Weight of world and past constantly on your shoulders. Bear this enormous burden. Feel others “got away w/life” and you got caught/trapped. Feel you settled by settling down. Marriage feels like a mistake because of your past. Past feels like a mistake—memory/observation.
    He wrote of his upbringing by his mother:
ENVIRONMENT—Self righteousness
—Perfection
Ultimate Restriction
—No Risk—absolute safety
(FEAR BASED)
What makes you uncomfortable and angry feeds off itself. Left feeling lost, insecure, unfulfilled, different, rejected, broken, bitter/anger → depression.
You want the impossible! Because you were given contradictory upbringing and standards—even within yourself. If you don’t somehow conquer this, you’ll lose what you have. You’ll continue on the path of negativity in thoughts, words, and actions.
    Russ Douglas’s current dilemma appeared to be over his marriage to Brenna:
Why are you so afraid to just be w/o Brenna and take off? Why are you holding yourself and them back? Are you afraid to leave? Are you afraid this isn’t what you really want? Are you afraid this is what you want but you also didn’t get what you wanted at all and always regret it?
Perception? Judgment? Rejection? Humiliation—from a divorce?
Afraid if you leave, it won’t get better?
Afraid to leave and end up where you were when you were alone and still not get “it”?
Afraid of lifestyle change?
Good. Responsibility and Commitment—w/o you what will your kids do?
    Plumberg shook his head. It was sadly ironic to read Douglas’s questions to himself about how he could find happiness and overcome what he perceived he had suffered in the first three decades of his life.
    Now, he had no future and his decisions wouldn’t matter at all.
    But Russ Douglas didn’t know that as he’d scribbled his jumbled