Practice to Deceive

thoughts, trying to winnow out some magic formula for a better life.
    One conclusion kept appearing.
Who provided you with the most happiness? Brenna. This is true!
    With only a very short time to live, Russel Douglas seemed to have made up his mind. He didn’t want a divorce; he wanted to move back into the house on Furman Road with his wife and children.
    What then, had drawn him to Wahl Road in Freeland? Where he would die instantly? Plumberg guessed that the victim was ambushed—lured to his murder by some sort of ruse.

C HAPTER E IGHT
----
    O N JANUARY 13, 2004, the detective team from Island County drove to the Redmond offices of Tetra Tech, hoping they might find out more about the people with whom Russel Douglas had interacted. Harry Turpin, the Tetra Tech supervisor, spoke with them first, and he described Russel as a “good employee” who had been with the company since July 2003.
    Asked if he had observed anything out of the norm about Russel, he nodded.
    “Well, once he came to work in a kilt, and another time he wore a kind of sarong—maybe you’d call it a long loincloth. We’re casual here—but not that casual. I took him aside and explained to him that basically we’re employed by Nextel, and they’re right next door. We have to dress the way Nextel staff dresses.
    “He apologized and said he wouldn’t do that again.”
    And he hadn’t. Turpin said he’d never had any disciplinary problems with Russel. He knew that he and his wife were getting divorced and that he had a girlfriend, but learned later that the lovers had broken up and Russ was getting back together with his wife.
    “I heard that just before the, ah, end.”
    Turpin recalled a three-day business trip with several of his employees, including Russ Douglas. They had gone to Klamath Falls, Oregon. Nothing unusual happened on the trip.
    Some of Tetra Tech’s employees had worked with Douglas at his former job with the city of Mukilteo, and they occasionally “razzed” him about his less-than-stellar performance there, but Turpin felt he was doing very well in his new job. In fact, he had been assigned—beginning in January 2004—to the “leasing side” of Tetra. It wasn’t a big promotion, but it would have put him in a position with the likelihood of more upward mobility. He would scout out locations where his company could erect cell phone towers.
    Systematically, Mike Birchfield and Mark Plumberg met with many of the Tetra Tech workers. He had been well liked by his coworkers.
    “He liked his job and everyone at work loved him,” one woman said. “His kids meant a lot to him. He didn’t come to our Christmas party because his wife wouldn’t let him bring them with him.”
    She confided that Russ had always wanted to be “best” at everything he did and wasn’t always successful. But, on the job, he was fine “once he got rolling.”
    Asked about drug or alcohol use, the woman looked shocked. “I’m telling you that I would be blown away if I found out Russ had a problem with either one!”
    The Island County investigators found that Russel Douglas had confided his marital difficulties to many of his coworkers. Some knew that he’d had a girlfriend for a while, and others didn’t. Most described him as “happy” and “friendly,” although they didn’t know where he spent his time after work hours. And no one described him as a druggie or drinker.
    He was a hard worker, a man excited about his new job in the company and his MBA, both of which would come true in the early months of 2004.
    Although he admitted that he and his wife, Brenna, often argued, his fellow workers believed he was doing everything he could to pick up his marriage again and make it work. They had married young, when they already had a one-year-old son. But it wasn’t a “shotgun wedding” in any real sense. Russ loved Brenna and she seemed to love him.

PART FOUR
----

Likely and Unlikely Suspects

C HAPTER N INE
----
    M ANY OF THE RESIDENTS of Island County tried to help in the investigation of Russel Douglas’s murder, most of them well intentioned. Mike Birchfield and Mark Plumberg listened to every lead that came in. Some sounded plausible, and others were a combination of gossip, rumor, and wild imagining. The two detectives were trying to locate patterns and connections, and listening to the lay public could very well net something that established those.
    Viola Peckinpaugh* called Plumberg on January 6, 2004. Her