Practice to Deceive

LEVEN
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    I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN ABOUT a case where the investigating detectives interviewed as many possible witnesses or informants as this one. That they hadn’t come up with a prime suspect by February 2004 wasn’t from lack of trying. Now, Mark Plumberg and Mike Birchfield enlarged their search for the Christmas killer. At the same time, there were other less compelling crimes to respond to on an island so large in area with relatively few residents.
    They asked for information from the public about anyone who might have visited Whidbey Island during the holidays in 2003.
    They had searched computers for email correspondence, and now they scanned telephone records of calls that Russel Douglas had made and received.
    On May 12, 2004, the two detectives went over the Nextel records for Russel. It would be ironic if there was any kind of solid clue in them that could lead to a killer who had by now gotten away with murder for almost five months.
    They found one number that they didn’t recognize; there weren’t that many calls from that area code. It had a 702 prefix, which meant it had emanated from the Las Vegas area, or from a cell phone listed to that area.
    Whoever had the phone with the Las Vegas number had called Russ Douglas three times on December 23, 2003. And he had called that number twice on that same day. If it was a cell phone, the calls from the Nevada number could have been made in that state—or from anywhere in America, for that matter.
    Mike Birchfield picked up his phone and dialed the number. It rang a few times, and then a recording of a female voice came on, saying her name was “Peggy” and asking callers to leave a message.
    He didn’t do that. Only a few moments passed before the detective’s phone rang. A woman named Peggy was calling.
    “I just got a call from your number,” she said.
    Mark Plumberg answered and identified himself.
    “We called you because your number came up in an investigation here—on the murder of a man named Russel Douglas.”
    “Peggy” was quite forthcoming.
    “You called my cell phone,” she said. “I’ll give you my home phone number, too. I used to live up there, but I’m a limousine driver in Las Vegas now.”
    Peggy, who was using the last name “Thomas,” said she knew both Russ and his wife, Brenna. She owned their rental house on Furman Avenue in Langley. They were supposed to buy the house from her—but that hadn’t occurred yet.
    “I’m an unwilling landlord,” she said. “I know—knew—them both, but I’m closer to Brenna.”
    Plumberg asked about the five calls between her cell phone and Russel’s two days before Christmas.
    That was simple enough for her to explain. Peggy Sue Thomas said she had been “in the area” visiting her family for the holidays, and she had wanted to meet with Russ to give him a Christmas present she’d bought for Brenna.
    “We kept playing phone tag.”
    “Did you see Russel?”
    “No, I was supposed to get together with Russ and Brenna during the holidays, but that never happened.”
    A moment later, she corrected herself. She hadn’t seen the couple per se, but she had seen Russ at his apartment about nine on the night of the twenty-third and she gave him the present for Brenna then.
    “Do you remember what he was wearing?”
    “I can’t really recall—wait—I think he had on spandex shorts and a bandanna that covered his whole head.”
    Peggy said that she had only talked to Russ for about five minutes, but she remembered how happy he was and excited about spending time with Brenna and his kids over the holidays.
    “He felt pretty good and thought he and Brenna could get back together, and get past his affair.”
    “What do you know about that affair?” Plumberg asked.
    “I just knew it was in another state—I don’t know if it was with a woman or what. I know Brenna was crushed about an affair he had with a man.”
    Peggy seemed to know the couple very well. Before the twenty-third, Russ and his girlfriend had come to Las Vegas in October. Peggy hadn’t seen him during that visit, but she’d talked to him when he called her.
    “Did he talk about his girlfriend?”
    “Only a story he told me about them getting thrown out of a bar for dancing on the table.”
    Plumberg asked Peggy if she could tell the investigators about Russel or if she knew anyone who could help them.
    “Well, Russ sometimes wears kilts,” she said, “and he likes to explore sexually.”
    It