Practice to Deceive

address,” she said.
    Ms. Bailey hadn’t had a clear view of the driver, but her recall did help to place the Tracker in the Double Bluff neighborhood sometime around noon on Friday.
    * * *
    M ARK PLUMBERG AND MIKE BIRCHFIELD weren’t through for the night. They still faced one of the tasks that any cop hates—notifying the deceased’s next of kin. There is no easy way to break such awful news; police know that they will hear sobs and see tears or the shocked, frozen reaction on the faces of those the dead have loved and who have loved them.
    Mike Birchfield knew of Russel Douglas; his wife, Brenna Douglas, had babysat with the detective’s children. Several deputies’ wives went to her beauty shop—Just B’s—to have her do their hair. That was one semilucky thing for the detectives; most residents on Whidbey Island knew each other, or they had mutual acquaintances.
    And then there was the gossip line that they knew would begin beating jungle drums with both solid and mythical information within hours. They had to find Brenna soon and tell her what had happened before someone called her and bluntly gave her the news that her husband was dead of a gunshot wound to the head.
    Russel Douglas might have been living in an apartment off-island, but his driver’s license gave his address on Furman Avenue in the Whidbey Island town of Langley. Mike Birchfield knew that that was Brenna’s current address. There had been rumors for months that Russel and Brenna were estranged and living apart; that could explain why Douglas had two addresses.
    But they weren’t divorced.
    * * *
    I T WAS ABOUT A quarter after ten when Mike Birchfield and Mark Plumberg pulled into the driveway of Brenna Douglas’s home in Langley. There was a maroon van parked in the driveway, but there were no lights on in the house. Plumberg stayed back in the yard while Birchfield approached the front door. A large dog was in the yard, barking at him.
    Birchfield shone his flashlight through the living room window, and saw a woman in a robe walking toward the front door.
    “That’s Brenna,” Birchfield said.
    She opened the door without hesitation. Squinting in the porch light, she asked, “Can I help you?”
    Mike Birchfield showed her his identification as a sheriff’s detective and introduced her to Plumberg. As they walked into the living room, it appeared that she was ready for bed.
    “Could you talk to us?” Plumberg asked, wondering why she would open the door so readily when she saw two strange men in her yard.
    “Come on in,” she said, opening the door wider. “What’s going on?”
    “We want to talk with you about your husband,” Mike Birchfield said as they walked in. They stood awkwardly for a minute or two before he gestured toward the dining room: “Could we sit down at that table?”
    Brenna Douglas seemed at ease as she led them toward the dining room. She asked no questions. Mark Plumberg pulled out a legal pad. He would take notes while Birchfield interviewed Brenna Douglas.
    As they passed a chair near the front door, he saw a note on lined tablet paper there. It was addressed to “Russ,” and read: “The kids and I went out and we’ll be back later.”
    It was a strange tableau. Even though it was fairly late at night and there were two detectives sitting with her, Brenna showed no curiosity about why they were there.
    Birchfield began easily, asking about Russel Douglas’s hobbies, habits, and how her relationship with him was going. She answered with a tumble of words, and the sheriff’s men noted that she often spoke negatively of her husband.
    “When did you see your husband last?” Birchfield asked.
    “It was before noon yesterday,” Brenna Douglas said. “I called him several times on his cell phone yesterday—but he didn’t answer. I slept with my phone beside me, but he never called. I know he planned to go surfing.”
    That didn’t seem strange. Mark Plumberg was a scuba diver himself, and he knew that the waters surrounding Whidbey Island drew surfers and divers any time of year as long as they had adequate protection from the cold. He wondered if she was concerned that Russel might have drowned—or disappeared in the dark water.
    Brenna explained that she and Russel were still married, but that they had separated seven months before and he was living in Renton. Christmas weekend also happened to be his time to see their two children—Jack, eight, and Hannah, five.
    Her words