Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

that she had an infant to care for.
    Lorraine Harris’s will left her assets to her two daughters, and because she had managed her money wisely, both Sue and Carol inherited a surprisingly large sum: hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lorraine left the house to her girls, and Bill, Sue, and Jenny moved into the house in Newport Hills where Sue had grown up. They put the proceeds from the sale of their house into an interest-bearing account—a joint account. Uncharacteristically, Sue deposited the money from her inheritance into a separate bank account, one in her name only. She did, however, write checks to deposit into their joint account whenever Bill asked her to do so.
    Sue deferred to Bill in handling money, and he paid the bills and kept their books. She didn’t check on how or where he spent their money. She didn’t see any need to.
    Bill handled their investments, and he took some dicey gambles in buying technology and computer stocks. Through a combination of luck and clever buying, the Jensens’ fortunes rose. Bill bought Microsoft and Intel in the days when those stocks soared, making millionaires overnight. He didn’t make that much money, but his buying on the margin appeared to be heading them in that direction.
    Because Bill’s job kept him on duty for long hours, and sometimes he slept during the day, Sue did all the yard work and painted their house inside and out; as the years went by she would be the Girl Scout leader, room mother, and volunteer for the myriad parent participation projects that needed workers at Jenny’s elementary school.
    Bill took a real interest in Jenny’s involvement in sports. He was pleased when she turned out to be a natural athlete, and he coached her basketball and baseball teams. He took great pleasure in his role as a coach, and Jenny was proud that her friends liked her father so much.
    There were some parents at the ball games who found Bill Jensen too critical, too loud, and too competitive for someone who coached youngsters. They thought he took a lot of the fun out of games that were meant for small children.
    “Bill Jensen would yell and belittle other coaches and umpires,” the mother of one of the girls he coached said. “He would use his size and intimidate anyone who disagreed with him—to the point that it would embarrass and humiliate the children and the parents.”
    Bill’s size was a factor in the way he was sometimes perceived as an arrogant, almost bullying, man. Sue had liked the way he towered over her when she first met him, but by the seventh year of their marriage, it was no longer much of an attribute. Now he used his height and weight to bully her. He weighed over 250 pounds, and the scale continued to climb. He was given to temper tantrums, and although she usually tried to calm him down, Sue sometimes got mad, too. Shortly after her mother died, Bill had deliberately thrown a cherished figurine that Lorraine had given to Sue and it shattered into a dozen pieces.
    “I was so angry,” Sue confessed, “that I flung a picture frame at him. I called the King County Police. We lived in the same district where Bill had once worked, and the deputies who came out were the guys Bill had worked with.”
    Sue was the one who got a citation. Their fights were more frequent, but Sue still hesitated to call the department where Bill worked. Making a domestic violence complaint against a deputy sheriff would jeopardize his career, and being a cop was all Bill Jensen had ever wanted to do. She didn’t want to harm Bill’s dream job, and so Sue backed off. If she hadn’t been so angry that he’d deliberately broken something precious that her mother had given her, she would never have called the police on him that one time.
    Unlike most police officers, who have a sense of camaraderie with their fellow cops, Bill Jensen had few friends in the King County Sheriff’s Office, and no close buddies at all. He was frequently moved from one unit to another. He had a reputation as a braggart and certainly not as a team player. Winning was his foremost goal in whatever activity he participated in. In law enforcement, it is essential for officers to use teamwork in many situations, but that was one aspect of his job where Bill Jensen failed. That was probably why he was transferred often.
    He sometimes patrolled on a motorcycle, and he really enjoyed that. He and Sue both had motorcycles.
    Jenny was three and a half years old when the Jensens’ son,