Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

he wanted to see the waterfront—that he’d been in the navy at Bremerton once. That’s all I can think of.”
    She said that Ruckelhaus drove a maroon 1974 Capri. “I don’t know the license number,” she said, and then looked up, “No— wait. He said something about getting a ticket for a moving violation on the trip up here. Would that help?”
    It quite probably would.
    Reed called the Washington State Patrol and gave them Ruckelhaus’s name, a description of the car, and the information that it had Texas plates. The WSP computers soon came up with the license number: Texas CXB-808.
    Sergeant Ivan Beeson and Dick Reed called the ferry terminals on the Seattle waterfront. If Ruckelhaus really had it in his plans to return to Bremerton, a ferry would be the quickest route. Ferry officials reported that a maroon Capri with Texas plates was on board a ferry departing the Colman dock at 2 P.M. It was due to dock in Winslow on Bainbridge Island at 2:40.
    The detectives alerted the Winslow Police, Poulsbo Police, and the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office that a murder suspect was on board the ferry and gave his description. Two police officers and a sheriff’s deputy on the Bainbridge Island side of Puget Sound put on ferry workers’ uniforms and waited at the dock for the ferry from Seattle to hove into sight.
    As it eased into the slip, the three officers jumped on board and moved between the vehicles waiting to debark. Their eyes rapidly scanned the license plates as they searched for one from Texas.
    They finally spotted it and saw that there was a couple inside. All the vehicles on board had been delayed from driving off the ferry, and drivers and passengers craned their necks in curiosity as the trio of officers surrounded the Capri.
    They signaled to the woman passenger to flip up the locks. She looked nervously toward the driver, and then did what they asked. With weapons drawn, they ordered the driver to get out.
    As the driver staggered from the car, a strong odor of liquor emanated from him. He wore blue jeans, a yellow shirt, and a leather thong tie. There was a knife sheath on his belt, and the Bainbridge Island and Kitsap County officers found two knives inside the car.
    The suspect put up no resistance as he was arrested. He appeared to be concerned about his “wife,” Emily, who trembled with shock.
    She identified him as Terry Ruckelhaus.
    Handcuffed, he was transported to the Kitsap County Jail in Port Orchard. Kitsap County chief of detectives Bill Clifton read Ruckelhaus his rights and asked him if he knew what he was being booked for.
    “No,” he said. “I don’t know.”
    “You’re under arrest for murder.”
    Ruckelhaus insisted that he had no memory about what had taken place in Seattle.
    “I can’t even remember getting on the ferry.”
    Ruckelhaus said he was twenty-nine, but he looked younger. He had curly hair that hung close to his face in ringlets, even features, and a thick mustache. His eyes were glassy, almost blank. When Clifton read him his Miranda rights, he nodded and said he understood them.
    While Ivan Beeson and Dick Reed were on their way to his Port Orchard office by ferry, Bill Clifton talked to Ruckelhaus’s young female passenger, Emily Borden.
    She looked as though she had gazed into hell itself, but she made an effort to describe had happened at her grandparents’ home earlier on this Christmas Day.
    Emily told him that Terry had literally kidnapped her, forcing her to travel to Seattle from Texas. Everything seemed to be all right when they got to her grandparents’ home and for a few days afterward. “But then my parents called me from Anchorage, Alaska,” she said. “That’s where they live, and I’ve been trying to get home to them for months now. I spoke to my mother, but Terry was sitting next to me, and he was giving me dirty looks so that I was afraid to say much.”
    “What is going on?” her mother had asked.
    “I tried to keep my voice soft so he couldn’t hear me. I told her that I would write as soon as I could, and explain everything.
    “After we hung up, I went into the bedroom and Terry followed me, demanding to know what my mother said, and what I said to her. I told him my parents just said to say ‘Hi’ to him, and that they had wished him Merry Christmas. But he didn’t believe that was all. He said what we did was none of my folks’ business and he didn’t want them butting in.”
    Terry had decided then that they