Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

that Bill Jensen had gone underground in Las Vegas, hiding there to avoid arrest. It had been his habit to run to Nevada whenever he felt he was going to be in trouble with court orders.
    But he could not hide forever. When he came back to the Bellevue area, Bill Jensen was arrested and booked into the King County Jail. It was May 29, 2003. As an ex-cop, he was housed in a maximum security section of the jail—administrative segregation—or as prisoners called it, “the Hole.” It was a pod of cells earmarked for those who needed to be in protective custody or who might be a danger to others. In one of the C tanks on the eleventh floor, each man was housed in a single cell, and was allowed out into the dayroom area—alone—for only an hour a day.
    This time, Bill Jensen didn’t bail out; he had used up his own money, and his father, who was now in his eighties, no longer wanted to risk losing his home. Bill’s latest attorney told him he would probably be in jail until the end of July, when his case would come to court.
    At first, those who feared what Bill might do next heaved a sigh of relief. Sue didn’t have to worry about something awful happening at Jenny’s graduation ceremonies; her father wouldn’t be able to attend. Their family and friends had a happy celebration, cheering as Jenny received her diploma.
    It was only a short respite, but even that was welcome. And yet, with this slight cessation of anxiety, Sue began to question herself, wondering if she had tried hard enough to preserve her marriage. Was there something more she could have done to make it possible for Jenny and Scott to have a father? When she read the Bible, the words seemed to say that divorce was wrong. She had always been a woman who tried to do the right thing, and, although she never wanted to live with Bill Jensen again, she felt a little sorry for him, locked up in jail.
    She was on the teeter-totter of emotions that so many battered women experience. Her attorney and her closest friends rushed to validate her bravery in following through with Bill’s arrest. They would not allow her to slip back into the way she had always rationalized the bad times in her marriage—by shoving abuse, intimidation, and blame far back into her unconscious mind.
    Women who have never been the object of domestic violence roll their eyes when they hear that Sue had even a moment’s doubt, but women who have been there understand her ambivalence.
    She turned to Diane Wetendorf’s site for help in dealing with this next escalation of her long, long divorce action. Bill would be out of jail soon enough, and she read that she had to be ready—to hide, to run, to testify against him, if necessary. Told that Scott and Jenny would probably have to be interviewed—and perhaps even testify—her heart sank. Sue had hoped they wouldn’t be drawn into this tangle any more than they had been.
    Sue’s fear came back, blooming stronger than ever. She had a safety plan, but when she studied domestic violence cases, particularly cases involving police officers, she realized it was very rare for those convicted to receive more than token sentences.
    “I am afraid,” she said, “that without further assistance, short of having to disappear, I will most likely be targeted by my husband as soon as he is released. I know Bill well enough to know…that he would eventually find me.”
    The other prisoners in Bill Jensen’s jail tank didn’t know who he was, and he certainly didn’t tell them he had been a cop for twenty years. Those in neighboring cells were mostly gang members, white supremacists, career criminals, and angry men who were known to start fights in jail. Bill could be very likable when he tried, and he got along with the men in other cells.
    All jail inmates complain about something—their “old ladies,” the food, cops, their attorneys. Bill waited until he understood the dynamics in his pod of cells, and then he confided that he’d been “screwed over” by a woman in his life.
    It wasn’t as if the pod inhabitants were all sitting around the tables in the dayroom; only one of them could be out at a time. But their cells were close enough together that they could carry on conversations, and the man who was out of his cell for his hour could stop by and visit all the other prisoners. They could trade candy bars, envelopes, items needed in their segregated world.
    Part of the mystique of being in jail or prison is the challenge