Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

gallery leaned forward, straining to listen.
    “I’m writing to you in regards to things we discussed—you’ve given a deposit on. I now wish for you to send the last $2,500 to [my] King County Jail booking account, as I have had a few setbacks. Consider this one of our last conversations unless you don’t do as I have asked. You have four or five days for it to hit my account, or I’ll have to go to the prosecutor and the Homicide unit and so on. I have more than enough to make you do a lot of years. I have the paperwork you gave me with all the info and your fingerprints, plus my statement.
    “Also, you are to tell no one and no harm is to come to any one of these ladies or your ex, your sister [ sic ], or your daughter. You must not harm them, Bill. I will not contact you [until] after we both get out, and you may then get most of the evidence I have on you. Until then, you must do exactly what I have instructed you to do. P.S. I know you don’t want your daughter or anyone else to know.”
    Yancy testified that he figured that would keep the Jensen women safe over the weekend, in case he couldn’t get through to Cloyd Steiger.
    “That wasn’t your only purpose, was it?” Cheryl Snow asked.
    “Well, sure. I wanted my other $2,500. I’m a businessman.”
    As it turned out, Bill Jensen never received that letter. Yancy had reached Steiger, and the homicide detective had jailers intercept it, confident that the intended victims were warned, protected, and that Bill Jensen would believe that Sharon Stevens was “Lisa,” the hit woman.
    There were plots within plots, but the most important thing for everyone concerned—from Yancy to Cloyd Steiger—was that Sue Jensen and her family would be safe.
    Yancy settled in to explain all the intricacies of the plan to brief Sharon Stevens, whom he pointed out in the courtroom as “that nice lady over there in the green pretty outfit.” She had to know certain things about the real Lisa before she approached Bill Jensen. But she was not to know about the murder plot itself.
    Yancy Carrothers wasn’t being paid for his cooperation—either in money or in time off a jail sentence. But for the moment, he seized his own payoff as he sat in the witness chair. He saw himself as a heroic king-of-the-mountain, and he regaled the courtroom with his grasp of criminal activity, police procedure, physical evidence, and con games. It was a small price to pay for his saving several lives. He boasted that he had promised Bill Jensen that a “pretty black lady” would be coming to see him. And that was exactly what had happened.
    It worked. Jensen had bought the whole thing, and gone ahead confidently, it seemed, with his deadly games.
    And they had certainly been deadly games. There was a bleak irony in Jensen’s repeated offers of “big, big money” to Yancy. Maybe the ex-deputy believed that he was in line for a huge inheritance, but it just wasn’t there. Neither Sue nor Carol Harris had inherited millions of dollars—not even 1 million. There was the house in Newport Hills, a residence Bill had shared for twenty years, and there had once been about $210,000 that Sue had put in their joint bank account. But Bill had spent that long ago. He had no information at all about what his sister-in-law might own.
    Either he had woefully overestimated the “fortunes” his wife and sister-in-law had or he wanted revenge so much that he was willing to kill.
    Bill Jensen was talking about $150,000 but he didn’t have even the $2,500 to pay Yancy the second half of his “research” money. Sue had to work for a living, and so did her sister. Scott and Jenny had part-time jobs to help out.
    There was no fortune.
    On cross-examination, James Conroy hammered at Yancy Carrothers about his criminal record, trying to impeach him as a witness, but his questions and Yancy’s answers had little impact. Yancy came across as a wannabe rather than a heavy hitter, his answers laced with humor rather than evildoing. Court watchers stifled giggles when Yancy explained that the many gangs he was affiliated with had infiltrated the diaper-service industry, and hinted that he was an agent for many undercover groups—whose names he was not at liberty to divulge.
    But he had somehow pulled off what seemed impossible; even though he exaggerated about his connections, his testimony and the backup physical evidence in the form of notes, letters, audiotapes, and fingerprints had been absolutely