Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

convincing.
    No one knew what the jurors were thinking, but court watchers murmuring in the courthouse corridors said they believed Yancy Carrothers. When he testified that Bill Jensen’s favorite scenario for the multiple hits was to do something to his wife’s car that would make it “fly over the edge of a hill or a mountain at certain times of the year,” he was believable. Jensen had suggested that his wife, sister-in-law, and daughter often went shopping together, and if Yancy could find a way to slip OxyContin to Sue and tinker with her car, they could carry out the perfect murders.
    “I didn’t think his ideas were too bright,” Yancy offered, “like taking out a high-powered rifle and shooting them.”
    It sounded like something the Three Stooges might come up with, but the witness said that Jensen had been coldly serious.
    Conroy, for the defense, suggested that Bill Jensen had been deliberately stupid, that he had been setting Yancy Carrothers up.
    “You didn’t know he was a police officer? Correct?”
    “No.”
    On redirect, Cheryl Snow asked Yancy if he had “forced” Bill Jensen into a murder plan.
    “No ma’am.”
    “That piece of paper—that yellow piece of paper that you showed us where you had the details of Mr. Jensen’s wife, his daughter, his sister-in-law—did you have to twist Bill Jensen’s arm to get all those details out of him?”
    “No ma’am.”
    “Did you have to twist Bill Jensen’s arm to get the location of his wife and sister-in-law’s homes—their addresses?”
    “No ma’am.”
    “Did you have to twist Bill Jensen’s arm to get the description of his wife’s home with the big tree in front…the description of her car…his sister-in-law’s car…to [hear] that his wife had an inheritance, and that he would inherit that money if she was dead?”
    “No ma’am.”
    “At the very end, it was going to go to his son, and then he wanted his son killed. Did you have to twist his arm to get that information out of him?”
    “No ma’am.”
    “Mr. Carrothers, my last question. On the defense’s suggestion to you that poor Bill Jensen got tricked by you into agreeing to this plan, do you think that’s accurate?”
    “No. I think Bill Jensen is an idiot.”
    “For what?”
    “He is an ex-officer. He disgusts me. That’s all I can say.”
    Yancy Carrothers had been on the witness stand for almost a full court day. Even with his checkered background, he had been an excellent witness for the prosecution. Jim Conroy wanted his testimony disregarded, which was understandable, and he especially wanted Detective Cloyd Steiger to avoid validating Yancy in any way when he took the witness stand. Cheryl Snow agreed to the latter.
    Iris Jensen testified next, and Marilyn Brenneman questioned her about her meetings with Yancy Carrothers and about her statements to Brenneman when she had gone to Iris’s home in Bremerton.
    Iris had a very bad memory, or at least she seemed to recall only vague bits and pieces of what had happened.
    Although she had been estranged from her brother in the past, she said they had been quite close over the last five years. She believed that she had given the man with the code word “Flying Kings” money for Bill’s bail. Her testimony had little impact one way or the other.
    Cloyd Steiger followed. He gave a clear, step-by-step overview of the police and prosecuting attorney’s office probe into the murder plot that had been hatched by Bill Jensen. It had to be a swift strike, as they sent Detective Sharon Stevens into the jail twice. And on the second visit, she’d worn a wire and caught Jensen’s voice on tape as he outlined his instructions.
    Steiger was an old master at testifying. He could not be shaken by any ploy the defense might attempt. And Conroy didn’t try for long to do that.
    Sharon Stevens was a pretty black woman, but she wasn’t the prostitute that Yancy had said “Lisa” was. She had been a detective with the Seattle Police Department for seven years, and she currently was assigned to the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit. She had agreed immediately to help Cloyd Steiger find out exactly what Bill Jensen had on his mind on July 23, 2003.
    Stevens answered Cheryl Snow’s questions about her appearance when she walked over to the King County Jail the next day. She had given a false name even to the jail staff.
    “What did you look like?” Snow asked.
    “I was in a role. I actually had on blue jeans