Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

grinned, but there was danger in his eyes. “We’re not going out to eat,” he said. “I have a surprise for you. We’re going to Seattle.”
    This was the last thing she wanted. Emily did hope to get to the Northwest and reunite with her relatives there, but she wanted to go alone.
    “I don’t want to go, Terry,” she said quietly. “Please turn the car around.”
    Instantly, he became angry. He began to scream and slammed his fists around, frightening her badly. She tried to keep her voice as calm as possible, but he was wired, almost vibrating with rage.
    Now he locked the car’s doors so that she couldn’t jump out. And he revved the engine up; the speedometer inched up to eighty miles an hour as they headed north.
    Once they were on the road again, Terry became eerily calm. Emily didn’t want to get him excited again so she said very little, censoring all of her remarks before she said them aloud.
    She wondered if her friends would report her missing when she didn’t come back. Maybe there was a chance the Texas Rangers or the highway patrol might stop them. But they passed several police units, and the officers inside didn’t pay any attention to them.
    They drove past the Texas border and across New Mexico without stopping. Finally exhausted, Terry pulled into a motel. But he wouldn’t let Emily out of his sight for a minute. If she had thought she was a prisoner before, now she was really captive. He kept her beside him as he signed in at the motel’s front office. She thought about signaling the desk clerk there but couldn’t think of a way to do it. Terry would notice.
    As long as she didn’t argue with him, he was calm. After they had some sleep, they continued on, heading northwest through Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and then into Oregon.
    Something set Terry off as they approached Portland. They had been on their marathon trip for five days, and Emily was exhausted, more frightened with each day that passed. Suddenly, he shouted that he was going to turn around and drive until they ran out of money. He didn’t care where they ended up.
    She pleaded with him to keep going toward Seattle; they were only 180 miles away. She didn’t want to hurtle through the countryside with him until they ended up in some godforsaken spot with no money. Maybe, if she could just get to her relatives, they could help her escape.
    Terry finally agreed to keep heading north on I-5. It was a little after four in the afternoon on December 20 when they pulled up in front of Emily’s grandparents’ modest home. She saw them peering out the window in surprise, and then William and Florence Borden rushed out their front door and welcomed them with open arms.
     
    Everything seemed normal for the first time in a week as Emily’s grandmother bustled around the kitchen to fix dinner for her unexpected guests. Emily was still afraid but she relaxed a little as they ate the home-cooked food and sat in the warm kitchen.
    They spent the next four days joining in her grandparents’ preparations for Christmas and visiting her aunts and uncles. Terry could be so charming—when he wanted to. He told Emily’s aunt that he had been stationed in Bremerton, Washington, when he was in the navy and he was looking forward to revisiting the navy yard and seeing the Seattle waterfront, too.
    On Christmas Eve, Terry and Emily went shopping for presents. He bought a shirt for Emily’s grandfather and a cutting board for her grandmother. They planned to open their presents Christmas morning and then go to Emily’s aunt’s house for Christmas dinner. Terry continued to act like a perfectly normal guest, and Emily relaxed a little more. She still wanted to “divorce” him, but he seemed so rational that she began to hope this could be accomplished without a lot of grief.
    Christmas Day dawned wet and rainy—as it usually does in Seattle; exterior holiday lights all had halos that shimmered in the downpour.
    In an extremely rare circumstance, even the Seattle Police Homicide Unit offices on the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building were empty. There were detectives on call—there had to be—but Sergeant Don Cameron’s four-man crew hoped devoutly that their phones wouldn’t ring and that they would be able to spend the holiday with their families.
    It was not to be.
     
    The Patrol Division answered the first call. At twenty-eight minutes after two on Christmas afternoon, Officers Dick Gagnon and Al Smalley responded to an