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made him angry enough to use force on her. Her perception of the world began to change; she looked at happy marriages around her and wondered what she was doing wrong. She began to blame herself for all the problems she and Bill faced.
    Being married to a cop is never easy for a wife. There is always the fear that when they leave to go out on a shift, they may not come back. Some officers share what happens on the job with their wives, but most tend to keep it to themselves, trying hard to separate their home life from those things they see out on the streets.
    Knowing that their husbands are often the objects of flirtation from other women who are attracted to the uniform, a lot of wives are either jealous or filled with anxiety. Socially, cops are treated differently by “civilians,” who approach them at parties to try to get tickets fixed or complain about some injustice they feel they’ve suffered at the hands of the police. That’s the reason cops tend to stick together, socializing with one another in venues where they don’t feel as though they’re under a microscope.
    But Bill Jensen still didn’t socialize with his fellow officers. Although there is almost always solidarity in police agencies and cops officially have one another’s backs on the job, Bill didn’t have any more close friends in the sheriff’s office than he had had in college.
    There was something about him that turned other deputies off—perhaps his tendency toward braggadocio, his know-it-all attitude, or his quick temper.
    Bill continued to be transferred laterally within the department. After he graduated from the police academy in December 1979, he was assigned to the Burien Precinct near Sea-Tac Airport, where he worked a patrol car for about eight months. Next, he drove a “highway car,” where he was on call in a thirty-block area.
    “Basically, you’re in charge,” he explained later in his usual self-aggrandizing manner. “The reason they selected me for that was because I had a very calming effect in situations. I didn’t let them get out of hand. As soon as I showed up, I was able to settle things down.
    “They wanted people to calm situations down,” he said, “not to exasperate people.”
    Bill usually worked Third Watch (11 P.M. –7 A.M. ) or Second Watch (3 P.M. –11 P.M. ). After a year in the highway car, Bill was transferred to the Kent Precinct in the southeast portion of King County, and he worked patrol there in a one-man car for four years. In an effort to penetrate a burglary ring, Bill did some undercover detective work, which he enjoyed. Although he had once hoped to move into a detective unit, that didn’t happen, and Bill was transferred next to the North Precinct, where he once again drove a patrol car. He was on call for a number of lightly populated, unincorporated areas in King County.
    Beginning in 1992, Bill had an additional assignment with the King County Sheriff’s Office: he was an emergency vehicle operations instructor. It was a natural for him, and one that fulfilled his need to be in a position of authority.
    “What my duties were was the training via my fellow peers, sergeants, and whoever. I took them out and they learned how to do pursuit driving and defensive driving,” he said proudly. “I really enjoyed that. It was a lot of fun, and I was really fairly decorated for that because I did a good job. It was a very intensive course. I think I can honestly say it was one of the most intensive courses I had ever taken, including college. I was kind of surprised how hard it was. Not everybody passed it.”
    Bill had a kind of blindness about how he came across to others. He was quick to brag and slow to compliment anyone else. He was the center of his own universe, focused only on himself. Even his children were a distant second, and his wife got even less affirmation.
    In the first seventeen years on the job, Bill Jensen was never elevated to detective—or even sergeant. He stayed