The Death of an Heir

by Philip Jett

  Corbett didn’t tell Pace his name, but when Pace was shown Corbett’s photograph, he recognized him right away. “I remember ’cause his two front teeth slanted backward a bit, kinda like a gopher’s.… Said he wanted to go shootin’. Seemed to me to be just skulkin’ about, up to no good. I told ’im I was rentin’ and it’d be better if he did it somewheres else, ’specially since most of the land ’round the mine is game preserve. Anyways, who target shoots in mine shafts less you wannabe buried under a mountain of earth? I do a little shooting myself, but never in a mine.… [W]e talked maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, and the whole time I thought it were strange—”

  “What? What was strange?” asked the FBI agent who interviewed Pace.

  “That he weren’t wearin’ a coat. My wife, Clara Jean, felt the same way. She come out after he pulled up. It was cold as blue blazes, and I thought to myself a man wouldn’t go shootin’ without a coat in this kinda weather.… Clara Jean said he looked crooked as a Virginia fence, but I never dreamed…”

  Mr. Pace never dreamed, but Corbett did. Not only of target shooting but pulling a job that would make him a fortune. And his planning was almost done. It soon would be time.

  CHAPTER 3

  Snow swirled past the windows outside Ad’s barn at eight o’clock on the night of Monday, February 8. Ad wanted to confer with his ranch manager about when they would auction the cattle. They decided to wait a bit, when the market was up. He also asked his manager if he would accompany him Saturday to size up some horses in La Junta, and he agreed.

  Mary called Ad to dinner. Afterward, Ad sat at the kitchen table near sweat-streaked windows, reviewing some of the ranch accounts. He was bushed and hoped to turn in soon. He’d been back from Miami for forty-eight hours, and his first day at the brewery had been a busy one, with more meetings and telephone conferences scheduled for Tuesday. At least his father was on vacation in Hawaii with his mother and wouldn’t return for another two weeks. Things wouldn’t be as tense with Mr. Coors away.

  Cecily was seated across the kitchen table from her father with Spike seated beside her, both doing homework. The youngest of the Coors children, Jim, lay on the den floor in front of the fireplace with a toy truck and horse trailer he’d gotten for Christmas. Mary sat watching television with the volume low so not to disturb those at the table. She’d finished putting the dishes away earlier with the help of Brooke, who now stretched out in the hallway floor with the telephone.

  Mary couldn’t help thinking how nice it was to be home with the kids and Ad and her fireplace and her favorite chair and everything feeling like it should. She wished she could freeze the moment and keep things just the way they were forever. She knew things at home were changing and the kids were growing up. What Mary didn’t realize was that night would be the best it would be, forever more.

  * * *

  “Three dollars—regular,” Corbett told gas attendant Lynn Westerbuhr at the Conoco Service Station on East Fourteenth Avenue, around the corner from Corbett’s apartment.

  It was a cold night, and the young attendant inserted the hose nozzle into the automobile and turned the pump lever. He stomped his feet on the icy concrete and cupped his gloved hands, blowing on them to provide a little warmth.

  “He stopped by regularly, usually once a week. He asked for three dollars’ worth of gas every time,” said Westerbuhr. “Never told me his name. Always paid cash.”

  The attendant removed the hose and hooked it on the side of the pump. “That’s three dollars,” said Westerbuhr, waiting for Corbett to slip three bills through the sliver of open window. “Whatcha got back there? Moving?”

  “A sleeping bag and tent.”

  “You going camping in this weather?” asked the attendant, just like the clerk had at the Sears department store.

  “Here’s your money,” said Corbett. He detested snoops.

  “He was driving a dark maroon Dodge, ’tween a ’46 to ’49 year model, I think,” Westerbuhr soon would tell authorities. “Around Christmas, I seen him in a bright-yellow Mercury and again in January, ’bout through the second week of January, I’d say. I seen him in several cars over the last year, though—a light blue Ford wagon, gray-and-white Ford sedan. He liked cars. Most times, he was by himself. Sometimes with another man. A big fella, about thirty-five, usually in dirty work clothes, might ’ave been an Indian or an Italian, I don’t know.”

  After leaving the station that Monday night, Corbett returned to his Perlmor apartment. Soon, metallic sounds filled the air. Gun chambers snapped, shackles clanked, and handcuffs clattered eerily in the sparse room. Corbett was making ready for the following day. He brushed his coat and spit-shined his shoes, like preparing for a job interview, a compulsion he’d picked up in prison. He’d gotten a haircut earlier in the day. A freshly dry-cleaned suit hung on a doorknob.

  Later that evening, Corbett hurried down the back stairs to the first-floor hallway and out the back door. A pistol, a rifle, cuffs, and leg irons draped in a blanket filled his arms. A sedan waited for him across the alley behind his apartment with its trunk raised and front- and rear-passenger doors open on the passenger side. He’d already loaded blankets, canned food, water in glass jugs, and his Coleman stove, lantern, and other camping equipment in the trunk. He checked for anyone who might be watching him before stretching out the blanket and removing the pistol and placing it in the glove compartment.

  “He seemed like he was in a hurry,” said Terrence Smith, a tenant in room 106. “I saw blankets on the back seat, two rifle cases, a telescopic case, and a pistol case, all zipped up along the side.”

  Corbett slammed the trunk closed, removed his hat, and wiped his forehead, running his fingers through his hair that was soaked with sweat despite the cold night’s sleet pelting down. Scaling flights of stairs half a dozen times made him perspire, but he was also full of nervous anxiety from fear of detection. He was afraid, all right, even though he’d spent months, almost thirty of them, planning this job. Despite being proud of his intellect (he’d been tested as having an IQ of 148) and his methodical, almost obsessive analytical approach to things, he knew he wasn’t infallible. After all, he had been captured for shooting a man and imprisoned in California a decade earlier.

  To calm himself, he sat in his apartment and turned on the television to Peter Gunn. Soon, he pulled open a drawer and stuffed the letter he’d perfected into the pocket of his coat hanging in the closet. He planned to mail it the next day.

  Corbett hadn’t seen his family for ages, and if the letter procured him what he expected, he doubted he’d have a chance to see them for a long time to come. He didn’t have a family of his own, not yet, only a father, stepmother, and stepbrother.

  “It says here that he’s got a wife—name’s Marion,” said one of Corbett’s former bosses reviewing his employment records with an FBI agent later. “Some of the boys said Walt told ’em he was married. But later he said he was married to ‘Anne’ and listed her as his wife on his company health insurance policy. Seems to me a man should know the name of his wife, and polygamy is frowned on in Colorado.”

  His female neighbors, however, never saw a wife or a girlfriend or any woman visiting, for that matter. If any woman said hello, she was lucky to receive eye contact from Corbett, much less a response. Many of his female neighbors who’d been rebuffed by Corbett’s shyness and abrupt exits referred to him as “Mystery Boy.”

  “When we’d go to the city café to eat, which we did a lot, he’d never talk to the waitresses,” said one of Corbett’s coworkers. “Some were interested, but he’d never say as much as a how-do-you-do. He’d just order his food.”

  “Women aren’t to be trusted,” Corbett would say. “They’re dirty, disagreeable, expensive, and worst of all, can’t keep confidential information to themselves.”

  Corbett clicked off the television set. He had things to do tomorrow—confidential things. He stretched out on his sleeper sofa. It was dark, but trails of light passing thro
ugh the metal venetian blinds laid stripes across a portion of the ceiling and one wall. He stared at the faint luminescent strands above him. It was late. His preparations had taken longer than he’d planned. But he wasn’t sleepy. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. Soon, his mind raced through the details of his plan. It was a good plan.

  CHAPTER 4

  Darkness filled the hallway as Ad ambled to the kitchen. It was 5:30 in the morning. Sunrise wasn’t due for another hour and a half. He flipped on the kitchen light and started the percolator as he did every morning. The smell of brewing coffee soon filled the kitchen.

  After a cup, Ad stepped into the basement, removed his flesh-colored rimmed glasses, and began his daily exercise routine. Push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and other calisthenics kept him a slender 185 pounds.

  Mary was awake by the time Ad stepped into a steaming shower. She could hear him whistling as she slipped on her robe. Ad was a morning person. Mary envied her husband’s predawn sprightliness. She poured a cup of coffee and was sitting at the kitchen table looking out a frosty window toward the Dakota Hogback when Ad, dressed for work, joined her.

  They discussed the routine matters that a husband and wife share: how they slept, what time he’d be coming home, what he’d like for supper. At last, Mary stood and walked down the hallway toward the kids’ bedrooms to awaken them for school.

  Ad took another sip from his mug and slipped rubber boots over his dress shoes. He stepped outside to check the horses and to piddle away a few minutes, breaking ice in troughs, pitching a little hay, and pouring a little feed. He stopped for a second to look across the bluff toward the rolling hills past the road. The morning felt warmer than last. The warm weather would make the day’s chores a bit more comfortable for his ranch hands, who’d be arriving soon.

  The Coors household came very much alive when Mary awakened the kids at 6:30. Spike and Jim dressed in a flash and were at the table, ready for breakfast, whereas Brooke and Cecily required more time.

  Outside the large kitchen window, the kids could see their father stirring about, though they really didn’t think much about it. He was always outside doing something when he wasn’t in his basement office.

  At 7:40, the sound of the school bus’s diesel engine moaned up the hill to a stop at the bottom of the Coorses’ driveway. The kids scattered from the table and raced for the door, picking up books and satchels along the way. They didn’t see their father as they trotted down the driveway.

  The bus driver spotted the kids hurrying downhill and waited. Soon, the doors folded shut, and the Coors children seated themselves about the school bus. They were off to another school day filled with the usual. Simply another school day in their young lives filled with school days. But this one they’d never forget.

  Mary cleared away the dishes and left them in the sink. She heard Ad step inside the back door. He removed his rubber boots, and she could hear him going down the basement stairs. Mary left to pick up Marie Miller, a woman hired to do the household ironing every Tuesday, who lived just minutes away. When back, Mary clicked on the television and sat in her housecoat and slippers, relaxing in the warmth of her den to the welcome quietness while Mrs. Miller worked downstairs.

  “I was doing the ironing in the basement,” said Mrs. Miller. “Mr. Coors was in his office. He didn’t say anything. He was busy. I remember he wrote out two checks and then went upstairs to leave for work.”

  Mary was drinking her coffee watching the early news when Ad ascended from the basement. “Gotta go, honey.” He bent down and pecked her on the lips. “Have a nice day.”

  “You, too, sweetheart,” said Mary, who stayed seated. Like most weekday mornings, they’d had little chance to talk. There’d be time to talk that evening.

  Ad grabbed his tan baseball cap and slipped on his favorite navy-blue nylon jacket, which he wore almost every day during the cold months. The hoodless parka doubled as a suit coat. If he had a meeting, Ad would slip on a tie and zip up the parka so that only his buttoned-down collar and tie would show.

  He stepped into the cold garage and started his 1959 white-over-turquoise International Harvester Travelall, a perfect vehicle for the rutted gravel roads sprinkled with potholes and fist-sized stones in the Colorado countryside. Most folks called it an oversized station wagon or a carryall (an early version of a four-wheel-drive SUV).

  Ad backed his Travelall out of the garage and eased down the winding drive to a gravel road that would lead him to the brewery in Golden, twelve miles away. He spotted Bill Hosler outside the barn with fellow ranch hand Peter Puck, who’d just arrived. Ad gave a wave. Hosler waved back. It was 7:55 a.m.

  Ad’s deerskin gloves gripped the cold, hard steering wheel, waiting for the Travelall’s heater to warm as he rambled north toward Morrison and on to the brewery. His normal route would have carried him less than a mile along a straight gravel road to paved US Highway 285, which would lead him to Golden. Yet that route had been closed for the last month while state workers repaired a two-mile stretch of highway. The detour took him along a winding, lonely stretch of road for four miles, barely wide enough for two cars, requiring that one pull over and let the other pass.

  The night had been stormy, but it was now a warm forty-two degrees with only a slight sprinkling of rain. He had a few telephone calls to make and then his 10:30 meeting with his brothers. After lunch, he had one or two more meetings. Not too stressful a day, but lots more paperwork to catch up on.

  Fewer than five minutes from his home, Ad’s Travelall rambled around the last bend before reaching a rough-hewn lumber bridge, twenty-three feet long and fourteen feet wide, with crude wooden railings on each side and two wooden tracks burrowed in gravel, wide enough for only a single car to cross, shadowed by a pair of scraggly leaf-bare trees and a telephone pole laden with sagging wires. Turkey Creek Bridge, locals called it. On the other side of the narrow, shallow creek lay State Road 70, also gravel, lined with hackberry and cottonwood trees. A right on Route 70 and then a left on Soda Lakes Road would take Ad to the town of Morrison and the busily traveled Highway 285.

  The gravel road mixed with snow and mud revealed that only the school bus had traveled the road that morning. Its driver was S. C. Nielson, who’d crossed the bridge at 7:35 a.m. and back again ten minutes later with the Coors children aboard.

  “I can’t recall seeing any cars at all,” Mr. Nielson later told a Colorado state patrolman.

  As Ad approached Turkey Creek Bridge, he came upon an automobile at the far end of the narrow bridge blocking his way to the crossroad. Its hood was raised and driver’s-side doors, front and back, were open. Beside it stood a tall, thin man in a dark suit, tie, and brown felt hat, wearing dark-rimmed glasses. He was standing near the open hood, along the driver’s side, just standing there watching Ad as he pulled his Travelall on the bridge.

  Ad stopped not far behind the stranded automobile and rolled his window down as the man approached.

  “What’s the trouble?” Ad shouted, stepping out of his Travelall.

  II

  THE

  DISAPPEARANCE

  CHAPTER 5

  Sounds of shallow water rippling beneath Turkey Creek Bridge were seldom interrupted during the day. But on the morning of Tuesday, February 9, 1960, the timber planks and log supports of the bridge would bear silent witness to a horrifying crime. Yet the seclusion wasn’t absolute. There were those who could tell their stories, and they would when asked the next day by law enforcement—for the grandson of the most famous man in Colorado had gone missing.

  “I was driving along State Road 70 that morning,” said Dr. John Pallaoro, a Golden veterinarian who knew Ad Coors. “It was muddy and the sun had just come out when I passed by Turkey Creek Bridge. I spotted a large blue-and-white station wagon parked on the bridge. It appeared deserted.… No, I didn’t cross the bridge because I didn’t come that way. I was headed toward Morrison and State Road 70 passes by the bridge.… Yes, I remember the time exactly. It
was 8:04.”

  Not until 10:20, almost two and a half hours after Ad stopped his Travelall, did another traveler come that way: Dan Crocker, a twenty-five-year-old milkman for United Dairies in south Jefferson County. He gave his statement to a Colorado state patrolman:

  I was making my morning deliveries in the Soda Lakes area when I come up on a blue-green–and-white Travelall on the bridge. It was parked in my way so I couldn’t pass. I got out and walked up to the car. The motor was running and the driver’s-side window was down and I could hear the radio playin’. I honked the car’s horn and waited another minute or two, and when nobody come, I went back to my own truck and rearranged the load, thinking somebody’s got to come move it. When they didn’t, I honked the horn on my truck and waited again. I probably sat there fifteen minutes honking and waiting till I decided nobody was coming. I got in the Travelall and backed it off the bridge, kinda catty-cornered on the side of this no-name dirt road. I turned the switch off and left the keys in the car and went on my way.

  I made a delivery to Mrs. Stitt that took me ’bout a mile down the road. I told her what I seen but she didn’t know whose car it was. She didn’t have a telephone neither so I couldn’t call the highway patrol. So I drove back the way I come. The car was still sitting where I left it. I made another delivery at the Lowdermilk Construction Company, then I went to the old CC camp outside of Morrison and made another delivery. Nobody was there. From there I drove to the Standard gas station on the east side of Morrison and called the Colorado State Patrol and told ’em what I seen.

  * * *

  Offices inside the Coors brewery were coming alive by eight o’clock. Ad’s secretary, Jo Ann, arrived and sat at her station, putting away her purse and tidying up for the morning’s work to begin. Other secretaries filed into the stenographers’ pool, rustling about, removing their coats, scarves, and gloves and slipping off their galoshes. Greetings and nods passed about the room and soon the chatter of “hello” and “good morning” gave way to the sounds of typing and ringing telephones.