by Gregg Olsen
She didn’t mean that at all. You have to be kidding. That’s Perry’s wife you’re talking about.”
Donna felt like laughing out loud.
“Boy, are you naive. That woman has eyes for any ball-bearing mammal that walks the earth. Let’s get realistic, Bob. The woman has no shame.”
BOOK II
Doctor’s Wife
“The reason Perry stayed with her was purely sexual. Sharon gave everyone the impression she was a real hot number. She was one of those little tarts with a round ass and large bust that comes around in short-shorts that show her crack. But there was something lurking beneath the surface with Sharon. You wanted to be real careful around her”
—Terry Mitchell, Trinidad chiropractor
“Everyone, lock up your husbands! Sharon’s coming around.’’
—Barbara Ruscetti, Medical-office assistant
“She led Perry around by the penis.”
—Donna Goodhead, friend of Dr. Nelson’s
Chapter 10
IT WAS A SNOWY MONDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 20, 1988. Icy air swirled over the roadways, filling ditches with white powder and forcing even the most seasoned mountain driver to take it a bit slower around the curves. Bundled-up kids pulled clothing tight to their bodies as they puffed “smoke rings” of hot breath while waiting for the bus to round the bend and take them to the warmth of a classroom. Snow splattered and drifted from Weston to Trinidad like seven-minute frosting flung off the ends of beaters by a sloppy cook.
It was as cold as a merry widow’s heart.
Sharon Nelson drank cup after cup of tepid coffee and smoked cigarette after cigarette, her ashtray resembling a stinking scrub brush of yellowed butts, ends dipped in the red of a lipstick. As she sat with her grown daughter, Rochelle Mason, in her Trinidad home, Sharon agonized over the horrific events of the night before. The terrible news relayed by her heartsick mother-in-law, the police interrogation, her distraught young children, all of it seemed to hit Sharon quite hard. Her face was puffy and pale, and she jumped to her feet several times to run to the bathroom.
Nineteen-year-old Rochelle expected her mother to be broken up over Glen Harrelson’s death, but she had not expected such an extreme reaction. She could understand such a response if her mother had been married to Glen for fifteen years—-but the two had been man and wife for less than one. Sharon’s oldest daughter tried to put whatever it was that was eating at her out of her mind. People grieve in their own way. No two survivors of a tragic loss acts the same. No one knows how a broken heart feels, unless, Rochelle knew, it is their own.
Thornton police detectives Glen Trainor and Elaine Tygart fueled themselves with coffee as they waited for the woman to come down off the mountain. They did not know Sharon Fuller Nelson Harrelson had gone to her daughter’s home in town in preparation for her interview. Neither did they know what would happen when she arrived or if she would have a change of heart and change her mind about coming at all. At least this time, they’d be in control of the environment. At the mountain house, Sharon was in her own element, able to get up and move freely about whenever the questions became too “painful” or too uncomfortable. She could go to the counter for more coffee. She could check on her children. She could leave for the bathroom. At the sheriff’s department, she’d be a visitor, not a hostess.
Accompanied by Rochelle, Danny and Misty, Sharon arrived right on time, around 10 A.M.
She wore a sweater and honey-dipped-tight jeans with high-heeled boots balancing lovely legs that gave her the tottering gait of deer on cobblestones. She wore little makeup and had fluffed up the wiry curls that came from her head like a Barbie doll with a ten-year-old girl’s curling iron makeover. In the harsh fluorescent light of a police station, Sharon was less attractive than she had been the night before.
Anyone who reads fashion magazines targeted at American women like Sharon knew: The warm light of an incandescent bulb is a tonic for middle-aged skin. Fluorescents show every wrinkle, every flaw.
Though she had willingly come to give her statement, Sharon arrived with slight bitterness. She had flirted with the idea that she would tell the cops off for subtly suggesting she might have had something to do with Glen Harrelson’s tragic death. She was going to set the record straight right then and there: “Now I’ve lost a husband, my second husband… and what in the hell are you doing? Why don’t you go look for the person?”
With the kids waiting outside the room, Sharon was motioned to a chair behind a mammoth antique oak conference table in the Trinidad Police Department, the law enforcement office on the other side of the building from the Las Animas County Sheriff.
The widow sat at an angle, her back to the door, her legs crossed. She was offered the seat by the open door for a reason. The detectives wanted her to maintain a sense of freedom, to think that she could come and go as she pleased. The more comfortable she was, the more she’d likely stay put and talk. Almost from the start, it was clear that though the woman had been gossiped about as a man-eater she didn’t seem anything of the sort at that moment. She was sweet. Nervous. Demure. She even focused her attention on the female detective, refusing to live up to a reputation which made her out to be an insatiable flirt.
Trainor turned on the little tape recorder.
“Okay, Sharon,” he said, “uh, before we get started I just want to let you know that you’re here of your own free will, okay? You understand that you are not under arrest or anything like that?”
“I know,” she said, her eyes again meeting only Elaine Tygart’s.
They spent the next few minutes reviewing Sharon’s personal background. She told them who her parents were; when she was born. She listed the Adventist schools she attended. She told them how she was a young bride when she married Rev. Fuller. Over the next couple of hours, the investigators simply allowed Sharon to speak. It was easy. Talk, she did.
Sometimes Sharon was blunt. Other times she was evasive. And always, she let the investigators know that she was a good woman, though she had to admit she didn’t always do good things. As Tygart and Trainor tried to sort out the story of her involvement with Dr. Nelson and how it had led to the breakup of her marriage to Preacher Mike, it became obvious there was plenty between the lines that she didn’t want to bring up.
They pushed her gently.
“Did you have a relationship before Perry, before you got, you guys got divorced?” Trainor asked as he continued treading a fine line on a question that might put Sharon on the defensive.
Sharon didn’t bat an eye, however. “No, I was separated. Yes, yes. Um.”
“What year did this, what year did you meet him?”
“Seventy-six, seventy-six.”
“When were you divorced from him? From Mike?”
“Seventy-six.”
“And then when were you married to Perry?”
“Seventy-seven.”
“Within a year’s time?”
“Seventy-seven, yeah.”
As the three continued to talk, Sharon’s two young children became somewhat anxious and loud. The little boy and girl wanted their mother’s attention.
God, they wanted anyone’s attention.
Det. Tygart stepped into the hallway and suggested to Rochelle that it might be a good idea to take Danny and Misty to her house until the interview had run its course. Though Sharon’s oldest daughter seemed concerned about her mother, she readily complied. What choice did she have? The kids had been through a great shock. Taking them home would get them out of the emotional fray.
When the subject of extramarital affairs during her marriages to her second and third husbands was more directly broached, Sharon conceded she hadn’t been perfect. But she wasn’t a cheat, either.
Yet once more she failed to mention Gary Adams.
Det. Trainor leaned closer and fixed his gaze on the woman with the hopelessly crumpled Kleenex. He did not bark out his questions, but he was firm.
”I asked you this
once last night, and I’m gonna ask you again, just to put it on tape. As far as you know, did Glen have any extramarital affairs?”
“No.”
“What about yourself?”
“No,” she said unflinchingly.
“Is there anyone that could, that other people might have misconstrued a relationship going on with either you or Glen?” Tygart asked.
Again she answered in the negative.
“Someone that would appear to be extra friendly, or just a little more fond than normal?”
Sharon’s resolve stayed intact. Her arms tightly across her breasts, she shook her head.
“No.”
Outside of son-in-law Bart Mason, Sharon continued, there was no one who helped out with chores or house maintenance while Glen was gone during the week. Sharon did admit, however, that she did have male visitors up at the house.
She named a man who had come up to see her from time to time, but once again, it was not Gary Adams.
“Did your relationship ever go beyond just a… a friendship?” the detective asked, again treading so gently.
Sharon hesitated, hunting for an answer. She said she had strayed only once. A fling took place when she came back to the mountains after breaking up with Glen, but that was before their marriage. She also mentioned a brief love affair with a man named Harry Russell, but that happened after Perry had died and before she met Glen.
Still, no mention of Gary Starr Adams.
Even though she could have ended the interview there, her soiled virtue still intact, she continued to talk. As she spoke, she became visibly upset. Nearly two hours had elapsed and with each minute, the woman with the two dead husbands slowly began to tighten up.
“Sharon, there’s something you’re not saying. I’ve been listening to you talk and I don’t know the reasons, but you’re not telling us the truth.”
Sharon feigned shock.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Sharon, you’ve got to tell us the truth.”
Trainor patted Sharon’s arm. It was a gesture meant to comfort her and continue the interview.
“And the most important thing in your life now is finding out who killed Glen Harrelson. Okay? Sharon, you’re covering up for someone; okay? You don’t need to be a part of that. You didn’t kill your husband.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But you know who did. You absolutely do. You don’t need the kind of trouble that can cause you. And it’s just—and it’s going to prey on your mind and it’s going to get worse and worse and for your children’s sake so that they can get on with their lives and so that you can get on with your life, you need to tell us everything you know. You’re not doing that”
Like a skewered water balloon, tears flooded down her face.
She kept her head down, her hands clutching a tissue to her eyes. And she sobbed and sobbed, muttering something about knowing what happened and how she had not been a part of any of it. She had been a victim, too.
“What can you tell us, Sharon?” Tygart asked.
She didn’t respond. Glen Trainor continued to push, telling her that it was time for her to get on with her life.
“Were the kids getting in the way?”
Sharon didn’t answer, so Tygart asked once more. “In your relationship with Glen?”
Finally, Sharon said no. She said she and Glen were happy. His mother, his coworkers could vouch for that.
Det. Trainor pushed once more. “Look, Sharon, I’ve been looking at you and you’ve been doing this for a real long time and you’re a troubled woman.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re absolutely about to fall apart at the seams and I know why. What happened up there wasn’t supposed to happen that way. And I don’t know what happened, okay? And that’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“It’s not gonna go away. It’s not gonna change, only for the worst.”
“Sharon, tell us what you know. Look, it’s obvious you’re scared of something. We’ll protect you. We’ll put you in a hotel room and guard you if necessary. Tell us what you know.”
She regained her faltering composure and nodded.
”I will, but not here. These walls have ears.”
“Then we’ll go.”
“I want my kids.”
“We’ll go get them from your daughter’s place.”
No one said another word. Not to the sheriff’s department or to each other. They simply picked up their belongings and left. Glen Trainor had it in his mind that by acquiescing to her requests, they’d be able to maintain her trust and learn whatever it was that she was holding inside. Beyond picking up Danny and Misty, the Thornton detectives knew nothing about what they would do next or where they would take Sharon, the lady of the canyon with two dead husbands.
Once again, Glen Trainor and Elaine Tygart were driving
Around Trinidad with no idea where they were going. After the cops stopped to pick up her squirming kids, Danny and Misty, Sharon instructed them to get on the highway and drive.
No one said much. Sharon and her children huddled in the backseat, making small talk and chatting about nothing of consequence. The detective drove north on 1-25. And they drove. Every once in a while, the two partners exchanged looks. Again, the reputation of Trinidad had reared its questionable head.
Where are we going? Is this a setup? Trainor thought.
Both officers had their guns out and on their laps, just in case Sharon was leading them into an ambush. Her remarks at the sheriff s department had somewhat perplexed and slightly worried them. Why had she said the walls had ears? Did she mean that local cops were somehow involved in the murder of Glen Harrelson?
But why?
“What’s going on, Mom?” Danny asked, interrupting the steady silence of the drive.
Sharon gently parted her son’s blond head and forced a smile.
“You’ll see when we get there.”
Glen Trainor wasn’t impatient, but he didn’t like the idea that they were all out on a Sunday Drive. It would, he thought, be nice to know where they were going. Finally, he met Sharon’s eyes in the rearview mirror and asked.
“Are we just going to drive to Denver or are you going to want to stop? We can drive to Denver, if that’s what you need to make you feel safe.”
Sharon shook her head. That wasn’t what she had in mind. She suggested they continue a bit further north to little Walsenburg, Colorado.
“I know of a Pizza Hut where we can talk privately,” she said.
Pizza Hut. The venue seemed ideal. What could be more cozy and safe than a pizza restaurant? It was the ideal locale for Sharon Harrelson to spill the rest of her story. It was the place she wanted to go to sort out what had happened and how none of it was her fault. Not really.
The cops drove on.
Chapter 11
FOR ALL SHE HAD BEEN THROUGH, SHARON Nelson stayed steadfast in one regard: She didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought or said about her. Everything was someone else’s problem. So what? None of their beeswax. She left the minister. She dumped the doctor. BFD. She could have slept with half the high school football team and not batted an eye. But she didn’t do that. Instead, as her marriage to Perry crumbled, Sharon took up with a man named Buzz Reynolds and moved into his house on a gorgeous spread of Colorado ranch land. So what if she left her husband and shacked up with Buzz? She didn’t care who knew about it. Sharon was living her life as if her actions had no effect on anyone. She was a woman unfettered by convention. She was no longer the Stepford Wife that she had felt was her destiny. She told friends she wanted a divorce. As if to rub salt in Perry Nelson’s considerable and gaping wounds, Sharon had added the betrayal of a decade-old friendship to the mix. Buzz Reynolds, a self-made rancher with vast holdings, was one of Perry Nelson’s best friends. Buzz Reynolds was a friendly man with a kind word for everyone, not a home-wrecker, not a Don Juan. Ten years older than Sharon, Buzz was more pleasant-looking than
handsome, and, like Perry Nelson, he was ripe for the picking.
Buzz had money.
Folks around town wondered if Sharon Nelson could have found it within herself to exercise a bit more discretion by dropping her skirt for a man her husband didn’t know so well.
Did the men who fell for Sharon’s charms take stupid pills, or what?
One morning not long after she left Perry and their kids for money and madness with Buzz, Sharon arrived at the Trinidad optometry office to pick up a check for hours she had supposedly worked at the clinic. When she asked to see her estranged husband, Barb told her to wait a minute.
“He’s busy with a patient,” she said.
A little later, the patient gone, Sharon and Perry got into a heated argument over money, their marriage and Sharon’s wandering ways. Barb could hear the two of them scream at each other. She expected everyone else in the building could, too.
A few minutes later, Sharon stomped out of the back office and went over to Barb.
“I’ll tell you what. If that son of a bitch doesn’t give me a divorce, I’ll blow his fucking head off. I’ll kill him.”
Barb tried to calm her by making a joke of the remark.
“Oh yeah?” she kidded. “What would you do with the body?”
Sharon didn’t laugh.
“I’ll stick it in the freezer. Nobody will find him there.”
And so the war went. Sharon would say this. Perry would do that. Bless his heart, Barb thought, the man was no match for his bitch-on-wheels wife. If they didn’t have the two kids, Dr. Nelson would have been a smart man to just let her go. But, of course, that was not an option. Perry was mad, but against all reason, he was still in love.
One afternoon, Barb rolled her eyes as she handed Dr. Nelson the telephone. It was another Sharon sneak attack. A Trinidad grocer was on the line asking for payment of $150 worth of groceries. Sharon, it seemed, had told the checker to bill her husband, “Dr. Perry Nelson.”
An irritated Perry balked at the charge. He wasn’t going to pay a dime to support Sharon while she flaunted her affair with Buzz. The woman had no scruples whatsoever. Perry had reached his limit. Sharon had traipsed all over town buying things and dropping his name like ticker tape in a parade.
