Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  “How's married life treating you?” he asked.

  Sharon made a disgusted face. “Terrible,” she said. “It isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “What's the problem?”

  Sharon complained that Glen was too demanding. He was always telling her what to do. He wasn’t nice to Misty and Danny. He didn’t treat her like Gary had. Gary, she said, knew how to please a woman.

  “Let's go in the house and talk,” she said.

  It was against his better judgment to go up to the house. He knew once inside, they’d be back in bed.

  He was right.

  Sharon tugged her Mountain Man to the bed and wrapped her legs around him, pushing her tongue into his mouth. Gary could not resist. He tore at her clothes; the breasts that he admired as the most beautiful he had ever seen were released from her bra. Though Sharon begged for him, something was wrong.

  Gary Adams couldn’t maintain an erection. Just as had been the case the first time the two tried to make love, he couldn’t get it up.

  Sharon did everything she could to get him to stand at attention, but to no avail. Two hours later, she gave up and rolled over.

  On the bedroom wall was a picture of Glen and the children. Another framed photograph was the image of Perry.

  “Get that off the wall!” Gary said, pulling his jeans back on. “I don’t want to come up here and see Perry's face.”

  Sharon refused. Perry was Danny's and Misty's father. It would be wrong to remove his image from the house. The children should be able to remember their dad.

  And though Gary stormed out of there over the pictures, it was a foregone conclusion that Sharon had not seen the last of him. Gary Adams would be back. He’d always come back to her.

  Of those who had met Glen in Trinidad and Weston, most considered him to be several cuts above Sharon. Though most felt Glen Harrelson could have done better, everyone knew love was never logical.

  Sharon brought Glen over to her son-in-law Bart Mason's parents’ Trinidad home for a visit one afternoon late in the fall. During the course of the brief visit, Glen casually mentioned he thought someone had been breaking into his Thornton residence whenever he was down in the Canyon with Sharon.

  “You should call the police,” Bart's mother urged. “You really should report it.”

  Though he had to be somewhat concerned to mention it, he tried to downplay his worries.

  “Nothing's gone” he said. “Must have a key to get in, too.”

  Mrs. Mason suggested it could be Glen's son and daughter or friends of theirs. Kids were always looking for a place to party when their folks were out of town. An empty house was a perfect target for that.

  Glen didn’t think so. He had asked them already. The two had convinced him that they had not done any such thing. Glen was satisfied that Todd and Tara weren’t the type to lie.

  Someone else had to be spending time at Columbine Court.

  Chapter 26

  THE FRONT DOOR ON ROUND HOUSE WAS NEVER locked. Wet Canyon, after all, was seldom the scene of a crime. People familiar with the Nelson place knew the home was big enough that patience was in order whenever a knock didn’t bring an immediate answer. They knew it would take Sharon awhile to make her way from one end of the residence to the other. Those who knew her best never waited. They simply knocked and went inside.

  Sharon must not have heard the pair of visitors let themselves in one afternoon.

  Or she didn’t care.

  In the middle of the kitchen floor, a hot and sweaty Sharon was in the throes of reckless abandon, engaged in sexual intercourse with a man. His face was not one that the visitors to Round House recognized.

  He was not Gary Adams, Sharon's steady lover.

  Not Glen Harrelson, Sharon's new husband.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, as she came down from the moon and collected herself. Her tone was typical Sharon. She appeared neither ashamed nor embarrassed. It was as if she had been caught doing nothing more than picking her nose.

  “Just a minute,” she said sweetly.

  The visitors had seen enough. They didn’t see a reason to stay any longer. As quickly as they could they got out of there. This was too much even for Sharon Fuller Nelson Harrelson.

  In Sharon's eyes, Gary Adams was the last of a breed. He was a Louis L’Amour invention: a mountain man, a cattle rustler, a renegade. And he was the greatest, most tender lover she’d ever known. He was the type to steal a neighbor's beef cattle, butcher it with a chain saw and throw a couple of steaks on the grill for a romantic dinner for two. She had been married to a preacher, a doctor, a fireman, but her heart belonged to the outlaw in the shack down the mountain. She deserved to feel the way he made her feel. She had a right to the excitement and the danger that he brought in to her life.

  Later, though the facts would never really be in dispute, Sharon would deny she meant for any harm to come to the men in her life. She only wanted freedom. Freedom to be a woman with the man she loved.

  It was at Round House, Monday, November 15,1988, when Sharon made her move. While she cuddled in bed with Gary, she told him that the time was right to get rid of Glen.

  “I want it done before Thanksgiving,” she said. “Glen's mother is coming from Des Moines and I don’t want to spend the holiday with her. I can’t stand her.”

  She drew out a Thornton area map on a small slip of paper, indicating that Gary park in the King Soopers parking lot or at the adjacent Safeway. She noted another possibility: an area of new construction not far from Columbine Court. The map directed Gary to drive up 1-25 to 120th to Claude Court.

  Then she made a bizarre request, not unlike asking Dorothy to bring back the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West as proof that she had killed her: Sharon wanted Glen's wedding ring.

  She alerted Gary to the fact that Glen didn’t wear the gold band often.

  “The last time I saw it was on top of the dresser in the bedroom,” she said. If it wasn’t there, she told Gary to check the watch pocket of Glen's jeans.

  It had worked so well with Perry Nelson's murder, that the idea of another supposed accident had been frequently discussed between Sharon and Gary's incessant cigarettes and screaming-at-the-Rockies orgasms. Though she seemed to want the deed done more than Gary, Sharon was somewhat leery of a murder taking place too close to home. A murder at Round House would raise too many red flags. Too suspicious. Too attention-getting.

  Gary considered the best approach would be to murder Glen at the Thornton house, put his body in the trunk of his car and drive it to some remote place in the Canyon where some kind of skull-crashing, bone-busting car accident could be faked.

  “See if you can get Glen to bring the Camaro down here,” he said.

  Sharon didn’t understand. She looked blank.

  “Glen's truck is too visible with that snowplow unit on the front. Everybody in the Canyon knows the truck,” Gary explained.

  Sharon shook her head.

  “I don’t think he’d ever bring the Camaro.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I just don’t think he would,” she said, explaining how the car was Glen's pride and joy and he didn’t want to risk his paint job on unnecessary drives. He seldom drove it, not even around Denver. Hell, he didn’t even like anyone brushing against the car when they passed by it in the garage on the way into the house.

  “Well, if you can get him to bring the Camaro, leave a note in the mailbox.”

  She left a note the next day: “No, bringing truck.”

  After a particularly nice visit with his wife and step kids, Glen Harrelson left for Denver on Wednesday night. By Thursday, Gary Adams was back in Sharon's bed.

  “Why wouldn’t Glen bring the Camaro?” Gary asked once more.

  “I asked him to bring the Camaro and maybe we’d take off and get a sitter for the kids and go to Taos for the weekend, but he just didn’t want to bring the car down.”

  Sharon insisted the murder couldn’t t
ake place in Weston, anyway. It was too close.

  Even so, Gary persisted.

  “Well, is there a way that Glen might go out through the Canyon, you know, the back way?” he asked.

  Sharon dismissed the idea. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Mikki Baker felt uneasy. Her best friend was in trouble. Glen Harrelson was not himself. He seemed very worried, and though he tried to hide it, it still showed. For a while, Mikki considered that it was the stress and strain of the long commute from Weston to Denver, coupled with the long hours of his extended shift at the fire station. But it was none of that. It appeared to go deeper. It was his relationship with Sharon that was troubling Glen.

  “She seems so distant,” he told the young woman over coffee one day. “Then the next day, she's all lovey-dovey. Sometimes she says she needs her space, other times she can’t get enough of me.”

  Mikki tried to reassure him. Perhaps Sharon was wrapped up in being a mother. Anyone with half a brain could realize that motherhood was more than a full-time job.

  But the issues went deeper, and in time, Glen confided his suspicions. Gary Adams, Sharon's old lover, was back in her life.

  “I know Gary's around,” he said, his face showing the strain of worry. “She thinks I'm an idiot, but I'm not stupid.”

  “How do you know?” Mikki asked.

  “I found some cigarette butts around the mountain house. Sher smokes Bel-Air, I smoke Marlboro and these aren’t either one. The ones I found are Gary's brand.”

  Mikki comforted him, but her words fell flat. She simply didn’t know what to say. She tolerated Sharon, maybe even liked her a little, but she didn’t put it past her to cheat on Glen. She tried to cheat unemployment. She was always working a deal. She was the type of woman who would go after what she wanted, damn the rest of the world.

  But Glen and Sharon had been married only a few months. A marriage shouldn’t fall apart so fast, she thought.

  “This isn’t the marriage I thought it would be,” he said. “I’ve made a mistake. I don’t think I should have married Sher.”

  Glen fumbled for an explanation, staring into his empty coffee cup.

  “I don’t trust her,” he said.

  Mikki didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure if Glen wanted a divorce or needed a marriage counselor. She just listened. She didn’t know if the subject of divorce should be broached so soon—after all, Glen and Sharon were newly-weds.

  Either there was nothing going on or all hell was breaking loose. At nearly every fire station across the country, that was pretty much the scenario. One November morning in 1988, there was just enough activity building at the station where Jim Schindler worked that left the veteran firefighter with complete certainty it was going to be a busy day.

  Amid the jumping beans of activity was the watch desk, the hub of any firehouse. The desk was a magnet for calls and firemen. Emergencies came in and help was dispatched. When the Centrex Line—or main line—buzzed with a phone call it was surprising that the man on the end of the line was Glen Harrelson. As a fireman, Glen should have known better.

  Jim Schindler was called to the telephone.

  “I need to talk with you,” Glen said.

  Jim could barely hear his friend and former business partner, though he did make out an urgency in his voice. He asked if he was all right and Glen said he was, but he did need to talk.

  “It's important.”

  “Give me five minutes and call me on the other phone.”

  Glen promised he would. Yes, he knew the number.

  Jim Schindler pried his way out of the fray of the watch desk and stood by a silent telephone in the back room. Five minutes passed, then ten.

  The phone never rang. Glen never called back.

  Jim wondered if the call had been about Sharon. Rick Philippi had been filling him in about his concerns over their friend's new wife.

  “When Glen is there, Sharon is as sweet as pie… but the minute Glen's back is turned, look out. I told Glen she's two-faced. He said, ‘No, she's not, she's really sweet.’ He's trapped in something and he doesn’t know how to get out.” Though Jim Schindler didn’t know it then, the call from his friend on the Centrex Line was the last time they’d speak.

  She did not know Glen Harrelson well, but on the occasions they shared together, Sharon's sister, Judy, found him to be a caring, gentle soul. He was always doing what he could to show that he wanted to belong with his new extended family. Judy was especially touched by his concern over her well-being when her husband died in late spring of 1988. In a family so divided, so distant, the call from Sharon's third husband was unexpected and wholly appreciated.

  Over the course of the summer months and into the bone-chilling nights of late fall, Glen called Judy several times to say hello and to see how things were going.

  The last time he telephoned it was not about how Judy was coping, however; it was about Sharon and Gary. Glen confided that he was worried that the affair between his wife and her mountain man lover had heated up once more. Though he hoped he was wrong, he asked Judy if Sharon had said anything that would bolster his concerns.

  “No,” Judy said with great assurance. “She's finished with Gary. She's told me how happy she is with you. I'm sure that Gary Adams is no longer a part of her life.”

  As far as Judy knew it was the truth. Sharon had been telling her for months that her long-distance marriage to Glen Harrelson was working better than she could have ever dreamed. They had renewed their search for a place to rent or buy in Castle Rock to ease the commute for Glen.

  “We couldn’t be more in love,” Sharon told her sister.

  The dust never settles on murder, and blood never really dries. When the deed is done and two are involved, finger-pointing is as inevitable as the lies told to cover the crime. Sharon Nelson had a different take on her encounter with Gary Adams that Monday when the plan for Glen Harrelson's murder was broached. She had never wanted anyone dead.

  Gary had been pressuring her. He was in her face, she would later say, demanding that they do what they had done before.

  Fire and water.

  He wanted the key to the door at Columbine Court. He wanted a map. He wanted to know if Sharon knew if there was a gas can in the garage.

  “Give me a key and I’ll get it done,” he said.

  He harangued her. He pushed every button he could think of. She deserved better. She could use the money. She could be with her Mountain Man for good.

  “Sher, give me the key!”

  In a second, the line was crossed again. Sharon's voice began to rise from deep within.

  “Here's the goddamn key! Get out of my face!” she screamed.

  She didn’t know with any certainty if it was a game or reality. She didn’t know if he was playing the macho man to her damsel in distress. Later, she would insist that if she had thought for one minute that Gary would really kill Glen, she would have driven down the mountain and called for help. She would have warned him.

  She would later say she wasn’t sure if Gary Adams was a killer or a big talker.

  Long after it barely mattered to anyone, she told a sympathetic ear where her doubt came from.

  “You haven’t seen the tender side of him,” she said. “You haven’t been in bed with him. I can’t imagine being in bed with a killer. The tender man that he could be could not be a killer.”

  Diann Browning was glad Friday had arrived, payday had come and she was able to get to Trinidad and do the week's grocery shopping. For the mother of four, it seemed like payday never came fast enough. Her arms brimming with bags and boxes, Diann unloaded her groceries in front of her little house at the Robinson sawmill where her husband, Mike, worked. She wanted to put things away and relax. She even had a couple of videos for Friday-night entertainment, Pippi Longstocking and E.T.

  It was 4 P.M., November 18, 1988, and the sky was starting to spit snowflakes.

  When Sharon and her two children pulled up, Diann
had not yet unloaded everything from her shopping trip. She smiled warmly at her three visitors. She knew the family was alone that weekend; Diann had waved to Glen Harrelson on the road near the tiny town of Segundo. He was heading toward Denver, back to work, away from the mountains.

  By the way she invited herself in, it was clear to Diann that Sharon wanted to stay for a while. Sharon was in good spirits, happy with her marriage. She was wearing a Denver Fire Department T-shirt.

  “Glen gave it to me this week,” she said.

  Diann said she thought the shirt was nice as she went about the business of making hot dogs and heating up a can of pork and beans.

  Sharon and her kids had invited themselves for dinner.

  When the snow started dredging the roadway in white, Diann figured her visitor would leave. Sharon hated driving up to Round House when the roads got slick. Without exception, whenever Sharon had been around and it started to snow, she would hurry home.

  Except that night. That night, the snow didn’t bother her. She planted herself on the couch, munched popcorn and watched the videos.

  And she talked about how wonderful her marriage was to Glen. She was so much in love with him. Everything was wonderful. She complained about how she and Glen just couldn’t get enough of each other.

  “Glen and I had the best sex last night,” she said.

  Around 9 P.M., the last tape ended and Sharon stood to leave. It was nearly as abrupt as had been her surprise visit. She packed up Danny and Misty and drove off to Round House.

  Chapter 27

  HOURS LATER, MILES NORTH OF SHARON’S Round House, the wetness she had left on Gary had dried to a noticeable itch. It was a sweet annoyance, a niggling reminder of the hours Sharon and he had spent together under sheets dampened by their careless passion. Of course, no reminder was really necessary. The world spun on an axis created by the two from Wet Canyon and the promises they had made to each other. The smell of her still lingered on him. It aroused him when he smelled her. When he thought of Sharon. He shook his head as if the abrupt action would sift her image from his consciousness. There was no chance of that.