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.