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.”