Sex. Murder. Mystery(55)

Even in Colorado, joggers let nothing stand in the way of their great endeavor. In the snow, their feet become twin plows as they run in the ruts left by cars and trucks on the roadways. In the rain, they dodge droplets, but press on. On Sunday morning, 250 miles north of Weston, a man jogging along the raging waters of Jefferson County's picturesque Clear Creek stumbled across the mangled remains of a car. At least, it seemed that the hunk of metal had once been a car. There were no windows. No license plate. Nothing that could break off was still attached. It was four tires and a crushed and shattered hull.

The car was as battered as if it had been in a rock tumbler, which, of course, it had. It was a VW in such bad shape that the jogger might have assumed it was a junked auto that had been pushed into river.

People were always doing stuff like that, trashing the planet to save the junkyard fee.

Anyway, the jogger decided to report what he saw. He notified the nearest fire department.

The car was Perry Nelson's.

Later that morning, Sharon Lynn Nelson made her way to the Trinidad Police Department. She told friends she had been forced into going down in person. The police had told her they would be sending someone out to Round House to facilitate the filing of a missing persons report, but the deputy hadn’t showed up. She dropped her son and daughter off at a babysitter and went inside.

“I’ve got people who have eye appointments at 8 A.M. I’ve got to get this done,” she said, after an officer directed her to the missing persons section. While she was filling out the paperwork, the officer who had been told to respond to her house approached.

Sharon later recalled her visit with the police.

“I'm bananas by now. They are saying, calm down, calm down. We can call the doctor to give you something. I said, ‘How can I calm down? You people don’t even know what's going on here. You tell me someone is coming to my house, nobody comes to my house. I don’t sleep all night. I know I’ve got patients coming in. I don’t know where my husband is. Get my kids to the sitter… I’ve got an office full of people that's going to be sitting…’ “

Something terrible had happened. Chiropractor Terry Mitchell was almost in tears as he stood at Julie Whitley's front door.

“It's Perry. His car went into Clear Creek Canyon up by Golden,” he said.

“Oh no,” she said. “He was just here last night.”

“What do you mean?” Terry asked.

Julie Whitley had a vision, a dream. It was a message from that other place that a few people can tap into. Julie had been teased about being a witch or weirdo, but she didn’t care. She could feel it in her bones. Perry Nelson was alive and he needed her help.

“He was at my door, asking for help… He's someplace and he needs help.”

In the space of a few minutes, Sharon and her group of supporters and their children were gathered up and away they went in Dr. Mitchell's van to search for the doctor. Emotions ran high. Periods of silence followed bursts of speculation about what might have happened to Perry.

But halfway along the way, something strange happened between Sharon and Jim Whitley. He felt her rub his thigh.

Come again? he thought. What's going on?

For a minute, Jim Whitley passed it off as the innocent result of sitting in a van that was too crowded for comfort. When it happened once more, he felt very uncomfortable. Sharon kept touching his leg, stroking his inner thigh with her fingertips. It was very unsettling. After the second and third time, Jim could not discount his concern. The woman whose husband was missing was putting the moves on him. She was playing with his leg. Jim tried to scoot away from her, but there was nowhere to go.

Good God, what is this woman doing? My wife's sitting right behind us! Her husband is missing in the creek! And she's groping me?

Sharon kept saying how upset she was, but her actions clearly didn’t fit. There were no tears. There was no sobbing. Just a wandering hand and the unspoken communication that she was interested in the man sharing her seat in Terry Mitchell’ s van. Maybe her petting of his thigh was the way she sought comfort?

Jim Whitley didn’t want to find out for sure. He did his best to stay away from Sharon.

God, she must be one mixed-up woman!





Chapter 16

THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS WERE A BLUR FOR the Trinidad gang. Sharon and the searchers stayed at a motel outside of Denver, heartsick that there had been no word on Dr. Nelson. Where could he be? Everyone wanted to know, though at times it seemed as though Sharon was the least interested among the group. She shed few tears. Instead, she was hungry. She was tired. She wanted to get some sleep.

And so they did. Sharon shared the motel room with Terry and Kay Mitchell and slept like a baby.