Sex. Murder. Mystery(56)
The next morning, the Trinidad search party visited the sheriff's department and the fire department. No one had heard of Perry Nelson's missing persons report. No one seemed to care. A visit to the wrecking yard was fruitless. When Dr. Mitchell asked if they had considered that the man could have been thrown from the car and was wandering the roadside in a dazed condition, they dismissed it. Beyond pulling the VW from the water, they hadn’t done anything at all. Zero.
Sharon, who seemed very composed, stayed in the car while the searchers looked over the vehicle at the junkyard.
The VW had been flattened like a beer can under a worker's boot. Terry Mitchell barely could discern how that mangled object in the twisted heap had once been his friend's car.
“It looks like it's been through a damn meat grinder,” he told his wife.
One of the emergency rescuers told the group that nothing was found in the car. The only thing that remained of its contents was a sleeping bag that had somehow hooked on to the passenger-side mirror and dangled in the water.
“Kind of weird-looking,” the man said.
A patrol officer accompanied the searchers to the place where in all likelihood the little car and its driver had met their horrific fate. The guardrail was twisted and marred with the grinded-on striping of black paint. The officer explained that for the barrier to sustain that kind of damage, the car would have been traveling in excess of 80 mph.
Sharon informed the officer that the VW had been painted only two months before. The paint, she reasoned, hadn’t had a chance to become “baked” on yet.
The search party went to the Coors plant in Golden to make sure that Perry hadn’t been caught in the big screen the company employed to keep large debris from contaminating the water. From there, they backtracked, covering two miles along Clear Creek. Bits of the VW had washed ashore, bedding, maps. All were signs that Dr. Nelson's car had, in fact, taken the terrible ride down the raging creek. A stoic Sharon told the searchers not to give up.
“He's here,” she said. “We’ve got to find him.”
A former medic with the Air and Sea Rescue unit of the Air Force, Jim Whitley had brought along binoculars to aid in the search in a unique way. He used them look beneath the surface of the water. The rush of the surface is a curtain, but the submersed binoculars were used to create a window through it. Whitley was disappointed. The technique brought no results that day.
The group scanned the far side of the creek. Would anything catch their eyes? They looked for pieces of clothing. Blood. Limbs. Bits of Perry. Anything. But they found nothing.
Nothing at all.
When the Mitchells suggested it would be a good idea to bring photographs of Perry to the bus station, airport and various Denver cab companies, suddenly Sharon didn’t want to be bothered.
“But maybe he's alive,” Terry said.
“I don’t think so,” she answered with a measure of certainty. “I think he's gone for good.”
The next day, the Trinidad Chronicle-News marked the sad story with the headline,
SEARCH FOR LOCAL OPTOMETRIST UNDERWAY NEAR CLEAR CREEK.
Barb Ruscetti had locked her front door and was walking to her car when her neighbor yelled over to get her attention.
“Barb!” the woman called out from across Colorado Ave.
“Did you know your old boss is missing?”
Barb hadn’t heard a word. “What do you mean, he's missing?”
The neighbor recounted what she had read in the paper.
“Well, Sharon made a report that he had left their place Friday night and he hadn’t shown up yet. She finally went to the police yesterday.”
Barb felt dizzy. What was going on here?
“Why did she wait so long to report him missing?” she finally blurted out.
When the neighbor didn’t have an answer, Barb spun around and went back into her house and called the Trinidad chief of police.
“Yeah, Barb, it's true,” the chief responded when she related what her neighbor had said. “Sharon claims she waited so long because she thought he was going to come home.”
“She killed him,” Barb said flatly, “I know she did.”
The Whitleys were not rich, but they had more than many in Trinidad. When Sharon asked if she could stay at their place on the corner of San Pedro and Goddard, Julie and Jim agreed. With what the woman had been through, it was the least the friendly couple could do. Sher said she wanted to be close to the police in case news about Perry came in, and, even more importantly, she had things to take care of with the optometry business.
“I don’t want to drive back and forth,” she explained.
Jim Whitley knew Sharon's reputation, as did just about everybody in town. He knew that she had slept with half the county and with the little move she made in the van, he was sure she was after him. He wanted no part of her and he did his best to keep her at arm's length.