Sex. Murder. Mystery(62)

“Mom's in the house! Dad's in the river!”





Chapter 17

WHEN HE TOLD SHARON THE STORY OF HOW HE killed her husband, Gary sometimes altered the tale. Sometimes he said he wasn’t sure if it had worked. Other times he embellished the saga. Sharon would later say she didn’t know what to believe. She didn’t know what really happened. But Gary, in fact, did know.

He told her about the drive up to Denver to get the guns, how Perry had chatted along the way, not knowing what was about to happen….

Gary asked Perry to stop for a beer, though that wasn’t the real reason for the delay. As the two shared a beer in a tavern in Castle Rock, Gary excused himself to use the bathroom. With Perry sitting behind half-empty beer glasses, Gary Adams made his way to a pay phone and dialed the number of a buddy with whom he had briefly lived near Denver.

“Pick me up at midnight at the first tunnel past Golden,” he said.

The friend agreed.

The beer-buzzed doctor and the carpenter drank a while longer, then left to get some shut-eye before driving back to Wet Canyon in the morning.

It was around midnight. The road was slicker than still-warm roadkill. The rain had been relentless, drumming the windows of the old VW with pellets hard enough to make one flinch. Perry hated driving in the rain. Any other kind of weather condition was easier, even snow. Unless it was a whiteout, at least the driver could see at night during a snowfall. Gary looked straight ahead at the roadway, his nervousness not overwhelming enough to stop him from what he had planned to do.

Perry pulled into a parking strip next to Clear Creek to get some sleep. Gary swung the door open and got out.

“Gotta take a leak,” he said.

Perry nodded and went to work on reclining the car seats so the two could stretch out and snooze until morning light.

Gary didn’t have a tire iron this time, so he went down to the water's edge to look for a rock that would do the job. It was dark and every stone seemed too large.

Finally, he found one he could lift. He memorized where it was and he returned to the VW.

“Perry,” he said, “I lost my wallet down there. Can you give me a hand looking for it?”

Perry nodded before picking up a flashlight and following Gary down to the surging banks of Clear Creek. Some creek— the water from the storm had swollen it to a raging river. The beam of the flashlight stretched a white line through the night air as it slid across the wet boulders flanking the immediate creek side.

“Can’t see anything,” Perry said, his head bent low as he searched the area.

Gary hoisted a large rock of fifteen to twenty pounds and slammed it hard against Perry's slightly balding head. He would later admit he had used all his might to do so. He had no clue that the human skull was so resilient.

Perry fell to his hands and knees into the icy water. In a second, blood and water running down his face and into his beard, he jumped back up. Gary couldn’t believe his eyes.

Why wasn’t he knocked out? The icy water? The adrenaline pumping through his terrified body? Why wasn’t he out cold?

Gary pushed Perry back down and tried to hold his head under the water. The two men thrashed, Gary trying his damnedest to keep the upper hand. Yet Perry was holding his own. He was much taller. He weighed more. And by then he must have known he was fighting for his life.

Gary put all his weight on top of his flailing friend and held him under the water. But again, just as he thought he’d completed what he set out to do, Gary was stunned by Perry Nelson's strength. He rose out of the water once more.

“Like a freakin’” horror movie.

At one point, Gary slipped under the frigid, waist-high water. The water's sudden depth scared him. The fighting had taken the two men further from the shore. And all of a sudden, as if it was meant to be, the current swept Perry Nelson away. Gary watched as the man he had called his friend, the man whose wife he had been screwing for months, floated down Clear Creek.

He was gone.

Gary, scraped and covered in sand, mud and blood, got behind the wheel of the VW and drove it a half mile away. When he hit about 20 mph, he swung the door open and rolled out. The car slipped into the creek, its headlights still on.

The goddamn thing's floating!

Volkswagens are watertight. Everyone knows that. Gary knew it. What was he thinking? Dr. Nelson's car had become a beacon. His heart raced as he watched the VW bob along the current of the creek. If a. car came by the driver would surely see it. He held his heaving breath and waited. In a couple of minutes, relief came. The creek twisted and the car disappeared around a sharp bend.

It had not gone exactly according to plan.

“The plan was in my head: Knock Perry unconscious, hold him underwater so he’d drown, drag him up the bank, put him in the VW, then drive him in.”