Gary considered the best approach would be to murder Glen at the Thornton house, put his body in the trunk of his car and drive it to some remote place in the Canyon where some kind of skull-crashing, bone-busting car accident could be faked.
“See if you can get Glen to bring the Camaro down here,” he said.
Sharon didn’t understand. She looked blank.
“Glen's truck is too visible with that snowplow unit on the front. Everybody in the Canyon knows the truck,” Gary explained.
Sharon shook her head.
“I don’t think he’d ever bring the Camaro.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I just don’t think he would,” she said, explaining how the car was Glen's pride and joy and he didn’t want to risk his paint job on unnecessary drives. He seldom drove it, not even around Denver. Hell, he didn’t even like anyone brushing against the car when they passed by it in the garage on the way into the house.
“Well, if you can get him to bring the Camaro, leave a note in the mailbox.”
She left a note the next day: “No, bringing truck.”
After a particularly nice visit with his wife and step kids, Glen Harrelson left for Denver on Wednesday night. By Thursday, Gary Adams was back in Sharon's bed.
“Why wouldn’t Glen bring the Camaro?” Gary asked once more.
“I asked him to bring the Camaro and maybe we’d take off and get a sitter for the kids and go to Taos for the weekend, but he just didn’t want to bring the car down.”
Sharon insisted the murder couldn’t take place in Weston, anyway. It was too close.
Even so, Gary persisted.
“Well, is there a way that Glen might go out through the Canyon, you know, the back way?” he asked.
Sharon dismissed the idea. “I don’t think so,” she said.
Mikki Baker felt uneasy. Her best friend was in trouble. Glen Harrelson was not himself. He seemed very worried, and though he tried to hide it, it still showed. For a while, Mikki considered that it was the stress and strain of the long commute from Weston to Denver, coupled with the long hours of his extended shift at the fire station. But it was none of that. It appeared to go deeper. It was his relationship with Sharon that was troubling Glen.
“She seems so distant,” he told the young woman over coffee one day. “Then the next day, she's all lovey-dovey. Sometimes she says she needs her space, other times she can’t get enough of me.”
Mikki tried to reassure him. Perhaps Sharon was wrapped up in being a mother. Anyone with half a brain could realize that motherhood was more than a full-time job.
But the issues went deeper, and in time, Glen confided his suspicions. Gary Adams, Sharon's old lover, was back in her life.
“I know Gary's around,” he said, his face showing the strain of worry. “She thinks I'm an idiot, but I'm not stupid.”
“How do you know?” Mikki asked.
“I found some cigarette butts around the mountain house. Sher smokes Bel-Air, I smoke Marlboro and these aren’t either one. The ones I found are Gary's brand.”
Mikki comforted him, but her words fell flat. She simply didn’t know what to say. She tolerated Sharon, maybe even liked her a little, but she didn’t put it past her to cheat on Glen. She tried to cheat unemployment. She was always working a deal. She was the type of woman who would go after what she wanted, damn the rest of the world.
But Glen and Sharon had been married only a few months. A marriage shouldn’t fall apart so fast, she thought.
“This isn’t the marriage I thought it would be,” he said. “I’ve made a mistake. I don’t think I should have married Sher.”
Glen fumbled for an explanation, staring into his empty coffee cup.
“I don’t trust her,” he said.
Mikki didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure if Glen wanted a divorce or needed a marriage counselor. She just listened. She didn’t know if the subject of divorce should be broached so soon—after all, Glen and Sharon were newly-weds.
Either there was nothing going on or all hell was breaking loose. At nearly every fire station across the country, that was pretty much the scenario. One November morning in 1988, there was just enough activity building at the station where Jim Schindler worked that left the veteran firefighter with complete certainty it was going to be a busy day.
Amid the jumping beans of activity was the watch desk, the hub of any firehouse. The desk was a magnet for calls and firemen. Emergencies came in and help was dispatched. When the Centrex Line—or main line—buzzed with a phone call it was surprising that the man on the end of the line was Glen Harrelson. As a fireman, Glen should have known better.