Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (15 page)

If he remembered anything about the time when he and his father left

the Madison Tower apartment on Sunday evening, he didn't want to answer

questions about it.

Svetkey and Finch looked at each other.
 
They were not going to push

this child.
 
There was no point in questioning Michael further.

Jess, a small, lonely little figure, walked into the grand jury room

and was given an oath to tell the truth.
 
There were five grand jurors

there that day in the fourth week of September.
 
None of them would

ever forget Jess Cunningham.
 
He was very smart.
 
He was very brave.

He was without guile.
 
X Jess's feet dangled far from the floor as he

sat upright in the witness chair and told the people on the grand jury

about the night of September 21.
 
Frank L. Smith, one of the jury

members, had worked for the U.S. Post Office for almost seventeen

years.
 
He took notes as the little boy talked.
 
Smith would remember

this moment for many years to come.

Jess told the grand jury the same things he had told Jerry Finch and

Susan Svetkey.
 
He recalled more, however.
 
He testified that he had to

unlock the door for his lather when he came back.
 
Jess said his father

had told him he'd been jogging "from Sara's hospital," and that he was

wearing red jogging shorts and a yellow and red shirt (probably meaning

the vest).

Asked if Brad was sweaty or out of breath when he came back, Jess said,

"No."
 
When Brad learned that Susan Svetkey had allowed his children to

be questioned by Detective Jerry Finch, he was enraged.
 
"I was at

Juvenile Court on September twenty-sixth," Svetkey recalled, "when I

received a phone call from Mr.
 
Cunningham.
 
He said, You're fired."

" The successful investigation of a homicide is composed of many

segments, not unlike bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope.

Detectives have to deal alternately with human emotion, experience,

recall, and prejudiceþand with solid physical evidence.
 
The testimony

of human beings has always been mutable, forensic evidence has become

more sophisticated and definitive with every year that passes.

Fingerprints, blood tests, DNA profiles, hair and fiber

identificationþthere are so many ways to tell if a suspect has been at

the scene of a murder at the time the murder occurred.

Did a suspect have means, motive, and opportunity to kill?
 
Did he or

she leave something behind and take something away?
 
The answer to that

last question is always "yes."
 
According to the great-granddaddy of

all criminalists, Dr. Edmonde Locarde, every felon takes something of

the crime sceneþno matter how minuteþaway with him on his person or in

his vehicle, and every felon leaves something of himselfþno matter how

minuteþat the crime scene.
 
Locarde's theory does not guarantee,

however, that those investigating the crime will find the infinitesimal

bits of telltale evidence left behind.
 
It is never as easy as it looks

in the movies and on television.
 
the death of Cheryl Keeton would be

one of the most inexplicable and difficult murders to prove in Oregon

criminal history.

The men and women investigating the case were faced with two widely

divergent assessments of who Cheryl had been.
 
What kind of woman was

she?
 
Was she an amoral slut, as her estranged husband had

characterized herþa victim just waiting for a murder to happen?
 
Or was

she the brilliant attorney, the devoted mother, the frightened

neardivorcee that her family and her associates were describing to

detectives?

And just who was Bradly Morris Cunningham?
 
Was he the man of singular

accomplishment, the constant father, the compassionate lover that Sara

Gordon knewþthat his surroundings and possessions confirmed and that he

himself claimed to be?
 
Or was it possible that he was not what he

seemed, that he was a man who had brutally bludgeoned his wife to death

and abandoned her vehicle on a busy freeway, hoping to make her death

look like an accident?

More painful to consider was the possihilitv that if Brad had murdered

his wife, he had done so in the presence of their four-year-old son,

Michael.
 
Six-year-old Jess had told Jerry Finch, Susan Svetkey, and

the Washington County grand jury that his father had taken Michael and

left the Madison Tower apartment for a considerable length of time that

Sunday night.
 
Brad himself said he had only run errands around the

building, checking the mailbox, putting boots in his car.
 
The running

time of the two movies that Jess was positive he had watched that night

would give the investigators parameters to determine the length of time

his father had been gone from the apartment.
 
Had there been time

enough to commit the crime?
 
Perhaps only young Michael knew.
 
And

either he didn't remember what had happened on Sunday night, or he had

buried his memories deep in his subconscious mind.

Under the direction of Oregon State Police Lieutenant James Boyd Reed

and Sergeant Greg Baxter, the investigation into Cheryl Keeton's murder

proceededþboth the search for physical evidence and the less precise

evaluation of the personalities and characters of the victim and the

suspects that would emerge.
 
Jerry Finch would continue to be the lead

investigator, along with Jim Ayersþwith backup from O.S.P detectives Al

Carson, Gus Bradford, and Richard McKeirnan.
 
And in the beginning, the

only thing they could do was fan out and try to cover as much territory

as possible.

Cheryl Keeton had had so many facets to her existence: her career, her

family, her friends, her failing marriage.
 
Each contact the O.S.P

investigators made led to another.
 
But little by little, they added to

their store of knowledge of Cheryl's life and of Brad's life too.

Greg Baxter talked to Cheryl's mother, Betty, who was now married to

Mary Troseth.
 
She was grief-stricken, but she took a deep breath and

tried to reconstruct the last day she had seen her oldest child

alive.

She remembered the previous weekend all too well.
 
Although Cheryl

often visited her hometown of Longview on the weekends when Brad had

her three little boys, this visit had been different somehow.
 
It had

been almost as if she had known that it would be her last.
 
Betty and

all the rest of Cheryl's family knew that she was going through an

agonizing divorce and custody battle.
 
But they had been shocked to see

that Cheryl, always slender, was bone thin and that her face was drawn

with worry and tension.

Cheryl had spent Saturday and most of Sunday visiting relatives, and

then had left in the afternoon so she could be at her house on the West

Slope before Brad brought Jess, Michael, and Phillip home at seven

Sunday night.
 
Every moment of that weekend was etched in the minds of

Betty Troseth, her daughters Julia and Susan, and Cheryl's stepfathers

Mary Troseth and Bob McNannay.
 
Theirs was a large and closely knit

family and they could scarcely absorb the fact that Cheryl had been

murdered.
 
They all adored her.

At only thirty-six, Cheryl Keetonþwho had never taken her husband's

surnameþwas already a full partner in the law firm of Garvev, Schubert

and Barer.
 
On Monday morning, September 22, the unbelievable rumor

that Cheryl was dead had begun to circulate in the Seattle offices of

the firm.
 
Cheryl had begun her career with Garvey, Schubert in

Seattle, and she had often commuted from Portland to work on unfinished

litigations in Washington State.

Greg Dallaire was the managing partner of the Seattle office.
 
When he

arrived at work before eight on that Monday, he heard the rumors and

Cheryl's face flashed in his mind, an image of a young woman so alive,

so vital, so tremendously competent in her work as a litigator for the

firm.
 
He could not imagine that she was dead.

Dallaire started calling Portland to see what he could find out.

It was a chilling thing to phone law enforcement agencies and morgues

searching for a friend.
 
Dallaire really didn't want to confirm the

rumors.
 
"I called the Multnomah County Sheriffs office first," he

said.
 
"I just assumed she would have been in Portland or in Multnomah

County, I didn't know she lived in Washington County.
 
The sheriffs

office referred me to the coroner's office."

Even years later Dallaire still could not speak of that awful morning

without pain.
 
"I called the coroner and I got somebody who worked

there.

He left the phone for a moment, and then he said, Yeah, she's here.

We have her here."
 
Just like that.
 
It was true.
 
Cheryl was dead.
 
It

must have been about eight-thirty or nine that morning.
 
The coroner

said that she'd been bludgeoned to death."

Dallaire went around to speak with the Seattle staff.
 
"There would

have been about fifty people with the firm thenþlawyers and staff.

Everyone was absolutely stunned."

Several members of the Garvey, Schubert staff attended Cheryl's funeral

services in Longview the Thursday after her murder.
 
It was an ordeal

she would not have chosen to put anyone through, and it was not the

kind of service she would have wanted.

Almost paralYzed with grief and shock, her sister Susan and her mother

had made the arrangements.
 
Susan would recall going to Steele's

Funeral Home the Monday night after the murder.
 
Eerily, she already