Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (34 page)

Cheryl and Dan had owned the SummerFun, and Cheryl was an excellent

sailor.
 
She had taken classes and she knew the Coast Guard rules.

Brad had owned sailboats too, but she was the more competent sailor.

Still, it was Brad who captained the thirty-six-foot sailboats he often

rented.

Susan remembered accompanying Brad and Cheryl on one sailing trip to

the San Juan Islands in the late 1970s, before they were married.

They intended to moor at Friday Harbor on San Juan for the night, but

they arrived late and found the harbor already jam-packed with boats.

While Cheryl and Susan were craning their necks, looking for an empty

slip where they might tie up, Brad suddenly dropped anchor right in the

middle of the shipping lanes.

At first Cheryl was bewildered.
 
It was such a dumb and dangerous thing

to do.
 
Then she showed a flash of her old spirit and demanded that

Brad pull up the anchor and get them out of there.
 
But Brad only

turned on her and said, "Shut up!
 
This is where we're going to

stay."

Susan expected to see the Cheryl she had always known, the one who

would fight for what she knew was the right thing to do.
 
Instead, she

was shocked to see her sister break into tears.
 
"I was scared myself,"

she remembered.
 
"You couldn't drop anchor in the shipping lanes.
 
We

could have gotten killed."

Implacably, Brad went about dropping the sails and acted as though he

was going to stay right there all night.
 
Susan was as frightened by

her sister's helpless sobs as she was by the thought that their

sailboat was probably going to be sliced in two when darkness settled

over the harbor.
 
At length, when he was sure that he had made his

point, Brad grudgingly raised the sails, hauled up the anchor, and

moved on to safer moorage.

This nightmare sailing trip was only the first of scores of frightening

incidents that Susan witnessed with the man who had taken over Cheryl's

life.
 
She wondered why her sister stayed with Brad, why she married

him.

Yes, she was pregnant with his child, but that wasn't really forbidden

in 1979.
 
Yes, he was handsome, and it seemed as though he was going to

be very richþCheryl had never lived in homes as nice as those she

shared with Bradþbut he was so mean sometimes.
 
Susan was, of course,

only thirteen and couldn't really understand the relationship between

her sister and Brad.

Cheryl had always loved Seattle, from the very moment she arrived at

the University of Washington.
 
If it had been up to her, she would have

lived in Seattle forever.
 
In 1979 her law practice was embryonic, but

she had great confidence that it would grow.
 
She was happy about the

baby she carried, too, and was sure she could manage both motherhood

and a career if she planned ner time well.
 
And she had always been

remarkably good about planning her time.
 
She was due to deliver in the

fall of 1979.

Brad was nothing if not fertile.
 
All of his wivesþexcept Cynthia, who

was in her forties when they rriarriedþhad conceived almost at the

beginning of their sexual intimacy, and he was always proud.
 
Brad

seemed pleased that Cheryl was pregnant.

Cheryl may have worried a little that summer and fall.
 
only two years

before, she had watched Brad become disenchanted with Lauren and desert

her when she was pregnant.
 
Cheryl had given up everything to be with

Brad then, and had gone against even her own moral code.
 
She had let

herself be swept away from her first marriage, she had been a willing

partner in deceiving her husband and her friend.
 
If Brad could betray

Lauren, could he not betray her?

It was a fleeting fear, washing over her from time to time and then

departing.
 
Brad had a terrible temper and insisted on having his own

way, but he was under a lot of pressure getting his growing real estate

empire together.
 
Cheryl continually made excuses for his behavior.

And from the very beginning of their marriage, she always believed that

things would get better.
 
She deferred to Brad in all things .
 
, had

faith in their future together.
 
She had given up so much to be Wsth

him that it was crucial for her serenity to believe that theirs was a

true love match that would last forever.

Brad took Cheryl to a Cunningham family reunion on Whidbey Island that

summer.
 
His relatives found her pleasant and pretty, but quite shy.

It was a description that would have baffled her own family who knew

Cheryl as strong and assertive, even take-charge.
 
But with Brad, it

was almost as if Cheryl "knew her place."

"One time Brad brought Cheryl to the reunion," a Cunningham cousin

recalled, "and she kind of stood on the sidelines.
 
When I found out

later that she was a lawyer, I was amazed.

She didn't say one word about what she did for a living.
 
She was just

a quiet, pleasant woman."

Cheryl had gloried in her pregnancy.
 
She didn't mind at all that her

usually slim, perfect figure was temporarily swollen.
 
She proudly wore

a tight one-piece bathing suit and posed for pictures when she was over

seven months pregnant.
 
She smiled for another camera as she balanced a

wineglass full of milk on the top of her gravid belly.

Jess Cunningham was born in October of 1979.
 
A handsome darkhaired

baby boy, he was the image of his father from the start.
 
Cheryl was

thrilled to be a mother.
 
It was difficult for her to think about

leaving Jess during the day while she went to work.
 
But after ten

weeks of maternity leave, Cheryl had to go back to her law practice

on January 2, 1980.

They needed her salary.

Jess went to stay with Sharon McCulloch, a day-care provider who had

once been a first-grade teacher.
 
Her husband was a teacher too.

Cheryl and Sharon had already become good friends when Sharon had

occasionally taken care of Jess in the first months after his birth.

Cheryl felt secure that Jess was in good hands.
 
But she missed him

during the hours she was at work.

"Jess was always happy," Sharon remembered.
 
"So was Cheryl.
 
Cheryl

laughed a lot when I first knew her.
 
I've raised forty children, but

Jess was always special to me.
 
I first started taking care of him when

he was two weeks old, and I had him with me more than a year."

At this time, Brad and Cheryl were living in Laurelhurst, a

long-established upper-middle-class neighborhood near the University of

Washington.
 
They had bought the house before they were married, with

Cheryl owning 29 percent and Brad 71 percent.
 
Set above a terrace of

shrubs, the house was white with a big bay window and a wide porch

under a sloping roof Cheryl loved that house, but Brad wanted to live

on Bainbridge Island, a half-hour ferry ride across Elliott Bay from

Seattle.
 
Cheryl argued that the commute from Bainbridge to her office

would add at least two hours to her day and would mean that much more

time away from Jess.
 
Still, Brad loved the automatic cachet of living

on Bainbridge Island.
 
And if that was where he wanted to live, that

was where they would live.

Occasionally Brad picked Jess up from Sharon McCulloch's.
 
Somehow

Sharon could not bring herself to like him, although he was quite

handsome and exuded sexual energy and charm when he wanted to.
 
"He had

compelling eyes.
 
He had this whole stud image," Sharon remembered.

But she found him remote and imperious, and he treated Jess like his

property.

She noticed that he never called the baby by name.
 
"It was always, Is

my son ready to go?"
 
He struck me as extremely possessive, and I was

always under scrutiny."
 
Cheryl explained to Sharon that Brad was very

particular about Jess, and that he insisted on being informed about any

changes in Jess's schedule and in his diet.
 
"If I even fed him cereal

without Brad's permission, Cheryl had to justify it to Brad," Sharon

said.

Susan McNannay continued to visit her sister after Cheryl married Brad

and although she was only in junior high school, she was a very

intelligent and observant girl.
 
She wondered a little bit about her

new brother-in-law when she found a stash of magazines under Brad and

Cheryl's bed.
 
"They were porno magazines with pictures of young girls

in them," she recalled.
 
"That Christmas, Brad wrapped up a Playboy and

put his name on the card and put it under the tree.
 
It embarrassed

Cheryl when he opened it.
 
I don't know why he did that, but holidays

never meant anything to Brad."

Brad ignored Cheryl's family when they visited.
 
"He sometimes didn't

even speak to us when we were in his home," Susan said.
 
"He respected

my father, though."
 
And Brad put up with Susan, possibly because

Cheryl insisted, possibly because Susan became a handy baby-sitter.

She went along on trips to Palm Springs and she often went with Cheryl

when she visited her natural father in Vacaville, California.
 
Susan

had been a big part of Cheryl's life from the moment she was born, and

she would continue to be.

Brad seemed so confident and strong, but Susan noticed that he was

absolutely terrified of natural disastersþearthquakes, floods,

hurricanes.
 
"When Mount St. Helens erupted in May of 1980, Brad

freaked out," she remembered.
 
"He made Cheryl take Jess and go to

Canada until he thought it would be safe to come home."
 
Brad was a man