Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (38 page)

insisted on having a timetable of exactly where she would be, and with

whom, and pertinent telephone numbers.
 
It wasn't worth the effort to

have friends.
 
She was in junior high and none of the other kids had to

account for every second of every day.

Brad was especially suspicious of boys.
 
Once, Kit got off at the

wrong bus stop and called Brad's office to ask him to come pick her

up.

He said he would be right there.
 
But one of the boys in her class

happened to live a few houses away and he invited her to come and see

his dog's new puppies.
 
While she was looking at the puppies, Brad

arrived to pick her up, and when he didn't find her at the bus stop, he

drove off When she called the house, he was angry and accusing.

"You'd better get here in fifteen minutes or you're grounded."

She was two miles from home and she knew she couldn't run that fast.

"I triedþbut I didn't make it."

Brad accused Kit of having sex with the twelve-year-old boy.
 
"It was

ridiculous," she recalled.
 
"He was the class nerd.... I was only five

minutes late to meet my father.
 
He went on about how women are like

that, and he'd tell me all about his sexual experiencesþwhich I didn't

want to hear.
 
He told me what I was going to be like when I was older,

how I'd be around men.
 
He was saying all it would take would be some

man saying I love you' and you're going to let them screw you...."
 
He

said I was fooling around with this boy and that's why I wasn't

there.

Which wasn't trueþbut he wouldn't listen to me."

Brad continually isolated Kit and tried to destroy any vestige of ego

she might have left.
 
He didn't want her to have any confidantes.
 
He

told her that none of the secretaries at his office really liked her.

"You're just the boss's daughter."

Kit called Loni Ann every day from school and cried.
 
It seemed to her

that she was never going to get away from her father.
 
She was afraid

to show it on the outside, but Kit was angry.
 
She was also a gutsy

little girl, and she began to formulate an escape plan.
 
She squirreled

away every bit of money her father gave her, going without lunch and

any of the movies or other treats she might have bought.
 
She hid her

money in her closet, counting it carefully as it grew closer to the

amount she would need for a one-way plane ticket.

Brad kept the alarm system on whenever they were home, so Kit could

not open any door without setting it off, but she knew where the keys

were and she finally figured out how to disarm it.
 
If she actually

made it onto a plane, Kit knew that her father would check the airline

rosters out of Houston.
 
She planned to book flights on her departure

day on every airline under her own name.
 
On one of the flights, she

would use a false name.
 
That would be the plane that would carry her

far away from Houston.

But Kit, as smart as she was, was only twelve.
 
Brad had asked one of

his women friends to befriend her and Kit trusted her.
 
"I told her

about my plan, and she told him.
 
And I went on restriction again."

By the spring of 1983, Brad's grip on his Texas fortune was

loosening.

But he apparently had a plan.
 
As a grown woman she could no longer

recall the details, but Kit remembered how Brad laughed as he told her

how he was going to beat the bankruptcy courts.
 
Kit recalled that he

showed her a page he had typed, listing his assets.
 
She was impressed,

and baffled when he filed for bankruptcy in June.
 
"He used his credit

cards because he didn't have to pay the bills.
 
When I came back and

told my mother, she didn't believe me because she said, No one does

that," but he did."

Verbal abuse from her father had long since become an almost everyday

thing for Kit, but there was one incident so frightening that she

would remember it years later as clearly as if it had just happened.

She had almost finished the school year in Houston, she was in her last

week in the eighth grade when some gaffe of hers set Brad off into the

most violent episode she had yet endured.
 
"He had told me to come

straight with him about everythingþmeaning any single secret or lie I

could have ever possibly had.
 
At this moment, I was supposed to tell

him.
 
I told him everything, except there was just one thing that I

wanted to keep secret to me.
 
I felt it was my secret garden," that it

didn't hurt anyone and it wasn't any of his business."

Brad had had to make a trip to Seattle, but he wanted to be sure that

Kit remained in Houston, and he had arranged to have her stay with the

family of an employee.
 
This manþwho worked in one of Brad's

warehousesþhad casually mentioned some facet of Kit's life that Brad

didn't know about.
 
Certainly nothing big.
 
But Brad's overweening

possessiveness was akin to his need to know the most minute information

about his children, right down to what kind of cereal Jess had been

given.
 
That someone other than himself would know anything about Kit

that he didn't know was anathema.

When Kit got home from school that day, Brad was talking on the phone

with the man whose family had cared for her while he was away.
 
She saw

that her father was coldly angry, but she had no idea why.

It began as sadistic teasing.
 
Brad took a pen and ran it up and down

Kit's nose.
 
She pushed it away and he asked in a puzzled tone, "You

don't like that?"

"No.

"Oh, that's too bad," he said sarcastically.

He kept running the pen along the bridge of her nose, and Kit, annoyed

and a little frightened, backed away from him, around and around the

room, around the coffee table.
 
"I would back up, going out of my room

into the living room.
 
He was trying to push me down.
 
I'd lose my

footing and take two or three steps back.... That's when he was

screaming at me.

I didn't even know him at that point.
 
It was like he was a different

person.
 
There was a whole different fire in his eye and he scared

me."

Brad ordered Kit to take off her clothes, they were, he said, his

because he had bought them.
 
"You didn't come straight with me," he

yelled, and he grabbed armfuls of her clothes out of her closet until

it was empty except for a few "bummy" garments.
 
Then he threw a large

pre-folded cardboard packing box at Kait as if he were throwing a

Frisbee, hitting her in the mouth with a sharp corner and bruising her

face.
 
He ordered her to 3ut it together.

"I started to really get scared and I was shaking," Kit remembered.

"And he told me I'd better put it together and that I'd better catch

this tape he was throwing at me, or I'd be in really big trouble.

I started to really freak out."

Kit managed finally to fit the complicated tab-and-fold box together

and Brad tossed her clothes inside.
 
Then he walked to the kitchen and

grabbed the garbage and poured it in the box on top of her clothes.

"He was screaming at me," she recalled years later, her voice betraying

the damage done.
 
"He told me that I was no longer part of this

t,amily, that my little brothers would grow up not knowing I

existed."

Brad grabbed Kit and drew his mammoth fist back and told her "that he

would just love to hit me.
 
But he knew I would tellþthat I had a big

mouth and I would tell everybody.
 
But he said one day he was going to

do it, and how bad he wanted to hit me."

Brad ordered Kit to carry the box down the stairs of the apartment

building.
 
It was terribly heavy for a slight twelve-year-old girl.

She was tall for her ageþabout five feet fiveþbut she didn't weigh very

much, and the only way she could hold the box was to bend her knees,

balance it on the front of her thighs, and take the steps one at a

time.

"He tried to kick me in the butt, which was something he liked to do to

my brother and me when he wanted to be ornery," Kit said.
 
"And so I t

.-d to dodge him while I was carrying this thing.
 
Then he told me to

go put it in this big garbage bin.
 
I was crying because these were all

my belongings.... This man had come over, and I was crying and I asked

him to help me get my clothes into the garbage, because I couldn't

reach, and my father came over and said, Hey!
 
Get away from her!"
 
I

finally got it in the garbage."

When Kit went back to their apartment, Brad ordered her into her room

and told her that he was putting something on the door, and it would go

off if she tried to open the door and he would know.
 
At this point,

Kit was terrified.
 
Her father had pushed and knocked her around

before, he had told her how much he wanted to hit her.
 
She crept into

her closet and began to pray.

But Brad would not permit it.
 
He followed her and peered into the

closet, demanding to know what she was doing.

"I'm praying," she said quietly.

"You don't do that in there!"
 
he said and grabbed at her.
 
He lifted

her in one muscled arm and held her above him with her back pressing

the ceiling.
 
He threwT her down on the bed and kicked her.
 
Then he

ordered her to stay out of her closet and warned her not to cause

trouble.

Kit stayed quietly in her room.
 
She believed every word her father

had told her, and she was sure he had booby-trapped her door.