Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (50 page)

about his relatives.

In her legal cases, Cheryl had always been so meticulous in her

research that she was prepared for any eventuality.
 
In her personal

life, she had chosen to believe what Brad told her about his childhood,

his family, his mother, his sisters, his ex-wives.
 
At first she hadn't

questioned him because she loved him.
 
Later she was cautious about

making waves.
 
But now she jotted down notes and the names of people

who might testify in her divorce case.
 
If it got nastyþand she was

quite sure it wouldþshe would have a list of potentially devastating

witnesses who could recall the days when Brad Cunningham was part of

their lives.

Cheryl was determined to work her way back through Brad's past.

She was going to find Rosemary and Ethel and Susan.
 
She would try to

get Loni Ann and Cynthia and Lauren to testify for her.
 
She did not

yet know the details of all of Brad's previous marriages, divorces, and

child custody cases, but she had reason to suspect they had been much

like hers, and she was going to validate her suspicions.
 
She was a

woman on fire, prepared to ignore her own terror and throw herself into

what seemedþat least to herþa life-and-death struggle.

Cheryl was adamant that she would handle the witness list for her

divorce trialþso adamant, in fact, that Betsy Welch was a bit put

off.

After all, Cheryl had hired her, yet sometimes it seemed she wanted to

run her own case, and any attorney knows that "he who represents

himself has a fool for a client."
 
But Cheryl was so caught up in this

divorce and custody action that she had forgotten.
 
"Don't worry about

the witnesses," she told Welch.
 
"I'll have the witnesses."

Cheryl's decision to open up Brad's past to scrutiny may have been a

fatal move.
 
But she didn't care.
 
She was a tigress, obsessed with

protecting her young.
 
She was no longer cowed.
 
She was no longer

afraid.

She feared no humiliation.
 
She had become the worst enemy that Brad

Cunningham had ever known.
 
And the most dangerous.

Brad was angry when Dr. Russell Sardo declared that Cheryl was the

primary parent of their children.
 
More than most men, he considered

himself an exceptional father, and he was sincerely dumbfounded when

Dr. Sardo didn't understand.
 
He had pulled out all the stops when he

talked with Sardo, certain he had won him over.
 
Now he doubted Sardo's

competence as a psychologist.

Under ordinary circumstances, Brad might have raged more at Cheryl over

Sardo's decision than he did.
 
But it was during the week following his

sessions with Sardo that he met Sara Gordon.
 
And she seemed to be

everything that Cheryl no longer was to Brad.
 
She was as beautiful as

Cheryl, but she was daintier, more delicate, and seemingly more

pliant.

True, their first date had been a little stilted, but then Brad turned

on the charm and Sara responded.
 
And he had quickly determined she had

a handsome income, several times as much as Cheryl's.

Brad plunged into an intense relationship with Sara almost immediately

and was soon courting her with his experienced and well-honed romantic

fervor As far as Sara knewþand all her information came from Brad's

lipsþCheryl was a monstrous mother, a faithless wife, and a morally

loose woman.
 
Brad would make sure that his about-to-he-exwife and his

new love did not meet face-to-face.
 
His relationship with Sara had

nothing whatsoever to do with his determination to gain custody of his

sons.
 
Sara was the next step up for him, Cheryl was oldþbut very

pressingþbusiness.

Even so, when his efforts to get custody of Jess, Michael, and Phillip

were met by Cheryl's inflexible stance and her temporary victory, it

didn't send Brad into one of his customary rages.
 
He was still angry

at Cheryl, but he had Sara to talk to now.
 
She was on his side.
 
Quite

probably, their love affair made the summer of 1986 far more serene for

everyone concerned than it otherwise would have been.
 
Cheryl was still

uneasy.
 
When you have been living in a war zone and the shelling

suddenly stops, the ensuing silence is eerie.
 
She didn't trust the

quiet, didn't believe for a moment that Brad had given up.
 
He had

moved back in with her once, she had no guarantee that he wouldn't move

in again.

In June, to forestall such an eventuality, Cheryl invited her half

brother, Jim Karr, to share her home with her and the boys.
 
She could

no longer afford the Gresham house and she looked for a rental more

within her means.
 
Her law career was just as remunerative as it had

always beenþeven more soþbut she would have to put away funds to pay

for the legal fight she knew lay ahead.
 
And so she made arrangements

to rent a house on 81st Street in the West Slope area west of Portland

just beyond the zoo.
 
The public schools there were good.
 
It would be

another fresh start And this time, she prayed, it would be a lasting

one.

There was no way she could keep her new address secret from Brad þhe

had to know where his sons were livingþbut she could move to a place

where bleak and frightening memories didn't mark every room.
 
Cheryl

wouldn't be any farther away from Brad, actually his apartment at the

Madison Tower was equidistant from Gresham and the West Slope.

Nothing would change the fact that Brad still had dominion over Jess,

Michael, and Phillip for nearly half of each week.

Having her half brother live with her would make Cheryl feel safer.
 
It

wasn't that Jim was a muscular hunkþactuallv, he was a slender young

man whom Brad could easily have broken in twoþbut he would be another

adult there in the house with her.
 
That meant a lot to Cheryl, having

somebody to talk to, someone who loved her, and a link to a time in her

past when life was much simpler and much safer.
 
But even the seemingly

innocuous move of inviting Jim to move in with her set off another

skirmish.

Brad doubted that Karr was capable of caring for his three sons.
 
He

demanded that he have psychological testing to determine if he was

suited for child care.
 
Cheryl had warned Jim that Brad was prone to

off-the-wall demands, so he shrugged and agreed to be tested.
 
Jim met

with Dr. Sardo for forty-five minutes in July of 1986, and Sardo

reported that he would do just fine with Jess, Michael, and Phillip.

Grudgingly, Brad agreed to the arrangement.

Jim Karr was a journeyman carpenter and he had enough free time to help

his half sister out.
 
He and Cheryl would be able to mesh their

schedules so that one or the other of them was always with the boys.

The arrangement was symbiotic.
 
Cheryl would give Jim fifty dollars a

week, room and board, and gasoline and other necessities.

That summer Cheryl and Brad continued to alternate time with the boys,

pending the outcome of their divorce.
 
July and August were almost

spookily tranquil.
 
When Brad asked to take his sons on vacation,

Cheryl acquiesced without arguing.
 
Even though the fear that he would

simply disappear and take her children with him walked with her always

Cheryl knew about Brad's relationship with Sara Gordon.
 
She was

reassured when Brad told her Sara was going along on their vacation.

Sara had a practice to come back to and a solid reputation.
 
Cheryl

didn't know Sara, but the boys liked her.
 
It hardly seemed probable

that she would help Brad hide the children from their mother.
 
Her

intuition was right.

Brad brought the boys back on time.
 
And Cheryl could breathe again.

Meanwhile, she continued her investigation of Brad as if she were

preparing for the biggest trial of her lifeþas, indeed, she was.

She kept meticulous notes of every encounter she had with him.
 
Brad

was unaware that all of his phone conversations with Cheryl were

written down and marked with date and time.

Cheryl confided in Eric Lindenauer.
 
She had been his mentor when he

was a fledgling lawyer at Garvey, Schubert and now Eric attempted to be

her protector and her confidant.
 
Cheryl needed someone to talk to,

someone with whom she could explore her doubts, her suspicions and her

fears.

Eric was more than a decade younger than she was, and they had never

had anything other than the most platonic of relationships, but he

loved her as a brother would love her.

Although Cheryl had not been actively involved in Brad's business

dealings during their marriage, common law made her a partner.

Sometimes her signature had been required on documents, more often, she

didn't have to sign to be equally responsible: she was Brad's wife.

She had become aware of irregularities that troubled her.
 
She told

Eric that Brad hadn't filed returns on his business income for the past

three years.
 
Before that, she said he had put false information on the

returns he had filed.
 
Cheryl had seen vast amounts of money pass

through his hands, she had never been sure where it came from or where

it went.

She knew that Brad had owned heavy equipment worth hundreds of

thousands of dollarsþequipment that should have been listed when he

filed for bankruptcy.
 
All assets remaining in a bankrupt estate are

legally supposed to be marshaled to pay creditors, and a trustee

appointed to see that that happened.
 
"Brad's got construction

equipment that's never been accounted for," Cheryl told Eric.
 
"I'm

sure he's hidden it over l near Yakima someplace.
 
He's driving