Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (57 page)

called his apartment shortly before eight and was surprised to hear the

phone ring five, six, ten times.
 
His answering machine always came on

by the fourth ring, but this time the phone just rang endlessly.
 
At

8:30 she dialed Brad's number again.
 
And again the phone rang

emptily.

Until that night, Sara had never known Brad to leave his apartment

without making sure the answering machine was on.
 
With his business

interests, with his concern about the boys, with his graciousness in

always being available to her, he just automatically left it on.

Sara was disappointed, and a little irritated.
 
If Brent was due home

at nine, Brad wouldn't be able to come and spend any time at all with

her.
 
Their times alone together were precious because they were so

infrequent, and now they had lost another evening.

Sara kept glancing at the clock.
 
It was getting dark outside.
 
And now

she was nor only annoyed, she was getting worried.
 
There was such

enmity between Brad and Cheryl, Sara had seen Brad enraged, frustrated

almost to the point of tears only five days ago.
 
She felt a

presentiment of doom.
 
Maybe she was superstitious.
 
Just when

everything was as close to perfea in her own personal life as she had

ever imagined it might be, she didn't want to lose the man she loved.

"I remembered what Brad had said about Cheryl trying to poison him,"

Sara would recall.
 
"I didn't take it seriously, but .
 
.."

Maybe Brad had had an accident.
 
He had been in such a tearing hurry

when he left.
 
And those darling little boys wouldn't be as safe in her

sedan as in the big Suburban.
 
Every time she heard a siren approach

the hospital, Sara flinched.
 
She didn't just love Brad, she loved

Jess, Michael, and Phillip too.

It was so out of character for Cheryl to go to Brad's apartment to pick

up the boys.
 
Why would she agree to do that tonight?
 
Sara wondered.

And if she had agreed, why wouldn't Brad be there?
 
The night no longer

looked lovely, it looked dark and empty outside the hospital window.

Her work in the trauma unit reminded her every day that people some one

loved often never went home again.
 
And most of them had parted saying,

I ll see youþ" Just before nine, Sara tried Brad's number again.
 
This

time, to her great relief, he answered.

"Where have you been?"
 
she asked angrily.

Brad sounded out of breath and a little excited when he spoke.

"We've been down waiting for Cherylþ" he said.

"For an hour and a half?"

"Yes," he said, and then elaborated.
 
He told Sara that he had called

Cheryl at 7:30 and asked her as nicely as he could if she would come

and pick up the boys.
 
But it had been clear to him, he said, that she

had not been alone.
 
"I heard someone in the backgroundþshe probably

just went out partying."

Sara slammed down the phone.
 
She wasn't sure if she was mad at Brad or

at Cheryl, but she felt guilty and foolish almost immediately.
 
From

everything Brad had told her about Cheryl, she might very well have

left him waiting that long.
 
Contrite, she called Brad back.

"I'm sorry," she said.
 
"I'm calmed down now.
 
I was just worried that

you were either out killing Cheryl or that she was killing you!

This is the first time since I've known you that you weren't where you

told me you would beþ" Brad sounded upset, too, as he accepted her

apology.

"What were you telling me about hearing somebody at Cheryl's house?"

Sara asked.

"I just heard some guy.
 
The second time I called, she wasn't home.

She probably just decided to go out and party."

"Well, where haveyou been, Brad?"

"Like I said, waiting for Cheryl downstairs.
 
She never showed."

They agreed it was too late for Brad to drive over to the hospital.

Besides, Brent wasn't home yet, and there wasn't anybody for Brad to

leave the boys with.
 
Sara told him she was going to go to bed, and he

said he would tuck the boys in at his apartment.
 
Sara was

disappointed, but she was no longer angry at Brad.
 
It was hard for her

to stay mad at him for very long.
 
She loved him too much.

Gheryl's last weekend was bittersweet.
 
She had gone to Jess's soccer

game even though Brad had told her that on his Saturdays she was not

allowed to go to the games or to speak to the boys or even to act as if

she knew her own sons.
 
She had called her mother either on Friday

night after Brad picked the boys up or on Saturday morning.
 
"Cheryl

wanted to go to Jess's game," Betty would recall, "but she didn't want

to make it bad for them."

Betty and Mary Troseth were all too aware of the terrible strain Cheryl

had been under for most of that year.
 
They lived in Longview, and so

did her sisters Julia and Susan, and her former stepfather, Bob

McNannay.

They all loved her but none of them could do much to helpþ except

listen.
 
Betty and Cheryl had grown extremely close and they talked

constantly by phone.

"The main issue, of course," Betty would say later, "was the custody of

the children.
 
At first she was afraid she wouldn't get them.
 
I told

her that was ridiculous.
 
Cheryl said, He will lie in court.
 
He will

kill me to get them."
 
I tried to talk her out of shared custody.
 
I

really preached.
 
He wasn't fit to have them."

Betty remembered that Cheryl had looked at her once and said with

complete resignation, "I'll have to put up with him.
 
For the rest of

my life, I'll have to deal with Brad."

Cheryl had felt cautiously confident after Dr. Sardo decided that she

was the primary parent.
 
Right up to the last week, she believed she

would have custody, although she knew it wasn't going to be easy.

She told her mother that she and Brad had both given depositions on

September 16.

After the soccer game on Saturday morning, Cheryl got in her Toyota van

and headed north across the bridge that separates Oregon from

Washington.
 
She was going home to Longview.
 
She was afraid.
 
Her

mother saw it.
 
Betty had seen Cheryl afraid for a long time, but this

weekend was different.
 
There was a kind of tragic acceptance about

Cheryl, as if she had done everything she could for her children, for

herself, for the slightest chance that she and her three boys might

have a happy futureþor any future together.

Cheryl was strangely low-key on Saturday.
 
She had always been a woman

of tremendous energy, and the contrast with the way she had once looked

and acted was shocking.
 
"She just looked terrible," her sister Susan

remembered.
 
"She was exhausted, and she was so thin that you could see

her rib cage.
 
Her cheeks were caved in."

On Saturday night, when Betty got up from the table to wash the supper

dishes, Cheryl didn't move to join her.
 
"She let me do the dishes

alone," Betty said.
 
"Cheryl always jumped up to help me."
 
But she

seemed, at last, to- have run out of strength.
 
She didn't talk about

the custody battle, but she did speak of her worries about Phillip, her

baby.
 
"She said he was starting to stutter, and she was going to take

him to a doctor.

Betty's role over the previous year had been to calm Cheryl down.

But she wasn't agitated that evening, she seemed beaten down.
 
"My

highs are not quite as high as they could be," she said.
 
"And my lows

are lower."

Then she said quite softly, "I know you don't think he's going to kill

me, Mom, but he is going to kill me."

Betty stopped what she was doing and stared hard at Cheryl.
 
It wasn't

that this was the first time Cheryl had said she feared Brad would kill

her, Betty had heard her say it almost a dozen times since November of

1985.
 
She responded as she usually did.
 
"He's too selfish to risk his

butt."
 
But then Betty felt a chill.
 
This time she believed Cheryl and

she warned, "Don't be alone with him, Cheryl.
 
Don't try to talk to him

the way you would with other people.
 
Watch your car."

Cheryl sighed.
 
"I have to live my life, Mom.
 
There are things I have

to do."

Cheryl spent that Saturday night at her mother's home.
 
they watched a

movie, Queen of the Starlight Ballroom, a sentimental story about

romance between lonely people in their sixties, with Maureen Stapleton

and Charles Durning.

On Sunday Cheryl told her mother that she wanted to visit her

sisters.

That was rather unusual, Susan and Cheryl had always been very close

but Cheryl hadn't seen Julia for six years.
 
When Julia graduated from

high school, she had left Longview immediately and headed for

Seattle.

She had been back in her hometown for only a short time.
 
"Julia lived

a few blocks from Mom's place," Susan said.
 
"Cheryl and Mom walked

over to see Julia.
 
Then they drove over to my house."

Susan still lived with her father, Bob McNannay, in the house that had

been Cheryl's home too when she was in high school.
 
The kitchen had

just been retiled in shades of cobalt blue, and this was the first time