Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (60 page)

Their mother had been dead for such a short time, and Jess, Michael, and

Phillip had already been dragged from pillar to post, moving almost

every day.
 
They had stayed with Sara's friends and family, protected

by a father who feared the police, unnamed assassins, and his

ex-motherin-lawþthree entities he sometimes spoke of as equally

dangerous.

Now for most of October the boys were completely separated from their

father, from Sara, from anything they could remember of their former

life.
 
It had to have been worst for Michael, he didn't even have a

brother to talk to when the lights were turned off at night.

Almost instantly, Trudy Dreesen had become one of Brad's staunchest

supporters.
 
Even though she had not seen him for longer than she could

remember, she was there for him now.
 
That was the kind of woman she

was, and her husband Herm backed her up.

The Dreesens and Brad's.other loyal supporters understood that he was

hiding his boys to protect them.
 
But there were othersþCheryl's family

and friendsþwho felt he was determined to hide them from the police for

fear that one or all of his sons might have some memories of the night

of September 21, memories that he hoped time would erase completely.

Brad's eighteenth-floor apartment in the Madison Tower stood empty.

When his rent came due on Oaober 3, Sara paid the twelve hundred

dollars.
 
On the seventh, she made his car payment.
 
He had enough

problems without having to face eviction or repossession of his

Suburban.
 
U.S. Bank owned his Cabriolet now.

On October 3, 1986, Sara testified before the Washington County grand

jury, which was still looking into Cheryl Keeton's murder.
 
The ordeal

she herself was undergoing was obvious.
 
Twelve days after Cheryl's

death, she didn't know where Brad or the boys were.
 
She didn't know if

they were alive or dead.
 
Sara was a small woman to begin with þone

hundred pounds was a good weight for herþbut she hadn't weighed that

much for months, now she was down to about eighty-five pounds, and

there were dark circles under her eyes.

She answered the grand jurors' questions about her contacts with Brad

on the night of September 21, and she told of her calls to him after he

left her at Providence Hospital, calls that went unanswered.
 
She did

not tell them about the purple bruise she had seen beneath Brad's arm

when they showered together on September 24.
 
He had explained that to

her satisfaction.

"I answered everything they asked," she said later.
 
"I didn't

volunteer information."

Sometime later that month, Brad got in contact with Sara.
 
"He told me

that he had taken the boys on a journey."
 
Later, he said that he took

them to Salt Lake City and he was looking for an underground system' so

that Cheryl's family could never have them.
 
He told me he knew he

would be taking a chance because even he might never be able to find

them."

After a few weeks, Brad had picked Michael up from Jean Count and met

the other boys at the Bainbridge Island ferry dock where Florence

Chamberlain brought them.
 
Apparently he had decided against sending

his boys into long-term hiding, or maybe he never found the

"underground system" he was looking for.
 
He brought them back from the

"journey" and made new plans.
 
One thing was certain, he refused to

stay in the Portland area, or even in the State of Oregon.

Brad and Cheryl had purchased property east of the Cascade Mountains in

Tampico, Washington, in the early 1980s.
 
The little crossroads town

west of Yakima was located between the Cowiche Mountains and the Lost

Horse Plateau.
 
Sanford Cunningham had lived there until his death, and

Brad had been drawn to the area.
 
He had taken most of his wives to

Yakima County to hunt or to camp.
 
After he lost the real estate

project in Houston, he and Sanford had started their abortive

businesses together thereþthe gas station, laundromat, and car wash.

He and Cheryl owned two large parcels of land in Tampico, on which Brad

had grown hay and built a barn and sheds.
 
He fancied it had potential

as a working ranch.
 
There was a small house on the property, a rental,

and the larger shell of what Brad would always call "the family

home."

It was presently nothing more than exterior walls and a roof.
 
This

Tampico property was the refuge that Brad ran to around Halloween

1986.

Even though the previous tenants had trashed the place, he and the boys

moved into the rental house.
 
Brad, Brent, Jess, Michael, and Phillip

were now living in a tiny house with cheap vinyl floors, urine-soaked

carpets, and scarred walls.
 
The place needed new wallpaper and

cabinets too.
 
It was a radical departure from the lifestyle that Brad

had become accustomed toþthe huge homes and sumptuous apartments.

Brad was down but far from out.
 
He had the twenty-three-thousand

dollar severance pay from U.S. Bank, Sara had paid all his legal bills

and his monthly obligations for September and October, and he was not

unskilled as a carpenter.
 
He bought supplies and quickly refurbished

the rental house.
 
It was anything but elegant, but it was warm, clean,

and comfortable.
 
Jess, Michael, and Phillip were glad to be with their

father, to sleep consecutive nights in the same beds in the same house,

and to begin to trust that they would not have to move on soon again.

The Cunningham boys were living in their own house, literally in their

own house.
 
Since they too qualified as tribal members, Brad had

borrowed money from the Colville tribe in his younger sons' names to

buy this property.

To her relief, Sara was once again part of Brad's life, and of the

boys' lives.
 
Perhaps they had a future after all.
 
When Sanford died

the previous July, Sara had worried about how his widow, Mary, would

manage, and she had bought the Prowler trailer that belonged to Brad's

father, deliberately paying Mary way over book value.
 
Now, Sara parked

the Prowler in Tampico, next to Brad's little house.

The boys still believed that their mother had died in a car accident,

and Brad felt they were much too young to know the truth.
 
They were

his children, and Sara didn't try to interfere with his decision about

what to tell them and when.

Every chance she got, Sara spent time in Washington with Brad and the

boys.
 
She either drove east on Highway 84 alongside the Columbia

River, crossing the river to head north on Route 97 into eastern

Washington, or she caught one of the little commuter airlines into

Yakima.
 
"When I visited," Sara remembered, "Brad and I slept in my

trailer, and Brent and the little boys slept in the two bedrooms in the

house."

Brad told his youngsters that their mother was gone but now he had

found them a "new mom."

"He wanted them to call me Mom," Sara recalled.

"And he always referred to Cheryl by her first name, so they began to

call her Cheryl too.
 
He told me that he didn't think the kids would

miss Cheryl at all."

It was true that Sara had never seen the boys cry for their lost

mother.
 
She was concerned that they seemed never to have gone through

a grieving process.
 
It was almost as if Brad had them under some kind

of mental control.
 
There was no question that they admired him and she

never saw him punish them physically.
 
But she wondered at the

"excessively long time-outs" Brad enforced.
 
Often one son or another

was ordered to stand in the corner, arms at his side, with his nose an

inch or two from the wall, and instructed not to waver.
 
Even Phillip,

who was not yet three years old, did his time at the wall.
 
"If they

moved, Brad extended the time," Sara said.
 
"It might start at ten

minutes' time-out and end up being an hour."

Sara wasn't present at the supper table in Tampico one night when one

of the boys suddenly asked where their mother was.
 
Had she heard

Brad's reply, she would have been horrified.
 
Brent was at the table

and stopped eating when he heard his father's reply.
 
"Your mother's

turning to dust.

Now eat your supper."

A month or two after Cheryl died, Sara accompanied Brad and the little

boys to Bunker Hill Cemetery outside Longview.
 
They were still

confused about where Cheryl had gone.
 
It was a raw day and it wasn't

easy to find Cheryl's grave.
 
It did not yet have a marker or a

tombstone on it.

Finally they located it far up at the top of the hill, near the section

that had been there for a hundred years.
 
Brad pointed to the grave and

told the boys their mother was buried there in the earth.
 
Michael

looked at the spot and Sara heard the five-year-old boy ask, "But how

can she breathe?"

It was arduous for Sara to make the trips to Brad's house in Tampico.

She had to arrange her on-call schedule very carefully and she couldn't

cut down on her work.
 
She had been meeting not only her own financial

obligations but Brad's too, plus his legal expenses.
 
Still, she had

fun when she was with Brad and the boys.
 
It snowed early in Yakima

County that year, and they made popcorn and hot chocolate after they

played in the snow.

Brad was resolute that he would never move back to Oregon.
 
He told

Sara he could never get work in Portlandþthere was too much media

interest in him there.
 
He was making a life for himself in the Yakima

area.
 
He was taking care of his boys and building a shed for one of

his tractors, and he had joined the local volunteer fire department.