Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (68 page)

gone to the bakery once late at night and found Brad aloneþbut Lynn's

purse was sitting out in plain sight, she had found Lynn in the

restroom, and Lynn looked anything but innocent.
 
It had happened

again, or close to it.
 
When Sara drove up to the bakery one night, she

recognized Lynn's car parked in front.
 
She discovered that someone had

taken the bakery key from her key ring, and by the time Brad let her

in, minutes had gone by.
 
There was no trace of Lynn, but when Sara

left, she saw that Lynn's car was gone.

All this had taken an emotionalþand physicalþtoll.
 
Sara's resting

heart rate was way over one hundred, she was afraid even to take her

blood pressure, and her weight was under ninety pounds.

Sara rented a studio apartment at Riverplace.
 
She had bought the big

house for the boys and she wanted them to be able to live there and go

to school where they had friends.
 
Above all, she didn't want them to

be uprooted one more time.
 
She would move and would continue to pay

the mortgage on the big house so they would still have their home.
 
"I

was prepared to make the payments on the Dunthorpe house until the boys

were grown," Sara would say later.
 
"I wanted them to be able to stay

thereþto have some stability, even if my marriage to Brad was over."

Sara and the boys picked Brad up at the airport when he returned from

Houston.
 
They went out to eat and Brad started to tell his sons that

he and Sara were splitting up.
 
She begged him not to do this in

public, but he had said too much already.
 
Michael and Phillip started

to cry, and Jess bit his lip.

"The boys drew wonderful pictures for us to stay together," Sara wrote

sadly in her journal.
 
"Brad and I talked for several hours.
 
He was

surprised that the boys were upset."

That astounded Sara.
 
How could Brad not know that his little boys

would be hurt by yet another loss in their lives?
 
Their mother had

been dead for only three and a half years.
 
They had bonded with Sara

and now she was their motherþboth legally and in terms of love and

caring.
 
She didn't know how she could bear to leave them.
 
She had

been going to counseling just to find the strength to do it.
 
If Brad

would let her have the boys, she would be overjoyedþbut she knew him

better than that.

She had had a ringside seat to his terrible battle with Cheryl over the

boys.
 
The most Sara could hope for was that Brad would let her see

them, and that they would still know how much she loved them.
 
She

agreed to sign a lease on a Volvo station wagon so that Brad would have

transportation for the boys.
 
He couldn't get a lease in his own name

because of his bankruptcy.

"I always think of February sixteenth as a kind of anniversary," Sara

said later, not without a trace of bitterness.
 
"Brad and I met early

to go over property settlements before meeting with Al Menashe [Brad's

attorney]."
 
Brad had already met with another attorney who had told

him that Sara should pay him between eight thousand and ten thousand

dollars a month child support.
 
Sara was surprised and explained that

she was currently spending eighty-five hundred dollars on the bakery

bistro and three thousand dollars on malpractice insurance.
 
She said

if she gave Brad what he felt he should have, "that left very little

for me."

She remembered his reaction vividly.
 
"Brad said he knew how much I

liked to work and now I'd have more time to work."

Sara stared at this wonderful man she had once loved so much.
 
He was a

stranger.

But something happened that day that completely changed Brad's

treatment of Sara.
 
From the Bistro, he spoke on the phone with one of

his criminal attorneys about this pesky civil case that some lawyer

named Mike Shinn had filed against him.
 
And for the first time, he

eemed to grasp how dangerous it could be for him.
 
The lawyer told Brad

if he was found civilly responsible for Cheryl's death, he might very

well face criminal charges.
 
Brad finally perceived that he stood a

very good chance of actually going to jail.
 
He had laughed off Shinn's

suit as ridiculous, now one of the best attorneys in Portland was

telling him that it wasn't funny.
 
Brad later told Sara that his lawyer

also advised him to keep his marriage intact.
 
Having a woman like Sara

beside him, a woman with a fine reputation in the Portland community,

would make his acquittal in the civil trial far more likely.

It would not look good for him if he was going through yet another

divorce while he was being sued civilly over the death of his fourth

wife.

It was at precisely that moment that Sara walked into the Bistro.

Brad was a pale shade of gray and there were beads of sweat on his

forehead.

This was not the same man who had sneered, "I know how much you like to

work, and now you'll have more time to work."
 
He was frightened.

"Brad had a revelation on that February sixteenth," Sara would remember

wryly.

The man who hung up the phone clung to her like a lost child.

"Brad became almost nonfunctional with the realization of the gravity

of the civil suit," Sara said.
 
His attitude toward her changed from

bitter sarcasm to tender affection all in the space of a few hours.

"He was on the phone with his attorney when I walked into the Bistro.

He begged me to stay around the Bistro with him.
 
He felt better just

having me around.
 
His behavior toward me changed totally.
 
He loved

me and needed me.
 
He needed his family to be together.
 
He couldn't

handle the boys being sad about my not being there, etcetera

etcetera.

His whole demeanor toward me changed to how it used to be.
 
I told him

I was in no hurry to leave, and could stay until his lawsuit was

finished."

But Sara was not deluded.
 
She knew that Brad needed her only as window

dressing during the civil trial.
 
She didn't try to get out of her

lease at the Riverplace apartment.
 
She kept it as her escape spot.

Brad helped her move a bed, a table, a sofa, and some chairs to the

studio apartment.
 
She knew that she would be leaving the marriage

soon, but she relished the reprieve she had been given to be with her

little boys.

On February 21, 1990, Sara lived through one of the most bizarre nights

of her life.
 
She met Brad for drinks at the exclusive Alexis Hotel in

Portland and they talked.
 
He said that he was thinking of moving to

Seattle or to Colorado Springs when "this is all over."
 
She didn't

know if he meant their marriage or the civil trial.
 
She didn't care

which, but she started to cry because if Brad moved so far away, Jess,

Michael, and Phillip would be far away too.

Later, Sara wrote down the events of that night in her journal.

"Brad became depressed when I told him I would not stay with him after

the lawsuitþtoo much pain for too many months, all of his lying to me,

etc. I left for home [the Dunthorpe house] so Rhonda [their

baby-sitter] could leave and Brad went for a walk.
 
He called me a

little later from the Morrison Bridge, and made it sound like he was

considering jumping.

I called the cellular phone a couple of times but he didn't answer."

Brad's threats to commit suicide had worked once before when Sara had

said she was leaving him.
 
She had capitulated and promised to stay

with him.
 
But this time, she was weary of his games.
 
Brad simply used

these threats to bring people into line.
 
Besides, the Morrison Bridge

was so close to the water.
 
Even if he jumped, he would only make a

small splash and get wet.
 
There were higher bridges in Portlandþmuch

higherþif Brad was serious about killing himself.

"Later, he called me from the East Bank Saloon," Sara wrote.

"Said he would like to have some hope that we might stay together,

wished that I would just lie' to him so that he could have that hope.

Brad eventually got home about 10:15 p.m. I was in bed sleeping.
 
He

wanted to talk and I told him I needed to sleep.
 
He got out of bed,

said he should just end his life, and started reaching for the gun in

his closet.

"I got up, pulled him away from the closet.
 
He went downstairs and I

followed.
 
He started crying, I want my Daddy."
 
I tried to talk him

into going to the hospital for help but he wouldn't."

Sara watched in horror as Brad got a box with a gun in it from a

cupboard in the laundry.
 
She was pretty sure he wouldn't shoot himself

but she wondered if he might just shoot her.
 
"I was scared beyond

belief but stayed calm.
 
I told him I wanted to leave and he said to go

ahead.

l had to go upstairs to get my purse and keys, and grab a coat.
 
I only

had my Mickey Mouse night shirt on and Jess's slippers.
 
I was very

frightened that he would get the gun while I was upstairs."

Brad allowed Sara to leave the house.
 
She drove away with tremendous

relief and went to Providence Hospital.
 
She called the house a couple

of times but Brad didn't answer.
 
She knew he was trying to make her

think that he had, indeed, killed himself.

Sara realized too late that she was dealing with a manipulator, a

master puppeteer.
 
She had no idea yet to what lengths Brad would go to

get what he wanted.
 
She had begun, however, to wonder what had really