Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (75 page)

Dunthorpe house.
 
So far he had won every flurry.
 
He wanted the house

and he told Sara that he would stop at nothing to keep it.
 
Along with

the wives he had left behind, he had walked away from some wonderful

housesþbut none as grand as this one.
 
He liked the huge gray house,

the sweeping circular driveway, the guest house.
 
He and his sons were

living in one of the best neighborhoods in the most desirable suburb of

Portland.
 
He informed Sara that he was in nO hurry to leave.

Sara had wanted the Dunthorpe house to be there for Jess, Michael, and

Phillip.
 
But that was before she found out she had co-signed too many

times for Brad and was now responsible for hills all over the Portland

area.
 
As hard as she tried, she didn't see how she was going to be

able to pay the bills and keep the house too.

Brad was unemployed.
 
Since U.S. Bank bought out his contract in the

fall of 1986, he considered his suit against the Houston contractors

his real profession, a kind of "legal career."
 
The Broadway

Bakeryþeven the Bistroþhad never been his true style.
 
He had only been

marking time, and now he was bored with the bakery.
 
In any event, he

had run it into the ground financially.

There were so many papers to be filed in Brad's marathon legal suit, so

many details to keep abreast of.
 
Vinson and Elkinsþthe second largest

law firm in the state of Texas, with five hundred attorneys in its

employþstill believed in his case.
 
There was still the chance that

Brad would be awarded several million dollars.
 
If he won, they won.

Several of the firm's top litigators, including the dynamic and

colorful Wes l Jrqhart, had been working on it for years now.
 
And

Brad's input was so vital that Vinson and Elkins always made a private

office available to him whenever he was in Houston.

For the moment, however, Brad was comfortably ensconced in the

Dunthorpe house, living there with Jess, Michael, and Phillip, who were

now ten, eight, and six.
 
Sara missed the hovs terribly.
 
She was their

legal mother, and she had been their mother in every sense hut

biological since Cheryl's murderþbut Brad made it very difficult for

her to see them.
 
Nevertheless, he was prepared to sue her for child

support.

they were her Achilles heel, and Brad knew it.
 
Sara had seen the boys

only onceþfor two and a half hoursþsince she filed for divorce in

March.

But then, surprisingly, Brad allowed her to take them out for a visit

on June 10.
 
They had a good day together and Sara bought them

clothes.

Whatever might happen in the civil suit against Brad and their divorce

proceedings, she hoped that this might be the start of regular

visitation.

Part V Dana

Brad had long since dismissed Rhonda, but he did need someone to take

care of his sons while he was involved with his business endeavors.

He advertised for a nanny who could live in.
 
He placed ads in the

Oregonian for months and interviewed scores of women.
 
The applicant he

finally chose would have to be just right, the perfect woman for his

sons and, quite possibly, for him too.
 
He was, after all, alone now.

rad's ads for a nanny were enticing.
 
The successful applicant would

earn a thousand dollars a month and would be provided with all living

expenses.
 
She could choose whether she wanted to live in "the mansion"

or in her own guest house on the property.
 
There would be travel, some

entertaining, and flexible hours.
 
There were many applicants and Brad

eliminated most of them because they were too old, too dowdy, too

stodgy, had no social graces, or they did not live up to the picture he

had in his mind.
 
He wanted class, he wanted physical beauty, and he

wanted a malleable female who would fit into the lifestyle he

envisioned for himself.

Brad had told applicants that he would need someone who could start in

May of 1990.
 
Some of them he put on hold, he told the patently

unsuitable ones that the job had been unexpectedly filled.
 
When he had

winnowed the profusion of applicants down to a handful, he called his

first choice back.

Dana Malloy'k was twenty-three years old, although she could have

easily passed for eighteen.
 
She was tall and slender, with a

spectacular figure and luxuriant ash-blond hair that surrounded her

face like a halo and fell to the middle of her back.
 
She had smoky

green-blue eyes and the small, even features that Brad always seemed to

seek in each new woman whose path crossed his, each woman who became

his wifeþ and his victim.

Until she was twenty-two, Dana Malloy's life had been as normal and

wholesome and happy as any small-town girl's in America.
 
"I grew up in

a little town in southern Oregon," she remembered.
 
"There were four of

us kids, and we were raised strict Catholic.
 
I was a Brownie and a

Girl Scout.
 
I was a cheerleader from the fifth grade until I graduated

from high school.
 
My folks sent me away for my last two years of

school so I could graduate from a Catholic school."

Dana and her sister Allie* were in 4-H, and Dana grew up crazy about

horses.
 
She could ride bareback, she could ride facing forward,

backward, or crosswise.
 
She was such a complete country girl that it

was hard to picture her any other way.
 
"My mom saw that we had tap

dancing lessons, and ballet, and baton twirling.
 
She didn't push us,

she just wanted us to have the best chance to succeed.
 
I was in every

beauty pageant I heard about.
 
But it wasfun.
 
It was just the girly

thing' to do.
 
If I didn't win, nobody cared.
 
It wasn't as though my

folks were pushing me.
 
It was just fun."

Dana kept a scrapbook with a blue gingham cover, and in the pictures of

one of the early pageants she was in, pretty, slender teenage girls

were wearing modest formals in pastel colors as they walked along a

runway covered with red velvet and edged in white fake fur.
 
The

audience beaming in the background was full of parents, sisters,

brothers, and townspeople.
 
Dana's lovely eyes were slightly tilted and

her smile was wide and confident even though, inside, she was scared

and her knees trembled.
 
She usually placed in the top two or three

contestants.

The Malloys were strict parents, but loving.
 
Their values were a

little old-fashioned, shaped by their own parents and the church.
 
When

Dana went to the prom, she wore a modest high-necked dress with long

sleeves, daisies in her hair, and a corsage of white carnations.
 
Her

cheerleader's costume was a long-sleeved red sweater, a swingy red and

white miniskirt, red and white saddle shoes, and huge matching

pom-poms.

Dana had been in love with Mark Rutledge,X a tall, dark-haired

basketball star, for as long as she could remember.
 
Everyone who knew

them assumed they would get married within a few years of graduation.

In the meantime, they dated and Dana sold cosmetics and cut hair.

After high school she still entered beauty pageants, but where she had

been merely pretty, Dana had become startlingly beautiful.
 
Her hair

was a few shades blonder and her gowns were sewn with glittering

sequins.

She strutted along the runways with more confidence now, even during

the bathing suit competition of the "Miss Oregon, U.S."
 
pageant.
 
The

audience was more sophisticated, but she was still having fun.
 
Dana

had no particular aspirations beyond marriage and babies.

"I really loved Mark and my parents thought that living in sin' was

wrong.
 
I was twenty when we got married.
 
It was July 26, 1986þhow

could I ever forget that date?"
 
It was a beautiful wedding.
 
Mark wore

white tails, and Dana's dress had a flouncy lace train.
 
She carried a

white lace fan decorated with pink flowers as her father walked her

down the aisle.
 
Her mother and her bridesmaids wore gowns of pale

dusty rose.

It should have been a happy ending, but it wasn't.
 
"Mark was a

workaholic.
 
I mean, he worked eighty hours a week," Dana said.
 
"We

bought a nice home with land in a little town twenty miles north of

Portland.
 
But I was alone there all the time.
 
Mark worked on projects

in Las Vegas or in California, and he couldn't even come home on

weekends.

He told me there was no point, he'd just get home Saturday and have to

fly back on Sunday.
 
He came home about once a month."

Dana knew that Mark worked all the time before she married him, but as

so many woman before her have believed, she thought marriage would

change him.
 
"He didn't change," she said.
 
"I couldn't go out because

I was married, and besides, I didn't want to.
 
I wanted children.
 
I

wasn't a women's libber.
 
I believed a woman should stay home.
 
But I

couldn't have babies with MarkþI would have had to raise them alone.
 
I

felt he was hurting me."

The marriage was probably doomed from the beginning.
 
It just kind of

wore itself out by September 1988.
 
Dana moved to Portland and got a

job selling high-end cosmetics in a department store.
 
Sometimes she

cut hair to supplement her income.
 
"I sold Estee LauderþI went to the

brands and the stores where I could make money."
 
Dana was divorced

from Mark in 1989.
 
It was not an acrimonious divorce.
 
Not at all.