Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (12 page)

known anyone involved in such James Bond-like intrigue, was

frightened.

Cheryl was dead and Sara knew absolutely nothing about her family,

nothing beyond Brad's conviction that Cheryl and her mother had planned

to poison him.
 
She supposed there could be people like that.
 
If Brad

was scared, then she was scared.
 
Sara wondered if she might be next.

And Brad.
 
And maybe even the little boys.

Sergeant James Hinkley walked away from Brad's door, hut he came back

and knocked again a few minutes later.
 
He was there to serve subpoenas

summoning Jess and Michael Cunningham to appear before the grand

jury.

Senior Trooper Keith Mechlem and a Madison Tower security guard stood

behind Hinkley.
 
After a long wait, Brad opened the door a crack.
 
He

was holding a gun, which understandably gave Hinkley pause.
 
Hinkley

was armed with a steel Smith & Wesson .357 revolver and he recognized

the gun in Cunningham's hand as the same kind of weapon.
 
Reluctantly,

Brad opened the door wide enough for ldinkley to step inside the

apartment.

"For the reasonableness of this situation, I think you can put your gun

down," Hinkley said quietly.
 
"You can see we're police officers."

Glancing around the apartment, he noticed that the doors were tied shut

with white rope that extended from door to door.

"I just wanted to make sure who was out there," Brad said.
 
"I'm

afraid for my children's lives.
 
I rigged those ropes for their

safetyþbut only the doors facing the walkway."

"Could you put the gun away?" Hinkley asked again.

Brad set it down on a low bookcase.
 
He called his sons from the master

bedroom and Hinkley handed them the subpoenas and left.

Now Sara was more puzzled than ever.
 
Why were the boys being asked to

testify?
 
Was Brad suspected of Cheryl's murder?
 
She needed more

answers, and Brad insisted that he had been in his apartment with his

sons all of Sunday nightþexcept for two short errands.
 
"Michael and I

checked the mail," he said.
 
"And then we went down to the garage to

put my shoes in your car.
 
I was going to inspect that land this

morningþ" "Why did you take Michael with you?"
 
Sara asked.

"You know Michael," he said.
 
"He was horsing around and keeping Jess

and Phillip from watching the movie."

"But why did you put your shoes in my car?"
 
Sara persisted.

"Weren't you coming over to the hospital to get the Suburban?"

Brad looked at her, distracted.
 
He didn't need this aggravation.

He had enough on his mind.
 
"I'd better not answer any more questions,"

he said, putting an end to her worried queries.

There hadn't been a subpoena for her yet, Sara thought, but there

probably would be when the police found out how close she was to

Brad.

Brad's tension was contagious and Sara spent a restless night.
 
But she

had to go to work the next morning, and so she called the Madison Tower

security guard to escort her to her car.
 
The little hairs on the back

of her neck stood up as she kept close to the guard in the underground

garage.
 
She didn't ever want to go back to that apartment.

Beyond the fear that someone was stalking him, Brad had other

worries.

He knew that the husband of a woman who dies under suspicious

circumstances is always the prime suspect.
 
He hadn't liked the waySim

Ayers and Jerry Finch stared at him when they questioned him on Sunday

night, or the big state cop showing up with subpoenas for his boys.

He had been involved in many civil litigation cases and always believed

in hiring the best attorneys for the job.
 
Early Tuesday morning Brad

called Sara at the hospital and told her he had retained Phil Margolin,

a prominent criminal defense attorney in Portland.
 
Margolin paged Sara

at Providence later that morning to ask her questions about the events

of Sunday night.
 
"He told me that he'd talked to Brad, and that he was

convinced of his innocence," she recalled.
 
"And that reassured me."

Sara spoke only briefly to Margolin, explaining that she was needed in

surgery.
 
But within an hour she was paged again and was shocked to

hear that Brad had been brought into the emergency room at Providence

by ambulance.
 
My Cod!
 
Had someone gotten to Brad, just as he

feared?

Terrified that he had been shot, Sara rushed down to the emergency room

and stood by as Brad was wheeled in on a gurney.
 
He hadn't been shot,

at least he wasn't wounded.
 
He had apparently suffered a heart attack

in Phil Margolin's office.
 
That was something she had never even

thought of.
 
Brad was such a strong man, and he was only thirty-seven

years old.
 
But her physician's mind told her that didn't mean he

couldn't have heart trouble.
 
His father had just died of a massive

coronary in July, and he was only sixty-one.
 
And Sanford Cunningham

had suffered several heart attacks in the years before his death, it

was an ominous cardiac history for Brad.

It was 11:45

A.M. when Dr. Steve Rinehart, Sara's friend and a cardiologist on

staff, began treating Brad.
 
He complained of chest pains, and he

winced when Dr. Rinehart touched the left front of his chest.
 
The

heart monitor showed that Brad was throwing PVCsþpremature ventricular

contractions.
 
There was an early extra beat of the ventricles and his

heart was contracting out of normal sequence.
 
It was a very common

conditionþand sometimes it was life-threatening.

Sara understood the potential danger of this particular irregularity of

the heart's rhythm.
 
A lot of people under extreme stress throw PACsþ

premature atrial contractionsþand they were not nearly as likely to

interfere with life itself But the ventricles were the largest chambers

in the heart and she knew that Brad's heart could go into fibrillation

and lose all of its normal rhythm in an instant, becoming just a

useless squirming organ unable to pump blood.
 
If that happened, Steve

Rinehart would have to put the electrical paddles from the Lifepak on

Brad's chest and try to shock his heart back into normal sinus

rhythm.

Sara had seen too many patients go sour and die with exactly the same

condition that Brad had.
 
She watched, stricken, as Rinehart examined

the man she loved.
 
How much emotional pain could she and Brad be

expected to take in one day?
 
Their happy time with his laughing little

boys at the pizza restaurant on Sunday seemed a million years away, and

it had been less than forty-eight hours ago.
 
Now, Brent kept his

little brothers occupied in the nurses' lounge while Brad was being

treated.
 
Sara couldn't bear to think that they could be orphans in an

instant.

To her immense relief, Brad began to come around and his EKG tracings

showed he was back in perfectly normal sinus rhythm.
 
Despite Sara's

pleading, he refused to he admitted to the hospital.
 
He had too much

to do.
 
Dr. Rinehart insisted, however, that Brad take a stress test

on the treadmill before he would release him.
 
Leads were attached to

his chest, arms, and ankles so that his blood pressure and heart rate

could be monitored as he walked on the moving belt.
 
Every three

minutes, a technician increased the rate and the incline of the

treadmill.

Brad's heart picked up speed, but it beat as steadily as a clock.
 
At

2:30 that Tuesday afternoon, he was released from the hospital.

Brad took Sara aside and told her that they had to continue to take

great precautions to protect themselves.
 
He felt it wasn't safe for

them to stay in the Madison Tower.
 
Whoever was stalking them, whoever

had killed Cheryl, could trap them there.
 
"That's exactly where they

will expect us to be," he whispered.

Phil Margolin required a retainer, Brad told Sara.
 
That was standard,

she knew.
 
She wrote out a five-thousand-dollar check and assured Brad

that she would pay for private investigatorsþfor anything he needed so

that he would be adequately represented and they could all be safe.

She knew Brad, and she loved him.
 
The world seemed to be closing in on

him, and Sara wasn't about to let that happen.
 
He was making almost

one hundred thousand dollars a year at U.S. Bank, and he said he had

millions coming to him from his suit in Texas, but his assets were not

as easy to get to as Sara's were.
 
There was no question in Sara's mind

now that they were going to he togetherþforeverþand they would share

everything.

Brad explained that it wasn't safe for Brent to stay at his apartment

either, and Sara agreed.
 
She wrote a thousand-dollar check for Brent

to help him find a hiding place.
 
All this had to be terrible for him,

too.

He had come home from a camping trip only a few hours before Brad's

apartment was invaded by a half dozen police investigators.

Gini Burton, the surgical technician who was Sara's friend and one of

the guests on the blind-date evening when she first met Brad, had

stopped by the E.R to check on him.
 
"Anything I can do to help, I

will," she told Sara.

"Could we stay at your house tonight?"
 
Sara asked.

"Sure, we'll make room.
 
Come on over."
 
Gini was too tactful to ask

why they couldn t stay in Brad's apartment or even in Sara's.
 
If Sara

asked, she must have a good reason.