Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (31 page)

It made Gary sick, he hunted, but he and his family followed the rules

of sportsmanship and they used the game meat for food.
 
"Stop it,

Brad!"
 
Gary shouted.

"There's a house right there.
 
They can see you."
 
Even that warning

didn't work and Brad continued striking the deer long after it was

dead.

He was filled with an almost inexplicable rage, he literally broke a

chunk out of the rifle butt.

Lauren didn't know one gun from another and they all scared her.

"Fortunately," she recalled of their trip the autumn after their

marriage, "we didn't see any deer."

Brad and Lauren continued to see Cheryl and Dan often.
 
If the foursome

weren't having dinner at the Olmsteads' apartment, they were probably

at the Cunninghams' condo.
 
They all got along, they had fun and

laughed a lot.

Cheryl had started law school, as she and Dan always planned.

Although Dan was already in practice, their budget was a little lean.

Brad suggested one night that Cheryl might like to work for him.
 
It

seemed like a good solution for everyone, Cheryl and Dan could use the

money and Brad's projects needed someone with Cheryl's legal knowledge

and flair for detail.

"Yes!"
 
Cheryl laughed.
 
"Yes, I want the job!"

It was only a part-time job.
 
Cheryl still spent most of her time at

law school.
 
But they began working together in the fall of 1977, and

Cheryl found Brad as bright and charming as a business associate as he

was a friend.

One night in November of that year, Brad and Lauren gave a

preThanksgiving party for a number of friends.
 
Lauren was five months

pregnant and still working, but Brad had convinced her that she should

give up teaching and be a full-time mother.
 
She wouldn't be going back

to school after Christmas vacation.

Lauren would remember every detail of that party.
 
As she was refilling

hors d'oeuvre trays in the kitchen, Dan walked in and shut the door

behind him.
 
Lauren turned to him with a smile, and her hands froze on

s. i the tray she held.
 
The look on Dan's face was indescribable.
 
It

was as if he had come to tell her that someone had died.
 
And in a

sense, someone had.
 
Dan had seen what Lauren had not even imagined.

He told Lauren that his marriageþand hersþwere in trouble.
 
Although he

had tried to deny his suspicions at first, he was convinced that

something was going on between Cheryl and Brad, and he thought Lauren

should know.

Lauren was stunned, staring at him as if he had had too much to

drink.

But Dan never drank too much.
 
Still, what he was saying couldn't he

possible.
 
She was carrying Brad's baby, they were still practically

newly weds.
 
Brad was her husband and Cheryl was her sorority sister,

her friend for so many years.
 
Yes, Cheryl worked with Brad now, hut

that was only business.
 
If Brad was having an affair, Lauren was sure

she would know.
 
There would have been signs, and there had been

nothing.

The rest of the evening was a blur.
 
Lauren got through the party with

a smile frozen on her face, her stomach churning, until the last guests

left.
 
Aks soon as they were alone, she came right out and asked Brad

if there was anything between him and Cheryl beyond friendship.
 
Was he

having an affair with Cheryl?

Brad denied it, half laughing.
 
She was being ridiculous.
 
She was

overemotional because she was pregnant.
 
She was seeing shadows where

there were none.
 
Dan was a troublemaker.
 
Brad hugged Lauren and she

tried to feel comfort in his arms, but something had changed.

Her world had shifted off its axis and was no longer spinning

smoothly.

Nothing more was said about Dan's suspicions.
 
But seeds of doubt took

root in Lauren's mind.
 
Even as her child kicked beneath her heart, she

couldn't forget what Dan had said.
 
She tried to recall if she had seen

some intimate look pass between her friend and her husband and couldn't

think of a single instance.
 
It wasn't that Brad didn't have ample

freedom to have an affair.
 
Lauren never really knew where he wasþhis

business demanded that he be here, there, and everywhere.
 
That had

never bothered her, but now she wondered.

Whenever Lauren got the panicky feeling that Dan might be right, she

reminded herself that she and Brad were going ahead with their plans to

buy their own condominium.
 
Brad wouldn't do that if he were going to

leave her, would he?
 
The new condo was much smaller than the one they

were living in, but it would be theirs.
 
The mortgage payments would he

four hundred dollars a month.

With Brad's urging, Lauren resigned from her teaching position.

She said goodbye to her third graders as Christmas approached.
 
She

thanked them for all the presents they brought for her new baby and

hugged them.
 
She would miss them, but in three months she would have

her own baby.

It should have been such a happy time for her.
 
But it wasn't.

Cheryl and Dan had separated.
 
Dan had been right about that part of

his disclosure at the party.
 
He and Cheryl had been having trouble.

And it had all come to a head when they went to Longview for

Thanksgiving 1977.

There Cheryl told Susan that she and Dan were splitting up.
 
"She took

me out for a drive," Susan said.
 
"She told me that she was youngþthat

she'd made a mistake.
 
She even tried to smoke a cigaretteþshe was so

nervousþbut she didn't know how to smoke.
 
Cheryl took the train home

from Longview that Thanksgiving, and Dan stayed, and he talked with me

too.
 
It was very sad."

Cheryl and Dan were both well under thirty when their marriage ended.

Cheryl was still on the path to her dream of becoming an attorney, but

she had met someone else, someone who absolutely dazzled her, a man so

charismatic and seemingly perfect for her that there was no question

but that she would go to him.
 
She was completely spellbound, surprised

at the depth of her own emotion.
 
She had always been the one who kept

her head.
 
She had never felt passion that made her teeth chatter and

her skin burn.

Now she did.

In December, Brad and Lauren were packing boxes in the process of

moving out of their rented condominium.
 
Without warning, he turned to

her and hit her with paralyzingþstupefyingþnews.
 
He said that

everything Dan had told her was true.
 
He was having an affair with

Cheryl.
 
"I don't love you anymore," he said.
 
When Lauren didn't say

anything, he repeated his words.
 
"Did you hear me?
 
I said I don't

love you anymore."

As Lauren stood with her arms crossed over her belly, unconsciously

protecting her unborn child, Brad told her quite calmly that his

relationship with Cheryl was deeply satisfying, and that Dan's

suspicions had been well founded.
 
He wanted to be free, he loved

Cheryl now.
 
"I'm not moving with you," he said.
 
"You're moving into

your new condo alone."

Lauren knew that Cheryl had left Dan and was living in an apartment in

Madison Park.
 
Her mind raced as she realized that all her fears had

come true.
 
Brad was still talking.
 
He told her that he would be

moving in with Cheryl.
 
And Lauren, now six months pregnant, would be

living by herself in the condo that she and Brad had agreed to buy.

Brad's instructions were as crisp and deliberate as if he were pointing

out the floor-plan for an apartment house.
 
It wasn't just hard for

Lauren to believe, it was impossible.
 
Couples didn't get married, plan

for a new baby and their first home, and get divorcedþall in less than

a year.
 
Men didn't walk away and leave their wives pregnant and

alone.

But Brad was going to do just that.
 
He was resolute.
 
This was the way

it was going to be.

"It was an immediate separation," Lauren recalled, her pain blunted by

the passing of years, "in that he basically never moved his belongings

from the [old] condominium to the new condominium in the IJIliverslty

District."
 
It was a nightmare for her.
 
It was incomprehensible.
 
"I

had given up my teaching contract and was saying goodbye to my

thirdgrade class, so that when Brad finally notified me that he was

going to be moving in with Cheryl, I was basically unemployed, six

months pregnant, and living in a condominium that cost four hundred

dollars a month Wittl no way to pay."

Had Lauren had any early warning from Brad that their marriage was

over, she would never have resigned from her job.
 
under the Teachers'

Credit UN benefits, she would have been eligible for maternity leave

with full pay and medical benefits.
 
She would have had a secure job

waiting for her return, a career that would help her support her

child.

Brad kneah7 all that and yet he had sat hack and watched her cut

herself off without so much as a word.
 
Worse, he had urged her to

resign.

"He left me financially stranded," Lauren remembered.
 
"I ended up

going to the Thank that held the mortgage on the condominium where I

was living.
 
Actually I went in when I was eight months pregnant and