Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (45 page)

treat himself.

Why Brad insisted that Cheryl was the source of his infection is

anyone's guess, given the fact that he was having sexual intercourse

with a number of other women.
 
But then, Brad now blamed Cheryl for all

bad things that happened to him.
 
He no longer wanted her by 1985, but

he would not simply let her go.
 
He accused her continually of being

unfaithful, but he didn't tell her about his sexually transmitted

infection, whatever its origin, and give her a chance to seek

treatment.

Indeed, it wasn't until February 3, 1986, when Cheryl began to suffer

symptoms herself, that she went to see her own doctor.
 
She learned

that she had contracted vaginitis.

A painful infection of the vaginal tissues, vaginitis has many

causes.

It can be transmitted through sexual contact, but it can occur just as

often when a woman is treated for flu or a sore throat with antibiotics

which tend to kill the protective bacteria always present in the

vagina.

A virgin can contract vaginitis.
 
Both men and women can carry the

infection and show no overt symptoms at all.
 
Cheryl also tested

positively for chlamydia.
 
If she had, in fact, been the source of

Brad's infection, she apparently went many weeks without symptoms after

Brad had sought medical treatment.

In those first months of 1986

Susan sensed that something in her sister's marriage was going to

explode.
 
Maybe Cheryl could hide her growing anxiety from her fellow

attorneys, but she couldn't hide it from Susan, who noticed that she

jumped every time the phone rang in her Seattle apartment.

Susan couldn't hear Brad's side of their conversations, but she could

tell he was always furious about something from the stricken look on

Cheryl's pale face.
 
Although it had been more than eight years since

Susan had accompanied Brad and Cheryl on the frightening sailing trip

to the San Juans, she again felt the same sense of dread.
 
This wasn't

the Cheryl she knew.
 
The woman who could be instantly reduced to

hysterical tears by a telephone call was not the real Cheryl, the

Cheryl who never gave up, who never lost her confidence.

Except with Brad.
 
And now Brad had hostages: he had Jess, Michael, and

Phillip.
 
And Cheryl had a new fear.
 
She confided to Susan that she

was afraid that one day she would go home and find not just her

furniture missing but her children too.

Susan had seen the way Brad disciplined his sons, despite Cheryl's

desperate attempts to stop him.
 
If they were out for dinner and one of

the boys did something Brad considered inappropriateþlike not eating

all his food, or sulking, or cryingþhe would only say ominously that

he'd take care of it.
 
"Cheryl would try to protect the kids," Susan

said.

"She'd say, iHe's tired' or He's hungry' or He just woke up from a

nap," but Brad wouldn't listen to her.
 
The boys knew that they would

get swats' when they got home.
 
Very matter-of-factly, he'd tote up the

swats.
 
Jess would get two because he was the oldest.
 
They knew they

wTere going to get hit.

"Brad created an atmosphere of fear.
 
They were obedient to the point

that it was unnatural.
 
They called him Dad'þnever Daddy."
 
Those kids

were his possessions.
 
Brad gets whatever he wants.
 
He wanted children

and he wanted boys.
 
Those boys were like another Mercedes to him."

Cheryl's struggles became so difficult that Susan began keeping a

diary.
 
On February 1, 1986, she noted that Cheryl had had to be in

Seattle overnight many times in a three- or four-week period during

January.
 
She got so lonely for Jess, Michael, and Phillip that she

asked her law firm for permission to bring her family up.
 
They agreed

and, somewhat uncharacteristically, so did Brad.
 
He came up on the

train with the boys.
 
Susan offered to baby-sit on Saturday night, and

Brad and Cheryl went out for dinner.

Things seemed to be calm enough when Brad left for home on Sunday

night, even though he was clearly annoyed that Cheryl had to stay in

Seattle until the following Wednesday.
 
But in reality the situation

had not been defused at all.
 
Brad started calling Cheryl almost from

the moment he arrived in Gresham, as if he had been quietly fuming on

the four-hour train ride home.
 
Susan remembered seven or eight

calls.

"Cheryl was very upset.
 
She was crying and yellingþtrying to speak,

and she couldn't.
 
She cried so hard that she couldn't speak.
 
It was

so out of character for her.
 
I begged her not to answer the phone when

it rangþand he called all nightþbut she answered."

Brad could destroy Cheryl even over the phone.
 
ks Susan listened,

Cheryl began to scream and shout hysterically.
 
"No!
 
That's not

true!

No!

I didn't do that.
 
I didn't do that.... You're lying to me."

"Are you okay?"
 
Susan whispered.

"Everything's going to be all right," Cheryl replied, covering the

phone with her hand.
 
But Susan saw she didn't believe her own words.

She wrote in her diary on February 3, 1986, "All hell broke loose last

night and this morning.
 
Brad and Cheryl fought, and I mean at the top

of their lungs.... It's very clear what she needs to do."
 
What Cheryl

had to do was get out of her marriage before she lost her equilibrium,

her sanity, her self.

One afternoon Cheryl got a letter from Brad marked CONFiDENTIAL.

She read it without comment and set it down, but when she left the

room, Susan's curiosity got the better of her.
 
"The letter said that

yes, Brad had had an affair with their former baby-sitterþbut Marnie

O"Connor didn't want him to tell anyone because her boyfriend and her

mother might find out about it."

Susan wasn't surprised.
 
"The guest-room bed was always mussed up in

that Gresham house.
 
And Brad had a dead-bolt lock put on that door.

He was always saying, Marnie likes to take naps during the day."
 
He

didn't even try to hide what was going on from Cheryl."
 
Cheryl wasn't

surprised by Brad's "confidential letter" either.
 
It didn't matter any

longer.

On Tuesday, February 5, Cheryl seemed strangely calm and resolute.

She didn't tell Susan about her visit to the doctor in Bellevue, where

she had learned she was suffering from vaginal infections.
 
She was

humiliated.
 
That diagnosis may have been the final straw.
 
She told

Susan only, "Everything's settled today.
 
I'm going back to

Portland."

"I was relieved," Susan admitted.
 
"My neighbors within a two-block

radius could have heard their phone conversations.
 
I was relieved she

was gone."
 
Later, of course, she would rue her feelings.

Cheryl found an empty house when she arrived in Gresham.
 
Brad had

moved all the furniture out again and, at first, Cheryl was exasperated

with Rose,* their current baby-sitter.
 
But Susan reminded her when she

called, "You know that Rose couldn't stop him.
 
No one can stop Brad

when he has his mind set on doing something."

A few days after Cheryl left Susan's apartment, she called to say she

had finally acknowledged there was no hope at all for her marriage.

She wanted only to have Brad completely out of her life, although she

didn't want her three boys to lose their father.
 
There had to be some

way for her and Brad to share custody.
 
She could bear to see him that

much, she supposed, just long enough for him to pick up the boys or

deliver them back to her.

In Seattle and Portland that February of 1986, there were breaks in the

winter rains, the pussy willows budded out, and crocuses sprang from an

earth no longer chained by winter.
 
It was a season of hope and

starting over, and it almost seemed as if Brad and Cheryl could

separate without rancor.
 
If they could somehow share Jess, Michael,

and Phillip, they had nothing left to fight over.

"I was glad," Susan recalled, "that she was going to get a divorce.

She just wasn't Cheryl anymore.
 
For her own health and well-being, I

was glad they were splitting up.... Their marriage started out

relatively normal on the surface, but somehow people were always

uncomfortable around them as a couple."

When Cheryl asked Brad to move out, he wentþuncharacteristically

without a fight.
 
He found himself an expensive apartment on the

fourteenth floor of the Madison Tower, then moved to an even more

expensive one on the eighteenth floor.
 
That didn't surprise Cheryl.

Even though the place cost almost twice as much as the house their

whole family had rented, she knew Brad, he always wanted the best for

himself.
 
She didn't care if he rented the Taj Mahal as long as he was

gone.

C Cheryl had hoped that having Brad out of her home would bring some

modicum of peace into her life.
 
And it was true that when he finally

moved out, he stopped playing "musical chairs" with the furniture.

But Cheryl was still saddled with all his debts.

Just before their separation Brad had bought himself a huge, exotic,

and expensive motorcycle, a Huskvarna.
 
It was a racing bike,

absolutely "top of the line."
 
Brad wasn't a motorcycle racer, and he

kept the Huskvarna in the garage, unused.
 
Cheryl begged him to sell