Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (8 page)

He didn't say which bastard.

It was a quarter to midnight when a group of law enforcement officers

headed to the Madison Tower to inform Brad Cunningham that his

estranged wife was dead.
 
Because they had no idea what they might find

when they got there, Detectives Jerry Finch and Jim Ayers and Senior

Trooper Keith Mechlem from the Oregon State Police had asked for backup

from the Portland Police Bureau.
 
Officer Richard Olsen joined them in

the parking lot of the new apartment complex.

Together the four men took the elevator to Cunningham's floor.
 
A

railed walkway ran around the perimeter and the apartment's main door

opened off that.
 
Rick Olsen stood back near the rail as the State

Police investigators knocked on the door of Cunningham's apartment,

watching silently while Finch and Ayers spoke to the tall dark-haired

man who answered the door.
 
Olsen could not hear the conversation, but

he could see the face of the man in the doorway and knew that he had

just been told his wife was dead.
 
Olsen heard no loud exclamations,

and he saw no emotion flicker across the man's face.
 
"He didn't look

surprised or shocked or agitated," Olsen would later recall.

That didn't necessarily mean anything.
 
Shock does funny things to

people.
 
They can hear their whole world end in one sentence and never

blink an eve.
 
Not until later.
 
For that matter, there are no rules

about how the human mind or the human body will react in any given

situation.

People have been known to sustain a bullet wound to the heart and run

half a block before they drop.

Ordinarily it would not have taken four officers to bring such terrible

news to the family of the deceased.
 
But Finch and Ayers were already

convinced that Cheryl Keeton had not died in an automobile accident,

she had been murdered.
 
At this point in the investigation, they could

not say whose powerful hand held the weapon that had struck her

repeatedly, could not say who had then maneuvered her van onto the

eastbound lanes of the Sunset Highway where it was almost certain to be

struck by other vehicles.

Finch had talked with Cheryl's half brother,Jim Karr, who had reacted

in a more predictable way to ghastly news.
 
He had shouted, "He did

it.

That bastard did it."
 
and handed over the note Cheryl had left

behind.

Finch had told Ayers about the note as they drove to the Madison

Tower.

Even so, they were still only at the embryonicþand diceyþstage of this

investigation.
 
They knew who Jim Karr meant by "that bastard," but

there was a great deal more they needed to know.

When 13rad Cunningham came to the door, he was barefoot and wearing a

gray University of Washington T-shirt and reddish orange jogging

shorts.

Avers noted that he seemed wide awake, not like a man roused from

sleep.

And when he told Brad quietly that his estranged wife, Cheryl Keeton,

had been killed, Brad blurted out, "Was it in a traffic accident?

"No."
 
AxTers olfere(l no more explanation.
 
Howþ?

Even up close, the Oregon State Police detectives could discern no sign

of grief on Cunningham's face.
 
That wasn't too unusual, Cheryl Keeton

was apparently.
 
his estranged wifeþnot a woman, perhaps, who was still

a big part of his life or even a woman he had any fond feelings for.

Divorces could be bitter.
 
Ayers had recently gone through one

himself.

He knew too well how nerves and emotions can be frayed in the wringer

of divorce.

"How?"
 
Brad Cunningham asked again.
 
"How was she killed?"

"We haven't determined that yet," Ayers said.
 
That much was true.

There wouldn't be a postmortem examination until the next day.
 
Ayers

wasn't about to reveal his own conclusions.

"Should I contact an attorney?"
 
Brad asked next.

Now that was a little over the line.
 
They were still in the doorway of

this man's apartment, he had just heard that his estranged wife was

dead, he hadn't been told how she had died, and he was already asking

if he needed a lawyer.

"You could, I suppose," Avers said slowly.
 
"But we're only here to see

what your last contact with her was."

Brad finally opened the door wide enough for the detectives to go

inside.
 
Etick Olsen stayed outside on the walkway, Trooper Mechlem

waited in the front hallway of the apartment, and Jerry Finch

deliberately stayed behind in the living room so Cunningham wouldn't

feel that they were "double-learning" him.
 
Brad led Ayers into the

dining room and gestured for him to take a seat at the table.
 
They

began to talk, an edgy and strange conversation.
 
After a while Finch

walked into the dining room and sat at the end of the table.
 
Brad was

leaning casually on his elbows, looking at Ayers who sat directly

across from him.

They would talk for almost two hours.
 
At one point early in their

conversation, Brad moved to the back of the apartment to check on his

sons.
 
He said that he didn't want them to wake up and find their home

full of strangers.
 
Later, Brad would recall leaving his conversation

with Ayers because he was so upset that he had to vomit.
 
But Ayers

could not locate that violent reaction in his memory.
 
He heard no one

vomiting in the apartment that night.

Ayers did not Mirandize Brad Cunningham.
 
There was no reason to þhe

wasn't a suspect.
 
He was merely one of the bereaved in this tragedy.

Ayers only asked Brad when he had last seen Cheryl Keeton.

Brad recalled the weekend just past for Avers.
 
He hadn't seen Cheryl,

he said, since sometime between 5:30 and 7:00 on Friday evening when he

had picked the boys up for their weekend visit with him.
 
He either

forgot or chose not to mention that Cheryl had broken their custody

agreement by showing up atSess's soccer game at the Bridlemile playing

field on Saturday.

"Todayþtoday.
 
.."
 
Brad struggled to recall, running his mind back

over the previous twenty-four hours, when Ayers asked him to try to

give as much detail as he could about that Sunday.

"I took the boys to the park to play."

"What about earlier this evening?"
 
Ayers asked.

iiWe went to meet my fiancee, Dr. Sara Gordon," Brad said.
 
"She was

on call at Providence Hospital.
 
We went out for pizza with the

boys."

Brad said that Sara had his Chevrolet Suburban and that he was driving

her Toyota Cressida.
 
He did not mention why they had switched

vehicles.

"You own an.
 
other vehicles?"
 
Ayers asked.

Brad nodded.
 
Ele had a pickup truck and several motorcycles.
 
He said

that his l,ather had died in July and he had inherited his pickup

truck.

It was a tan Chevy, license number HS12936, parked in one of his

assigned spaces in the garage of the Madison Tower.
 
Cheryl had

possession of their Toyota van, Brad said, although its final

disposition was in contention Finch and Ayers knew where that van

was.

It had been taken away by Collins Towing and was currently awaiting

processing by criminalists from the C)SI' crime lab.

E'inch quietly left the apartment to check tlae garage for the vehicles

Brad had mentioned.
 
Ele returned some time later and silently shook

his head at Ayers.
 
the Chevy pickup and Sara Gordon's Toyota Cressida

might be there in the multilevel garage, but he hadn't found them.

Ayers kept his face blank of expression.
 
It didn't mean much.

Cunningham's vehicles probably were somewhere down in the cavernous

garage.

Brad told Ayers that he hadn't actually .seen his estranged wife that

evening, Sunday, hut he had spoken with her on the phone.

"I called her around sevenþseven-thirty," he said.
 
"I told her I was

running late and that the hovs were watching the last half of The

.Su Jord in the.Stone " Chela I had been "short" with him, Brad said,

and anxious to get off the phone.
 
It had been his impression that she

was not alone, that she might even have been drinking.
 
From his

demeanor, that didn't seem to be an unusual circumstance to Brad.
 
He

said he had called Cheryl back an hour later and she had grudgingly

agreed to come over to the Madison Tower to pick up their sons.

She had never shown up.

Ayers nodded noncommittally.
 
If that had been Cheryl Keeton's plan, it

meant that she could(l have been driving east on the Sunset Highway

somewhere around 8:()() or X:30

P.M within the same time frame when Eiandv Blighton found her dead in

her Toyota van.
 
That would jibe, at least partially, with the tragic

event that had occurred.

Brad's explanation that he had expected Cheryl to pick up their sons at

the Madison Tower didn't seem unusual.
 
Ayers did not know yet how

stringent and meticulous the custody transference "rules" were in the

Cumlillghanl-Keeton divorce.
 
But he and Finch had gone over all the

facets of the case that they had gleaned in the first hour or so, and

Ayers knew that Jim Karr believed fervently that Cheryl had gone to meet

Brad Cunningham in her own neighborhood over on the West Slope just

before she died.
 
She had left a note that was very explicit about