Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (9 page)

that.

The note said nothing at all about plans to drive into Portland.

"Cheryl left a note for her brother that she was meeting you at the

Mobile station on the West Slope," Ayers said to Brad.
 
"She told her

mother that, too, when they talked on the phone this evening."

"No."
 
Brad shook his head.
 
"She was coming here to pick up the

boys."

They had been talking for about forty-five minutes, and Jim Ayers had

yet to detect any sign of emotion in the man sitting before him.
 
It

was very quiet, high above the city of Portland, in the early hours of

a Monday morning, a long time before the city below woke up to begin

the business week.
 
Somewhere in that large apartment, three little

boys slept, unaware.
 
Brad's older son Brent was also in the apartment,

although the detectives didn't vet know that.

"Did you kill Cheryl?"
 
Ayers asked, suddenly blunt.

The question hung heavily in the air.
 
Ayres's dark brown eyes bore

into Brad Cunningham's.
 
Brad stared back, unflinching.

"No."
 
At that time, Ayers saw what he later estimated to be "fifteen

seconds of emotion."
 
Brad seemed startled and even a little

frightened.
 
But those feelings washed over his face like a slight wind

rippling a pond, gone as quickly as it blew in, leaving no sign that it

had ever been there.

Ayers pulled back.
 
"When were you in the Toyota van last?"

"MarchþMarch, I think."

March was almost six months ago.
 
Of course, even if they found Brad

Cunningham's fingerprints in the Toyota van, they would likely be

useless as far as physical evidence went.
 
Mom-and-Pop homicides were

tough when it came to physical evidence, both victim and killer had

good reason to leave their prints, hair, cigarette butts, semen, urineþ

you name itþwhere they lived or had once lived.
 
Fingerprints could be

retrieved after decades, and Cunningham's prints could be expected to

be found in a van he had often driven.
 
Unless they happened to find

his prints in blood, they wouldn't necessarily link him to this

investigation.

Having sprung his most straightforward question on the man before him

and gotten little in the way of response, Ayers excused himself and

went out on the walkway to have a cigarette, allowing the events of the

evening to sink into Cunningham's mind.
 
Sometimes silence was more

intimidating and productive than questions.
 
At this point, Ayers and

Finch knew next to nothing about Cheryl Keeton or her estranged

husband, other than that there seemed to have been no love lost between

them.
 
The two detectives were akin to researchers just beginning a

scientific project.
 
They would weigh any number of variables that

might eventually bring them to the truth.

Brad had not spoken of his newly deceased wife in hushed, shocked

tones.
 
Whatever love or respect or friendship he might once have felt

for Cheryl, it was patently clear he felt it no longer.
 
He was coarse

and voluble about the woman who had been his wife for seven years, who

had borne him three sons.
 
He told the two detectives that Cheryl had

been "fooling around" with a large number of menþprimarily other

attorneys with whom she worked at the law firm of Garvey, Schubert and

Barer.
 
These men, he said, were all married.
 
"There are a lot of mad

wives," Brad said a little smugly.

Of course, he admitted with a half grin, half grimace, he had not been

exactly celibate himself Why should he have been faithful, once he

found out Cheryl was cheating on him?
 
He told Ayers and Finch that,

initially, he had been involved with a woman named Lily Saarnen who

worked with him while he was a bank executive in Salem and then in Lake

Oswego.

Coincidentally, Brad said, Lily also lived in the Madison Tower.

"In fact, it was.she who introduced me to Dr. Gordon, and we started

dating."

Ayers let Brad continue his odd, almost stream-of-consciousness

conversation until he eventually wound back around to Cheryl.
 
His

description of his dead wife was hardly flattering.
 
He said that she

had been a great fan of country music and had often hung out at the

Jubitz Truck Stop south of Portland alongside the 1-5 freeway, where

she went to pick up men.

Finch and Avers exchanged glances.
 
Why would a woman who was a partner

in a prestigious law firm be picking up truck drivers?
 
But then, why

not?
 
The O.S.P detectives had seen all varieties of human sexual

peccadillos.

Brad went on to describe Cheryl as "narcissistic," a woman who enjoyed

going to nude beaches along the Columbia River.
 
"And she hung nude

photographs of herself around the house."
 
Ayers had, in fact, noted

several artistic photographs of a nude female on the walls of Brad's

apartment.
 
He couldn't know if they were of Cheryl, at this point, he

didn't know what Cheryl Keeton might have looked like in life.
 
She had

been so brutally beaten that she was unrecognizable.
 
And the nude's

head was cropped from the photographs, revealing only an exquisite

torso.

They weren't "Playboy shots", they were beautifully done.

The woman Brad was describing sounded as if she had been a wanton

creature who might very well have been a set-up for violent murder.

Ayers had no way of knowing if he was hearing an accurate description

of Cheryl Keeton, but her alleged avocations and preferences certainly

sounded bizarre.
 
Maybe she had been one woman in the courtroom and

another after dark.

Ayers asked again for specific details on Brad's movements during the

hours preceding Cheryl's death.
 
Brad seemed calm and confident as he

thought back over the evening.
 
After he returned to the Madison Tower

from the pizza parlor with his three sons, he said, he had left only

once, and that was just long enough to put some things in his carþshoes

and work clothes he needed because he had an on-site inspection of some

property the next day.
 
"In fact," he said, "I talked to a cop in the

garage.
 
He was talking to two people down there, and he nodded at

me."

Ayers made a note to check on that.
 
He asked if it might be possible

for him to ask a few questions of the three Cunningham children.

"No," Brad said firmly.
 
"Not until I talk to an attorney about it."

Again the two detectives' eyes met, but they said nothing.

Glancing at the jogging outfit Brad wore, Ayers asked, "Are you

athletic?"

"No.
 
I used to jog, but I haven't for some time."

"Was Cheryl athletic?"

"Cheryl?"
 
Brad looked surprised.
 
"Noþnot at all."

As Brad became more expansive, seeming to relax slightly, Ayers

commented that he himself had been through a divorce and could

empathize with the stress and frustration involved.
 
And then he caught

Brad up short again by repeating the question he had asked earlier.

"Did you kill your wife?"

The second time was too much.
 
Brad got up from the table and walked to

a phone.
 
He called Wayne Palmer, a Portland lawyer, and left a message

with his service.

Within a short time, the phone in the apartment rang and Jerry Finch

answered.
 
Wayne Palmer, who said he was representing Bradly

Cunningham, asked that all questioning of his client stop.
 
He informed

Finch that he didn't want the children to be questioned either.
 
"Don't

wake them up."

So, at close to 2

A.M the questioning had to end.
 
After Brad denied for the second time

that he had killed Cheryl Keeton, and after his attorney demanded that

the detectives' questioning stop, there was nothing more for them to

do.
 
They had informed Brad of his estranged wife's death and he seemed

no more troubled than if they had told him someone had dented the

fender of his truck.
 
Now he wanted them out of his apartment.

Whatever had happened to Cheryl Keeton, the answers were not going to

come easily.
 
Her almost-ex-husbandþnow her widowerþwas most assuredly

not devastated to learn that she was dead.
 
He wasn't surprised either,

he saidþnot given the lifestyle she had chosen.
 
But he had assured the

detectives that what had happened to Cheryl had nothing to do with him,

with his children, or with his activities during Sunday evening,

September 21, 1986.
 
His duty now was to protect his children, and he

intended to do just that.

At 6:30 on Monday morning, September 22, Brad called Sara Gordon at

Providence Hospital with news so shocking that she could scarcely

believe what he was saying.

"Cheryl's dead.
 
The police came by at eleven last night and inaormed

me."

"Brad!"
 
Sara gasped.
 
"Why didn't you call me?"

"I didn't want to disturb your sleep."

Disturb her sleep?
 
Didn't he know that her profession disturbed her

sleep all the time?
 
Way back when she was an intern, Sara had learned

to fall asleep leaning against a wall if she had to.
 
She could wake in

an instant, be perfectly alert during delicate surgery, and then

immediately fall back asleep.
 
All doctors could.
 
They had to learn to

sleep when they had a chance or they wouldn't survive.
 
Sara couldn't

understand why Brad hadn't called her the moment he learned the awful

news.
 
When his father died only two months before, he had called her