If You Really Loved Me Part 14

The Randomex income was grossa"not net; David had to pay salaries and the required state taxes and withholdings out of that for his employees. His employees were all "family." Linda's twin brother, Alan, worked for them some, and sometimes David's father, Arthur, helped out. Once in a while, David gave some work to Linda's brother Larry, but he had slight confidence in Larry and was cautious with him. Larry was fired more than he was hired. Later, David taught Arthur some of The Process.

Still, n.o.body but Linda and David knew the whole process.

That was best. Even though it was not nearly as esoteric as David liked to suggest, it took exactly the right combination of ingredients. That belonged to David Arnold Brown and he was zealously protective of his technique.

Beyond David's Randomex income he had other interests a"coin collecting, for one. No one who knew him doubted that David Brown, from one source or another, was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.

As the 1980s progressed, both David's second and fourth wives were long since relegated to dim history. He kept in touch with Brenda only because of Cinnamon. He enjoyed the fact that she still lived with all the old furniture she had cleared out of their apartment. "She's bitter because I'm a millionaire," he liked to tell people.

He and Linda were solid. His place in the Bailey family was established. He was the rich relative. Thus far, the changes he had wrought in their lives were mostly positive. Even those who didn't care for David's high-handedness acknowledged him as a member of the family. They maintained only a gritty, bare standard of living. David Brown had the power to cast a warm, monetary glow over their existence.

Although he barely noticed her at first, there was another member of the Bailey family who gazed at David with eyes dazed with pure worship. She had been only a little girl of Seven or eight when she sat shyly in the corner and listened to the man who brought them hamburgers. She found him quite wonderful and loved to listen to the rumble of his deep voice. He was a man and she was a child. Almost sixteen years yawned between them.

But Patti Bailey adored David Brown almost from the start. He was kind to her and to the rest of the family, and she had always wished she could curl up in his lap and feel safe forever. Patti was so young the first time David married her older sister, not old enough to feel real jealousya"only a kind of wistful longing. Linda got to move into David's nice house and be safe with David. And Patti had to stay behind.

"With Linda gone, Patti was the last young girl left in the Bailey household. She had no one left to run to." Patti was afraid so much of the time. She slept with one eye open, aware of soft male voices and the smell of sweat. Men's and boys' whispers in the dark, their quick hands. Patti thought that, if only she could live in David's house, she would be in heaven.

When Linda's first marriage to David ended, Patti wasn't sure what she felt. Sadness certainly that David wouldn't be part of their family any longer, and perhaps a certain smugness that Linda wasn't as smart as she thought she was. Patti held on to her little girl's dream that someday David would come and take her away and marry her. He was always so nice to her, and he winked at her as if they shared secrets together. She found him handsome with his shiny brown hair and his mustache.

When Linda and David started living together again, Patti was jealous and angry that Linda had had two chances, and she none. She was twelve and she would be a teenager soon. Why hadn't David waited for her? In a way, it was the plight of little sisters everywhere who suffer from hopeless crushes. But Patti Bailey had real, dark reasons to long for rescue. She was as vulnerable as a rabbit trembling in a clearing, and she viewed David Brown as all things kind and good and safe.

Linda knew how things were at home in Riverside, and she invited Patti to spend many weekends with her and David in Victorville where they were living then. David was buying a small house up there and the acre of land surrounding it. Victorville was about forty-five miles north of Riverside, up near Barstow and edging into the Mohave Desert. Patti loved it up there; it was another world. She dreaded going home when Sunday night came. Finally, Linda took Patti aside and told her that she didn't have to go back to Riverside anymore. Linda and David were going to get married again, and that meant Patti could stay.

Patti was ecstatic. When Christmas vacation started that year, she moved out of her family home and into David and Linda's. She would go to Yucca Valley school. Patti Bailey was delivered from despair into the fulfillment of most of her young aspirations. She would live in a clean house with new furniture. She would have all she wanted to eat. She would go to school wearing clothes bought at K Mart and J.C. Penney, new and fashionable. She would watch color television and be able to buy records.

Best of all, she would be near David.

David had rescued her, and Linda had said she could live with them. Her grat.i.tude to both of them was boundless. But most of all, she loved David. He made her so happy. Years later, she would remember the exact date she moved in with David and Linda: "December 19, 1981. I was thirteen."

Once more, David and Linda drove to Las Vegas to be married. She was both his third and fifth wife. It would be the first time in years that David spent two consecutive Christmases with the same wife. And from that point forward, Patti was an integral part of David Brown's family. David and Linda and Patti. And sometimes Cinnamon.

Cinnamon was bounced back and forth between her parents; they often seemed to treat her more as a weapon against one another than a child to be loved and nurtured. If Cinny didn't mind Brenda, she called David and demanded he come and pick Cinnamon up. If David wearied of the day-to-day care of a small child, he packed her clothes and sent Cinnamon home.

Cinnamon was living with David and Linda in Victorville when Patti moved in. They soon moved to a house on West Street in Anaheim. Cinnamon was attending Patrick Henry Elementary School, and she lived with her father's family until July 1983. The girls got along, fighting occasionally as sisters will. They had known each other since Cinny was four or five. Cinnamon was two years younger than Patti, and they were very different. They were not really sisters, not even cousinsa"but friends. Even after she eventually went back to live with her mother, Cinnamon didn't seem to be jealous that her father let a girl close to her own age live in his home all the time when she only visited during weekends and vacations.

Cinnamon's trial time with her father and Linda and Patti didn't work out. n.o.body could really explain why. But she didn't fit in, and her independent spirit was an irritant. Cinnamon was an extrovert where Patti was quiet. Cinnamon had a sense of humor, even then, and she was quick to see the humorous side of things. Patti was solemn and failed to get the puns and quips that Cinnamon tossed out. Cinny was slapdash and detested doing ch.o.r.es, the vacuuming and dishes that were required of the two girls. Patti was neat, maybe because she had lived so long with disorder and because she treasured her new possessions so much.

As dissimilar as the two girls were, Cinny was part of the family. This new family. Linda and Cinny got along fine for most of the year they shared a home, and Cinnamon apparently accepted her stepmothera"even though Linda was only twenty. Her father recalled that Cinny was sent back to Brenda "because she wouldn't obey Linda."

Cinnamon was humiliated when David ordered her to stand in front of the whole family in her underwear while he spanked her with a leather belt. (The incident that caused Dr. Howell to report David to authorities for child abuse after Linda was murdered.) Despite the red welts David's belt raised, Cinny refused to cry. She only looked at him defiantly and said, "I hate you. ... I can't live with you anymore. I hate you."

Cinny went back to Brenda in Anaheim, brokenhearted. She didn't really hate her father. She loved him beyond reason.

If Cinnamon was really incorrigible, it was not apparent to anyone but David. Everyone who knew them had always marveled at how well Linda and Cinnamon got along. Cinnamon would be tossed back and forth a lot over the next few years. At an age where she especially needed to know where she belonged and that she was a worthwhile person, she was tethered nowhere; she floated like a balloon without a string.

She was, however, a child with remarkable insight, who unlike most of her peers accepted the consequences of her own actions. She was frank about her flaws. "I totally hated everybody at the time," Cinnamon recalled. "I felt mad and I was a big snot." At other times, she said she was "a brat. I drove my mom nuts."

But incorrigible? No. Perhaps she seemed so to a mother who was only thirty herself and was trying to juggle a new marriage, a new baby, and problems of her own.

"Living with my mom was much different than living with my dad," Cinnamon said. "Living with my mom, I felt more independent. I got to go with Krista and my friends. I learned to appreciate things more while living with my moma"I valued things more. But I didn't receive as much attention as I wanted. I understood that my mom worked very hard a,.d tried her best. I tried to do things to please my mom. I always wanted better communication with my mom, but she would yell a lot. I'd ask for an explanation and be spanked. I was curious to know what I'd done wronga"so I would not do it again. But she'd be so stressed and impatient, she didn't take the time to communicate."

Still Cinnamon's thirteenth year was, comparatively, her best. Her only teenage year. "Krista and I were very happy and active teens. Always doing things like riding each other on my Beach Cruiser [bike] handlebars all over Orange County. . . . Going to the beach with Krista seemed like another life or chapter. We spent a lot of time together. I was active in running and bike riding. I rode my bike to and from school too, while I was living with my father."

Cinnamon still visited her father's home, and she lived by his rules when she stayed there. Everybody did. David wanted to know where they all were, and he expected them to be home on time. David was always in charge. People who didn't obey David's rules didn't stay around long.

"Eventually, I didn't receive as much attention from my dad," Cinnamon remembered of the visits. "Because of his marriage changes and divorces ... I had to share him with Patti. I wasn't included in family affairs anymorea"well not as much as before. I wasn't receiving any quality time with my dad. Of course, we still had some great memories. I appreciated my dad's sense of humor, but I also saw my father as selfish with everything... he wanted to be the center of attention. He was greedy with material things. Those are things I noticed as I grew up with him."

The doors of any house David Brown and his girls lived in were revolving. He was sporadically generous about letting Linda and Patti's family visita"if they toed his carefully defined marks. Ethel visited with them from time to time, and Linda's twin, Alan. Even Larry stayed over on occasion. But David discouraged more than surface relationships outside his immediate family. He much preferred his own householda"not the extended Brown-Brown or Brown-Bailey families. He stressed the need for a closing-in, his modern circle of wagons against intruders.

From the time she was twelve, Patti Bailey believed in the family that David had created. His philosophies became ingrained in her mind, and she followed David as devoutly as any cult member. Anyone who observed his interaction with his teenage sister-in-law could see that Patti had a crush on David, but n.o.body teased her about it. Linda mentioned it to Mary Bailey, and they smiled and shook their heads. They knew Patti would outgrow her feelings for David when she started to date boys her own age. Linda still thought of Patti as her baby sister, a child.

Patti didn't know much about David's job at first, but she knew it had something to do with computers, and that it was very important. They moved often, so he could be closer to work, and sometimes because he and Linda wanted a nicer house. They always stayed close to Orange County, and they always stayed together so it didn't really matter to Patti that they moved so much. The family meant more than any friends she had at school.

She had to struggle to remember the different places they had lived. Most clearly, she recalled visiting her sister and brother-in-law first in Victorville. Then there was Anaheim, Yorba Linda, Brea, and finally Garden Grove, all within a s.p.a.ce of three years. She wasn't concerned about graduating from high school. Linda hadn't graduated, and she had what Patti perceived to be the perfect life.

The family always had fun together. Often David's parents joined them for trips out to the desert or the mountains. They watched television, rented movies, and played board games. David was no athlete, but he was superb at organizing family get-togethers. "It's hard to believe nowa"but I was funny," David recalled much later. "I was alwaysa" whatta you call ita"the life of the party."

When they lived in Victorville, the house David was buying had plenty of open s.p.a.ce around it, and David and Linda and Pattia"and whoever was living with them or visitinga"would shoot at beer cans, laughing as the cans flew off stumps and somersaulted in the air. David kept several guns, both "big and little." That was the way Patti distinguished between rifles and handguns.

They often drove deep into the Mohave Desert beyond Barstow to the ghost town of Calico. David had a camper and they took iced chests of food and soda pop up into the Calico Mountain area. They would spend hours horsing around on the all-terrain vehicles that David bought them.

David loved his "toys," and when he was feeling all right, he played with them just like a kid.

Patti and Linda soon learned that David grew bored quickly with his possessions; he always wanted the newest model. Larry Bailey was driving one of David's ATVs when he crashed into something and bent it up, but didn't do serious damage. David saw it as an opportunity, not a loss. "I don't know the damage," Patti said, "but I know it was minor. David discussed it with Linda and Larry that, well, heya"if we took it out to Calico and pushed it off a cliff, then it'd get really smashed up. Then the insurance company would pay for it."

Patti and Linda helped drag it back out of the gully where it lay crumpled after the "deliberate" accident and steadied it while Larry and David put it on the trailer. "David took it back and he filed a claim. That's when I got an Odyssey instead of an ATV," Patti remembered.

Although David Brown was almost doubling his income each year in his data recovery contracts, he frequently used insurance companies as a way to update his equipment. He collected on a number of automobile accidents. He sued a supermarket, claiming he had injured himself tripping over an extension cord. There was a shed, filled with old furniture and building materials, on the Victorville property. David no longer wanted any of it; he rented a bulldozer and tried to enlist Alan Bailey as the operator. He wanted Alan to crush the shed with the dozer so that he could collect insurance on both the outbuilding and its contents. Alan reneged. He didn't think they could convince anyone that he had accidentally run into a structure of that size, and that he would have kept on going until the contents were smashed.

And after they all moved to Garden Grove in 1984, a neighbor's driving mishap proved fortuitous for David. An elderly lady next door lost control of her car in her own driveway when she panicked and pressed down on the gas pedal instead of the brake. Her car leapt across the narrow s.p.a.ce between the homes and hit below the window on the side of the Brown housea"right at the middle bedroom.

Although the damage was minimal, David saw a chance to replace the Commodore computer he was using. He wanted an IBM.

"He moved his desk and the old computer out of his office into the room where the house was. .h.i.t, and then I guess the computer fell on the floor somehow," Patti recalled. "I wasn't therea"I didn't see it happen. Anyway, he made it look worse outside, added dirt and stuff." The neighbor's insurance paid off, and David Brown replaced his computer with a state-of-the-art IBM. He explained to Linda and Patti that that was what insurance was designed to doa"pay people for their losses.

All along, David was building up his collections. Rare coins. Gold and diamonds. His rings were all custom designed. The phoenix pendant. David also had business cards printed, with a stylized phoenix "guarding" computer banks. He liked the imagery. He retrieved and revived data that seemed to have been hopelessly lost in fires. He helped it to emerge almost unscathed.

David Arnold Brown saw himself in the phoenix. Mr. Magic.

David not only employed his in-laws, he drew his own family members into his business ventures. He boasted that he had taken a brother and a sister "out of ceramics and started them in data retrieval." The data retrieval business fit right in with David's view of family life. Much of it could be done at home.

David claimed to have fielded extremely important phone calls "from the government or some major corporation. The phones rang all day. It might be the Pentagon or Coca-Cola or whoever." He was quick to brag that he was instrumental in rescuing data from some vital projects and businesses. Data Recovery, he told everyone, had reconstructed most of the lost data in the "towering inferno" First Interstate Bank fire in Los Angeles. He loved to describe his role in rescuing dozens of people from almost certain death in the MGM Grand Hotel fire on November 21, 1980. Because the hotel computers were badly damaged in the conflagration, David said the hotel turned to him for help. Within two hours, he was able to reconstruct its files. This was vital, he pointed out, because the files were the only way to show which rooms had occupants and which were vacant. "I was instrumental in saving the lives of one hundred and twelve hotel guests by directing rescue efforts in Las Vegasa"while I was in California. They went directly to the rooms with people in them and didn't waste time on the empty rooms." Despite David's alleged role in the rescue attempts, eighty people did perish in the MGM Grand fire.

When the San Diego blood bank was also hit by fire, David said he was able to restore its computer network so that blood bank employees could trace blood units desperately needed in southern California hospitals.

And then there was the Coca-Cola Company. "Linda and I weren't supposed to fly together," David explained. "The Coca-Cola Company wouldn't allow it. If we were both killed, they'd be in deep trouble. They even called us Mr. and Mrs. Coca-Cola! We were that vital to them. But we didn't care what they said. Neither Linda nor I thought we could go on without the other. If we went down, we wanted to go down together."

The boy who never got past the eighth grade was the man who proudly boasted of being referred to in both People and Time. "I'm known as the 'Red Adair of the computer industry.'" It was he, and his particular skill and talent, David bragged, who unlocked the tragic puzzle of the explosion of the Challenger s.p.a.ce shuttle on January 28, 1986. "I worked for two days with NASA and the Department of Defense to find the cause of the explosion," David explained in his deep baritone. "I was able to prove that the crew members were killed instantaneouslya"I could guarantee they didn't suffer."

This claim, at least, was an outright lie. But few people questioned David Brown and his skill; he had a convincing way about him and he talked computerese like an expert. He was making money and he was sought after in the data retrieval industry. Who could say how many of his stories were true and how many were gross exaggerations?

Whatever the truth, by 1984, business was booming. Patti and Linda folded and stuffed envelopes. They took turns typing. Phones in the house were all on speakers so David could talk to his many clients from every room without having to pick up the phone. That way everyone in the family could keep up with which orders were coming in. There were no secrets in the business, not among the three of them.

Or so it seemed.

Had Cinnamon Darlene Brown been a jealous child, she might have had good reason to feel she was odd child out in her parents' lives. She was always being shuttled back and forth, and she had no sense of permanency. If she was even a half hour late getting home, her mother would sometimes call her father and demand he come and get Cinnamon. She was a p.a.w.n used for threats and revenge.

Cinny loved both her parents, but her father had Linda and Patti; her mother was remarrieda"to Tracy Sands, a man a few years younger than shea"and had given birth to a second daughter. Cinnamon's stepfather was a struggling musician, and much of the attention in Brenda's house in Anaheim was given either to Tracy's career ambitions, or to the new baby girl, Penelope.

Cinnamon, however, loved her half sister, just as she greeted the news that Linda was pregnant with happy excitement. Linda was due to deliver in July of 1984. There would be almost exactly fourteen years between children for David. Cinnamon had been born to poor teenage parents; David was now in a financial position to give this expected baby everything. The preparations for the birth rivaled those for a royal offspring. The family had settled into the rental house on Ocean Breeze Drive in Garden Grove by 1984, and there was room for everyonea"the master bedroom for David and Linda, the large front bedroom for Patti, and the middle room as a nursery.

Room for everyone but Cinnamon.

Every minute that she wasn't working with David or cooking or cleaning, Linda spent fixing up the middle bedroom for a nursery. David let her buy anything she wanted for the baby. She got the nicest crib, the kind that could be turned into a youth bed later, and matching chests and a little chair swing that moved automatically and played music too. It made Linda happy to know that her baby would have all the things she had never had.

Still there were clouds over her bliss. Even though she was thrilled about her pregnancy, the final months were difficult for Linda Brown. She felt fat and awkward in the heat of a southern California summer. She wore smocks and shorts with elastic panels and her feet swelled. That same summer, her sister Patti, who had the perfect figure that only a well-endowed sixteen-year-old can have, looked exquisite in shorts and halter tops.

For the first time, Patti's obvious crush on David niggled at Linda. She wasn't a kid anymore, and Linda's patience was wearing thin. Patti was so transparent in the way she looked at David. He could do no wrong in her eyes, and Linda felt a shiver of fear as she watched Patti's adolescent attempts at being seductive. She had been there herselfa" with Davida"and not so long ago.

Linda was used to going everywhere with David, and he had always bragged, "I won't go to work without Linda." Now, there were days that David did go to work without Linda; sometimes, he even took Patti with him. He was training Alan in The Process too, since the baby would require so much of Linda's time. She couldn't feel bad about that; it was her idea. Even so, Linda felt her closeness with David evaporating.

Friends who spoke to Linda on the phone that July recall that she sounded depressed and unhappy. Her mother, Ethel, knew that Linda wanted Patti to move back home. Linda mentioned it to her several times, but David always refused to let Patti leave.

Linda and Patti seemed to be getting along better by the time Linda gave birth to Krystal Marie on July 20, 1984. Everybody loved that baby and took turns taking care of her. After {Crystal's birth, Linda had a lovely baby shower. Even Brenda attended, and Linda seemed happy and thrilled about her baby.

David was just crazy about Krystal and didn't mind at all that he hadn't had a son. He played with the baby and rocked her and tickled her. He would brag later, "That little girl loves me. I had her laughing from the day she was born." He took pictures of Linda and their new baby and hung them in his office.

Linda put her jealousy over Patti down to plain old pregnancy blues. Now, as far as anyone could tell, everything was fine with the family. If problems remained, Linda never mentioned them. Only a few weeks before she died, she had stopped over in Riverside at Mary and Rick Bailey's house after visiting a friend. She had both Patti and Cinnamon with her, and Mary saw nothing but harmony.

Brenda Brown Sands, however, saw things that troubled her. "I wanted to have Cinnamon baptized and David said no. He said he'd drag her out of the church if I did that. I needed her birth certificate, and it was in David's safe. Linda said she'd look for it while David was gone. She said, 'I'm scareda"but I'll do it.' Well, she had the safe open and I heard her gasp and say, 'Oh, my G.o.d, he's coming in the door!' Believe me, she was afraid of him!"

A few weeks later, Brenda saw Linda and Patti at the Department of Motor Vehicles and noticed how sad and tired Linda looked. "I wanted to just go over and tell her, 'Leave hima"things are not right.'"

When school started in September 1984, Cinnamon moved back into her father's house. Linda explained to Mary Bailey, "I took her aside before any decision was made. I told her, 'This will be the last time, Cinnamon. No more moving in and out. If you want to live wfth us, that's finea"but you'll have to go by our family's rules.' She took it just fine."

Cinnamon had no problem with that. She moved in with David and Linda in time to start school at Bolsa Grande High in Garden Grove. She and Patti both went there. And Patti shared her room with Cinnamon. Patti had the white iron daybed next to the wall, and Cinny slept on the trundle bed that pulled out.

Neither of the girls had many friends among their peers. Patti sometimes talked to a girl who lived across the street, and they both liked Betsy Stubbs, whose father, Al, was David's insurance agent. Betsy was plain and not the smartest girl in the world, but Cinnamon thought she was a riot because she coined original phrases that sent Cinny into gales of laughter. "Neat things like calling people 'Sheep Dip' or she'd yell, 'Oh, you rowdy p.o.o.pster!'" Patti could never see the humor in it, but Betsy broke Cinnamon up. They saw Betsy quite a bit because David had a lot of insurance business, and the girls often rode along with him. David didn't care for most of their friends, but he liked Betsy.

Still, basically, David had only his family. Just David and -jour females: Linda, Patti, Cinnamon, and now, Krystal.

-*Later, one of David Brown's detractors would liken his living situation to "his own little fiefdom." In a sense, the characterization was apt: "an estate in land held from a lord on condition of homage and service."

Everyone danced to David's tunes.

Even with all of them living so close together, sharing meals, sharing evenings in front of the television, sharing outings up to the Calico Mountains, and working in Data Recovery together, there were a number of secrets in the Brown household in Garden Grove. Cinnamon stumbled across one of them in late January 1985.

The family stopped at a K mart to make a purchase. David, Patti, and Cinnamon went in to shop, leaving Linda with Krystal in the van; Krystal needed a diaper change, and Linda told them to go on in to shop without her. She arranged a blanket on the tailgate so she could change the baby.

Cinny headed for the stereo tapes, vaguely aware of her father and Patti as they walked toward the clothing department. When she found the tape she wanted, she hurried to find them. Cinnamon turned the corner around a rack of dresses, then stopped, feeling icy shock wash over her. Here, back in a far corner of the sprawling store, her father was kissing Patti. Not a friendly kiss or a fatherly kiss, but an intimate, pa.s.sionate kiss. Cinnamon watched, her feet frozen to the spot where she stood, unable to believe what she saw.

"I stared.... I couldn't breathe that well. I was in shock.... I was alla"oh, no, something's wrong here!.. . They were holding each other... I thought I was going crazy or something.

"Then my father turned quickly, and he looked at me," Cinnamon remembered. "I ran across the store and he chased me. He goes, 'Cinny, Cinny! What's wrong? What's wrong?' And I said, 'I saw you!' And he goes, 'What did you see?' and I told him, 'I saw you kissing Patti.' And he goes, 'I'm sorry you had to see that. Kissing Patti was an accident.'"

Cinnamon's head buzzed. How could he have kissed Patti by accident? She darted a look at the parking lot and was relieved to see Linda was still standing out by the van. Stunned and confused, she began to cry. "Are you trying to drive me crazy?" she asked. "I don't understand." Her father was asking her to forgive him, but she didn't want to talk to him. She ran away and huddled, shaking, at a counter where he couldn't see her.

After a long time, Linda found her and was alarmed at how distraught Cinnamon looked. "What's wrong with you?" she asked.

"Nothing," Cinnamon lied, "I'll be all right."

Cinnamon was silent as they paid for their purchases. She couldn't tell Linda what she had seen. "At the time I was scared of my father. Otherwise I would have been a.s.sertive and told Linda."

It made her feel especially bad because Linda was so concerned about her. She moved back in the van to sit by Cinnamon and tried to find out why she was so upset. Linda seemed to think that Cinnamon had wanted to buy something and hadn't had money. Cinnamon turned her face to the window and shook her head. Linda had no idea how bad it really was.

"When we got home, my father stopped me by the front door and he goes, 'Don't tell anybody about what you saw in the store. It's very important to me.'"

She promised him she would say nothing.

"Okay, fine. I'll respect that," David said.

Cinnamon ran out to the little trailer in the backyard. She didn't want supper, and she certainly didn't want to talk to her father. "I didn't know how to deal with him." But David came out and pounded on the door until she let him in. He tried to explain to her that what she had seen wasn't anything special. "Sometimes, these things happen."

"I don't want to talk about it."