If You Really Loved Me Part 18

"The subject is neither psychotic nor depressed."

It was a familiar diagnosis. It was indeed true that Cinnamon Brown was evasive, as if she was fighting to guard some terrible secret, afraid of what might happen if the truth should ever surface. Too many questions, too much probinga"even too much sympathya"were threats she had to deflect.

But sometimes, she was so lonely. Sometimes, when lights out had been called, she thought of being home again, going to Disneyland or being on the beach watching the surfers or being free to go to college on the outside. She wondered about where her life was going. Or indeed, if it was ever going anywhere.

It was true that the world she saw only on television seemed ugly and dangerous. It was true that she was so far behind that world outside that she could probably never catch up. But sometimes, it didn't seem fair that she should spend her fifteenth birthday, her sixteenth birthday, her seventeenth birthday, anda"soona"her eighteenth birthday behind bars.

Nothing her father promised her had come to pa.s.s. She had trusted totally, and as disloyal as she felt, she wondered sometimes if she had trusted too much.

Whi.e Cinnamon was undergoing her second psychiatric examination in as many months, her father was once again changing his residence. He needed bigger quarters. Actually, it wasn't even that. He required quarters that would allow him to separate the two main women in his life. Manuela and Patti continued to circle each other warily, and as grand as the house on Summitridge Lane appeared, the actual square footage wasn't that large. There wasn't room for both women to live there in harmony.

Something had to be done. David's nerves were frayed, and his health was worse than ever. He couldn't stand the bickering.

He looked around for property where there might be a mother-in-law apartment downstairs, or a detached cottage. Manuela and Arthur were a permanent part of his household, even though they still kept their place in Carson. But Manuela looked upon Patti and her baby as intruders, and Patti felt that Manuela was bossy and mean.

Finally, David found a place that looked as though it would solve all his problems: 1166 Chantilly Street had both a big house and room for a guesthouse. It wasn't as upper cla.s.s as the Summitridge address, but it had more land, and it would afford more privacy. There was a pool, and it was close to transportation.

It was also less exposed. Sometimes, David felt as if somebody was staring at the back of his neck. But when he turned around, he saw nothing behind hima"or no one he recognized. The house on Chantilly Street afforded him walls all around.

David borrowed $257,000 on the Summitridge house, and on December 29, 1987, he paid $177,300 cash for the Chantilly place. Then he immediately ordered remodeling that would cost another $100,000. As soon as he sold Summitridge, he would own a huge complex free and clear. They wouldn't be able to move in until late spring or early summer, but at least relief was in sight.

David was always scrupulous about keeping his insurance updated. When he purchased the home at 1166 Chantilly Street in December 1987, he immediately had it insured for $182,000. On June 23, 1988a"after the extensive remodelinga"he upgraded that insurance to $667,000 on the dwelling, and $500,250 on personal property, paying, of course, a hefty premium.

The personal property he listed was far more than the average Orange County family possessed. David included certified appraisals on some of his jewelry in his application. Among the jewelry described were: "A 14 Karat man's custom ring with a 5.25 carat pear-shaped diamond and 12 approximately 10 carat brilliant cut diamonds, all channel set, hand-engraved designa"retail value, $36,450.00; a 14 Karat man's custom-designed emerald-cut diamond ring with eight approximate 10 carat brilliant diamonds channel set, diamond center approximately 4.92 carats, custom hand-engravinga"retail value, $41,000; a 14 Karat lady's custom marquise diamond ring with approximately 2.10 carat in center, and 16 1.1 carat baguette diamonds, and 31 approximately .04 carat brilliant cut diamonds, all channel seta"retail value, $28,950; A 14 Karat lady's ring with approximately 1.08 carat center stone diamond, and baguette channel set diamondsa"retail value, $18,950."

Despite all his wealth, misadventure dogged David Arnold Brown. The 1986 Dodge pickup that he had purchased in September of 1986 and financed with forty-seven payments of $315.22 was stolen in the spring of 1988. David reported the theft to the Buena Park police, since he recalled parking the truck in the Buena Park Mall. Although he did not get around to making a formal report until April 26, David told the Buena Park police that the truck had vanished on April 23, 1988.

One of the odd aspects of the theft was the uncanny speed with which the truck was discovered. David reported it stolen to the Buena Park police at two P.M., and California Highway Patrol officers found the blackened hulk way up in the desert, many miles away, forty-five minutes later. The 1986 Dodge D-50 truck with the camper had been stripped, rolled, wrecked, and burned when it was discovered by California Highway Patrol officers in Deep Creek, south of Rock Springsa"and only a hop, skip, and jump from Victorville where David had once lived. You couldn't even drive to Victorville from Buena Park in forty-five minutesa" much less have time to cannibalize and incinerate a truck. (Later, Bailey family members admitted that David had told them to take the trucka"he was tired of making paymentsa" and that they could have anything they wanted off it, as long as they wrecked and burned it later. Before the "thief" could strip it, it was stolen by an acquaintancea"who finished the job.) Despite all of his run-ins with Allstate, the company nevertheless paid his claim for the trucka"deemed a total lossa"promptly. This time, the payment wasn't to David himself, but to the Chrysler Credit Union. Allstate paid off the balance of his loan: $7,545.28 on May 27, 1988.

No one was ever charged in the truck theft. And once again, David Brown came out ahead. He no longer had to make the hefty monthly payments on the Dodge truck.

At that point, Data Recovery Incorporated was doing better than ever, and David expected to have a tax-reportable quarter-million-dollar yeara"or morea"by the end of 1988. After three years of upheaval, it was beginning to look as if his life were going to settle down a little.

Cinnamon was almost eighteen, and she was still locked up, more cut off from home than ever. She didn't know about the new housea"or the old house, for that matter. Certainly, she knew nothing of her father's Las Vegas marriage to Patti. Or of the new baby sister. n.o.body told her when Heather was born; she had only heard rumors that Patti was pregnant, but Cinnamon's information came from Grandpa Brown, who muttered Patti had "gone out and gotten herself pregnant."

This puzzled Cinnamon. She could never remember Patti dating anyone, or even showing an interest in anyone. And Grandpa's latest rumor disturbed her more than anything she had heard yet. If it was true, then Cinnamon was afraid she knew with whom Patti had gotten herself pregnant.

It was a thought so ugly she shoved it away, so ugly that she asked no more questions about the subject. She didn't want to have her conclusions confirmed.

Cinnamon found herself farther and farther removed from the family. She spent a lot of time looking at old photographs, trying to picture herself back with all of thema"but it was hard. She asked to have family alb.u.ms sent, but David never quite got around to sending them.

It wasn't that Cinnamon lacked for anything. She still had her color TV in her room, and when the electricity was turned off at midnight, David had rigged up a self-charging battery pack to operate it. But inst.i.tutional food had long since begun to pall. "The salad is O.K.," Cinnamon wrote in a letter, "but the rest I don't attempt. I eat the food I buy in canteena"soup, chips, pastries, cookies, peanut b.u.t.ter, jelly a"anything."

There was always money in her canteen account; sometimes that was the only way she knew her father still remembered her. He hardly ever visited anymore.

"My father visited very regularly in the beginning," Cinnamon said later. "He asked a lot of questions, like 'How much pressure do they apply dealing with your commitment offenses?' and 'What will you tell them?' He told me not to say anythinga"just that I don't remember.

"He'd frighten me with thoughts that Linda might not be dead." Cinnamon shivered. "I had a few nightmares, but I knew she was gone.

"His visits got farther apart. He wrote cards and four or five actual letters. I saved two cards from him. His visits got to where I had to ask him to please come up because I missed him. He said he was sick or admitting himself to the hospital or he was dying. I was scared and worried. I called to see how he was, just checking to make sure all was well. But my grandparents would say, 'He's shopping' or 'At the movies.' Well, how could he be there if he was sick or in the hospital?

"This happened several times. Around this time, I realized that my father wasn't truthful with me. I'd ask my grandparents things and see if my father's story matched. Grandma said him and Patti shared a room. My father denied it, saying, 'Grandma's crazy.'

"New cars were bought, and my father denied it. New housesa"and he denied that. Grandpa said he collected money for Linda's death. My father denied it. He lied to me a lot. The lies made me realize that I was alone. ... I was still in Ventura.... I wasn't going anyplace for a long time.

"People never came to talk with me from my father [attorneys] about going home again. Daddy said home wasn't fun, and I wasn't missing out on anything. He said all they did was spend their days at homea"which wasn't true."

Cinnamon's mother stuck by her, and once in a great while, she would hear from an old cla.s.smate from elementary school. Her first stepmother'sa"Lori'sa"parents kept in touch. Krista's life, naturally, changed, and Cinnamon's old friend had little in common with her any longer.

Cinnamon began to feel that she had been forgotten. Worse, she suspected that she had been lied to for a very long time. She didn't tell anyone. She certainly had no idea at all that a man named Jay Newell existed, or that he was working on the outside to verify the very doubts that haunted her days and nights.

3 ay Newell decided it was high time that someone wised Cinnamon up to what was going on at home. As far as he could tell, the only information she ever got was from her grandfather, and that came to her in obscure bits and pieces. But Newell could not go to her directly. Since Cinnamon was still a minor and would be one until her eighteenth birthday on July 3, 1988, he could not talk to her without her parents' permission.

Cinnamon's custodial parent at the time she was arrested was the very person Newell was investigatinga"David Arnold Brown. Everything he was coming up with made Newell that much more suspicious that Brown had played some rolea"however ephemeral it might have beena"in the murder of his fifth wife. He was obviously still living with the suspect Grandpa Brown had fingered. Brown was a smart man; he had to be aware of the possibility that Patti was involved. Why would he stay with her?

David Brown was the last person Newell wanted to alert. He preferred to watch David and Patti without their knowledge. And he sure as heck didn't want to ask David Brown for permission to question Cinnamon. He couldn't imagine that Brown would acquiesce.

One thing that Jay Newell could do and remain strictly and ethically within the bounds of the law was to pa.s.s certain information to Cinnamon's parole officer. Newell couldn't talk to Cinnamon, but he could have a kind of secondhand input. It was akin to fishing in murky waters at midnight; he didn't know what would come up on his line.

Newell was convinced now that Cinnamon Brown was serving out a kind of penance, shouldering all the punishment for a crime she might not have committed. Something was keeping her from talking to the parole board or to her counselors. He didn't know if it was fear or misplaced loyalty, or part of some prearranged plot.

Newell would have liked to let Cinnamon know she had a friend working on the outside for her. Himself. But he didnt dare tell her. By the time he finished his investigation, he might even turn out to be an enemy instead of a friend. He didn't know the girl. He didn't know what drove her, and what it might take to get her to tell the complete truth.

If she even knew it anymore.

Jay Newell began by taking pictures of the lovely new homes where David and Patti liveda"the sumptuous field-stone mansion in the Anaheim Hills, and the sprawling six-bedroom complex on Chantilly. He took a picture of the pool at the new house. It was blue-green with statues of Grecian G.o.ddesses watching over it. Luxurious tables and lounge chairs were grouped around the sun-drenched patio. He took the photos with him when he drove up to the Ventura School in Camarillo. He moved through the high-security check-in building and asked to see Cinnamon's PO.

As he waited, Newell could not help but notice the tremendous contrast between David's living conditions and his oldest daughter's. David had it alla"and Cinnamon had almost nothing.

The school itself, with its low red-brick buildings, swimming pool, gra.s.sy area, and round picnic tables with umbrellas, didn't look that forbidding. But it was an inst.i.tution; all the windows were secured, announcements blared continually. The sound of flat keys in slotted locks was familiara"a sound Jay Newell had left behind long ago at the HOJJ. This was Cinnamon's world, and it had been for three years. Guards and body searches and pa.s.ses and lockdowns.

Newell discussed with Carlos Rodriguez, Cinnamon's parole officer, the feasibility of letting her know what was going on at home. He gave the pictures of the homes where David and Patti had been living to Rodriguez.

Jay Newell felt Cinnamon deserved to know that her father and Patti were still together. That they drove expensive cars, traveled often to Las Vegas to gamble and see the shows, that they not only walked free, they were also living high and well. David, at least, walked free. Patti was constantly leashed in with her beeper.

"I didn't know at the time if she saw the pictures or not," Newell said. "I didn't want to know." But if Cinnamon did see those pictures, she could not help but be shocked by how well her father was living.

Maybe she already knewa"but Newell doubted it.

The counselors at Ventura School told him that Cinnamon still had no way to get in touch with her father directly. She could call the answering service for the business, or she could write to the business address, a box number in Anaheim, but for all the information she had, her father might be living in Australia. One thing seemed to bother her, however, more than anything. She had been asking questions about Patti's baby.

Newell kept track of Cinnamon and of how she was doing at Ventura, although he never spoke to her directly. Occasionally, he caught sight of her across the quad, but she didn't see him. He had never spoken to Cinnamon. By the time he would normally have questioned her after her arrest in March 1985, she reportedly had no memory of what had happened.

Newell learned Cinnamon was a loner who didn't hang out with any particular group, not the Caucasian girls or the Hispanics or the blacks or the Asians. After three years, she still kept to herself, didn't cause trouble, and cooperated with the cottage parents and teachers. Her grades were nothing to brag about, but she wasn't flunking either. Except for the fact that "Ventura School" was a prison, Cinnamon's reports were probably exactly what they would have been if she were back in Anaheim going to Loara High School. But instead of heading for the beach on weekends and in the summer, Cinnamon went back to her cell after school.

Newell learned from her counselors that she hadn't become inst.i.tutionalized, and she certainly hadn't become tough or hardened. She was a normal kid, save for the fact that she had been removed from real life for so long that she seemed almost afraid to go back out into a changed world. She had a "boyfriend"a"not a real boyfriend, but a young man she saw and talked to when she went to work in the evening. She would lose him too; he was being paroled.

Newell had no idea what Cinnamon was really like now, nothing beyond what others told him. He doubted that he would be able to reach hera"at least not emotionally. No one else had. If all the psychologists and all the counselors and her own attorney had been unable to break through her wall of forgetfulness, how on earth could he hope to? If Cinnamon had seen the photographs of the fancy houses her father now lived in, how had she reacted? She might have closed up even more. Her psychological tests had shown a young woman almost totally devoid of hostility. Newell wasn't a psychologist, but it seemed to him that that kind of personality might not come out fighting for her fair share of life. A girl with no hostility in her might simply turn her face to the wall and give up.

Cinnamon had now been locked up for three years, three of the most important years of a teenager's lifea"from fourteen to seventeen. Newell had seen the visitors' sign-in sheets and noted that David rarely visited his daughter any longera"although he kept her commissary account solvent. It was as if he had written his oldest child off, giving her money and things to a.s.sure himself that she wouldn't bother him. More incomprehensible, it was as if he had his new life and he had left Cinnamon, at least figuratively, to rot.

At some point, might not Cinnamon Darlene Brown get mad? Even for a girl with only a teaspoonful of hostility, couldn't there be a breaking point?

The case had become an obsession with Jay Newell. He took the case file out of his drawer often, reading it over, worrying it, approaching it from oblique angles. More than three years. A man with good sense would have given up long ago, he told himself.

But every time he opened up the dog-eared file, he found something elsea"some little fragment of informationa"that made him believe he was on the right track. He didn't know who had shot Linda Marie Brown as she slept, but he was absolutely convinced that the impetus that led to her murder had not originated in Cinnamon Brown's mind.

Somebody else had to be involved. And since Cinnamon was the only one locked up, that somebody or those somebodies were walking free. Maybe it was Patti, as Grandpa Brown insisted. Maybe it was David. Maybe it was even other members of the Bailey family as David had suggested. And even if it turned out that Cinnamon herself had pulled the trigger, Newell wanted to find a way into the void of her memory and learn why.

Newell contacted Brenda Sands, hoping that she might help him get Cinnamon to open up. Fred McLean had talked to Brenda several times with no problems. Newell barely survived his first encounter with Cinnamon's mother. With all his experience with the toughest gangs in southern California, with all the midnight drug busts, getting shot at on patrol, and staring Charles Manson straight in the eye, Newell had never met anyone like Brenda Sands.

Their meeting was akin to a hawk trying to peek into a mother wren's nest. David had convinced Brenda that Jay Newell was a major force threatening her daughter and one of the villains who had put Cinnamon in prison (which, in truth, he had to admit he was). Brenda chased him from her door, and the big detective ran for cover when the pet.i.te brunette took off after him. A friend waiting in the car for Newell saw him come bucketing out in total rout and said, laughing, "Are you sure you like this job? It sure doesn't look like much fun from here."

Brenda kept in touch with Cinnamon and visited her whenever she could, driving a funny old humpbacked station wagon that David had given her so she could make the trip up and back to Ventura. Fortunately, as time pa.s.sed, Newell was able to convince Brenda that he was still trying to unearth the truth about her daughter's case. They met again and she told him everything she knew, but it was so very little. Yes, David had rushed to her and to Susan Salcido on the very day of Linda's murder, hurrying to warn them to be sure to portray Cinny as flaky and suicidal.

Brenda smelled a rat too, but she was in the same position as the rest of them. She had misgivings and doubts; she did not have proof. And she was still afraid of her first husband, terrified to cross him.

W hen the call came, Jay Newell was absolutely astounded. He had laid the groundwork, he had hoped that it would happena"but he had never really believed it would. Then, and in retrospect, it was the longest shot he had ever played.

But it worked.

It was July 19, 1988, and the caller on the line was Cinnamon's parole officer, Carlos Rodriguez, at the Ventura School.

"I have someone here who wants to talk to you. She wants to talk about her case."

It was Cinnamon.

Newell quickly called Deputy DA d.i.c.k Fredrickson to pick up an extension, and the two members of the Orange County DA's staff heard the small voice come across the phone line from the Ventura School. It was a wispy, half-frightened voice.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Newell?"

"Cinnamon?" Newell identified himself, and at the same time rea.s.sured himself that it was, indeed, Cinnamon Brown at long last.

Cinnamon Brown wanteda"neededa"to talk to someone. She did not balk at having Fredrickson listening, but her first question was startlinga"and telling: "Will I be protected, or will my father be listening?"

"Who?" Newell asked, surprised.

"My father."

a.s.sured that David Brown was not listening, she burst forth, "He was in the wrong for what he did, and I was too young to realize it. I know now that it's time for him to take the responsibility for the crime that's taken place. ... I was a little bit involved 'cause I knew what was going to happena"but I didn't actually do the murder."

Jay Newell's voice was as calm and steady as always. But there was an undercurrent of excitement and relief in his voice when he spoke to Cinnamon. She finally felt safe enougha"or mad enougha"to call. She was hesitant to go into details on the phone, but Newell needed to know more, to be a.s.sured that she was really ready to deal in specifics.

"It's possibly something you can work with," she told him. "He said that Linda was going to be killing him, for insurance or something for her and her twin brother, and he said we had to do something about it. I said, 'What is it that you want me to do?' and he said, 'We're going to have to think of a way to get rid of her or I'll have to leave town.' I said I didn't want him to leave town, and he said, 'You're going to have to help me then.' So we went for several drives while he and Patricia thought of ways to dispose of Linda."

Cinnamon recalled to Newell her memory of catching her father kissing Patti in the store. "Later things started getting worse. He'd take off with Patricia, and sometimes I'd go with them. To banks and stuff to cash checks. We'd be gone for hours. Well, him and Patricia started talking about ways to get rid of Lindaa"like we'd throw her out of the van when we were driving down the freeway . . . she suggested hitting her over the head to knock her out... different ways ... I was listening ... I wasn't involved."

Oh, my G.o.d. ..

The long-held secrets burst out like floodwaters knocking down a wall. After the crime, Cinnamon said her father had first told her to say she had done it, and then he had told her not to say anything, not to remember anything. "I didn't because I trusted him."

Newell questioned Cinnamon about the gun, and she said she knew it was Linda's, and she knew that Patti had wiped it off with a towel.

Cinnamon said she had not talked to her father for four weeks, and then only to ask for some supplies she needed. Asked if she had ever confronted him with her thoughts on Linda's murder, she said she had, but that her father always pushed the subject away and said, "Well, you'll be out soon."

"For some reason, he won't talk about it at all. He pretends not to hear."

Cinnamon said Patti never visited her, never talked on the phone, but sometimes listened in when Cinnamon called David.

"Do you know Patti had a baby?" Cinnamon asked suddenly.

"Yes," Newell answered.

"Do you know that baby is my father's baby?"

"I know all about that."

That was it. Cinnamon Brown had been betrayed in so many ways, Newell suspected, and in ways he didn't even know about yet. But the birth of Patti's baby, fathered by David Brown, had shattered her steadfast belief in her father. She finally realized she had simply been thrown away.

"Are you willing to give a formal statement about this . . . and open up the investigation?" Newell asked.

"I could probably help you . . . but I don't want to endanger myself with my father."

"Are you afraid of him?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid of him. To me, he seems very powerful."

Cinnamon's coming forth might help her in her hopes for freedom, but Newell was adamant that he could give no such a.s.surances. "I don't know what you're going to lead us into."

Over and over again, Cinnamon asked that her call be kept confidential from her father. She asked for protection. Newell told her that, if it seemed necessary, she would be protected.

d.i.c.k Fredrickson came on the line. He had two questions to ask. "You said you heard your father drive away before you heard the shots?"