If You Really Loved Me Part 21

"A crossbow?" McLean asked; he had not seen any bows or arrows when he worked the crime scenea"nor had Morrissey listed any. "The kind with cams on it?"

"I would think it had arrows," Cinnamon said.

"Yeah, but I mean cams for reducing the draw pull on your shouldera"but it increases the force of the bow. It's got wheels on both ends," McLean explained.

Cinnamon shook her head, baffled. She couldn't remember if she had loaded a crossbow into the vana"her father had so many weaponsa"but she did remember David had reminded her to be sure the BB guns were in for herself and Patti.

They headed for the mountains, but David never stopped for BBs. Nor did he stop to leave Linda at her mother's house. When Cinnamon asked why they hadn't stopped, her father had told her to sit down and be quiet.

The tape clicked to a stop. Newell held up his hand to silence Cinnamon for a moment. He looked at his watch. It read 12:21.

A new tape started rolling, and Cinnamon began again. "At this time, we were way up there in the mountains somewhere. I reminded my father about the BBs again. He goes, 'You're on my last nerve. Go sit your b.u.t.t down.'. . . My grandpa said . .. 'Don't worry about it. Just sit down.'"

"So your grandpa and grandma went too? Everybody went?"

"I can't remember if Grandma went. Grandma sort of blended into the carpet when she was in the van, and I can't remember if she was there or not."

Newell and McLean exchanged an amused glance. Despite the grim subject at hand, Cinnamon had a flair with words. Her recounting of the perambulations of the van packed full of Browns sounded like a day trip with The Family From h.e.l.l.

It was full dark before David would interrupt the trip to eat, and very, very late. They stopped finally at a Del Taco for food.

David had been nervous as a cat, his daughter remembered. When Cinnamon jumped out of the van, shouting, "I'm hungry!" he had told her to shut up. "I said, 'I've been back there really quiet for the past couple of hours and you're going to start yelling at me?'"

Linda had stood up for Cinnamon and told David to leave her alone. The tension between David and Linda had been almost palpable, but then David had backed off meekly.

Patti said nothing, watching them.

And then the oddest thing happened. They ordered their burritos and got right back in the van. They had been on the road for almost six hours. Cinnamon was "still vibrating" from riding so long and begged to at least stay in the restaurant long enough to sit down and eat. David flatly refused.

Linda was nervous too. "I think we should turn back. I think we should go back home. It's late."

David said, "Why don't we just stay here overnight?"

"I want to go home now," Linda insisted.

"Are you sure?" David asked. "We came this far."

But Linda was almost shouting. "I want to go home now!" She seemed frightened, no, petrifieda"of camping out in the dark March night in the lowering mountains.

And so David had turned the van around and they went back down the mountain, bouncing and bucketing over the road. "So we got in the van; we were eating and I was smashing the burrito in my face from all the b.u.mps and stuff, and I was getting mad," Cinnamon told the two detectives. "A totally wasted trip."

Cinnamon had not understood the purpose of that abortive trip, the need to pack all the guns, bullets, arrows, and suppliesa"simply to drive up in the mountains, buy burritos, and turn right around to go home. McLean and Newell thought they did. With all the plots to get rid of Linda, perhaps she was not meant to return from that camping trip. Had David lost his nerve? What had thrown him off?

"The next day, my father told me to go get the stuff in the van and put it all back in the house," Cinnamon continued. "I said, 'Why don't you have Patti do it? I put it in therea"you have her take it out,' but he just told me not to argue."

Cinnamon had obeyed that Sunday, March 17a"St. Patrick's Day. It seemed dumb to her to unpack everything. They were supposed to go on a picnic to the desert the next day. Why not leave everything in the camper?

But then, it rained the next day.

And during that night, Linda was murdered.

Cinnamon seemed to be growing more nervous. She was supposed to go to work, she explained. Would she get in trouble with the staff at Ventura if she was late? Newell a.s.sured her that she would not. But he could sense that they had come to a place in a long, long recitation that would soon cast a chill over the hot room. All the earlier details had been, if not easy for Cinnamon, endurable.

Now, they had come to the day of Linda's death.

Newell had learned enough about Cinnamon Brown in these two hours to note that the more frightened she was, the more animated and humorous she became. She was smiling now, but he knew she was scared to death.

Cinnamon described Monday, March 18. Her mother and her aunt and great-grandmother from Utah had dropped by the Ocean Breeze house to visit. They had taken pictures, and she had shown them her new puppy. Her father had grudgingly agreed to come outside to greet his ex-in-laws. "He put on a good show for them because he'd been snapping at me a lot and the rest of the family."

Cinnamon visited with her relatives for a little while. "I went inside a little later. He goes, 'You didn't tell them anything, right?' I said, 'No, I didn't tell them anything. Stop getting paranoid.' He goes, 'Good.' And that night is the night Linda was killed."

"That night your grandparents came to visit from Utah?" Newell asked.

She nodded. "My grazf-grandmother and my aunt."

Cinnamon said that her father had called Manuela and Arthur at about six and invited them over for dinner and to play Uno. "Linda was cooking dinner. I can't remember what we had, but it was one of the bigger meals that took a long time to make. I was in and out of there grating the cheese and stuff. My grandma was just sort of helping her. Linda didn't like Grandma in the kitchen too much because she would, like, take over."

Newell and McLean let Cinnamon tell it at her own pace.

"And we were playing Uno cards. My grandpa was cussing me out. I kept on laughing at him in the game, giving him a whole bunch of cards which he didn't need. So he was yelling at me ... and I was laughing. Well, then, Grandpa goes, 'I don't want to sit by her anymore,' and he was yelling. He was serious. 'Get her away from me.' And I sort of took it to heart, you know, because usually he'd just cuss me out and I enjoyed that."

It was such a cheerful recitation of a happy family eveninga"or would have been had Newell and McLean not known what was coming.

Cinnamon said she had run between the kitchen and the game, with people calling her from every direction. "I ended up getting kicked out of the game, right?"

"Oh, literally?" Newell asked.

"Literally. I mean I lost, okay? . . . They had really got me good."

Cinnamon had to do the dishes, her second night in a row. When she balked, Linda had said, "Just do the dishes. Don't make a scene with Grandma and Grandpa here."

There had been a slight argument between Linda and Manuela over whether or not to rock Krystal to sleep. Manuela had stalked off and turned on MTV music videos, her favorite. Finally, Linda handed Krystal to Manuela and said she was going to take a shower. Manuela got Krystal to sleep by rocking her and singing to her. Then the elder Browns had left.

Cinnamon drew a deep, shuddering breath.

"It was just me, Patti, and my father left in the living room. ... My father was all, 'We have to do ita"we have to do it. It has to be done!'"

Cinnamon had known what he meant. They had to kill Linda. She had asked, "Well, who do you expect to do it?" and he goes, 'You. If you love me, you'll do it. If you really love me, you'll do it.'"

Cinnamon whispered, "How bad is it?"

"It's really bad. Any day now, she can kill me."

"Is it really urgent?" she asked desperately.

"Yes, Cinny. She's going to kill me. Do you want her to kill me? Would you kill her?"

"Yes," I said, "but I don't think I have enough strength to."

"Not even for me?" her father had asked.

Cinnamon started to sob, "I don't know. I don't know."

"Patti looked at me, and she goes, 'You're always crying.' She got mad. She yelled at me. Then she said, 'Well, we'll discuss it later. I have a few things in mind.'"

Linda was in the shower and heard nothing of the conversation. About ten minutes later, she walked through David's office to the kitchen to get some apple juice. "She was standing in the hallway when she said, 'Cinnamon, go to bed. It's late.' And I said, 'I'm going to bed right now,' and she goes, 'Okay. I trust you.'"

Linda and David disappeared into the master bedroom together. Things must be all right, after all, Cinnamon had thought, praying that was true.

Patti dozed on the floor, and Cinnamon sat on the couch in the living room. She too dozed off, serene in her belief that people who were planning a murder that very night wouldn't be able just casually to fall asleep.

She jerked awake when she heard a song on MTV that she liked. She woke Patti up then and suggested they go to bed. Both girls had fallen asleep in Patti's room.

"My father woke me up. He opens the door and goes, 'Girls, girls, wake up! Get up, get up! We have to do it now!'"

Patti had jumped up, as if she expected that command, Cinnamon said.

A few days before that, Cinnamon continued, her father had told her "to write a note that said something to the effect like 'I didn't mean to do what I did,' so I ended up writing, 'Dear G.o.d, please forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt her.'"

"Uh-huh," Newell grunted. Cinnamon's words were gushing out so fast, and the story was incredible. And yet he and McLean both knew that it all fit. So far, it all fit.

She described the note further. "I put my own personal touch. ... I put a little ribbon around it... he told me to hide it inside the trailer."

Patti had been bossy and obnoxious that night, Cinnamon recalled. "I don't care for her at all." After he woke them up, "my father told me, "Come with me,' so I went with them and I was standing at his master bedroom door. Linda was asleep, and I could hear ... the Fisher-Price baby thinga" she can hear the baby in her room. . .. She had it on full blast. I could hear the baby breathinga"that's how high she had it up."

Cinnamon asked Patti why Linda had turned the monitor up on high, and Patti explained that Krystal had a cold, and that Linda wanted to make sure the baby didn't choke.

"My father had brought out bottles of pills . . . two or three bottles, and I go, 'What are these for?' and he said, 'Come with me.' So I followed him into the kitchen, and he told me to get a gla.s.s of water."

"Take these," her father had ordered.

"Why?"

"Because I want to make it look like you tried to kill yourself, in case it doesn't go through tonight."

"And if it doesn't go through tonight," Cinnamon said, "it's going to look like I tried to commit suicide."

"It'll go through. It'll go through. Don't worry about it. I have a feeling Patti's going to do it tonight."

"Will this hurt?"

Cinnamon was afraid. She had the feeling that all those pills would really make her sick. There were so many, and some of them looked like "horse pills" to her. But she obeyed her father, swallowed all the pills, and set the empty gla.s.s on the dryer.

Her father had turned the alarm off. He instructed her to go outside and get into the doghouse, a.s.suring her that she could fit into the big one. She headed outside, but her father called her back and told her to get the suicide note. "So I went inside the trailer. I got the note. ... He goes, 'Now did you write any notes previous to thata"like trying to make it perfect or maybe you messed up or something?' I said, 'Yes .. . they're in my trash,' and he goes, 'Go get them and burn them.'

"Why?"

"Just do it."

"So I went and burned them."

"Where at?" Newell asked.

"In my trailer. It was in this little trash can. I started the flames; it was like a lot for little pieces of paper, because it sparked up, and I turned the trash can over onto the driveway. ... I waited for it to cool down, and I tried to put it in a plastic bag in the trash can area."

Her father had seemed satisfied then and told her to go where he had told her, and to take the suicide note with her.

David Brown had said no good-byes to his daughter, only, "Now don't you go get crazy on me."

Cinnamon said that she had gone to the dog pen, and that the dogs ran around her and made her dizzy. She felt nauseous. She said she didn't want to know what was going to happen "because I loved Linda a lot."

She heard the car door open and close, and she peeked out and saw her father's car driving away. "And I'm thinking, did they do something and leave me here? ... I heard something likea"I wasn't sure it was a gunshot at first. ... I wasn't sure if it was from the house or from around the neighborhood ... so I went inside the doghouse where he told me to, and I curled up. I was in there shaking and I heard two more. Two more of the same sounds. They were like right after each other. Two of them. And I was shaking and then I started getting sick and I was vomiting really bad, and then I didn't hear anything after that."

Newell held out pictures of the backyard of the Ocean Breeze house to have Cinnamon point out where she had been standing when she heard the first shot. She pointed to a spot near the garage. She remembered nothing more, until, a long time later, she heard her father's voice someplace nearby saying, "It's done. It's over with."

"Previous to that, he told me if anything was to happen, that I would say that I did it. . . because I was younger and I'd get less time. ... He said that I probably wouldn't get any time at all, that they'd probably just send me to a psychiatrist about twice a week or something. Because they'd think I was crazy. That's what my father told me that they would do if I ever did the murder."

She didn't know if it had been three minutes after the shotsa"or two hoursa"when she thought her father had come out in the backyard. "He was saying, 'If they ask you, say you did it, okay? Remember what I told you before. You're not going to get in trouble. If they ask you, you did it. You did it!"

He told her that Patti had shot Linda, Cinnamon said, and she was to say she did ita""because they [David or Patti] would really get a long time. And he goes, 'If you love me, you'll do this.' I said, 'I love you. I love you. I'll do it. I'll do it.' I remember I was talking real slow . . . and then I guess he was gone, because I didn't hear his voice. . .. The next thing I remember is some men coming to get me, but I can't remember what they looked like, who they were. I can't remember the questions they asked me either. Because I was gone."

Cinnamon remembered finally coming to in the hospital. Her mother came to see her first. Then her father came and told her that she was to say she had done it. "Don't make it complex; you'll confuse yourself," he had said.

"I had plotted out in my head ... to tell them I did it. I had already planned that out in my head."

"For what reason?" Newell asked.

"For the protection of whoever did it. My father and Patti."

"What were you going to tell the police as to why you did it, or had you thought about that?"

"I hadn't really thought about that. What I told the police isn't too clear to me. ... I remember hearing it on the tape in courta"but I can't remember the actual talking to them. I must have been really gone."

Cinnamon did not seem aware that Fred McLeana"who sat nearbya"was the man who had rescued her from the doghouse, nor that she had spoken to him on the tape. He sat silently, giving no clue that they had met before.

"At one point, you said you didn't remember what happened," Newell said. "What made you change your mind?"

"My father was confusing me. . .. And Mr. Forgette had come to help. I had told him that I did it, and I guess my father talked to lawyers. . . . My father came in and said, 'Never mind. Tell them you don't remember anything. Tell them you don't remember anything at all."

Newell questioned Cinnamon carefully to see whose idea it was that she should fake amnesia.