If You Really Loved Me Part 22

"My father said that Mr. Forgette said it's not a good idea [to remember]."

"Okay," Newell said easily, knowing that that was not Forgette's style.

"My father said, 'Tell them you forgot, That'll work because of the medication. Just tell them you don't remember anything at all, because you'll end up saying something that will get all of us in trouble.' I said okay. And he told me this in Juvenile Hall too. . ..

"During the trial, Mr. Forgette came back to chambers and he said, 'If your father did it, or if Patti's involved, you tell me. You tell me right now. Because this is it.'

"And I was thinking what my father said, 'Don't ever tell anybody'; I was afraid of my father. He [Forgette] goes, 'If you're afraid of your father, we'll protect you.' I was thinking, no, I can't do this. And I said, 'No. No. Not that I know ofa"they don't have anything to do with it,' and he goes, 'You don't remember anything?' and I said, 'No,' and he said okay and so we went in and we had the last part of the trial."

And with that refusal to betray her father or Patti Bailey, Cinnamon had effectively tied her attorney's hands. If she was telling Newell and McLean the truth now, her story was truly tragic.

"Okay then," Newell said. "Here at the Ventura School, have you been to any psychiatric workshops or anything to discuss it?"

Cinnamon shook her head. She had kept up her stance of forgetfulness even at the workshops.

But she was here. Something had made her change her mind about telling the truth.

"What was it?" Newell asked. "What made you change your mind?"

"Well, within the past year, my grandparents have been telling me what's been going on with the house. There's been a lot of neglect going on with the babya"Linda's child. There hasn't been much attention paid to Krystal. My father didn't tell me, but Patti was pregnant."

Cinnamon said she didn't know much about Patti's baby, not even how old she was. "All I know is her child's name is Heather."

"How did you find out the name?"

"Oh, my father told me. But he told me she got pregnant by a boy down the street. My father was very possessive, and there's no way that he would even let her out of the house to go down the street. . . even to talk to a boy. So ..."

David had denied Cinnamon's outright accusation that he had fathered Patti's baby, but her grandfather said it was true. "He told me, 'Don't let him tell you any different. You know he doesn't let that girl out of his sight. . .. Don't listen to anything your father says. He lies to you all the time.'"

Cinnamon no longer believed her father was so ill that he never left his house. He was never home when she called. Arthur Brown had told her he and Patti were out together. "I don't have his address. ... I send [letters] to his P.O. box. He won't tell me his address because he doesn't want the district attorneys to know."

Cinnamon said she had told her father that she thought the DAs already knew where he was, and David was anxious after hearing that. "Do you think they're watching us?" he had asked.

"I don't know," Cinnamon had told her father. "If I were you, I'd be careful."

"He's been acting really weird," Cinnamon said. "He doesn't come upa"it's getting less and less visits from him, so now I hardly ever see him."

"So you're saying that the reason that you are now telling what you remember isa"is why? Because he and Patti had a baby?"

Cinnamon looked down and shook her head, then lifted her eyes to Newell's. "No. I feel I was manipulated when I was younger, and I started dealing with it within myself. I had kept a journal here . . . about the incident, about what happened. And I feel like I was manipulated by my father by the whole thinga"because he would say, 'If you love me, you would do this.' And inside, I knew that it was wrong. Now I know it's wrong, and I don't think I should take all the responsibility for what happened."

There were so many components of the crime that Cinnamon had known nothing about. She said "Board" had told her that there was a million-dollar insurance policy involved in Linda's death, and she'd been shocked. "I asked my father about that, and he said that he hadn't collected anything on insurance, because it did not pay off because Linda was murdered. ... I just found out a month ago that he really did collect money."

Cinnamon acknowledged that she hoped to get out of prison, but she knew that just talking to Jay Newell and Fred McLean would not help her with the parole board. In order to be free, she would have to have a new trial, and she had little hope of that.

She was doing well at Ventura. She had graduated from high schoola"sooner than she would have on the outside. She was in collegea"at least taking college courses. She was working in the TWA program, four hours for pay, and four hours after as a volunteer.

But she was not free. She was eighteen years old, and everything that she had ever believed in had slowly but methodically disintegrated. She did not seem angry. She seemed, rather, to be very, very weary of carrying a tremendous burden for so long all by herself.

Fred McLean and Jay Newell said good-bye to Cinnamon after almost three hours of listening to her steady stream of words. They were noncommittal with her. They said they would be in touch. They would have to talk to the DA to see if there was any legal precedent for reopening her case.

They said nothing to each other until they turned onto the south-bound on-ramp to the freeway, heading back toward Orange County. In a sense, they were both poleaxed by Cinnamon's story.

"What do you think?" McLean finally asked.

"I don't know. It's wild. If she's telling the truth ..."

"You think she isn't?"

"Part of it. Maybe all of it. At least enough of it so the things she's telling us dovetail almost perfectly with what we know. I'm still not sure who the shooter was. She's got the sequence of shots exactly right. Could she have heard that from outside?"

McLean shrugged, remembering that shadowy backyard, the little girl in the doghouse. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"She still says he left before the shooting. She could still be protecting him and putting the blame on Patti. She doesn't like Patti."

"No."

"Funny," Newell mused. "I have this picture in my mind of Cinnamon all zonked out on the pills, of Patti actually propping her up and taking her in there and practically pulling the trigger for her. I still don't know if Cinnamon was inside or outside."

They rode along, each man caught up in his own thoughts, remembering all the things Cinnamon had said. She was so close to what they had thought was the truth all along. But was she right on the mark?

The details were correct, and hard to take, even for detectives used to dealing with violent death. They thought of Linda, sleeping peacefully, with her baby's monitor close to her ear. They pictured David Brown forcing Cinnamon to swallow enough pills to kill her many times over. And all the while, he had said, "Trust mea"I'm your father."

And over and over again, the ultimate manipulation, "If you really love me, you'll do it.

"If you love me, you'll help me.

"How much do you love me?"

As they pulled off the freeway in Santa Ana, Newell said, "We'll run it by Robinson and see where we go nexta"or if we're going anywhere at all."

The next morning, Newell and McLean met with Jeoff Robinson in his office. Both detectives felt they had finally gotten the first glimpse into the real story behind Linda Brown's murder.

Robinson agreed and shared their excitement. "But it's not enough to hear it from Cinnamon," he cautioned. "We all know she'd be easy to impeach in courta"if we ever got that far. We have to hear it from David Arnold Brown. In his words, his voice."

Brown was never going to admit any culpability in the murder of his fifth wife; he wouldn't even talk to them. The only way to get verification for Cinnamon's claims from her father's own lips was to wire Cinnamon.

If they could obtain a court order to attach a recording wire to Cinnamon, was she strong enough to carry it off? She had grown up believing her father was perfect. Now she feared him. "She's unsophisticated," Newell mused. "She's smart and she's quicka"but I don't know if she's got the guts to try to get him to tell the truth, knowing all the while it's being recorded."

"Let's try it," Robinson said. "Let's see if we can pull it off."

Sylvester Carraway, the superintendent of the Ventura School, and Cinnamon's parole officer, Carlos Rodriguez, were willing to cooperate. If Cinnamon agreed to wear a transmitter during a visit from her father, they would do everything they could to support her, and to facilitate the DA's men who would monitor the wire.

Cinnamon said yes.

She was afraid, but she would wear the wire. The trick would be to get David up for a visit. Sometimes, it was months between visits from her father. Her next official visiting day was only two days away: Sat.u.r.day, August 13.

Newell instructed Cinnamon to call David and tell him that she needed to talk to him about something important and needed to talk to him right away. She had something to tell him. Newell suspected that Brown was running scared, expecting trouble. The man claimed, among his myriad ailments, a susceptibility to panic attacks.

Well, all right! Let Cinnamon's call panic him a little.

David was cautious when Cinnamon called him and was annoyed because she refused to discuss whatever was bothering her on the phone. He could not wheedle anything out of her, and that was worrisome. Cinny was usually so transparent. David promised he would be up to see her on Sat.u.r.daya"with his usual proviso about the mercurial state of his health.

On Friday, August 12, Jeoff Robinson went up to a.s.sure himself that the staff at Ventura was prepared for every eventuality. Everything was to be carefully ch.o.r.eographed to prevent slipups.

Superintendent Carraway would provide a room facing out into the outdoor visitors' area so that Newell and Robinson could monitor the conversation between Cinnamon and her father, be sure it was recording audibly, and also take photos of the meeting. With luck, they would be only about eight yards awaya"if Cinnamon could steer David over to the shady lawn beneath the trees.

Cinnamon would be taken to an office just before visiting hours to have the transmitter and wires attached. Armondo Favila, a.s.sistant chief of security of CYA, would be on hand, and he could take messages to Cinnamon if Newell needed to instruct her during her father's visit. Neither of the Orange County DA's men could chance being seen.

Jeoff Robinson was very high profile in Orange County; David might recognize him from media coverage on other cases. And there was little doubt that Jay Newell, aka Realtor "Jerry Walker," was burned into Brown's mind. Newell had had his one shot at being incognito.

"I was also the 'technician,'" Robinson remembered. "My sole a.s.signment was to supply the correct batteries for the transmitter. And I managed to mess that upa"brought the wrong size. The ones I brought were half an inch too short. We had a last-minute panic ourselves until our sound man, Greg Gulen, back at the DA's Office, told me to peel the foil off gum wrappers and wad it up to make the batteries fit. It worked."

Newell gave Cinnamon simple instructions. "Keep your voice up. Discuss the night of the murder, and keep telling your father that you have to know the truth. We'll be listening. If the transmitter stops working, we'll send Armondo over to tell you we're done for today. Okay?"

She nodded. She was pale, but she was resolute.

They were ready.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon, August 13, 1988, Cinnamon wore blue jeans and an oversize light-blue sweatshirt. There was no visible sign that she was wired for sound as she hurried into the visitors' areaa"so intent on her mission that she had to be called back by a guard to show her pa.s.s. And then called back again to explain the Coca-Cola she carried. No one ran at Ventura; no "ward" moved from one area to another without a pa.s.s or a good explanation.

She spotted her father. He wore jeans, a gray sports shirt with red and black stripes, with the familiar pack of cigarettes bulging in the pocket.

She pasted on a smile and went to meet him.

"h.e.l.lo."

"No 'I love you'?" That was her dad, playing word games and trying to throw her off-balance from the first moment.

"I love you," she said dutifully.

They made small talk as Cinnamon led her father toward a shady area. That was the easy parta"he hated the sun. They had not yet reached the spot beneath the tree before David asked, "What do you have to tell me?"

"It's something concerning me being . . . confused. I have a lot of emotion lately and I needed to talk to you about it. 'Cause I feel like I'm lost."

David said nothing, but then he murmured something that made Cinnamon's heart stop, and Jay Newell's do the same in his hidden vantage point. "See," David said, "they don't know that I'm wired."

How could he know? Was he taunting her?

Cinnamon fought to keep her voice calm. "What are you wired for?"

"For my back. I've got things all over me."

Of course. He had those little electrical things the doctor gave him. Transcutaneous somethinga"to cover up his pain. Relieved, Cinnamon laughed. "Me too. I'm wired for sound." Her father grinned; he thought she was kidding.

He didn't know.

She began again. "For the past couple of months I've been thinking ... but I've been keeping it to myself. What am I going to do in here, Daddy? I'm so confused. If's been hurting me a lot. Partly because Ronny went home. [Her 'boyfriend' from work had been paroled.] Partly because I've been in here for so long."

David eased his considerable bulk carefully down onto the gra.s.s. He nodded sagely. "I figured that was what was bothering you. I know what it feels like to love somebody and not be able to be near them. You're proof."

"I'm very confused."

"What are you thinking about?" David asked. The sound was coming through loud and clear to Newell's and Robinson's hidden vantage point.

"I'm thinking about the things that keep going through my head at Board. . .. They keep on telling me the same thing over and over again."

"What's that?"

"We're going to keep you here to '92 to '95. They just keep putting more time on me, Daddy."

"I can't see why. You're working hard, graduated from school. I know that you're not a pain in the a.s.s. What's their problem?"

"The crime."

It was as if he had completely forgotten why she was there.

"Why did you tell me that I would only be here for a little bit, and then they'd let me go home?"

"'Cause that's what I understood the law was. Apparently I didn'ta""

"I feel like you lied to me."

"No, I didn't lie to you. I swear to G.o.d that is exactly what I had understood. If you remember right, Cinny, I asked you not toa"I told you I'd rather die because I'm in too much pain anyway. My whole body's falling apart, my nerves are gone. I can't think anymore. I can't do business."

Cinnamon would not be deterred. She had heard her father feign critical illness all her life; he had become like the boy who cried "Wolf!" Finally, she had come to the point where she didn't believe him any longer.

Her voice, as always, sounded like a little girl's, high and sweet. "What was the purpose of it all?" she asked.

He said nothing.

Cinnamon tried again. "It confuses the h.e.l.l out of me. Because I'm always lying and I'm lying so much I forget what the lie before that was. . . . And then I tell them another lie, and they say, 'That's another lie.'"

"That's how they work on you," David warned. "The only thing I know is Patti.. . said that the whole idea was that Alana"okay, apparently you know that Linda was into drugsa""

"What kind of drugs?"

"Cocaine, and something else. But she was heavy into it."

David explained that Linda's twin, Alan, was still stalking him. "I even got a new place and I'm supposed to be moving, but I'm not healthy enough to move yet. And he already knows where it is."