If You Really Loved Me Part 29

David talked and he talked and he talked. He smoked until the air in the little yellow room was blue. And still he talked. That was how he had always won. Just keep talking and people will come around. Throughout his interrogation, the d.a.m.n cops had hardly gotten a word in edgewise, and David felt he had been in control of the conversation.

When Robinson and Newell watched the three-hour tape, they were gleeful. They had him. "Up to then," Robinson admits, "we had a skeleton case. We were going to go with it, no matter what. But in this long tape, David Brown talked. At first, it wasn't so much what came out, it was the fact that the man actually opened his mouth and talked. ... Jay and I couldn't predict how a jury might view that tape."

For the moment, David Brown's biggest problem was that he would have accommodations far less plush than he had become used to. He was worried about what would happen if he needed medical help in a hurry. Jailers a.s.sured him that he would be taken care of; they would have someone review his medications. He was strip-searched and given a large pair of orange coveralls. David Arnold Brown, computer genius, millionaire, was now Orange County prisoner #1058076.

Lodged in the IRCa"the Intake and Release Centera"in the Orange County Jail, David thought about his sudden change of fortune, and he looked for ways to survive until his father bailed him out. He wasn't sure what they thought they had on him. That Newell was a closemouthed s...o...b..

He touched his neck, fumbling automatically for his phoenix pendanta"but it wasn't there. It was safe with his other jewelry, back in the house where his dad could find it. It had to be that way. d.a.m.n cops would steal anything they got their hands on. He knew he could count on his father to take care of things.

Still, his throat felt naked without the phoenix. It was his security, his good-luck talisman, the symbol of who he was.

At 12:44 P.M., Patti sat in the same chair in the interview room that David had, and while David had barely changed position, Patti twisted and turned, tucked one leg beneath her and then turned and tucked the other foot beneath a slender flank.

Patti Bailey didn't talk. Not really. She spoke with Jay Newell in her husky, flat voice, but she said so little.

She remembered nothing. She had "blanked it out." A psychiatrist had helped her block it out. She couldn't remember how long ago it had been since Linda died. "She [the psychiatrist] got me to deal with it realistically. See, I always thought that Linda had just gone on vacation, and she got me to see that she wasn't just on vacation, and she wasn't coming back. But I don't remember the details. Everything's just a total fog. ... I guess I don't want it to come back."

Patti said she was still having terrible memory problems.

AMM RULE.

She could barely remember what happened last week. She never discussed it with Cinnamon. She had seen her a month ago, and not for a year and a half before that. "I remember the drive up [to Ventura School], but I don't remember a whole lot of what was said."

"What made you go after so long?" Newell asked.

"She's my sistera"well, not really, but like a sister. ... I had to see if she was still therea"if she was okay."

"What did you talk about?"

"About Krystal."

"Did you talk about Linda's death . .. ?"

"No."

"What if I told you Cinnamon remembers discussing it with you?"

"I don't remember."

"What is the relationship between you and David."

". .. He's not my blood fathera"but he is my dad."

"What is your feeling for David?"

"Just the same as I would feel for a father."

"Do you love him?"

"No . . . as the aspect of'Dad,'yesa"but not as the aspect of any other way."

"There's nothing s.e.xual between the two of you?"

"No."

"Has there ever been anything s.e.xual?"

"No."

Newell asked about the long-ago kiss.between David and Patti in the store. Patti said she couldn't remember.

Patti could barely remember what happened yesterday. She was dry-eyed, emotionless, and would not be swayed from her position of almost total forgetfulness. "Sometimes I feel I'm in a daze. I don't want to remember, or whatever."

Newell asked her about the time she had overheard a plot between Linda and Alan about killing David. She merely looked blank. Patti apologized for being so dense. She could not help her loss of memory.

"Do you ever dream about Linda's death?" Newell asked.

"I dream about picking her up at airports and stuff, but that's all."

Newell told Patti that he was going to have to dig deep into the mystery of Linda's murder, that he had a tape to play for her, and Patti suddenly began to choke up.

She begged Jay Newell to "go slowa"'cause it really hurts. I just now woke up and realized she's really gone; she's not going to come back. 'Cause I'd find myself driving down the street trying to find her. So go slow. Go slow and deep if you have to, but it's going to hurt."

Newell left the room to find Patti some Kleenex, and she bent her head and sobbed. She did not know she was on camera; the tears were real, whether for herself, for her baby, or for her dead sister, whom she described as "more a mother to me than a sister."

Patti expected to hear a tape from the night of the murder, and she was afraid to hear it. No, Newell explained, he was going to play her a tape of David discussing her involvementa"a recent tape.

Patti stared at Newell, uncomprehending. She insisted she and David never discussed anything about Linda's murder. They discussed only details of the house, buying clothes for Krystal. "He knows I don't understand what happened in the past."

Patti said she and David didn't get along.

"Why are you living there?"

"Because I take care of Krystal the best I can. That's the only key I have left to Linda. I don't want to lose it. Until I feel more stable about myself, or until there's someone to take care of Krystal, I'll stay. ... I wouldn't leave unless he told me to get the h.e.l.l out of his house."

Patti denied the slightest connection to David Brown in any way beyond father-daughter.

She did nota"or would nota"recall any conversation with Cinnamon at Ventura, nothing beyond talking about Krystal. Even when Newell played s.n.a.t.c.hes of David's voice on the tape, implicating Patti in the murder, she balked. She did not remember. She would not connect David ... or Cinnamon ... or herself to Linda's death.

"Everybody's pointing at you?" Newell asked. "Why?"

"I don't know."

Patti's affect was flat. She scarcely reacted when Newell played the portion of the tape where David told Cinnamon he was "scared to death" that Patti was going to "do him" next.

"Maybe I don't want to remember. ..."

"... It's about time to start remembering.... David's pointing fingers at you, saying you did it."

"He can point all he wants. I didn't do it."

"What involvement do you have in Linda's death?"

"None."

"David is saying, 'Patti did it.'"

"I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I hurt someonea"I can't tell Krystal no, or spank her. I can't yell at my mother without calling her to apologize," Patti argued.

Nudged to remember something, anything, about the night of May 18-19, 1985, Patti now recalled that David had summoned her and Cinnamon into the living room, but she had no idea why. She had no more memory of that night. "I go on and off. I really don'ta"that's the truth."

She would not talk. Even with the sound of David's voice on the tape from Ventura School, with the sound of her own voice on the tapea"confirming that she had some part in a conspiracy to kill her own sistera"Patti still clung to her position that she did not remember.

She was as white as paper; she looked scared, and the hidden camera recorded her sighs and her despair when Newell left the room from time to time. And still she protected David.

"Okay, Patti," Newell said, "we've got to start jogging your memory more . .. we're going to play this entire tape for the jury. They're going to hear that you got up in the middle of the night and discussed whether or not to go through with killing Linda. . .. You better start jogging your memory right now, Patti, because this is first-degree murder. Are you going to ride this out all by yourself?"

"If I have to."

Newell discussed the medication given to Cinnamon, suggesting that Patti had given the pills to her.

"I wouldn't even give her Tylenol without her father's permission."

"Ah, bulls.h.i.t!" Newell shouteda"this man who rarely raised his voice. "You tried to kill her that night!"

"I did not," Patti hissed, the first show of hostility.

"And we're going to prove that!"

The moment Jay Newell raised his voice, Patti said between clenched teeth, "I want an attorney if you're going to be nasty."

The interview was over.

Patti Bailey, Orange County prisoner #1058088, was booked into the women's jail. She wore a gray jail sweatshirt with yellow numbers on it as she gazed stolidly into the mug camera.

Her baby, the only thing she had ever had that was her own to love, was in the care of Manuela Brown, a woman who detested Patti. David, the man she had loved for a dozen years, had betrayed her to save his own skin. Linda was dead. Linda was ashes now.

It was all ashes.

Arthur Brown, looking tired and worn, entered the little interview room at two-thirty that long Thursday. Jay Newell had heard that Grandpa Brown was present during the trip to the mountains the night before Linda's murder.

"Was Cinnamon there too?"

"Yeah."

"Did Cinnamon get in that conversation?"

"No . .." Art struggled to recall. "But that may be what I told her [at Ventura] that upset her so much."

"Did David get in the conversation?"

"He never said a half dozen words the whole evening when we were heading up the mountain."

"Just Patti'sa""

"It was mostly Pattia"running off at the mouth. I thought that's all it wasa"just statica"and then this come up."

Arthur Brown could remember only that it was close to a weekend, and they had been planning a barbecue which was canceled by a "real bad storm."

That was the only conversation about getting rid of Linda that Grandpa Brown recalled hearing. He had told Patti there were a whole lot better ways to handle the situation. "But it don't do no good. She's like thata"in one ear and out the other. I've tried to correct her, but it doesn't do any good 'cause David always takes her side."

It was clear that Art cared little for Patti Bailey. He felt all the lavish remodeling on Chantilly Street was David's attempt to please Patti. He was almost glad they had been arrested. "It's the best thing that ever happened to David," he said, wondering if now his son would "turn around and straighten out."

A familiar and pathetic blindness, the inability of parents to see flaws in their young, but Jay Newell said nothing, waiting. It was clear that Grandpa Brown viewed Patti as the killer, the only one involved. If that should be true, he could have his son and his favorite granddaughter back, and a semblance of a happy ending.

"I was in hopes it might help Cinny, 'cause as far as I'm concerned, she's a doll."