If You Really Loved Me Part 3

McLean glanced down into the doghouse as he steadied the girl with his arm. The floor was covered with vomit, and he could see perhaps three dozen orangey capsules still intact in the reddish pool on the floor.

Cinnamon Brown was a very small girl, still carrying a soft cushion of baby fat. She clung to Fred McLean, a perfect stranger, as if he were her savior. She said nothing. It was clear that she was very, very sick, very, very cold, and drowsy. She looked nothing like the crazed teenaged desperado the whole Garden Grove Police Department was combing the streets for.

McLean held the girl's hand and steered her toward a squad car parked beside the house. He instructed Davis to take her at once to police headquarters.

She was not what he had expected. But then, what had he expected?

Somebody bigger, maybe. Tougher looking.

Fred McLean had arrested a number of killers in his years on the force. He knew all too well that in police work even more than in ordinary life, things are seldom what they seem. But this little girl, who had clearly lain for hours in the icy pitch dark in a pool of her own vomit had to be the most pathetic suspected felon he had yet encountered.

Smelling now of vomit himself, McLean unrolled the piece of pink cardboard that Cinnamon had been clutching in her right hand as he removed her from the doghouse; he had practically had to pry her fingers apart to get her to release it. He untied the purplish ribbon that encircled it. In the light, McLean could make out laborious printing on the cardboard: "Dear G.o.d, please forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt her."

L/ong before Woods and Saunders got to Juno Avenue in Anaheim, they heard the radio transmittal that told them they could stop their search for Cinnamon.

"We have the juvenile suspect in custody," Davis's voice sounded on their radio, giving his odometer reading. "I'm transporting her to the station. Time check? I have oh seven sixteen hours. I am leaving one two five five one Ocean Breeze Drive." Female subjects are never transported by male officers without time and mileage checks.

Sanders and Woods turned around and headed toward the Garden Grove Police Station, spotting Davis's patrol unit ahead of them. The two police cars arrived together.

Cinnamon Brown was first taken into the holding-cell area on the lower level.

"Do you remember me?" Steve Sanders asked.

The girl looked up, and nodded. "Yes."

"Can you tell me where you remember me from?"

"From last falla"at Bolsa Grande High School. You came out when I saw the flasher."

That was right. The kid looked terrible and smelled worse, but she was oriented enough to remember a detective she had seen once five months ago.

"I have a terrible headache," Cinnamon Brown murmured. "And I'm afraid I'm going to throw up."

They quickly handed her a wastebasket and the girl leaned over it, vomiting bright orange material.

Woods administered a GSR test on Cinnamon to see if she had fired a gun. The swabs from her hands would go to the lab along with the GSR tests from Patti Bailey and David Brown.

Sanders turned to Halligan and Davis. "Has she been Mirandized?"

"No, we didn't question her or talk to her at all."

At twenty minutes after seven, paramedics examined Cinnamon. They found her pulse normal, her blood pressure slightly low, and although her pupils were sluggish in reacting to light, they didn't think she was in immediate danger. She was in stable condition, but they warned that that could change at any time. She had clearly been vomiting a lot, ridding herself naturally of whatever she had ingested.

"Do you know what she's taken?"

"No. McLean just found her."

"Well, since you don't know what she's taken, she should be seen by a doctor."

The medics questioned Cinnamon about what she had ingested. She told them she had taken three bottles of pillsa"one might have been a tranquilizer prescriptiona" and then she started throwing up while she was in the doghouse.

"When did you take the pills?"

"Maybe two-thirty... maybe about three. I'm really tired, and my head hurts, and I feel kind of light-headed," Cinnamon responded. "Is my dad all right?"

Sanders looked up sharply. The kid was sick as a dog and she was more worried about her father than herself. He answered carefully, "Your father's all right and Patti's all right."

"How about Linda? How's Linda?" Cinnamon asked.

Sanders looked away and said nothing. McLean was going to do the questioning.

Fred McLean arrived a few minutes later and handed the paramedics the list of the medications he had bagged into evidence. They winced as they read the list. Darvocet-N was a painkiller. The medics checked their PDR (Physicians' Desk Reference). The 100-mg dosage came in large orangey-red capsules, containing 100 mg of propoxyphene napsylate and 650 mg of acetaminophen. Dyazide was a diuretic, usually prescribed for high blood pressure, to rid the tissues of excess fluid.

McLean nodded his head when the medics asked if the bottles had been completely empty.

If Cinnamon Brown had taken all the pills that had originally been in those bottles, she would have swallowed 260 capsules. If she hadn't vomited, she might well have been dead by now. But she was on her feet and making pretty good sense; the bottles must not have been full. Still, she was one miserably sick girl.

She continued to gag and throw up and complain of a headache. Lab technicians were requested to take blood samples that would give them a more accurate picture of the concentration of propoxyphene and Dyazide in her blood. The paramedics stood by watchfully; at the first sign that she was deteriorating, they would transport her to a hospital.

At 7:38 that Tuesday morning, Steve Sanders asked Jail Matron Barbara Gordon to accompany Cinnamon Brown to a cell area where she changed her vomit-stained clothes. Cinnamon removed her sweat pants and shirt, her undergarments, the thin gold chain with the star charm holder from around her neck, her earrings, and handed them to Gordon, who put each item into a separate bag and labeled them.

Sanders had asked the matron to check Cinnamon carefully for any bruises, abrasions, or scratches. She did, but she reported back to Sanders, "There's not a mark on the girl's body."

Gordon mentioned that Cinnamon was menstruating and brought her fresh tampons and pads. Dressed in a clean jail jumpsuit, Cinnamon walked down the police station hallway with Detective Sanders, and up the flight of stairs to the east interview room on the second floor. She seemed terribly weary, and her face was void of all expression.

* * a At eight A.M., Fred McLean sat across the table from the girl he had led from the dog pen. He saw a pretty girl with brown hair, lightened with one peroxided blond blaze across her bangs. There was still a bit of childhood roundness in her cheeks. Her deep brown eyes had lost all light; she might have been fiftya"eighty, evena"if he stared only at those eyes. She looked at him stoically, almost hopelessly.

"Cinnamon," McLean said softly. "Cinnamon?"

"What?"

"I need to talk to you now."

She stared back at him silently.

"I need to talk to you. I'm Fred McLean. I'm a detective with the Garden Grove Police Department, and this is Officer Steve Sanders. You've met him before?"

"Yesa"at school."

"Okay. Right now, you're at the Garden Grove Police Department. You know that?

"Do you know why you're here?" McLean asked.

"'Cause I hurt Linda."

"Because you hurt Linda," McLean echoed. "How did you hurt Linda?"

"I shot her."

"All right, Cinnamon. I've got to advise you of your rights."

"What do you mean?"

"Okay. I'll just explain to you some things, and then we'll talk. Today is March the nineteenth, 1985, it's Tuesday morning, and right now, it's oh eight oh one hours in the morning. Cinnamon, your last name is Brown?"

"Yes."

"Cinnamon Darlene Brown, and you're fourteen years old?"

"Right... yes."

"Okay. You've been taken into custody, Cinnamona""

"I have?" For the first time, the girl's voice was full of disbelief.

"By me ... I've taken you into custody because of what you did to Linda. Now, Linda is deada"" "She's dead?" Again, Cinnamon Brown seemed genuinely shocked.

"Yes."

"Oh... no!"

"So you've been taken into custody for murder, and I want you to listen to me right now."

McLean quickly advised Cinnamon of her rights under Miranda and explained them to her, reading from the Garden Grove Police Department's standard Miranda-warning card. She nodded and said "I think so" each time he asked her if she understood. But she seemed to falter in understanding, and McLean explained the Miranda warning in more detail. And when he asked her again if she understood, she said "Yes" firmly. Steve Sanders sat nearby, watching silently.

It was hard to tell if the girl was truly drugged, or if she was only exhausted from a night without sleep. She seemed to drift in and out. When McLean could keep her attention, she responded quickly and intelligently. She didn't appear to need time to form her answers.

"With those rights in mind," he said, "are you willing to talk to me about the charges against you, Cinnamon? Do you understand that you don't have to talk to me?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to tell me what happened last nighta" yesterday?"

"Yes."

"All right, Cinnamona"you were living at your father's residence at one two five five one Ocean Breeze?"

"We were moving around a lot too."

"Uh-huh. When did you move in with your father?"

"The first day of school."

Cinnamon explained to McLean that she had attended the ninth grade at Loara High School during the fall of 1984.

"Why weren't you living with your mother?"

"Oh, because she yells too much. It made me nervous."

"Why does your mother yell at you?" "Because I'm a brat."

"What do you do to be a brat?"

"I go to the beach every day."

"What do you do at the beach?"

"Get a tan."

"Do you go with anyone?"

"My best friend ... Krista Taber."

So far, McLean could not see the rebellious teenager he'd expected. Playing hooky at the beach was hardly a major felony. He saw that Cinnamon was getting drowsier, drifting away from him, and he frequently had to repeat her name to bring her back.

"Cinnamon, can you hear me?" McLean repeated.

She waved her arm at him impatiently, as one would shoo a fly.

"Cinnamon? Cinnamon!"

"What?"

"Can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"How many times did you fire the gun?"

She did not respond.

"Cinnamon? The gun. Do you remember how many times you fired the gun?"

"Three . .. times. Once in Patti's bedroom ... and twice ... at Linda in her room."

"Do you ditch school?" McLean asked, backing off from the danger area for the moment.

"Only during the summer. This week I didn't go because I wasn't feeling good. I started feeling better yesterday, buta""

"Well, we know why you're not feeling good now. Okay, what happened yesterday ... Cinnamon?"

"I'm here."

"Okay. What happened between you and Linda yesterday?"

"... Me and my father get along pretty gooda"but Linda said a while back that she didn't want me in the house. So we moved me out to the trailer ... It still didn't work out.

She wanted me to move far away from them. She said, 'If you don't leave the house by the time I wake up, I'm going to kill you,' and . . . everything."