If You Really Loved Me Part 30

"Well, the truth can't hurt hera"that's for sure. It's been so many years that n.o.body's known the truth," Newell agreed. "She went through a lot."

"That's the trouble with these two guys right now. They tell one G.o.dd.a.m.ned lie and then they have to turn around and tell another one to cover it up.. .. David didn't used to be that way at all. If he told you the truth, that was his word."

Newell tried to keep Art on tracka"to be sure the old man was not fantasizing. Or engaging in wishful thinking.

The elder Brown said he worked with David in his business, although he was privy to few secrets. David was still working for Randomex, his father said, and then looked around nervously. "I'm not supposed to discuss it."

"Because it's government work, or because it's David's business?"

"No, it's David's idea, and his work. n.o.body in the world knows it but him."

Arthur Brown explained that Alan Bailey had once again fallen into disrepute and was no longer connected to David's business. Alan had only known how to do part of The Process anyway; it had been Linda who knew it all. Linda could have run the business all by herself.

Newell could see that the old man was thoroughly awed by his son's genius. Even intimidated by it.

Brown said that David seldom went into the Randomex plant in Long Beach. "He used toa"but since he's been so sick, he gets out in the heat and it just tires him up. A yeara"a year and a half now, maybe. He goes in occasionally, but not on a hot day."

Brown wasn't exactly sure what was wrong with David. Lately, it had been his gallbladder, but the doctors had never been able to put their fingers on a precise diagnosis. He didn't drink, never had, even though dozens of grateful customers sent him liquor at Christmas, especially brandy.

"Who drinks all the brandy?"

"n.o.body, unless it's Patti. It's sitting right there next to the bed."

"Whose bed?"

"David's bed."

Newell didn't change expression. He was convinced that Patti and David slept together, but he wasn't sure that Art Brown knew it. Or rather, that he was ready to acknowledge that his son might be sleeping with the girl he had just called a killer.

The old man clearly considered Patti Bailey an interloper. She seemed to wield so much power, to act as if she were mistress of the house. "I don't want her dead or anything. I just want her out of the house."

Jeoff Robinson stepped in to talk with Brown. "Wasn't David along and talking with Patti about killing Linda?" he asked.

"No ... he didn't say half a dozen words."

"But you were in the motor home on the way back from Venturaa"they were obviously upset the last two visits?" Robinson pressed.

"The way that motor home is, you have to get your head right down between the seats to hear anything." Art Brown shook his head.

All fingers pointed at Patti Bailey, and it seemed she had not one friend left in the world. David had his parents staunchly behind him, defending him as a fine young man, led astray by the wicked Patti. Cinnamon had the support of her mother, and of Newell, McLean, and Robinson, who believed she had been treated badly by the law.

Patti had no one. Except Heather. David had thrown her to the wolves the first chance he got. If it turned out that Patti had killed her own sister over her pa.s.sion for Linda's husband, would her own family desert her? Probably. She had left them behind long ago to go to David.

All the pieces were beginning to fit.

But still. . . Newell and Robinson felt hinky; what was missing?

Jay Newell put in a call to the Ventura School. He wanted to let Cinnamon know that her father and Patti had been arrested before she heard it on the radio or saw it on television. He got a counselor on the phone and told him to warn Cinnamon that the arrest story would be all over the media.

And it was.

From the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register to the Weekly World News and the voracious tabloid television shows, the David Brown family murder was headline material nationwide.

"Man Charged with Murder, Making Daughter Confess" (Orange County Register). "Businessman Arrested for Murder for Which His Daughter Is in Prison" (L.A. Times). "Teen Took Murder Rap for Her Greedy Father, Say Cops" (Weekly World News). The a.s.sociated Press wire story was headlined a bit less sensationally "Teen Recants Her Murder Confession."

Orange County residents were mildly surprised. Most of them vaguely remembered the girl with the unusual namea" Cinnamona"who had been tried for her stepmother's murder a few years back. They hadn't given her a thought for years. There were always new murders, new scandals, to erase yesterday's news from memory. The father? He had never been mentioned much. The fact that the sister of the murder victim had been arrested too made the case kind of t.i.tillating.

Not for everyone. David Ira Brown, a computer expert who lived in Farmington Hills, Michigan, president of Data Recovery Inc., was less than enthusiastic with the headlines about the man with a name so similar to his own, and with a business name almost identical. His office fielded calls from people who wanted to know, "What in G.o.d's name happened to Dave Brown? Why would he do this?"

The nonarrested David Brown had incorporated under the Data Recovery Inc. name in Michigan in 1981. David Arnold Brown first registered his company name in Anaheim in 1988, after using a similar name in 1982.

David Arnold Brown was ordered held without bail. So was Patti Bailey. They waited in their separate cellblocks for the next step in their confrontation with the law, the preliminary hearing, set to begin the week before Christmas, 1988.

David hired Joel Baruch, a well-knowna"if somewhat flamboyanta"Orange County defense attorney to represent him. Joel Baruch and Jeoff Robinson were an incendiary combination; if the case had not already promised sensational courtroom revelations, the combination of these two attorneys in one courtroom would have. Robinson had beaten Baruch twice in jury trials, and Baruch was not about to let it happen again.

Patti Bailey was represented by Donald Rubright, a tall, handsome defense attorney, also well-known in Orange County. David paid for both attorneys, just as he had paid for Cinnamon's defense in 1985.

David was arraigned on Monday, September 26, 1988, before West Orange County Munic.i.p.al Court judge Dennis S. Choate. He pleaded innocent and was ordered held without bail. Patti awaited a hearing to see if she would be tried as an adult or as a juvenile.

For a very short time, there was a spate of rest, a chance for Jay Newell and Jeoff Robinson to catch their breaths, before they plunged into preparing for the trial that lay ahead.

Newell only rarely talked to the press. Robinson would say onlya"somewhat inscrutablya""Who pulled the trigger is really not important in the totality of the circ.u.mstances. We believe that we have all the parties arrested."

Jay Newell kept in touch with Cinnamon infrequently. During the week before Halloween, 1988, Robinson and Newell voiced some doubts that had been niggling at them. There were areas in the tapes of Cinnamon's conversations with police in 1985 that didn't mesh with what she was saying now. There were good reasons that she might forget, but one lie now would give Baruch and Rubright a chance to tear Cinnamon apart on the stand.

They could not risk that.

On October 27, Newell drove up to the Ventura School and talked with Cinnamon. The preliminary hearing was coming up in December. The decision about whether or not to hold David and Patti over for trial would be made then. There had never been a time when it was more vital that Cinnamon tell the absolute truth. If her testimony should be shaken, there would be no going back.

Ever.

Cinnamon had never testified in court before; she had not been allowed to in her own trial, and she needed to be fully aware of the consequences of evading the truth on the stand. Newell gave Cinnamon a "layman's" explanation of perjury. It was possible that she could get another charge if she lied on the witness stand. If she had held back anything from him, she had to tell him before they got into court.

Newell supplied copies of Cinnamon's earlier tapes to her, and transcripts of the hidden-wire tapes with her father and Patti, and asked her to listen to them, to read the transcripts. "Don't answer now. Listen to the tapes. Think about it. I'll leave my number with your counselor. He'll always be able to get in touch with me. If anything you've told me isn't true, let me know?"

She nodded.

The next day was a busy one for Jay Newell, and he had no chance to return a call left on his answering machine. The call was from Cinnamon's counselor at Ventura.

Weekends in the Newell household were devoted to kids or dogsa"or both. On October 29, Jay Newell was getting ready to take his children to a Halloween parade. He nodded yes or no to last-minute decisions on costume additions, dodged big yellow dogs galloping through the recreation room, and reached for the phone.

It took a while to summon Cinnamon to the phone in her counselor's office. Newell had no idea what she had to tell him. He wasn't really apprehensive.

Her voice came through, that small, childlike voice. She might have been ten years old from the sound of her.

"Jay?"

"Yeah. What's up?"

"You said to call. What are you doing?"

"Getting ready to go to my kids' parade. What are you doing?"

"I have something to tell you."

"... Yeah?"

"I was ashamed beforea"to tell you the whole truth. I just couldn't say it," she said softly.

"What?"

"Jay ... I did it. I was the one who actually pulled the trigger. ... I lied to you. I'm sorry."

Newell hung up the phone. How did he feel? He wasn't sure at first, and then he felt a surge of relief. Deep within his bones, he knew he had just heard the final truth, the terrible secret Cinnamon had kept submerged for years. They would no longer have to worry about the tiny tears in the fabric of Cinnamon's story. Jay Newell had been fairly certain that David himself hadn't pulled the trigger; the man was a coward.

Patti's part of it all was still a question mark.

He remembered Cinnamon saying plaintively, "Daddy, does it really matter who pulled the trigger?" Under the law, it really didn't.

When Jeoff Robinson heard that Cinnamon had admitted the shooting, he remembered being "totally relieved." Both Robinson and Newell were still convinced that David had set the whole murder scheme in motion, orchestrated it, pulled all the strings, and let someone else do the unpleasant part.

That still made him guilty as h.e.l.l in the eyes of the law. It is a tenet in California law (and in almost every other state): "vicarious liability." Princ.i.p.als who aid and abet a crime are equally guilty. Anyone who aids, abets, instigates, promotes, or encourages murder is guilty of that murder, just as guiltya"if not more so in some casesa"as the actual killer.

It was Halloween when Newell headed north to see Cinnamon once again, this time to hear it all. The air grew crisp. It smelled like Halloween, and he thought of how excited his own kids were. His oldest daughter was now the same age Cinnamon had been on the night Linda died. Fourteen. He remembered now the Ocean Breeze neighbor girl's scorn as she laughed at Patti and Cinnamon for dressing up on Halloween. They had had such precious little time to be children; that night in 1984 had to have been one of their last attempts.

Patti, at least, must already have been playing David's "killing" game.

Even though, as a detective, Newell was eager to hear what Cinnamon had to say, this day would be rough. She looked pale and frightened when she came over from her "cottage." Newell took his time. They had lunch and talked about easy things, until he could sense that Cinnamon was relaxing.

Cinnamon nodded as he said, "You have told me that it was not true what you told me about being outside. Okay, everything else that we talked about that daya"when Detective McLean and I came up here and talked to you on August 10a"was that true?"

"Up until the time of her deatha"yes."

There was a symmetry in the way all of thema" Cinnamon, Patti, David, Art Browna"had reconstructed the day of the murder, right down to the menu and the games they had played. That was the easy part. But now Cinnamon had to continue on with a chillingly true version of what happened next.

"Linda was already in the room taking a shower.... Me and Patti were left in the living room. My father was in there for a little bit, talking to us. He had left the living room and went in there with Linda. Me and Patti were in the game room; we were watching TV."

It was quite latea"she wasn't sure of the time, but they had been watching music videos. "Patti fell asleep on the floor; I told her to get up, go sit on the couch ... and we ended up going in Patti's room to go to sleep.... Later on that nighta"I'm not sure how long it was, but I know I was asleepa"he came in and woke us up."

"Okay. Who came in?"

"My father. ... He came in, and he woke us up, and he said, 'It has to be done tonight.' And he was to the effect saying that, if I loved him, then I would do it for him."

Newell had to help Cinnamon so much more in this interview. Her words and thoughts did not emerge easily, but caught themselves up and held on tight. It was too ugly to think about. Too ugly to say out loud.

"The same thing that he had talked about before then? Right?"

"Right. He was saying basically the same thing ... and he said it had to be done tonight. And I was asking him why? And he just said, you know, 'Otherwise, I won't be here anymore. Linda's going to kill me.'"

"Did you guys stay in the room, all three of you, or what?"

No, Cinnamon remembered that David and Patti had talked softly between themselves, and then her father had instructed her to go with him. He led her to the door of his bedroom and told her to be quiet. "He went in and got some bottles and brought them out."

She didn't know what they were, just some prescription bottles. Then her father had led her to the kitchen and told her to get a gla.s.s of water.

"I took them____"

"Took what?"

"The pills he told me to."

She had no idea how many pills there were. "He told me to take them. I took them. I was having a hard time swallowing them. He just said, 'Do what you can do.' I told him I felt like it was going to come back up again."

But she had kept swallowing pills, handfuls of orangey pills, and some other kinds of pills from a new vial her father opened. When she was done, he led her back to Patti's room. David was inflexible. "My father was talking about 'it has to be done tonight. It has to be done tonight. . . . And one of you is going to have to shoot her. That's the only way I can think of. That's the only way it's going to work.'

"He was telling me I had to shoot myself to look like I trieda"like I was sorry."