Unconsciously, Patti rubbed the white scars circling her wrists as she spoke.
Had she told the truth? Yes. Most of it. There had been no opportunities for at least eighteen months for Cinnamon and Patti to speak together alone. Each had now talked to Jay Newell, Fred McLean, and Jeoff Robinson from their own independent recall. And each remembered that ugly night and the pathological schemes leading up to it in almost exactly the same detail.
Neither had anything to gain by talking. Cinnamon had already lost, and Patti had much more still to lose.
And still, when Robinson and Newell listened to one replay—and then a second and a third of the interview with Patti Bailey Brown—they detected pauses in odd spots in the conversation, and a certain sense of holding back and holding in.
Patti had not told it all. Why?
David Brown had no idea how much Jeoff Robinson and Jay Newell now knew about him. He recognized them as enemies, certainly. And he hated them for what they had done to his life. With every setback, the bitterness he felt toward the deputy DA and the DA's investigator grew and festered.
Patti was the key to his freedom. He knew that, and he still believed that Patti could never be turned against him. Patti would protect him to her dying breath. He wasn't sure why she wasn't answering his letters and cards, but he knew she would come around.
He wrote his wife an original poem and sent it through the jail mail system. He could picture her with tears in her eyes as she read it. Patti was a sentimental fool. An excerpt began:
MY LOVE IS A PROFOUND HEARTACHE
AND THE FIRE OF MY SOLE [sic] LOST
WHENEVER WE ARE APART
THE VERY FIBRE OF MY BEING
BECOMES LIKE DUST.
Patti read the poem, and then she turned it over to the DA's office, along with all the other letters from David.
And now, she told them part of what she had held back. "He's not just like a father to me. We got married two years ago."
Fred McLean called a friend on the Las Vegas police force, who checked vital records and called back. It was true all right. David Arnold Brown and Patricia Ann Bailey were legally married and had been since July 1, 1986.
Even so, Patti was still hiding something. All alone in jail, without the beeper summoning her, without David constantly reinforcing what she was to believe, she began to wonder if she should tell it all.
34
By the time the Orange County Jail was serving a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, David Brown at last sensed that he was not going to win Patti back with his poems, love letters, and suicide threats. Something had changed, and someone had turned her against him. Patti was the loose cannon who could link him irrevocably to Linda's murder. In all the years he had known her, Patti had never had any power at all, except that which she drew from him. Now she did. The reality was that she would go down with him if she talked too much, but David figured she was too dumb to realize that.
There was no telling how much damage Patti could do before she was effectively muzzled.
David Arnold Brown was always a man easy to underestimate. His face and build were not prepossessing. He was not a snappy dresser. His grammar was flawed. But none of that seemed to matter. A look at what he had accomplished in a decade illustrated clearly that Brown always got what he went after. Those who fell out—or were forced out—along the way mattered little to him.
Now, David wanted to be free. That certainly did not set him apart from his fellow prisoners. But there were few men among them who would go to the lengths David would go to achieve his goal.
He had visitors, he could call outside—if he called collect—and he was rapidly making "friends" on the inside. He had found his footing, and he was advancing, albeit in increments small enough that his enemies had, at first, no warning of his dangerousness.
Patti Bailey knew all too well how David could work people. Some of the women she was living with in Module G-4 were giving her the creeps too. They came back from visiting and said that David's attorney was asking about her—that he wanted to know why Patti was testifying against David. They seemed to take delight in her fear. Everybody in the Orange County Jail apparently knew her business and kept track of what she was going to do. She knew David used money to get people to do what he wanted. And she had learned that money would buy you anything you wanted in jail.
Jay Newell talked to one woman who had been approached by an attorney on David's defense team. She confirmed that he was seeking information on Patti Bailey, that he wanted to know what Patti was going to say in the preliminary hearing. "But I told him he was there to talk about my case—not Patti Bailey's—and that was that."
Nevertheless, Patti was moved into protective custody on November 17, 1988. Frightened as she was, Patti had not changed her mind about testifying.
On Monday, November 28, his first day back from the Thanksgiving Day holiday, Newell spoke to Patti once more. Don Rubright, her attorney, was present as he talked with Patti about some of the myriad secrets David had ordered her to keep, including the identity of "Doug," who kept appearing in David's letters to her.
Patti half-smiled as she traced the existence of Doug. "In June of 1986, David asked me if I wanted to become Krystal's mother," she explained. She had agreed readily and signed the prénuptial agreement without even glancing at it.
There had never been a real Doug, a revelation that scarcely surprised Newell. "David was very upset after some investigator from the DA's office talked to Grandpa Brown. [Patti had no idea that Newell was that investigator.] He tore up our wedding license and the agreement. When I told him I thought I was pregnant a month later, he wanted me to have an abortion. I wouldn't—and that's when he made up 'Doug.' He told me to stick to that story."
Patti admitted that she already had "a physical relationship" with David at the time Linda was murdered. Newell could see this was an area of questioning that threatened her, and he pulled back—for the moment.
Patti was more comfortable talking about David's panic after Cinnamon had summoned him to Ventura. She described him as "very scared" by Cinny's questions. Up to that time, David had told Patti that they had to do whatever it took to "keep Cinny in a good mood—so she wouldn't tell the police or anyone."
In the forty-four months since the murder, David had continually repeated to Patti a litany that went: "You know Alan and Larry are really the ones that killed Linda" and "You know, I didn't want it to happen." Patti said, "He kept trying to put those thoughts into my head—even though I knew they weren't true."
But once Cinnamon demanded answers, David panicked. Patti herself had been ordered to tell Cinny she would take her place. "He told me to go to the authorities and make up a story that didn't involve him."
"Is there anything else about the night Linda was killed?" Newell asked. "Anything that you can remember now?"
"Just that David told me if the police asked about the pills, to say that they were taken from his top drawer."
"Did you see those pills or the bottles?"
She shook her head. "No."
There was something else that concerned Patti. She had been receiving visits from a man named Wallace DuPree*, an old friend of David's. These were "official visits." (At the Orange County Jail, an "official visitor" does not have to adhere to visiting hours and can talk as long as he or she wants. Attorneys and ministers enjoy that status.)
Patti remembered Wallace DuPree as a man who had visited David when they lived on Summitridge—when she was pregnant with Heather. She was under the impression that he sold used cars and was somehow connected to the computer business, but she wasn't sure; David had always made her leave the room when DuPree arrived for a business consultation.
Now, she was surprised to find that Wallace DuPree was a Mormon lay minister, and that he had come to visit her—as he told her he visited David—in the capacity of a preacher who was there to help both of them. DuPree, however, appeared to Patti to be acting as an emissary from David.
/> DuPree had penetrating blue eyes, stood well over six feet tall, and weighed 235 pounds. He talked to Patti persuasively, his face full of concern and sorrow. "He keeps telling me that David will probably get the electric chair if he's convicted, and that David would never testify against me, so how could I even think of testifying against him?"
Brother Wallace Elmore DuPree was a master of slathering on guilt with one side of his mouth, and promising wondrous rewards out of the other. He showed Patti a thick roll of bills and told her that David would buy a car for Mary Bailey (who was supportive of Patti at a time when she had almost no family backup.)
"He told me he was authorized by David to put money on my books [in her jail account] if I needed any." DuPree also told Patti that David trusted him so much that he had given him power of attorney to take care of David's business.
Newell was intrigued by the sudden appearance of the Reverend Mr. DuPree. As far as he knew, David was Catholic and had no interest in the Mormon religion. He ran a computer check on DuPree, and found that, although he had no status as a minister, he did have a rap sheet with the California Bureau of Criminal Identification that trailed back to 1958.
The fifty-year-old "preacher" who spoke about what a pity it would be for David to die in the electric chair (although California administers the death penalty by cyanide gas) had many sins of his own to do penance for. DuPree had been arrested for burglary, grand theft, illegal pricing, failure to appear, assault and battery, resisting arrest, battery on a police officer, receiving stolen property, fraud, fraudulent tax returns, and three counts of child molestation.
Newell wondered what business David Brown and Wallace DuPree had discussed after Patti was banished from the living room on Summitridge. It was clear now, at any rate, that David was employing whatever means he could to pressure Patti to come around to his side.
Patti, who was already nervous in jail, believed that if David wanted to get to her to do her harm, he would find a way. The preliminary hearing was only three weeks away. Patti planned to testify against her husband, but she had told no one in the jail. No matter. It seemed to her that David knew everything that was going on, that he could even see into her mind.
Brother DuPree brought up facts about Linda's death that only she and David knew. Now, DuPree was trying to get her to go along with an intricate call-forwarding plan that would eventually allow David to talk to her on the phone.
She didn't want that. David could spin her around with his words. She didn't want to hear his voice anymore.
DuPree, aware that the police were checking out his religious affiliations, suddenly stopped visiting Patti.
But David Brown was unconcerned. There were other ways to go.
35
The Christmas season of 1988 was to be a bleak holiday for Patti and Cinnamon, and unsettling for David. Jeoff Robinson for the Orange County DA's Office and Joel Baruch representing David Arnold Brown squared off in the preliminary hearing in Superior Court judge Floyd Schenk's courtroom on December 19. This hearing would determine whether David would go free or would be bound over for trial.
Robinson had beaten Baruch twice before, and Baruch wanted this win badly. He was up and confident; he had just come off a successful defense case where the jurors agreed with his arguments so wholeheartedly that they had not only found his client not guilty, they had also joined Baruch and the client for a celebration after the trial. (The defendant was tried for murder; he had killed the man who beat and raped his fiancée. The jury agreed with Baruch that his violence was justifiable.)
Robinson, on the other hand, hadn't lost a felony case in years. No matter, he wanted this win more than any other. In January 1989, when it was over, Schenk's courtroom would still echo with the arguments, accusations, and insults that had caromed off its walls.
Returned to Santa Ana to testify, Cinnamon Brown had her first glimpse of the outside world in almost four years. There were so many changes. She clung to Fred McLean and Jay Newell like a child would on the first day in a new school.
It was Monday, December 19, when Cinnamon told her story in court. She admitted she had lied four times about the night Linda Brown died, first to protect her father and Patti, and then because she was ashamed. But there was no artifice now. Cinnamon dabbed at her eyes as tears streaked her cheeks.
David Brown, in a neat black suit and tie, sat impassively at the defense table, handcuffed to his chair. He stared hard at Cinnamon, but she would not meet his eyes.
Cinnamon told the whole story, just as she had told Newell and Robinson, but she was interrupted repeatedly by Baruch, who complained she was speaking too softly, and that Robinson was "leading" the witness.
Robinson fought back, accusing Baruch of trying to disrupt Cinnamon's testimony, and of playing to the television cameras and reporters who were packed into the front row.
"Mr. Robinson is a buffoon!" Baruch fired back.
Judge Schenk admonished Baruch and threatened to fine him $250.
The exchanges in the courtroom were pale compared to those outside in the hallway.
"You're going to get your petard handed to you," Baruch snarled at Robinson, mangling the cliché.
Robinson seethed, "You're the dirtiest, most unethical attorney I've ever seen."
The Los Angeles Times dutifully reported the state of siege between Robinson and Baruch. Indeed, it seemed for a time that the Brown murder case had fewer inherent fireworks than the attorneys' recriminations.
Cinnamon's first time on the witness stand was daunting enough. On the second day of the preliminary hearing, she faced cross-examination by Baruch, who attacked her mental stability. He recalled Cinnamon's imaginary friends of long ago—Oscar, Maynard, and Aunt Bertha.
Robinson objected, and Judge Schenk sustained the objection.
"Would you let me explain! Would you let me explain?" Baruch shouted at the judge, who was not pleased.
Instructed to control himself by the Court, Baruch cried, "Put me in jail!"
They wrangled, the deputy DA and the defense attorney. Baruch complained that he wasn't being given a fair chance to put on his defense, and Robinson accused Baruch of trying to intimidate Judge Schenk. "This is the way Mr. Baruch tries to get ruling in his favor."
Joel Baruch went too far as Robinson walked by him to make an objection. He turned and shouted at the prosecutor, "Sit down, Robinson!"
Judge Schenk rose up from behind the bench in a froth of black robes and fixed his eyes on Baruch. He held the defense lawyer in contempt of court. "I'll guarantee you one thing: you are not running the courtroom whether you think you are or not. I've had it with you!"
David Brown paled. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong defense attorney after all. He was paying enough for his legal defense—an estimated $250,000. That should have bought him a lawyer who wouldn't make the judge so angry.
Baruch's defense plan implicated Cinnamon and Patti as the sole participants in a wicked plot to kill Linda, and he presented his client as a man who had warned the teenagers that "nothing is supposed to happen" as he left for his drive to the beach. David Brown, he argued, was the innocent dupe, a man who had been desperately trying to hold his family together.
Cinnamon was not shaken by Baruch's concentrated attempts to trap her. When his questions were obscure, she simply answered, "I don't know." She admitted that she was "nervous in the courtroom," but she blamed her unease— not on Joel Baruch—but on her father. "I feel intimidated with him staring at me."
This was to be a long, intermittent preliminary hearing. It was obvious that Baruch wanted to start all over with another judge. He made a motion for recusal against Jeoff Robinson. (A recusal motion or hearing is designed to remove and replace the prosecuting team.) Baruch complained that Robinson was "overzealous and intimidating to me," making it impossible for him to defend his client.
And so the preliminary hearing was interrupted again— this time by a recusal hearing. Robinson, represented by attorney Tom
Goethals, responded to Baruch's twelve allegations against him. Patiently, Robinson answered. Had he, indeed, called Baruch "the dirtiest, most unethical" lawyer he'd ever seen?
"Yes, I did," he responded calmly.
"Truth was my defense," he said later. "I meant it when I said it the first time."
The recusal was denied and they began again. With time out for Christmas, it was January 6, 1989 before Patti Bailey took the witness stand. She had nothing to gain by testifying, and much to lose. There were no "deals"; Patti had been offered neither a chance to "walk" nor "short time." She too was facing murder charges.
There was every chance that she would never get to raise her baby daughter.
What would Patti say? David tried to catch his wife's eye, but she would not glance his way. He was a little anxious, but not overly so. He had expected Cinny to burn him on the stand. That was no big deal. He figured that Robinson and Newell had really gotten to her, and besides, she would do anything to get out of prison.
But Patti. Patti was another story. Patti loved him. She adored him. Sure, she hadn't answered his letters, nor had she opened up to DuPree, but when it came down to it, Patti wouldn't leave him. What would she do without him? Where would she go?
The most noticeable thing about Patti as she moved to the witness stand was her thick butterscotch hair, with heavy bangs and masses of long curls pulled back from her face with a clip. She was a pretty woman with a strong jaw, wearing a sweater of variegated colors. She trembled continually, as if her nervous system had been pushed beyond a point she could deal with.
David bade her with his mind to look at him, but she would not. He frowned slightly. That was not a good sign. As Patti answered Robinson's questions, David flushed. The bastards had gotten to her, all right. Each answer was worse, more damning than the one before. David stared harder at his wife, willing her to just shut up.
"We were always talking about ways to kill Linda," Patti testified, her voice quivering. "We were both discussing it."