He always lapsed into inscrutable and deliberately vague phrases when asked to describe The Process. Linda was the first to have all the pieces of his formula. David trusted Linda because she adored him. "Well, I developed The Process," he explained. "I designed computers and disk drives and all kinds of stuff like that. I trained people like Sperry Univac. ... I trained other engineers, so training Linda ... I used training materials I used to teach other people to teach her, training materials I had written and developed."
Linda had no high school education, but The Process didn't require that. It required careful, tedious attention to the job at hand—but no special intelligence or talent. Actually, despite all the mystery surrounding David's process, and his determined efforts to remain obscure about the magic he wrought, his technique required little more than patience, Q-Tips, rubbing alcohol, and nonoily detergent. Sometimes he and Linda would have to run the damaged disks through The Process only once, and sometimes over and over, but they delivered what the customer wanted, and Randomex rewarded them with more and more jobs.
David Brown's 1099 income tax forms reflected his growing skill at data retrieval. In 1981, he was paid $ 11,255 by Randomex. In 1982, $98,143.85; 1983—$124,905.82; 19X4—$171,141.79. His data retrieval income dropped in 1985 to $ 114,081.02, but that was understandable, given his shock and grief over the loss of his wife and business partner.
The Randomex income was gross—not net; David had to pay salaries and the required state taxes and withholdings out of that for his employees. His employees were all "family." Linda's twin brother, Alan, worked for them some, and sometimes David's father, Arthur, helped out. Once in a while, David gave some work to Linda's brother Larry, but he had slight confidence in Larry and was cautious with him. Larry was fired more than he was hired. Later, David taught Arthur some of The Process.
Still, nobody but Linda and David knew the whole process.
That was best. Even though it was not nearly as esoteric as David liked to suggest, it took exactly the right combination of ingredients. That belonged to David Arnold Brown and he was zealously protective of his technique.
Beyond David's Randomex income he had other interests —coin collecting, for one. No one who knew him doubted that David Brown, from one source or another, was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.
As the 1980s progressed, both David's second and fourth wives were long since relegated to dim history. He kept in touch with Brenda only because of Cinnamon. He enjoyed the fact that she still lived with all the old furniture she had cleared out of their apartment. "She's bitter because I'm a millionaire," he liked to tell people.
He and Linda were solid. His place in the Bailey family was established. He was the rich relative. Thus far, the changes he had wrought in their lives were mostly positive. Even those who didn't care for David's high-handedness acknowledged him as a member of the family. They maintained only a gritty, bare standard of living. David Brown had the power to cast a warm, monetary glow over their existence.
Although he barely noticed her at first, there was another member of the Bailey family who gazed at David with eyes dazed with pure worship. She had been only a little girl of Seven or eight when she sat shyly in the corner and listened to the man who brought them hamburgers. She found him quite wonderful and loved to listen to the rumble of his deep voice. He was a man and she was a child. Almost sixteen years yawned between them.
But Patti Bailey adored David Brown almost from the start. He was kind to her and to the rest of the family, and she had always wished she could curl up in his lap and feel safe forever. Patti was so young the first time David married her older sister, not old enough to feel real jealousy—only a kind of wistful longing. Linda got to move into David's nice house and be safe with David. And Patti had to stay behind.
"With Linda gone, Patti was the last young girl left in the Bailey household. She had no one left to run to." Patti was afraid so much of the time. She slept with one eye open, aware of soft male voices and the smell of sweat. Men's and boys' whispers in the dark, their quick hands. Patti thought that, if only she could live in David's house, she would be in heaven.
When Linda's first marriage to David ended, Patti wasn't sure what she felt. Sadness certainly that David wouldn't be part of their family any longer, and perhaps a certain smugness that Linda wasn't as smart as she thought she was. Patti held on to her little girl's dream that someday David would come and take her away and marry her. He was always so nice to her, and he winked at her as if they shared secrets together. She found him handsome with his shiny brown hair and his mustache.
When Linda and David started living together again, Patti was jealous and angry that Linda had had two chances, and she none. She was twelve and she would be a teenager soon. Why hadn't David waited for her? In a way, it was the plight of little sisters everywhere who suffer from hopeless crushes. But Patti Bailey had real, dark reasons to long for rescue. She was as vulnerable as a rabbit trembling in a clearing, and she viewed David Brown as all things kind and good and safe.
Linda knew how things were at home in Riverside, and she invited Patti to spend many weekends with her and David in Victorville where they were living then. David was buying a small house up there and the acre of land surrounding it. Victorville was about forty-five miles north of Riverside, up near Barstow and edging into the Mohave Desert. Patti loved it up there; it was another world. She dreaded going home when Sunday night came. Finally, Linda took Patti aside and told her that she didn't have to go back to Riverside anymore. Linda and David were going to get married again, and that meant Patti could stay.
Patti was ecstatic. When Christmas vacation started that year, she moved out of her family home and into David and Linda's. She would go to Yucca Valley school. Patti Bailey was delivered from despair into the fulfillment of most of her young aspirations. She would live in a clean house with new furniture. She would have all she wanted to eat. She would go to school wearing clothes bought at K Mart and J.C. Penney, new and fashionable. She would watch color television and be able to buy records.
Best of all, she would be near David.
David had rescued her, and Linda had said she could live with them. Her gratitude to both of them was boundless. But most of all, she loved David. He made her so happy. Years later, she would remember the exact date she moved in with David and Linda: "December 19, 1981. I was thirteen."
Once more, David and Linda drove to Las Vegas to be married. She was both his third and fifth wife. It would be the first time in years that David spent two consecutive Christmases with the same wife. And from that point forward, Patti was an integral part of David Brown's family. David and Linda and Patti. And sometimes Cinnamon.
Cinnamon was bounced back and forth between her parents; they often seemed to treat her more as a weapon against one another than a child to be loved and nurtured. If Cinny didn't mind Brenda, she called David and demanded he come and pick Cinnamon up. If David wearied of the day-to-day care of a small child, he packed her clothes and sent Cinnamon home.
Cinnamon was living with David and Linda in Victorville when Patti moved in. They soon moved to a house on West Street in Anaheim. Cinnamon was attending Patrick Henry Elementary School, and she lived with her father's family until July 1983. The girls got along, fighting occasionally as sisters will. They had known each other since Cinny was four or five. Cinnamon was two years younger than Patti, and they were very different. They were not really sisters, not even cousins—but friends. Even after she eventually went back to live with her mother, Cinnamon didn't seem to be jealous that her father let a girl close to her own age live in his home all the time when she only visited during weekends and vacations.
Cinnamon's trial time with her father and Linda and Patti didn't work out. Nobody could really explain why. But she didn't fit in, and her independent spirit was an irritant. Cinnamon was an extrovert where Patti was quiet. Cinnamon had a sense of humor, even then, and she was quick to see the humorous
side of things. Patti was solemn and failed to get the puns and quips that Cinnamon tossed out. Cinny was slapdash and detested doing chores, the vacuuming and dishes that were required of the two girls. Patti was neat, maybe because she had lived so long with disorder and because she treasured her new possessions so much.
As dissimilar as the two girls were, Cinny was part of the family. This new family. Linda and Cinny got along fine for most of the year they shared a home, and Cinnamon apparently accepted her stepmother—even though Linda was only twenty. Her father recalled that Cinny was sent back to Brenda "because she wouldn't obey Linda."
Cinnamon was humiliated when David ordered her to stand in front of the whole family in her underwear while he spanked her with a leather belt. (The incident that caused
Dr. Howell to report David to authorities for child abuse after Linda was murdered.) Despite the red welts David's belt raised, Cinny refused to cry. She only looked at him defiantly and said, "I hate you. ... I can't live with you anymore. I hate you."
Cinny went back to Brenda in Anaheim, brokenhearted. She didn't really hate her father. She loved him beyond reason.
If Cinnamon was really incorrigible, it was not apparent to anyone but David. Everyone who knew them had always marveled at how well Linda and Cinnamon got along. Cinnamon would be tossed back and forth a lot over the next few years. At an age where she especially needed to know where she belonged and that she was a worthwhile person, she was tethered nowhere; she floated like a balloon without a string.
She was, however, a child with remarkable insight, who unlike most of her peers accepted the consequences of her own actions. She was frank about her flaws. "I totally hated everybody at the time," Cinnamon recalled. "I felt mad and I was a big snot." At other times, she said she was "a brat. I drove my mom nuts."
But incorrigible? No. Perhaps she seemed so to a mother who was only thirty herself and was trying to juggle a new marriage, a new baby, and problems of her own.
"Living with my mom was much different than living with my dad," Cinnamon said. "Living with my mom, I felt more independent. I got to go with Krista and my friends. I learned to appreciate things more while living with my mom—I valued things more. But I didn't receive as much attention as I wanted. I understood that my mom worked very hard a,.d tried her best. I tried to do things to please my mom. I always wanted better communication with my mom, but she would yell a lot. I'd ask for an explanation and be spanked. I was curious to know what I'd done wrong—so I would not do it again. But she'd be so stressed and impatient, she didn't take the time to communicate."
Still Cinnamon's thirteenth year was, comparatively, her best. Her only teenage year. "Krista and I were very happy and active teens. Always doing things like riding each other on my Beach Cruiser [bike] handlebars all over Orange County. . . . Going to the beach with Krista seemed like another life or chapter. We spent a lot of time together. I was active in running and bike riding. I rode my bike to and from school too, while I was living with my father."
Cinnamon still visited her father's home, and she lived by his rules when she stayed there. Everybody did. David wanted to know where they all were, and he expected them to be home on time. David was always in charge. People who didn't obey David's rules didn't stay around long.
"Eventually, I didn't receive as much attention from my dad," Cinnamon remembered of the visits. "Because of his marriage changes and divorces ... I had to share him with Patti. I wasn't included in family affairs anymore—well not as much as before. I wasn't receiving any quality time with my dad. Of course, we still had some great memories. I appreciated my dad's sense of humor, but I also saw my father as selfish with everything... he wanted to be the center of attention. He was greedy with material things. Those are things I noticed as I grew up with him."
The doors of any house David Brown and his girls lived in were revolving. He was sporadically generous about letting Linda and Patti's family visit—if they toed his carefully defined marks. Ethel visited with them from time to time, and Linda's twin, Alan. Even Larry stayed over on occasion. But David discouraged more than surface relationships outside his immediate family. He much preferred his own household—not the extended Brown-Brown or Brown-Bailey families. He stressed the need for a closing-in, his modern circle of wagons against intruders.
From the time she was twelve, Patti Bailey believed in the family that David had created. His philosophies became ingrained in her mind, and she followed David as devoutly as any cult member. Anyone who observed his interaction with his teenage sister-in-law could see that Patti had a crush on David, but nobody teased her about it. Linda mentioned it to Mary Bailey, and they smiled and shook their heads. They knew Patti would outgrow her feelings for David when she started to date boys her own age. Linda still thought of Patti as her baby sister, a child.
Patti didn't know much about David's job at first, but she knew it had something to do with computers, and that it was very important. They moved often, so he could be closer to work, and sometimes because he and Linda wanted a nicer house. They always stayed close to Orange County, and they always stayed together so it didn't really matter to Patti that they moved so much. The family meant more than any friends she had at school.
She had to struggle to remember the different places they had lived. Most clearly, she recalled visiting her sister and brother-in-law first in Victorville. Then there was Anaheim, Yorba Linda, Brea, and finally Garden Grove, all within a space of three years. She wasn't concerned about graduating from high school. Linda hadn't graduated, and she had what Patti perceived to be the perfect life.
The family always had fun together. Often David's parents joined them for trips out to the desert or the mountains. They watched television, rented movies, and played board games. David was no athlete, but he was superb at organizing family get-togethers. "It's hard to believe now—but I was funny," David recalled much later. "I was always— whatta you call it—the life of the party."
When they lived in Victorville, the house David was buying had plenty of open space around it, and David and Linda and Patti—and whoever was living with them or visiting—would shoot at beer cans, laughing as the cans flew off stumps and somersaulted in the air. David kept several guns, both "big and little." That was the way Patti distinguished between rifles and handguns.
They often drove deep into the Mohave Desert beyond Barstow to the ghost town of Calico. David had a camper and they took iced chests of food and soda pop up into the Calico Mountain area. They would spend hours horsing around on the all-terrain vehicles that David bought them.
David loved his "toys," and when he was feeling all right, he played with them just like a kid.
Patti and Linda soon learned that David grew bored quickly with his possessions; he always wanted the newest model. Larry Bailey was driving one of David's ATVs when he crashed into something and bent it up, but didn't do serious damage. David saw it as an opportunity, not a loss. "I don't know the damage," Patti said, "but I know it was minor. David discussed it with Linda and Larry that, well, hey—if we took it out to Calico and pushed it off a cliff, then it'd get really smashed up. Then the insurance company would pay for it."
Patti and Linda helped drag it back out of the gully where it lay crumpled after the "deliberate" accident and steadied it while Larry and David put it on the trailer. "David took it back and he filed a claim. That's when I got an Odyssey instead of an ATV," Patti remembered.
Although David Brown was almost doubling his income each year in his data recovery contracts, he frequently used insurance companies as a way to update his equipment. He collected on a number of automobile accidents. He sued a supermarket, claiming he had injured himself tripping over an extension cord. There was a shed, filled with old furniture and building materials, on the Victorville property. David no longer wanted any of it; he rented a bulldozer and tried to enlist Alan Bailey as the operator. He wanted Alan to crush the shed with the dozer so that he could collect insurance on bo
th the outbuilding and its contents. Alan reneged. He didn't think they could convince anyone that he had accidentally run into a structure of that size, and that he would have kept on going until the contents were smashed.
And after they all moved to Garden Grove in 1984, a neighbor's driving mishap proved fortuitous for David. An elderly lady next door lost control of her car in her own driveway when she panicked and pressed down on the gas pedal instead of the brake. Her car leapt across the narrow space between the homes and hit below the window on the side of the Brown house—right at the middle bedroom.
Although the damage was minimal, David saw a chance to replace the Commodore computer he was using. He wanted an IBM.
"He moved his desk and the old computer out of his office into the room where the house was hit, and then I guess the computer fell on the floor somehow," Patti recalled. "I wasn't there—I didn't see it happen. Anyway, he made it look worse outside, added dirt and stuff." The neighbor's insurance paid off, and David Brown replaced his computer with a state-of-the-art IBM. He explained to Linda and Patti that that was what insurance was designed to do—pay people for their losses.
All along, David was building up his collections. Rare coins. Gold and diamonds. His rings were all custom designed. The phoenix pendant. David also had business cards printed, with a stylized phoenix "guarding" computer banks. He liked the imagery. He retrieved and revived data that seemed to have been hopelessly lost in fires. He helped it to emerge almost unscathed.
David Arnold Brown saw himself in the phoenix. Mr. Magic.
David not only employed his in-laws, he drew his own family members into his business ventures. He boasted that he had taken a brother and a sister "out of ceramics and started them in data retrieval." The data retrieval business fit right in with David's view of family life. Much of it could be done at home.