As always, Cinnamon's response to the psychiatrist's questions was very general, veering off from areas that got too close to the night of the murder. She was not impolite; she was merely evasive. She said she was busy with college courses, and the Christmas holidays. She admitted there were "a lot of things that get me really upset," but she did not want to explore them. She had "tons of homework" and that came first.
Pressed, Cinnamon insisted she had not committed the crime for which she was locked up, and that she still had no memory of Linda's murder.
"How do you feel about the fact that your stepmother's killer might presumably still be at large?"
She pondered the question for a moment, then answered inscrutably, "I have anger in me, but I'm not angry at that person—I don't have the right. It was not her fault. She was not in control of the situation."
Her fault. ... It was not clear whom Cinnamon was talking about.
Cinnamon admitted freely that, yes, she was angry that she was still in prison. But she was used to dealing with that. She was also angry about the crime, but "did not hate the person who did it for who they were."
Cinnamon's examiner looked at her perplexed, and she said she could not explain fully, and she did not expect anyone else to understand what she meant. "No one else has been through this."
This seventeen-year-old girl accepted what was—what had to be—in a sad, world-weary way. She said she suspected that the parole board also knew she was innocent, but that, without new information its members could do nothing to help her. "And I don't expect new information to show up," she said quietly. "This doesn't bother me."
"What if you should be confined beyond your parole date?"
"That's great," she said flatly. "I have nothing to do outside that I'm not doing here. I might like to take more college courses, but as for being outside—all I see on television is hate."
Beneath Cinnamon's brittle, listless veneer, there was fear. It showed only sporadically, but it was there. She made veiled references to the possibility that someone on the outside might harm her; inside, she was safe.
She had participated fully in every program, in every educational opportunity offered at the Ventura School— everything but group therapy. "It would be ridiculous for me to go," Cinnamon said softly. "With everyone talking about their offenses and dealing with them—and me saying I was innocent. There's no point. I'd be uncomfortable."
Cinnamon Brown missed her little sisters—Krystal and Brenda's younger daughter, Penelope. (She did not know that she had another little sister, Heather, two months old.) She wondered aloud about why she had been locked up for so long. Going on three years now from the time of her arrest. And yet she seemed resigned to staying incarcerated; her biggest concern was finding enough college courses to keep her busy.
Looking at the girl, it was difficult for even a trained psychiatrist to view her as a cold-blooded killer. Still, reading the details of Linda Brown's murder, there was no other way to describe the crime and the shooter.
But something was off-center. Something didn't mesh. Cinnamon's test results had always showed very low readings in the hostility index, and her other scores indicated she was a well-functioning, untroubled personality. Her reasoning and vocabulary were in the normal range.
Cinnamon had blossomed from the chubby fourteen-year-old Fred McLean had found vomiting in the doghouse. She had slimmed down, and she worked out with weights. She was a pretty girl, with long-lashed olive-brown eyes. She had started a part-time job as a reservations clerk with a major airline (albeit working at her computer well inside the reformatory's walls). She did cross-stitching and fancy needlework, and she went to school. Her days were full. She did whatever was asked of her; she was a credit to Ventura School.
But she was blocking her psychiatrist. Asked why she was incarcerated, she answered swiftly, "Why, to be rehabilitated."
"Rehabilitated for what?"
"Why, to have a better life."
Pinned down, she admitted the judge who convicted her had felt she was guilty of first-degree murder. She was sorry she had not had a jury trial, although that had never been an option in Juvenile Court. She denied committing the murder, and indeed, all wrongdoing . . . ever.
It was impossible to dislike Cinnamon Brown, and almost as hard to believe she was guilty of murder. Was she a multiple personality perhaps, a girl who truly did not know what her other self was doing? Was she a sociopath who could lie glibly? Was she hiding the truth because she was still terrified of something—or someone—outside the wails of her prison?
She was evasive, that was certain. She stalled, repeating nearly every question, rolling it around on her tongue while she formed an answer. When a question was too probing, she giggled to buy time. The giggle was a practiced device, a happy, light laugh, but one designed to ignore questions.
Cinnamon's psychological test scores warred with a diagnosis of multiple personality, sociopathy, or some other dark personality disorder. There was no convenient niche in which to fit her. The worst infraction she had committed at Ventura School was forgetting to tuck in her blankets when she made her bed.
Hardly the sign of a cold-blooded killer.
But her evasiveness troubled the interviewer. Confronted with the fact that she skirted around questions, delaying, Cinnamon answered that she wanted to be sure she got things right—so she had to take her time to answer.
"The subject is neither psychotic nor depressed."
It was a familiar diagnosis. It was indeed true that Cinnamon Brown was evasive, as if she was fighting to guard some terrible secret, afraid of what might happen if the truth should ever surface. Too many questions, too much probing—even too much sympathy—were threats she had to deflect.
But sometimes, she was so lonely. Sometimes, when lights out had been called, she thought of being home again, going to Disneyland or being on the beach watching the surfers or being free to go to college on the outside. She wondered about where her life was going. Or indeed, if it was ever going anywhere.
It was true that the world she saw only on television seemed ugly and dangerous. It was true that she was so far behind that world outside that she could probably never catch up. But sometimes, it didn't seem fair that she should spend her fifteenth birthday, her sixteenth birthday, her seventeenth birthday, and—soon—her eighteenth birthday behind bars.
Nothing her father promised her had come to pass. She had trusted totally, and as disloyal as she felt, she wondered sometimes if she had trusted too much.
Whi.e Cinnamon was undergoing her second psychiatric examination in as many months, her father was once again changing his residence. He needed bigger quarters. Actually, it wasn't even that. He required quarters that would allow him to separate the two main women in his life. Manuela and Patti continued to circle each other warily, and as grand as the house on Summitridge Lane appeared, the actual square footage wasn't that large. There wasn't room for both women to live there in harmony.
Something had to be done. David's nerves were frayed, and his health was worse than ever. He couldn't stand the bickering.
He looked around for property where there might be a mother-in-law apartment downstairs, or a detached cottage. Manuela and Arthur were a permanent part of his household, even though they still kept their place in Carson. But Manuela looked upon Patti and her baby as intruders, and Patti felt that Manuela was bossy and mean.
Finally, David found a place that looked as though it would solve all his problems: 1166 Chantilly Street had both a big house and room for a guesthouse. It wasn't as upper class as the Summitridge address, but it had more land, and it would afford more privacy. There was a pool, and it was close to transportation.
It was also less exposed. Sometimes, David felt as if somebody was staring at the back of his neck. But when he turned around, he saw nothing behind him—or no one he recognized. The house on Chantilly Street afforded him walls all around.
David borrowed $257,000 on the S
ummitridge house, and on December 29, 1987, he paid $177,300 cash for the Chantilly place. Then he immediately ordered remodeling that would cost another $100,000. As soon as he sold Summitridge, he would own a huge complex free and clear. They wouldn't be able to move in until late spring or early summer, but at least relief was in sight.
David was always scrupulous about keeping his insurance updated. When he purchased the home at 1166 Chantilly Street in December 1987, he immediately had it insured for $182,000. On June 23, 1988—after the extensive remodeling—he upgraded that insurance to $667,000 on the dwelling, and $500,250 on personal property, paying, of course, a hefty premium.
The personal property he listed was far more than the average Orange County family possessed. David included certified appraisals on some of his jewelry in his application. Among the jewelry described were: "A 14 Karat man's custom ring with a 5.25 carat pear-shaped diamond and 12 approximately 10 carat brilliant cut diamonds, all channel set, hand-engraved design—retail value, $36,450.00; a 14 Karat man's custom-designed emerald-cut diamond ring with eight approximate 10 carat brilliant diamonds channel set, diamond center approximately 4.92 carats, custom hand-engraving—retail value, $41,000; a 14 Karat lady's custom marquise diamond ring with approximately 2.10 carat in center, and 16 1.1 carat baguette diamonds, and 31 approximately .04 carat brilliant cut diamonds, all channel set—retail value, $28,950; A 14 Karat lady's ring with approximately 1.08 carat center stone diamond, and baguette channel set diamonds—retail value, $18,950."
Despite all his wealth, misadventure dogged David Arnold Brown. The 1986 Dodge pickup that he had purchased in September of 1986 and financed with forty-seven payments of $315.22 was stolen in the spring of 1988. David reported the theft to the Buena Park police, since he recalled parking the truck in the Buena Park Mall. Although he did not get around to making a formal report until April 26,
David told the Buena Park police that the truck had vanished on April 23, 1988.
One of the odd aspects of the theft was the uncanny speed with which the truck was discovered. David reported it stolen to the Buena Park police at two P.M., and California Highway Patrol officers found the blackened hulk way up in the desert, many miles away, forty-five minutes later. The 1986 Dodge D-50 truck with the camper had been stripped, rolled, wrecked, and burned when it was discovered by California Highway Patrol officers in Deep Creek, south of Rock Springs—and only a hop, skip, and jump from Victorville where David had once lived. You couldn't even drive to Victorville from Buena Park in forty-five minutes— much less have time to cannibalize and incinerate a truck. (Later, Bailey family members admitted that David had told them to take the truck—he was tired of making payments— and that they could have anything they wanted off it, as long as they wrecked and burned it later. Before the "thief" could strip it, it was stolen by an acquaintance—who finished the job.)
Despite all of his run-ins with Allstate, the company nevertheless paid his claim for the truck—deemed a total loss—promptly. This time, the payment wasn't to David himself, but to the Chrysler Credit Union. Allstate paid off the balance of his loan: $7,545.28 on May 27, 1988.
No one was ever charged in the truck theft. And once again, David Brown came out ahead. He no longer had to make the hefty monthly payments on the Dodge truck.
At that point, Data Recovery Incorporated was doing better than ever, and David expected to have a tax-reportable quarter-million-dollar year—or more—by the end of 1988. After three years of upheaval, it was beginning to look as if his life were going to settle down a little.
Cinnamon was almost eighteen, and she was still locked up, more cut off from home than ever. She didn't know about the new house—or the old house, for that matter. Certainly, she knew nothing of her father's Las Vegas marriage to Patti. Or of the new baby sister. Nobody told her when Heather was born; she had only heard rumors that Patti was pregnant, but Cinnamon's information came from Grandpa Brown, who muttered Patti had "gone out and gotten herself pregnant."
This puzzled Cinnamon. She could never remember Patti dating anyone, or even showing an interest in anyone. And Grandpa's latest rumor disturbed her more than anything she had heard yet. If it was true, then Cinnamon was afraid she knew with whom Patti had gotten herself pregnant.
It was a thought so ugly she shoved it away, so ugly that she asked no more questions about the subject. She didn't want to have her conclusions confirmed.
Cinnamon found herself farther and farther removed from the family. She spent a lot of time looking at old photographs, trying to picture herself back with all of them—but it was hard. She asked to have family albums sent, but David never quite got around to sending them.
It wasn't that Cinnamon lacked for anything. She still had her color TV in her room, and when the electricity was turned off at midnight, David had rigged up a self-charging battery pack to operate it. But institutional food had long since begun to pall. "The salad is O.K.," Cinnamon wrote in a letter, "but the rest I don't attempt. I eat the food I buy in canteen—soup, chips, pastries, cookies, peanut butter, jelly —anything."
There was always money in her canteen account; sometimes that was the only way she knew her father still remembered her. He hardly ever visited anymore.
"My father visited very regularly in the beginning," Cinnamon said later. "He asked a lot of questions, like 'How much pressure do they apply dealing with your commitment offenses?' and 'What will you tell them?' He told me not to say anything—just that I don't remember.
"He'd frighten me with thoughts that Linda might not be dead." Cinnamon shivered. "I had a few nightmares, but I knew she was gone.
"His visits got farther apart. He wrote cards and four or five actual letters. I saved two cards from him. His visits got to where I had to ask him to please come up because I missed him. He said he was sick or admitting himself to the hospital or he was dying. I was scared and worried. I called to see how he was, just checking to make sure all was well. But my grandparents would say, 'He's shopping' or 'At the movies.' Well, how could he be there if he was sick or in the hospital?
"This happened several times. Around this time, I realized that my father wasn't truthful with me. I'd ask my grandparents things and see if my father's story matched. Grandma said him and Patti shared a room. My father denied it, saying, 'Grandma's crazy.'
"New cars were bought, and my father denied it. New houses—and he denied that. Grandpa said he collected money for Linda's death. My father denied it. He lied to me a lot. The lies made me realize that I was alone. ... I was still in Ventura.... I wasn't going anyplace for a long time.
"People never came to talk with me from my father [attorneys] about going home again. Daddy said home wasn't fun, and I wasn't missing out on anything. He said all they did was spend their days at home—which wasn't true."
Cinnamon's mother stuck by her, and once in a great while, she would hear from an old classmate from elementary school. Her first stepmother's—Lori's—parents kept in touch. Krista's life, naturally, changed, and Cinnamon's old friend had little in common with her any longer.
Cinnamon began to feel that she had been forgotten. Worse, she suspected that she had been lied to for a very long time. She didn't tell anyone. She certainly had no idea at all that a man named Jay Newell existed, or that he was working on the outside to verify the very doubts that haunted her days and nights.
3 ay Newell decided it was high time that someone wised Cinnamon up to what was going on at home. As far as he could tell, the only information she ever got was from her grandfather, and that came to her in obscure bits and pieces. But Newell could not go to her directly. Since Cinnamon was still a minor and would be one until her eighteenth birthday on July 3, 1988, he could not talk to her without her parents' permission.
Cinnamon's custodial parent at the time she was arrested was the very person Newell was investigating—David Arnold Brown. Everything he was coming up with made Newell that much more suspicious that Brown had played some r
ole—however ephemeral it might have been—in the murder of his fifth wife. He was obviously still living with the suspect Grandpa Brown had fingered. Brown was a smart man; he had to be aware of the possibility that Patti was involved. Why would he stay with her?
David Brown was the last person Newell wanted to alert. He preferred to watch David and Patti without their knowledge. And he sure as heck didn't want to ask David Brown for permission to question Cinnamon. He couldn't imagine that Brown would acquiesce.
One thing that Jay Newell could do and remain strictly and ethically within the bounds of the law was to pass certain information to Cinnamon's parole officer. Newell couldn't talk to Cinnamon, but he could have a kind of secondhand input. It was akin to fishing in murky waters at midnight; he didn't know what would come up on his line.
Newell was convinced now that Cinnamon Brown was serving out a kind of penance, shouldering all the punishment for a crime she might not have committed. Something was keeping her from talking to the parole board or to her counselors. He didn't know if it was fear or misplaced loyalty, or part of some prearranged plot.
Newell would have liked to let Cinnamon know she had a friend working on the outside for her. Himself. But he didnt dare tell her. By the time he finished his investigation, he might even turn out to be an enemy instead of a friend. He didn't know the girl. He didn't know what drove her, and what it might take to get her to tell the complete truth.
If she even knew it anymore.
Jay Newell began by taking pictures of the lovely new homes where David and Patti lived—the sumptuous field-stone mansion in the Anaheim Hills, and the sprawling six-bedroom complex on Chantilly. He took a picture of the pool at the new house. It was blue-green with statues of Grecian goddesses watching over it. Luxurious tables and lounge chairs were grouped around the sun-drenched patio. He took the photos with him when he drove up to the Ventura School in Camarillo. He moved through the high-security check-in building and asked to see Cinnamon's PO.