If You Realy Loved Me

  "The next day, my father told me to go get the stuff in the van and put it all back in the house," Cinnamon continued. "I said, 'Why don't you have Patti do it? I put it in there—you have her take it out,' but he just told me not to argue."

  Cinnamon had obeyed that Sunday, March 17—St. Patrick's Day. It seemed dumb to her to unpack everything. They were supposed to go on a picnic to the desert the next day. Why not leave everything in the camper?

  But then, it rained the next day.

  And during that night, Linda was murdered.

  Cinnamon seemed to be growing more nervous. She was supposed to go to work, she explained. Would she get in trouble with the staff at Ventura if she was late? Newell assured her that she would not. But he could sense that they had come to a place in a long, long recitation that would soon cast a chill over the hot room. All the earlier details had been, if not easy for Cinnamon, endurable.

  Now, they had come to the day of Linda's death.

  Newell had learned enough about Cinnamon Brown in these two hours to note that the more frightened she was, the more animated and humorous she became. She was smiling now, but he knew she was scared to death.

  Cinnamon described Monday, March 18. Her mother and her aunt and great-grandmother from Utah had dropped by the Ocean Breeze house to visit. They had taken pictures, and she had shown them her new puppy. Her father had grudgingly agreed to come outside to greet his ex-in-laws. "He put on a good show for them because he'd been snapping at me a lot and the rest of the family."

  Cinnamon visited with her relatives for a little while. "I went inside a little later. He goes, 'You didn't tell them anything, right?' I said, 'No, I didn't tell them anything. Stop getting paranoid.' He goes, 'Good.' And that night is the night Linda was killed."

  "That night your grandparents came to visit from Utah?" Newell asked.

  She nodded. "My grazf-grandmother and my aunt."

  Cinnamon said that her father had called Manuela and Arthur at about six and invited them over for dinner and to play Uno. "Linda was cooking dinner. I can't remember what we had, but it was one of the bigger meals that took a long time to make. I was in and out of there grating the cheese and stuff. My grandma was just sort of helping her. Linda didn't like Grandma in the kitchen too much because she would, like, take over."

  Newell and McLean let Cinnamon tell it at her own pace.

  "And we were playing Uno cards. My grandpa was cussing me out. I kept on laughing at him in the game, giving him a whole bunch of cards which he didn't need. So he was yelling at me ... and I was laughing. Well, then, Grandpa goes, 'I don't want to sit by her anymore,' and he was yelling. He was serious. 'Get her away from me.' And I sort of took it to heart, you know, because usually he'd just cuss me out and I enjoyed that."

  It was such a cheerful recitation of a happy family evening—or would have been had Newell and McLean not known what was coming.

  Cinnamon said she had run between the kitchen and the game, with people calling her from every direction. "I ended up getting kicked out of the game, right?"

  "Oh, literally?" Newell asked.

  "Literally. I mean I lost, okay? . . . They had really got me good."

  Cinnamon had to do the dishes, her second night in a row. When she balked, Linda had said, "Just do the dishes. Don't make a scene with Grandma and Grandpa here."

  There had been a slight argument between Linda and Manuela over whether or not to rock Krystal to sleep. Manuela had stalked off and turned on MTV music videos, her favorite. Finally, Linda handed Krystal to Manuela and said she was going to take a shower. Manuela got Krystal to sleep by rocking her and singing to her. Then the elder Browns had left.

  Cinnamon drew a deep, shuddering breath.

  "It was just me, Patti, and my father left in the living room. ... My father was all, 'We have to do it—we have to do it. It has to be done!'"

  Cinnamon had known what he meant. They had to kill Linda. She had asked, "Well, who do you expect to do it?" and he goes, 'You. If you love me, you'll do it. If you really love me, you'll do it.'"

  Cinnamon whispered, "How bad is it?"

  "It's really bad. Any day now, she can kill me."

  "Is it really urgent?" she asked desperately.

  "Yes, Cinny. She's going to kill me. Do you want her to kill me? Would you kill her?"

  "Yes," I said, "but I don't think I have enough strength to."

  "Not even for me?" her father had asked.

  Cinnamon started to sob, "I don't know. I don't know."

  "Patti looked at me, and she goes, 'You're always crying.' She got mad. She yelled at me. Then she said, 'Well, we'll discuss it later. I have a few things in mind.'"

  Linda was in the shower and heard nothing of the conversation. About ten minutes later, she walked through David's office to the kitchen to get some apple juice. "She was standing in the hallway when she said, 'Cinnamon, go to bed. It's late.' And I said, 'I'm going to bed right now,' and she goes, 'Okay. I trust you.'"

  Linda and David disappeared into the master bedroom together. Things must be all right, after all, Cinnamon had thought, praying that was true.

  Patti dozed on the floor, and Cinnamon sat on the couch in the living room. She too dozed off, serene in her belief that people who were planning a murder that very night wouldn't be able just casually to fall asleep.

  She jerked awake when she heard a song on MTV that she liked. She woke Patti up then and suggested they go to bed. Both girls had fallen asleep in Patti's room.

  "My father woke me up. He opens the door and goes, 'Girls, girls, wake up! Get up, get up! We have to do it now!'"

  Patti had jumped up, as if she expected that command, Cinnamon said.

  A few days before that, Cinnamon continued, her father had told her "to write a note that said something to the effect like 'I didn't mean to do what I did,' so I ended up writing, 'Dear God, please forgive me. I didn't mean to hurt her.'"

  "Uh-huh," Newell grunted. Cinnamon's words were gushing out so fast, and the story was incredible. And yet he and McLean both knew that it all fit. So far, it all fit.

  She described the note further. "I put my own personal touch. ... I put a little ribbon around it... he told me to hide it inside the trailer."

  Patti had been bossy and obnoxious that night, Cinnamon recalled. "I don't care for her at all." After he woke them up, "my father told me, "Come with me,' so I went with them and I was standing at his master bedroom door. Linda was asleep, and I could hear ... the Fisher-Price baby thing— she can hear the baby in her room. . .. She had it on full blast. I could hear the baby breathing—that's how high she had it up."

  Cinnamon asked Patti why Linda had turned the monitor up on high, and Patti explained that Krystal had a cold, and that Linda wanted to make sure the baby didn't choke.

  "My father had brought out bottles of pills . . . two or three bottles, and I go, 'What are these for?' and he said, 'Come with me.' So I followed him into the kitchen, and he told me to get a glass of water."

  "Take these," her father had ordered.

  "Why?"

  "Because I want to make it look like you tried to kill yourself, in case it doesn't go through tonight."

  "And if it doesn't go through tonight," Cinnamon said, "it's going to look like I tried to commit suicide."

  "It'll go through. It'll go through. Don't worry about it. I have a feeling Patti's going to do it tonight."

  "Will this hurt?"

  Cinnamon was afraid. She had the feeling that all those pills would really make her sick. There were so many, and some of them looked like "horse pills" to her. But she obeyed her father, swallowed all the pills, and set the empty glass on the dryer.

  Her father had turned the alarm off. He instructed her to go outside and get into the doghouse, assuring her that she could fit into the big one. She headed outside, but her father called her back and told her to get the suicide note. "So I went inside the trailer. I got the note. ... He goes, 'Now did you write any
notes previous to that—like trying to make it perfect or maybe you messed up or something?' I said, 'Yes .. . they're in my trash,' and he goes, 'Go get them and burn them.'

  "Why?"

  "Just do it."

  "So I went and burned them."

  "Where at?" Newell asked.

  "In my trailer. It was in this little trash can. I started the flames; it was like a lot for little pieces of paper, because it sparked up, and I turned the trash can over onto the driveway. ... I waited for it to cool down, and I tried to put it in a plastic bag in the trash can area."

  Her father had seemed satisfied then and told her to go where he had told her, and to take the suicide note with her.

  David Brown had said no good-byes to his daughter, only, "Now don't you go get crazy on me."

  Cinnamon said that she had gone to the dog pen, and that the dogs ran around her and made her dizzy. She felt nauseous. She said she didn't want to know what was going to happen "because I loved Linda a lot."

  She heard the car door open and close, and she peeked out and saw her father's car driving away. "And I'm thinking, did they do something and leave me here? ... I heard something like—I wasn't sure it was a gunshot at first. ... I wasn't sure if it was from the house or from around the neighborhood ... so I went inside the doghouse where he told me to, and I curled up. I was in there shaking and I heard two more. Two more of the same sounds. They were like right after each other. Two of them. And I was shaking and then I started getting sick and I was vomiting really bad, and then I didn't hear anything after that."

  Newell held out pictures of the backyard of the Ocean Breeze house to have Cinnamon point out where she had been standing when she heard the first shot. She pointed to a spot near the garage. She remembered nothing more, until, a long time later, she heard her father's voice someplace nearby saying, "It's done. It's over with."

  "Previous to that, he told me if anything was to happen, that I would say that I did it. . . because I was younger and I'd get less time. ... He said that I probably wouldn't get any time at all, that they'd probably just send me to a psychiatrist about twice a week or something. Because they'd think I was crazy. That's what my father told me that they would do if I ever did the murder."

  She didn't know if it had been three minutes after the shots—or two hours—when she thought her father had come out in the backyard. "He was saying, 'If they ask you, say you did it, okay? Remember what I told you before. You're not going to get in trouble. If they ask you, you did it. You did it!"

  He told her that Patti had shot Linda, Cinnamon said, and she was to say she did it—"because they [David or Patti] would really get a long time. And he goes, 'If you love me, you'll do this.' I said, 'I love you. I love you. I'll do it. I'll do it.' I remember I was talking real slow . . . and then I guess he was gone, because I didn't hear his voice. . .. The next thing I remember is some men coming to get me, but I can't remember what they looked like, who they were. I can't remember the questions they asked me either. Because I was gone."

  Cinnamon remembered finally coming to in the hospital. Her mother came to see her first. Then her father came and told her that she was to say she had done it. "Don't make it complex; you'll confuse yourself," he had said.

  "I had plotted out in my head ... to tell them I did it. I had already planned that out in my head."

  "For what reason?" Newell asked.

  "For the protection of whoever did it. My father and Patti."

  "What were you going to tell the police as to why you did it, or had you thought about that?"

  "I hadn't really thought about that. What I told the police isn't too clear to me. ... I remember hearing it on the tape in court—but I can't remember the actual talking to them. I must have been really gone."

  Cinnamon did not seem aware that Fred McLean—who sat nearby—was the man who had rescued her from the doghouse, nor that she had spoken to him on the tape. He sat silently, giving no clue that they had met before.

  "At one point, you said you didn't remember what happened," Newell said. "What made you change your mind?"

  "My father was confusing me. . .. And Mr. Forgette had come to help. I had told him that I did it, and I guess my father talked to lawyers. . . . My father came in and said, 'Never mind. Tell them you don't remember anything. Tell them you don't remember anything at all."

  Newell questioned Cinnamon carefully to see whose idea it was that she should fake amnesia.

  "My father said that Mr. Forgette said it's not a good idea [to remember]."

  "Okay," Newell said easily, knowing that that was not Forgette's style.

  "My father said, 'Tell them you forgot, That'll work because of the medication. Just tell them you don't remember anything at all, because you'll end up saying something that will get all of us in trouble.' I said okay. And he told me this in Juvenile Hall too. . ..

  "During the trial, Mr. Forgette came back to chambers and he said, 'If your father did it, or if Patti's involved, you tell me. You tell me right now. Because this is it.'

  "And I was thinking what my father said, 'Don't ever tell anybody'; I was afraid of my father. He [Forgette] goes, 'If you're afraid of your father, we'll protect you.' I was thinking, no, I can't do this. And I said, 'No. No. Not that I know of—they don't have anything to do with it,' and he goes, 'You don't remember anything?' and I said, 'No,' and he said okay and so we went in and we had the last part of the trial."

  And with that refusal to betray her father or Patti Bailey,

  Cinnamon had effectively tied her attorney's hands. If she was telling Newell and McLean the truth now, her story was truly tragic.

  "Okay then," Newell said. "Here at the Ventura School, have you been to any psychiatric workshops or anything to discuss it?"

  Cinnamon shook her head. She had kept up her stance of forgetfulness even at the workshops.

  But she was here. Something had made her change her mind about telling the truth.

  "What was it?" Newell asked. "What made you change your mind?"

  "Well, within the past year, my grandparents have been telling me what's been going on with the house. There's been a lot of neglect going on with the baby—Linda's child. There hasn't been much attention paid to Krystal. My father didn't tell me, but Patti was pregnant."

  Cinnamon said she didn't know much about Patti's baby, not even how old she was. "All I know is her child's name is Heather."

  "How did you find out the name?"

  "Oh, my father told me. But he told me she got pregnant by a boy down the street. My father was very possessive, and there's no way that he would even let her out of the house to go down the street. . . even to talk to a boy. So ..."

  David had denied Cinnamon's outright accusation that he had fathered Patti's baby, but her grandfather said it was true. "He told me, 'Don't let him tell you any different. You know he doesn't let that girl out of his sight. . .. Don't listen to anything your father says. He lies to you all the time.'"

  Cinnamon no longer believed her father was so ill that he never left his house. He was never home when she called. Arthur Brown had told her he and Patti were out together. "I don't have his address. ... I send [letters] to his P.O. box. He won't tell me his address because he doesn't want the district attorneys to know."

  Cinnamon said she had told her father that she thought the DAs already knew where he was, and David was anxious after hearing that. "Do you think they're watching us?" he had asked.

  "I don't know," Cinnamon had told her father. "If I were you, I'd be careful."

  "He's been acting really weird," Cinnamon said. "He doesn't come up—it's getting less and less visits from him, so now I hardly ever see him."

  "So you're saying that the reason that you are now telling what you remember is—is why? Because he and Patti had a baby?"

  Cinnamon looked down and shook her head, then lifted her eyes to Newell's. "No. I feel I was manipulated when I was younger, and I started dealing with it within myself. I had kep
t a journal here . . . about the incident, about what happened. And I feel like I was manipulated by my father by the whole thing—because he would say, 'If you love me, you would do this.' And inside, I knew that it was wrong. Now I know it's wrong, and I don't think I should take all the responsibility for what happened."

  There were so many components of the crime that Cinnamon had known nothing about. She said "Board" had told her that there was a million-dollar insurance policy involved in Linda's death, and she'd been shocked. "I asked my father about that, and he said that he hadn't collected anything on insurance, because it did not pay off because Linda was murdered. ... I just found out a month ago that he really did collect money."

  Cinnamon acknowledged that she hoped to get out of prison, but she knew that just talking to Jay Newell and Fred McLean would not help her with the parole board. In order to be free, she would have to have a new trial, and she had little hope of that.

  She was doing well at Ventura. She had graduated from high school—sooner than she would have on the outside. She was in college—at least taking college courses. She was working in the TWA program, four hours for pay, and four hours after as a volunteer.

  But she was not free. She was eighteen years old, and everything that she had ever believed in had slowly but methodically disintegrated. She did not seem angry. She seemed, rather, to be very, very weary of carrying a tremendous burden for so long all by herself.

  Fred McLean and Jay Newell said good-bye to Cinnamon after almost three hours of listening to her steady stream of words. They were noncommittal with her. They said they would be in touch. They would have to talk to the DA to see if there was any legal precedent for reopening her case.

  They said nothing to each other until they turned onto the south-bound on-ramp to the freeway, heading back toward Orange County. In a sense, they were both poleaxed by Cinnamon's story.

  "What do you think?" McLean finally asked.