If You Realy Loved Me

  "I don't know. It's wild. If she's telling the truth ..."

  "You think she isn't?"

  "Part of it. Maybe all of it. At least enough of it so the things she's telling us dovetail almost perfectly with what we know. I'm still not sure who the shooter was. She's got the sequence of shots exactly right. Could she have heard that from outside?"

  McLean shrugged, remembering that shadowy backyard, the little girl in the doghouse. "Maybe. Maybe not."

  "She still says he left before the shooting. She could still be protecting him and putting the blame on Patti. She doesn't like Patti."

  "No."

  "Funny," Newell mused. "I have this picture in my mind of Cinnamon all zonked out on the pills, of Patti actually propping her up and taking her in there and practically pulling the trigger for her. I still don't know if Cinnamon was inside or outside."

  They rode along, each man caught up in his own thoughts, remembering all the things Cinnamon had said. She was so close to what they had thought was the truth all along. But was she right on the mark?

  The details were correct, and hard to take, even for detectives used to dealing with violent death. They thought of Linda, sleeping peacefully, with her baby's monitor close to her ear. They pictured David Brown forcing Cinnamon to swallow enough pills to kill her many times over. And all the while, he had said, "Trust me—I'm your father."

  And over and over again, the ultimate manipulation, "If you really love me, you'll do it.

  "If you love me, you'll help me.

  "How much do you love me?"

  As they pulled off the freeway in Santa Ana, Newell said, "We'll run it by Robinson and see where we go next—or if we're going anywhere at all."

  The next morning, Newell and McLean met with Jeoff Robinson in his office. Both detectives felt they had finally gotten the first glimpse into the real story behind Linda Brown's murder.

  Robinson agreed and shared their excitement. "But it's not enough to hear it from Cinnamon," he cautioned. "We all know she'd be easy to impeach in court—if we ever got that far. We have to hear it from David Arnold Brown. In his words, his voice."

  Brown was never going to admit any culpability in the murder of his fifth wife; he wouldn't even talk to them. The only way to get verification for Cinnamon's claims from her father's own lips was to wire Cinnamon.

  If they could obtain a court order to attach a recording wire to Cinnamon, was she strong enough to carry it off? She had grown up believing her father was perfect. Now she feared him. "She's unsophisticated," Newell mused. "She's smart and she's quick—but I don't know if she's got the guts to try to get him to tell the truth, knowing all the while it's being recorded."

  "Let's try it," Robinson said. "Let's see if we can pull it off."

  Sylvester Carraway, the superintendent of the Ventura School, and Cinnamon's parole officer, Carlos Rodriguez,

  were willing to cooperate. If Cinnamon agreed to wear a transmitter during a visit from her father, they would do everything they could to support her, and to facilitate the DA's men who would monitor the wire.

  Cinnamon said yes.

  She was afraid, but she would wear the wire. The trick would be to get David up for a visit. Sometimes, it was months between visits from her father. Her next official visiting day was only two days away: Saturday, August 13.

  Newell instructed Cinnamon to call David and tell him that she needed to talk to him about something important and needed to talk to him right away. She had something to tell him. Newell suspected that Brown was running scared, expecting trouble. The man claimed, among his myriad ailments, a susceptibility to panic attacks.

  Well, all right! Let Cinnamon's call panic him a little.

  David was cautious when Cinnamon called him and was annoyed because she refused to discuss whatever was bothering her on the phone. He could not wheedle anything out of her, and that was worrisome. Cinny was usually so transparent. David promised he would be up to see her on Saturday—with his usual proviso about the mercurial state of his health.

  On Friday, August 12, Jeoff Robinson went up to assure himself that the staff at Ventura was prepared for every eventuality. Everything was to be carefully choreographed to prevent slipups.

  Superintendent Carraway would provide a room facing out into the outdoor visitors' area so that Newell and Robinson could monitor the conversation between Cinnamon and her father, be sure it was recording audibly, and also take photos of the meeting. With luck, they would be only about eight yards away—if Cinnamon could steer David over to the shady lawn beneath the trees.

  Cinnamon would be taken to an office just before visiting hours to have the transmitter and wires attached. Armondo Favila, assistant chief of security of CYA, would be on hand, and he could take messages to Cinnamon if Newell needed to instruct her during her father's visit. Neither of the Orange County DA's men could chance being seen.

  Jeoff Robinson was very high profile in Orange County; David might recognize him from media coverage on other cases. And there was little doubt that Jay Newell, aka Realtor "Jerry Walker," was burned into Brown's mind. Newell had had his one shot at being incognito.

  "I was also the 'technician,'" Robinson remembered. "My sole assignment was to supply the correct batteries for the transmitter. And I managed to mess that up—brought the wrong size. The ones I brought were half an inch too short. We had a last-minute panic ourselves until our sound man, Greg Gulen, back at the DA's Office, told me to peel the foil off gum wrappers and wad it up to make the batteries fit. It worked."

  Newell gave Cinnamon simple instructions. "Keep your voice up. Discuss the night of the murder, and keep telling your father that you have to know the truth. We'll be listening. If the transmitter stops working, we'll send Armondo over to tell you we're done for today. Okay?"

  She nodded. She was pale, but she was resolute.

  They were ready.

  On Saturday afternoon, August 13, 1988, Cinnamon wore blue jeans and an oversize light-blue sweatshirt. There was no visible sign that she was wired for sound as she hurried into the visitors' area—so intent on her mission that she had to be called back by a guard to show her pass. And then called back again to explain the Coca-Cola she carried. No one ran at Ventura; no "ward" moved from one area to another without a pass or a good explanation.

  She spotted her father. He wore jeans, a gray sports shirt with red and black stripes, with the familiar pack of cigarettes bulging in the pocket.

  She pasted on a smile and went to meet him.

  "Hello."

  "No 'I love you'?" That was her dad, playing word games and trying to throw her off-balance from the first moment.

  "I love you," she said dutifully.

  They made small talk as Cinnamon led her father toward a shady area. That was the easy part—he hated the sun. They had not yet reached the spot beneath the tree before David asked, "What do you have to tell me?"

  "It's something concerning me being . . . confused. I have a lot of emotion lately and I needed to talk to you about it. 'Cause I feel like I'm lost."

  David said nothing, but then he murmured something that made Cinnamon's heart stop, and Jay Newell's do the same in his hidden vantage point. "See," David said, "they don't know that I'm wired."

  How could he know? Was he taunting her?

  Cinnamon fought to keep her voice calm. "What are you wired for?"

  "For my back. I've got things all over me."

  Of course. He had those little electrical things the doctor gave him. Transcutaneous something—to cover up his pain. Relieved, Cinnamon laughed. "Me too. I'm wired for sound." Her father grinned; he thought she was kidding.

  He didn't know.

  She began again. "For the past couple of months I've been thinking ... but I've been keeping it to myself. What am I going to do in here, Daddy? I'm so confused. If's been hurting me a lot. Partly because Ronny went home. [Her 'boyfriend' from work had been paroled.] Partly because I've been in here for so long."
>
  David eased his considerable bulk carefully down onto the grass. He nodded sagely. "I figured that was what was bothering you. I know what it feels like to love somebody and not be able to be near them. You're proof."

  "I'm very confused."

  "What are you thinking about?" David asked. The sound was coming through loud and clear to Newell's and Robinson's hidden vantage point.

  "I'm thinking about the things that keep going through my head at Board. . .. They keep on telling me the same thing over and over again."

  "What's that?"

  "We're going to keep you here to '92 to '95. They just keep putting more time on me, Daddy."

  "I can't see why. You're working hard, graduated from school. I know that you're not a pain in the ass. What's their problem?"

  "The crime."

  It was as if he had completely forgotten why she was there.

  "Why did you tell me that I would only be here for a little bit, and then they'd let me go home?"

  "'Cause that's what I understood the law was. Apparently I didn't—"

  "I feel like you lied to me."

  "No, I didn't lie to you. I swear to God that is exactly what I had understood. If you remember right, Cinny, I asked you not to—I told you I'd rather die because I'm in too much pain anyway. My whole body's falling apart, my nerves are gone. I can't think anymore. I can't do business."

  Cinnamon would not be deterred. She had heard her father feign critical illness all her life; he had become like the boy who cried "Wolf!" Finally, she had come to the point where she didn't believe him any longer.

  Her voice, as always, sounded like a little girl's, high and sweet. "What was the purpose of it all?" she asked.

  He said nothing.

  Cinnamon tried again. "It confuses the hell out of me. Because I'm always lying and I'm lying so much I forget what the lie before that was. . . . And then I tell them another lie, and they say, 'That's another lie.'"

  "That's how they work on you," David warned. "The only thing I know is Patti.. . said that the whole idea was that Alan—okay, apparently you know that Linda was into drugs—"

  "What kind of drugs?"

  "Cocaine, and something else. But she was heavy into it."

  David explained that Linda's twin, Alan, was still stalking him. "I even got a new place and I'm supposed to be moving, but I'm not healthy enough to move yet. And he already knows where it is."

  "Where are you guys living now?" Cinnamon asked.

  "In Orange—moving to Anaheim . . . but anyways, from what Patti said, Linda and Alan were apparently tied to some group that Alan dealt drugs with ... I don't know if Linda owed money or what. But they wanted Data Recovery. They wanted it bad. Real bad. Okay? They had Larry [Larry Bailey] locked up for two weeks in a house, tied to a chair. That's what the San Bernardino police told us. They found unlimited tons in the basement. Cocaine, PCP, and all kinds of drugs . . . and they found them on and in Linda. She was apparently a heavy user and I had no idea."

  Newell and Robinson exchanged incredulous glances. David was lying "big time."

  "No, I never knew she used drugs," Cinnamon murmured.

  "It's in the autopsy report. That she was heavy into it, and very recently." (In fact, toxicologists had detected a minute amount of cocaine in Linda Brown's system after autopsy, a minuscule metabolite of the drug. There were many ways it could have been introduced into her system.)

  "Anyways," David continued conspiratorially, "they were instructed to off me so that Linda would inherit the business entirely, and her and Alan could run it by themselves under whoever this mob group thing is. . . . The mob is still trying to get Larry or Alan to off me. They want Data Recovery. As long as I'm alive, the government and everyone else comes to me. I mean, I've done the Pentagon. I'm the one that found out what killed the shuttle Challenger crew. All that kind of stuff. The Stealth bomber—that's critical to the United States. I've saved all that shit since you've been in here. The Mafia wants to run it. They want The Process."

  Newell listened, slightly shaking his head. It was easy to imagine that a man who wove such grandiose stories might influence his fourteen-year-old daughter. But now that daughter was eighteen, and no longer a child.

  David Brown's deep, confident baritone rumbled on. "They [the Mafia] promised her money and all kinds of shit, for her and Alan to find a way to get rid of me. They wanted me dead. As long as I'm alive, no one else will be able to get Data Recovery. See, I don't charge a million dollars a job, like I could. I've done several lately that I could have charged a million dollars—like for the First Interstate Building fire. There's over a thousand computers in there. Okay, I got maybe five thousand dollars out of it. I do it honestly. I don't rip people off because it just isn't worth it. I charge a fair price for my service.. . . Anyway, Alan has apologized since then ... but I can't trust him. He's still tied to the Mafia. Larry's even been caught with a gun on his way to shoot me again—"

  "But," Cinnamon cut in, "what was the real purpose behind it all? What was the real reason?"

  "That was the honest, real reason." And David was off again, describing Linda and Alan's plot to kill him, and Patti's decision that she would save him. But he would not say the words to kill Linda.

  "But what should I tell the Board?"

  In the twinkling of an eye, David reversed himself. "Why don't you tell them the truth was—remember? Linda wanted you out of the house and I didn't."

  "Linda didn't want me out of the house—there wasn't enough room in the house."

  Patiently, her father explained the scenario he wanted Cinnamon to repeat. "She wanted you to move out. And you ended up moving to the trailer. And then she wanted you out of the trailer and back with your mom. And your mom didn't want you. I told her [Linda] I waited too many years for you to be with me—we'd had too much fun. Linda wanted you out of the house. You and Patti both. She wanted you guys out—"

  "Linda never told me she wanted me out of the house."

  "I'd swear she did. But she made sure I knew. I thought she told you. I thought that's why you got in a fight with her once and moved out to the trailer."

  Cinnamon shook her head and told him she had moved out because she didn't want to share a room with Patti.

  And now, incredibly, David changed tactics again.

  "Well, Patti said if worse comes to worse, she'll confess to it, but you guys are going to have to get your story straight. She'll take your place."

  "Why can't you just tell the truth?" Cinnamon cried.

  "I'll tell you why." He paused to think. "You can tell them the truth if you don't tell the whole truth . . . okay? Because if there was knowledge—if me, Grandma, Grandpa, Patti —everyone had knowledge in advance of what was going to happen, then we'd all go to jail. Everyone. That doesn't make any sense, because we weren't the ones who did anything wrong. As far as I'm concerned, you didn't do anything wrong—"

  "As far as I'm concerned, I didn't do anything wrong either," Cinnamon agreed bitterly.

  For Newell and Robinson monitoring this bizarre conversation, it appeared that every possible suspect in the murder of Linda Brown had just been neatly eliminated. Save Alan Bailey. Save Larry Bailey. And neither had ever been a serious consideration.

  "I asked you not to do it," David was saying obscurely. "Because I wasn't taught about the repercussions—"

  "Well, how did Patti feel about this? Doesn't she have any remorse? Doesn't she feel bad?"

  "It's tearing her up."

  "I don't hear from her," Cinnamon said softly.

  David swore Patti had written often. And once again, he offered Patti up as a trade for Cinnamon. He explained that Patti had moved out of his house. "She can take the blame for it, and you just stick to your thing that you never knew anything about it. 'Cause she doesn't have anybody. All she's got is Heather."

  My God, Newell and Robinson wondered. Who was this man? Patti was expendable. All she had in the world was her child. David Brown's rea
soning was, thus far, totally self-serving.

  Patti had moved out, he assured Cinnamon, but she had come on the trip—she was out in the camper right now— because he needed someone to accompany him to handle his medications. "She's not as dingie as she was anymore," he explained about Patti. "She's grown up a lot. She's in pain, Cinny. She hates what happened. Not because of Linda. Because of you."

  "Now she hates what happened."

  "No—she's hated it since it happened. She knows I wouldn't stay here a week. I would find some way to kill myself. She knows that you've got to be feeling something like that."

  "I feel stupid, "Cinnamon said with feeling. "'Cause I was so young. And I loved you so much. And I was gullible enough to do it."

  Newell sat up straight. What did that mean? Do what? They couldn't tell. The words coming over the wire tumbled out in a non sequitur fashion. The only solid theme that never varied was that David had to be left in the clear. No one must ever, ever implicate David Brown.

  "Grandpa was going to do it if you didn't," David was saying forcefully.

  Cinnamon was shaking her head. "Grandpa loved Linda. Grandpa wouldn't do something like that."

  "You don't know Grandpa as well as you think you do."

  "I don't know anybody as well as I thought I did."

  "Patti is willing to prove it to you by taking your place."

  "She won't be able to take my place."

  "If she confessed to it. There have been no confessions— the only confession was when you were under drugs in the hospital."

  David's mind was clearly racing; the DA's men watching could see him lean toward Cinnamon, gesturing. He was explaining to her that there was nothing solid against her, that it would be easy to get her out and put Patti in. It was Cinnamon he really loved, the baby girl he had been proud of "since the day you were born." Patti didn't matter. Patti was moving out anyway.

  "I thought you said she already moved out," Cinnamon shot back.

  "She's here today to help," David repeated easily. He already had two housekeepers to look after Krystal.

  "What about the baby?" Cinnamon asked suddenly.

  "What baby?"