If You Really Loved Me (3 page)

"Did anything special happen today—yesterday—that might have escalated the situation?"

Brown shook his head slowly, as he reached for another cigarette, and tried to form his thoughts. He recalled that his parents, Manuela and Arthur Brown—who lived in Carson —had come over and spent most of the day with them. It was a Monday, but David Brown ran his own business: Data Recovery. He had invented a "process" that enabled him to retrieve lost data from computers. He had worked, he said, for a number of major corporations as well as the Pentagon.

"Linda and I ran my business. The phones rang all day long."

But he could work the hours he wanted, take a day off in the middle of the week to make up for working all weekend. On Monday—only yesterday—they had all planned to go out to the desert for a picnic excursion, but rain made them change their plans.

McLean noted that Brown remembered some events of the day before precisely, and then there were times his clear recall suddenly became vague and fuzzy. Shock. McLean had seen it before.

Brown continued his recollections. They had spent most of Monday playing a card game: Uno. They often did. It was a favorite of his whole—extended—family. And his parents were over to visit a lot. Linda had refused to play Uno the day before.

"She was irritable yesterday. Cinny played for about half a game. Then she left—she might have gone out to her trailer."

"Trailer?" McLean prompted.

David Brown explained that Cinnamon had been living in a little Terry travel trailer in the backyard for about three weeks. There had been problems between Cinnamon and Linda. His wife had "kicked Cinnamon out" of the house and said she had to stay in the trailer.

"They just didn't get along," Brown said, sighing. "There were continual problems between them. About two weeks ago, I spoke to her mother—to my first wife, Brenda— about having Cinny move back to her. But we compromised by having Cinny live in the trailer. Cinny was having problems at school too, so I transferred her out of Bolsa Grande in Garden Grove and she just started at Loara High School in Anaheim."

Brown explained that Cinnamon refused to help with the household chores and didn't get along with either Linda or her younger sister, Patti. Although Cinnamon slept in the trailer, she usually came into the house for meals and to watch television, so it wasn't as if she had been completely banished.

Asked to home in on the evening before, Brown strained to remember. He had an appointment with his chiropractor sometime between five and six, and he had taken Cinnamon and Patti with him. The trio had been in an automobile accident months earlier and were all being treated. On the way back home, Cinnamon had begun to cause trouble again and had verbally abused Patti, treating her "very badly," as Brown recalled.

David Brown had certainly been a man pulled in many directions. His parents were still at the home on Ocean Breeze, his wife was "irritable," and he was driving home on a rainy day with two arguing teenagers. He said he had stopped to pick up some fast food—Mexican food for Cinnamon and his father, and pizza for the others—so everyone would be happy, and they'd returned to the house about six-thirty. They all ate the food and decided to play a second game of Uno.

Brown recalled there had been some friction between his mother, Manuela, and his young wife over Linda's care of Krystal. Manuela was of the old school—where babies were not allowed to cry themselves to sleep—and Linda was trying to get Krystal on a regular schedule. Linda had been hurt that anyone would question her care of her beloved baby. Manuela had finally rocked Krystal to sleep, but Linda was angry and hurt about that.

"My folks must have left about nine," Brown said, and he had noticed that Cinnamon had already changed into her sweat pants and shirt, the outfit she commonly wore to bed.

Then Brown ruefully recalled that he and Linda had had an argument, about, he thought, the same subject Linda had disagreed on with her mother-in-law. He just didn't want her to let Krystal cry; he wanted Linda to pick her up right away. The argument had disturbed him.

David Brown admitted he was a very sensitive man, and he certainly looked as if the tiff with his wife had troubled him. Of course, it would trouble him; it was the last evening he would ever have with her. "We made up, and we went to bed together. But I was upset, and I couldn't get to sleep."

Brown's solution to insomnia, he told McLean, was usually to take a drive. He had gotten out of bed, dressed, and driven to the Circle-K twenty-four-hour market at the corner of Central and Brookhurst, not far from his home. He had bought a Dr Pepper and a Hostess apple pie. 'Then I went back in. I bought three or four comic books. The clerk thought it was funny for an adult to be buying comic books."

McLean was noncommittal about that. Brown's taste for comic books was the least of his concerns.

Still disturbed about his argument with Linda, Brown said he had headed for the beach, for a quiet spot where he could sit and think. He recalled getting on the Garden Grove Freeway westbound, and then veering off southbound to the Newport Freeway, headed toward the ocean.

"I stopped in a Denny's Restaurant in Newport Beach— to use the rest room. I didn't buy any food—the place was full of Hispanics. I do recall seeing a heavy-built waitress with curly red hair and glasses."

David Brown, so distressed over a minor argument with his wife that he could not sleep, had been away from his home for only an hour or so. Ocean Breeze Drive was dark and still as he pulled up into his own driveway in his Honda Prelude. There would be hours yet to sleep, his emotions soothed by the sight and sound of the waves rolling in as the Pacific Ocean hit the shore at Newport Beach.

Instead, he found stark horror inside the dark house. Patti Bailey, holding Krystal, met him. "She was shaking, crying, almost hysterical.

"She said Cinny had tried to kill her."

3

D
avid Brown described his daughter as difficult, stubborn, adamant about not seeing a counselor. He told both Day and McLean that Cinnamon "Cinny" as he called her, fought with his wife, with his sister-in-law Patti, and with her own mother, that she didn't get along in school. He was clearly a man with tremendous problems, apparently dealing with a child who was not only out of control, but dangerous. Everything he said enhanced that picture.

But Brown hadn't been home when the shooting took place. He was not the best source of what had happened after he left the house and headed for the ocean beach to think.

Patricia Bailey
had
been there. Patti had talked at length to Officer Davis, and to Detective Sanders, and she was willing to talk with Fred McLean, even though the ordeal of the long night was becoming more real to her with each retelling.

She had known David Brown well, she said, since she was a child. Later, after David and Linda married, they all moved to Yorba Linda. "We all got along, and we had no problems in 'the family,' " she said. They had moved often and had lived in Brea on Branch Lane before they moved to Garden Grove.

Patti Bailey was seventeen years old, and she had grown up as much with David and Linda as she had with her mother, Ethel. Cinnamon had been like family to her too, although they weren't really related.

Patti was a pale, pretty girl, with straight ash-blond hair that hung halfway down her back. She was small, but she had wide shoulders and hips and full breasts. She spoke softly, shyly, her hair partially covering her face as she ducked her head. She seemed somehow older than seventeen, and she held her dead sister's baby on her hip as easily as most teenagers might balance an armful of schoolbooks. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying now, and she shivered in remembered terror.

She began by trying to orient McLean to the rather unusual makeup of the household. Cinnamon had moved in and out of her father's home. Patti recalled that Cinnamon had lived with them in Brea, but she had left in June of 1984 to move back with her mother in Anaheim. "She left because she wasn't getting along with Linda or David," Patti said. "She just argued constantly about doing chores and the household rules. I don't think she got along with her mom either—and I guess that's why she moved back with us."

Cinnamon had been living with "the family" this time since school started in the fall of 1984. There hadn't been an extra room for Cinnamon in Garden Grove. Patti had the bedroom at the front of the house, and Krystal had the middle room, but Patti had agreed to let Cinnamon share her room.

"She didn't talk that much about anything," Patti recalled. "But everyone else got along fairly well. I don't know though. Right after Christmas—during vacation— Cinnamon just started drawing away from the family, and she didn't get along with anyone. Linda made a special effort to be nice to Cinnamon, but Cinnamon didn't respond to her."

Patti said that Cinnamon Brown had become very moody, so moody that she didn't talk to any of the rest of the family. "She started talking about killing herself in January. She was going to use a gun, she said. I tried to talk her out of moods like that. I would tell her that I loved her very much and that I would always love her. That seemed to cheer her up."

The teenager that Patti Bailey described to detectives sounded like a very disturbed youngster indeed. Cinnamon had a father who loved her and a stepmother who bent over backward to accept her, and Patti herself was trying to help her.

But, Patti emphasized, nothing got through to Cinnamon.

Things got so bad in January and February of 1985 that Cinnamon had, according to Patti, become "very rebellious and sarcastic toward Linda and David." In late February, Patti said that Linda, who was usually so patient and kind, had had enough and she "kicked Cinnamon out" and made her stay in the trailer in the backyard. It was true that she came in to eat and to watch television, but Patti said she wouldn't talk to anyone.

Cinnamon
had
slept inside both Sunday, March 17, and Monday, the eighteenth. "She asked me if I minded if I had company, and if she could sleep on the cot that rolls out from under my bed. I said fine and I really thought that Cinnamon wanted to talk about something. There was something wrong, I felt, but she didn't want to talk about anything."

Monday morning—the last day of Linda's life— Cinnamon ate breakfast with them. They all ate off trays in the living room. "She didn't talk to us. The only thing she said was could she have the last two pieces of sausage—and Linda gave them to her."

They had all taken turns watching Krystal. They had planned to go to the desert, Patti remembered, to visit friends and have a barbecue. "David invited Cinnamon to come with us, but she didn't feel like going. David just about insisted. He said it would be 'nice to get reacquainted and be a family again.' "

But the rain pelted down, and by the time Manuela and Arthur Brown arrived, they decided to call off the trip. Yes, they had played Uno most of the day, but Cinnamon had gotten angry because she was losing.

It had been such an ordinary day. Patti remembered the argument about whether to pick up Krystal or not when she cried. David had sided with his parents, but he had apologized to Linda later. None of it was a big deal.

Despite her grief and fright, Patti Bailey proved to have a meticulous memory for details. She recalled that Cinnamon had been watching a movie called
Wife for Sale
when the elder Browns left. Linda had taken a shower around nine or nine-thirty and then gone to bed. But she had come out to get a soft drink in the kitchen an hour later and said, "Cinnamon, remember you have to go to school tomorrow."

Cinnamon had snapped back sarcastically, "I
know."

"We went to bed in my room; David went to his and Linda's room. But Cinnamon wanted to watch more television. Something was
wrong
with her and I thought she wanted to talk. So I went out with her to the living room. It was about eleven-fifteen, and we watched MTV—but she still wouldn't talk to me."

Patti had been very tired, and at a quarter to midnight, she had begged off and got up to go to bed. And it was at that point that Cinnamon made an odd request. "Cinnamon followed me and said, 'Okay—but could you show me something first?' "

Patti said she had turned to look at Cinnamon and was a little startled to see a small gray gun in Cinny's right hand. She asked Patti how it worked.

"I asked her, 'Why?'"

"Just in case."

"Just in case
what?"
Patti had asked.

"In case someone breaks in."

"No way—the alarm is too good."

But Cinnamon had not been convinced. Patti thought that Cinnamon might have been planning to sleep in her trailer, which was not wired into the security alarm system. At any rate, Cinnamon had seemed anxious that an "emergency" might come up and wanted to know how to shoot the gun.

" 'I'm not positive how to work it,' I told her. ‘I’ve just seen it on TV—but you just cock it back and pull the trigger.' "

"She just said, 'Oh . . . okay,' and then, 'Good night.' "

McLean asked if she had been concerned to see Cinnamon with the gun, and Patti shook her head. She really hadn't thought much about it. Guns were not unusual for the family; they often went target shooting out in the desert.

"I went to sleep about midnight," Patti said. "Cinnamon was in the living room watching TV. I was asleep and I woke up with a gunshot in my room! It was very loud and it echoed. I looked toward the door and I saw Cinnamon standing there next to my bed, and then she ran out."

Patti had instinctively looked at the clock beside her bed. It said 2:23.

Somewhere in the house, she had heard a baby crying. Less than a minute later, Patti heard a second shot. She was sure it was inside the house. She had been immobilized with terror.

And then the gun had sounded again.

After the third shot, Patti told detectives she had lain in her bed, petrified with fear, for about a minute. But then she heard Krystal, wailing in her crib in the nursery. "I ran into the nursery, picked the baby up, and ran back to my room."

"Did you look in the house for someone who'd been shot, or to see where the shots came from—or for Cinnamon?" McLean asked.

"No. I was freaking. I hadn't heard anyone leave the house. I thought Cinnamon was still in the house and she might shoot me or the baby. I didn't have a phone in my room, so I sat on the floor with my back to the door. The baby was screaming and I tried to turn the radio on to calm her. I began pacing back and forth. The baby screamed until three or a quarter after.

"And then I heard a very quiet knock on the front door. I thought it was Cinnamon and I wouldn't answer it. Then I heard another quiet knock, and I went into the living room, by the entry, and I listened. I heard a key in the lock and I knew it had to be either David or Linda—because Cinnamon didn't have a key."

Patti, clutching the baby and her bottle, ran toward the door, filled with relief that someone had come to save them.

It was David.

"He asked me what was wrong, and I told him about hearing the gunshots and seeing Cinnamon with the gun. He said,
'God, no!'"

Patti Bailey told McLean that David Brown had questioned her carefully about
where
she had heard the shots, but she wasn't sure because the sound seemed to be everywhere. "He said, 'It's important that you tell me.' But I couldn't tell him, because all I knew was that it was close to my bedroom because of the loud noise and the echoing."

David Brown had then checked the entire house—with the exception of the master bedroom. He'd come back to Patti and told her that everything looked okay.

"Did you check Linda's room?" Patti had asked.

"No."

Patti told McLean that she had been afraid that Cinnamon might have shot Linda first and then committed suicide. "I begged David to check the back bedroom. He said, 'Don't say that!' because he knew what I was afraid of and he couldn't face it."

For an instant, Fred McLean's face betrayed surprise, and Patti explained almost matter-of-factly that David Brown couldn't handle the sight of blood—everyone who knew him knew that.

"But I asked him again to please go and look so that we would know what happened."

If anything, David Brown had been more frightened than his wife's sister. He told Patti he just couldn't look; he was incapable of facing what he might find back in the bedroom he shared with his wife.

"He sent me outside to look for Cinnamon," Patti said. She had looked around the backyard, with the baby in her arms, but she hadn't located Cinnamon, not in her trailer nor farther back where the shadows swallowed up the light from the kitchen window.

"When I came in, David was on the phone talking to his father, asking him what to do, telling him to come over because he needed help. I guess Grandpa Brown told David to hang up and call the police, because that's what he did."

Patti Bailey recalled hearing two periods of gentle knocking at the front door. David Brown said he never knocked at his own front door; he had a key. He said he always set the security alarm. But it hadn't gone off that night. It was controlled with both a key and a code to punch in each time it was either armed or disarmed. How did Cinnamon get out of the house without setting off the alarm? Or, if Brown had forgotten to set the alarm, why would he have had such a lapse? He said he was "religious" about setting it. But he had left for the beach; his wife, his baby daughter, Krystal, his teenage daughter, Cinnamon, and seventeen-year-old Patti were alone in the dark, possibly without the alarm's protection.

McLean pondered the tragic synchronicity that had left the home unprotected at the very moment it had been so vital. The man seemed devastated at the loss of his wife, and he had to be blaming himself for forgetting the alarm. But then Brown had said over and over how upset he had been by the day-long family bickering, and then the argument with his wife. That could have been enough to make him forget the alarm on this one, terribly important night.

Fred McLean studied Patti Bailey. It was clear she put all of her trust in David Brown, and she didn't seem disturbed that David had not had the courage to go back and check on her sister. That was just the way David was.

Routinely, Sgt. John Woods and Bill Morrissey conducted GSR (gunshot residue) tests on David Brown and Patricia Bailey. Davis asked Patti if she had handled the little silver gun when Cinnamon asked her how to shoot it, and she said she had not.

"When's the last time you fired a gun?" Officer Davis asked as Woods swabbed her palms, fingers, and the back of her hands with a Q-Tip, and Morrissey carefully inserted the swabs in plastic vials.

"Over a year ago."

Even as the Garden Grove police investigators tried to piece together the events leading up to the shooting of Linda Marie Brown, patrol units all over the area were looking for Cinnamon Brown. Her father had given officers her mother's address. He wracked his brain to come up with other suggestions about where she might have gone. She didn't have a gun anymore, as far as anyone knew. But then no one had any inkling that she hated her stepmother enough to shoot her. If she was as disturbed as her father and Patti Bailey described, she could be very, very dangerous to anyone who encountered her.