"He asked me to marry him because he knew he was dying," Patti would recall. "Then Krystal would be all alone when he was gone. If she had a stepmother, he could die without worrying about her. As his legal wife, I would have no trouble getting custody of Krystal."

It was not the most romantic proposal in the annals of lovea"but it succeeded. Almost any proposal would have; David was the only man Patti Bailey had really ever known. She had loved him for her whole life, or so it seemed to her. She was delighted to become the sixth Mrs. David Arnold Brown.

When asked about his sixth marriage, David snorted at Patti's recall and insisted his sixth marriage was not legal, nor was it ever intended to be. His reasoning was either a prime example of David Brown's confabulation after the fact, or as he swore, the "honest-to-G.o.d" truth.

"Go look in the records," he said. "If you give false information on the application, then the license isn't valid and the marriage isn't valid. Patti and I both deliberately lied on the application. We only got married as a favor to a friend of Patti's who was pregnant. The gala"Dee Ann*a" begged me to suggest to her boyfriend, Tony*, who was a friend of mine, that we all four go to Vegas and get married. She was upset, naturally, and kept coming over, and she just begged me to do it, so I pulled the guy aside and talked him into it. I never intended to marry Patti.

"Tony and I each paid three hundred dollars to get a prenuptial agreement from the same lawyer. Same form and all; we just filled in our own stuff."

If David never intended to marry Patti Bailey legally, he certainly went to great pains to separate their property. David's half of the prenuptial agreement, signed by Patti, stipulated thata"should they ever divorcea"David would get:

1. Real property at 3823 E. Summitridge Lane, Orange, Californiaa"with a current equity of approximately $480,000.

2. The business known as Data Recovery . . . and proceeds of employment of David A. Brown.

3. IRA accounts, savings account, checking account . . . with a current balance of over $ 150,000.

4. All furniture and furnishings . ..

5. 1986 model 560SL Mercedes-Benz.

6. 1986 Ford Bronco.

7. 1986 Honda Accord LX.

8. 1985 Honda 500 Shadow motorcycle.

9. Two 1985 Honda Odysseys with trailer.

10. Rare coin and paper money collection, currently valued at $350,000.

11. Dali Women Rising painting, valued at $12,000.

12. Rockwell Old Man and the Sea painting, valued at $12,000.

13. Variety of lithographs and original artworks, valued at over $10,000.

14. Oriental ivory and jade sculptures, carvings, and artwork, valued at over $30,000.

15. Russell bronze and marble sculpture ent.i.tled It's Not Meat Until It's on the Table, valued at over $500,000.

16. Future proceeds from personal injuries sustained in November 1985 automobile accident.

Patti's list of a.s.sets was shorter:

1. 1955 MG.

2. Future proceeds from personal injuries sustained in November 1985 automobile accident.

3. Future proceeds from personal injuries sustained in September 1983 automobile accident.

She didn't care. She signed the doc.u.ment eagerly on June 30, 1986.

It was not exactly a romantic madcap jaunt to Vegas. One bride was pregnant and queasy, and the other obeyed her groom like a robot, almost scared to breathe for fear David would change his mind. They left for Nevada on July 1, 1986, Patti Bailey's long-awaited wedding day.

"So we went to Vegas," David continued to explain, "and Patti and I falsified whatever we could, everything that wasn't on our driver's license, so we wouldn't really be married. See, it couldn't be a commonlaw marriage eithera" because Patti was my dependenta"not my wife. So, even if she'd lived with me all that time, it wasn't like she was a wife."

The two couples got into the long linea"what David termed a "production line"a"and were married in the We've Only Just Begun wedding chapel by the Reverend George M. Stover, ordained minister of the Abundant Life Christian Center. There was no reception, and no announcement to friends or even immediate family.

"Afterward we ate at Caesars Palacea"or maybe the MGMa"Dee Ann was one of these 'yuppies' who had to have Chinese food with sushi, and Patti got sick as a dog."

That made two brides who were feeling miserable*

And so they were marrieda""but not really," according to David, who smiled slightly as he related how Patti's "wedding day" was ruined by food poisoning.

Las Vegas was David Brown's preferred wedding locale, just as the Orange County Courthouse was where he got all his divorces.

"I knew we weren't married," David said. "Patti might have thought we were married." In point of fact, they were, indeed, legally married. The wedding certificate exists, as does the prenuptial agreement, all in perfectly legal order.

At the age of thirty-three, David Brown had married for the sixth time, a wedding so private that it defines the meaning of the word. No one beyond the bride, the groom, and the other half of their double wedding knew. Patti could not have a ring, or a honeymoon or a shower. Neither his family nor Patti's approved of his closeness with Patti. Besides that, people might look askance at a man who married his sister-in-law so soon after his wife's murdera" although David considered a mourning period of fifteen months more than sufficient.

Back home on Summitridge Lane, the mixture continued as before. Despite Manuela and Arthur's resentment at having Patti live with them, she stayed. Patti begged David to let her tell his parents and her family that they were man and wife, but he was inflexible on that subject. People might jump to stupid conclusionsa"they might even say that they had something to do with Linda's murdera""like this was our intent all along."

They especially could not tell Cinnamon. David warned Patti that, if Cinnamon had been so bent out of shape about a kiss in K Mart, there was no telling what she might do if she knew they were actually married.

Patti remembered when Krystal was just a newborn and Linda was in that weepy, postpartum-blues stage. She had made her sister promise that, if anything ever happened to her, Patti would take care of Krystal. It made Patti frightened and sad to think about it.

And something had happened. Linda seemed to have known it would. Now, Patti lived in quiet dread that David would die and leave her all alone.

She loved him so.

During the few visits David made to the Ventura School, he brought his parents along. He did not mention Patti, who either stayed home or waited in the new camper out in the parking lota"far from Cinnamon's view. Grandpa Brown was the only one who ever told Cinny anything anyway. And he only muttered a few hints here and there about where and how they were living. Arthur Brown dearly loved Cinnamon, and it broke his heart to see her locked up for so long.

In September 1986, Cinnamon was again recommended for psychological counseling. She was a very confused, extremely frustrateda"and frustratinga"subject. While she knew that the parole board would not consider setting a release date for her until she "dealt with her offense," she could not deal with an offense she didn't even remember. And there were very, very important reasons why she must not remember.

She did not want to take any more of their silly tests. She resisted their test for academic ability, but she obediently completed the psychological tests, even though she said she saw no reason for them.

Cinnamon was given another Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test with its 566 true-false questions, and her results were normal, with the exception that she was attempting to deny and avoid the MMPI "honesty" questions, the deliberate lie questions that anyone would answer "true" toa"if they were totally honest. Questions such as "At times I feel like swearing," "I get angry sometimes," "I like everyone I know," and "Once in a while, I think of things too bad to talk about."

She carefully printed "False" to all of them.

What was she trying to hide? Why did she try to appear impossibly perfect?

On the Thematic Apperception Test, the TAT, Cinnamon once again showed herself to be "markedly guarded," unwilling to let anyone inside her head. "Subject views the world as an untrusting and uncaring place that is cold and rejecting," her psychologist wrote.

Interestingly, her Kinetic Family Drawing test showed figures that demonstrated hostility toward the Linda figure from the Patti figure, and Cinnamon, in a corner, desperately seeking attention.

Overall, Cinnamon's tests showed a young woman who felt both rejected and dominated and who was suffering from a mild depression. The tentative diagnosis showed no psychosis, and only mild mood swings. It would fit any teenager. Everything was normal about Cinnamon Brown a"except that she was a teenager in prison for murder.

In November, the official diagnosis resulting from her latest testing was "unspecified mental disorder, nonpsychotic: possible psychogenic amnesia." Her examiner had barely scratched the surface of her mind and gone away stymied.

Nothing had changed, and nothing new had been revealed.

The therapist felt that Cinnamon would never be able to move forward until she was willing to close the distance between herself and the night of the murder. She was holding the horror away, unwilling to deal with the memories. He did not know why; she was a sweet, pleasant child, but as closed off from him as a building shuttered against an approaching storm.

Again, psychotherapy was recommended. Again, Cinnamon refused to accept treatment.

Cinnamon had her second review with the parole board on December 18, 1986. She was given a six-month time cut for "positive adjustment to the program." Her behavior was excellent. She had been imprisoned for fourteen months, and she had caused no trouble at all. She was adjusting well, save for the fact that her memory was as blurry and gauzy as ever.

Cinnamon Brown did mention to her examiners, however, that she had had a visit from her grandfather, Arthur Brown, about four weeks before. He had explained to her that he knew who had killed Linda, and when the time was right, he was going to tell who really did the killing.

Because of the inconsistencies in Cinnamon's case file, her amnesia, and this new information, on January 5, 1987, O. J. Harkey, a parole agent with the California Youth Authority, asked the Orange County District Attorney's Office to interview Arthur Brown. There appeared to be more to her case than had been officially acknowledged.

This communication was, of course, no surprise to the District Attorney's Office. It only validated the doubts that McLean, Newell, and Fredrickson had had for almost two years. In a letter responding to Harkey, Deputy DA d.i.c.k Fredrickson succinctly summed up the position of his office to CYA authorities and offered all the help his office could provide: "It is clear that Cinnamon either was the sole actor in the killing or was acting as part of a conspiracy. Under the current state of the evidence, however, Cinnamon's recollection is the key to any ultimate resolution of the possible involvement of the others. We do not, however, regard the case as closed, but are continuing with our investigation as time and manpower permit."

Cinnamon was the key. She always had been. But she had long ago closed up and closed in. Every time Jay Newell reread the incriminating statements she had made in the few days following the murder, he saw a pattern. The language was repet.i.tive and stilted. It sounded as if she had memorized a script. And then, suddenly, she recalled nothing at all. What had happened to wipe out her memory like that? Who had talked to her? He looked at the list of visitors: her attorney; Kim Hicks, the young medical student; her mother; her father. . . .

The CYA parole board set the next review for Cinnamon in just ninety days, in the hope that Jay Newell might be able to learn more from Arthur Brown. If Arthur had gone so far as to visit Cinnamon and tell her that he knew who the real killer was, he might be waiting for someone to give him a chance to talk. The old man had always been skittish, afraid to talk with Newell before. David didn't like him talking to people.

On January 28, 1987, at the request of the CYA board, Newell went back to try again. He drove up the long, winding hill to Summitridge Lane. This time, he preferred not to encounter David Brown. He sensed that the old man would shut up like a clam if his son was listening.

The layout of Summitridge made it difficult for Newell to drive by the Brown house casually and see who might be home. The incline was steep, and the street was not a well-traveled thoroughfare. Strangers stood out. He parked down the street on the other side and strolled along, looking at the houses. In a pinch, he would become an instant real estate agent, a breed that swarmed over Orange County.

David's most recent car wasn't in the driveway. Still, Newell felt relieved when he spotted Arthur Brown in the yard. Wary, the old man agreed to talka"but only for a moment or two. He would not sit in Newell's car and kept edging away nervously.

Newell explained that Cinnamon was upset over something her grandfather had said to her, and that the counselors at CYA were concerned.

"I don't know what I could have said to her," Arthur Brown waffled as Newell began to question him. But he readily agreed to keep the conversation confidential. As frightened as he was, it was clear he cared for Cinnamon: "She's a very darling little girl."

"Do you have much time to talk to Cinnamon?" Newell asked. "You and she evidently have some rapport. Does she ever open up to you?"

"Noa"I'm always ... with David, her dad."

Arthur Brown said that he and his wife had been unable to visit Cinnamon for some time because Manuela had lost her ID card and he hadn't wanted to go up without her, but "Cinny did call me and said she wanted to talk to me, so I just went on up there by myselfa"and let the wife sit in the car."

"What did she say?"

"Just how much we loved each other, and how she got six months off her sentence."

"You wouldn't say anything to her to give her false hope, would you?"

"I try not to."

The old man was nervous as a cat. "That's no place for her. I don't believe that she had anything to do with it. And I still don't. I never will."

"Well, what did you say to her?"

"I told her that I was sure I knew who planned the whole thing."

Carefully, Newell suggested that Cinnamon might not be carrying the whole burden of guilt, even though she had been convicted. He watched the old man's face and saw silent agreement there, but Arthur Brown was clearly scared to death of saying the wrong thing.

"I told Cinny that I felt like I knew who planned it, because I heard her say that she was going to do something to save Davida""

"Heard who say?"

"Her . . ." Arthur Brown looked over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to come up behind him. "The little girl he's taking care ofa"Patti. ... I was with them the night she made the statement that she heard Linda [on the phone with her twin, Alan] planning to do away with Davida"to take his business. And she said that [David's being hurt] wasn't gonna happen even if she had to do it herself. .. she'd get rid of her."

Jay Newell felt a surge of triumph. This was the first breakthrougha"the first overt admission that Patti Bailey might have been part of a plot to kill Linda. Newell kept his face calm and let the old man ramble on.

"When she was killed, I just lost my G.o.dd.a.m.n mind."

Newell waited. "How long before Linda was killed did you hear this conversation?"