"Do you have an irregular heartbeat?" I pushed.

"No."

"Do you have tightness in your chest?"

"No."

"Do you feel pain?"

"No."

"Do you have shortness of breath?"

Finally he nodded. "And I have numbness. I can't feel my arms sometimes."

It was obvious even to a layman that David Brown's heart was fine; he suffered from the cla.s.sic symptoms of panic attacks. But for once, he didn't want to talk about his many ailments; he wanted to talk about how he was seduced and threatened into the murder-for-hire plot by Irv Cully and Richard Steinhart.

"I was being strong-armed by those guys; they had pictures of the Chantilly Street house. They would have killed my mom and dad and childrena"one by one. They told Newell and Robinson that they could lock me in a cell and get me. The DA said, 'If you can, do it."

Brown studied my face to see if I was buying this, and I stared back at him.

He tried harder. "Listen, there were tons of message slips [between Cully and Steinhart and the Orange County DA's Office] that disappeared. Irv gets pizza, juice, burritos. We don't get that stuff in here."

David had apparently perused items taken in discovery from the prosecution by his attorney Gary Pohlson. One was a scrawled note from Irv Cully: "During the discussion with Newell, Myself and 'Goldie' Steinhart would APPRECIATE two styrofoam cups and a BIG can of pineapple juice, as a token of good faith."

Food was obviously very important in David Brown's life. He mentioned it often. Being denied his favorite foods was apparently symbolic of his loss of power in jail. He seized on Cully's modest request to show me the DA's office was crooked. There was nothing in evidence to indicate that Cully ever got his pineapple juice.

And Steinhart, of course, never got any pizza; he only put on such a good act from his phone in the Huntington Beach Jail that David still thought he had. If the stakes in David's games had less potential for tragedy, his petulance about food would have been laughable.

David suggested that I read the September 22 interview again and again. "Act out the parts," he urged. He still believed that he deported himself very well the morning of his arrest in that devastating interview with Jay Newell.

I had read the transcript ten times; I had viewed the videotape a dozen times, alone and with others, and perceived a man who revealed his sociopathy completely. It was significant that David saw himselfa"and Newella"in reversed roles.

From David's point of view, it was Jay Newell who lied. "As naive as I might sound," he said, deliberately ingenuous, "I didn't think an officer of the law could lie. I've never been arrested in my life. He caught me with a right hook, and I believed him. He flat-out lied to me. He made it sound like I admitted I was guilty! I was scared to death, Ann. He caught me with my shorts down! It shocked me to see the pictures [taken by the surveillance camera in Ventura]. I didn't know it was Cinnamon. Would I deny ita"if I knew I'd done it? Wouldn't that just make her mad?"

David Brown confided to me that he feared prison. "The cons will go after me because they think I'm rich, or they'll blackmail me."

"Couldn't you use your money inside to buy an easier life?" I asked.

"No way."

I asked David if he was, indeed, still wealthy. He contemplated me and then said earnestly, "Honest to G.o.d, I'm flat broke."

There it was again, "honest to G.o.d" as a preamble to a flat-out lie.

I asked another blunt question. "Is Heather your child?"

"No! . . . Patti's a s.l.u.t. Patti was going out since junior high school. She was dating a contractor. A DNA test would show I'm not Heather's father. I've asked for a blood test."

"Why did you marry Patti then?"

"That's a hard one to explain." David's eyes moved again to the right as he formulated an explanation. The marriage was only a dummy marriage, never meant to be real, he a.s.sured me. "h.e.l.l, I won't deny that during some real lonely and emotional times, I did have some 'encounters' with Pattia"she wasn't unattractivea"but trust me, she couldn't have gotten pregnant. How shall I say ita"she couldn't have gotten pregnant with the kind of encounter we had. I had emotional problems and physical problems that precluded a"ah, s.e.xual intercourse."

But apparently did not preclude oral copulation, as Brown subtlely suggested, as he watched my face to see my reaction. I said nothing.

"And then," he continued, "my folks were there, and Krystal, and Alan lived there. I was having a relationship with Betsy Stubbs right up to the arrest."

Betsy Stubbs, the daughter of David's insurance agent, more recently the baby-sitter. Betsy Stubbs, who at nineteen, still believed she could miscarry by "throwing up a baby." Jay Newell had interviewed Betsy and learned of her affair with Davida"even while he was married to Patti. "I didn't have boyfriends," she had said to Newell, sobbing. "He was the first guy who made me feel attractive and a little bit important."

Betsy clearly mattered little to David; he mentioned her only to bolster his indictment of Patti. He expanded on Patti's black desire for him. "Patti killed Linda to get to me. I was scared to death of Patti. I thought she was the one who killed Linda. That's why my parents lived there. We were that close to having her move out when we were arrested. Patti was looking into buying property in Oregon. ... I hated Patti. I wouldn't have minded if something happened to her."

There was a loathsome kind of fascination here. David Brown blamed everything on someone else. In the three hours we had talked, he blamed Patti, Brenda, Cinnamon, the Baileys, Gary Pohlson, Jeoff Robinson, Jay Newell, Richard Steinhart, Irv Cully, and the justice system for his misfortunes.

He added Joel Baruch, his ex-attorney. "I was forced into PC [the protective custody wing] and they planted Irv Cully and Richard Steinhart in there to entrap me. Baruch said, 'Pay them. They're just criminals. They won't really kill Robinson.' I told Baruch to warn Robinson. I believed Baruch and he was gone to Florida." This was typical David Brown rhetoric; whatever served him best at the moment was that day's truth.

I had a creeping sense of d6j& vu. How many times had I listened to convicted killers deflect blame before it ever touched them? In a sense, I think they all came to a place where they believed what they were saying. David Brown looked sincere, and he sounded genuinely aggrieved; I believed that, for that s.p.a.ce in time, he believed. He actually saw himself as a victim.

He was impatient with those who kept harping on the old truths. "Robinson says I brainwashed Cinny and Patti," he said with a laugh. "How could that be?"

"Do you understand the steps in brainwashing?" I asked.

He shook his head, but David was curious.

"I wrote a book about it once," I said. "In order to brainwash someone, four criteria must be met. First of all, the victim has to suffer a profound psychic shocka""

"They never had that."

"They thought their home was being broken up," I said. "They depended on you completely. They didn't think they could get along without you."

"Nawa"that doesn't fit. What else?"

"The victim must be removed from everything and everyone that makes her feel safe," I offered. "The girls weren't in schoola"all they had was home. They thought Linda was going to kill you, that the 'family' would be gone, and there would be no home."

Already, David Brown was shaking his head. ". . . Doesn't fit."

"The third thing is that the subject is 'programmed'a" told what the brainwasher wants her to believe, over and over and over again."

This time, David said nothing.

"Fourth," I said, "the victim is promised a reward. Usually her very life. Patti said you were her 'life support.'"

"No way. It doesn't fit. I didnt brainwash those girls. They did it all on their own."

David enjoyed the mental jousting. I could tell he rather liked the idea of being a successful Svengali, but he would not, of course, admit that to me.

He changed the subject. I had come too close to reality for him. He wanted me to know how very, very much he had loved Linda. He had treated her like a queen, never letting the romance go out of their perfect marriage. "I had an account with a special florista"for Linda," he recalled, his eyes actually misting. "I ordered only expensive, unusual arrangements, and I insisted on crystal vases. I had that florist scouring Nordstrom's and I. Magnin's looking for just the right crystal vases."

David described his meticulous attention to the details of Linda's inurnment, repeating to me, as he had to anyone who would listen, how important it was to him that her ashes had a pleasant resting place. He told me how lovingly he composed the inscription for the plaque to mark her place in the "twenty-four-hour-a-day fountain."

"What did you write?" I asked, pen poised.

David only repeated that he had grappled to find the right words to write on the plaque that covered Linda's niche in the fountain. And yet, urged to remember, he could not.

"The wordsa"the words that you wrote?" I asked again.

He looked blank and shook his head. "I don't remember. Go look at the plaquea"you'll see how much I loved her."

David said he still felt close to Linda, that they had shared an interest in communication between the real world and the other world beyond, in ghosts and psychic phenomena. "Linda and I believed in that kind of stuff," he said. "We went to psychics. We only went to the best. They told me I would be very, very successful in business, and that I would live to an old age. But Lindaa"well, two of them just turned white when she asked about her future. They didn't want to talk about it. The third finally came right out and told her she would die very young. I'm afraid she believed them. It troubled her, and I guess it scared her more when Krystal was borna"because they'd all told her she would give birth to a daughter, and that part had come true."

After three hours, I was beginning to hear David Brown's explanations for the second time. Obviously, he believed that he had won me over with his arguments. He urged me to begin work at once as an investigator for him and suggested that I start with his parents. "They will tell you what kind of person I am... . I've never hurt anybody. I'm not violent. ... I divorce women. I don't kill them."

I had already spent twenty months investigating the death of Linda Brown, and the crimes for which David Brown was convicted. Nothing he said had convinced me of his innocence.

But I had wanted to give him a chance to speak. And so once again, I had looked into the chillingly blank eyes of a sociopatha"the antisocial personality. Empty eyes, reflecting nothing, even as the brain that controlled them skittered frantically around for new excuses, new plans, new plots. I had hoped that David Brown might offer me some definitive key to unlock the reasons behind his conscienceless life. I was disappointed. Perhaps he didn't know himself why he was the way he was.

David Brown had thought he could manipulate me, as he had always tried to manipulate others. But I had been to school. And suddenly, I could not get away fast enougha" out of the airless cubicle, down the blank hall and into the waiting room whose Barbie chairs were now filled with a whole different platoon of visitors.

Afterword.

The hardest concept for most laymen to understand is that criminals such as David Brown are quite sane. When we encounter or read about individuals who commit heinous and ugly crimes, it is easier to write them off as "crazy." Deliberate cruelty is hard to accept so we tend to say, "You'd have to be crazy to do that."

No.

Sociopathy may be the most intriguing of all mental aberrations. To greater and lesser degrees, the vast majority of human beings empathize with each other. Even two-year-olds understand that other creatures feel pain and cry. "If it hurts me, then it must hurt you too." The sociopath (or antisocial personality or psychopath; the terms are interchangeable) understands the concept of empathy only intellectually. Indeed, he uses it to further his own aims. But he does not, apparently cannot, understand it emotionally. He cannot put himself in another human's shoes; the concept is utterly foreign to him. As Jeoff Robinson said in his closing arguments, David Brown "wants, wants, wants."

David Brown wanted s.e.x and money and respect and things. He betrayed women, his brother, his parents, his children, all of his wives, to get what he wanted. After midnight on March 19, 1985, he drove away in the night, knowing that his sleeping wife would be dead when he returned. He let his daughter take the rap for it. He married Patti Bailey, impregnated her, and blithely offered her up as the next sacrifice. I have no doubt that, as Robinson suggested, David Brown would renounce Krystal to stay free.

He will offer up anyone to benefit himself. And as he does so, he will feel completely within his rights.

"I'm worth it."

Whether he truly believes he is "worth it," or whether he is only trying to pad an almost nonexistent sense of self-esteem, is an absorbing question.

In talking to psychiatrists and psychologists, David had given, I suspect, a "safe" version of his early life. He claimed s.e.xual molestation by "an old man in the park." I have no doubt he was molested; the molester is far more likely to have been someone quite familiar to him. Child molestation is a cyclical crime, running through families like an incurable virus.

Still a child, David Brown viewed suicide attempts of a close relative. Still a child, he worked all alone through the night in a gas station. He speaks proudly of his accomplishment, but how lonely it must have been at four A.M. on a dark desert morning for an eleven-year-old.

David Brown had an aggressive mother and a meek father. He had no money for clothes or school supplies. A school picture of the young Davida"perhaps eight years olda"looks like Beaver Cleaver. He needs braces, the b.u.t.tons on his shirt don't match, his pocket is torna"but his eyes seem clear and trusting. It is well nigh impossible to connect this child of 1960 to the overweight manipulator of 1990.

And yet the seeds would have been there.

Even then.

David Brown, the poor teenager, the welfare recipient, sought s.e.x and wealth to cover up his inadequacies, and he used s.e.x and wealth to control others. He hit p.u.b.erty obsessed with s.e.x. Throughout his life, he vacillated between periods of inhibited s.e.xual desire and intense s.e.xual activity. He freely voices his preferred s.e.xual activitya" f.e.l.l.a.t.i.oa"to fellow prisoners, detectives, and the young women he attempts to seduce.

They are all young womena"girls, really. Brenda Kurges Brown Sands is unarguably the personification of David's ideal female. Or at least she was once. When she was fourteen or fifteen, poor, dependent, trusting, and adoring, he rescued her. When she became even slightly independent, the relationship began to erode.

Lori, his second wife, was sweet, kind, and trusting. But she was nineteen when David married her. Too old.

Linda, who was both his third and fifth wife, was perfect. So like Brenda when the teenage David chose her. But Linda too grew up. Like Brenda, she bore David's child, and he was no longer her only love.

Patti shared Linda's abysmal background. Like Brenda and Linda, she was running from an unhappy home when David "saved" her. From eleven to twenty-one, Patti remained David's perfect s.e.x slave. But she too grew up and became a mother, and in doing so, she lost the only man she had ever loved.

With Patti, his wife, down the hall, Betsy Stubbs shared David's bed the week he was arrested. Betsy was a plain girl who used too much makeup and wore her skirts too short. She was a "little slow" and had no self-confidence at all. She engaged in oral s.e.x with David, she told Jay Newell, because she thought no one else would want her.

All of them were David's kind of women. They allowed him to maintain absolute control. David was in charge. Cindy, his fourth wife, was the only aberration. She had two children when he married her, and she was older. That marriage, of course, lasted only six months.

Had David Brown not been arrested and convicted, this man who was married six times by the time he was thirty-three would surely have continued his search for "Brenda." The young Brenda. He might have grown old, but his women would have continued to be teenagers. In truth, I suspect David Brown detests women. He teased his mother s.a.d.i.s.tically, and he characterizes women by their body partsa"never by their minds or souls.

Jeoff Robinson gave two primary motives for Linda Bailey Brown's murder: l.u.s.t and greed. Those are the concepts, the goals, that shaped David Brown's life.

He is the complete sociopath.

He is also narcissistic and a hypochondriac. The person who suffers from the narcissistic personality disorder feels a sense of ent.i.tlement; he believes that he deserves everything he wantsa"because he is special. The hypochondriac revels m the attention he gets for all his imaginary illnesses. David has convinced others he is dying of colon cancer for twenty years!

Even the most brilliant forensic psychiatrists do not know what factors cause sociopathy. Every s.a.d.i.s.tic sociopathic killer I have ever written about suffered abuse in early childhooda"under the age of five. Abandonment, physical abuse, s.e.xual abuse, humiliation, rejection. The developing conscience, which should have blossomed around two or three, was smothered aborning. These children fought to survive; they had neither time nor energy to grow a conscience. They learned, instead, to look out for number one, for if they did not, who would? Therapists cannot go back a dozen or more years later and insert a conscience; it is far too late.

But every child who is abused, abandoned, rejected, humiliated, under the age of five does not grow up to be antisocial. What makes the difference? After two decades of examining the sociopathic killer, I have come to believe that there are genetic, predisposing factors that come into play. The very intelligent, very sensitive childa"abuseda"seems most likely to adjust, to survive at all costs. And the cost is the complete loss of ability to empathize and to feel regret and guilt.

A growing school among psychiatrists espouses the "bad seed" theory. Some experts believe that a certain percentage of infants are born evil, and that no amount of nurturing can overcome a bad seed's natural tendencies.

Others cite physiological causes. We share with animals the limbic system in the brain. The limbic system tells us what we want. Animals take what they want and have no control system. Human beings have the prefrontal lobe that gives us feelings and reasoning power. That, in essence, gives us brakes. One school of thought suggests that some infants are born with a breakdown in the pathways between the prefrontal lobe and the limbic system and lack the ability to control their desires. Like animals, they simply take what they wanta"congenitally crippled villains.