Since the back door opened onto a stone patio that led directly to the unfenced pool, the layout of the new house seemed an unsafe choice for a man alone with a baby. Krystal Brown could crawl so easily toward the pool.
By visiting Summitridge Lane whenever he could, Jay Newell quickly saw the reason for the empty house in Carson. Brown had moved his parents in with him. There would be Manuela and Arthur to help keep an eye on Krystal. And then, Jay Newell saw Patti Bailey in the car with David Brown as they drove away. Patti had apparently made the move to Summitridge Lane too.
Newell could not know at the time, not from his solely exterior vantage point, but this was not a happy house. Manuela Brown complained to her husband about Patti's continuing place in the family. Why didn't the girl go home with her own family now? She had no business being with David any longer. Arthur agreed; he felt privately that Patti wasn't good for David, that she might even be a bad influence. But he was never a man who told his son what to do.
The house on Ocean Breeze Drive had been a nice, cozy run-of-the-mill bungalow. David had leapfrogged to the similar rental on Breckenridge, then to this house, this near-mansion that bespoke quiet elegance, understated wealth.
It was the sort of place where David had always pictured himself, even way back in the years when he and Brenda were living hand-to-mouth with minimum-wage jobs and welfare. Well, Brenda should have had more faith. He was well on his way to being a millionaire now, and Anaheim Hills suited him. He was sure Brenda was jealous, and that pleased him.
Despite the tension that never quite left him, David felt that, all in all, things were turning out well. Krystal rarely cried for her mother any longer; she had Manuela to rock her, and she had Patti to carry her around. The memory of her mother evaporated so rapidly from her baby mind. Linda had had only eight months with her baby girl.
For those who had known Linda, especially for those who had loved her, the sight of Patti wearing Linda's things was an icy jolt. Like seeing a ghost. They had looked so much alike, so very much alike.
The only difference was that Patti was younger.
Sitting beside his pool on his patio, sipping a soft drink and smoking his fiftieth cigarette of the day, David Brown spent many evenings reflecting upon his life. He was in complete control of his world again and his sex life was great—if a little tricky with his parents living with him. He still managed to keep his private life untouched. As tragic as it was, Linda was gone. The past had buried the past, as it was meant to do. Life was for the living, and he was going to wring all the juice out of it he could.
David's business continued to boom with rising computer use. He no longer had Linda to help him. He taught bits and pieces of The Process to new employees—mostly family. Arthur helped out, and Patti.
Alan and David had apparently settled their differences because Linda's twin was back on the payroll. Larry Bailey, whom David had never trusted, was, nevertheless, brought into the business. Odd—since David had once suggested to Fred McLean that he suspected Larry might have crept into his home and shot Linda. Larry had been in jail just before her murder, and David told McLean that Larry was furious when Linda wouldn't bail him out. The police had checked that theory and found it without merit; it appeared to be only one more of Brown's attempts to divert suspicion from Cinnamon.
Arthur Brown didn't really understand how they retrieved data from the computer disks, and he didn't care to. His son was the brilliant one. Arthur often went down to Randomex in Long Beach and picked up damaged disks and brought them back to David to evaluate. If David spelled it out to him step by step, Arthur could follow his directions. But that was it. He couldn't begin to try it on his own. All the elder Brown really knew was that David worked for the government and for a lot of big, important corporations. His son had told him that.
One of David Brown's favorite claims about his burgeoning business enterprise was that he had to be available to his clients to reassure them that he would save their lost data. He could explain what had happened and why—and tell them just enough about how he would bring the damaged disks back to life again. He liked to tell his clients that they had been lucky enough to find the one man in America who could help them—that his expertise was highly technical and uniquely his own.
It wasn't a total scam. He did know his stuff. He might make his skill sound a bit more miraculous than it was—but hell, he was a businessman in a competitive field and a little razzle-dazzle helped.
Executives at Randomex would dispute Brown's claims that he had invented The Process, stating that the data retrieval techniques David used were actually refined by several experts at Randomex. And in the beginning, David rarely, if ever, talked to clients. However, as the years passed, David wasn't averse to making Randomex's clients his clients.
David was so adept at diagnosing the problem with a disk that he could quote a fee to retrieve data before he ever got into the disk. He usually required the money up front before he began. With bigger corporations, he could quote a bid for a major job that usually came in on a dime.
Linda's twin, Alan, was impressed with David and a good audience for a recitation of his ambitions. David assured him that one day he would build his own towering office building, own his own company jet. The way David's income had jumped year after year, Alan had little doubt that David would accomplish just what he said he would.
With all his new business success, with his pleasure in his luxurious new home, David Brown appeared to move through the period of mourning for his murdered wife with remarkable ease. And if he felt low, he was surrounded by people who cared about him, some to the point of adulation, some because they feared him.
It wasn't that David Brown was physically threatening; he was an admitted coward who ran from fights. It was because David always seemed to know secret things, to refer obliquely to some nameless danger that awaited anyone who crossed him. Among his handpicked associates, his devoted family, David was power.
He was in control and meant to keep it that way.
David Arnold Brown, of course, had trouble he was not yet aware of. When he walked, he did not walk alone. When he cruised the streets and freeways of Orange County in one of his expensive new cars, he had company. Jay Newell was often just behind him, his tape recorder and notebook filling up with every change in David's life, every move, every new acquisition. Newell didn't know himself where all this information was going to lead—maybe nowhere.
Newell had checked every county in California by computer to see what properties David Arnold Brown might have purchased. It would have been easier if Brown's name had been rarer; Newell got dozens of Browns back, but he also got some hits on the man he wanted. Every time David Brown bought a lot or a house, Newell knew about it.
It was the same with cars. Tedious computer checks spit out volumes on David's car purchases. The guy was spending money as if he had found a lost gold mine. David had the Bronco and the Chevy Monte Carlo when Linda was murdered. Almost immediately after her funeral, he bought a Nissan 300ZX Turbo, 1985, a sleekly expensive sports car. He ordered vanity plates, reading "Data Rec."
Between August 1985 and the spring of 1988, Brown changed cars almost as frequently as the seasons changed. He bought:
A Chevrolet Suburban station wagon, 1985
A Honda Accord LX, 1985
A Dodge D-50 1986 truck (with camper)
A 560 two-door convertible Mercedes, which bore the license plate "Phoenix" (Estimated cost: $70,000)
A 190E Mercedes (Estimated cost: $25,000)
A Ford Bronco, 1986 or 1987
A Ford station wagon, 1986 or 1987
Two identical Nissan Sentras, 1987
A third Nissan Sentra, 1987 (orange)
A Ford Bronco, 1988
A completely equipped motor home, 1988 (Estimated cost: $60,000)
A Ford station wagon, 1988
A Ford Escort, 1988
Fifteen expensive vehicles in three years . . .
Da
vid had not had the Nissan sports car long when he and Patti were driving on Katella Street in Orange on November 22, 1985—shortly after ten P.M. on that Tuesday night. David, behind the wheel of his new 300ZX, was stopped in the left turn lane when the car was struck from behind by a small Renault Alliance. Patti screamed and cried and grasped at her neck. She was soon hysterical. As her sobs and screaming grew louder, David explained to the Orange Fire Department medics who worked over her that she had been through a great deal of tragedy recently. "Her sister was murdered only a few months ago—she was my wife. I don't know what this is going to do to her. How much are we expected to take?"
Not all that much, it would seem. The "accident" was scarcely more than a nudge. California highway patrolmen investigated the incident. The other driver admitted that it was his fault. "I was slowing down, maybe going ten miles an hour, when my foot slipped off the brake pedal and hit the accelerator." The impact had been enough to knock David's shiny black car forward. The CHPS investigator noticed the Renault driver was wearing cowboy boots—that could account for his foot's slipping.
There was no damage at all to the Renault and only a number of minor scratches to the rear bumper of David Brown's car. But neck injuries—"whiplash"—are tricky, and virtually impossible to diagnose. They are the bane of the insurance industry. Patti Bailey was now complaining of increasingly severe neck pains and a terrible headache. She was treated at the scene and rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital by ambulance.
David and Patti had both been visiting a chiropractor frequently before the accident, including the afternoon before Linda died. With these new injuries, they saw the chiropractor even more often.
David had insurance with Allstate. He insisted that he had reported the accident to his insurance agent at once, but the first record the Garden Grove office had about the "rear-ender" was when David made a claim more than four months later, on April 3, 1986. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, that office brought up David's auto insurance policy on the computer, and it showed that David had more than adequate medical coverage on his policy—$ 100,000.
Six months later, David brought a stack of medical bills in for payment—almost $25,000 worth. This was a bit of a jolt to Allstate. The police accident reports depicted an essentially minor collision. Most of the claims were for "soft tissue injury." Patti asked for $1,000 for pain-clinic visits. On many occasions, the bills noted several chiropractic visits on the same day. Nevertheless, Allstate eventually paid David $12,500 and Patti $10,500. A check with Farmers Insurance, the insurer of the driver of the other car, showed that Farmers had also paid—under the liability provision—to the tune of $38,500.
Insurance investigators are a suspicious breed by nature, and they began to work back through David Brown's insurance history. To them, $61,500 seemed an inordinately large payoff for a low-speed, rear-end collision that resulted in a few scratches, most of which, probers found, had been there when David bought the Nissan. Moreover, Patti's neck showed no lingering symptoms of soft-tissue or cervical-spine damage.
Allstate had other policies with David Brown; the house on Summitridge Lane (and later, the house on Chantilly). He had also attempted to insure Linda's jewelry with Allstate, but it was so valuable, the company declined.
A check of David's driving record in Orange County revealed several speeding tickets and showed accidents in 1970, 1972, 1978, two in 1980, and 1982.
After payment had been made on David's claims, Allstate's recheck of its computers for David Arnold Brown's car insurance brought a shocking revelation. Although agents swore that their initial computer check indicated that he had $ 100,000 medical coverage, it no longer showed on computer screens or printouts. Nor was it listed on any hard-copy documents on the auto policy.
Nor could it be there. Alístate didn't offer medical coverage on the kind of policy David had. But somehow—for a time—the computer printout had said David Brown was insured.
The only conclusion deductive reasoning could suggest was that someone had illegally accessed the company's computers, inserted the $100,000 coverage in David Brown's policy, and then, silently, erased it
Further, one Allstate investigator checked in the central file that lists all claims against the company, and against other companies, for another claim she knew David had collected on. It had to be listed in the computer files.
But it was gone.
Such computer wizardry could be accomplished only by someone with extremely sophisticated knowledge and skill regarding operating systems, programing, and data entry and retrieval. Someone who knew that illegal computer access can be accomplished in three ways, known in colorful computer lingo as "data diddling," "Trojan horse," and "superzapping."
No charges were ever filed, but with the realization that it had paid David Brown and Patti Bailey's medical claims of $23,000 on a policy that had never had any medical coverage, Allstate quietly beefed up its computer security.
18
With all of David's new cars, it was difficult for Newell to keep track of him. It did little good to know what kind of car he drove; the next week, the next day, he might have a new one. He tired of the two Mercedes sedans quickly and sold them to invest in Fords.
Following another trail of his investigation, Newell tediously filled in all the gaps in David Brown's credit profile. He found out about federal tax liens on Brown's property in 1983 and saw they were paid off within a few months of filing. He even knew the credit cards Brown carried, and that they were paid to date. However, he detected a pattern of wobbly credit and money problems before Linda's murder, and emerging affluence and larger luxury purchases after.
"It was good to have that background, to know as much as I could about him," Newell would say later. "But the one thing I wanted most was to talk to David Arnold Brown."
It was galling to think that he had yet to meet the man's eyes, to exchange the most innocuous words. For Newell, a master at assessing nonverbal communication, a chance to observe Cinnamon's father close up might well answer the question that plagued him. Was David Brown really the childish, insensitive boob who had teasingly pulled his ex-wife's hair in the courtroom even as his daughter was being sentenced for murder? Or was he a brilliant manipulator who had somehow managed to pull off a murder and walk away with no particle of evidence clinging to him?
Where was all the money coming from? Was Brown's business truly as successful as he bragged it was? Investigators knew of one insurance policy payoff on Linda, but that would be long gone by now at the rate David spent money. Either there had been more policies, or Data Recovery was raking in the contracts from frantic corporations and government agencies. Perhaps both suppositions were true. All Newell needed was a face-to-face confrontation with Brown and he thought he could find out.
It shouldn't have been that difficult just to talk to a man. But David was like quicksilver. Although Newell called at the Brown household on Summitridge Lane at disparate times of the day and night, he was never able to penetrate the protective wall that surrounded David Brown.
Patti or Manuela or sometimes his father, Arthur, answered the door. They explained that David was at the doctor's or away on business, or in the bathroom or too ill to talk. They were polite, evasive, wary, and obviously well trained. Sometimes, they didn't even open the door, but talked through it; they told Newell that the alarm was activated, and they didn't know how to operate it. If they opened the door, the alarm would go off.
Newell knew that David Arnold Brown really did exist. He thought he knew the man as well as anyone could without ever talking to him. He had read the entire case file a couple of dozen times, reviewed the statements Brown had given, and seen him up close that one time at Cinnamon's sentencing, and even now, he frequently caught glimpses of David at a distance.
If Brown bothered Newell, the reverse was true—and double. Jay Newell had shocked Brown with the way he had managed to keep up with the family's moves. David didn't like people coming to his door, asking f
or him. If he had had any idea how many times Newell was only fifty feet away from him, he would have been outraged—and panicked.
But Newell had the advantage. David didn't know what Newell looked like. He knew his name all right; Newell had left enough cards to paper Brown's entry hall—but that was all. If he was truly concerned, he could have done some research and found a picture of Newell. But David never bothered.
Jay Newell had the definite impression that David Brown had no wish to see him or talk to him—ever. And there was no legal way to force such a conversation. Perhaps David's reluctance was born of some instinctual wariness. He knew he could routinely charm both clients and females with his voice and his repartee. He was good. He had to be good; the man had parlayed an eighth-grade education into a million-dollar business, and even though he was short, stout, and far from handsome, he never lacked for women. But a police detective was another matter. Here was a man who might cut through the bullshit and snare him.
If, indeed, there was any crime to snare him for.
And still, Newell kept up his quiet pursuit. He had to squeeze in time to spend monitoring David Brown; he was deep into myriad investigations of gang activity. And David Brown was officially old business.
"It sounds dull," Newell would say later. "I didn't do anything that dramatic. I just watched him and followed him and monitored public records. I'd see him leave the house, often with Patti Bailey, and I'd see him come home. I wanted to know who this man was—where he went and what he was doing. I was never far behind him, but I doubt if he realized that for months."
19
Jay Newell knew far more about David's whereabouts and lifestyle than David's own daughter did. Cinnamon had no address for her father, and she had no telephone number. She didn't know where he lived or who lived with him.