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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.
    Patricia Bailey had attended Bolsa Grande High School with Cinnamon and gave officers the names of one or two of her friends, stressing that Cinnamon talked more to her imaginary friends than to real people. Patti was emphatic about the other "friends" Cinnamon Brown had. Invisible friends. "Maynard" and "Oscar" and "Aunt Bertha."
    "Sometimes, I'll walk into the room and she's actually talking to them."
    Perhaps that was the answer to the puzzle of a fourteen-year-old girl who would shoot her stepmother as she slept. Possibly Cinnamon Brown lived in her own fantasy world, with imaginary friends, friends who seemed more real to her than anything else. She apparently didn't talk to her family unless pressed. She talked to people nobody else could see. Adolescent schizophrenia?
    None of the investigators had yet seen Cinnamon Brown. They had no way to judge what her motivations had been.
    They couldn't even be positive that Cinnamon Brown was the shooter. For all they knew, Cinnamon could be a victim too. It was second nature for them to question what seemed obvious. In a homicide investigation—more than any other police action—nothing can be taken for granted. There were aspects of the events of that night that didn't quite match up, and the yard—the whole street—was so dark. Cinnamon could be out there, dead.
    Patti Bailey had furnished them with the names of Cinnamon's friends—Krista Taber, and a "Jamie" and "Joanne"—but said she didn't know if Cinnamon would have run to their houses.
    Det. Steve Sanders recalled that he had taken a report on an indecent exposure complaint from Cinnamon Brown in October of 1984—some "lily-waver" who had beckoned to the teenager. He asked the records section to check for any witness names on that report. They came up with one; a girl named Rebecca had heard Cinnamon gasp and seen her run away from the man.
    Phones rang in the homes of her teenage friends at five A.M . Was Cinnamon there? Had anyone heard from her? Where might she be?
    No one contacted had the slightest notion where Cinnamon might be. It was soon apparent that Cinnamon had very few friends. She was not encouraged to make a lot of friends according to her best pal, Krista Taber.
    "She was grounded a lot," Krista said when she was questioned. "The slightest thing and her dad would ground her. She wasn't allowed to give out her address, and most people didn't know her phone number. I haven't even heard from her for more than a week 'cause she's grounded again."
    Some of the other girls contacted said they knew Cinnamon Brown only slightly. They could not imagine she would run to them if she was in trouble.
    Krista, the only friend with whom Cinnamon shared secrets, denied vigorously that the missing girl had a boyfriend.
    Odd—because Patti Bailey had mentioned an older boyfriend of Cinnamon's, but she didn't know his name. All she knew was that he went by the nickname Steely Dan.
    The Garden Grove Dispatch Center checked the nickname through their computers and came up with a case where a junior high school girl had been harassed by a twenty-three-year-old male known as Steely. His real name was Jamie Guiterrez * , and he lived on Juno Avenue in Anaheim, the same street where Cinnamon's mother lived.
    Woods and Sanders headed for Anaheim to check Guiterrez's