He came to stand beside me, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag. “According to her sister, this was Angelina’s favorite spot. The two of them came here often for picnics or alone when something was bothering them. It wasn’t unusual for them to come here at night.”
That would have been perfect for Christian’s MO. He would have watched them the same way he’d watched me and followed them until he knew every place that was special. “So the killer robbed them both of more than just Angelina’s life.”
The lack of crime scene tape and forensic teams on the site had been disturbing when I’d first arrived. It still was. “I’m confused, Detective Browne. I don’t know how things are done in Chatham County, but there’s nothing here to mark this as a crime scene. Why is that?”
“The property is owned by the family. As you said, she wasn’t killed here. We went along with their wishes to keep the media away.” He took another long drag from the cigarette then blew out the smoke as his eyes traveled from my face to my toes. “Didn’t work, or you wouldn’t be here. You plan on working this case?” His earlier amusement was completely gone.
“Yes. Do you plan on trying to stop me?”
He tossed the cigarette on the ground and flattened it with the heel of his boot. “I thought about it. Haven’t made up my mind yet.”
I was getting more than an ache in my abdomen. Something about Browne tugged at me, pulling me to get closer. I wanted to know what had put the gray around the edges of his hair and the deep lines between his eyebrows, but more than that, I wanted to know what lay beyond the shadows in his eyes.
“Do you think he’ll kill again?” Browne interrupted my thoughts.
“If he’s following Salyer’s pattern, there will be at least nine more bodies before he quits or moves on.”
He watched me closely, strange shadows once again flickering in his eyes. “So you think it’s a copycat. You haven’t seen the body, have you?”
The small cove darkened, as if clouds were shutting out the sun. “No.”
“If it was a copycat, he has inside information that wasn’t released to the press.”
“What information?” I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide their trembling.
“She was painted crimson from neck to toes.”
The darkness was more complete. It surprised me that no one else could see it, not even Max. “That’s my next stop.” I turned toward the trail I’d followed in from the main road. “Unless you’re planning on stopping me.”
Strong fingers closed around my arm. “Is Salyer still alive?”
He’d gone into interrogation mode, the tone of his voice brusque. Before Christian, I would have felt intimidated, even slightly scared by the anger just below the surface. Since then, only one thing scared me, and I kept that buried deep inside.
I shook off his hand. “I don’t know. I saw the bullet hit him dead center in the chest. He fell from a fifty-foot cliff into the river.” I’d repeated those words so many times over the past year that they had become automatic. “I don’t see how he could have survived.” I turned away from him before my eyes betrayed me. I knew Christian had survived.
Browne stepped around me on the trail. “Follow me into town. We’ll stop by the morgue. After that, I want to see you in my office.”
Gabriel lit his third cigarette since leaving the creek, doing what his grandmother had called “puffing like a freight train.” His hands trembled as he relived the thirty minutes he’d stood watching her. He’d known she was beautiful—he’d seen all the pictures of her with Christian Salyer and read all the news articles. He’d even stomached a few of the tapes where she’d confessed her love for the bastard. None of that had prepared him for the things he’d witnessed when he stood on the bank above her, watching as she went through a myriad of emotions. At one point, she’d trembled with fear, her wide eyes filled with so much pain it had cut through him like a knife slicing butter.
Get a grip, Browne. He tossed the cigarette and ran a hand over his eyes. He’d planned for over a year, spending every dime he had. He wasn’t going to have everything ruined because she wasn’t the cold-hearted bitch he’d thought she would be. Either she knew where Salyer was, or she knew how to find him. Colleen deserved justice, and if the doctors were right, he was running out of time.
His thoughts turned to Angelina Clark. A raging fire of guilt blazed through him. She deserved justice too. He hated himself for seeing her murder as a gift. He’d spent weeks trying to come up with a plan to lure Dale to Savannah, each time falling short of the lines he was willing to cross. Solving the Clark murder would be easy. He knew who killed her. The killer could be in jail. Instead, he’d delayed, using her death as a means to an end. You’re a real piece of work, Gabriel Browne.
He parked in front of the morgue. He needed Dakota’s files to remind him of why he was doing what he was doing and keep the hate alive.
He dug through the console, found his cell phone, then took a deep breath and dialed Calvin’s number.
“What’s up, boss?”
“I need you to do me a favor. Pull those files on Dakota Dale I asked for a few weeks ago and put them on my desk. Also, find a way to get her medical records and psychiatric files. I need to see all of it.”
“They’re not gonna just hand that kind of file over to me, Gabriel. That could take a while.”
“You’ve got an hour before I’ll be back. I’ve got faith in you, kid. Work your magic.”
Gabriel ended the call and slung the phone back into the console. Then he riffled through the glove box until he found the whiskey bottle he’d stored there for emergencies. Everybody had their own ideas of what constituted an emergency. He twisted off the top, took a long swig, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. She would probably smell the alcohol on his breath, but he didn’t care. It was time he introduced her to the demons he was fighting.
3
“Crimson is such a beautiful color, don’t you think?”
The knife slid from my shoulder to my right breast, leaving a tiny trail of blood drops.
“So beautiful against that snowy-white background.” He laughed softly. “It’s the color of my rage.” His eyes darkened as the knife continued its trail down my abdomen. “You made me angry, Dakota. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Damn,” Max whispered. “She could have been your sister, Dakota.”
Max’s statement didn’t go unnoticed by Browne. I regretted stopping to pick him up before meeting Browne at the morgue, but Max had seen Salyer’s work, and two sets of eyes were always better than one.
The victim was young. Raven-black hair outlined a china-doll face. Her eyes were closed, but I didn’t need to see them to know they were a light blue, the color of a clear sky on a sunny day. The killer had painted her body with a rough brush. Tiny rivulets of dried blood covered her torso and legs. Christian would never have done that.
I finished my examination and pulled the sheet over Angelina’s body to hide her from our prying eyes. There was little to no respect for the dead. In a few hours, Angelina would be nothing more than a slab of meat on a cold autopsy table. “It wasn’t Salyer.”
Browne’s eyebrows knitted. “How can you be sure?”
“For starters, he only kept her one day. Salyer liked to torture his victims physically and mentally prior to killing them. All the women he killed before were kept a minimum of three months.”