“What about the paint?” Browne asked.
I shook my head. “Salyer also considered himself the next Michelangelo or Picasso. He would never have used a wire brush to paint her body.”
“I need a cigarette.” Browne nodded at the door. “I’ll meet you in my office. Max knows where it is.”
After he’d gone, Max asked, “You okay?” He studied me, analyzing and not liking what he saw. “If you’re sure it isn’t Salyer, we can head home on this one.”
Three months had passed since my father’s funeral. A lot had changed externally. I’d remodeled the plantation home to include a suite for Max along with a fully installed command center with the very best in computers and software. Being rich had its advantages, even if I’d never cared about the money. We’d also applied for and received our private investigator’s licenses—not as good as a police or detective badge, but it still allowed us access to areas we would otherwise be denied.
“We’ll stay.” Whoever had killed Angelina had access to the police files in Beaufort. They also had information that wasn’t in the file. Salyer was sending me a message, one he knew I would understand. He painted her nails. That fact wasn’t in any of the files. We’d deliberately left it out. “Browne is out of his league on this case. It wasn’t Salyer, but whoever did this is either working for him or with him. The killing won’t stop until the newspapers doubt Salyer’s guilt. They’ll want me drawn and quartered for his murder.” I pushed Max’s wheelchair toward the door. The chair was automatic, so he didn’t need me to push him, but he was sensitive enough to know when I needed something to do with my hands and mind. “We were lucky on this one, Max. You caught the story less than an hour after her body was found. We may not get that lucky again.”
“Browne probably has your file by now.” Max looked over his shoulder, his dark-blue eyes filled with concern. “He’s going to want an explanation.”
“He’ll get the same one I gave everyone else. The photos and tapes are fakes.”
“What if he doesn’t believe you?”
“Don’t worry about it, Max. No one else believed me. Why should Detective Browne be any different? He can’t stop me from talking to the family or investigating on my own time.”
Max took over the operation of his wheelchair, rolling toward our van. “I believed you.”
The Chatham County station was a beehive of activity. With the constant tourist trade, murders weren’t exactly rare anymore, but they didn’t often touch the more prominent families.
Browne met us at the front desk, and we followed him down a long hallway to a typical detective’s office. Boxes of files lined the wall behind his chipped and battered desk. The chairs he waved us to were also of chipped wood. Everything in the office had seen better days.
“Have a seat.” He picked up a file, flipped through it, and held it out to me. “A few things your partner failed to tell me about, Miss Dale.”
I didn’t need to open the file to know it contained eight-by-ten glossies of me with Christian Salyer in various romantic settings. I’d seen them a hundred times already, plastered across the front pages of every newspaper in South Carolina. They were good images. If I didn’t know better, they would have convinced me the woman in the photos was heavily involved with him. “They’re fakes. Photoshop or whatever app people use to change backgrounds and faces. He stalked me for months, taking those pictures. The man whose picture should be in them was someone I was dating at the time.” I kept my eyes trained on his face. “He killed him the day he kidnapped me. And if you’d bother to look closely, you’d notice there’s no facial pictures of Salyer. All you see is his back or the back of his head.”
“Still look pretty real to me.” Browne pursed his lips. He dropped the file and picked up another one. “Then there’s this other thing about you being a danger to yourself.” His eyes turned a dark forest green, the golden highlights completely gone. “I’ve got enough on my plate without worrying about someone out to commit suicide in my county.”
“You’re going to believe what you want to believe, Detective Browne. Max and I came here because the information we received on the crime committed was similar to those committed by Christian Salyer.
“You were right. Whoever did this had inside information that wasn’t released to the press. They also had information that wasn’t in the files. The only way that’s possible is if they knew Salyer then or know him now.”
I stood, playing a trump card that I didn’t expect him to take, but it was all I had to offer. “You asked me if Christian Salyer was still alive. I believe he is. The killing isn’t going to stop until I find Salyer or he finds me. My being here, used in the right way, may save another woman from suffering what Angelina Clark went through.”
“So what you’re saying is you want me to use you as bait.” Browne shook his head and grunted something unintelligible. “If you’re telling the truth, take your seat and tell me how you see this going down.”
A whoosh of air came from Max as I took my seat. He never really knew how I was going to react anymore. The old Dakota’s first instinct would have been to tell Browne to go to hell then walk out.
“Give Max access to everything you have on the Clark family and Angelina. I plan on interviewing the family today. Go with me. Let the media see us together. They’ll do the rest.”
“They’ll also bring back the stories concerning you and Salyer. You won’t be able to take a crap without one of them tailing you.”
“I’m actually counting on that. I’ll make sure to call him Salyer every time I speak to them. He spent a year forcing me to call him Christian. The more I piss him off, the more likely he is to show himself.” I stood again and stuck out my hand. “Do we have a deal, Detective Browne?”
He clasped my hand in a firm grip. “I’m probably going to regret this, but yeah, we’ve got a deal—on two conditions.”
“I’m not big on conditions.”
Browne smiled. “Figured that, but both are deal breakers. When we’re in public, you call me Gabriel. If we’re going to feed Salyer things to tick him off, then that should add a little spice to his meal.”
“Gabriel it is then.” I was beginning to think Browne just might be the right man for the job. “You said two conditions?”
“You two have a place to stay?”
“Not yet. We weren’t sure we’d be staying. We’ll probably drive home, pack up what we need for a few days, then check into a motel.”
He reached into his desk and pulled out a set of keys. “I own the house next to mine. Renters moved out a while back, and I haven’t rented it again. It’s fully furnished. You’ll stay there while you’re here.” He tossed the keys to Max, jotted down the address on a sticky note, and passed it to me. “It’s a gated community. The code at the bottom will get you in. That way, I can keep an eye on you. You should have time to run home, pack up, and be settled in by the time I get off work. I’ll have copies of everything ready for Max.” He pulled the phone closer and picked up the receiver. “You won’t be interviewing the family today. I’ll set something up for first thing in the morning. Be ready to go by nine.”
“We’ll see you in the morning then.”
“I’ll stop by this evening to see if you need anything and drop off the files.”