There, in the beam of his flashlight, dangled a large, dead-white carcass. It was hanging upside down by its feet. Its front had been split completely open, so that its trunk was little more than a dark, gaping hole. The carcass had been decapitated as though someone had sliced the head off for a trophy. The body had been butchered like a heifer or a dressed-out deer. Only it wasn’t an animal. It was the body of a human being, an adult woman. Bernice Worden’s body. The sight was so stupefying that it took a moment for Schley to understand what he was looking at. Then he managed to choke out a
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