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gruesome scene Driver had led him to when he first arrived was still all too vivid in his mind. |
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Dawkins got up, walked across the room and stood staring out the window at the darkened landscape. It was the same one where Flora Saint Quentin had monitored the progress of the storm earlier in the day. "Your housekeeper is dead, Colonel Driver, because someone carved, and that's exactly the word I want to use, carved her heart out. Brutal and vicious and crude is how I'd describe it." He paused to let the words sink in. "And I think it's safe to say what we're dealing with here is not a typical homicide, Colonel, not by a long shot. What we've got here is something unusual, real unusual." He had managed to get the emphasis on the word "real." "I'd even go so far as to say I've never seen anything quite like it before, and I've seen a lot.'' |
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"I . . . I . . . I figured she must have been stabbed," Driver admitted, "when I saw all that blood." |
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Dawkins hesitated. He was like a man groping his way through a complicated equation, each symbol and word conveying precisely what he wanted it to convey. "Was it Miss or Mrs?" |
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Driver looked up at the man absently. |
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"Was your housekeeper married, single, |
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