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Weinstock sipped the stea coffee, then paused and stared into the middle distance "It is my considered medical opinion that it beats the hell out of runted Terry "What about Connie?"

"Noe come to the bad news She is physically unharh this relatively unscathed So and fro the others experienced Nevertheless, her trauerous than that of Val Guthrie She was nearly raped, but in her own mind she actually was raped Or at least violated beyond her capacity to endure You have to understand, gentlemen, that this is a very old-​fashioned, very modest woman Probably a little naive, too, one of those people who just isn’t prepared for this kind of visit to the real world Her kind isn’t ators Will she snap out of it? Probably yes In most ways, yes, but can she put the event behind her and not let it haunt her and warp her like it does to so many of the innocent ones?" He just shook his head "I don’t know, fellows I’ood shrink"

"So’s her husband," said LaMastra "I had a talk with hi that he doesn’t want to talk about it He’s on some kind of denial trip, thinks his father’s death is his fault soer was ripping his wife’s clothes off and running his hands all over her, all young Mr Guthrie could do was sit and watch and screa hi and unable to do anything…well, I don’t even want to speculate"

LaMastra made a sour face "I’ve seen cases like that Poor bastard’s held down by one guy with a knife or gun or whatever, and has to watch the other guys take turns with his wife or girlfriend What man could take that?"

"I sure as hell couldn’t," Weinstock said grirew quiet as the men stared down at the floor and down at the dusty bottoine what Mark Guthrie had felt, putting theht, as was the speculation, however distorted, of what it must have felt like for Connie Guthrie as well It was harder for these men to relate to her traus burned holes in each of them

Gus blew out his cheeks "Well, if that is the bad news, I just can’t wait to hear what the really bad news is"

Weinstock sipped his coffee and considered the darkly rippling liquid for a long five seconds "I just finished the posth "You know, fellows, I never signed up to do this kind of shit I’m essentially a country doctor My patients are upscale suburbanites who get expensive conditions and rare and glae, or they have heart attacks on the back nine, two under par, and still sue But this crap…this body you brought ht…ahh, I just don’t know I h not to be squeah school kids after the paramedics peeled them out of wrecked Lexuses That I can deal with, but this…htmare stuff, you know?"

"We all saw the corpse, Saul," said Terry quietly "We know"

"No," Weinstock said e down his coffee cup with a thump "No, you don’t know You don’t even know the half of it" He looked at them each for a s out of his abdomen, both of different calibers One was a nine millimeter and the second bullet wound was a thirty-​two caliber--delivered hours later fro, but al the drug buy, in Philly," said Ferro "That was probably the nine, and Ruger has a thirty-​two caliber belly gun Raven Arms automatic"

"Okay The first shot was from a distance, the hole was clean and there were no powder burns, no tattooing, just a clean hole But the other was a classic near-​contact entry wound, possibly even on-​contact, fired through clothes The entry wound had a clear burn-​rier ut and popped hientlemen, was a fatal wound, and Mr Macchio would have been far better off if it had been, but no Frouess that he lived another half hour, er, and it’s what happened in that half hour that scares the hell out of me"

"We knoas tortured, Dr Weinstock," said Ferro

Weinstock tilted his head to one side "Is torture the right word for it, I wonder? Torture almost seems, I don’t know, too clean a word for what happened The perpetrator inserted so into Macchio’s two bullet wounds, possibly his own fingers, and literally tore the front of his sto theled rope Next, he…uh…bit the skin around the wound"

"Bit?" Terry said softly, his face paling, and suddenly he was back thirty years and so his shoulder… He had to shake himself to break free of the memory and stay focused

"Bit Chewed Ate! We found clear impressions of teeth ers, actually chewing off theoff most of the nose, the lips, the eyebrows, the ears…" The doctor’s eyes were glassy "You all saw the disht they had been hacked off crudely, perhaps with a ses of the bones, we discovered that the hands had been bitten off, the , very sharp teeth"

"Holy shit," breathed Gus

"We were able to lift saliva fro a workup on it now There were bite roin, neck, and, uh, so on If you ever catch this guy I can guarantee you a perfect set of dental impressions"