charged with embezzling almost four thousand dollars.
Stupid cow, thought Flame. Wreck your life for a pal-
try four thousand?
Still no identification for the dismembered body
of a muscular Caucasian male. The Colleton County
Sheriff ’s Department again urged the public to report
any missing man between the age of thirty and sixty.
Eighteen dogs had been confiscated in Black Creek and
their owner charged with felony dog fighting and ani-
mal cruelty, while—
131
MARGARET MARON
“Wait a damn minute here!” Flame exclaimed. She
was almost past the Dobbs exit, but she flashed her turn
signal, yanked on her steering wheel and slid in front of
a van that was trying to make its own sedate exit. The
van honked angrily and veered to avoid rear-ending the
Jeep, but Flame barely heard.
It was crazy, but what if that bitch was even less will-
ing than Buck to share what they had built?
“Major Bryant?”
Dwight looked up to see one of the departmental
clerks standing in his doorway.
“Mr. Stephenson’s here with a client and they’d like
to speak to you if you have a minute?”
“Sure,” he said, laying aside the ME’s report on the
torso, a report which confirmed that it really was part
and parcel of the other appendages they’d collected. If
there had been scars, tattoos, or anything else unique
to this body, they were obliterated by animal depreda-
tions or by the heavy blade that had dismembered it.
Said blade, incidentally, appeared to be approximately
six inches wide with a slight curvature of the cutting
edge, all consistent with an ordinary axe.
Nevertheless, in addition to the broken right ulna ear-
lier X-rays had discovered, the torso did carry two mark-
ers that might help distinguish this body from another.
First, there was a small mole just below the navel.
Second was what the ME described as “a protrusive
umbilicus.”
“Thanks for seeing us, Major Bryant,” Reid Stephenson
said formally as he held the door open for a very attrac-
132
HARD ROW
tive redhead. A handsome six-footer himself, Reid was
well-known for his penchant for knockout redheads,
but this one was even more gorgeous than usual.
Where the hell did he keep finding them? Dwight
wondered as he stood and shook hands with Deborah’s
