Three whole pages had been cut cleanly out of the binding.

The edge of the white paper was jagged and sharp where the blades had cut close to the stitching.

Someone had used a small pair of sewing scissors to snip the pages out, line by line.

I held the spine up closer to the bulb over the table.

A sliver of paper no wider than a matchstick was still caught in the cloth seam.

On that little strip, the top curve of a capital R still showed in blue ink.