Nothing like that had been in Myra Paprock's file.

Milo nodded.

“A man,” said Paprock. “So what are you telling me? The first cops had it all wrong? They went and looked for the wrong thing?”

“We don't really know much at all at this point, sir. Just that someone wrote “bad love' at the scene of Mr. Shipler's homicide.”

“Shipler.” Paprock squinted. “You're opening the whole thing up again, 'cause of him?”

“We're taking a look at the facts, Mr. Paprock.”

Paprock closed his eyes, opened them, and took a deep breath. “My Myra was taken apart. I had to identify her. To you that kind of thing's probably old hat, but . . .” Shake of the head.

“It's never old hat, sir.”

Paprock gave him a doubtful look. “After I did it—identified her—it took me a long time to be able to remember her the way she used to be . . . even now . . . the first cops said whoever—did those things to her, did them after she was dead.” Alarm brightened his eyes. “They were right about that, weren't they?”

“Yes, sir.”

Paprock's hands gripped the edge of his desk and he wheeled forward. “Tell me the truth, detective—I mean it. I don't want to think of her suffering, but if—no, forget it, don't tell me a damn thing, I don't want to know.”

“She didn't suffer, sir. The only thing new is Mr. Shipler's murder.”

More sweat. Another wipe.

“Afterwards,” said Paprock. “After I identified her—I had to go tell my kids. The older one, anyway—the little one was just a baby. Actually, the older one wasn't much more than a baby, either, but he was asking for her, I had to tell him something.”

He knocked the knuckles of both hands together. Shook his head, tapped the desk.

“It took a helluva long time to get it set in my mind—what had happened. When I went to tell my boy, all I could think of was what I'd seen in the morgue—imagining her . . . and here he is asking for Mommy. “Mommy, Mommy'—he was two and a half. I told him Mommy got sick and went to sleep forever. When his sister got old enough, I gave him the job of telling her. They're great kids, my mother's been helping me take care of them, she's close to eighty and they don't give her any problems. So who needs to change that? Who needs Myra's name in the papers and digging it all up? There was a time, finding out who did it was all that mattered to me, but I got over that. What's the difference, anyway? She's not coming back, right?”

I nodded. Milo didn't move.

Paprock touched his brow and opened his eyes wide, as if exercising the lids.

“That it?” he said.

“Just a few questions about your wife's background,” said Milo.

“Her background?”