Her beloved’s legs that wore socks and shoes, and on this cruel April afternoon, corduroy slacks almost the same tawny brown as his recliner and the couch. Slacks that she had picked out for him at Saks.

The stiff white face said in that small room: He looks pretty good because his most profoundly mutilating injuries are to the lower extremities.

Which were covered—the lower extremities, his lower extremities—by the papery blue sheet.

Shrew left the morgue, and she left her mailing address, and later she wrote the check and got a copy of Dr. Lester’s final report after it had been pended for about five months, awaiting toxicology. The official autopsy results were still sealed inside their official envelope, in a bottom drawer of her desk, under a box of her husband’s favorite cigars that she’d sealed in a freezer bag because she didn’t want to smell them, yet she couldn’t bring herself to toss them out.

She put another glass of bourbon next to the computer and sat down, working later than usual and not wanting to go to bed anytime soon or ever again. It occurred to her that all had been bearable until she’d opened that Marilyn Monroe photograph earlier today.

She thought of a punishing God as she envisioned the man with the mutton-chop sideburns and flashy jewelry, and his offer of a free dachshund or a shih tzu or a springer spaniel puppy, and then the ride home. He was trying to silence her through the bribery of a kindness that hinted what it would be like if he weren’t inclined to be kind at all. She’d caught him red-handed, and they both knew it, and he wanted her to feel friendly toward him. For their own good.

She went on the Internet and searched until she found a story that had run in the Times just three weeks ago, the very same week that the Boss had written such nice things about Tell-Tail Hearts’s main pet shop on Lexington Avenue. The article was accompanied by a photograph of the white-haired man with the big sideburns and dissipated face.

His name was Jake Loudin.

This past October, he had been charged with eight counts of animal cruelty after one of the pet shops he owned in the Bronx was raided, but several weeks ago, in early December, he’d gotten off scot-free:

CHARGES AGAINST PUPPY MILL KING DROPPED

The New York County District Attorney’s office has dropped eight counts of aggravated animal cruelty against a Missouri businessman who animal-rights activists call “The Puppy Pol Pot,” comparing Jake Loudin to the Khmer Rouge leader responsible for the slaughter of millions of Cambodians.