There was something otherworldly about reading original case notes. It transformed a corpse into a living, breathing human being. The two original homicide investigators—Arnold Lamar and Calvin Vitton—seemed to have worked hard, and the file was complete. The resurrection of Ben Little would demand that Decker have a long chat with Lamar and Vitton, but he wanted to form his own opinions first.

Slowly, Little emerged as a complete and complex person. He had his idiosyncrasies—knuckle cracking, a braying laugh, and compulsive list making—but he didn’t seem to have any overt or dangerous vices. According to Melinda Little, her husband was a man of boundless energy, involved with the school, with the faculty, with the troubled students, with the honor students, with community clubs and civic duties, and—not to be neglected—with his family. Once in a blue moon, he’d wear out and come down with a cold or flu, and when this happened, Ben reverted, “as most men do, to a complete baby.”

Melinda claimed that she was more than happy to wait on him hand and foot, to give back because he was always giving to others. As far as she knew, there were no other women.

“When would he have time?”

He was always leaving her schedules, addresses, and phone numbers of his meetings in case of an emergency. And the few times she had to locate him, he was always where he said he would be.

He didn’t drink, and he didn’t take drugs. They had money in the bank, a retirement plan, life insurance, and college plans for both the boys. If Ben was spending money on a vice, he wasn’t taking anything out of their savings account. The house didn’t have a secret second mortgage, the car payments were timely, there was always money for birthday and Christmas presents, and he and Melinda always made a point to get away alone at least once a year. Ben was kind and thoughtful, and if he had one fault, it was his overextension. A few times, he had missed the boys’ play-off games and a couple of their school plays, but wasn’t that the case with most working husbands?

When pressed, Melinda admitted that Ben had occasional down periods. There had been a student who had died in a car accident, another who died in an overdose. A promising girl had gotten pregnant. Those kinds of things made him blue, but his favored way of coping was to throw himself into another project. He didn’t dwell on what was out of his control.

At the time of Ben’s death, his sons, Nicolas Frank and Jared Eliot, had been fifteen and thirteen, respectively. They’d be thirty and twenty-eight by now. Decker wondered about the boys’ perceptions now that they were adults. They needed to be interviewed.