“The wife’s body is found, and the husband ends up serving twenty to life in maximum security. Wouldn’t you think that by now at least one of these guys would settle for an old-fashioned divorce?”

Miller didn’t have anything to say.

D.D. sighed, ran a hand through her hair, sighed again. “All right, gut reaction. Do you think the wife’s dead?”

“Yep.” Miller said it matter-of-factly. When she waited, he offered up, “Broken lamp, missing quilt. I’d say someone wrapped up the body and carted it off. Quilt would contain the blood, which accounts for the lack of physical evidence.”

“All right. You think the husband did it?”

Miller pulled out a folded yellow sheet of legal pad paper from inside his brown sports jacket, and handed it to her. “You’ll like this. While the husband has been, shall we say, reluctant, to answer our questions, he did provide his own timeline for the evening, including the names and phone numbers of people who could corroborate his whereabouts.”

“He provided a list of alibis?” D.D. unfolded the sheet, noting the first name listed, Larry Wade, Fire Marshall, then James McConnagal, Massachusetts State Police, then three more names, this time from the BPD. She kept reading, her eyes growing wider, then her hands starting to shake with barely suppressed rage. “Who the hell is this guy again?”

“Reporter, Boston Daily. House burned last night. He claims he was there, covering that story, along with half of Boston’s finest.”

“No shit. You call any of these guys yet?”

“Nah, I already know what I’m gonna get.”

“They saw him, but they didn’t see him,” D.D. filled in. “It’s a fire, everyone’s working. Maybe he asked each one of them for a quote, so they noticed him at that moment, then when he slips away …”

“Yep. As alibis go, this guy scores straight out of the gate. He’s got half a dozen of our own people to say where he was last night, even if some of the time he wasn’t there at all. Meaning,” Miller wagged his finger at her, “don’t let Mr. Jones’s good looks fool you. McDreamy is also McSmarty. That’s so unfair.”

D.D. handed the paper back. “He lawyer up?” They hit the corner, and by mutual consent turned around and headed back. They were walking into the wind now, the force of the breeze flattening their coats against their chests while carrying the sting of the water into their faces.

“Not yet. He just won’t answer our questions.”

“Did you invite him down to the station house?”

“He asked to see our arrest warrant.”