NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — The young widow was too grief-stricken for anything but a brief interview, the police were told. As she answered their questions, her shoulders shook. Her mouth was set in a deep frown. Her voice was low and quivering. She buried her face in her hands.

For the detective sitting across from her, however, the most notable sign of mourning was absent.

"I did not see a tear in her eye," the investigator recalled Tuesday during testimony at the murder trial of Melanie McGuire, a fertility nurse accused of the 2004 shooting and dismemberment of her husband.

The detective, Ray Pickell, of the Virginia Beach police department, was the first homicide investigator to question McGuire after her missing husband's remains were discovered in three suitcases in Chesapeake Bay. He told jurors that he found McGuire's dry eyes perplexing.

"She made facial expressions that she may be crying, but I didn't see any tears," he testified.  

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He said that despite a physical display of grief, McGuire's words were filled with bitterness toward her husband, William, 39, the father of her two young sons. She spent much of the 15-minute interview disparaging him. She said he had racked up $50,000 in gambling and day-trading losses and made enemies easily because of his "big mouth." She had filed for divorce since he vanished and said their marriage "was not a happy one."

"She mentioned that her husband had a knack for pissing people off, that in the last three or four months his behavior became erratic," Pickell testified.

The detective said McGuire insisted that, the last time she had seen him, they had a violent argument during which he stuffed a dryer sheet in her mouth and then fled the apartment, saying "that she would never see him again, that she was the reason the children would never have a father."

She subsequently got a restraining order. Prosecutors, who are seeking a first-degree murder conviction that could send the 34-year-old to prison for life, maintain McGuire manufactured the allegations as a cover story. She and her boss at the fertility clinic were having an affair.

Pickell said McGuire asked only one question: whether authorities had found the victim's Nissan. Told they had not, McGuire suggested they look in Atlantic City, where, she claimed, he was a loyal customer at several casinos. Police subsequently recovered the sedan from a hotel parking lot.