NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — In a closing argument Tuesday, a prosecutor suggested a lack of direct evidence against Melanie McGuire in the murder of her husband is actually proof the fertility clinic nurse plotted and executed his slaying with the same meticulousness and organizational zeal she brought to her career and housework.

Referring to an absence of any DNA in the apartment where the fatal shooting of William McGuire allegedly occurred, the lead attorney for the government told jurors McGuire had cleaned the property as painstakingly as she kept her patients' charts and arranged her kitchen spices — "in alphabetical order, labels out."

"Sometimes the total lack of something is as evidential as finding something," Assistant Attorney General Patricia Prezioso said.

The prosecutor urged jurors to convict McGuire on the basis of other evidence, saying that, while circumstantial, "it is also powerful, compelling and inescapable."

Jurors are to begin deliberating a first-degree murder charge and seven other related counts against McGuire, 34, a mother of two, Wednesday morning. She faces a potential sentence of 30 years to life in prison.

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Throughout the seven-week trial, prosecutors have kept their theory of the 2004 crime close to their vests. But in Prezioso's summation, the last opportunity for an attorney on either side to speak directly to jurors, the prosecutor laid out a detailed scenario that included the defendant doping the victim with wine laced with a sedative and then performing a leisurely dismemberment of his body in the shower stall of the couple's master bathroom.

Acknowledging that this is just a theory and she could not offer conclusive evidence of when and where William McGuire was killed, the prosecutor maintained her case still offered proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was involved in the slaying.

"I don't need to prove exactly what time and where he was when he took his last breath," Prezioso said.

She asked jurors to view the trial as a search for the truth rather than "a contest to see if a smart, organized, methodical killer can hide a crime scene and if so she gets away with murder."

Among the circumstantial evidence the prosecutor cited were garbage bags holding the victim's remains. Experts said they were identical to ones removed from McGuire's apartment after the murder.

The victim, a 39-year-old computer analyst, was last seen alive April 28, 2004, the day he and the defendant closed on their first home. Melanie McGuire contends he left her at dawn the following day after a violent argument about the purchase. His remains, stuffed in trash bags in three suitcases, washed up on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

Prezioso told jurors the motive was a hassle-free, well-financed escape from a loveless marriage. She said the defendant wanted to be free of her husband so she could intensify her relationship with her married boss, Dr. Bradley Miller. The prosecutor cited the testimony of witnesses who said McGuire had inquired about the costs of divorce and felt her husband would fight for custody of their sons.

"She knew a divorce from him would not be easy," Prezioso said. "She needed him dead ... She needed the chance to be the next Mrs. Miller."

Jurors sat rapt as the prosecutor presented her theory of William McGuire's death. She said McGuire likely stirred liquid chloral hydrate into a drink for her husband, perhaps under the pretext of toasting their new home. Someone forged a prescription for chloral hydrate on Miller's pad on April 28. The defendant had access to the pad, and the prescription was filled at a pharmacy near her children's school.