Deadline by Gerry Boyle

with her was the most fun I’d had in ten years.
    But I didn’t. Instead, I looked at my watch, which had reached the witching hour of 11:43 a.m. I said I had to get back to the paper to makesome phone calls and write some stories. They clapped to thank me, with boys in the back stomping on the floor until the teacher told them to stop.
    Where was he when I needed him?
    I had a blank yellow legal pad in front of me on the desk. The number of the medical examiner’s office was ringing and Vern was shouting to a coach over the phone. I covered my right ear with my hand and waited.
    A woman answered. I asked for the medical examiner, Dr. Richard Ritano. She paused, as if I was trying to peddle him some embalming fluid, then asked my name.
    â€œJack McMorrow,” I said. “I’m with the Androscoggin Review , the weekly paper in Androscoggin, and I have a question about the Arthur Bertin case.”
    Nothing.
    I waited, wondering if she’d hung up on me very quietly. Then there was a click, then another silence, then more clicks and a guy who said, “Yeah?”
    I identified myself again, identified the paper.
    â€œHave you issued a finding on the cause of death?”
    â€œHaven’t issued anything.”
    â€œYou mean you haven’t come up with anything yet?”
    â€œDid I say that? No, I said I hadn’t issued a finding yet.”
    â€œSo you have come up with something?”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œA cause of death. Accidental or homicide or whatever.”
    â€œWhat paper did you say you were from?”
    I told him again, told him I’d seen him testify in a murder trial about two weeks after I came to Maine. A guy had been shot by his wife and left in a closed car in a garage for a month. In the summer. Ritano had related all of the grisly details about the advanced state of decomposition. He was cool. Arrogant. Condescending.
    A real jerk. Then and now.
    Would he have taken me more seriously if I’d said I was from the Boston Globe? The Associated Press? Like a lot of people, Ritano probably thought bigger was better when it came to newspapers. Sometimes that was true. Sometimes it wasn’t.
    I could hear him breathing and shuffling papers. Finally, he coughed.
    â€œWell, I can’t tell you much,” he said. “Preliminary findings, and I would ask that you stress that these findings are preliminary, if you would do me that much of a courtesy. Preliminary findings show that the deceased, Arthur Bertin, died of accidental drowning. Secondary cause, hypothermia. He got cold in the water and drowned.”
    I scribbled as he spoke.
    â€œNo evidence of foul play?”
    â€œNot at this point. That’s why I said accidental.”
    â€œAny scratches or bruises that might indicate that he fell or was assaulted?”
    â€œNothing inconsistent with a fall from the height of the riverbank there.”
    â€œIt’s not really a riverbank,” I said. “It’s a canal. A stone canal. It channels water through the mill.”
    â€œWhatever.”
    Whatever. Whoever. Some schmuck from the sticks as far as this guy was concerned.
    â€œMaybe you could explain something to me, Dr. Ritano,” I said. “Let’s say somebody, hypothetically, somebody is pushed in a river or a canal or whatever. How does your office or you decide that he didn’t fall, that he—”
    â€œWhether it was accidental or a homicide?”
    â€œRight.”
    Ritano let out a long sigh. Another dumb question from a dumb reporter.
    â€œIt’s very complicated,” he said wearily. “There are things we look for in conjunction with—”
    â€œWhat kind of things?”
    â€œThere’s no hard-and-fast rule. Each case is taken on an individual basis and examined in the context of the circumstances of the death, the identity of the victim. His character. Listen, I could, and have, taught entire courses in forensic