Deadline by Gerry Boyle Page A

medicine on this subject. I could talk for hours.”
    â€œDo you check the area of the death, the scene, to see if, let’s say, there is a sign of a struggle? Check the body to see if there are any signs of a struggle or whatever?”
    â€œSure, you do. Police do some of that work. They confer with this office and we come up with a finding. But I really don’t see how this broad kind of generalization is going to help you with your story.”
    How kind. He was concerned about my story.
    â€œWell, specifically then,” I said. “In the Bertin case—”
    â€œHey, listen,” Ritano interrupted. “I’m not gonna beat around the proverbial bush here. I’m not gonna get into a discussion of what we did or didn’t do in a case that is still pending, so that you can take something out of context and make a story where there isn’t one.”
    â€œI think the story is that you found that Arthur Bertin’s death was accidental.”
    â€œPreliminary. I said preliminary. I stressed that.”
    I kept scribbling, now on the third page of legal pad.
    â€œSo what might change?” I asked.
    â€œHey, I told you. I’m not going to speculate on that. With the evidence we now have, that’s the ruling.”
    â€œI understand that. And I appreciate how forthcoming you’ve been. But is there more evidence coming from someplace? The police?”
    â€œI can’t comment on that. I’ve already given you more than I do ordinarily.”
    Big deal, I thought.
    â€œI appreciate that,” I said.
    â€œYes, I’m sure you do,” Ritano said. “What did you say your name was?”
    â€œMcMorrow. Jack McMorrow. The Androscoggin Review .”
    â€œBeen with the paper long?”
    â€œNot too long. About six months.”
    â€œWhere were you before that? Other papers?”
    â€œOh, yeah.”
    â€œLike where?”
    First the kids and now this guy. Talk about the public’s right to know.
    â€œAround New England. New York area.”
    â€œNew York City?”
    â€œYup. For a while.”
    â€œWhat, the Post or something?”
    â€œNo, the Times ,” I said.
    Ritano sniffed.
    â€œThat explains a lot,” he said.
    The ink was still wet on Ritano’s rubber stamp.
    I’d seen it work that way before. A homeless guy. A bag lady. A drug dealer with no ID. In the city, they’d turn up dead and some junior member of the coroner’s staff would show up and ask the cops what they thought.
    â€œWho the hell knows?” the cops would say.
    Why waste time on somebody nobody cares about? Why waste time on a possible homicide when there are very definite ones stacked up in the fridges down the hall?
    So it didn’t surprise me that Ritano wasn’t fired up to do a full investigation of Arthur’s death. But I was surprised that Vigue and the other local cops weren’t pushing it more. They didn’t have anything else to do. But it was like the word was out. Hands off. Let it die.
    If they didn’t push it, the ME wouldn’t. The AG’s office wouldn’t. Nobody would. Except me.
    I went over my notes from Ritano, underlining the best quotes and filling in the gaps where he’d gotten ahead of me. I could leave it alone, too. A couple of routine stories from official sources and the case would disappear from the news pages and end up in a file in our morgue. We’d get on to more-pressing issues, like the cost of the town’s new backhoe or the building of the new animal shelter. Maybe a nice photo of the town council at the groundbreaking.
    Or maybe we’d keep pushing for a little while. Maybe something would break. Arthur deserved that much. For us to give his death a little bit of a whirl.

5

    T he fire truck was parked in the middle of Main Street, with the diesel clacking like a city bus and the ladder jerking spasmodically between the light poles.
    I stood on