Deadline (7 page)

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.

“Well, 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.

“No evidence of foul play?”

“Not at this point. That's why I said accidental.”

“Any scratches or bruises that might indicate that he fell or was assaulted?”

“Nothing inconsistent with a fall from the height of the riverbank there.”

“It's not really a riverbank,” I said. “It's a canal. A stone canal. It channels water through the mill.”

“Whatever.”

Whatever. Whoever. Some schmuck from the sticks as far as this guy was concerned.

“Maybe 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—”

“Whether it was accidental or a homicide?”

“Right.”

Ritano let out a long sigh. Another dumb question from a dumb reporter.

“It's very complicated,” he said wearily. “There are things we look for in conjunction with—”

“What kind of things?”

“There'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 medicine on this subject. I could talk for hours.”

“Do 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?”

“Sure, 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.

“Well, specifically then,” I said. “In the Bertin case—”

“Hey, 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.”

“I think the story is that you found that Arthur Bertin's death was accidental.”

“Preliminary. I said preliminary. I stressed that.”

I kept scribbling, now on the third page of legal pad.

“So what might change?” I asked.

“Hey, I told you. I'm not going to speculate on that. With the evidence we now have, that's the ruling.”

“I understand that. And I appreciate how forthcoming you've been. But is there more evidence coming from someplace? The police?”

“I can't comment on that. I've already given you more than I do ordinarily.”

Big deal, I thought.

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“Yes, I'm sure you do,” Ritano said. “What did you say your name was?”

“McMorrow. Jack McMorrow. The
Androscoggin Review
.”

“Been with the paper long?”

“Not too long. About six months.”

“Where were you before that? Other papers?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Like where?”

First the kids and now this guy. Talk about the public's right to know.

“Around New England. New York area.”

“New York City?”

“Yup. For a while.”

“What, the
Post
or something?”

“No, the
Times
,” I said.

Ritano sniffed.

“That 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.

“Who 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 the edge of the crowd of kids and old men and focused the camera on the ladder. Five rungs from the top of it, a fireman named Honey Rancourt was leaning out, trying to hang a big plywood candy cane onto the top of the light pole. I shot as he leaned out, just before he missed and grabbed back at the ladder, cursing. The annual cursing of the Christmas decorations. A New England ritual.

When I'd first come to town, it had amazed me that these kinds of things really happened. In the suburbs of Jersey, where I grew up, they didn't get the town together to hang Christmas decorations. Christmas decorations were something that just appeared at the mall. Around Halloween.

So when the town brought out the fire truck to hang the plywood candy canes, it was like it was the prototype of the cliché. But nobody saw it that way, with the big-city cynicism that comes from being too hip or cool. For Androscoggin, hanging the candy canes was like
putting up the tree at Rockefeller Center. With Honey Rancourt, your master of ceremonies.

I moved back through the kids to where the fire chief, a calm, wise sort of guy named Will Dubois, was standing by the cab of the truck. Dubois was a nice guy. Very sure of himself and his place in the community.

“You're the cameraman now?” he said, standing there in his big rubber boots.

“Don't have much choice.”

“Shame,” Dubois said, like he meant it.

“Hard to believe,” I said.

“Yeah.”

Dubois ran a hand through his hair and watched as the ladder swung across the street. He had handsome white hair, like a fireman in a cigarette ad.

“What do you think could have happened? You've been to a few of these things,” I said.

Dubois watched Honey on the ladder. Another candy cane went up.

“I've given up trying to figure out some of the stuff that goes on around here,” he said, over the idling diesel. “There are some of these things where you just never know. I don't know that this will be one of 'em, but it wouldn't surprise me. Not at all.”

An older man came up and spat tobacco juice on the street. He grinned at me and poked Dubois in the ribs. His face had liver spots on it and his hat said
A
&
A AUTO PARTS
, with a picture of a wrecker truck.

“What's Honey's real name?” I asked Dubois.

“Clarence,” he said. “But if you put that in the paper, nobody will know who you're talking about. Been Honey since he was in grade school.”

“And useless as tits on a nun,” the old man said. “What are you doin'? Taking pictures of these bums?”

I walked. It was only 3:30, but the sun dropped behind the mountains early and the buildings on Main Street made a chilly shaded canyon that was turning my feet cold. I walked up toward the municipal building, past Ducharme's Department Store, where they had plastic canes full of green and red candy piled in a shopping cart outside the front door. Two gray-haired women were looking at the canes and one woman held one up and shook it. I smiled and they smiled back and I kept walking, thinking I'd seen one of them in one of Arthur's pictures. The Daughters of Isabella? Beano at the elderly housing?

I was thinking about it when a police cruiser hissed by fast, blue lights on.

By the time I turned the corner at the municipal building, up the block, the cruiser was parked by another one, and two cops were leaning into the backseat. As I got closer, I could see somebody in the backseat, thrashing. Then I could hear the guy's muffled bellowing as one of the cops, Vigue, reached in and yanked him out by the neck and shoulders and dropped him headfirst on the pavement.

The guy was thirty, maybe thirty-five, with a beard and long dark hair tied in a ponytail. He had on black biker's boots, and he tried to kick Vigue and the other cop, LeMaire, J., as they dragged him toward the door by the chain between his handcuffs. I stood next to the door as they moved past me and down the hallway, to the windowless door to the holding cells.

“He's upset,” Vigue grunted.

It was fifteen minutes before they came out of the cell area. I could hear the ponytailed man hollering inside.

“I'll kill you. Come on, Vigue, you pussy. Take off that gun and come in here, you wuss. You pussy, you wuss. You pussy, you wuss.”

It almost had a rhythm to it. A cell-block mantra.

Vigue waved me into his office as he crossed the hall. I stood and waited as he fished for cigarettes, first in his jacket and then in the top desk drawer.

“You want to interview my friend?” he asked. “Nice fella. His girlfriend called. Trailer out in East Overshoe, past Androscoggin village. Girl calls when he says he's gonna cut her up and feed her to the Doberman. Gonna cook her, she says, and feed her to the dog. One rugged son of a bitch, I'll tell ya. Friggin' blotto, and it still took four of us to take him down. A couple of country boys came by and helped us out. I'm telling you, I'll take a drunk over one of these cokeheads anytime, mister. When we got there, he was cutting a hole in the bathroom door with a knife and the girl had gone out the back of the trailer. Maced the bastard, I mean but good, and he still wanted to fight.”

Vigue sat down on his desk and lit a cigarette.

“Getting too friggin' old for this, I'll tell ya.”

He exhaled.

“What do you want anyway. A story?”

“If you've got one kicking around.”

“Got one kicking the cell around, if you want.”

I smiled. Waited.

“No, I talked to the ME a while ago. After lunch. He said Arthur was an accidental drowning.”

Vigue inhaled and waited.

“So I have a couple of questions.”

“So ask 'em.”

LeMaire, J. walked by in the hallway, wiping his hands on a paper towel.

“Were the state cops here at all?” I asked. “And two, does this mean your investigation is finished?”

The guy in the cell stopped yelling. A door slammed. Vigue glanced past me toward the cells and then back at me.

“I don't keep tabs on the state boys,” he said. “They don't ask for my help, if you know what I mean. But they did call and I told them what I had so far. As far as their coming here or going to the scene, you'd have to ask them.”

“Who was it who called?”

“Hoag. Detective.”

“So who did go to the scene?” I asked.

“We did.”

“Went to the scene?”

“Yeah. We inspected the scene. SOP.”

“Looking for what? What do you look for in a case like this?”

My notebook was out of my parka pocket. I reached for a pen from my shirt. Vigue glanced at the notebook, then looked back at me.

“They teach it at the academy. Crime scene. My first job is to keep it secure. That was our primary job here. But we also look for any sign of a struggle. You know, rocks missing off the wall, scuffs in the dirt. Anything. Pieces of clothing. Footprints.”

“Find anything?”

“This for print?”

“I'd like it to be.”

“Can't tell ya. Ongoing investigation.”

“Come on,” I said.