Deadline (11 page)

“You got it. Fletcher the dink.”

“All you have to do is stick to the deadline,” I said. “Teach him a lesson.”

“Yeah, a quarter-page lesson. Three-hundred-buck lesson.”

He sat down at his desk and shuffled through insertion orders.

“Hey, I'll tell you,” Paul said. “I'll work here forty hours a week. Maybe fifty. But not sixty. I'm not spending my whole life in this place. Life is too goddamn short.”

Vern turned back to his desk.

“Some of us are trying to put out a newspaper,” he said. “If the advertising department can't behave appropriately in the workplace, it may face disciplinary action.”

“Discipline this,” Paul snarled.

“Now children,” I said, and turned to my screen and began to write.

          
Preliminary results of an autopsy performed on the body of Arthur Bertin showed that the Androscoggin man died of accidental drowning, Chief Medical Examiner Richard E. Ritano said Tuesday.

              
Bertin also was suffering from acute hypothermia at the time of his death, Ritano said.

              
Bertin's body was found Sunday in a canal on the property of St. Amand Paper Co., between the Androscoggin mill and Route 108. Ritano, who performed the autopsy at Kennebec Valley Medical Center in Augusta, said there was no indication of foul play in the death of the forty-six-year-old freelance photographer.

              
Ritano emphasized, however, that the findings were preliminary. He said he could not say when a final ruling would be issued.

              
Bertin's body was first discovered floating in the canal at 3:55 p.m. by youths playing in the area. Fire and rescue units were dispatched and recovered the body using an Androscoggin Fire Department rescue boat. The body was found lodged against the canal wall about a half-mile west of the St. Amand access road off Route 108.

              
A longtime Androscoggin resident, Bertin was a freelance and studio photographer for many years. He was a familiar figure at area sports events, which he often covered for the
Review
.

I grabbed the phone and dialed the police department.

Charlotte the dispatcher answered, with the television blaring in the background. I asked for Vigue and she put me on hold. I waited and Vigue answered.

“Lieutenant. Jack McMorrow again.”

“Yup.”

“I know we talked about this already, but I wanted to get, make sure I had the latest information.”

I could hear him breathing.

“You there?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“I couldn't hear you.”

“That's because I didn't say anything. Hey, listen. What can I tell you. Nothing's changed.”

“What about those pictures?”

“Those pictures don't mean squat. What'd you think he was? A priest? Just because he was a weirdo doesn't mean somebody killed
him. That was true, we'd have ten homicides a week. He ain't the only one with a skeleton in his closet.”

“But he's the only one who ended up in the water.”

Silence. Vigue was not happy.

“Listen. I'm not—this department is not gonna be railroaded into commencing something as important as a homicide investigation. Just because the stiff worked for your paper doesn't make it the crime of the century.”

“But the pictures—”

“The pictures are interesting. I will make sure they are considered should any other information come to our attention. And—”

“Is it gonna come to your attention, or are you gonna go out and find it?”

“Listen, Sam friggin' Spade. This is what I am gonna tell you. This is for the record: You can do whatever you want with it. This death is under investigation. This department is always looking for information that could potentially involve criminal activity. But at this point in time the medical examiner has ruled it an accidental death. At this point in time we do not have any information that would indicate that this is a homicide. At this point in time. I don't know any other way to say it.”

“Well, I'm not a cop, but—”

“You bet you're not a cop, and I am. So are a lot of other people around here, and they are doing their jobs and they don't need people like you interfering with this investigation. And I'd like to know just how you found those pictures.”

“Subpoena me when the killer is brought to trial.”

“Jesus! You are—you are almost enough to piss a man off. That's off the record.”

“Be that way,” I said. “Thanks for your time. I'll talk to you later. Oh, and if you really want to know more about the pictures, I'd be glad to talk.”

“I know where to find you,” Vigue said, and he hung up.

In front of me on the desk were two yellow legal-pad pages covered with scrawled notes. I went through them, rewriting where the handwriting was illegible. I looked at them and began typing.

          
Androscoggin Police Lieutenant John Vigue said police are continuing their investigation of Bertin's death. But Vigue on Tuesday said police had no evidence that would lead them to view the death as suspicious.

              
“This department is always looking for information that could potentially involve criminal activity,” Vigue said.

I wondered if I should use the railroading quote or any of the other stuff. Vigue would hit the roof, but did I want him completely turned off on me and the paper? Would he get so mad at me that it would make him back away from the Arthur thing even further? Or had I already crossed that line?

Flipping through the pages, I decided to wait. But I took the Vigue notes and stuck them in a folder with the picture of Joy. I took the photo of the woman with Martin and put it with the other stuff and stuck the folder in my file cabinet under “N,” for no reason. I shut the drawer and for the first time since I'd been at the
Review
, locked it.

7

I
t was late Tuesday afternoon and the shift had changed at the mill, releasing a stream of cars and pickup trucks that flowed down Main Street as if it had been squeezed out of a tube. I was sitting at my desk with my hands on the keyboard but my gaze on the traffic under the Christmas lights. When I looked back at the screen, nothing had changed. The slug read
SIDEBAR-ART
and the rest of the glowing green screen was blank.

I looked around the office. Vern was drawling into the phone with the southern accent that he fell into every once in a while, usually when he was really waxing on about something or when he was drunk. I wondered about that. Was it just sports macho, or had he lived in the South at some point? He never said much about his background. Nothing that really told you much. A private person who never shut up.

Paul was cursing as he picked at a roll of border tape for an ad. He'd been in a nasty mood all week, but that was the way he usually was when he was under a lot of pressure, which pre-Christmas was. Or when one of his two-month flings was on the way out. Then I'd hear him talking to Cindy, man to woman. “She doesn't understand.

I adjust my life to hers. But if I ask her to make some adjustments for me, she acts like I'm pushing her around. I don't know how long it's gonna last.” Within a week, he'd be with somebody else. Two months later, he'd be talking to Cindy again.

I took a breath, stretched my shoulders, and started typing.

          
Arthur Bertin didn't leave much behind when he drowned last weekend. There are stuffed bunnies gathering dust in his studio on Carolina Street. They are left over from years ago, when Arthur used to get kids to smile for the camera. Many of those photographs are probably still treasured by mothers and fathers who by now are grandparents. Their grandchildren won't be able to go to Arthur to have their photographs taken.

              
There are pieces of old Nikkormat cameras scattered around his studio, too, cameras cannibalized to keep one camera in operation for Arthur's work at the
Review
. Most of those pictures have disappeared with the papers, but a few probably have survived. They turn yellow in scrap-books. Perhaps Little Leaguers still have them taped to their bedroom walls.

I thought of the stack of Peeping Tom photos, the bank teller in her slip. It really didn't change anything—or did it? Arthur took child portraits. He was practically an institution at the
Review
. I knew of his other side, but most people didn't. And they would be expecting that his career be acknowledged somehow. But could I do it without feeling like I was lying to the public? As I sat, I heard Dave Curry's booming Dale Carnegie voice.

Maybe I'd ask the opinion of somebody who lied for a living.

“Jack, sorry to bother you again, but something came up, and I thought you'd want to know about it.”

Overdressed and overbearing, he shook my hand and pulled some typed pages from his leather folder. He handed one to me and the way he waited made me think I was supposed to read it. I looked at the Philadelphia letterhead, the phrase, “reaffirming our commitment to the community.” There was more about the company pledging to do everything in its power to retain jobs in Maine, but the “extremely competitive marketplace, the responsibility to the shareholders, the burgeoning environmental costs …”

“What's this say in English?” I said.

“Ha, ha,” Curry said. “Always right for the jugular. Well, you want a quick answer, I guess, and if I may paraphrase Haze Gavin, St. Amand and parent firm Quinn-Hillson are both reaffirming their commitment to the community. Gavin knows that you have been making some inquiries about the company's actions in other contexts, and the company is just saying that each of those actions is taken independently, and we are not in a mode where we make any of these decisions easily. But we are in a mode where some difficult decisions may have to be made if the community, the town, the employees don't recognize the marketplace we're working in.”

“So what does this have to do with me?”

“Ha, ha,” he said. “No, Jack, we are serious. We recognize that you have legitimate concerns about the company's moves and the way they might impact Androscoggin. You have a responsibility to get all the information out to the community, and you are doing a great job of that. But we want to make sure that you
do
have all the information. So Haze Gavin wants you to look at this statement. Consider it talking points. Then we can get together, do a conference call, and really lay it out for everybody to see. What's your deadline for this week?”

“Deadline is Thursday morning to make the streets early Friday. But that's in North Conway at the printer's. In theory, we should have everything set to go Wednesday night.''

“Hey, I remember deadlines at the college paper. University of Oklahoma. Boy, did we bust some deadlines.”

Bust some deadlines? Spare me.

“When does Gavin want to talk?” I asked. “Tomorrow? We have had some other things going on.”

I waited. One, two, three …

“Oh, yeah, the Arthur Bertin thing. Well, I know, I'll call you. We can work around that, I'm sure. Terrible thing. I didn't mean to … No, you take care of that, of course. If there's anything that the company can do, we'll—”

“What's down there? Where he died, I mean?”

Curry's expression changed, almost as if he'd been asked a real question for a change and could give a real answer.

“Nothing, really, Jack,” he said. “A lot of storage. Nothing really. If we put in another paper machine, not that we have any firm plans, but if we ever did expand, that would be the direction we'd head. But nothing. Just … I don't know, just a lot of junk.”

Junk and a dead man who had been very lonely.

Curry finally left and my stomach grumbled. I closed Arthur's editorial and shut off my machine. I got up and looked out at the traffic, looked at Marion's note on the community news copy and briefs, with thirty-six inches in the system. Marion was very efficient. It was good to have at least one grown-up in the operation.

Vern was still on the phone, talking basketball. He was a funny guy, able to talk for hours about nothing or, when he was drinking or hungover, come out with something that cut to the absolute heart
of a subject, a verbal stiletto. It was unsettling, as if he thought more than he ever let on, as if the veil was always down. Almost always.

The shift-change traffic had thinned, which meant there were no cars on Main Street. My stomach grumbled again and I decided to head home, and within minutes I had caught both of the lights on Main Street on green, swung over the bridge, past the park and up the hill. At Penobscot Street, I went left, slowing to let a group of high-school kids saunter across the street. When I got to the house it looked bleak and cold, with the lights out and the driveway empty.