I didn’t need to find a body in the front yard. I was just trying to shovel us out. Anyway, I already had more than enough problems what with my job and with Heintz.

A pitiless snowstorm had raged down from Canada in the middle of the night. After Annie woke me up that Saturday morning with “Sal, you’ll have to shovel,” I squinted out the living room window to check the outside thermometer.  The red bar had fallen to four degrees above zero. The clean white snow looked knee-deep. For a minute, I pressed my hands against my forehead. I was suffering from a skull-thumper of a hangover. Last night—clear skies and a 30 degree temperature— I’d strolled down to Maggiore’s Bar and Grill to have a few Labatts with the regulars. I ached to go back to bed, but Annie had to work later today and would need our one and only car.
 
Moving quietly so as not to wake the kids, I pulled on my heaviest clothing.     It was when I was jamming my feet into my boots that I suddenly realized I didn’t remember coming home last night.
 
I pushed the problem aside to deal with later, pulled my ski cap down on my forehead, wrapped a muffler around my lower face. I Ieft my glasses on the kitchen table. They’d only fog up.  I put on my gloves, shoved hard on the front door to move the wall of snow blocking it, and stepped outside. I looked straight ahead: unbroken snow stretched out to the curb and the car. I took a quick glance to the right where the back of the tall two-family house at the front of the lot stood transformed.  Peaks and swirls of snow covered its pitched roof and gingerbread decoration, giving it the friendly look of a house in an Alpine village. But Heintz’s house held no charm for me.

I soon got into the shoveling rhythm. As I scooped, lifted, and tossed, I couldn’t stop thinking about my problems: how much I detested Heintz and what he was planning to do;  my lackluster students in the alternative high school where I taught basic science; my constant worry about being laid off. Whenever there was a financial crunch, the school board would lay off teachers who had no tenure—like me. Then I thought, I wonder how the pig is.

I had paused to straighten my aching back when something in the yard caught my eye. There was an odd-shaped, snow-covered thing on the ground near the back door of Heinz’s house. I narrowed my eyes in an effort to see it clearly. Damn my poor eyes. I rubbed them and looked again. What is that thing? It was shaped like a . . . a . . .  penguin with what looked like a projecting wing slanting upward. What the hell is it?

I left the path I was clearing and moved clumsily toward the thing through the snow as fast as I could, lifting my legs high. When I reached the humped shape with the wing, I stared at it for a moment and then noticed something metallic glimmering through the top of the projection. I peered more closely. Something red was in there. I cleared away some of the snow and saw a huge gold ring with a ruby stone on a pallid finger.

“Holy mother of God!”  I yelled. I was looking at a body. And once more, I knew who it was. Jack Heintz. He always wore that pretentious ring and the penguin shape fit.

I fought my way back to the cleared sidewalk and rushed into the house. After several false starts, I finally connected with the local precinct. A calm woman listened to the story. She said she’d radio the nearest car and the officers would be there as soon as they could. Folks were phoning in a lot of problems

“Stay in the house and wait for the police, “she said. “And don’t touch the body, sir.”

The police arrived around noon, examined the site, put up tape, and conferred with others, walking around with steaming cups of coffee and looking frozen and dour. Annie, the boys and I stared out the living room window at the chaos in the yard. A number of official-looking people in plain clothes came and went. We couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
 
Around 2:30, a couple of men rang the bell, flashing their shields when I opened the door. Both were tall and muscular, their faces impassive. I’d never been in trouble with the police, but I was intimidated by their presence. I better be careful what I say, I thought. I have a tendency to blurt out whatever is on my mind. Annie often warns me about it. They stepped into the living room, handed me their business cards and politely refused Annie’s nervous offer of coffee.

Annie shooed the boys into Petey’s bedroom and got them started playing with their Star Wars Lego set. She shut the door and came back into the living room.

The red-haired man said, “I’m Detective Dugan and this is Detective Ramirez. We know you’re the gentleman who found the body. We’d like to ask you some questions. Your name is Rizzo?”

“I’m Sal Rizzo and this is my wife, Annie. Our two boys are Petey and Johnny. They’re seven and nine.”

“Where do you work?”

“I teach science at The Alternative School for Students with Different Learning Styles. It’s a school for . . .”

“We know it,” said Ramirez. “We’ve—met—some of the students who go there.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t surprised. “Annie has a part-time job at a convenience store on Niagara Street.”

“First, Mr. Rizzo,” said Ramirez, “tell us exactly how you came to find the body and what you saw.”

I told my story and tried not to leave anything out.

“Were you and Mr. Heintz friends?” asked Dugan.

“Hell, no!” I said without thinking, and then cursed myself silently.

Ramirez pounced on it. “What was your relationship with him? Sounds bad.”

“He wanted to raise the rent to something we can’t pay.” The simmering anger and worry surfaced, and I threw all caution aside. “He’d kick us out and rent to someone who could pay more. I did all the work fixing this cottage up and he wanted to  . . .  Yeah, I was mad. He was a greedy skinflint, no one liked him.”

“What else can you tell us about Mr. Heintz?” asked Dugan.
 
“He was about 70, a retired principal who worked at my school but before my time. He was divorced twice. Currently there’s no Mrs. Heintz but he was definitely looking around. One day he bragged that he was surfing the Internet to find dates, the old goat. He went out a lot on weekends.”

 Both detectives looked hard at me. I could hear my own breathing and knew my face must be red and blotchy. It always gets that way when I’m upset.
 
 “What do you know about the upstairs tenant?” asked Ramirez.

“Not much. They moved in about three weeks ago.”
 
I told the detectives how we met Leon Gibbs and his daughter, Leonie. When I saw them moving in, I went over to ask if they needed help carrying their possessions up the narrow, winding stairway to the top flat. Gibbs was a tall, burly man who smiled pleasantly and shook my hand.  We didn’t learn much about the family. Although Gibbs looked as if he had a job that required physical strength, he worked as a tax preparer at one of the offices of a national chain. His daughter was a senior at the local high school.
 
“He drives his daughter to school every day. Leonie arrives home earlier                                                         than her father. The school bus drops her here,” added Annie.

I wasn’t surprised when Dugan asked the Big Question. “Where were you last night, Mr. Rizzo?”

“I walked down to Maggiore’s after dinner, about 7:00. Do you know that bar?”

They nodded.

“What time did you get home?” continued Ramirez.

When I hesitated, Dugan said, “What’s the matter, Mr. Rizzo?”

“I . . . was drinking too much last night,” I confessed, “and to tell you the truth, I don’t know when I got home.”

Ramirez and Dugan looked at one another. I thought I knew what they were thinking and my heart sank.

Annie’s voice was quiet. “Some friends brought him home about 11:30. They put him in bed and then left.”

 “Thank you, Mrs. Rizzo. Did you go out last night too?” asked Dugan.

 Annie reddened. “Certainly not. I stayed home with the boys.”

 “Anything else you want to tell us?” said Ramirez to me.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Seems you hated him.”

 “‘Hated’ is too strong a word,” I said. It sounded unconvincing.

Both men stood up and Dugan said, “That’s enough for today, Mr. Rizzo. We’ll be in touch.”

I couldn’t help saying, “Detectives? Am I . . .  a person of interest?”

“Everyone is in a case like this,” said Dugan.

Eventually everyone—including the body—vanished from the yard.  The police vehicles and city snow plows had flattened the drifts. The snow was now slushy and dirty. The plow came up our narrow street later. We could drive, but Annie, worried about the danger Heinz’s death posed for us, called the store to report she couldn’t go in that night.

When the boys were in bed, we were finally able to talk.

“I think I’m a strong suspect, Annie. I can’t explain how I got home, that’s certainly suspicious, and I let them know how I felt about Heintz. I’m sorry, love. I didn’t handle any of it well.”

 “What are we going to do, honey? Should we talk to Vince?” My cousin was a lawyer.

“First, let’s see what I can do myself. It’s my fault we’re in this mess.  Annie, what did happen last night?”

“The doorbell rang around 11:30, just as I told the police, and two men were there. They were holding you up between them. You were in bad shape, muttering and laughing.”

I winced as I suddenly remembered a scene at my old home a few blocks away. My father laughing hysterically as two drinking buddies maneuvered him over the doorstep. My mother’s face tired, like Annie’s.
 
“You must have been so embarrassed, Annie. Can you forgive me?”

“Sal, you have to stop drinking so much. You know it.” She paused. This was an old argument. “Anyway, the two asked me what they should do with you and I directed them to our bedroom.  They were nice, didn’t give their names, left quickly. I undressed you and pulled the covers up. You went right to sleep and stayed that way until this morning, when I woke you up to shovel.”

“Can you confirm the time they came?”

“Yes. You know I can’t go to bed without you. I watched the local news at 11:00; it was over at 11:30. I was trying to find a good movie when the bell rang.”

“The sooner I get to Maggiore’s, the better.” I hurried to say, “But not to drink. I have to verify what time I arrived, who brought me home, and what time they got here.”

“Don’t you think the police will check that out?”

“Sure, sooner or later. But with a snowfall like this one, the police are overworked. Here’s what I’m afraid of, love. If anyone at school hears I’m a suspect and tells others, I could be fired. I have no tenure. I have to do something right away.”

I put my arms around Annie, kissing her anxious face.  “I’ll hurry back.”

At Maggiore’s the old-timers greeted me happily. Despite the snow, they had all made it there somehow. It was cozy and cheerful and the dim lights heightened the intimacy of Paul’s place. God help me, I even liked the smell of stale beer and cigarettes.   Maggiore greeted me with a genial smile from behind the mahogany bar. “We all heard that old Heintz finally got what he deserved, Sal. What’ll you have?”

“Just a Coke,” I said, and watched Maggiore’s eyebrows rise into his thick gray hair. “I need your help.”

“Sure.”

“You know I was in here last night.  I might be in trouble with the police. The fact that I was drinking heavily and passed out and can’t say what time I got home makes me—as they call suspects—a ‘person of interest.’  Annie told them I got home at 11:30 but I’m here to verify when I got here and when I left.  Have the police been here yet?”

“No. Here’s what I remember, Sal. I think you came in around 7:30.”

“Yeah, I left the house at 7:00. That’s about right.”

“You and the guys had fun that night. At one point, everyone was watching a replay of a Bills game and yelling. You were kidding around a lot, laughing.”
 
My shame overcame me and I had to stop a minute before I could go on.

“Uh, did you see me . . . black out?”

“Yeah, sure I saw it. Mikey Capello came to the bar. Said he and Steve Foley would put you in Steve’s car and drive you home.”

“What time was that?”

“Around 11:00, I think. But those guys are in the back room playing foosball. Ask them yourself.”

To my great relief, Capello and Foley, two old, gnarled men with ropy arms who’d worked on the docks all their lives, backed up Paul’s memory of what time I blacked out. They said they’d put me in bed a little after 11:30. They both said no, they hadn’t seen anyone else that night—and certainly not a body. Since it hadn’t started snowing yet, they would certainly have spotted Heintz lying in the yard. They both were prepared to swear that the yard was perfectly empty. They’d hurried to the car and drove back to the bar.

“Thanks for taking me home,” I told them. “It could have been me who died in the snow.”

I left then, refusing offers of free drinks from several regulars. Paul, Mikey and Steve had agreed to tell the police everything they knew.

I missed the bar already as I started my cold car and switched on the heater. But I knew I could not go back. I’d kept up the Rizzo family tradition too long, and I would have to stop. Look what I’d done to Annie already. Now the drinking and the blackout had made me a suspect in Heinz’s death.

When I got home, I made my voice cheerful as I told my wife the guys at Maggiore’s would back up my story. “But I have something else in mind I want to do. If it works, I think I can convince the detectives that I’m not a suspect.”

“What is it?”

I would explain no further because what I planned to do sounded crazy and Annie didn’t need anything more to worry about. She was too tired to protest and fell asleep after a while, but I lay like a board, every muscle rigid while I worried about what I was going to tell the police and what we would do if I lost my job. Finally I drifted off.

On Sunday, the sky was still steely, but the temperature had moderated. I prepared a set of handouts for my Monday 1:00 class. I spent more time researching on the Internet and working out a theory about Heinz’s death. I made careful notes so I wouldn’t forget a step in my reasoning when I talked to the detectives.  I hoped to see them after school the next day. I put Annie off again when she asked me what I was going to tell the police. If she hadn’t been exhausted with worry, she would have kept at me until I told her.  Annie doesn’t like secrets.

When I left for school on Monday morning, I said goodbye to everyone with a smile, while inside my stomach was twisted with fear. A lot depended on what I had learned to make my 1:00 class more appealing for the kids. The only trouble was, my theory wasn’t 100% airtight.

To my delight, the 1:00 students and I had a good class for the first time that year. Usually I fought an unsuccessful battle to interest them. As they filed out, some still asking questions, I was elated. But my delight cooled fast as I remembered what I had to do. During my free period at 2:00 I called the precinct. Lucky for me, Ramirez was there.

 “This is Sal Rizzo, Detective. How are you doing?” Immediately I felt silly for asking the question.
 
“What’s on your mind, Mr. Rizzo?”

“I need to talk to you and your partner about Jack Heinz’s death. Could I meet with you after school today?”

“Something important?”

“Yes.”

The detective paused. I held my breath.

“Can you come to the precinct? Dugan and I can meet with you at 4:30. That OK?”

“I’ll be there.” I called Annie, told her where I was going, and said, “Don’t wait dinner for me. I’ll probably be late but I’m hoping I’ll have some good news.”

“Me too,” she said.

When I arrived at the precinct and identified myself, a policewoman offered coffee and escorted me to the interview room. Detectives Ramirez and Dugan came in, shook my hand without enthusiasm, and took seats facing me at a beat-
up metal table. Dugan opened a file.
 
“I . . . uh, I want to tell you some things.”  
    
“Go ahead,” said Dugan.

“I hope you won’t be mad, I know citizens aren’t supposed to investigate on their own. But on Saturday night, I just couldn’t stand the strain any more of being a person of interest. I’m so worried about my job. If it got out that I’m a suspect, I’d probably be fired.  It’s three years until tenure. So I went to Maggiore’s to verify what time I got there and what time I left—or rather, was helped out the door.”

Ramirez thawed a bit. “You shouldn’t have taken matters in your own hands that way. But let’s hear what you found out. Go on.”

“Did you check out Maggiore’s yet?”

“No,” said Dugan. “Haven’t had time, but we will. Ray and I have, at last count, 53 ongoing suspicious cases we’re working on. The Heintz death is one of them.”

They think Heintz could have been murdered, I thought. That goes along with my theory.

“Paul Maggiore, the owner, and  Mikey Capello and Steve Foley, the men who brought me home, established the important times: 7:30, when I arrived at the bar, and 11:30, when I got home. People definitely saw me from 7:30 to 11:30 Friday night.  And Mike and Steve brought me home when it hadn’t started snowing yet. The yard was empty. They didn’t see Heinz’s body. They didn’t see anyone who could have been an intruder.

“But I wanted to go further. I wanted to figure out approximately when Jack died if I could, establish I was dead to the world at that time, couldn’t possibly have had anything to with his death.

“A little background first. Last week, I bought a small dead pig, from a meat supply company.” Seeing the confused look on their faces, I hurried to say, “I wanted to teach a very simple forensics lesson to my 1:00 class. You see, the teachers can’t seem to get the kids excited about anything. I thought if we could do a simple experiment, they’d like it. Kids watch police shows . . .”

Both men rolled their eyes. I knew that lots of people think the police have all that fancy equipment and can solve a murder in less than an hour like the forensics teams on television.
 
“The lesson was to measure tissue cooling and arrive at a time of death in a human body. I chose a pig because its physiology is close to that of a human. I kept the pig at home on a lower shelf in our refrigerator until Friday morning, when I took it to school. I left it in my office to get as warm as possible. At 1:00, I put it on the desk in my classroom, and explained to the kids what we were going to do. We would pretend it was a human body. For once, I had their attention.
 
“First we’d take the pig’s temperature using a probe. Of course, we’d say it was 98.6. A pig’s normal temperature is 102.5.”

Dugan’s lip twitched a little. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“Then on Monday, we’d measure the body temperature again and figure out the time of death from the amount of cooling.

“Everything went well on Friday. A volunteer—one of my worst kids—stuck the probe into the approximate location of Salvatore’s liver. He loved it. I let them name the pig so it would be easier to think of the pig as human. They wanted to name it after the principal but I wouldn’t let them. They asked if they could name it Salvatore and I said sure.

“Anyway, today they were eager to take the temperature and use the formula I gave them to figure out Salvatore’s time of death. I told them that the human body temperature drops two degrees during the first hour after death and one and a half degrees each successive hour after that. The class and I figured out the time of death. I was so pleased with their enthusiasm that I’ve decided to go on with the forensics experiments.”

“That’s good, Mr. Rizzo,” said Ramirez. “But what does it have to do with you and the time of Mr. Heinz’s death?”

So far, so good, I thought.    “I have to ask you some questions, and then I’ll explain.

“First, what was Heinz’s body temperature at the scene?”

Dugan ran his finger down a file page. “The coroner who examined the body around 1:00 PM that day said the temperature was sub-normal, way down in the low eighties.”

“Did he use a thermocouple probe? I wish I had one for school.” The detectives looked impatient. I had blundered again. It’s just that being in a real police station talking about a real crime was fascinating. If I wasn’t a suspect, I’d love it.

I forged on. “Am I right in thinking that Jack’s temperature would be colder than it would be if he died inside because he’d been lying on the ground, getting snowed on, and there was evaporation from his wet body and clothing?”

“Yes,” said Dugan, “that’s right.”

“He wasn’t in rigor mortis yet, I suppose. The intense cold delayed it. When the body got warmer later, it developed rigor.”

“No he wasn’t,” said Dugan.

“Yesterday I got to thinking about the massive amount of snow we had. I called the airport weather station and discovered that the snow started around midnight. It snowed all night up until around 5:30 Saturday morning, and Jack was completely covered with it by the time I found him around 6:30. To be covered with that much snow, he must have been lying there a long time.

“Using three factors—the body completely covered with snow, the cooling formula, and the fact that his body temperature was in the low eighties at 1:00 PM--I figure he died--a very rough estimate--between midnight and 1:00 AM.

“I think someone attacked Heintz after my two Good Samaritans from the bar drove away and then just left him there to die in the snow. I couldn’t have done it, because I was dead-drunk, hammered, in the house until Saturday morning. Believe me, I couldn’t have gotten out of bed, much less wander into the yard and do something to Heintz.”

And here was the problem I had feared. They’d have to believe Annie when she testified that I was, indeed, unconscious all night, incapable of any action. There wasn’t anyone else who could prove it.

To my disappointment, the detectives had nothing to say about my alibi.
 
“Why do you think he was attacked?” Ramirez asked.

“Because of the position of his arm. It looked as if he was fending off a blow. I think his arm remained in that position because of something called cadaveric spasm.”

I paused, and said, “Should I go on?”

“Mike and I have been talking about that,” said Ramirez. “How did you know about it?”

“I researched it on the Internet yesterday. I learned that in cadaveric spasm a person’s muscles can stiffen at death and stay that way right into rigor mortis. There has to be intense emotion at the time. I think old Heintz was terrified when the person attacked him. He was always afraid of getting assaulted. He liked to bully other people verbally, but he always backed down when a larger man threatened him with physical violence. I witnessed that myself one time when the garbage man threatened to punch his lights out if Heintz reported him again to his supervisor for laziness. Heintz almost fainted. I read that cadaveric spasm affects groups of muscles only, often in the forearms and hands.”

“The cause of cadaveric spasm isn’t fully understood, but CD has important medical and legal implications because it’s the last act of life. In this case, we were both struck by his position in the snow, that arm sticking up,” said Dugan.

My throat dry from nerves, I took a sip of coffee, and then asked, “Do you know if he was shot or stabbed?”

“I had a quick word with the pathologist this morning in the lab as she was just starting on the body,” said Dugan. “She ruled out those methods, said she’d get back to us.”

I ventured a theory. “Assuming that he wasn’t beaten to death, he might have had a heart attack.”

“We don’t have all of the results yet, because the Department is overworked what with all the snow. The pathologist will look into that as a matter of routine,” said Dugan.

Here was my cue to thank them for listening to me and go home. But I didn’t want to stop the conversation. I was having too much fun. I waited a minute but no one objected to my going on.

 “Assuming that he did have a coronary after the attack, there are two possibilities. If the heart attack killed him instantly, he lay there and slowly got covered with snow. Or, if it wasn’t fatal, but he couldn’t get up, he lay there and froze to death from hypothermia, which occurs when the body temperature drops below 95 degrees F. Within three or so hours, his body did drop below 95. If the coronary killed him right away, he must have died sometime between 12:00 and 1:00. If he lingered, he didn’t die until his temperature dropped below 95. Could have been a couple of hours.”

I thought I’d try broaching my alibi again.

“Anyway, I concluded from all this, that I couldn’t have been responsible
for Heinz’s death, because I was at home in bed when he was attacked by Mr. X.”

“Mr. X?” said Ramirez.

Dugan jumped in fast. “You know what, Mr. Rizzo? Let’s take a break for a few minutes, maybe get some more coffee. And there are Danishes in the break room down the hall. You must be hungry; it’s close to dinner time. Ray and I should—confer—for a while.” He was definitely friendlier.

Forty minutes later, I was eating a second Danish when the detectives came back. I braced myself, tried to prepare for them telling me I had a good theory but it couldn’t have been that way.

But Dugan smiled as he said, “We’ve decided that if everything checks out—and we think it will—you’ll be off the hook. We’ll have to interview the men at the bar and of course, your wife, to verify that you were . . . incapacitated...the night Mr. Heintz died.”

I was ashamed about my alibi, but I needed to be sure of my status. “I’ll no longer be a person of interest?”

Dugan nodded. “More information came in while we were interviewing you.  The pathologist found extensive bruising on the body. Heintz had been punched in the face and kicked in the ribs. One rib was broken. He probably raised his arm to ward off the first blow.
 
“But there wasn’t enough damage from the beating he took to cause his death. We now know he had a massive coronary, so he died right away. However, we have to find out who beat him and left him to die in the snow. We need to get more leads on Heintz. Do you know anything else, anything you haven’t told us, even if it’s unsubstantiated?”

I thought about being virtuous, saying it wasn’t ethical to talk about another educator and I didn’t have any proof. And the part of my theory about why Heintz was murdered and therefore who killed him was based on hearsay. The hell with it, I decided, and told them about the faculty room chatter I’d heard from the old teachers who’d worked under Principal Heintz. “He used to waylay the teen age girls in the halls, come on to them. He was careful not to touch them in front of the teachers and students, so there was no reliable testimony.

“And one thing more. Leonie Gibbs is a teenager, and Heintz had a master key. What if Heintz . . . ?

The detectives stood up and we shook hands.

“Thanks, Mr. Rizzo. You did some good police work. Both of us enjoyed this interview, believe me. We don’t usually get suspects as cooperative—or knowledgeable. And we’ll look into the Gibbs connection,” said Ramirez.
 
“One more favor? Would you give me a call when you find out how he died?”

Dugan said, “We’ll try,” always cautious with a civilian.

That was good enough for me. I thanked the detectives for listening to me and believing my alibi, and hurried out of the precinct, driving home as fast as I could to tell Annie the good news. Her smile was something to see.  But when I said I would never go to Maggiore’s again, she cried.

Several weeks later, Dugan did call.

“We found out how Heintz died. You were right. He was attacked, and then suffered a massive heart attack. Died instantly in the snow.  And the Gibbs connection was right on the money. The attacker was Leon Gibbs. His daughter told him Heintz caught her alone on Friday in the flat—he used his landlord’s key to enter—and tried to molest her. She managed to get rid of him but told her father when he got home from work. He waited until Heintz came home around midnight. Heintz had taken off his glove and stuffed it in his coat pocket, and was fumbling for his key when Gibbs caught up with him. That’s why you could see that ungloved hand in the snow and its ring, by the way. Police found the glove in his coat. Gibbs says he went nuts and punched and kicked him. Swears he heard him crying and cursing when he went back upstairs to his flat. Trouble is, he should have picked Heintz up and made sure he got into the house.”

“What will become of Mr. Gibbs?”

“Depends on how good a lawyer he has.”

“Poor guy,” I said. “I understand why he did it. My cousin is a lawyer. I’ll get him to talk to Mr. Gibbs.”

There was a little silence, and then Dugan said, “Teaching anything new?”

“Yep. I’m letting the kids pretend to be homicide detectives. They’re investigating the death of a man who died in a snowstorm. Guess who the person of interest is?”

“That’s where I came in,” said Dugan, and hung up.