McMillan & Wife (TV Series)

Guilt by Association (1974)

Logan Ramsey: Sam - Coroner

Quotes 

• [McMillan reaches Sam, the Coroner, after a new autopsy has been done on Tom Ryan] 

  Coroner : Well Commissioner, when you're right, you're right. We blew this one.

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : Nobody's perfect, Sam.

  Coroner : I am, usually.

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : Usually perfect? That's like saying slightly pregnant. What did you find?

  Coroner : Well, like you speculated, this guy was poisoned. We didn't find it.

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : You didn't find it because you weren't looking for it.

  Coroner : The man has two bullet holes in his back, it never occured to us to look for poison. How many times do you have to kill a guy?

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : What kind of poison?

  Coroner : Poison mushrooms. Extremely toxic, even in minute amounts it's always fatal.

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : Slow or fast-acting?

  Coroner : Slow. He could have ingested it, went to bed, and died in his sleep. This particular poison requires very specific tests.

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : Yeah. His dinner was poisoned.

  Coroner : Must be. How'd you find it?

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : Scientific deduction, Sam. My wife talked to a short-order cook whose dog was poisoned the same night he was.

  Coroner : You think the killer was the cook?

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : No, I figured he fed his dog food scraps from the hotel every night, and that the poison that killed the dog was the same poison that killed Tom Ryan.

  [the office phone rings, and it is a call for McMillan, who gets very bad news about a suspect the department has been tailing] 

  Coroner : [after McMillan hangs up]  Anyway, Comissioner, if you find the guy who served Tom Ryan his dinner, you've found your killer.

  Commissioner Stewart McMillan : Not necessarily. The guy who served Tom Ryan his dinner is in County General. They found him shot three times in the chest.