I magine a sticky, early August morning, around three o’clock. It is dark, the moon blocked by clouds, no streetlights, a siren in the distance, medics running to a heart attack. Imagine a man out on a bike or walking a sick dog, or maybe a woman who works at a bar and has just finished the late shift. In a car or on foot or on a bike—it doesn’t matter. This stretch of road is rarely used; it’s dark and development has yet to come, so there isn’t much through traffic. Just a lonely street on a high bank above a muddy black canal that smells of salt marsh. A desolate piece of road below a span of highway that towers twenty-four feet above.
The passerby is startled by what looks like a body lying in the road beneath the bridge span. Let’s say it’s the body of a young man, just a day away from his thirtieth birthday. His body is so badly broken that he will live only one day past this milestone.
Let’s say the man has been lying there for hours—or no, maybe he has just fallen from the span above. The north- and southbound lanes are separated by a distance of thirteen feet. Could a man jump the span between these two structures? Is this what he was trying to do when he fell?
Let’s say the medical examiner rules the cause of death “undetermined.” There’s not enough information to say exactly what happened, except that he fell. Although … could it have been death by natural causes, something difficult to detect hours after the fact and camouflaged by the traumatic injuries: an asthma attack,
