McMillan & Wife1971

[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.