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Tom Dellaira knew what was wrong from the moment the police chaplain advised him to sit down.

"I looked at him and said, `Are you going to tell me my wife is dead?' " Dellaira remembers about Aug. 3, the day he learned his wife, Mary Carnes, had died at her job with the city.

What Dellaira still doesn't know - almost nine months later - is whether the city will rule Carnes' death an accident, pay workers' compensation and close its book on the incident.

"This chapter is about conflict and disappointment and hurt with the entity that my wife devoted a number of years to," he said. "I hope that chapter is over pretty quick."

Carnes, 52, was an environmental scientist with the city's Environmental Health Department. She had been taking meter readings at the Los Angeles Landfill south of Balloon Fiesta Park on Aug. 3. While working with some equipment in a pit in the ground, she died.

A medical examiner's report lists the cause and manner of Carnes' death as "undetermined."

The Albuquerque Fire Department, the report states, took air samples, but they didn't show dangerous amounts of methane or hydrogen sulfide, gases that old landfills routinely emit.

However, a separate report written for the city's life insurance company concludes that Carnes died due to lack of oxygen.

The New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau leveled four citations against the city, all centering around a failure to classify the pit Carnes died in as a hazardous confined space. The state subsequently ordered the city to pay $6,500 in fines.

But here's the legal rub: If a worker dies of natural causes on the job, then the employer isn't responsible for paying workers' compensation. So the inconclusive medical examiner's report has turned a simple matter into a complicated one.

"It's a very unusual circumstance. Usually these calls are easy to make," said Deputy City Attorney Randy Autio.

In the absence of a cause of death, he said, the city is working to hire additional experts to look into the case - that's what is taking so long.

"We have to come to our own determination because we are self- insured" for workers' compensation, Autio said.

But Dellaira isn't buying that. Carnes' insurance policy, he said, came with a clause that made an additional payment in the case of accidental death, and the company has paid that claim. The insurance company's report, he says, is all the proof needed.

"That expert concluded that she died as a result of an accident," he said. "She was at work, so clearly she died as a result of an accident at work."

The insurance company's conclusion is all the more credible, he said, because "they actually have a vested interest in finding the opposite."

Dellaira's next meeting with the city is June 12. Autio said he hoped to have a decision on the matter in 30 to 45 days.

"That would make that about the fifth time they've said that since December," Dellaira said. "At a certain point it becomes insulting."

To Dellaira, 55, the battle is especially irksome because of the uncertainty it creates for his family. He has one grown daughter, Ava, 23, and a younger daughter, Laura, 20, who goes to the University of New Mexico.

Dellaira keeps a picture of Carnes on the opening screen of his cell phone, the same picture that ran on the cover of her funeral program.

He describes her as "the kindest, most caring, most generous and loving woman and mother that I ever met."

At First Presbyterian Church, Carnes was working toward becoming a lay pastor. She was remembered in her obituary for "an uncanny ability to know what was needed when - whether it be a sympathetic ear to a friend, or hamburgers for a homeless man and his dog, or, as always, her immense love."