“I’ll come out,” she said finally.

“It’s pretty cold out here.”

I’d been hoping to warm up, as well as get a look inside the home of the mysterious Vic Bazinet. As if Chamberlain’s life vest would be hanging on display on a wall.

“I’ve been cooped up inside all day and need some air,” said Felice. “My youngest has been sick. I didn’t know you could get Montezuma’s Revenge if you were three years old and had never set foot outside Androscoggin County.”

“The truth is, I was hoping to use your bathroom.”

“For real?”

“Too much coffee.”

“If you come inside, I can’t be responsible for whatever germs you pick up.” She undid the lock on the storm door.

Unlike everyone I’d met on Pill Hill, with the possible exception of Arlo Burch, she seemed relatively at ease. She was alert, of course. That is the natural reaction to a strange man showing up on your doorstep with a badge and a gun, asking questions.

The layout of the single-wide was cookie cutter. The door opened onto a living room, carpeted from wall to wall with a green rug that yielded beneath my boots like ancient moss. The floor was littered with school papers, discarded coats and mittens, boyish toys. Wheeled stuff, mostly, as well as figurines of superheroes and space warriors. An artificial Christmas tree, heaped with tinsel and wrapped with lights that flashed in a kaleidoscope of colors, asserted itself from the corner.

The boy I’d met earlier, the companion of Tina’s daughter, Treasure, lay sprawled in front of a flat-screen TV, staring vacantly at the same wrestling show that the Cronk boys found so fascinating when they snuck over to my house to watch television. I was always disturbed by their obsession with steroid freaks yelling into microphones. It made me worried for their generation.

“Say hello, Levi,” said Felice.

“Hey, cop.”

“Levi!”

“It’s OK,” I said.

“It’s not OK.” She didn’t sigh, but she might as well have. “Through the kitchen, second door on your right.”

I passed a refrigerator decorated with paintings done by kids not destined for careers in the visual arts. The air smelled of soup cooking in a crockpot. Chicken or maybe turkey. As always happened when I was engrossed in my work, I had forgotten to eat. If Felice Bazinet had offered me a bowl, I wouldn’t have refused.

I passed what I guessed was the sick child’s room, door closed, and entered the bathroom.

I did my business without peeking inside the medicine cabinet because I try not to be that kind of person. My late mother used to say, “Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is watching.” She attributed the quote to C. S. Lewis, but in the age of memes, when words float around social media detached from their authors, God only knows who said it.