Definitely a New Zealand accent.

“Your father-in-law’s body was recovered. The medical examiner’s report noted water in the lungs which indicated he drowned. Excuse me for being blunt, but what is there left to investigate?”

“His head was bashed in!”

“According to the autopsy, the damage to his skull occurred post-mortem.”

“His body was in the water six days before he was found—how can the doctor be sure?”

I was no expert in forensic medicine, but I suspected she had a small point. Our longtime chief medical examiner had a history of blunders.

“Are you suggesting he was bludgeoned and then tossed into the river? I’m looking at a sworn affidavit by an eyewitness who saw him alone in his boat.”

“This won’t do!” Mariëtte Chamberlain said. “I refuse to have this conversation over the telephone. I require your presence.”

“My presence?”

“What time can you meet me this afternoon? At two o’clock? Let’s say two o’clock. I will see you at my father-in-law’s farm in Stratford. The address is 2 Riverlands Road. I will expect you at two o’clock.”

Mariëtte Chamberlain demanding my attendance annoyed me enough that I considered blowing her off. But I knew myself well enough to admit that I wouldn’t. Curiosity would always trump my petty resentments, let alone my better judgment.

The tomcat who climbs to the top of a tree with no plan on returning safely to the ground—that would always be me.

An hour later, I got my first look at the Androscoggin River, the third longest in Maine. The “Andro” has its headwaters in the Boundary Mountains that separate northern New England from Canada. Its watershed marks the border between Maine and Quebec. The river then tumbles 1,245 feet—the steepest drop of any comparable watercourse in the state—and flows east across 164 miles before it enters the vast, brackish estuary of Merrymeeting Bay.

For centuries, the hydraulic muscle of the Androscoggin had powered dozens of mills, making paper and shoes, textiles and electricity. Communities had grown up along its banks and prospered, until the end of the twentieth century, when seemingly overnight, the world had gone topsy-turvy. The factories had been closed and the pulp machines had been sold and shipped to third-world nations in the Global South. Capital flows like a river to the lowest level.

Livermore Falls was one of the casualties of globalization. Like my destination of Pennacook, the town had once been a capital of the American papermaking industry. Now there was a park where a factory had once stood, complete with baseball diamonds and tennis courts, none of which were in use on this blustery morning. There was actual snow here, a foot of it. I saw a couple of heavily bundled people walking their dogs across a well-trodden field. Their heads were wreathed in clouds of steam and their hands clutched plastic bags full of shit.