So Decker agreed to let the kid ride with him, listening to him bitch and moan. This time he was complaining about their next visit on the roster: a senior with chest pains. The fire department was having its monthly drill so the call came into the police. Patrol could have handled it, but Decker volunteered his services. He didn’t mention the call to McAdams, but as he was leaving the kid jumped up and grabbed his fancy schmancy coat to come with. He always did that. Maybe it was because Decker let McAdams bend his ear.

Lucy Jamison was eighty-six, a pale and thin widow. When Decker offered to take her to the hospital, she demurred. She was feeling better. Decker fetched her a glass of water, making sure that she drank it all. Wintertime was deceptive and seniors easily became dehydrated because of the dryness indoors and outdoors.

The old woman talked about her life as a young girl in Michigan. She showed Decker and Tyler pictures of her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren. Decker turned the heat from 80 to 74. When she said she was fine, Decker left his card. She opened the front door and waved good-bye as the two of them walked back to the car, their boots crunching the snow.

Heading back to the station, Decker cranked up the heat as McAdams rubbed his hands under the warm air of the car’s heater. The kid was wearing a coat and gloves, but his head was bare. Not that he needed a hat. It was in the midthirties with a full sun and an iridescent blue sky, the scent of pines and burning wood wafting through the town. White-covered hills undulated in the distance. The Hudson wasn’t too far away but the area was miles from the nearest coastline, something that Decker had yet to get used to.

“How’d you do this for thirty years, Old Man?” Tyler asked him.

Decker hated when the kid called him Old Man. He wasn’t young but he wasn’t ready for the glue factory, either. He still had a head of thick, gray hair, a full mustache with traces of its former red color, and a mind that was quick and perceptive. So instead of answering the rhetorical question, he said, “That was the third chest pain case in a month. You really need to learn CPR.”

“I’m not putting my mouth on that old crone. Her breath was rank.”

“Acetone,” Decker said. “Diabetes that’s not very well controlled.”

“Whatever,” McAdams said. “Anyway, if it was between you and me performing CPR, you’d do it anyway.”

“That’s not the point. It’s a skill you should have. Everyone expects a cop to know CPR just like everyone expects a cop to know how to shoot a gun.”

“We don’t carry guns.”