In the hall, under a fluorescent light that buzzed, she took her glasses off and let them hang on their beaded chain and rubbed her eyes with a thumb and finger.
"Officer Ostrowe tells me you used to be a paramedic," she said.
"Nineteen years. Elmira, then Southern Tier Ambulance."
"And she tells me you lost your certification."
"I did." He had said this out loud enough times by now that it no longer cost him anything, or not much. "I hurt my back lifting a patient in 2012. Herniated two discs. They gave me pills for it. I got hooked on them. When the prescriptions ran out I started taking morphine and fentanyl out of the drug box on the truck and replacing it with saline. I did that for about a year and a half before they caught me. I did thirty-four months in state. I've been clean eleven years in January."
Arliss Duchene looked at him for a long moment. "That's very direct."
"Saves time."
"And the coffee can on the fence on Lake Street."
"That too. Naloxone. County health department issues it to me. Nothing else in there."
"Officer Ostrowe says her sergeant has thought for a long time that the can is a front."
"A front for what? Selling a drug that makes people violently sick if they're high and does nothing if they're not?" He shrugged. "I can't stop people believing what they believe."