"Alarm didn't go off," he says, not looking at me.
I lean back in my chair and cross my arms over my chest, watching him with a patience that I typically don’t have. "Your alarm didn't go off."
"That's what I said."
"Levi." I wait until he looks at me. "In the history of every excuse a man has ever given for being late, saying your alarm didn’t go off because you had a morning quickie is lame as fuck.”
He opens his mouth and then closes it again, which is enough for me. I grin wide enough that it probably looks ridiculous, but I don't care.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he mutters, but there's color creeping up the back of his neck that says otherwise.
"Sure you don't." I push up from my desk and start getting my shit together. "Next time, set two alarms. One for the activity, and one for when you actually need to leave."
"Can you not make this weird?"
"I'm not making it weird, I'm making it educational." I grab my jacket off the back of the chair. "Samuel's got us down by the river today. Some teenagers are throwing rocks at fish, apparently."
He finally looks up at me, and the relief on his face at the subject change is something I'm going to keep in my back pocket for later. "That's what passes for excitement in Laurel Springs these days, huh?"
"Don't knock it, that's our job security right there."
He snorts and gets up, and the two of us head out together the way we always do. Working with your best friend is fun, and I don’t take it for granted. I knew when I was a kid that Levi was the kind of person who would always show up, and that's never changed. Even when everything else around me felt like it was falling apart, he was steady. Now we get to do this every day, and even when it's slow and boring and the most exciting call we catch is somebody's goat getting loose on Highway 9, I'm glad it's him standing next to me.
The drive to the river takes about twenty minutes, and although it’s January, the weather can't decide if it wants to be winter or spring. The sky is overcast and low, and the tree line along the river is just starting to show the faintest bit of green at the edges where the buds are coming in from where we had a warm snap before Christmas. I roll the window down anyway, because I like the cold. It wakes me up and keeps my head clear in a way that no amount of coffee ever manages to do.
"So I guess Magnolia’s doing well?" I ask, keeping my eyes on the road.
"Yeah." He snickers. "She's good."
"Good," I say, and I mean it. Magnolia's been through enough, and those two deserve a happy life together.
We pull off the main road and follow the gravel path that runs parallel to the river access point. Before I even get the truck into park, I can hear them. Two teenage boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen, standing about ten feet from the bank and hauling back with rocks the size of their fists. One of them gets one skipping across the surface, which looks more impressive than it actually is, and the other one is rearing back to do the same thing when I step out of the truck.
"Hey." I don't yell at them. I don't have to. There's a certain tone that works, and I've had enough experience in law enforcement to know exactly what it is. Both of them freeze like somebody hit a pause button on them. "Yeah, I'm talking to you two."
Levi comes around from the passenger side and we walk toward them together, which I know is intentional on both our parts. There's a reason we fall into step the way we do. Sometimes we can communicate with the way we walk, and we’re doing that today. Saying to each other, to watch these two. They have rocks, and sometimes the worst weapons are ones you least expect.
"We weren't doing anything," the taller one says, because they always say that first.
"You were throwing rocks into the river," I tell him, stopping a few feet away and looking at the pile they'd collected. There's got to be thirty rocks stacked up near their feet, which tells me they've been here a while. "Which means you were disturbing the fish. Which means you were violating state wildlife regulations. You want to tell me what the plan was here, or do you just enjoy throwing rocks?"
They look at each other the way teenagers do when they're calculating whether the adult in front of them actually has authority over them or if they can talk their way out of it. I watch the math happen in real time.
"We were just messing around," the shorter one says. He's got a fishing hat on, which is almost funny given the circumstances.
"I can see that." I crouch down and pick up one of the rocks, turning it over in my hand. "Here's the thing about messing around near a waterway. There are regulations in place for a reason, and that reason is that harassing fish and wildlife isn't something you get to do just because you're bored on a Wednesday morning. Are either of you in school right now?"
"It's a teacher workday," the tall one says quickly.
"Okay." I stand back up and look at Levi, who's watching them with eyes that see everything going on around him. He’s not quick to get worked up, so he just stands there with his arms crossed, observing. "Then I'm going to tell you both something that I want you to actually hear, because I'd rather not have to come back out here and arrest you."
That gets their attention. The word arrest has a way of doing that.
"Throwing rocks at fish is considered harassment of wildlife under state law," Levi says, picking up where I left off. "We can cite you, which means your parents get involved, and I don't imagine either of you wants that conversation."
"We didn't know," the one with the fishing hat says, and I actually believe him, which is part of why I'm still standing here talking instead of writing.
"That's why we're telling you now," I say. "So you do know. And knowing means the next time you come out here and you decide to do this again, you don't get a conversation. You get a citation, and depending on how cooperative you feel like being, it can go a lot of different directions from there. Are we understanding each other?"