Steven James - The Rook

I came to an intersection, saw a sign for Bryson Heights High School, and wondered if they might have a track or a fitness trail. I jogged toward the school, found that they didn’t have a track, but they did have a football field. And that was good news because football goals meant I could crank out some pull-ups.

I found the goalposts, jumped up, grabbed the horizontal bar, and it felt good to get into the rhythm. Up. Down.

Up.

Down.

When I was nineteen I worked for a year as a wilderness guide and I fell in love with rock climbing; and the best way to stay in shape for the crags is doing pull-ups. At first a couple hundred pull-ups a day was impossible-I could barely do ten. But over the years, I’ve worked my way up, and, after more than four thousand days of doing them, pull-ups come almost as natural as walking.

Up.

Down.

I squeezed out a set of forty, took a breather, and then tried flying solo with my left arm. The homeless guy’s bite didn’t affect my arm as much as I thought it might, but with every pull-up I could still feel it sting.

Up.

I thought of him. Bewildered. Raving. Losing his life. All so meaningless. So tragic.

Down.

Most of the time I try to focus on the positive impact that my work at the NCAVC has, but sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is. Up. The majority of people who’ve ever lived on our planet have led short, difficult, brutal lives and then died before their dreams could come true.

Down. People like Sylvia Padilla and that man last night and Christie, my wife who passed away last year, taking all of our plans for the future with her.

Up. It’s tragic and pointless, but it’s the way the world is.

Down. We live in a country where television newscasters are allowed to get excited about the score of a baseball game but aren’t allowed to show emotion or remorse while reporting a homicide, a suicide bombing, or a rape.

Up.

Down. That’s our world.

Enough with the left. Only managed nine. Time for the right.

Sweating, sweating. Today would be a scorcher.

Every time I pulled my chin toward the goalpost, I was able to glimpse the stoic ships in the harbor and catch the glisten of sunlight on the ocean. Without last night’s anxious wind, the sea was early morning still.

Up.

Coronado Island stared at me from the bay. The island was a study in contrasts, with thousands of naval personnel living in anonymous-looking barracks right across the street from some of the most expensive real estate in the world; and of course one of America’s most lush hotels, the Hotel del Coronado, lay only a quarter mile from the Spartan living conditions of the Navy SEAL Amphibious Training Base.

Down.

I snagged eleven with my right arm. It’s my stronger arm, anyway.

I could feel the burn. I did as many sets as I could until my arms were blown out, and the bandage on my left forearm began to get soaked with something other than sweat. So I started my jog again.

This time I chose a path that took me along the beach.

The water beside me seemed so still, so tame in the dawning day, so different from last night. A few timid waves tiptoed across the surface, just enough to keep the ocean from becoming an endless sheet of glass.

And if I didn’t know what went on deep beneath those ripples, I probably would have felt a sense of calm. But I’d been scuba diving enough to know the truth: deep beneath the surface, in the places where the sun’s light will never reach, lies a whole different world.

Even on days like this, when the surface looked peaceful and serene, dark currents, swift and strong, were snaking endlessly through the depths. Never tiring. Never resting. Always, always on the move.

As I ran beside the paradoxical ocean, I couldn’t help but think of my walk with Tessa last night.

Both eerie and beautiful.

And then I thought of John Doe’s suicide.

It was only another mile or so to the trolley tracks where he died. I decided to cruise past the scene, see if I noticed anything different in the daylight.

As I crossed Kettner Boulevard, I could hear the Orange Line approaching, so I knew that the trolleys were running again.

Life moving on.

Soon, the people of San Diego would be listening to their mp3 players, sipping their lattes, and deciding what movie to see this weekend, as they rode the trolleys to work, oblivious to the dark stain on the tracks beneath them.

Just six more blocks. Sunlight blazing. The day had come in at full force. It would probably hit eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit today. Maybe more.

Life is a puzzle to me with its moments of inexpressible joy and its seasons of heart-wrenching pain-sunlight dancing on the surface while the deadly currents roam below.

Suffering comes crashing into our lives and then washes away and we find a way to go on. Or we don’t. Some people don’t.

I rounded the block.

It’s a balancing act. You want tragedy to hurt, you need it to hurt, because once it stops hurting, the part of you that matters most becomes hollow and numb. Part of being human is letting life hurt.

But on the other hand, if it hurts too much, if you get caught dwelling on the meaninglessness and suffering, you can drown in it.

I’ve seen people get jaded and I’ve seen them pull apart at the seams.

Either extreme, you lose. I haven’t figured out how to strike the balance in my own life yet, but I know this much-every time the dark currents rise to the surface, they take a little of my optimism back with them into the abyss.

Only three more blocks.

At two blocks I began to catch the scent of scorched wood.

At one block I saw a hazy layer of smoke hovering above the pavement.

It couldn’t be.

I came to the corner of K Street and 15th and I froze. My skin felt clammy and cool, even as the day blazed to life around me.

Gray smoke smudged the morning, curling up from the blackened shell of a charred but still structurally intact two-story home.

The house lay directly across the street from where the homeless man had appeared last night-less than one city block from where I’d parked and tried to predict the future.

I stood staring at the smoldering ruins, trying to catch my breath, trying to process what this might mean.

If a crowd had been there earlier, it had dispersed, and instead a few tired-looking firefighters lingered by their truck. Beside them, I noticed Lien-hua and Lieutenant Aina Mendez walking toward the cooling remains of the home.

After allowing myself a brief glance at a certain section of freshly scrubbed track, I jogged over to join them.

Based on the amount of water soaking the home’s foundation, I guessed the building had cooled sufficiently, which meant the fire had been suppressed several hours ago. And based on the limited degree of structural damage, I figured that the firefighters must have made it here almost immediately. Maybe they received a tip.

Lieutenant Mendez waved to me. “ Buenos dias, Dr. Bowers. I didn’t think you would come. I couldn’t get in touch with you.”

I gestured to my outfit. “Went for a little jog. Left my cell at the hotel. And Lieutenant Mendez, I keep telling you my friends call me Pat.”

She gave me a polite nod. “Si, Dr. Bowers.”

I’d first met Aina three weeks earlier when I came to San Diego for a day to do an initial assessment of the case. I liked her right away. She struck me as savvy, street smart, and, most impressive of all, open-minded. Too often detectives only look for evidence that confirms their suspicions or fits their “gut instincts.” Not Aina; she trusted facts above feelings. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Though it was still early in the day, Lien-hua wore dark sun-glasses. She tipped them up and eyed my soaked T-shirt. “How many did you get in?”