“Let’s talk outside,” I said softly. Sami started to lean in my direction. “We’ll be better when we talk out here.” He looked up at me and I believed I was finally starting to get through to him. His eyes had a flicker of life in them, a spark of engagement. His leg swung around and took its first hesitant step towards me.

Then that sound again from deep in the house. I heard it first. I watched Sami’s right eye narrow like he was trying to reconcile the distant gurgle with the people in the room. Confusion crossed his face as he couldn’t quite put it all together. I filled the silence with my dithering, just spilling out nonsensical words, anything at all to mask the sounds and distract his attention from what was coming out from the back of the house. It didn’t work. The unmistakable cries of a newborn filled the room. Sami’s head snapped around and his body followed with cold, sleek precision as he calmly walked back in the direction of the baby’s sounds.

I ran after him. It was the only time in my life that I just acted. I caught him outside Nelson’s bedroom and threw my body into his backside. We toppled to the floor, and I rolled off his back and into the hallway wall. I reached out for the arm with the hammer and grabbed what I could. He jerked his arm back and freed himself from my grip but he also lost his balance and fell back into the opposite wall. Jeanette’s screams filled the narrow space. Nelson came bounding down the hall. I barked an order but he was already ahead of me and dashed into the room with Jeanette and the baby and slammed the door shut. The room was the only source of light in the hallway and the closed door cast a near darkness between me and Sami. I didn’t wait. I threw myself forward to the spot where I thought he was. I felt a hard wall but I also got a piece of soft flesh. I clawed at it and anything I could. I felt something warm and moist which might have been his eyes. He wriggled underneath me. I tried to make myself as heavy as possible to keep him down. There was a loud thud and I found myself letting out an airless cough. My back suddenly felt hot and tingly. I gasped for a breath of air and although all the components to breathing were in motion, no air came in.

Another thud from the hammer crashed down on my back, this time lower and squarely on a bone. My mind became singularly focused on keeping his body close to mine. I somehow knew that distance between us meant more blows from the hammer but in more dangerous parts of my body. But with each swing, I felt myself being drained of what little energy and strength I had. My arms numbed from exhaustion. I held on but without any kind of force. I was slipping down. My eyes, now adjusted to the darkness, saw a form moving up and away from me. It made a swift, arching motion, the hammer slightly trailing.

Then the form jerked backwards and a loud clap exploded in the hallway. Sami spun off his feet and stumbled down to his knees. There was barely a pause before he propped himself up with the hammer and got back to his feet. He struggled back into a striking pose. And despite the window of escape, I remained in my position on the floor. The hammer squared itself for a blow to my head.

“Don’t do it!” a voice behind me shouted.

It jarred Sami from his focus of crushing my skull. But he didn’t drop the hammer. He stared at Detective Ricohr and the gun pointed at his chest. In the brief ten seconds of stand-off between Sami and the gun, I could see the deliberation in his head and the eventual conclusion that his own life was much too important for him to let it end prematurely. He smiled and let the hammer fall to the floor.

BLACK ROCKS

The following couple of days were a flurry of activity involving a quick hospital stay and the interminable visits from members of the police. Claire came to see me a few times but her face was only a brief respite from the litany of nurses and doctors and detectives that asked endless questions that I was often too tired to answer. Detective Ricohr came once just to admonish me for ignoring his advice.

“But I did listen,” I reminded him. “I called you before I went into that house.”

“And if you hadn’t you’d be dead,” he shot back.

Neither wanted to admit that the other was right.

Eventually, I was released from the hospital and took a taxi home, forced to lean forward onto the passenger seat because it was too painful to lean back.

I returned to work after a few days and had to explain in detail the reasons behind my unexpected leave of absence. Each detail felt like yet another pinprick in the trial balloon of my attempt to earn the leadership role of the department.

Pat Faber eventually set up a meeting for early Tuesday morning. We terminated people on Tuesdays so the selection of this day caused me concern. He greeted me without his usual banter and somberly waved me over to a seat in his office. He waited a moment to collect his thoughts. In that time I scanned the shelves behind him. They, too, were lined with crystal trophies and awards just as Bob Gershon’s shelves had been. I wondered if they were legitimate.

The firm would never terminate me because I lost the bid to take the leadership role but they would make it clear that my future there was not a long-term option. I would scuffle along for a few years and then quietly be forced out. But I was too young to retire and would have to reinvent myself with all the youthful energy and drive it takes to reestablish a career. That thought made me sick to my stomach.

“There’s a stretch of country behind my house in Palm Desert,” he began and I thought to myself, this bastard has more houses than hairs on his head. I also pondered the fact that I had heard every single one of Pat’s folksy metaphors but I had never heard this one. “It’s named after an old prospector who tried to make his fortune in the hills. There are still remnants of his work — old wash planes, pick axes, tunnels carved out of the scrabble. I take Bessie back there and let her run. She loves the open country as do I.”

“Me, too,” I think I muttered, but Pat ignored me. He even looked a little miffed that I was interfering with his rhythm.

“There’s one cave in particular back there,” he began again. “Bessie stumbled upon it. It’s up a narrow canyon that I’m sure no one has seen except for the man who made it. And me.” There was a thick vein of pride in his voice. “The front is collapsed, the beams forming a big X, but you can see somewhat in there, depending on the time of day. If you shout inside it takes a long time for your echo to come back. It’s deep. I can’t tell you how many times I have stood in front of that cave. Bessie, the old girl, she won’t go near it. It scares her. It intrigues her but it scares her. At some point in life, Chuck, a man is going to come upon a cave like this one.”

My mind raced with the possibilities of what the cave stood for. Was it my career — abandoned, hopeless, a hole of lost dreams? Was it Pat’s delusional self-journey — daring, solitary, the pinnacle of his life’s work?

“And you have a decision to make. The hardest decision in your life because the cave has so many unknowns.” My heart sank with each additional line. “Chuck, I stood there this past weekend and stared at that entrance for an hour. And a single thought came to me.

“A black rock isn’t black in the dark,” he stated, and paused long enough for those profound words to sink in. I found myself nodding along with him despite not understanding anything that was coming out of his mouth.

“Chuck, you are the man to lead this group. Congratulations,” he said and rose to shake my hand.