Jericho sidled back down the stairs, avoiding Angie’s wrath by abandoning the rest of his ill-begotten fries.  He took his seat back at the bar, his neon windbreaker saving his spot between two strangers he’d befriended that night.

“As I was saying, Nancy,” he began, turning to the mousy woman on his right, “the best places to see the lights are up on Pinyon Ridge and at the high point of the Buena Vista trail.  Pinyon Ridge is way back there, it’s something like a 15 mile hike out, but it’s so worth it.  Completely dark skies.  Even if you don’t catch anything strange, the view of the milky way--” Jericho kissed his fingers for emphasis, “absolutely stunning.  Buena Vista is a trek, but you could probably get out there in a half day.  6 hours, if you’re slow, and it follows a creek the whole way up so you won’t need to haul your own water or worry about getting lost.”

Nancy scribbled down everything Jericho said in a leather bound journal with a tiger burned into the front cover.  On Jericho’s other side, a man with dark hair listened intently with a recorder held up to catch the conversation on tape.

“Have you seen the lights out there yourself?” the man asked.

Jericho swiveled his chair.  “Yeah, a few times!  It’s nothing like losing time, but it’s the best shot you’ve got of seeing any activity while you’re here.  Speaking of losing time, if you take the bend around Red Light Hill in the afternoon, that’s when most folks end up losing time.  Some people lose radio signal, too, even though it’s a straight shot to the tower from there.  Best to take that drive around 3 or 4 in the afternoon if you want a chance at having your own temporal anomaly.”

“That’s the road leading into town off of I-40, right?” the man asked.

“The very same,” Jericho nodded, “how long are the two of you planning to stay?”

Nancy shrugged.  “A few days, just passing through on my way down to Sedona.  After that, I’m headed down to Phoenix and then out to Roswell.”

“A classic tour,” Jericho laughed, “you’re skipping Nevada?”

“Oh, I’ve already been to Area 51, or as close as you can get.  Not much to see out that way,” Nancy said, “and the UFO sightings are all just stealth planes.  I prefer the vortex points out here.”

“I don’t know how long I’m staying, depends on whether or not I see any activity,” The man looked at Jericho with a crooked smile, “what about you?”

Jericho waved him off.  “Oh, I got a cabin outside of town.  Call it the base of operations,” he waved down Doreen, who was busy making a whiskey sour for another customer, “Hey, Dora, can you get me another vodka soda when you’re done?”

She didn’t acknowledge him.

Jericho turned back to his conversation, jabbing his thumb down the bar at Doreen.  “She knows me.”

Jericho did not go home when the bar closed at 3.  Doreen found him after she ushered all the stragglers out, asleep in a booth next to the jukebox.  She hauled him to his feet and half-carried him out to his sleeper van.  He offered her a slurred thank you as she closed the door on him and headed home herself.  Her engine fading into the distance lulled him to sleep in the mess of blankets he used as a bed.

That morning, the first thing Jericho did was open the door of the van and vomit in the dirt.  The second thing he did was drive home and sleep in his childhood bedroom for another four hours.  By the time he managed to get up, the mid afternoon sun beat down on the little cabin and turned it into a sauna despite the curtains keeping out the light.  The phone rang and Jericho wandered into the kitchen in nothing but his underwear to pick it up.

“Hello?” he half-slurred into the phone.

“Jerry?  It’s Edie.  Sheriff Vitale asked me to call you in for a statement about the cattle mutilations.”

Jericho cringed at the hazy memory of the previous night, sitting down across from the sheriff.  “Does he really need to hear it again?”

“I can give him the phone, if you’d like to ask yourself,” Eden offered.

“No, no thanks.  Is the AC at the station working?” Jericho held the phone away from him as he chugged a stale glass of water he left on the counter the previous day.

“Yep.”

He set the cup down.  It toppled over, and began to roll.  He caught it before it dropped off the edge of the sandstone countertop.  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

Jericho rattled up to the station in his van forty-five minutes later, dressed haphazardly in cutoff jean shorts and a too-small t-shirt he dug out of his dirty laundry.  He basked in the cool gust of air that greeted him as he entered the station.  Eden looked up from her paperwork.

“Sheriff’s in his office.  You can head back,” Eden said.

“Thanks, Edie.” Jericho winked at her as he slipped through the door to the offices concealed behind the entry room to the station.  The blinds of the sheriff’s office were closed tight, but the door was propped slightly ajar with a heavy county law reference book.  Jericho pushed open the door and peeked inside, watching the new sheriff shuffle through case files for a moment before he cleared his throat.

The sheriff looked up, surprised, and straightened up his work station.  “Mr. Khalid?  Come in.  Sit down.  I have some questions to ask you.”

Jericho dragged the swiveling office chair in the corner across from the sheriff and sat down.  He wondered if he had hallucinated the exhausted, sweaty, bleeding man from the night previous.  When he met eyes with the sheriff, his piercing gaze looked right through him, his hair and suit absolutely impeccable.  The only sign that this was the same man was a bandaid above his eyebrow and the dark circles under his eyes.

“How’s your afternoon going, Mr. Khalid?” the sheriff asked.

Jericho grinned.  “Better now that I’m out of the heat.  You want a statement about the cattle mutilations?”

“Well, yes,” the sheriff said, setting a tape recorder on the table in front of him, “you mind if I record our conversation?”

“Nah,” Jericho said, “sorry for last night, I was already pretty tipsy by the time you showed up.  Didn’t look like you had a good day.”

The sheriff chuckled. “I went up to the pasture where the mutilations occurred last year.  Based on your reputation, I’d assume you already know about them.”

“That’s a long trek.  Three hours on horseback.” Jericho swiveled in the chair.

The sheriff grimaced, remembering his own trip.  “Can you tell me about the circumstances under which you found the mutilated carcass?  Be as specific as you can, this is for my own record.”

Jericho repeated his story as clearly as he could past the hangover throbbing behind his eyes.

The sheriff jotted down notes, despite the tape recorder.  “What’s your relationship to Walter Strong?”

“Well,” Jericho started, “it’s actually not so much a relationship with him as it is with some of his ranch hands.  Arnold is a friend of mine from the road years back, when he got a job at Strong’s ranch he talked the guy into letting me wander his property.”

The sheriff squinted. “Is there any reason Arnold wouldn’t tell me about your relationship?”

“Uh, well,” Jericho swallowed and lowered his voice, checking that no one was listening at the door, “we had a -- a relationship, years ago.  Romantic, or sexual, or whatever, it’s not something you share with any random cop.  I’m not surprised Arnold didn’t tell you.”

The sheriff nodded.  He gave no indication of judgment. “Understandable.  Last night you mentioned other cases of cattle mutilations?”

Jericho leaned back in his chair, settling into the more comfortable topic.  “Yeah, I was a chaser a couple years ago.  I followed different claims, primarily livestock mutilations.  I can make you a copy of my map if you think it’ll help.”

“And this is related to… aliens?”  The sheriff raised a skeptical eyebrow at Jericho.

Jericho nodded.  “I really don’t see any other explanation for the injuries.  As I said, there’s no army bases near the mutilation sites, no consistent extremist groups, no shared environmental conditions or known species of animal that can cause those kinds of injuries.  Not even vet or medical schools in common.”

The sheriff sat back in his chair and set his entwined fingers on the desk, his eyebrows knit together in consideration.  After a long moment of thought, he spoke, “Thank you for your help, Mr. Khalid.  If you could drop a copy of that map off when you get a chance, I’d very much appreciate it.”

Jericho nodded as he stood up.  “Yeah, sure!  I’ll drop it by later today.”

The sheriff’s eyes wandered down to his bare legs before he caught himself and his eyes snapped back up to meet Jericho’s.  “I’ll have Ms. Windrose call you if I need to get in contact again.”

As Jericho left the office, he could feel the sheriff’s eyes on his back, appraising him.  Something jumped in his stomach, a small thrill at being watched so intensely.  He put an extra sway into his hips for the man behind the desk.