Sinclair glanced at the shotgun in the back seat of the squad car.  He checked the clip of his .38 and the bear spray stashed in the side pocket of the car.  Tom’s gun sat heavy in his waistband with three bullets in the clip.  Deputy Gaye sped around the curve.  The lights of the cruiser flashed without sirens.  She switched them off as they turned onto Pinyon Way.  The afternoon sun shone through the trees, heating up the squad car.  Sinclair wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

“Sheriff, how sure are you?” Deputy Gaye asked, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“I know it sounds crazy--” Sinclair began, but Deputy Gaye interrupted him with a slow shake of her head.

“What am I in for, Vitale?” she said tightly.

Sinclair checked the guns again.  He licked his dry lips.  “If it’s the same thing, then it’s drugged.  Mean, smart.  It can plan, might know we’re coming.  Got it in the shoulder with Tom’s gun, probably broke some bones.  Jericho hit it with a lot of tranqs, but I can’t remember what Tom said they were.  Just that one shot would take down a moose.”

“How many tranqs?” Deputy Gaye asked as they rolled onto Pinyon Way.

“At least three,” Sinclair tried to count the neon feathers stuck in its skin, but the memory blurred in the wake of yellow teeth, “maybe four.”

“And it was still up?” Her eyes scanned the trees.

Sinclair nodded. “Ran off.  I don’t know how long that kind of thing takes to work.”

“About 20 minutes.”

Hope sparked in Sinclair.  “Then maybe this is just a bear.”

“How much would you be willing to bet on that?” Deputy Gaye asked him without a hint of amusement.

Sinclair checked the shotgun again.

Deputy Gaye pulled the car off the road a few houses down from 247 Pinyon Way.  She drew her .38 as she stepped out of the cruiser, closing the door behind her softly.  Sinclair followed her lead, taking the shotgun out of the back seat and keeping the barrel pointed towards the ground.  He clipped the can of bear spray to his belt, safety off.

“Bearspray?” Deputy Gaye asked in a harsh whisper.

Sinclair glanced down at the can on his belt.  “It bought Jericho enough time to escape the first time.”

“Right, but bullets didn’t slow it down.” She rolled her eyes, but gripped her gun tighter.

They slipped between the trees separating the Decker and Bean properties.  The driveway opened up like a battlefield.  Deep claw marks drove ruts into the gravel, the forest floor tilled black in a brutal scuffle.  

“Tiff!” Erin rushed across the open space to a body face down on the ground.  The barrel of her rifle twisted ninety degrees, the wood stock splintered and discarded fifteen feet from her.  She still reached for the broken weapon.  A pool of blood spread from her body and soaked into the gravel, turning the dust to red sludge.

Sinclair turned away from her body and toward Tiff’s house.  A wooden sculpture of a duck flew through the window in a glittering cascade of glass and landed in a crater of dirt.  Erin’s voice rose in a strangled scream as she turned Tiff’s body over.  Sinclair made for the splintered door, hands tight on the stock of the shotgun.

Sinclair raised his weapon as he entered the house through the ravaged doorframe.  “Freeze!” he commanded the figure looming over the coffee table.

The man didn’t seem to notice him, focused on throwing the wooden coffee table against the wall to rid itself of the barrier between itself and Alice.  She cowered on the floor among the remains of a shattered wall mirror.  The man hunched oddly, shoulder twisted and strange as it shifted beneath his blood-smeared skin.  Sinclair realized for the first time that he was naked.

“Alice, baby,” the man’s voice growled.  The sound turned Sinclair’s stomach and Alice let out a frightened whimper.

“I said Freeze,” Sinclair said, his voice clear and steady.

The man swayed on his feet.  Sunlight streaming in through the window caught the neon feathers of a tranquilizer dart lodged in his neck.  He yanked it out, a spray of blood splattering against the far wall.

“Why’d you make me do that, baby?” he spoke like his teeth were too big for his mouth, “Alice… you know I didn’t want to.”

Alice sobbed.

“Brian Decker, this is your last warning.” Sinclair cocked the shotgun.

Brian’s head rolled, spine cracking as he bent backwards to look at Sinclair.  His eyes shone green.  His injured arm twitched.  He licked blood and dirt from his lips with a too-long tongue.  He rolled his shoulders as he turned.  “Hang on, baby.  I gotta… I gotta… take care of something.”

“It doesn’t have to end this way, Brian.  I can get you the help you need,” Sinclair’s hand trembled on the gun.  He placed his finger on the trigger as Brian turned towards him, “I know you’re tired.”

“I’m tired,” his voice like the snarl of a dog, “I’m tired because you shot me, stranger.  Shot me in the middle of a kill.  In the middle--” he sucked in a breath and turned around again, distracted, “Alice, baby, you smell so nice.  I missed you while I was hunting, baby.  But you didn’t keep my house clean for me, did ya, baby?”

Alice stood on her feet and held out a shard of mirror towards Brian.  “Get away from me.” Her voice trembled, but she held Brian’s gaze.

“Aw, baby, what’s that for?” he panted, “I’d never hurt you, baby, you’re my mate,” his voice morphed into a low growl, “you’re mine, baby.  I marked you.”

Alice’s hand tightened around the shard and bled.  Brain’s eyes slipped away from her face, focusing on the steady drip of blood falling onto the carpet.  Sirens blared in the distance.  Brian whipped around, the claws of his mangled arm shredding an armchair as he did.

“Would somebody shut that shit up!” he barked, eyes grazing over Sinclair as though he wasn’t there at all.

The sirens grew closer.  A car crackled up the gravel drive.  Brian whipped back around to Alice, who now held the shard in both torn hands.

“You, you lying little whore--” Brian’s seething growl ended in a yelp as Alice tackled him with a guttural yell, knocking his unsteady bulk to the ground.  

Alice raised the glass shard above her head and drove it down into his face.  His eye popped with a squelch and he howled.  His arms flailed as she reared back and drove the mirror shard into his face again.  She screamed, a warcry bubbling up from some feral part of her as she plunged the shard in.  He fell limp, claws twitching with each subsequent stab until the face that stared back at her was an unrecognizable mass of flesh, sharp white teeth standing like spires in the bleeding mess.  The shard shattered against the bones of Brian’s face and drove into Alice’s hand.   She straddled his chest, each breath hard, staring down at her bloody reflection in the glass embedded in the mess.

Sinclair moved automatically.  He set the shotgun down and stepped over Brian’s body to help her up, draped her in a jacket off the coat rack by the door and swung his arm protectively around her shoulders as he guided her into the sun.  She shielded her eyes from the light and noise and tried to pull away.  

The first arrival, a journalist, faced down Deputy Gaye, who forced him back down the driveway with nothing but the force of her rage.  He held his camera out in front of him like a shield.  An ambulance roared up, followed by three state patrol cars.  

The EMTs disembarked and surrounded Tiff’s body.  Sinclair turned Alice away from the sight and walked her to the ambulance.  Behind him, the journalist clamored for comment and Deputy Gay’s voice rose above the noise.  She smashed his camera on the ground and Sinclair used the commotion to set Alice up in the ambulance with one of the state troopers.

“What happened?” the mustached man asked, blocking Alice from the crime scene.  He took off his mirrored sunglasses and rubbed his eyes against the sun.  When he crouched down in front of Alice, she flinched away from him.

Sinclair ran his hand through his hair and sighed.  “Two dead, one inside the house.  It’s bad.”

“Aggressor?” the state patrolman glanced at Alice’s hands.

“Dead.  Self defense,” Sinclair nodded at Alice, “I’ll witness on her behalf.”

Alice stared up at him, her eyes wide with rage.  She looked down at her mangled hands.  Sinclair sucked on his teeth when he saw the injuries in the light of day.  

He turned to beckon an EMT over.  “Hey!  Can we get some help for the living over here?”

One of them looked up beneath the brim of his cap and walked over at a brisk pace.  “She’s gone,” he told Sinclair, nodding at Tiff’s body.

“I worked homicide in Chicago for 5 years, I know what’s fucking dead,” he gestured to Alice, “take care of her, please.”

Alice shied away from the EMT at first.  Sinclair grimaced, watching the man try to coax her to show him her hands.  He looked back over at the other two EMTs bagging Tiff’s body and noted the woman standing up and brushing off her pants.

“Hang on there, I think your colleague might have more luck,” Sinclair said, stopping the EMT with a patient hand, “I’m sorry for yelling at you.  There’s another body in the house that needs taking care of.”

The two EMTs rolled Tiff’s body over on a stretcher and Alice released a strangled wail.  She buried her head in her arms.  Sinclair placed a hand on her shoulder, but she flinched so he pulled away and nodded at the woman beside the body bag.

“Can you help her?” he gestured to Alice, “bandage her hands and all.  Once you give me clearance, I’ll be sending her down to the clinic with my deputy.  Those injuries aren’t life threatening.”

“Oh, of course,” she swapped seats with the other EMT and spoke low and gentle to Alice, who offered her hands for inspection.  She winced at the EMT’s touch, but didn’t pull away as she produced a bottle of water and flushed the wounds out.

Sinclair shooed away the mustached state trooper and went to deal with the media.  The scrawny young man sheltered in his car as Deputy Gaye berated him furiously.  He sputtered through the cracked window that he had been called about the murder.  That double homicide was the biggest thing to happen in Cobalt Peak for years -- ever, even.  Erin nearly smashed the window of the car with the butt of her gun.

“Deputy,” Sinclair said.

She stopped, gun inches from the window, and glared at him.

“Let me take care of it, would you?  Alice needs a ride to the hospital, and I think she’d be more comfortable with you there instead of me.  Besides, I’m used to dealing with these vultures.” He glanced at the camera smashed on the ground.

Deputy Gaye stormed away towards the ambulance.  Sinclair opened the door of the car and sat down in the passenger’s seat.  He pulled out his notebook.

“Name.”

“Uh, Johnny Cash,” the journalist gave him a little grin.

He held out his hand.  “Alright Johnny Cash, ID and registration.”

“You can’t--”

“ID and registration,” Sinclair cut him off, “or I can take you into the station and you can spend some time in the drunk tank until I figure out what to do with you.”

The journalist reluctantly handed him his ID.  “Registration is in the glove compartment.”

“Alright Donald Berk,” Sinclair flicked the ID back at him after copying the relevant information into his notebook, “get the fuck out of here or I’ll arrest you for contaminating the crime scene.”

“But my camera--”

“Is evidence now, Mr. Berk.  Thank you for your contribution to our crime scene photography.  Now, get out of my fucking sight.” He slammed the car door behind him.  The car started and Donald Berk slowly backed out of the driveway, waiting at the end for a state trooper to move and peeled out.

The scene finally began clearing.  Alice and Deputy Gaye were hopefully at the hospital in Goreman already.  The ambulance left shortly after them, sirens off.  Only one state patrolman, the forensics van, and Sinclair remained, waiting for forensics’ ok to go.  Sinclair sat down on a nearby tree stump and reached for the pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket.  No jacket.  He tugged the sleeves of his shirt down around his wrists and flagged down the mustached state trooper as he walked past.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a smoke to spare?” He asked.

“Uhh, yeah,” he dug around in his pocket and offered his pack of Camels to Sinclair, then took one himself and offered Sinclair a light, “you handled the scene real well, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Sinclair hummed, staring off into the trees behind the house.

“I’m just saying ‘cause I know you’re pretty green.  Used to live around here when I was a tyke, y’know?  They’ve had Foreman since I was yea-high,” he waved his hand around his knees.

“I’ve handled,” Sinclair took a drag, “a lot of homicides.”

“Oh,” the man ran a hand through his dark hair, “well, if ya need someone to talk to, I’ve been seeing a real good therapist just a ways down the road.  Helps a lot with figuring out what --” he gestured to the pool of Tiff’s blood on the ground, “Fixin’ that part in your brain.  I know how that goes, used to work the night shift in Phoenix before I came back.”

Sinclair glared at him.

“I can tell you don’t wanna talk about that, but, here,” he pulled a card out of his wallet, “you wouldn’t have a pen on you?”

Sinclair shook his head.  “Thanks for the offer.”

“Hey, you’re new.  I don’t know your story,” he handed him the business card, reading Dave Blanchard, “but look me up if you ever need some backup.  Real backup, I mean.”

Sinclair flipped the card over.  “Yeah, thanks.”

“You need a ride back to town?  I think frenzy’s finishing up in there.” Dave said, shoving his free hand in his pocket.

“Forensics?”

“Yeah, forensics.  Used to call ‘em frenzy at my old precinct, like a feeding frenzy, y’know?  They go in there like sharks, snap up all the evidence,” Dave shifted uncomfortably, “ride?”

Sinclair sighed and pressed his palms against his eyes.  “Yeah, thanks.”