Sinclair banged on the cabin door with his closed fist and brushed the paint chips off his hand.  He heard a crash inside and knocked again.

“Jericho?” he called, “It’s Sinclair.  Open the door.”

“Hang on!” Jericho called back, followed by another crash and a curse in a different language.

“Are you okay?” Sinclair asked through the door, “I’m coming in.”

He shoved the door open.  It caught on the frame, but shook free with another push.  Jericho stood over his kitchen table, arranging a plate of crackers, a block of cheap cheese clenched in his fist.  He froze.

“Are you --”

“Yeah I’m fine,” Jericho said with a shy grin, “you just didn’t give me much warning.”

Sinclair glanced at the pile of mail and trash shoved into the corner of the kitchen.  “I just came to talk, you didn’t have to roll out the red carpet.”

“I’m --” Jericho looked down at his stained kitchen table, “it’s a habit.  Come, sit down.  Have a snack?” he looked at the block of cheese, “maybe skip the cheese.”

“I’m not hungry, but thank you,” Sinclair took his seat at the table across from Jericho and stared at him across the plate of saltines.  

He searched Jericho’s face, the bags under his eyes and days of unshaven stubble.  Jericho met his eyes, staring back without any hint of discomfort.

“Did you call Donald Berk?” Sinclair asked.

“Who?” Jericho blinked, a practiced wide-eyed gesture of innocence.

Sinclair looked at the copy of the Cobalt Gazette sitting on top of the pile of mail and sighed. “Uh-huh, I see.  So, Mr. Khalid --”

Jericho’s expression of innocent confusion faltered.

“What, exactly, possessed you to call a journalist first?” Sinclair folded his hands on the table in front of him.

“Well, I --” Jericho sucked his teeth, “I just thought that having him on the scene would keep this from getting swept under the rug.”

Sinclair waited patiently for Jericho’s explanation.

Jericho swallowed.  “I know, Donald has a reputation, but he’s one of the only people who believes me.  I told him to go and take pictures, then bring them back to me.  He -- we agreed that he wouldn’t run a story on it.  I didn’t want this to vanish.”

“Thank god that didn’t work out for you, then!” Sinclair sat back in his chair, “don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the backup.  Thanks for the ambulance, thanks for the state patrol, but Donald fucking Berk!” He laughed, a sound swallowed up by the clutter, “You think he wouldn’t run a story on a homicide?  Do you know what he told my deputy?”

Jericho shook his head.

“He told her -- he told Erin, who just found her good friend mauled in her own driveway -- that this was the biggest story Cobalt Peak had ever seen.  That he needed to report on it.”

“What attacked us wasn’t normal, Sinclair!” Jericho defended himself, “it needs to be researched and understood.  I know people like you don’t --”

“People like me don’t what?” Sinclair seethed at him, “how about, people like me don’t want an innocent woman exploited by the media for her personal tragedy.  People like me want Tiffany Bean to rest easy where she’s buried without publishing her autopsy report like some fucking curiosity in UFO Daily.  People like me don’t like that real people turn into spectacles before their fucking corpse even starts to cool, Jericho.”

Jericho studied his hands.  “I thought…”

“Thought what?” Sinclair demanded.

Jericho held up his hand as if to say “stop.”  He rested his head in his hands and sucked in a deep breath.  Sinclair sat back in his chair, rolling the tension out of his shoulders.  

“I called Donnie because he’s a friend.  I swear -- I swear to god, Sinclair -- if I thought he would make a scene I wouldn’t have called him at all.  I just wanted him there to snap a photo of Brian so we had evidence you didn’t have to turn in to the feds,” Jericho kept his hand up, stopping Sinclair from commenting, “I didn’t know how fast this would get covered up.  If the FBI shows up at your evidence locker, you don’t have any recourse to stop them from destroying everything you have.  You reported what happened in the woods to the forest service, right?  So the government already knows.  If we let all the evidence go, then Tom died for nothing.”

Sinclair tented his fingers.  He pursed his lips, and stammered.  “I don’t know what to say,” he dropped his hands to the table with a smack, “‘the government already knows,’ great, okay.”

“Am I under arrest?” Jericho asked, all expression wiped from his face.

Sinclair laughed.  “No, Mr. Khalid, you are not under arrest,” he stood up from the table, “working with you has been an… enlightening experience.  Let me know if the ‘government’ shows up on your doorstep.  I’ll be sure to take care of it for you.”

Jericho watched Sinclair leave.  He slammed the sticky door behind him twice, the first time bouncing back at him.  Jericho slumped on the table and stared at the hastily prepared plate of crackers in front of him.  He turned a saltine over in his hand and crushed it, letting the crumbs fall onto the table.  

The mess of his kitchen swallowed him up.  Bananas browned on a paper plate next to a ceramic toaster covered in smudged fingerprints.  Groceries sat in paper bags, ignored for a full day.  His dingy refrigerator hummed, hand-drawn maps of UFO sightings in the area and half-written to-do lists tacked on with magnets like childish drawings.  The kitchen trash overflowed, one full bag leaning against the side of the can.  The trash he swept off the table in preparation for Sinclair’s visit sunk into a sprawling pile of old copies of the Cobalt Gazette and unopened junk mail.

Jericho picked up the phone on the wall.  He dialed a number.  Another phone rang on the second floor of the house.  He let it ring until the answering machine picked it up.

You’ve reached the office of Doctor Raina Khalid.  If this is an emergency, please hang up and call 9-1-1.  If you are a new client, please call back Monday through Wednesday, ten AM to two PM.  If you are calling regarding scheduling or deliveries, please leave a message with your name and number.  Thank you.

“Hi mom,” he said softly into the receiver.

✴ ✴ ✴

The elevator rattled on its descent into the county morgue below Goreman Hospital, the doors sticking for long enough that Sinclair wondered if the old machine would trap him.  They opened with an unoiled squeal, the dingy light of the morgue filling in for the flickering lightbulb in the elevator as he stepped out.  Immediately, the fluorescent lights triggered a headache.  The pathologist spun around in her desk chair idly, straightening up when she noticed him.

“Can I help you, sir?” She asked.

Sinclair pulled out his badge. “Yeah, I’m Cobalt Peak’s sheriff.  I came to collect your autopsy reports.”

“I mail those, why’d you bother coming all the way out here?” she stared blankly at him.

“Just wanted to see the bodies myself, if you don’t mind,” Sinclair explained.

She chewed her lip.  “I guess that’s fine.  I’ll pull them out for you.”

“Do you have those autopsy reports handy?” he asked, walking over to her desk.

She waved at the pile of papers on her desk.  “They’re there somewhere.”

Sinclair moved a couple files aside until he found the two original autopsy reports for Tiffany Bean and Brian Decker.  He flipped through Brain’s report, where the pathologist had drawn claws on one arm and extended it to match the way his body looked.  The pathologist hauled two creaky metal tables out of a walk-in refrigerator.  They took up almost the entire free space in the room.  Sinclair tucked Brian’s autopsy report under his arm and walked around the autopsy bench built into the floor.  The pathologist unzipped the canvas bodybag on one of the tables.

“No reconstruction?” he said, glancing at Brian’s ruined face.

She laughed.  “Not even Anubis could put this guy back together.”

Sinclair winced at her blase attitude.  He studied Brian’s shoulder.  Even in death, his flesh bulged strangely.  Stitches ran across his skin where the pathologist dissected away the tissues of his chest and stomach.  His left arm ended in wicked claws, the palm more akin to the paw of a dog than a human hand.

“What do you think of this?” He asked the pathologist, gesturing to Brian’s arm.

She shrugged.  “One of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.  It’s all human, as far as I can tell.  All his.  A lot of it looked like weird cancer, particularly around the shoulder.”

Where I shot him, Sinclair thought to himself, “do you mind if I take some pictures for the sake of the investigation?”

“It’s all in there,” she pointed at the autopsy reports he held in his hands, “don’t take pictures in my morgue.  Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“They’re dead,” Sinclair said.

She shrugged.

“Do you have copies?  Of the autopsy photos?” Sinclair asked, “I can take them up and run some for you.”

She rifled through her desk and handed him two packs of photographs labeled Tiffany Bean and Brian Decker respectively, along with their date of arrival.  She held out her hand, asking for Brain’s autopsy report back,  “I’ll just mail copies of the reports to your office.”

“Thank you,” Sinclair handed back Brian’s autopsy report.  A twinge of anxiety twisted in his stomach, and he wondered if he would ever see that scratchy drawing of his arm again.

She grunted and sat back down in her desk chair, spinning it around once.  Sinclair took that as his cue to leave.  He paused at the elevator.

“When are you releasing Ms. Bean’s body?” he asked, her still-shrouded body next to Brian’s.

The pathologist shrugged.  “We’re looking for next of kin, but if we can’t find any I guess we’ll just release it to her legal counsel.  Apparently her will is scant at best, left everything to a dead woman.”

“I see,” Sinclair sighed, “well, thank you.”

She ignored him and turned back around to her desk.  Sinclair wondered if she intended to put the bodies back in the fridge, or if she liked the audience for her paperwork.  He pushed the button on the elevator.  When he disembarked in the light of day again, he replayed Alice stabbing Brain.  When he closed his eyes, the ruin of Brian’s face looked back at him.  His vicious maw gaped open, laughing.  Sinclair shut the door of the squad car and thought he could smell blood in the backseat, simmering in the Arizona heat.