Sinclair checked the drawer of his bedside table for the autopsy photos and breathed a sigh of relief when he counted both sets, along with the photos from the cattle mutilation case.  The trip up to the ridge two weeks ago seemed a distant memory.  The landscape in those photos was alien now -- pristine and quiet, full of lowing cattle.  He hoped to resume the case, once he finished the paperwork for the missing persons.  He missed it, the banal strangeness of an animal carcass.

Maybe Brian killed Strong’s cows?

That made no sense.  The first cows died before Brian went missing, and besides, the way Brian tore that elk apart -- Sinclair cringed at the memory of Tiffany Bean’s wounds.  No, Brian’s violence lacked sophistication.  It was animal brutality.  He was dead now, anyway.  Erased.

He hoped Jericho was getting some rest now that he was home.  Should Sinclair have offered to stay?

He sat on his bed and stared up at the pristine square of orange paint where the orgy painting used to be above his bed, unmarred by cigar smoke.  He still hadn’t moved in, not really.  Sure, his clothes were in the closets, but he still felt like he was just crashing in Mattie’s house.  He fantasized about taking the time to renovate, painting the walls, sorting through uncle Mattie’s junk.  

And there was the matter of the office, locked with an antique Mattie no doubt treasured.  Where’d he get that, anyway, that relic of Prohibition-era cops and robbers?  Mattie loved telling them stories about their family running booze, the grand shootouts and heists.  That’s probably why he stopped coming around, eventually -- a bad influence.  He didn’t fit the squeaky-clean political Vitale image.

The dirt of it all was why he snuck around with Mattie in the first place.  The stories of not-so-distant aunts and uncles running Chicago with tommy guns and sharp wit, the easy contact with people still living that life.  He’d been a poser, Mattie always knew it.  Mattie loved him anyway.

He’d call a locksmith, it would be a shame to use bolt cutters on a family heirloom.  

Sinclair laid back on the bed.  His body begged him to curl up and sleep those 24-hour shifts away now that everyone was home safe.  Everyone except his sister.  He opted for removal and organization of decor.  Uncle Mattie, an art collector of sorts and obsessed over theft prevention, coped with his anxiety by nailing his prizes into the studs.  He stacked each piece he wrenched off the drywall in each room, and stood back to look at the bare canvas that remained.

He grimaced.  The swaths of teal popped with orange in the living room.  He needed a better eye to fix the travesty, like his sister’s.  Worry clenched in his gut for her, he dealt with it by moving his project into the guest room.  The bobcat mount glowered at him as he tore the sheets from the bed.  He opened the window, trying to flush out the dust cloud he’d kicked up.  Nothing he could do about the dark blue walls, unfortunately.  Hopefully Ophelia wouldn’t mind.  Maybe she could turn them into the night sky.  She always loved mythology, he could let her have the room full of stars she wanted when they were little.  He smiled at the thought.  The bobcat sneered back.

The phone rang downstairs and he ran for it.

“Hello?”

“I got the pathology reports.” Sinclair’s face fell at the sound of Erin’s voice, flat with displeasure.

“Oh no,” he groaned.

“They’re wrong.”

He resisted the urge to scream.

“We’re going to have to close the case,” she said, “I talked to Alice.”

“What did she say?” Sinclair fell back onto the armchair in the living room.

“She wouldn’t give details, but she said she didn’t want to pursue it any further.” Erin said.

Sinclair ran a hand down his face.  “Paid off or scared?”

“Paid off.  She wasn’t scared.  Seemed tired, like she wanted it to be over,” Erin paused, “I think we should let it go.”

Sinclair fought back the urge to argue and bit his lip.  “Maybe she’ll come back around.”

“Let it go.”

“For now, in a professional capacity,” Sinclair said.

Erin scoffed.

“Can I have my day off back?” Sinclair asked, all his energy drained, “I need a nap.”

“Yeah, don’t we all.” Erin hung up the phone.

Sinclair leaned back in the chair and moaned loudly in frustration, pressing his palms against his closed eyelids until he saw stars.  He understood Alice’s reasoning, but a part of him raged at a case unsolved.  Tiffany Bean was still dead.

So was Brian.  What would the point of a trial be with no killer to prosecute, anyway?  If the feds are taking care of it, why bother stretching this situation out more?  It’s not like their station had the manpower for a full investigation, they didn’t even have a second receptionist.

Still, something in Sinclair strained for answers.  He stared down at his hands, mind projecting the shape of Brain’s twisted limbs onto his own.  Something other than human.  The memory of Brain’s flesh twisted, veins bulging and spreading bruise-purple from the gunshot wound in his shoulder, twisted his stomach.

Sinclair rolled the tension out of his back and surveyed his work in the living room.  The eclectic collection of objects so unreal to Sinclair that he momentarily lost grasp of where he stood in reality.  He shook it off.  He had to finish preparing the guest room for Ophelia.

He trudged upstairs and checked on the autopsy photos in his nightstand again, just to be sure.  He sat on the bed, log headboard looming over him like the dry trees of the forest.  He flipped through the photos, the jagged lines of laceration on skin clean and purplish cast in the fluorescent lighting of the morgue.  Something in Sinclair -- the part of him that worked homicide for so long -- clicked into place as he sorted through the photos.  Just meat on the slab, bodies without names.

Unable to glean anything useful, he stowed them again and reprimanded himself for working on his day off.  After all, this is why he left.  This was how he got suspended.  He laid down to stare at the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling.

Sinclair startled awake to the phone ringing downstairs.  He groaned as he sat up, body creaking, and went to pick up the phone.

“Hello?” he croaked into the receiver.

“Clair?” Ophie’s voice came through the phone.

“Ophie!  How’s the ride?” He leaned on the back of the armchair, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Long, we just stopped over in Amarillo,” the weariness weighed in her voice, “one more day to go.”

“When are you getting to Flagstaff?” Sinclair asked.

“Round noon, if the bus is on time.  It’s not ski season, so I don’t think the traffic will be too bad.  How far are you?” the quarters clinked into the payphone slot beneath her voice.

Sinclair rolled his head, stretching his sore neck.  “About two hours away.  Cobalt Peak isn’t Chicago, I hope you won’t mind.”

“I could use some peace and quiet,” Ophie said, smiling through the weight of her thoughts.

Sinclair laughed dryly.  “Well, I don’t know about that.  You want to tell me what’s going on with mom and dad?”

Ophelia sighed and the line went quiet for a moment while she collected herself.  “Do you remember Eugene Monk?”

Sinclair cringed.  “Larry’s oldest?  Isn’t he forty-five now?”

“And married twice,” Ophelia’s voice dropped low, “he’s running for mayor right now.  His second wife went missing six months ago.”

Sinclair shifted in his chair, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.  “Do you think he killed her?”

“I don’t -- I don’t know,” Ophie’s voice trembled, “but you saw how he treated his first wife.”

He remembered the makeup caked on her face, eyes sad and pleading every time she looked at him.  She was his age -- a hard twenty.

“I’m going to kill dad,” Sinclair growled.

“Before he kills me first, please.  I think I fucked up his political gamble,” she joked, her voice still hushed over the phone.

Sinclair ran a hand over his face.  “Well, you’ll be safe here.  I’m trying to clean out Uncle Mattie’s place a bit before you get here.”

Ophelia chuckled.  “That sounds like a project.”

“Yeah, love the guy, but goddamn if he didn’t have some strange tastes,” Sinclair pointedly eyed the abstract sculpture of a naked woman with an oversized vulva he’d taken off the shelf earlier that day, “I was thinking we could make it a project for the two of us.”

“Really?” Ophie perked up on the other end.

“Yeah, I’ve always been a terrible decorator.  Figure I could use your aesthetic touch.  It’d give you something to do while you’re looking for a job, and I’d help out on my days off,” Sinclair offered.

Ophelia laughed, a genuine laugh.  “You’re going to put me straight to work, huh?”

Sinclair smiled.  “Gotta pay your way, baby.”

“I’d deck you if I was there,” Ophelia said.

“Only if you could catch me,” Sinclair taunted.

“How have you been, Clair?” Ophie asked, “after what happened back home, you left so fast.”

Sinclair coughed and cleared his throat.  “Well, this place is keeping me busy.  There’s been a double murder and a mass-missing persons case in the last two weeks.”

“Jesus,” Ophie replied.

“I know!  Luckily I’ve got a cutthroat deputy.  It’s a good team,” Sinclair assured her, “I think you’ll like them, even Erin -- deputy --  you already got a chance to talk to Eden.”

“Edie’s a sweetheart,” Ophelia said, “seemed tired when I talked to her.”

“You called while we were trying to finish up that missing persons case, we’d all been up for some 48 hours,” Sinclair told her, tension leaving his shoulders.

“That’s a quick wrap-up,” she said.

Sinclair grunted in affirmation. “For all the weird shit this place throws at me, it’s not politics.  That reminds me, though: something weird happened the other day.”

“Oh?” she perked up at the promise of gossip.

Sinclair took a deep breath.  “All of the folks who went missing were omegas,” he started.

“Weird,” Ophelia said with bated breath.

“One of which was this guy named Jericho.  Met him on my first day -- he stole my fries, told me about dead cows over a burger --”

“Oh, you hate that,” Ophelia giggled, “is he cute?”

Sinclair reeled back.  “Wh-- ye-- I don’t know!  It doesn’t matter!  Anyway, Ophie, we got into a fight before the night everything went crazy.  I went back to apologize to him in the morning and discovered he was gone, door left open.”

“Yeah?” Ophelia urged him on.

“I went to investigate.”

“Of course.”

Sinclair hesitated.  “Well, when I went into his room, I could smell him.”

“Weird, Clair.” Ophelia said.

“I know!  But not like that, the creep way, like an alpha smells a person.  Does that make sense?” He shifted uncomfortably in the chair, regretting his decision to share and holding his breath for Ophelia’s response.

She was quiet on the line for a minute.  “That is weird.”

He let out the breath he was holding in a sigh.  “I know.  I tracked him through the forest that way.  It was bizarre -- I mean, I’m glad I found him, but it was such a weird experience that I can’t get it out of my head.” He ran a hand through his hair.

“How far away did you find him?” She prodded.

“I don’t know, I’d been up for nearly 24 hours by that point,” Sinclair twirled the cord of the phone around his fingers, “but I think I found him pretty far into the woods, I carried him back and got him to the hospital.  Walked maybe a mile or two.  I picked him up from the hospital earlier today.”

“Have you asked him out yet?” Ophelia asked after a second of hesitation.

“I--what?  No!  I took him home, he’s probably sleeping.  He doesn’t need that right now,” Sinclair picked at the plastic cover on the armchair.

Ophelia cleared her throat, cutting a laugh short.  “Looks like they’re loading up again, Clair.  I love you.  I’ll see you in Flagstaff?”

He sighed in frustration.  “See you in Flagstaff, Ophie.  Love you.” Sinclair assured her, keeping the phone pressed to his ear until it clicked off and beeped at him, disconnected.

Sinclair slumped over the back of the chair, shoving thoughts of Jericho out of his mind.  Fucking Eugene.  Never once a decent man, not for a second of his life, and yet that was the guy his father picked to sell his youngest daughter to.  Why would his mother sign off on that?  He heard her voice in his head advising her daughters of quiet strength, snapping at her sons with all the viciousness of a mother wolf.  She saw the bruises on Eugene’s first wife, she probably suspected him in the disappearance of his second wife.  Why would she allow that?

Sinclair burned.

His stomach growled.  Terrible timing.  Maybe a protein bar would make him feel better.  He went to fish one out of the cabinet and chew on the tough, chalky substance until he calmed down.