Paws before dying

told you, the aunt knows about Mrs. Engleman. I heard her tonight. She was asking about shock collars. And I heard Leah saying she got the pictures-Mitch, I had to tell him.”
    “Shit,” Dale said, “I’m not afraid of them. I already got them good.” He laughed and waved the black cylinder around.
    “Dale,” Mitch lectured him, “so her goddamned aunt’s got the pictures. What good’s that gonna do you?”
    “Yeah, Dale,” Willie added. “Nobody cares about the dog now. Dale, will you listen? I told you, she was asking about shock collars, and if you turn yourself in, all’s it is is manslaughter. But you gotta do it. You gotta get that it’s serious. Nobody cares about the dog anymore.”
    “Yeah,” Dale shouted painfully, “’cause it’s only my dog.”
    “Jesus, Willie,” Mitch said. “Would you lay off dogs?”
    “Yeah, lay off,” Dale said. “Goddamned well leave my dogs the hell alone. They’re my goddamned dogs, and nobody’s taking my goddamned dogs away from me.”
    “So take your goddamned dog with you,” Mitch said. “Nobody’s gonna miss him. Just get the hell out of here, and I’ll take care of the rest.” The rest. Leah. Kimi. “Dale, you gotta really get it. It’s over. It’s too late.”
    Mitch should have known better than to make any sudden moves, but he rose abruptly, took a couple of long strides toward Dale, and tried to snatch the black cylinder from Dale’s hand. Dale, though, was brawnier than Mitch and quicker than Mitch had anticipated. When he sidestepped, Mitch crashed into one of the coffee tables. Dale began laughing and waving the black cylinder around, then suddenly held it still and pointed it toward a corner of the room, a corner that was out of my view. His eyes brightened, and crazy as this may sound, his face softened in simple happiness. He pressed the button.
    Kimi’s yelps of pain rang in my ears. Leah began screaming and screaming. Rowdy, who’d been sitting still and keeping absolutely quiet, suddenly barged ahead of me, shoved open the door, and hurled himself into the room. Unsure of his intentions and my own, I followed. What happened next was, I think, the weirdest event in the whole nightmare.
    From the top of the flight of stairs came Edna’s voice. “Boys?” she called almost sweetly. “Boys? What’s going on down there?” She sounded like a den mother who’d caught her little scouts in the middle of a major pillow fight.
    The effect was sudden. All three of her sons held still and stayed quiet. Dale must have taken his finger off the button on the transmitter, because Kimi stopped yelping. Then, as if prompted by someone offstage, Mitch, Dale, and Willie all began laughing.
    “It’s nothing, Mom,” Mitch called. “Go to bed.”
    “Well, if you boys don’t settle down,” she scolded, “you’re going to wake up your father.”
    “Relax, Mom,” Dale called to her. “We’ve just caught a burglar is all. We’ve just caught a burglar!”
    At the top of the stairs, a door clicked shut.
    I’d used the distraction Edna offered to grab Rowdy’s collar and pull him with me toward Kimi. Miss Malamute Power, who’d never once before seemed even slightly disconcerted by anything whatsoever, was shaking. Around her neck was a thick collar encased in heavy black electrician’s tape. The shock collars—oh, pardon me, electronic trainers—I’d seen before in the catalogs and ads hadn’t looked anything like this one. It was much thicker than any collar I’d ever seen before, heavy all the way around, and I was having trouble finding a buckle. Had he taped the collar on? My fingers groped, searching for a loose piece, something to pull. Before I found anything, Dale noticed me.
    He stared blearily at me, held up the transmitter, and grinned. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. I sat on the floor next to Kimi, lifted one hand rapidly upward in front of Rowdy’s nose to tell him to lie down, and then put a hand on each of my dogs. I slid the hand that rested on Kimi slowly under the tight, tight collar and felt for the plugs. There were two. I squeezed my fingers between those plugs and Kimi’s neck. I held still, waiting.
     

Chapter 28

     
    DALE Johnson should have known better than to tease Edna about a burglar, and his brothers should have known better than to let him get away with it. All three should have realized that their mother had no sense of humor.
    The only person facing the stairs, I saw