"Gentlemen," said Captain Ulibarri.
He hadn't raised his voice. He'd put down his pen and stood up from the table, that was all. Ingot let go of the strap. She let go so suddenly that I sat down hard on the floor with the backpack in my lap. She backed away two steps and sat, and looked at the captain, and looked at the backpack, and her whole body shook.
Captain Ulibarri walked over and looked down at me. He didn't look angry. He looked the way he'd looked the Friday before, when he'd come back from the call on Orman Avenue, tired and careful, like a man going down a flight of stairs in the dark.
"Eloy," he said. "That dog has been telling you something for two weeks. I think it's time we found out what. Open the bag, please."
I held it against my chest. Everybody was looking at me. Chuy and Hank and Bert, who was standing now, in his socks. I could feel the receiver in the front pocket against my ribs, the hard corner of it, the stub of the antenna. I thought: this is it. This is when they find out. And I almost did it, I almost just opened the zipper and handed it to him and said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I left him, I've been leaving him for a month. My hand was on the zipper.
And Ingot stopped barking.
She stopped all at once, in the middle of a whine, and she went perfectly still. She stood up. She tipped her head way over to the right, further than I'd ever seen her tip it, so that her black ear pointed almost straight at the ceiling, and she looked at the backpack in my arms. She didn't make a sound. Nobody in the kitchen made a sound. The furnace ticked. The coffee maker on the counter gurgled once and stopped. Outside, on Evans Avenue, a car went by with its chains on, chink chink chink.