And it came into my head all at once, whole, the way the answer to a math problem comes after you've given up on it. The gaps in my grandfather's snoring. The yapping under the hiss. Yap yap yap. Every day at half past four, when Ingot sounded off.
"It's a dog," I said. "It's not the mailman. It's the dog in there." I pointed at the receiver. "That little dog. It barks at the mailman every day, I've been hearing it, I thought it was the TV. And Ingot hears it barking and she barks back. That's what she's doing. She's been barking at that dog. She's been barking at that dog for two weeks."
The captain looked at Ingot. Ingot looked at the receiver in his hand with her head tipped all the way over, and she whined, a long rising whine, and then she went to the side door and put her nose to the crack at the bottom of it, and stood there with her tail straight out behind her.
"Where's Lucero's route after us?" the captain said.
"Down Evans," Hank said. "Then over to Pine. He's done by four-thirty, most days. Ends at the Gurulé place, he told me once, because it's the last house before the cut-through to the—"
"The Gurulé house," I said. "There's people in the Gurulé house. A little girl. And a dog. A little black dog with big ears. I saw them in the window."
"Let's go," the captain said.