It happens so fast that the crunch of steel into skull melds with the crumpling of body into gravel.

When Henry releases the iron, the bandaged cord keeps it swinging right below his fingertips. On the ground, the dogmonger’s eyes stretch with shock. Black blood spills fast from a deep, crescent-shaped wound under the dogmonger’s temple and begins trickling into his mouth, spattering as the man gasps. When he tries to stand, his limbs skitter like a crab on ice.

Panic claws Henry. He worms his fingers free of the cord, and the iron thumps to the ground. He squats over the dogmonger, shakes his shoulders, saying, “Look at me. Look at me.”

The dogmonger’s eyes dribble wildly, the rest of him twitching in weedy, erratic spasms. A female copy of the dogmonger, small-faced and hair like silly string, steps out of room 9. Her unblinking gaze springs from the gash to Henry to the iron and back to Henry. “Jesus,” she says. “The fuck you do?”

“Call an ambulance.”

A cough speckles red onto his suit sleeve.

The woman’s pupils quiver in a rapid lateral motion, as if various interactions with the authorities are playing out right in front of her. She blinks, having reached a decision:

“Fuck that.”

She disappears into room 9 and in seconds charges out with a plastic grocery bag tucked under one arm, the dachshund in the other. Room 9’s door hasn’t shut all the way, and now a pit bull’s nose presses through the gap. The dog scuttles after the woman and manages to hump its way into the driver’s door of the Neon before she closes it. Now comes a German shepherd, then a golden retriever. A Labradoodle. A Pomeranian. A boxer. A Shih Tzu. A Yorkshire terrier. A pug waddles out last, approaching Henry and the dogmonger. It takes a lap at the wound. Unimpressed, the pug trots off into the night with the others playing in the darkness, skittering out of the way as the Neon peels out, its flat front tire thumping over the gravel, then drumming down the service road.

When Henry props the dogmonger onto his side, a pistol slips from his waistband to the gravel. Henry kicks it away, then starts swabbing at the blood with the back of one hand, trying to reroute the black stream away from the dogmonger’s mouth before getting Junior.

Inside room 8, the hammer of the bathtub faucet is deafening. The tub has overflowed, a film of water rippling over the linoleum and inching across the carpet. Junior is sound asleep. With his clean hand, Henry shakes the boy much rougher than he’d meant to.

First recognition then terror flashes over Junior, suddenly locked in Henry’s grasp. Before Henry can apologize, the boy says, “I’m ready for my bath now.”