Dead Dog Blues — Neal Barrett Jr.

You find a dead barking dog and maybe what you want is a nice cold beer. Three or four would be better. A dead barking dog's not a thing you can explain to anybody...
Say you're Jack Track and you've been away from Pharaoh, Texas for fourteen years...using an assumed name, and there was that business with the two dead hoods and the two million dollars...and when you come back you're the town constable and your main job's making sure the stores are all locked up.

Nothing at all happens for a while, then everything happens at once. Millionaire Max Coomer's big black Lab is found in his backyard--a tape recorder between his legs and its jaws wired to a barbecue pit. Then Coomer's maid goes missing, and Coomer himself winds up dead and running for glory down Pharaoh High's football field.

After several other folks die in bizarre ways, it's clear that a maniac's gone loose in Pharaoh. It looks like Jack's going to have to borrow Doc Hackley's Thompson submachine gun that once belonged to Clyde Barrow.

Unless he wants to wind up dead.