Evil Breeding (22 page)

I
F HE’D BEEN CROSSING
from the cemetery side of Mount Auburn Street to the Star Market side, I’d probably have decided that the worst he was up to was shoplifting. In my dogs, that up-to-trouble air often heralds a spree of food-stealing. But he was making his strangely abstracted yet resolute way across the street to the sidewalk that runs by the cemetery fence. Mount Auburn Cemetery is, I might mention, the largest fully fenced yard in Cambridge. It’s much larger than Harvard Yard, which is walled rather than fenced, and the walls are, in any case, rendered almost completely useless by the wide-open gates. Imagine! An institution of so-called higher learning where dogs can’t pursue advanced obedience skills because it’s unsafe to work them off-leash! And with Harvard’s endowment! Disgraceful! There’s no excuse.

Mount Auburn does have an excuse: disrespect for the dead. Eager though I am for a clean, attractive, spacious, and fully fenced area right near my house where I can train and exercise the dogs off-leash, I have to admit that it would be a little unseemly to allow even such splendid and civilized animals as Kimi and Rowdy to lift their legs on B. F. Skinner or Mary Baker Eddy. Skinner’s presence, though, sustains my hope. Skinner? Harvard psychology professor. Renowned behaviorist. Pigeons, not dogs, but learning is learning, or so Skinner maintained. Best publicist that operant conditioning
ever had. Anyway, there lies Skinner, cold and mute, when, damn it, if I could just warm him for a minute or two of animated chitchat, he’d come up with a clever solution to the vexing problem of how to train dogs not to pee on tombstones. The other part I’ve solved myself: The owners carry plastic cleanup bags. The plan as a whole is perfectly sound. There’s ample precedent. From the beginning, Mount Auburn has been more than a place to bury the dead. Since 1831, it’s been an arboretum, a nature preserve, a sculpture garden, and a bird sanctuary as well as a cemetery. Precedent! Precedent for its reincarnation as the world’s largest and most beautiful training facility and off-leash dog park. The transformation wouldn’t cost a thing. You’d just have to persuade visitors to close the gates.

Gates. The fence. That’s where we were. As I was starting to say, in contrast to Harvard Yard, which has high, solid, uniformly expensive-looking brick walls on all sides, Mount Auburn Cemetery has a stretch of handsome, obviously costly wrought-iron fencing on either side of the main gate, which is a towering gray stone, Egyptian-looking affair that somehow fits the popular conception of the gates of hell, but with a different inscription and radically different intentions, of course. The point of a garden cemetery cum bird sanctuary and dog park and so forth is to urge people to reclaim hope, right? Not to abandon it. Anyway, the wrought-iron section wouldn’t have disgraced Giralda, but having sensibly put their money up front, where it shows, the Mount Auburn people have economized around the rest of the cemetery’s perimeter, most of which is bounded by chain-link,
good
chain-link, mind you, quality stuff, but not in a class with wrought iron. Not that I’m complaining! The Committee for the Canine Reclamation of Mount Auburn is perfectly satisfied with the existing dog-containment system. The chain-link is heavy and sturdy, and it’s high enough all the way around to prevent dogs from leaping over. People, too.

The cemetery had closed for the day. The main gate was shut, as the back gate undoubtedly was, too. If the tattooed Mercedes man intended to enter, he’d need to force a gate, scale the fence, or cut a hole in it. On the night of Peter
Motherway’s murder, someone had apparently climbed over. The gates hadn’t been tampered with. The chain-link hadn’t been cut. Rather, someone had hauled the body over the fence before transporting it to the Gardner vault.

Whatever the man’s intentions, he wouldn’t carry them out here on Mount Auburn Street. Now, even after the rush hour had ended, cars and trucks passed, their headlights on. The Star Market was busy. Streetlights shone on pedestrians. I’d had practice in sneaking a dog into Mount Auburn when it was open to the public. Now, stopped at a red light, I quickly tried to plan what I’d do if I wanted to enter unobserved after dark. If I walked along the fence in the direction the man was taking, I’d come to Coolidge Avenue, where I’d turn right and continue to make my way along the boundary of Mount Auburn. The inhabitants of the big, handsome houses on the opposite side of Coolidge Avenue would be arriving home late from work, leaving for evening activities, walking dogs, and otherwise coming and going. After a quarter mile or maybe a half mile, the houses would give way to the grounds of the Cambridge Cemetery, which has a magnificent view of the Charles River, but is otherwise an ordinary cemetery, lacking as it does Mount Auburn’s magnificent monuments, impressive vegetation, imaginative landscaping, and famous remains. Ah, the eternal town and gown! Still, there’s a fairness about death. Residents on both sides slept the same six feet under. Even along that stretch, Coolidge Avenue wouldn’t be deserted; it served as a convenient shortcut from Cambridge proper to several large condominium buildings, a tennis and fitness club, and a big shopping mall. But tall trees grew inside and, in some places, outside Mount Auburn’s fence. Furthermore, somewhere along Coolidge was a gate I’d seen in daylight when the dogs and I took this route to the river. I vaguely remembered the gate as small. I’d never paid much attention to it because it was always closed and secured with a length of chain; a permanently locked, evidently unused entrance was no place to sneak in a dog.

When the traffic light turned green, I drove past the turn at Brattle that would have taken me home and past the man, who was now moving swiftly. At Coolidge, I made a right
and cruised by the big, illuminated houses. Somewhere to my right, not far beyond the fence, was the fine old Mount Auburn neighborhood that included the Mary Baker Eddy Monument and the Gardner family vault. The tattooed man had prayed before Mrs. Gardner’s portrait at Fenway Court. Did he also worship at her grave? If the vault was his destination, he might scramble over the fence soon after turning onto Coolidge. But maybe not. The discovery of Peter Motherway’s corpse had generated lots of media attention. Especially near the Gardner vault, people would be on the alert, wouldn’t they? Cemetery guards, residents of Coolidge Avenue, passersby. As I’d expected, lights were on in the houses along Coolidge, but no children played on the front lawns, and no one sat on the steps or porches by the front doors. There wasn’t a dog in sight. These suburban-style houses had side yards and backyards, many of them fenced. What had I been thinking? This wasn’t an area where neighbors visited back and forth to gossip on front stoops or where children played anywhere near the street. The yards probably had teak benches and those expensive wooden climbing structures that combine swings, ladders, slides, and gymnastics equipment with adorable little tree houses. Cambridge being Cambridge, Mommy and Daddy sat outside congratulating themselves on the papers they’d just had accepted by peer-reviewed journals. Cambridge being Cambridge, the kiddies prepared for adult life by imaginatively scaling the ladder from assistant to associate to full professor upward, ever upward, toward the tree house, transformed by the infant vision of the future into the ivory tower of academe. The family dog, a black Lab, kept hopefully dropping a tennis ball. No one threw it for him. Why bother? You don’t get tenure by playing with your dog.

The traffic was lighter than I’d predicted. For a skilled interloper, almost anywhere along here would offer access to Mount Auburn. I began to look for a place to pull over, preferably a place where I could sit in my car and reconnoiter. A row of parked cars would have camouflaged mine; here, not a single car was parked on the street. What’s more, its age and dents made the old Bronco distinctive; the man could have
noticed it on the way to Waltham or at the fast-food place. My car was more recognizable than I was, I thought. Bigger, too. On foot, I could become all but invisible in the dark. I could flatten myself against a tree trunk or lurk in a shadow. I had to get rid of the car.

Just after turning onto Coolidge, along the stretch with the big houses, I’d passed a couple of narrow side streets, one of which dead-ended at the Shady Hill School. Like other elite private grade schools, Shady Hill would have liberated its students at the end of May or the beginning of June; there’d be no parent-teacher meetings or school plays tonight. On the other hand, the school’s parking area might be gated shut for the night, or there might be a security guard who’d have my car towed. The access road undoubtedly had permit-only parking; my Cambridge permit was good for my own neighborhood but not for this one. What’s more, the area around Shady Hill had the kinds of fancy houses that attract burglars; my disreputable Bronco might be mistaken for a getaway car. Feeling outclassed, I ended up leaving the Bronco much farther from Mount Auburn Street than I’d have liked, in the parking lot of the older of two condo complexes near the intersection of Coolidge and Grove. I pulled in, parked, and killed the engine. In his crate, Rowdy stirred. When he shook himself, the tags on his collar jingled. He’s always thrilled to go anywhere.

“Sorry, boy,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

I hated to leave him. I always hate to leave my dogs. Rowdy is, however, a big, flashy showman who knocks himself out to become the center of all eyes. He carries his plumy white tail over his back. Except in a complete blackout, you can see his white face, and it’s hard to miss the watch-me wag of that magnificent tail. Unobtrusive he’s not. Tonight, I wanted to pass unnoticed.

In the absence of Rowdy and Kimi, I imagined their leashes in my hands and their familiar rear ends surging ahead of me as I set off back down Coolidge Avenue on the side opposite Mount Auburn. A short stretch of sidewalk ended, a guardrail appeared, and I found myself forced into the road. On this side of Coolidge, though, I was free from
the irrational fear that the man would vault over the fence from inside the cemetery to plummet on top of me. I always walk fast; ever since I first toddled, my pace has been set by big dogs. Now I almost trotted. It still seemed to take me forever to cover the ground. I felt a strange, senseless annoyance at the absence of lights in Mount Auburn. The place was closed to the public. Why waste electricity? The only living people who belonged there were guards, who certainly carried flashlights and knew their way around, and maybe a few of those topflight birders who were rumored to possess cemetery keys. What bothered me, I realized, was the contrast with the cozy, residential atmosphere of Mount Auburn by daylight. The cemetery had its Chestnut, Oak, Spruce, and Magnolia avenues, its Pond Road. The graves, too, bore familiar names. Julia Ward Howe, Winslow Homer, and their neighbors weren’t just
buried
at Mount Auburn; they
lived
there. Immortality was the point, wasn’t it? The nighttime darkness of the Cambridge Cemetery, on my right, felt normal. Mount Auburn, however, was a charming little town abnormally blackened by a massive power failure.

Soon after I passed the Cambridge Cemetery, just before the access road to Shady Hill, I heard the approach of a car behind me. So what? A few others had passed in both directions. Those cars, however, had been speeding along. This one was moving slowly. Before its headlights reached me, I impulsively stepped to the right, flattened myself on the ground between a hedge and a fence, and peered. What I was seeing might, I thought, be known as a town car. Or was that Town Car, with capitals? Anyway, it was a big American car, not a limousine, but the kind of long, dark car from which a uniformed chauffeur could emerge without surprising anyone. As the car crept by, I read the license plate. The tiny bulbs mounted above it struck me as ridiculous: A license plate was not a work of art that deserved to be admired in good light. What really drew my dog-person’s eye, though, was the vanity plate. You can’t attend a dog show without seeing hundreds of vanity plates:
DACHSLUV, MALS R A1, DAL-PROUD
, and all kinds of others printed with breed brags and abbreviated kennel names.

This vanity plate?
HSM GSD.

To a dog person, GSD means one thing: German shepherd dog. Having decoded the second part of the license plate, I understood the first. HSM: Haus Motherway. Haus Motherway German Shepherd Dogs. B. Robert Motherway’s kennel. Then I finally recognized the car as the limo-like one I’d seen in the Motherways’ barn. B. Robert Motherway’s vanity plate. B. Robert Motherway’s car. Was he in it? Was Christopher? Jocelyn? Two of the surviving Motherways? All three? Only a short distance ahead of me, the car came almost to a stop before turning right onto Shady Hill Road.

Feeling foolish, I imitated war-movie G.I.’s by crawling flat on my belly to the end of the fence and the hedge. The big car halted. For a minute or two, it just waited there, its engine running, its headlights on. A soft glow came from the interior of the car, but I couldn’t see in. The windows were tinted, I realized. Also, my position on the ground made a wretched vantage point. Suddenly a dark figure crossed from the opposite side of Coolidge Avenue so quickly that it almost seemed to materialize at the front passenger door of the big car. I’d noticed the purposeful air of the tattooed man. His purpose, or part of it, was now clear: He was keeping an appointment. In response to his presence, the door opened. The interior lights went on. My view was now unimpeded. At the wheel was Jocelyn. In the passenger seat, holding a gun to her head, sat B. Robert Motherway. I understood his purpose, too. He was delivering Jocelyn to her executioner.

H
ERE IN CAMBRIDGE
, if you want to spend a pleasant, companionable afternoon in the outdoors, you and your friends stroll through Mount Auburn Cemetery. You chat, admire the trees, and walk on the remains of dead people. In Maine, where I grew up, you do more or less the same thing. You stroll through the woods chatting and admiring the trees, but instead of passively treading on corpses, you create them. Then you take them home and eat them for dinner. They aren’t human, of course. Still, the recreational similarities outweigh the differences: fresh air, camaraderie, nature, death.