Evil Breeding

then ministered to his eyes, which he was forced to close to avoid having his eyeballs groomed. After that, she apparently meant to give herself a break, but Rowdy stirred. Gently and tenderly, he poked her in the chest with one of his big forepaws. More! As if she were glad to know that he appreciated her efforts, she resumed her task. The sight of Kimi playing dental hygienist with her tongue was too much for Kevin. He looked back at me.
    “Quiet type.” Kevin’s tone was ominous.
    “Kimi? Kevin, I’d hardly call her the—”
    “The widow. Jocelyn. Sometimes it’s the mousy ones that—”
    “That what? Turn out to be bubbling with murderous rage that finally comes spewing out? Kevin, Jocelyn Motherway is not some sleeping volcano. I’ve met her. She just isn’t.” Stretching his gorilla-like arms in an immense shrug, Kevin said lugubriously, “Marriage. It’ll do that to a person.” Kevin’s prejudice against the institution is not based on personal experience, unless you count his experience with his mother and his late father, who died a natural death, at least as far as I know. Rather, according to Kevin, he merely possesses a professional understanding of the risks of marriage and parenthood. For as long as I’ve known him, his view has been that if your spouse doesn’t kill you, your parents, your siblings, or your children will.
    I hoped Kevin wouldn’t launch into statistics. He did. Forty-five percent of murder victims were killed by people they knew. Twenty-six percent of female murder victims were done in by a husband or boyfriend. When women committed murder, in thirty-one point four percent of the cases, the victim was the husband. Mate homicide is a phrase he savors.
    “Kevin, I don’t remember numbers the way you do, but I seem to recall from one of our previous discussions that the great majority of murderers and victims are men. Violence is a predominantly male phenomenon. It is in dogs. The typical dog that bites someone is an intact male. Unneutered. ” Kevin turned red.
    “But,” I added, “does that mean that Rowdy is going to bite someone? No. And all the statistics going do not mean that this particular murder is a mate homicide. Since most murderers are male, the raw probability is that Peter was killed by a man.”
    “Never said otherwise.” With a look that falsely suggested a change of subject, Kevin asked, “You read about that guy in Watertown?”
    Watertown is west of Cambridge. I’d assumed until now that Kevin had been too busy to follow the latest local example of what was definitely a family murder. This one was especially gory and dramatic. At five-thirty in the evening on a quiet street of small houses, a thirty-six-year-old man cut his sixty-seven-year-old father’s throat. The father got up and ran. Neighbors tried to intervene, but the son caught the father and stabbed him to death.
    “Yes,” I admitted, “and if you know any details that weren’t in the paper, I don’t want to hear them, and in particular, considering that we have both just eaten a big meal, including steak, it would be nice of you to refrain from quoting the autopsy report.” I particularly hate hearing postmortem incisions compared to letters of the alphabet. I like the alphabet. I don’t want to think of its letters in terms of shapes incised in dead bodies. “Peter Motherway wasn’t stabbed, was he? I thought he was strangled.”
    “Garroted.Strangled with a thin length of wire.” He got himself another beer.
    “What makes you think he wasn’t killed at Mount Auburn?”
    Kevin was succinct. “Everything. M.E. says so. And Motherway’s vehicle was left at Logan, probably right where he parked it. Poor bastard probably never got back into it. Eight forty-five P.M. Comes out of the cargo terminal, proceeds to his vehicle, perp moves in from behind, wire around his neck—”
    “Well, you can probably rule out old Mr. Motherway. He’s in great shape for his age, but I’m far from sure he’s strong enough. And Jocelyn doesn’t have the gumption. Christopher?”
    “Out to dinner with Granddad. Got to the restaurant— French place in Acton—at seven-thirty. Left at ten. Service must’ve been awful. Stopped for gas on the way home. Verified.” Acton is west of Boston, nowhere near Logan airport or Mount Auburn Cemetery.
    “Jocelyn wasn’t with them,” I said.
    “Home alone,” Kevin replied. “Big, brawny woman. A lot of muscles from lifting the old