Evil Breeding

to me is about Christina’s death and, as of what arrived today, Peter’s murder. That’s why I’m showing it to you. It’s your business, not mine. For all I know, someone knew we were friends and sent this stuff to me on the assumption that I’d do exactly what I’m doing right now.”
     

Chapter Twenty
     
    AT NINE O’CLOCK the next morning, the wail of sirens on Concord Avenue set off sympathetic vibrations in my dogs’ vocal cords. With all the free will of fine crystal shattering in response to the power of a high soprano note, I snatched a little yellow-and-white noisemaker and a handful of cheese cubes and began to click and treat. The scenario serves as a handy paradigm. An environmental stimulus triggers a response in dogs that itself acts as a stimulus for a human behavior. This neat behavioral chain is what we in the profession succinctly refer to as “dog training.” I am happy to report that a mastery of the fundamentals of this sport enables the trainer to generalize her skills to the modification of human behavior.
    Consider, for example, my success in letting Kevin Dennehy elicit a ton of homicide-relevant behavior from me while supplying me with hardly any information. What had I learned from Kevin? That Peter had not been murdered at Mount Auburn. That the murder weapon had been a length of wire. That B. Robert Motherway and his look-alike grandson, Christopher, alibied each other for the time of Peter Motherway’s demise, and that Jocelyn claimed to have been home alone. So what? I already knew that the elderly Mr. Motherway lacked the physical strength to have garroted Peter or to have moved the body to the Gardner vault. Although Christopher was young and powerful, what motive could he have had to kill his father? Although he was B. Robert’s biological grandson, Christopher was, in effect, his grandfather’s favorite son. Why do in a rival he had already defeated?
    And the unalibied Jocelyn? I continued to see her as the victim, not the victimizer. This was, after all, a woman who passively played the role of servant to her in-laws. She couldn’t even stand up to an ill-mannered dog. In desperation, she might have lashed out at her husband. But Peter had been intercepted at Logan Airport, not killed at home, and he’d been garroted. The murderer must have prepared the garrote in advance. And the method was gruesome. Kevin might be right that murder was often a family affair. But murder by garroting? Women shot their husbands and lovers, didn’t they? They poisoned them. Or stabbed them with kitchen knives. If I decided to murder someone, I’d choose a weapon I at least knew how to use. A length of wire: How long? With handles fastened to the ends? Handles? What kind? Fastened how? Then wrap it around the victim’s neck. But what if the victim resisted? Even if he didn’t, then what? Yank hard? Once? Repeatedly? Twist the weapon? Or not? Pull and keep pulling? For how long? I couldn’t possibly garrote anyone. Even if I were that kind of person, I wouldn’t know how. And Jocelyn? Even if she had the specialized knowledge I lacked, did she have the requisite force of will?
    But let me return to the application of the principles of dog training to the shaping of human behavior in everyday life. After making great progress in using the click-and-treat method with the dogs, I settled in front of my computer and retrieved my e-mail, which included a message from my coauthor, Elizabeth Kublansky. “IMHO,” she wrote in e-mail jargon —in my humble opinion —“if you cannot get it together to turn out straightforward text in your usual orderly fashion, you should just say so, and I’ll find someone who can. I don’t know about you, but I need the second half of our pitiful advance. My part of this book is done. Where’s yours?”
    With one click of the mouse, I deleted Elizabeth’s message. The treat was the Web. Having resolved to obey Elizabeth’s sensible command by writing publishable sentences to accompany her photographs instead of continuing to amass increasing amounts of useless information, I rewarded myself with what was supposed to be a minute or two on-line to search for anything about Eva Kappe, the housemaid recommended by Mrs. Dodge, the writer of the 1939 letter from Giralda. There wouldn’t be anything. Why would there? In five minutes, after finding nothing, I’d be off-line and dutifully double-clicking the icon for my word-processing program,