Evil Breeding

and a dog trainer. The cop was Kevin Dennehy. Jocelyn’s fears had been rational; her life was in jeopardy. It was time to call the police. Or it would be, as soon as I could get away. For the moment, I didn’t dare to move. I’d taken refuge on surprisingly cold and damp earth between the scratchy hedge and the wooden fence. Now that the man had appeared and the car door was open, I was afraid that any movement I made would set the shrubbery rustling. I’d stuck my head out far enough beyond the end of the fence and hedge to discover that they bordered a driveway. It offered no cover. If I leaped out and bolted, I’d be dead. For now, I could do nothing but listen and watch.
    There was little to hear. B. Robert spoke softly to Jocelyn. He must have ordered her to move the car beyond the driveway and then turn off the engine and the headlights. She did. The door reopened and the interior lights again came on. I could see that he was holding a silver flask, the kind of old-fashioned one I associate with flappers, Prohibition, and bathtub gin. The gun was in his left hand, the flask in his right. He put the flask down for a moment. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but he must have produced some pills from somewhere, because when he spoke, he said, “Swallow them. All of them.” Jocelyn must have complied. It was her habit. Without a gun at her head, she’d probably have obeyed. I couldn’t see her, but I heard gasping and sputtering. Maybe the flask really did contain gin.
    B. Robert was unsympathetic. “Pig! Look what you’ve done to my dashboard. Dirty pig!”
    I remembered reading somewhere that as an epithet, pig was far more insulting in German than in English.
    As B. Robert repeated it, the tattooed man moved around the car to the driver’s side and opened the front door. “The keys,” he told Jocelyn.
    Reaching toward the ignition, B. Robert said, “I’ll take them. You get her. Gently! Not a mark on her! Suicide, suicide, suicide! The dirty little pig will soon be all nice and clean. Off we go!” With that, he stepped out of the car, waited until Jocelyn had done the same, and then threw a switch on the door, an automatic lock, I assumed. I heard a click. Then both doors closed. Motherway didn’t suffer from my sense of vehicular social inferiority. With Jocelyn between them, the men crossed Coolidge Avenue and disappeared into the darkness by the fence. Was the locked gate here? It seemed to me that it wasn’t across from the houses, but across from the Cambridge Cemetery, in other words, between me and my car.
    I forced myself to count to sixty. Then I did it again four more times before wiggling from under the hedge and emerging on Shady Hill Road. Trying to adopt the unobservant, inner-directed manner of a fitness walker on her regular route, I made no effort to conceal myself, but strode boldly to the comer, turned left, and headed toward my car. The impulse to sprint was almost overwhelming. I restrained it. As I’d done on the way from the car, I avoided the Mount Auburn side of the street. Casting my eyes in that direction, listening hard, I neither saw nor heard a thing; Jocelyn and her captors must already have entered the cemetery. Even after I passed the entrance to the Cambridge Cemetery and found myself squeezed into the road by the guardrail, I persisted in my superstitious resistance to crossing Coolidge Avenue. Instead, keeping an eye out for cars, I broke into a run at the edge of the blacktop. Pounding along, I managed not to worry about Rowdy. Instead, I focused on a mental map of the area and searched it for the location of the nearest pay phone. At the Mount Auburn Star Market? Or in the opposite direction, at the shopping mall on Arsenal Street? The two spots were about the same distance from my car, weren’t they? So the direction didn’t really matter. Whichever way I went, I’d be talking to the police in no time. And if Christopher Motherway were lurking around somewhere? If he were part of the plan? If he were meeting his fellow conspirators inside Mount Auburn? Or keeping a lookout? Well, the chances were negligible that he’d noticed the Bronco in the parking lot by the condo building. If he had? Why would he break into my car and steal Rowdy, for heaven’s sake? Not that Rowdy would have put up a fuss. On the contrary, Rowdy’d have happily gone with Christopher Motherway or anyone else. In the short time it took me to reach the parking lot, my heart