Evil Breeding

the cemetery fence. No cars coming! Rowdy, this way!” Across the street we went and onto the grass that carpeted the area between the pavement and the chain-link. Now that we were practically inside the cemetery, I directed my attention to looking and listening for a sign of a guard on night patrol. Birders would be silent, wouldn’t they? Or did they night-visit in chattering flocks?
    Rowdy expressed his anxiety about murderers, graveyards, and assorted other petrifying threats both real and imaginary by casually lifting his leg on the fence and then on a utility pole. The streetlight mounted atop the pole cast none of its light into Mount Auburn. Its principal effect was to dim my night vision. Through the chain-link, I saw nothing in the cemetery and, indeed, nothing of the cemetery. It might have been a black hole in outer space. Not five minutes earlier, I’d assured myself that Mount Auburn would be thick with armed guards. If so, they were on stealthy patrol. The call notes of birds or birders? There were none. I strained to hear footfalls. Ah, but would the guards necessarily be on foot? Mount Auburn had more than ten miles of roads and paths. In the daytime, maintenance crews used trucks and golf carts. If Rowdy and I just kept heading along the fence toward that never-used gate, I was sure to see the lights of a patrol car and to hear the comforting sound of its engine. For all I knew, the guards kept watch from outside the cemetery as well as from within! At any moment, Mount Auburn guards or maybe even uniformed members of the Cambridge police force might cruise along Coolidge Avenue. Moving quickly behind Rowdy, I shifted my eyes hopefully back and forth between Mount Auburn, a few inches to my left, and the Cambridge Cemetery across the street. Maybe it, too, had guards! To my annoyance, however, Coolidge Avenue remained almost as deserted as the burial grounds that bordered it. I began to feel an irrational anger at the families and loved ones of the people buried for acres and acres around me. Why did cemetery visits have to be daytime events? Foolish custom! Why not floodlight the monuments and turf, throw open the gates to flower-bearing nocturnal mourners? Wasn’t it on lonely nights that the departed were most acutely missed? If fair were fair, these forsaken grounds would be open twenty-four hours a day! Supermarkets were. Why not cemeteries? Which was more likely to strike at three A.M.— grief or hunger?
    A few cars passed. Not one looked even remotely like a cruiser. As Rowdy and I drew opposite the gate to the Cambridge Cemetery, the grass verge on our side of Coolidge Avenue widened, and trees appeared between the pavement and the Mount Auburn fence. Almost clinging to the fence, I felt sheltered by the trees and took advantage of the sense of concealment to halt briefly and once again focus on the far side of the chain-link. As before, all was as dark and silent as the proverbial you-know-what. We’d covered the distance from the car in what felt like an unnaturally short time. The unused gate to Mount Auburn must be along here somewhere. I cursed myself for failing to study the terrain by daylight when the dogs and I had taken this route to the river. I’d driven by here many times. Why hadn’t I noted the mileage from landmark to landmark? From Shady Hill Road to the border of Cambridge Cemetery? Why hadn’t I memorized the precise location of the unused gate? Because it hadn’t mattered, that’s why. Landmarks hadn’t been landmarks. Until now.
    The gate was even closer than I expected. My memory had distorted its size. Perhaps because the double doors were always closed, I’d remembered the gate as a single, narrow panel. But I’d been right in recalling a length of heavy chain. As usual, the gate was closed. My hands found the chain, which was deceptively looped around the panels of the double gate as if to lock them together. I found one end of the chain, then the other, and ran my fingers slowly along the links. The gate was indeed shut and chained. But it wasn’t actually locked. Despite the mildness of the night, a shiver of cold ran down my arms. This had to be where B. Robert Motherway and the tattooed man had led Jocelyn into Mount Auburn. When? At a guess, twenty minutes ago. Was Jocelyn dead now? Murdered? This gate was the men’s bolt-hole, wasn’t it? Any second now, it could open. When it did, I’d collide with Jocelyn’s killers face to face. No guard