Home Body Read online

  Home Body

  A Jack McMorrow Mystery

  Other books by Gerry Boyle

  Jack McMorrow Mystery Series

  Deadline

  Bloodline

  Lifeline

  Potshot

  Borderline

  Cover Story

  Pretty Dead

  Once Burned

  Straw Man

  Praise for:

  Straw Man

  “Deftly drawn characters and a strong sense of place add texture and depth to this gritty tale of rural crime and vigilante justice.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Once Burned

  “Once Burned may be the best mystery McMorrow mystery yet—an intricate and clever plot, sharply defined characters, authentic Maine setting, snappy dialogue, and white-knuckle suspense.”

  —Bill Bushnell, Kennebec Journal

  Home body

  A Jack McMorrow Mystery

  Gerry Boyle

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  Home body

  e-book edition / July 2017

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by Gerry Boyle

  ISBN: 978-1-944762-17-9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949383

  Islandport Press

  P.O. Box 10

  Yarmouth, Maine 04096

  www.islandportpress.com

  [email protected]

  Publisher: Dean Lunt

  Cover Design: Teresa Lagrange, Islandport Press

  Cover image courtesy of iStock: CribbVisuals

  Printed in the USA

  For Emily, Carolyn, and Charlie.

  I count my blessings.

  Introduction

  The woman lived in a mobile home on a country road. I don’t recall the exact location, but I have a vague recollection of the place: a sliding-glass door that opened onto a wooden platform built around an aboveground swimming pool, the kind with fish printed on the sides and a blue liner that is supposed to make the water look like the sea. Not the sea in Maine, which is gray-green, but the sea around some tropical island, where the blue is vivid, at least in the pictures in magazines.

  This was many years ago, in Clinton, a small town in Kennebec County, Maine. I was a columnist, the guy with his picture in the paper. I told people’s stories, and a woman had called and asked me to tell hers.

  I can picture the meeting. There was the woman, her hair dyed an unlikely shade of red, flanked by some other relatives who didn’t say much. It was the woman who did a lot of the talking. She was the mom. The story was about her daughter, who was fifteen or so. She’d been living on the streets in Portland and Bangor and she’d just come home. It looked like there’d been some kind of party for the occasion, maybe a cake. They’d decided that the story of the Prodigal Daughter had a lesson that needed sharing.

  While I don’t recall the moral of the story or why she’d left home in the first place, I can picture the girl. She was slim and wiry and attractive in a tough, chain-smoking sort of way. And I remember her saying how when she first landed on the streets in Portland, she was given a serious beating by the other homeless kids. It was a rite of passage and she’d survived, and didn’t seem to have any hard feelings. She was accepted after that, and settled into the street-kid routine: filch food from fast-food restaurants, ride the bus to the mall and harass the rent-a-cop, find a place to spend the night, warm.

  I wrote the column, went on to the next one. But I couldn’t get a question out of my mind: What if a kid who wasn’t cut out for homeless life ended up on the streets? And what if once that kid got out there, there was no going back?

  Enter Rocky, first encountered by Jack and Roxanne as they sit down in a restaurant on Monument Square in Portland. Rocky runs by the window with a gang of kids in pursuit. I can picture that scene like it really happened. The restaurant was real then, but now it’s gone. Rocky was real to me, too, born from that conversation in the Clinton trailer. I imagined him badgered out of his home by a cruel and domineering dad who expected his son to be “a real man.” Rocky still likes to play with Legos.

  Roxanne, a child protective worker, is drawn into Rocky’s life. Jack follows and soon is tracking the elusive teen through her friend Tammy, who’s taken Rocky under her streetwise wing. The pair navigates a cold and heartless world where there are only two types of people: exploiters and the exploited, predators and prey.

  These are two characters who have haunted me—Rocky, because I wanted Jack to save him; Tammy, because she was a twist of fate away from another life. There are good breaks and bad breaks, and sometimes I wonder if I should have helped Tammy out more. McMorrow can only do so much.

  There’s another reason why Tammy has stayed with me, long after McMorrow and I have gone on to other stories. I can’t tell you the details here, but after you read the book, drop me a line ([email protected]). Put tammy in the subject line. I’ll fill you in on the one occasion where life imitated my art in a way that dropped me in my tracks. Really.

  I wrote Home Body in 2000 or so. My publisher at the time decided to publish the McMorrow novel Pretty Dead out of order, so Rocky and Tammy had to wait in the wings for a year before they got to take center stage. It was tough for me to wait for their appearance because I knew that while my street kids were waiting in the publishing pipeline, real kids just like Rocky and Tammy were wandering the streets, lying awake in shelters, huddling in the back of city buses, squirming out of the grasp of some very bad people. Or not.

  Were there real Jack McMorrows out there to come to their aid? We can only hope.

  —Gerry Boyle

  March 2017

  1

  k

  A Monday morning and I was waiting for Roxanne at Portland District Court. She had a hearing about a little girl who was being molested by her uncle, who had done time for doing the same thing to his daughter, but I didn’t know that because it was all confidential. I stood in the corridor with the defendants: drunken drivers and bar fighters, check bouncers and methadone junkies. We were slouched against the wall, eyeing the cops and lawyers and listening to their cheery, grating banter. The guy next to me, tall and gaunt and wolfish, looked at the people in suits and shiny shoes and dismissed them with an obscenity. Along the wall, there was silent agreement. And then a deputy pushed the courtroom doors open from inside and a knot of people emerged.

  A puffy-eyed woman and her emaciated husband. Their lawyer, a pale, doughy guy who looked about fifteen. A counselor or something, a woman toting folders for each of her young and tormented clients. And then Roxanne, pulling on her trench coat, looking for me. I peeled myself off the wall and took her arm.

  At the foyer, we paused. Roxanne held my arm for balance as she switched her pumps for running shoes. She stuck the shoes in her briefcase, and zipped it up.

  “What would I do without you?” Roxanne said.

  “Topple,” I said, and we went out into the cold and down the stone stairs.

  It was snowing, a dry flurry that swirled like dust balls on the brick sidewalks. We walked arm in arm, past the federal courthouse, across Market Street, behind the Portland Press Herald building, across Exchange up the courtyard at Monument Way. The courtyard had benches and round concrete planters that looked like giant ashtrays. It was lunch hour and people from the downtown offices were hurrying in all directions, heads dow
n, intent on their errands. Executive types in cashmere coats pretended to be on important business, solemn and serious as assassins.

  We went to our usual place, the Victory Deli, and took our usual table in the front window by the neon Rolling Rock sign. Roxanne hung her briefcase and pocketbook on the back of the chair, then her trench coat, too. She brushed at her hair, which was frosted with snow, and she eased herself down. I sat, too. Roxanne sighed.

  “Did you win?” I said, folding my hand over hers on the table.

  “Oh, I guess so. If you ever do. I don’t know. We got what we asked for. The mother is in total denial, which was hard. I don’t know. I just don’t feel so good.”

  I looked at her. Her skin usually was milky white, but today it was ringed with blue-gray. There were shadows under her eyes.

  “You’re beautiful when you’re tired,” I said, smiling.

  She smiled too, but wanly.

  “I know. I look awful.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I just think maybe I’m getting some kind of bug.”

  I frowned and said, “Maybe you should go to the doctor.”

  “Jack, just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I have to run to the doctor every time I get a sniffle.”

  “Sure it does. Now you need to eat. How ’bout chicken soup?”

  “Jack, I’m not an invalid. I’ll have spicy Asian noodles. You want to split an order—”

  Roxanne looked toward the window. I paused. She listened, and then I heard I heard it, too. Slapping. Pounding. Muffled footsteps, growing louder, coming closer. I turned to the window just as a figure flashed by. Then another and another and another.

  Kids.

  “Oh, God,” Roxanne said, and she was up, her chair sliding on the floor. People looked as she slipped between the tables and eased her way through the take-out crowd at the door.

  “Hey, lady,” somebody said. “Watch it.”

  I started to move through, too, and a little guy in a suit tried to block my way. I moved him like he was a potted plant.

  But by the time I got out the door, Roxanne was gone. I hesitated, then turned left, the direction the kids had run. The next building was a parking garage, and I ran to the entrance and stood by the ticket machine and listened. A car pulled up and I crossed in front of it and heard the horn blow behind me. The sound echoed as I trotted from the garage, past a line of cars parked in the alley outside. The alley ran along the back side of buildings on Monument Square, and I ran along it. I slowed to listen. Stopped. I heard voices. Shouts.

  Roxanne.

  2

  k

  “Stop it,” she was yelling.

  I could see her as I rounded the corner. She was pulling a guy by the shoulders from behind. It was a kid but he was her size, or a little bigger, wearing a black baseball cap on backward. As I ran toward them, he reached behind him and gave Roxanne a shove. She held on to his sweatshirt and they both staggered. I hit him at a full run, took him by the neck and shoulders, and flung him over a curb and into a parked truck. He banged against the metal, and I turned back as Roxanne, in her suit and sneakers, bounded up a flight of steps and disappeared.

  I was behind her as she shoved another kid aside. There were four of them standing and one was on his knees in a corner filled with trash. He had his arms over his head and two of them were kicking him in the back; another was kicking at his face, which was streaked with blood. As I came up the stairs, they shoved the boy onto his side and he put his arms out behind him and a girl kicked him in the mouth and he screamed. She was whooping and grinning as I took her by her shoulders, spun her around, and threw her off the stairs.

  “Hey, you—” she said, but then another one was on the kid on the ground, crouching as he punched him in the back of the neck, kneed him in the back of the head. The kid on the ground was making a sobbing animal shriek, and I booted the bigger boy off, taking the wind out of him, then kept shoving him back until he hit the graffiti-covered wall. He had black feral eyes, a scrubby mustache, and brown-stained teeth. He came off the wall like a weasel, arms and feet flying.

  I stumbled in the trash and fell back for just a moment, and he was on me, snorting and spitting and grunting. I didn’t want to hit him, but he was clawing at me, scratching my hands and arms, then kicking for my groin. I took him by the arms, whirled him around until he came off the ground, then heaved him off the steps. He flew ten feet in the air and landed hard, and clutched at his leg and didn’t get back up. The first kid, the one with the hat, stood beside him and screamed at me but didn’t come closer.

  Roxanne was beside the boy on the ground, saying, “Stop it, stop it,” to one of the girls, trying to wrap the girl in her arms, but the girl was kicking at the boy and at Roxanne’s shins, stepping on Roxanne’s feet. I grabbed the girl from behind, and she turned and tried to bite me, her teeth white against black lipstick, her green-and-red hair pressed against my face.

  “You asshole,” she said, and I dragged her away from Roxanne, and shoved her down the stairs. As she stumbled back, the weasely kid came bounding toward me, up the steps, and then leapt into the air so fast I couldn’t even get my arms up. His sneaker caught me in the mouth, and I felt a white-hot flash of pain, and then he was jumping up again, like something on a video game, kicking and punching at my face in this flurry of limbs. I staggered, grabbed an arm, and yanked him toward me, then spun him toward the cinder-block wall. When he hit it, still facing me, I took him by the throat and slapped him in the face, hard, over and over, until he started to go limp. I stopped and let go.

  A siren whooped and the kids scattered, two going down the alley past the parked truck toward Free Street and the two others going the other way, around the corner toward Exchange. For a moment, it was just the three of us, me and Roxanne breathing heavily over the boy on the ground. My mouth was bleeding and one of my front teeth was kicked in. I could feel it with my tongue, slanted inward like a broken slat on a fence. Roxanne’s hair was in her face, and her suit jacket was torn at the shoulder. There were long scratches on her neck. Four of them, parallel like jet contrails in the sky.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Roxanne said. “I guess so.”

  “You can’t do this.’

  “They were killing him,” she said.

  She leaned down to where the boy now was sitting up. He leaned forward and coughed blood onto the litter of leaves and fast-food trash, flattened cans and broken bottles, all dusted with snow.

  “You all right, Rocky?” Roxanne asked gently.

  He sniffed and didn’t answer. His glasses were bent, but still on his face. His nose was bleeding. There were scuff marks on his cheekbones and on his temple on one side. He was breathing in quick shallow breaths, but he got himself to his feet. Blood ran from his mouth down his chin. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his red plaid wool jacket, then took his glasses off and examined them. He was slight, bookish. His wrists were thin and hairless.

  “I think you need an ambulance, buddy,” I said. “You got kicked pretty hard, and you don’t know if something inside is—”

  He bolted as soon as he was out of arm’s reach, and scurried around the corner of the building. I started to follow, but he was already crossing Exchange Street, slipping through traffic. I didn’t want to leave Roxanne alone, so I loped back up the alley, just as the police cruiser slid to a stop, blue strobes flashing in the grille.

  Two cops got out, a blond guy and a dark-haired woman. They were both carrying flashlights, and the guy called out to me and started to run.

  “Hold it right there.”

  I did, and then he saw Roxanne walking slowly toward us.

  “Roxanne?” the woman cop said. “You okay?”

  “You don’t move,” the guy told me, pointing the flashlight. “You get on the ground, now.”
r />   “It’s okay, Jimmy,” Roxanne said. “He’s with me. This is Jack.”

  “You want to sit in the car, Roxanne?” the woman cop said. “You know you shouldn’t be doing this—not in your condition.”

  “I’m fine. It was Jack they got into it with.”

  “Who?” Jimmy said.

  “Kids from the square. The one who hangs out with Crystal with the green hair. A couple of guys I’ve seen, but I don’t know them. Another girl. I think her name is Hillary or Helena or something. They had that new kid, the little kid, Rocky. They were beating the hell out of him.”

  “You know you really should be more careful,” the woman cop said.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Roxanne said. “Jack, this is Delena.”

  She nodded at me sternly, like it was somehow my fault.

  “They all split?” Jimmy said.

  “In different directions,” I said.

  “The Rocky kid, too?” Delena said.

  “Went toward Exchange, but I don’t know if he went up or down,” I said. “He’s got glasses. Red plaid jacket. Face pretty beat up.”

  “Weapons?” Jimmy said.

  I shook my head.

  “Just fists and feet, that I saw. One of the little bastards kicked me right in the mouth. Came at me like some sort of ninja warrior.”

  “They start that crap, I just use this,” Jimmy said.

  He popped a can of Cap-Stun off his belt. Held it up and popped it back in.

  “Takes the ninja right out of ’em.”

  I felt my tooth with my tongue, spat blood on the pavement.

  “You need Medcu?”

  “Nah,” I said. “You okay, Roxanne?”

  “Yes, for God’s sake.”

  “Hey, this is a very crucial time,” Delena said. “What are you, five months?”

  It seemed odd, talking about pregnancy in the back alley. It seemed odd that this cop was talking about my baby. Roxanne said she and the baby were fine.

  “It’s Rocky who might need to be looked at. They were kicking him in the face and the back. Kidneys, maybe?”