Bloodline
Authors: Gerry Boyle
Praise for Gerry Boyle's
Bloodline
“Boyle deftly establishes mood and setting, clearly defines his characters, and offers lots of reflection from Jack, whose subdued first-person narration gives this solid mystery an intimate, small-town air.”
âPublishers Weekly
“The dialogue hums and crackles ⦠Low-profile freelance reporter Jack McMorrow sticks his head above the tree line long enough to contract for an article on kids having kids, then homes in on one particular high-school kid: Missy Hewett, a success story of sorts who put her baby up for adoption and left Prosperity, Maine, to enter a nursing program six months ago. Trouble is, determined Missy's been having second thoughts about the adoption, and the day after she phones Jack with her reservations, she's found dead ⦔
â
Kirkus Reviews
“Swift, smart, and suspenseful. A compelling read from a big, new talent.”
â
Judith Kelman
“Superb writing. His feel for small-town New England is almost eerily photographic.”
â
Cleveland Plain Dealer
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.
BLOODLINE
First Islandport edition / November 2014
Printing History
North Country Press edition published 1995
Berkeley Prime Crime edition / March 1996
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 1995 by Gerry Boyle
ISBN: 978-1-939017-46-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014911388
Islandport Press
P.O. Box 10
Yarmouth, Maine 04096
Publisher: Dean Lunt
Cover Design: Tom Morgan, Blue Design
Interior Book Design: Teresa Lagrange, Islandport Press
Cover image courtesy of © Toma Bonciu /
Dreamstime.com
Printed in the USA
For Emily, Carolyn, and Charlie
Contents
INTRODUCTION
I
f
Deadline
defined Jack McMorrow,
Bloodline
defined McMorrow's world.
This book was written as I awaited publication of my first McMorrow novel,
Deadline
. I finished it and then sent a note to Robert B. Parker, the renowned creator of the Spenser novels, who I'd met at our mutual alma mater, Colby College. I asked him if he'd like to see it, perhaps give me some advice. He did: Send the manuscript to his literary agent, Helen Brann, and “Tell her I sent you.” Thus began a relationship that lasted two decades, and only ended recently.
If
Deadline
kicked the door open, it was
Bloodline
that I carried as I sprinted across the threshold.
Rereading this novel twenty years after I wrote it, I was struck by the number of firsts it includes. After the events that occur in the fictional western Maine town of Androscoggin, McMorrow sets out to find a new home. In this book, the reporter is settled in the small, also fictional Waldo County town of Prosperity, tucked into a corner of Maine that time has forgotten.
On the dump road in Prosperity, McMorrow meets his closest neighborâa silver-haired Marine and Vietnam War veteran who can (and does) dispense both wisdom and deadly force. The two men become close, and a pattern is established. McMorrow storms in where few would dare to tread. Clair Varney, who prowled behind enemy lines as a Force Recon commando in his war, always has McMorrow's back. And that's a good thing.
In
Bloodline,
McMorrow's love, Roxanne, has taken a break from the tumult that trails him. After a sojourn in the mountains of Colorado,
she returns to Maine and joins Jack in Waldo County. Will she stay? Or will Roxanne decide, after the next newspaper story turns murderous, that she was right the first time. McMorrow has his charms, but life with him carries too high a cost.
In some ways rereading this book was like looking through old photos, smiling at the recollection of a scene. As I reread
Bloodline
in preparation for writing this introduction, there were passages that stopped me, made me reread them more than once. The rapport Jack establishes with teen mom Missy Hewett. The affectionate patter between Clair and Jackâand the attraction Jack and Roxanne feel for each other. There is a scene where Clair and his wife Mary meet Roxanne for the first time. The chapter begins, “Clair was shy around Roxanne.”
He remains so for the next eight novels.
It's an interesting experience, rereading your early books. In some places the writing is so familiar I could recite it, but in others it's like the book was written by someone else. I found myself recognizing certain passages, even particular phrases, feeling the echo of déjà vu in my head. Others were as new to me as they will be to you.
I could write about the subject of
Bloodline
âteenage parents, how one person's burden is another's treasure, how babies are not only cherished, they are also a valuable commodityâbut I'll let that story unfold on its own. I will say there are characters I grew fond of writing this book: feisty and determined Missy, quietly relentless Detective Poole. I've been very pleased to renew our acquaintance.
But what also struck me was the introduction of a recurring characterâthe Maine woods. McMorrow's stretch of Waldo County is steeped in the sweat and blood of long-dead farmers, whose descendants have fled, and whose fields have grown up. Barns have moldered,
foundations caved in. McMorrow feels it all around him, this place that most people can't see.
          Â
In many ways it was lost, their civilization. The woods had reclaimed the land. The families had left the hardscrabble farms for jobs in mills and factories to the south. It all seemed so futile, but then again, those farmers hadn't cleared the land to build a civilization. They had cut those woods to feed their children. It had been a matter of survival, nothing more, and where disease hadn't sliced through families like a broadsword, the mission, through the mercy of their stern taskmaster of a God, had been accomplished.
So welcome to
Bloodline
, a portal to McMorrow's world and its center, Prosperity, Maine. This neck of the Maine woods is a beautiful place, but it's also dark and unforgiving. It's a place where a misstep can be, and often is, fatal. It's a place where McMorrow needs Clair to survive, where he presses to find the truth at the core of his news storiesâat his own considerable risk.
Gerry Boyle
October 2014
1
T
he bats had kept me up all night, swooping around the bed, making that tissue-paper flutter in the dark just inches from my face. I'd tried to sleep, but even when I'd been able to drift off, the bats had moved in and out of my dreams like little furry spirits. Finally, when it was morning and the sun had lit the room like a shopping mall parking lot, I'd dreamed that the loft was full of flying bugs, so many bugs that the bats were outnumbered and overwhelmed. I woke up with a start, exhausted and mildly hungover and generally ornery.
When the phone rang.
“Jack,” a man's voice said, cheery and energetic and soothing as a chain saw. “You old dog, you. You are one tough hombre to track down.”
Not tough enough, I thought.
“Who's this?” I asked.
“Jack, it's Dave. Dave Slocum.”
Slocum. From the
Times.
Wore expensive suspenders and chased the summer interns. Went to Harvard. All talk. Well, maybe 80 percent.
“What, did I get you up, fella? Hey, I thought you Mainers were up at the crack of dawn. Out splitting wood or cleaning the outhouse
or whatever it is you can find to do at that ungodly hour. Am I right? Jack, are you there? Come in, Jack.”
I took a deep breath.
“No, Dave, been up for hours,” I said. “Just got done milking the chickens. Where are you?”
“Beautiful downtown Amherst, Mass. The heart of the Berkshires.
New England Look
magazine.”
Amherst, Massachusetts, I thought. That's far away. I felt better.
“You left the
Times
?”
“By mutual agreement,” Slocum said. “We both needed to grow, you know? And they got this idea that the newspaper could run without me. Poor deluded bastards.”
“I saw it last week,” I said. “A shell of its former self.”
“You noticed, too, huh? Yeah, it lacks that certain style and grace and insight that is the hallmark of a newspaper at the top of its game.”
“I don't know about that. I just look at the ads for the fancy houses.”
“Hey, that's all right,” Slocum said. “Fantasy's okay. I'll give you the number of my therapist.”
“Don't tell me. It begins 1-900.”
“Hell, yes. Ask for Brandy. She does the groups. You do have phones up there, don't you?”
“There's one at the general store. I'm sitting on a cracker barrel.”
“Well, say hi to Jethro for me, Jack. Your former drinking buddies on Seventh Avenue will be glad to hear you've found your niche.”
“Fits like a glove.”
“I'm glad for you. I'll come up sometime and chew tobacco with you and your friends.”
“After that, we'll go out to the dump and shoot rats,” I said.
“Ha, ha. The same old Jack McMorrow. I gotta tell you, buddy. When you left the
Times
it created a terrible void.”
“A vacuum, you mean.”
“Right. A black hole right over the metro desk. They still talk about you. Leaving for a weekly in some hick town in Maine? I mean, that was like going from the Yankees to Little League. I mean, Babe Ruth going to play Babe Ruth.”
I felt myself bristle.
“It wasn't that much different.” I said. “Just smaller.”
“But now you're freelancing, right? I saw your story on the flowers in
Down East
. Zen and the art of the bearded Siberian whosey-whatsis.”