Strawgirl Read Free Page A

Ganage went on,
    "I'm a psychologist specializing in the cult-related ritual abuse of children."
    Ganage's voice, Bo realized with renewed contempt, was just loud enough to be heard by two newspaper reporters hurrying through a side door from the ambulance bay. The lobby of St. Mary's was gradually assuming the frenzied atmosphere of a shark tank at feeding time.
    "I'd love to chat, but duty calls," Bo smiled with patent insincerity, handing her identification badge to a security guard at the elevators.
    Cynthia Ganage raised her voice another two notches. "Are you here to investigate the Franer case? From available information I'm certain that Satanism is involved. I'm here to volunteer my professional services, free of charge—"
    As the elevator doors smothered the blonde woman's words, Bo took deliberately deep breaths and reminded herself that sensationalism was not really a criminal offense, even though it should be. In publicly revealing the child's name and details of the case, Cynthia Ganage had just violated every protocol observed by police and Child Protective Services personnel alike. Staring at the Mayan snake-face clasp on her briefcase, Bo decided that compared to Ganage the snake was actually cute.
    "I'm here on the Franer case," she said at the fifth-floor nurses' station. "Is the child still being examined? I need to speak with the mother, too. I assume she's with Samantha?"
    "The child's still in surgery," a heavyset black nurse with whom Bo had worked on previous cases answered quietly. A look in the hooded eyes issued a warning. Bo had seen the look before. The silent language of medical personnel.
    "Put the walls up," it said. "Get ready to face the intolerable."
    "You can go on down to the observation deck," the nurse suggested. "See how much longer it'll be. The mother's in the surgical waiting room."
    Every nuance of the softly spoken words told Bo things were not going well. Nodding, she forced herself to walk through the unmarked door at the back of an office behind the nurses' station. The door opened into a short corridor that led to a small observation cage through which activities in the operating room could be observed. The observation chamber, always dark, held a row of chairs bolted to the floor for silence, and a speaker projecting voices from the brightly lit operating arena below. It was, Bo thought, like entering the interior of a Christmas tree ornament.
    "... unable to effect substantive prophylactic measures already described ..." the familiar voice of Dr. Andrew LaMarche pronounced slowly as Bo made herself focus on the scene seven feet beneath her. Something wasn't right. The green-clad surgical team was too quiet, moving too slowly. The surgical nurse empty-handed. The anesthesiologist failing to monitor his bank of screens, which appeared to be blank. One surgeon walking away, another closing a wide incision across the child's abdomen with unusually large stitches. The little girl's skin was as pale as the cap of short blonde curls above her closed eyes. She seemed more representational than real, a chunky Raphaelesque cherub on an unfinished canvas. In the intense operating room lights the tousled blonde curls seemed crystalline. Like spun glass. Bo fought a realization that blurred her vision. The realization that the child's body was merely an empty and fading husk from which the personality of someone named Samantha Alice Franer had already fled.
    "The cause of death ..." Andrew LaMarche pronounced into a microphone suspended above the operating table, "is internal hemorrhage secondary to . . ."
    Bo turned back into the small corridor and pressed her forehead against its cool tile wall. What was it like to be three years old? She searched her memory and found very little. A favorite green plaid sunsuit with white eyelet ruffles on the straps. Her grandmother had embroidered the first three bars of "Kitty of Coleraine" on the sunsuit's bib and taught Bo to pick out the melody