The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five) Read Online Free Page B

the whereabouts of the minor's parents or guardian were unknown at the time of her admission. The hospital would have procured a judge's permission to treat the child, if any treatment had been necessary. As it was, Janny had merely spent the night in a clean bed, restrained from harming herself, but given no medication or other treatment. St. Mary's needed no hold to do that, and Madge Aldenhoven knew it.
    Bo leaned against the nurses' station counter and pictured her supervisor's hands. The polished nails, filed smooth below the fingertips. A typist's hands, even though Madge never typed. Short, short fingernails. Impossible to snag on anything, especially the edge of a Formica-topped desk. Madge hadn't torn a nail, Bo realized, puzzled. It was th e girl's name that made her gasp.
    And in her three and a half years with Child Protective Services, Bo had never known investigators to work in pairs. It wasn't done. There were too many cases. If a case were dangerous because the adults involved were on drugs or made threats, then CPS turned the investigation over to the police. The guidelines were in the Procedures Manual . Madge, unaccountably, was breaking the rules.
    "Something's rotten in Denmark," Bo whispered to a picture of a pink woolly mammoth on the wall. "Several things, actually."
    Janny Malcolm was staring at the restraint cuff on her right wrist when Bo came back into her room. In the morning light she looked especially fragile, Bo thought. Like an old-fashioned doll meant for pink taffeta and lace mitts, but made up as an eighteenth century laudanum addict instead. The hollow eyes were especially informative, betraying too much worldly exhaustion for even an aging child to bear.
    "I haven't got much time, Janny," Bo said, "but I want to help you."
    "Okay," the girl sighed, trying unsuccessfully to sit upright against the pull of the body restraint. "I don't... really know what happened."
    "You went to Goblin Market last night. A boy you know as Gunther said you just stood on the patio for an hour or so, and when he went to look for you, you'd collapsed on a bench. Do you know why you collapsed? Were you sick? Did you drink anything or use any drugs? Did something upset you before you went there?"
    "I don't do that shit," Janny answered. "Goths, well, most of the really cool ones, they don't do drugs or get drunk or anything like that . It's not cool."
    "What do Goths do?"
    The wan face with its halo of dark, fine hair became animated. Bo saw a weak smile tug at the edges of the girl's mouth where the night's dark lipstick had crusted in bloodlike flakes.
    "Oh, it's really neat!" she began. "It's a scene. You just, well, you just get to wear these great clothes like in the old days, only sexy, y'know, and dance and listen to music. Some of them get a little carried away, I think. I mean, there's this girl who wears a bustier over just this mesh T-shirt, and you can see her breasts and everything. I mean, that's not really Goth. It's like, you're supposed to look like you're into kinky sex and everything, but really be nice underneath and have this, like, secret code where you have really nice manners and nobody outside knows the dirty stuff is just to fake them out so they won't find out the truth."
    "What truth?" Bo asked, feeling herself spiral into the barely remembered confusion of adolescence.
    "That you're really nice. Like, nicer than the real world. You know. Nicer than the way things are."
    Bo nodded, gazing pointedly at the girl's wrists. "Fancy black cuffs with chrome studs and little chains really are nicer than real wrist restraints, even with the lambswool padding," she acknowledged. "Do you know why they put those on you?"
    "I keep freaking out," Janny admitted. "Something keeps, like, coming into my mind. I don't want it... I don't want to think about it."
    "Is it like somebody talking?" Bo asked casually. "Like a background noise or radio static that sounds like words?"
    "Nooo! I'm not hearing