Free Turtle Baby by Abigail Padgett

slacks. "In the meantime can you run a check for me on ..." Bo fumbled in Acito's case file for the names she'd heard yesterday. "...Dewayne Singleton from someplace in Louisiana, and a minor called Chris Joe Gavin, Henderson, Kentucky. Thanks, Dar." To Madge she said, "Are you trying to give me a Spanish-speaking case? Where's Estrella?"
    "Estrella is sick this morning," Madge emphasized the key word, "and as it turns out the mother speaks English. Estrella did a superb initial investigation yesterday, but I'm afraid this case has just become too demanding for her current, well ... resources."
    "Her resources?"
    "Any woman who's ever been pregnant could identify Estrella's condition immediately, Bo. It's hardly a secret. And after what happened at the hospital last night, we've decided that it would be more appropriate for you to continue the investigation."
    "Because I'm not pregnant?" Bo had to ask. "I'll bet Nick Paratore's not pregnant, either. He's in our unit, too. I just saw him in the cafeteria. He wasn't barfing or anything. Why don't you give the case to him? And what happened at the hospital last night?" She widened green eyes and let them go glassy. "Let me guess. The baby turned out to be a tiny werewolf and ate the entire night staff, right?"
    Madge stared at the floor as if it were about to slip away, and clenched her teeth. "The mother showed up at St. Mary's last night, demanding the release of the baby. There was a row when staff explained that he had to remain in the hospital for an HIV test, and then go into foster care pending the outcome of our investigation. The police were called. I think the mother actually assaulted Detective Reinert, but he allowed her to return to Tijuana in spite of that. Doubtless a mistake, not that it matters. We're probably looking at a 'freed for adoption' here unless the father can be located. That's what I want you to do. Either find the father or let's file for termination of parental rights. If the baby's HIV positive, transfer him to medically fragile long-term foster care. If not, transfer him to adoptions, assuming you don't find the father, or he forfeits his right to the child. Meanwhile, Estrella will handle your case from yesterday. Any questions?"
    "No," Bo answered. "No questions."
    Except why wasn't I invited to your installation as God, Madge? And how inspiring that you haven't let it go to your head.
    "Good." Aldenhoven sighed and stalked into the hall.
    Bo pushed the heels of her hands against her knees under an African print skirt featuring ragged black suns on rust-colored homespun, and grimaced. The Maya mother and baby, she thought, had wandered too close to a nation made of systems. Bureaucratic systems like the one she worked for, which weren't real, which were nothing but interlocking grids of rules. Which could never, ever hear a mother's song or touch a baby's soft black hair.
    "I'm overreacting," she said to a photograph of the poet Anne Sexton on her bulletin board, "as usual. But then, you'd understand, wouldn't you?"
    The system was going to take Chac's baby away, unless somebody stopped it.
    "CPS, Bo Bradley," Bo snarled into the phone when it rang again. "Oh, hi, Andy ... yes, I heard." The sleeveless black turtleneck she'd chosen to complement the woodblock-printed skirt felt as though it were alive and slowly choking her. "Sure, I can come right over," she agreed, pulling the fabric away from her throat. Proximity to the dry, mechanical heart of injustice, Bo realized, made even her own clothes feel threatening.
    "I'm going over to St. Mary's," she yelled at Madge's door, "for a technical explanation of the substance that poisoned Acito."
    "That will be good in the court report," the supervisor answered with a disinterested calm typical of strangers at bus stops discussing pleasant weather. A calm that Bo Bradley, carefully medicated and stabilized manic-depressive, would never feel. Or, she admitted, ever want to feel.
    Andrew LaMarche was