Gladiatrix (4 page)

At that, Jones, Fuentes and Gregson stared into the camera in a confident, but fixed kind of way.

Haverstock continued. ‘The document, presented by the Moral Legion as proof of the satanic pact, was discovered by archaeologists from the Université de la Sacré Croix who were excavating the foundation of the main Isis temple in ancient Rome. The text has been scientifically dated back to the early first century
AD
and there is no doubt that it is a legitimate, historic artefact. As well, a range of experts agree that the handwriting matches other scripture written by the Hierophant.'

Des looked at me. ‘Is this aboveboard?'

I said, ‘Well, this is the first I've heard of all this stuff.' I'd pretty much stopped watching the news over the past year. I was too busy and it was too depressing.

Off-camera, reporters started shooting questions at the Governor. A barrage of voices flowed over him and he called for silence. ‘However, it is the translation and interpretation of the content that is in dispute. This document seems …' he emphasised the last word, ‘to be the description of a special ritual. One involving human sacrifice.'

The audience broke out at that, everyone shouting questions. But the Governor silenced them with a single shake of his head. ‘This sacrifice was intended to evoke a pact with a supernatural being.' He paused.

‘Now, the Isiacs deny that living sacrifice, of any kind, is a part of their modern rituals. They assert that the Hierophant, on whose writings they base so much of their beliefs and practices, preached only love and compassion. They claim that the document is either a
fake, or is being misinterpreted. So,' he paused again, ‘to resolve the controversy I have received permission from the President to use the services of the NTA.'

Des turned to me and said quickly, ‘That's the National Time Administration.'

‘Of course it is,' I spluttered.

The NTA and NASA. They'd been started at about the same time, and we'd all been learning about them in school ever since. Everyone knew what the acronyms stood for. National Time Administration. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Then I checked his face. Why was he making that particular point?

Des pointed at the screen. ‘Watch.'

The Governor turned to someone off-camera and beckoned. A tall, dark-haired woman stepped onto the stage to stand next to him. She wore a navy skirt suit with the NTA silver infinity symbol shining on her breast pocket.

He introduced her, saying, ‘Time Marshal Victoria Dupree, the most senior field officer in the National Time Administration, will undertake the mission.'

He gave her a nod of respect. ‘Marshal Dupree, as you all know, has a very distinguished service record, and we're extremely lucky to have her on board as this is, potentially, a very dangerous assignment. She will travel to 8AD, the year the disputed document is believed to have been written, and investigate the Hierophant and any matters related to this accusation.'

A male reporter yelled into the silence left after the Governor stopped speaking, ‘But who will she report to? Is this going to be an impartial inquiry?'

In response to that question, Gregson and the two Isiacs standing behind the Governor all shifted on
their feet at exactly the same time, like Siamese twins, conjoined by their anxiety.

Very interesting body language, shifting feet …

So none of them really trusted the Governor? Or maybe the process he'd set up? Or maybe they doubted their own positions …?

I cut that line of thought short. I'd been around Des too long. Everyone, and their motives, had become a target of speculation.

‘Marshal Dupree,' answered the Governor, ‘will be reporting directly to me, and the evidence gathered will be presented to a specially convened committee of the California legislature. Mr Gregson and the leaders of the United Isiac Coalition have agreed to abide by their findings.'

Encouraged by his new responsiveness another reporter shouted, ‘But what are the possible outcomes? What will it all mean?'

Yeah. Good question.

The Governor replied with care and tact, ‘If the document is false, if the Hierophant is not involved in any such practices then …' He turned back to White Gregson for confirmation, and Gregson gave a confident, full-toothed smile for the camera. The Governor continued, ‘Then the Moral Legion will drop its push for constitutional amendment and call for religious tolerance.'

Then he looked to Jones and Fuentes for their response. They didn't smile, just nodded in agreement. ‘And the Isiacs have agreed that if the Hierophant did, in fact, perform human sacrifice, then they will voluntarily, and with full disclosure, submit their organisation to a Congressional inquiry into their practices.'

‘It's not going to work,' I snapped. ‘The side that loses will still dispute the findings. You can see they're
thinking that way already. It won't work.' I calculated, ‘If this press conference took place early last year, maybe a year ago, then the mission must be well under way, if not finished.'

I turned to Des. He'd seen the rest of the recording. ‘So what happened? What did Marshal Dupree find out?'

‘No results reported as yet.' He qualified that with, ‘Well, none reported in this segment anyway.'

‘What? They do this news segment on it then don't give an update on her mission?'

‘There's only another few minutes of this story left to go,' Des said, quietly. ‘And the rest isn't about the mission.'

The screen went into a close-up of the Time Marshal standing next to the Governor. The dark-haired woman, Victoria Dupree. We'd learnt some basics about the NTA and the marshals at school, but I didn't know much more than that. The US was the only country with a time portal, so I had no hope of ever going through one. The closest I'd ever get to travelling in the past was by digging it up.

Dupree's eyes gleamed with a measured intensity. She didn't look like she'd let much get in her way. I'd read somewhere once that the time marshals were all law officers. Just like the first astronauts were all pilots.

Yeah, she looked like a real law officer. Scanning the crowd in front of the podium, searching for potential trouble.

And she was the senior NTA field officer? They were the ones who actually went through the portal, who went into the past. What kind of woman made it to that position? I wondered how many missions she'd been on. Had they been dangerous? She must have been better than good to make it to the top in that place.

The marshals still had an air of the Wild West to their reputation. Gung-ho. Against all odds. Macho. Their missions, on behalf of their own government and as a favour to others, had covered every time and place in our collective histories. The Civil War. France during the Revolution. Rome during the Fall.

We'd all heard the stories: exposing a mafia-paid Supreme Court judge, recovering World War II military secrets, uncovering who really murdered Mahatma Gandhi, finding the lost treasure of the Incas …

‘I wonder what missions she's been on,' I mumbled. ‘I must look them up … I wonder if she was on the one that …'

‘Kannon,' Des tapped my hand, ‘this is it, now. Watch.'

I frowned. What the hell was I supposed to be looking for in this stuff?

Des leant forward with the remote, his thumb ready to hit the pause button.

I leant forward, too, mimicking his posture, trying to read his face. ‘What is it, Des?'

‘Just listen.'

‘However,' Mornington's voice intoned over the close-up of Dupree, ‘now Governor Haverstock has come under heavy attack from both sides of the controversy. The mission still has not been completed, nor have any preliminary findings been presented for public scrutiny. In response, the Governor has announced today that he will be giving a special press conference in five days' time.'

An old black-and-white photograph of a much younger Dupree replaced the press conference close-up.

‘But the Governor is not the only one who has come in for sharp criticism. The NTA has been less than forthcoming about the mission and many now
wonder whether even the famous Marshal Dupree can bring such a hazardous and difficult assignment to a successful conclusion.'

The voice-over continued, ‘But this is not the first time Marshal Dupree has been at the centre of a furore. Twenty years ago, Victoria Dupree was a San Francisco homicide detective, the first woman to reach that level in the San Francisco Police Department. At that time, criminals involved in a murder case she was investigating abducted her two-year-old daughter, Celeste.'

Twenty years ago? Two?

My heart started to pound.

Des looked at me, nodded, and then turned back to the screen.

So this was it.

The screen changed to a colour photo of a young Victoria Dupree kneeling with her arms around a little girl. A little girl with big black eyes, and white-blonde hair swept up in a ponytail. She was dressed in a cream, frilly dress and black tap shoes. They were both smiling into the camera.

‘Tragically for Marshal Dupree, Celeste was never found,' Mornington stated.

Des pushed the pause button and the image froze in place.

He rose and, next to the image of the affectionate mother and happy child, he slapped a black-and-white photo taken of me the day I was found. The photo was smaller in scale than the screen image, but it was easy to see the likeness. Each showed the same little girl with dark eyes, framed by long white hair.

Des tapped the screen image with his stubby finger. ‘I believe that Victoria Dupree is your mother,' he turned to me. ‘That you are Celeste.'

I stared at the screen in a daze, then at Des' excited face. It'd all come as a rush in the last few moments of the recording and I was still processing it. I wasn't prepared for this. At all.

He tapped the image of Celeste again. ‘Look at her.' The happy little girl with the ponytail, enfolded by her loving mother. ‘The white hair, the dark eyes.' Then he tapped the black-and-white of me next to it. ‘It's you, Kannon.'

He looked over at me, his face intent. ‘There's no mistake. I'll never forget the day they brought you into the hospital. I'll never forget your little face.'

Des pulled a roll of sticky tape out of his briefcase, stuck the photo of me to the screen, and commanded, ‘Look at them. Really look at the two little girls.' He came back and sat next to me, on the lounge. ‘I couldn't believe it when I saw this footage. I'd been watching the cricket. Janice, from next door, had asked me to record it. But Australia was losing … so I decided to make a cup of tea and a sandwich. But when I came back the cricket was over and this was on. The first thing I saw
was her face.' He pointed at the screen image. ‘Your face. From twenty years ago.'

He started laughing, ‘I almost missed it.' Then became serious again, as though he'd scared himself, ‘Yes, I almost missed it.'

I couldn't think. He wanted me to respond, to be excited too. But it just seemed so strange.

‘Kannon?'

I tried to give him something. ‘Des, I …' I floundered.

He could see I was overwhelmed. ‘Kannon, you've got to understand. That image brought it all back to me. The whole thing. The day Yuki found you. I saw that photo, and I was back there.'

I looked over at the TV. At the two photos. But couldn't take it in.

He tried to reach me another way. ‘Kannon. You know me. I'm a cop, through and through. Okay, I'm a bit excited. But that doesn't make any difference.' He said the next few words carefully, ‘I know faces, Kannon. I remember them. I don't make those kinds of mistakes. And I will never, never, forget your face when you were found.'

He searched my expression.

I was still grasping at how to respond. Then one emotion rose to the top: exasperation. ‘Des, stop for a minute. Stop trying to railroad me into this. I need more information …'

‘But don't you see?' He jabbed at the image on the screen. ‘This explains everything. This explains why there were never any real leads, why no-one of any use ever came forward. Just all those dead ends. It wasn't because they didn't want to be found. Your parents didn't put you there, in that cave. No-one came forward, because everyone who knew you, who cared about you, who could identify you — was in America.'

I didn't know what to say first. A billion objections had bubbled up. America? How could that possibly fit in? This kind of scenario, that I could've been brought from overseas, had never been discussed. Not once, in all this time. That thought made me shape my first question. ‘But, Des, why would Celeste's kidnappers …' It suddenly felt very strange saying that name. I stopped.

‘Why would they bring her to Australia?' Des finished the question for me, still trying to coach me into his point of view.

‘Yes,' I said, with firmness. ‘Why on earth would they do that?' I looked at the happy mother and daughter on the screen. They scared the hell out of me. I could really want to be that girl. Not abandoned, not unwanted, but lost.

‘I don't know yet, Kannon. But that's exactly what we have to find out.'

So this was all speculation? He didn't have anything? Any reasonable story?

I studied the two little girls. They were starting to look different, really different. Celeste was healthy; you could tell she laughed a lot. I was thin, with dark lines and a pinched face. The more I looked, the more differences appeared.

‘What?' Des could see he was losing me.

My voice was rough. I didn't mean it to come out that way, but it did. ‘So you don't know about any other connection?' I shrugged. ‘Other than the same hair and eye colour?'

Des blinked. He didn't like being questioned as though he was just some civilian. He snapped back, ‘For Christ's sake, Kannon, this only happened a few hours ago. I've been ringing here, trying to get hold of you, ever since I saw it.'

Oh, the phone messages I hadn't checked.

‘But you never returned my calls! What did you expect me to have ready for you? A full dossier, with a contact list?' He shoved his whole arm at the screen, one finger pointing. ‘This! This is a bloody godsend! If Yuki was alive she'd tell you. This is the answer!'

His enthusiasm was making me doubt my resistance. He'd spent all afternoon looking at this picture. But there had to be more. Didn't there? ‘But that's all, Des? That's all you have? Just the resemblance between the pictures? Nothing else on the news segment that was useful? That could make a connection?'

‘But the year, Kannon! You heard Mornington say it; Celeste went missing twenty years ago, this year. It's the same year as you!'

I put up my hands, trying to quieten his insistence. ‘Okay. Okay, Des.' I had to get him to calm down.

But my resistance just seemed to fire Des up. He pushed himself to his feet, picked up his briefcase, then shoved books and papers aside to slap it down on the dining room table. He started pulling things out. A pen. A notepad. His reading glasses. His address book. My old case file, in a new manila folder. He'd made his own copy of everything before he retired, of course.

‘We have to get started immediately, Kannon. So let's have a cup of tea and make a list of the jobs.' He'd decided to just ignore my concerns. ‘You're better on the computer than I am, so you can look up …'

‘Whoa there, Des. It's late. You have to go home and go to bed. We can talk about this tomorrow. After you've seen Dr Calichett.'

He ignored that, too, and started filling the electric jug with water. ‘Have you got any of those biscuits left? The double chocolate ones? I haven't had dinner yet and I could use …'

I took the jug out of his hand and said, ‘Des, I've just lost Yuki. I don't want to lose you as well. Can we talk about this first?'

The more frantic Des got, the more detached I was becoming. I wasn't that girl on the screen, she was someone else. This was all part of Des' recovery from heart surgery.

His face became old when I mentioned Yuki. I think he missed her almost as much as I did. They'd not always seen eye to eye. She was a strong Asian woman and he was a cop from the bush, but when his wife died and he'd been forced to take medical retirement the following year, he'd moved down here. Essentially, to help Yuki raise me. In the end they'd become very close. And Yuki's death … Well it was another thing we couldn't talk about. It was too painful.

He scowled, ‘Stop mothering me, will you? I'm not going anywhere!' He plugged in the jug, and flipped it on with a gritty determination. ‘If you want to be “mother” then make me a cup of tea. And find those bloody chocolate biscuits!'

We bickered for a while over the fat content of the biscuits, then I put together some tuna and tomato sandwiches, and opened some low-fat biscuits I was going to take to his place tomorrow. I made a pot of Irish Breakfast tea and put it all down in the middle of the dining room table. I watched him eat. At least now he was seated. Des stuffed it all down with surprising enthusiasm, and slurped his tea with satisfaction. He hadn't eaten like that since he'd become ill.

Des considered me over his teacup. ‘Why aren't you excited, Kannon? What's going on?'

‘Des, I need a lot more proof than a hazy resemblance between two old photos, before I'm going
to be sucked into this. You trained me, Des. You know the drill: ask the hard questions first.'

‘Precisely,' he said, rubbing his hands together. The food had helped. He wasn't overexcited any more, instead, he sounded like he was back behind his detective's desk, waiting for a tricky suspect to say the wrong thing. ‘That's why, my girl, we're going to Lithgow tomorrow, and getting the coppers there to earn their money.'

Damn. I hated Lithgow. I'd only been there a few times, but it repulsed me. And I wasn't going back now. ‘Des, it's been twelve years since you were the detective sergeant there. If we go with just this photo, they won't listen to us. And anyway, I can't go, I've got classes all tomorrow.' As well as a serious interview with the police college coordinator.

‘Come on, Kannon. You can get Antoinette to fill in for you. Or any of the others. As soon as they know what this is about, they'll volunteer. But you'll have to come with me. Show you want the case reopened. That's a given.'

‘I'm not going anywhere tomorrow. But you've got to go home.' I stood up. ‘I'm going to drive you.'

He didn't reply. Just picked up his address book, ambled over to the phone, and slumped into the lounge chair next to it. He checked for a number, then started dialling. It was interstate. He waited, then said, ‘John? Good! You're still up.' It had to be John Lugan, another retired ex-copper, who was now living in Brisbane. ‘Look, I have a situation. Do you know who …'

I threw up my hands. When he got like this, you just had to let him be. I'd make up the bed in Yuki's room. He'd have to go to sleep some time.

When I came back, Des was still deep in conversation, telling his friend about the Dupree case.
I sighed, and went into my room. Spud followed. She wanted to sleep and must've figured Des was going to keep yakking away. I sat down in front of my computer and switched it on. Spud did her normal thing of curling around my ankles. Maybe I could find out something that would put a full stop to all this and Des could go to sleep. Then we could all go to sleep.

I opened the inquiry page, and typed in ‘Celeste Dupree'. It was an old case, but possibly not so forgotten with Victoria's kind of public profile.
The Linken Fox News Hour
may not have been the only people to remember. A long list appeared. I checked through, but most of them just dealt with recent missing children and only mentioned Celeste in passing, nothing exact about who, when or where. It was depressing reading for too many reasons.

Then I hit an article in the
New York Tribune
, dated yesterday. It was on Victoria's mission. It started by saying Marshal Dupree should never have been sent on the mission, that it was a fool's errand, and that it couldn't, and wouldn't, solve the problem of religious intolerance in the USA. I was nodding. It seemed like a fair point to me. Then it snaked around into a convoluted rant against the National Time Administration in general and how its budget could be better spent on improving the present. Like dealing with a failing health care system, and getting the homeless into homes … Also a fair point, but not getting me anywhere.

The article finally went back to Victoria, saying that she'd been in ancient Rome for eight months now, and would be returning soon to meet with the Governor. But it didn't say when. At that I felt a flutter in my stomach. I didn't believe Des was right, but she'd seemed so wonderful, and had loved the little girl so
well, that a part of me considered for a moment how good it could be if …

Spud gave a ‘woof' in her sleep, and her legs mimicked running. She was dreaming of rabbits again. That, or MotorHead, the macho grey tomcat that lived down the street. I refocused on the article. The only reference to Celeste was right at the end. It merely said that Marshal Dupree would still not answer questions on her daughter's kidnapping, and that her disappearance remained a sad mystery.

No luck.

I flicked back to the list. Why was it so hard to dredge up details about the case?

‘Ah, you're on the computer? Good.' Des came in and sat on the bed behind me. ‘Have you found anything?'

‘I've just started looking, Des, so no, not yet. How did you go with John?'

He groaned. ‘None of the old blokes are there. It's a whole new gang.'

‘So?'

‘So we go to Lithgow tomorrow, bright and early. I may not have any connections left but they'll have to listen. We just stay until they do what needs to be done.'

I wasn't going. But I'd deal with all this in the morning. Postponing the drama would mean we'd both get some sleep tonight.

He leant over my shoulder. ‘Hey, what's that?' He was pointing to the list. I focused in. It was a site dedicated to children missing in the San Francisco area. I hadn't checked it yet.

‘Yeah, that looks okay. Let's give it a try.' I opened it. The top pages were all the most recent cases. Little faces with sad details. I found it hard to look at.

There was a section dedicated to the Dupree kidnapping in the unsolved-cases file, so I flicked that
open. Scanning through the material was pretty disappointing. There were lots of photos but the text didn't really say much more than we already knew.

‘Look!' Des had moved up into a crouch over my left shoulder. His finger pointing at the last line of the text on Celeste.

It gave the exact date that Celeste was kidnapped. It was two weeks before I'd been found in the cave. Here.

‘That's it!' Des slapped my shoulder. ‘That's it! Now do you believe me? We get in there tomorrow and show them this. Two weeks before you were found!'

He started pacing round the room, as he always did when he was excited. There wasn't much space to step, as my shoes and clothes were not where they should be. ‘You looked like Celeste … You appeared just after she went missing … They'll have to follow it up.' He punched the air, ‘They'll have to!'

Meanwhile, I sat there staring at the screen.

In the top left corner was a photo of Celeste dated the week before she was kidnapped. The photo of an ideal childhood. It was a sunny day, and she was in yellow swimmers, kneeling over the side of a turquoise-blue swimming pool. The little girl was fishing out a dripping wet teddy bear wearing matching bathers. She was half-turned, giggling into the camera. Her other arm was wrapped around a big black dog that was trying to help her retrieve the wet toy.