Chapter 48: You'll have to come with us
Walter got back to me the next morning when I was sitting in a cafe a few blocks away from my Dad's old office finishing a late breakfast. John had rushed off early in the morning to continue his quest to find the Replicator, leaving me clear to be beamed back down to the surface to hopefully continue mine.
I'd begun by searching the internet for more information on court orders - what I found didn't reassure me because it seemed even with a court order I still might not get access to everything that was in my file. I was at the point of glaring uselessly at my laptop screen in annoyance over my lack of progress when my phone rang.
"Mrs Sheppard," Walter greeted me briskly. "I have some information for you on that court order."
"What did you find out?" I asked hopefully, glancing quickly around the mostly empty restaurant.
"Not a great deal ma'am," Walter admitted. "Court orders for release of records like the ones you want can take anywhere from four to twelve weeks to make it through the system. The air force does have the power to expedite petitions through the courts but usually that's reserved for top level importance, things affecting national security and such."
"Oh," I nodded to myself – not really a surprise. Still, it couldn't hurt to ask. "Is General Landry around?"
"I'll put you through ma'am," Walter replied in a tone that said he'd already anticipated my request.
"Thanks for your help Walter," I said before he transferred me. I waited a few seconds listening to the canned hold music while tapping my foot nervously against my chair.
"Mrs Sheppard," General Landry greeted me pleasantly.
"General Landry, thank you for speaking with me," I began. "I'm not sure if Walter filled you in or not but I was looking to get a court order to open my adoption records. He tells me it's usually a significant wait – I'll be back home long before it's likely to make it to court. Walter mentioned the air force expediting some requests if they're seen as important enough?"
"And you'd like for us to do that in this case," General Landry concluded. "Forgive me for being blunt but you must have had plenty of opportunity over the years to gain access to those records. Why now?"
"I never cared before," I admitted honestly. "Things have happened back home recently that make me think my origins might be a little more important than I've always thought. But I won't know unless I can look at those records."
"Unless you can be a little more specific I don't see that as compelling enough to warrant air force intervention," the General returned in a reasonable tone. "Have you got anything more than vague suspicions?"
"Ah," I thought quickly, wondering if I should tell him what I'd heard in the hologram room. No – John's words about keeping it to ourselves echoed loudly in my head and I decided to respect that. "I'm sorry General, at this stage it really is just a vague feeling. I understand that you can't act on that alone."
"I'm sorry Sabina," General Landry said understandingly. "I can see that this is important to you right now ... if you still want to pursue the court order give the details to Walter. He can progress it in your absence and let you know when the decision is made."
"I appreciate that, thank you General," I signed off feeling more than discouraged. I understood the air force wouldn't see my own little case as being nationally relevant – of course it wasn't! Still it left me with the sense that things were conspiring against me ... a feeling that made me all the more determined to get around them.
Realising I needed to talk to John again, see if he had any other ideas I called Walter back and got him to patch me through to John's cell.
"You have reached the voice mail of Colonel John Sheppard. Leave a message and I'll get back to you."
Great! I resisted the urge to groan aloud at yet another road block. Leaving a short message that said little more than hello I shoved the phone back in my pocket and sat back, thinking. What now?
I knew I should have just let it drop, bitten the bullet and gotten the address Rodney had given me but I couldn't get that damn Davos vision out of my head. I had seen my file – seen myself looking at it. There had to be a way.
And that's when it hit me ... if I had the guts to do it I could take a peek at my records without the time lag and the whole official route through the courts. Luckily I had my laptop but I needed a couple of other tools before I could execute my plan so I headed out to find the nearest electrical store.
oOo
An hour before close of business I strolled into the offices of Scott and Sloan Associates, walking confidently to the lifts with a friendly smile to the receptionist. She smiled back, obviously recognising me from the previous morning. She didn't question my presence just as I'd assumed, my personal connection to Jason would have been pretty clear from what she'd witnessed the previous morning. She just assumed I was there to see Jason again and let me through without a word.
Inside the lifts I punched the button for the basement, not surprised when it didn't work – of course you'd need special access to get down there. Picking the lowest floor I could get to I rode the lift down, plans bubbling away in my head.
There were a couple of offices down there plus a large law library, luckily all deserted late in the day. And a storage cupboard just the right size for me to hide in through closing time. Settling myself on the floor I sat back for a long uncomfortable wait.
oOo
Waiting until 7:30pm was torture but I daren't move any earlier than that, remembering lawyers were notorious for working late – or at least Roger had been. Groaning as my muscles protested I dragged myself out of the cupboard and quickly across to the door. Looking out into the corridor I relaxed at the deserted feel of the place.
Before I went any further I tried again to get John on his cell without success ... either he was still up on the Apollo or more likely he was involved in something that required communications silence so he'd switched off the phone. At the back of my mind was the vague worry that something had gone wrong because surely by now he'd be wondering where I was but I pushed it into the background for later.
Heading straight for the lifts I called the lift down to me. Once inside rather than push a button I quickly pried off the lift covering and attached some leads from my laptop to the operating controls inside. Crossing my fingers I ran one of the old programs I'd created when I'd been an ethical hacker, hoping it would still prove effective in bypassing the floor control systems.
A few seconds later I was grinning at my success – I now had access to all the floors in the building and only had to push the one I wanted. With any luck they'd be like every other company I'd come across when I'd been in the hacking business, believing that stopping someone from getting to specific floors was all the security they needed.
The basement was dark and creepy, like a maze with its rows and rows of shelves. They had a catalogue system near the door to help find specific files easily but rather than hack into that I shone my torch at the nearest shelf to see what kind of ordering system they were using. Alphabetic by month and year.
Walking slowing down each row of shelves I made my way steadily back in time until I hit the relevant year ... 1974, more specifically December 1974.
Running my finger over the labels on each box I located the 'S' one and pulled it slowly from the shelf, carrying it over to the single desk in the middle of the room. Sitting down I opened the lid. Inside it was just like a filing cabinet draw, with individual files inside, complete with labels. 'Scott' jumped out at me and I felt a sudden apprehension that I was so close to finding out ... well it could be something but it could also be nothing at all.
I opened the file and skimmed through the first page – details about the adoption that I already knew.
Then there was the post adoption birth certificate Gwen and Roger had registered for. There should have been an original birth certificate too but I could understand why there wasn't ... if you were going to abandon your baby at a hospital it stood to reason you wouldn't bother registering that baby's birth first.
It was the next and final sheet that had me sitting up and paying attention. It was the police report on the search they'd done to find my birth mother. What was interesting about it was the comments from the attending officer when they'd marked the file as unsolved.
"This baby might as well have appeared out of nowhere for all the evidence we have to explain where she came from," he'd written. "There were no fingerprints or any other kind of identifying markings on the baby's things or in the room where she was left. The door was locked from the inside ... no windows and no evidence that the lock had been picked or otherwise tampered with. The baby's cries alerted staff to her presence and it took them more than ten minutes to locate the key to what was a little used storage room. Surveillance footage from the surrounding security camera's showed no one entering or leaving that room during the window when the baby must have been left there. Fingerprint analysis against the police, military and FBI databases did not reveal any leads on either parent. With so little to go on we have no choice but to abandon the investigation."
Appeared out of nowhere? That had an ominous ring to it, especially in light of what I'd heard in the Hologram room. It would have been nice if they'd done some kind of DNA search too but that kind of thing didn't come into forensics until the mid to late eighties.
Click.
My eyes shot to the door as it opened, revealing the night security guard doing his rounds.
Crap!
It would have been comic to an observer the way our eyes met in surprise ... the delay before we each reacted.
"Hands up!" the guard ordered, pulling his gun and aiming it straight at me.
"This is ... I can explain," I stood slowly with my hands hovering at head height.
"Tell it to the cops," the guard dismissed ... clearly I wasn't going to be talking him over to my side. "This way." Motioning with his gun he urged me from the room and into the lift, keeping his weapon trained on me the whole time.
On the ground floor he moved to the security desk and called the police.
"Can I at least call someone too?" I asked hopefully.
"Quiet!" the guard ordered grimly. "I'm not letting you touch anything else until the cops get here."
In less time than I'd have imagined two police officers appeared at the doors and were let in by the guard.
"This is her," the guard gestured to me almost proudly. "Caught her down in the basement vandalising some old files when I was doing my first nightly rounds."
"Hey I wasn't vandalising them!" I retorted indignantly.
"What were you doing?" police officer one asked mildly.
"I was ... ah ... I was reading them," I admitted reluctantly. "But it was just the one file and it was about me so really I can't see what the harm is."
"You broke into the building and accessed restricted information," police officer two returned.
"Actually I didn't break in either," I pointed out. "I was in the building before closing and I just didn't leave when everyone else did."
"What's your name?" police officer one requested.
"Sabina," I said slowly. "Sabina Sheppard."
"Well Ms Sheppard," police officer one announced. "You'll have to come with us down to the station."
"Are you gonna charge me?" I cringed at the thought, wondering what John was gonna say when he found out about the mess I'd gotten myself in to.
"We'll need to contact the owners," police officer two replied.
More great news ... now I'd have the disapproval of Jason Sloan to add to what I'd be copping from John. Great going Sabina!
oOo
Let me just say straight up that all my previous thoughts about Earth jails turned out to be completely accurate. If I had a choice I'd be choosing an Ancient jail cell for all my future incarcerations.
It was cold and grey and frankly very worrying to be pacing around in that tiny cell waiting for something to happen. Finally a different police officer arrived and said I could make a call if I wanted. He led me out into a processing area and pointed to the phone. The two policemen I was familiar with were there also, one of them filling in some kind of form while the other stood waiting.
Rather than waste a call on John's cell when he probably wouldn't answer I decided to go through the SGC, crossing my fingers that doing so wasn't going to get me in even more trouble.
"This is Sabina Sheppard," I said casually to the person on phone duty – it was late and contrary to popular belief Walter did actually leave the SGC each night. "Can you patch me through to Colonel Sheppard please?" I noted the way my words caught everyone's attention but there was nothing I could do about it.
"Colonel Sheppard is here on base at the moment," the Sergeant advised. "I'll see if I can locate him ... stand by."
Smiling awkwardly at my audience I tapped a foot impatiently waiting for John to answer.
"Sabina?" John greeted me with a mix of concern and irritation. "I've been trying to call you for hours! Where the hell are you?"
"Ah ... don't get mad okay?" I began, my voice quavering as I braced for his reaction.
"Where are you?" John asked again sternly.
"Washington seventh district precinct," I admitted weakly. "I was ah ... I was arrested for um trespassing and um ... other things."
"What?!" John's voice echoed loudly in my ear and I winced at the anger that came through nice and clearly. "You're in jail?"
"Yes," I confirmed, "and I'd really appreciate it if you could come down here and bail me out."
"I'll be there in five," John hung up abruptly, leaving me staring at the handset mutely.
"My husband," I said to the watching officers awkwardly. "He's on his way."
"Colonel?" police officer one asked curiously.
"Air force," I admitted. "Needless to say he's less than impressed with me right now."
"We called Jason Sloan," the other officer advised. "He's also on his way. It'll be up to him whether formal charges are laid but he said he would like to speak with you first. We'll take you to the interview room now so you can wait for him."
"Thanks," I said, trying to smile but failing to stop the faint quiver as I realised the full depths of how badly I'd screwed up this time.
Author's Note:
Next Up? Fortunate Journey Season 4 Chapter 49