PART 7

The next few days were difficult for everyone. The stress was almost unbearable. The police had no information about whether Loubar was alive or not. They had dragged the lake for a second time but still didn’t recover a body. Angie continued to rack her brain but failed to remember anything more about the woman in the picture. She was beginning to doubt such a woman existed when she got a reply from one of her old school mates. He didn’t remember her name, just the fact she resembled Angie. He also recalled that she didn’t attend NYU with them. She was SUNY student at NYU to study with one the professors. It was some sort of exchange program. That’s why she wasn’t in her yearbooks.

Without hesitating, Angie broke into the SUNY student records system. Efficiently, she set up a search to match majors, time frames, and looks. Luckily, their system retained the student ID pictures. She returned to her own work while she waited for the results. If she had to idly sit and wait for the results, she’d go crazy.

Twenty minute later, a message flashed on the screen. Three matches were found in the computer system. Angie quickly looked at the picture of the first match. It wasn’t who she was looking for. Then she moved on to the next photo. This one was a closer but still wasn’t quite right. Silently praying for a match, Angie looked at the third name: Angel Ramirez. It didn’t sound familiar; she would have remembered someone with a name so similar to her own. As soon as she saw the picture though, Angie knew this was who she was looking for.

"Rollie, come here," she bellowed across the workshop. "It’s her. It’s who we’re looking for."

Rollie ran across the loft to see why Angie was causing such a commotion. He came to a dead stop as he looked over her shoulder, to see the monitor. He gaped at it, dumbfounded. There definitely was a strong resemblance between the two women.

"Who is she?" he asked.

"Man, I wish I knew. I got her address. Let’s go pay her a visit."

Rollie was a little apprehensive about going but based on Angie’s facial expression, one of determination, tenacity and perseverance, Angie was going with or without him. And if she was going, he was going. Anything to try to put this nightmare behind them. Then, maybe, they could concentrate on their future and their happiness.

They sped through the city until they arrived at the address Angie had scribbled down. It was an old, apartment building that had seen better days, located in an area with a seedy reputation. The bricks were covered in a layer of black dust. The awning covering the door was faded and ripped in several places. Even the gold lettering on the door had partially flaked off.

They approached the front door, only to encounter someone they assumed was a doorman. They made this assumption despite the fact he didn’t look like a stereotypical one. The man wasn’t wearing a traditional doorman’s uniform. Instead, he was clothed in torn black jeans, a white, stained T-shirt and a black leather vest. A thick, metal chain hung from one of his belt loops. Tattoos covered both of his muscular arms. He seemed to have a permanent scowl on his face. In addition, there was a long, violent-looking scar on his face, the remnant of a long ago knife fight. His big bulging neck muscles only enhanced the impression that he was all brawn and no brains. Rollie thought he wasn’t a doorman, he was more like a guard dog.

"Who’d you want?" asked the burly doorman.

"Angel in 4C."

"She’s not there. Go away." Before they had a chance to react, he shut the door on their faces and locked it behind him. So much for the easy route, Rollie thought. Now came the dilemma. What should they do next? Back at the van, they placed a call to Mira, hoping she could get a search warrant. She wasn’t answering, neither was Francis. As Angie hung up, she noticed Rollie standing outside on the sidewalk, looking up at the roof of the adjacent building. She could tell he was developing a plan. She could almost hear the wheels in his head turning.

"C is that apartment there." He pointed to one of the windows.

Angie looked at him sideways, and with suspicion in her voice, asked, "How do you know that?"

"Uh…" A sheepish grin dominated his face. "I’ll tell ya later, luv. But, by climbing onto that roof, I’d just have to go along that ledge a bit, and we’re in."

Quickly, he left Angie’s side and proceeded to make his way onto the roof. Once there, he swallowed hard. The ledge was a mire five inches wide. Meticulously, he rigged a safety cable so if something went wrong, it would stop his fall. At least, that was the theory. He’d rarely used the device because it failed to function properly on multiple occasions. Once it was set to his satisfaction, he slid one foot along the decorative ledge, then dragged, with painstaking slowness, the other. He was making good progress, until he heard Angie’s voice over the headset.

"Whatever, you do Rol., don’t look down." Angie said, observing intently from inside the truck.

Immediately, his eyes shot downward and saw the hard pavement far below him. Panic seized him momentarily and he clung desperately to the side of the building. "Thanks, Ang.," he said sarcastically. After several deep, cleansing breaths, he recovered enough to finish inching his way to his target. As he reached into his pocket for a glass-cutting tool, he realized it wasn’t necessary. The window was open just a crack. Carefully maneuvering himself, he managed to put his fingertips in the gap and pry the window open enough for him to swing through.

The apartment was a depressing, dismal site. It was quite a small apartment. As far as Rollie knew, there were only three rooms in the entire place; the common room he stood in, the bedroom and the bathroom. The walls were covered with old nail holes, unframed photographs and peeling paint. A mirror in desperate need of re-silvering hung next to the door. The door was off the closet revealing it’s meager contents.

The furnishings in the main room were quite plain and in disrepair. It consisted of an old rickety table with two folding chairs in the eating area. There was a small stained sofa in the living room. He concluded that there definitely a single woman living there. From where he stood, he could see a single coffee cup in the sink. One plate, littered with toast crumbs, sat beneath it. A discarded pair of heels lay by the front door. Through the open bedroom door, he could see one end of a single bed covered with a faded floral spread.

Just when he was about to step further into the room, he heard a muffled noise. He froze in place. He heard the sound again, and pinpointed the source. He let out a sign of relief; he was just hearing the neighbors moving about through the thin walls. However, it re-enforced the need for quiet. If he could hear them, they could hear him.

An impressive computer system waited in one corner. Obviously, this was how the apartment’s occupant spent most of their money. Angie would love a system like that, Rollie thought. Intrigued, he stepped closer. He could see an envelope taped to the monitor. It was addressed to Angela Ramirez c/o Tyler F/X leaving no doubt whom it was for. Suddenly, someone pounded on the door. The knocks resonated throughout the entire apartment.

"Rollie, get out of there. Now!" Angie ordered.

Rollie grabbed the note and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. He wasted no time exiting the way he entered. He hustled down the fire escape and into the passenger seat of the van.

****

Back at the loft, Rollie handed the note over with a flourish. "I believe this is for you, Madame."

Angie slit the envelope’s top and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She smoothed it out, then started reading.

After reading the note, memories came flooding back to Angie. Annie Ramsey. She had been a Master’s candidate from SUNY. Instead of writing a thesis, she had done a project, which was a hacker-proof computer system. Specifically, it was an Internet server application. Angie was asked by her professor to try to break into the system, without revealing to her that is was part of Annie’s evaluation. Angie had broken the code in less than 15 minutes. It would have been less except the equipment she was forced to use wasn’t that great.

Angie always had mixed feelings about the situation. She was proud that she was able to impress her professor but always felt bad that it had to come at someone else’s expense. Annie’s failure to get her Master’s effectively ruined her future; at least in the short term.

Angie ran her fingers through her hair and sat back into her chair, recalling one of the few times the two of them had ever talked to each other. Despite both being computer science majors, their paths rarely crossed as Annie was only at NYU one day a week. The other days she studied at SUNY. It was in the lounge area outside their professor’s office. Both were waiting for him to return from a department meeting. Angie remembered that Annie had started talking first. She made some comment about how she was always being mistaken for Angie. Once the ice was broken, they kept talking to occupy themselves until the teacher arrived. It was some way to pass the time. Somehow, the discussion turned into one about families and family origins. They discovered that they were both originally from Cuba only Annie left when she was only a few months old. Both found it a little odd and weird that they were so similar to each other. It was almost like they were twins who were separated at birth.

Across the room, Rollie coughed slightly, breaking Angie out of her reverie. She looked over at her partner, and judged by the look on his face, that it was time to tell him, and the police, everything she remembered.

****

The following afternoon, Angie had been working on a sequence for several hours straight when she decided she needed a break. Since it was a beautiful day, she elected to in-line skate for a while. About thirty minutes after she left, inspiration struck and she couldn’t wait to get her idea on paper. She abruptly changed directions and headed back to the loft. During the return journey, she kept working on her idea. Details and slight improvements kept popping into her head, demanding her full attention so she didn’t pay much attention to the surrounding environment. This was why she never heard the car accelerate behind her.