THE FIRST SIDE: losing yourself…

Chapter One

"Ms. Rosenberg, if you'll follow me—?"

"Uh, Detective."

The tall, bald black man in the navy suit stopped short and turned to her, his hand on the doorknob of his office door, the question poised on his lips.

"Sorry, Mr. Wood, I said, 'Detective.'" Willow cleared her throat. Her voice had been a bit squeaky, undermining her attempt to establish her professional credentials for conducting her first official police interview—solo. Her newly paired senior partner of six weeks, Liam "Angel" McAmmond, had uncharacteristically called in today. "If you could please call me Detective Rosenberg."

Willow noticed the barely perceptible rise of Robin Wood's eyebrow that plainly said, "are you sure?" though he glossed it over smoothly enough with a quickly murmured apology as Willow followed him across the threshold of the man's office door. The old-style clouded glass had his name and title painted on it in bold letters, so it was easier for him to advertise to any approaching his door that he was principal of the Brooklyn Academy of Liberal Arts. Willow took the wooden chair opposite the desk as Wood rounded the large oak structure into his high-backed leather office chair.

As soon as he settled into the seat, Willow knew it had been an error as the ludicrous scenario of being called into the principal's office came to mind. A quick scan of Wood's face and she knew he felt it too. For him it was probably déjà vu, particularly given her youthful appearance that belied her actual 24 years, though Willow, the studious, thoroughly bookish type throughout her accelerated academic career from grade school through the John Jay criminal justice program and the New York City Police Academy, could only imagine the experience.

But Willow was an exceptional reader of tableau—her talent for reading it had staked her well in her chosen career as it would have in a number of fields, and she knew the appropriate counter-measure. She leaned forward off the back of the wooden chair, shortening the distance between herself and Wood, breaking the scene. "So, Mr. Wood, I won't take more of your time than is necessary. I understand you and your staff want to get back to planning tomorrow's memorial service you're holding to help your students through this. I can imagine the difficult times they're facing right now, especially her friends." Willow pulled out her PDA and it automatically beeped to life at her touch. "What can you tell me about Natalie Gorman?"

15-May-2122 - Up until six weeks ago, Natalie Gorman had been a fairly mediocre seventeen year old student of the privately owned and run Brooklyn Academy of Liberal Arts, for which Robin Wood serves as principal. In late March, the high school senior, an average student whose most notable trait was being the daughter of United States Senator Robert Gorman, began to miss classes. No excuse was provided, but warnings were issued to the family household, left on the contact email and messaging service. We are now aware that Natalie had been intercepting those messages prior to their delivery to Robert or Helene Gorman.

Willow leaned back from her keypad. She hated this part—writing narrative. Unfortunately, having only joined the detective squad two months ago and being the decided junior partner as the youngest cop to receive the promotion to detective in the history of the 57th Precinct, the more mundane parts of her department's work more often than not fell to her. She did most things well, some things—computers and tech work, mathematics and applied science, she excelled at. Others—writing narrative, singing anywhere but in the shower, public speaking, dancing with an audience, however… Not so much. She squinted at the screen.

"What did you get from that high school principal, Will?"

Willow looked up as Angel dropped a file on his desk, directly across from hers, then folded his large frame into his worn leather seat. "Hey, Angel." He looked haggard, the effects of the food poisoning that had caused his call-in that morning still on his handsome face. "How are you doing? Did Buffy make it in today?"

Angel snorted. "You're asking about Buffy? Buffy had no problem getting up this morning at 6AM and being at work by 8 like normal. I swear, I don't know what I did, but it must have been something. I'm starting to think she might have it in for me. Why am I always the only one to get sick from her cooking?"

Willow chuckled. "Hey, I put up with it all through college, Mister, remember? Why don't you do what I did, and do the cooking yourself?"

The look on Angel's face clearly said that wasn't an option. Willow shrugged and looked back down at her file. She was still getting used to her partner's chauvinistic idiosyncrasies. Clearly a 20th century kind of guy, which was kind of surprising given the ultra-feminist she knew her best friend to be. But they had been together since she and Buffy were sophomores in high school and Angel years past the Academy. The teasing they both had gone through…

She slid the hard copy of her notes from the Wood interview across the desks. "Pretty much just a confirmation of what Gorman said." She waited for Angel to open the folder to glance down at her carefully coordinated notes, outlined in different colors, printed direct from her PDA as they had downloaded into her desktop after she had snapped it into its cradle. She had put in for the wireless download interface that would have transmitted the data to synch with her workstation upon entry into the building but it wasn't in the budget, though her partner, entering his seventh year on the squad, had it and didn't really use it. Willow thought about asking Angel for a swap of the little handheld devices but knew he wouldn't give it up, even though he rarely bothered to use it for anything but tracking his appointments. She had noticed when he had asked her to correct a setting on it for him after he had accidentally jacked it downloading an (unauthorized) poker app. Pick up dry cleaning. Meet Buffy for lunch. Dinner with DA at 7. Angel truly had been born for a less modern century. But it was more of a status thing. He'd been there longer, he got the toys to show for it. And he was absent-minded enough that at least it did get some use at least as a PDA, after all.

It didn't matter, anyway. It looked like the whole system was being dismantled as the department's budget had been cut again this year, and the wi-fi system seemed to require more attention than it was worth as the technology was outstripped by the tweaks and upgrades prompted by ever-changing industry efficiency and security standards that kept the communications companies (as well as the corresponding hacker communities) in business. Her first week as detective, she had actually gotten the system back up after adding her entry into the central system had temporarily brought it down. She recalled the look of glee on Lieutenant Giles's face as the "demon-infested infernal system" rebooted, good as new, as well as the simultaneous look of panic on Angel's face. Later, he had taken her to the side to chastise her for revealing her talent with technical systems. Now that it was known, he warned, every computer glitch from servers down all the way to the slightest wonky fax that came in to the department would be on her to-do list to look into and resolve.

She had to admit, he had been right, though she wasn't bothered for the big stuff for which they retained an outside IT agency, as it was contracted by the global HQ in Washington. Six weeks into her detective career, and she had been—kindly, at first, by the more old school detectives, officers and even EAs, but gradually more off-hand—to please look at the 3rd floor booking computer, or the line into the global FBI system, as the systems were acting up again. To date, she'd fixed the printer on their floor three times (gotten toner all over her jacket the first time before learning her lesson and removing it both times thereafter), the fax once, the network server connection one and a half times (had worked with the real resident tech, Daniel "Oz" Osbourne, the first time, had paid attention, and managed on her own the second), and Lieutenant Giles's laptop twice.

Truth be told, Willow didn't mind too much. The added tasks were few and exposed her to other faces within the department, which, if Angel were her only contact, she'd suffer from the wrong impression was overly mundane and, being perfectly candid, boorish. The couple of times she'd worked on Giles's laptop had given her the chance to make an impression on him, and the lieutenant had taken a shine to her in an almost fatherly way. He was also a bit of a technophobe and she found his problems were usually due to him not logging in enough so that when he did, his system, which he never brought in voluntarily for physical upgrades, would be overwhelmed by the new software that poured in from the network servers. He had originally come in from the London branch and wanted to return there some day, to join the Academy faculty as a lecturer. No doubt so he can be around real books with real covers and pages, Willow thought.

Now Oz… Oz was a different story. Willow had known Oz since high school, and had hit it off with him early on. They were both technically inclined, though Oz was not the nerdy bookworm Willow had been in high school throughout college at John Jay. He had, in fact, been on the lazy side, academically speaking, more interested in his other life as the guitarist for a local garage rock band, and had pursued the computer sciences degree at Newark Technical College more out of a lack of anything better to do than any real conviction. Working on the computer systems for the New York branch of the Justice and Law Enforcement Organization was simply a paycheck to Oz. It also gave him the opportunity to visit Precinct 57 of the New York branch of the Global Justice and Anti-crime office, where coincidentally, his girlfriend since high school, Willow Rosenberg, worked as the most junior detective. She hadn't returned his last two calls, though, and hadn't seen him face to face for over a week. She frowned. They'd been busy as hell the past couple of days with the Gorman case they'd caught. That wasn't the only reason, though.

"Wood concurred with the parents' story almost point for point. She must not have been showing until just before she gave birth, 'cause she was still going to school without a hitch up until March 25th or so. No one in admin had a clue, and no visits to the campus health office."

"Yeah," Angel mused. "Well, she was on the heavy side. I'm not surprised she wasn't really showing."

"But not even to her own parents? That's kind of hard to figure."

"Maybe to someone thin as a stick like you, Will—no offense, but heavy girls? Come on. You know it can be hard to tell."

Willow felt a brief flash of anger at the remark, both for herself and for those stereotypical heavy girls, before she quickly cooled herself and just shrugged. Given her parents' lack of interest in her life since she'd left their home to go to college seven years ago, she doubted they'd notice even if someone with her slight frame was 8 and a half months pregnant, either.

From their separate interviews with the Gormans yesterday within the hour of catching the case, Willow surmised they were also not the hands-on type of parents. She had sat with Mrs. Helene Gorman, who was understandably distraught at the news her daughter had been attacked and killed on the street as she waited for a cab to take her home from the Lexington Women's Health clinic. What was even more of a shock given she had no clue as to her daughter's situation—the reason she had even been at the clinic, that Natalie had been taking her newborn daughter home for the first time when she was attacked, and the killer or killers had taken the infant with them.

Helluva way to find out you lost a daughter, had a granddaughter, but lost her, too.

But there was still hope for the infant, however increasingly slim that hope got as the days passed by. It drove Willow, thinking that the NYPD, and specifically Angel and she, were now the girl's best and possibly only chance at being reunited with her grandparents.

Willow had not gotten much from the woman other than her quite understandable shock and grief. She'd awkwardly offered her condolences for Natalie and encouragement to not lose hope for Baby Gorman and secretly wished that she had sat in on Angel's interview with the more stoic Robert Gorman taking place in the other room. Gorman, if as affected by his daughter's murder as his wife, did not show it in the brief time she introduced herself to the man, other than the thin lines that formed between his eyebrows and at the corners of his tightly drawn mouth, before he disappeared into his study with Angel.

But Robert Gorman was a US Senator of New York, a position that, if you followed the political tabloids, was a typical jumping off point to more ambitious national and even global offices, rumors of which had followed him from early in his political career. Indeed, the rumors were becoming more persistent and given air by increasingly legitimate media. But as far as Willow was concerned, it was moot. Even if Gorman's current political position did not have the weight of a global office, the case was still too sensitive to give to the rookie detective. Naturally they had split the interviews as per normal procedure. Of course, Willow trusted Angel's greater experience, but he just didn't take notes like she did, preferring to keep stuff in his head where he could brood about it in private, before finally sharing his information. Not like me, the insane note-taker with no poker face, according to Buff.

As for Angel's assumption, quickly and easily made once the file was assigned them and the outline of their investigation began to form, that Willow's gender made her the natural choice to handle the distraught Natalie Gorman leaving Senator Gorman for him to handle, Willow barely blinked. Anyone digging further beyond the surface of gender, she noted without voicing it, would have been sorely pressed to find anyone on their squad, cis or trans, male or female, with less outward compassion than Angel. Angel was a good detective, approaching legendary status with his ability to close the toughest cases, deal with the most uncooperative witnesses, handle the worst of the criminals, all while adeptly working the Byzantine politics of the business of law enforcement. It was easy to give him the benefit of the doubt that emotional affects, actual and disguised or simply just not there, were not among the skills he used to handle his duties.

In fact, as much as rumors of higher office followed Gorman, Angel seemed destined for a leadership position himself, state, national, even global. Willow knew she was damned lucky to have gotten him as her partner and mentor and was determined to learn as much about policing and law enforcement as she could from him, as much as he was willing to teach her. She wasn't sure but suspected her life-long friendship with Buffy might have had something to do with Angel agreeing to take her as his partner after an extended time on his own since his last regular partner, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, had transferred to the Texas office several months prior to her promotion to the detective squad.

From what she gleaned from Angel's sparse notes, Robert Gorman had been equally surprised by his daughter's secret life. A quick scan of the family computer had confirmed that Natalie had been intercepting the messages from the school inquiring about her extended absences the past five weeks. And apparently, as Angel had speculated, her added weight from her pregnancy had not been noted by her largely absent parents. Indeed, they hadn't even been able to offer the name of their granddaughter's father, so out of touch they had been with Natalie's life. Willow was still waiting for the disk image from Natalie's personal computer which was still going through the standard search down in the technical lab to dig a little deeper into those details, but if the lack of interest shown by her parents was mutual, it would not be surprising if the murder/kidnapping were random rather than motivated by the fact that Natalie was Robert Gorman's daughter.

Still, given that unflattering picture of the senator's household and Gorman's position within the national political system, the case had been deemed sensitive by New York Chief Snyder and the details had been suppressed from the normal news channels. Natalie's death would have hardly been worthy of the media's ever-escalating appetite for sensational occurrences, anyway. It was simply one murder case among the sixty-seven reported within the city/state for that day. On the other hand, both Willow and Angel knew the kidnapping of her day-old daughter would be worth extra hours to investigate. In an age of a 10% fertility rate, kidnapped children, much less a newborn baby, were still big news items for most people, regardless of the child's pedigree.

Though the two acts were most certainly related, locating the child had a slightly higher priority than finding Natalie's killer. Gorman himself had impressed that on Angel. He and his wife may not have shown enough interest in their own daughter's life, but he would be damned if the same would be said about his granddaughter.

"Anyway, I have her schedule and the list of friends. I'm still waiting for the stuff from her PC. That should be here this afternoon. Did you want to start the interviews with the teachers after lunch?"

"You can take those and the PC. Give me the list of friends."

Willow nodded in agreement. The friends would have been the more interesting, and she supposed, more fruitful source of information, but she didn't fault Angel for sticking her with the more mundane avenues to follow. This was their first really big case as partners, a sensitive one to boot, and she was content to have him take the lead on it. Plus he was tacitly acknowledging that she was better with the technological issues such as decrypting Natalie's computer files, though her greater expertise in that area was a given. It was still good that he admitted without pause that she did something better than him and could contribute to working the case in her own way.

She closed out the file to finish the narrative and summary later. Typically, summaries only had to be logged every three days, though it was her natural inclination to finish it, like anything she was assigned, as soon as possible. They gathered their things for the trip back to Wood's academy.

"When we finish up there, we can call it a day. The feeds from the surveillance cameras from the bodega across the street should be here by the morning and I doubt we'll get anywhere with this one without the footage any way… You're coming for dinner tonight, though, right? Buffy mentioned—?"

"Yup, I'll be there at eight or so. Xan and Anya too, huh?"

Angel grunted. He didn't get along with Xander, Buffy's and her childhood friend. Or his weird girlfriend Anya. Willow didn't blame him for the Anya part. She chuckled and shrugged on her jacket as Angel led the way to the stairwell.