Alex drank the water but not a lot; she didn't want to get sick for drinking too much while sparring. She put her head gear back on when Ranger called for the next round to begin. Tank grinned down at her as she looked up at him. She put her left hand out to tag in and he tagged the top of her glove. Alex started hopping in a circle fashion going around him, she brought up the left crescent and Tank grabbed her leg, grabbed her left shoulder and put her on the floor.
Alex was getting frustrated by the time the time she got to Ranger. What am I doing? They know what kick I'm throwing, it's not the chamber it's too fast. Alex thought as she ducked Ranger's front fist, and hopped back from his ax grind kick. She tapped her left foot getting ready to throw the crescent and saw his hands move, she stopped midway in the air from throwing the kick. The tap, I'm so giving away my kicks. Damn, not good. Alex thought. She put her left side back and switched to her right. She saw Ranger raise an eyebrow. Okay, buddy, let's see how you like my power side. Alex thought.
She pushed off the floor with her back left foot and pivoted in the air and drove her right foot with the heel straight to his chest. Ranger barely dodged the kick. Alex spun to the left with a rear come around crescent and laid her foot up on his shoulder and tapped the side of his head. Ranger grabbed her leg, reached under and grabbed her shirt in the middle and then put her on the floor.
"Smartass," Ranger said. "Did you figure it out?"
"Tap, right before I throw it."
"Good job, Tiger. Go back to the left stance, throw the kick, and don't telegraph it." Ranger grabbed her right hand and hoisted her off the ground.
Joe read through the birth records again, he flipped over to the last sheet and stopped picking up the coke he was going for. On the back of the last sheet were tiny little hand prints and feet prints. He picked back up the sheet, a slight smirk about his mouth. He stood up and went over to the scanner that was in the small hall area and placed the sheet down and scanned in the prints. Alex's prints were on file, and he wanted to confirm the prints.
If I'm right, and Alex isn't Ramono's then these prints shouldn't match her. They should throw up a red flag and not match Alex at all. Joe thought. He pulled out the print copy and went back to his desk and started up the program to compare and match prints. The program booted up and Joe leaned back in the chair, he started typing in Alex's name into the program and brought up her prints on file that they had and then called in the new prints that had been scanned in by him. He hit the compare button. Joe took a drink of the coke and waited.
Antoine was typing away on other paperwork he had needed to catch up on while Joe worked on the birth records. "What did you scan in?"
"Prints from the birth record," Joe picked up the page where he supposedly had signed for the girl. He leaned out of the cube, "Kirkpatrick!"
"Yeah!"
"Get over here." Joe yelled back.
"Why can't you use the phone?" Came the reply from another cube.
"Bite me Stanvick." Joe yelled at the replier.
Kirkpatrick came walking over to Joe's and Antoine's cube. "What is it Morelli?"
Joe handed him the page, "Can you run that signature? I don't have that program on this computer."
Kirkpatrick took the sheet and looked down at the name. "This is your signature."
Joe pulled out one of his folders that had his signature on it and showed Kirkpatrick, "No it isn't, this is mine."
Kirkpatrick looked from Joe's real signature to the fake one. "This person is a lefty. The slant of the hand shows left. I'll run it." He left with the fake signature after he handed Joe back the paper that had his real one on it.
The computer beeped and Joe looked back to the screen. The blinking box had one word in it: MATCH.
"This shouldn't happen." Joe shook his head at the computer.
"What?" Antoine asked.
"The prints match."
Antoine shifted around his chair and looked at Joe, "How is that possible? She isn't the child's mother."
"That is what I'm wondering? How much of her identity is actually hidden?" Joe pulled back over the birth record documents and went through them. He had gone over these documents five times now. He stood up and started pacing outside his cube. Joe kept running his hands through his hair.
"Let me take a look at them." Antoine went over to Joe's chair and sat down.
"Be my guest. I have to be missing something. But what?" Joe asked.
"Relax! She's probably not your daughter. I think we should still look into the missing child cases you asked me to drop this morning." Antoine said.
"What if she is?" Joe asked. He groaned out in frustration and walked back over to his desk and picked up the first sheet that Antoine had discarded. K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid. It has to be something simple I'm not seeing, it has to be right in front of my face. Joe thought. He looked to the bottom of the page on the left hand side and saw the code for the document. He read page one of fourteen. "What page number are the prints on?"
Antoine shuffled to the last page. "Seventeen."
Joe started laughing. Antoine looked at him. "You're starting to scare me. Want to share?"
"She's not Ramono's." Joe went and laid the page down and pointed to the code for the document. Antoine saw it.
"We have to get the rest of the records that go with the prints." Antoine said.
"Yes." Joe picked up the file and shoved everything into it. "Let's go."
"If she's not Ramono, then where is Ramono?" Antoine asked.
"Don't know. We'll have to figure that out." Joe started walking down the cube isles. "Kirkpatrick, call my cell after you run that."
"We'll do!" Joe saw his head come up over the cubes low wall. "Where you headed?"
"Back to the records storage. Two kids." Joe said and left the room with Antoine.
"Sweet Jesus!" Joe heard Kirkpatrick answer on their way out.
Stephanie answered the cell phone she had put on vibrate, "Hello." She whispered quietly.
"Why are you whispering?" Mary Lou asked.
"Because Ranger is in the room. He's busy right now. What have you got?"
Stephanie looked over and saw Ranger sparring with Tank, the only thing she learned in the last few minutes of watching them spar is that she didn't want to do it. Matter of fact, she didn't even want to be in the workout room. She saw Ranger glance over at her and then back to Tank just in time to dodge from being hit in the face. Lula was dancing in her seat next to Stephanie throwing punches in the air.
"Junior year, Joe was seeing Babs, I called Babs. Okay, Babs said Joe got drunk one night, they all had been drinking. But Joe called Babs a different name, when they were you know…doing it."
"What was the name? Joe has never done that before that I know of." Stephanie said.
"Well she said it was…" That was as much as Stephanie heard because Ranger pulled the phone away from ear.
"Babe," Ranger said and shut the phone off. "You are supposed to be paying attention. Bobby is going to have you and Lula sparring in the next day or so. You said you would pay attention if I let you keep your phone."
"No!" Stephanie jumped up. "I almost had a name. I need to call Mary Lou back."
Ranger put the phone over his head. "No. You promised you would pay attention."
Stephanie jumped up trying to get it. "Give it back!" Stephanie glared at him then dove for him.
Alex turned her head when Stephanie shouted. She had her left side out facing Hal, not paying attention to him. She saw Stephanie dive for Ranger and busted out laughing. Hal spun and his foot landed right in her ribs. Alex went down to her knees gasping for air. She looked up with pain contorted on her face at the guys watching Stephanie and Ranger now rolling around the floor for the cell phone. Her breathing was short and fast. The burning in her ribs was making it harder to breath. Hal bent down, "Are you okay?"
"Hal! What did you do?" Ranger growled out amid all the laughter which stopped as all eyes swung towards her and Hal. Stephanie was under Ranger who was sitting on top of her and with his hands holding her wrists, in her right hand was her cell phone.
"She wasn't looking. I didn't mean to kick her there." Hal said now realizing that Ranger was on the floor with Stephanie and not knowing how they got there.
Alex pushed off the floor, her breathing was still coming short and fast, she chambered her leg up towards her chest and fired her leg down in a stomp kick at Hal's face as he turned to look up at her.
"Jesus!" Tank said as he heard the snap and Hal's face started pouring blood.
Alex had her foot back in chamber then turned holding her ribs and started heading for the door. Ranger jumped up off of Stephanie. Alex made it half way towards the door before she felt her arms lifted up. Lester held her arms up, "Stop, breathe. Just breathe."
Ranger pulled off the thin sparring gloves he had on, he saw Tank going for Hal and Lester going for Alex.
"My fucking nose is broke." Hal's voice sounded distant. "She broke my damn nose."
Ranger went to Alex and pulled up the tank top and he started checking her ribs feeling if any of them were broke. He lowered her top back down.
Bobby looked over to Ranger, "I already told him to watch his power. I told him to lay off her ribs."
He saw the look Lester gave Hal, "Leave it. He got what he deserved, we are supposed to be sparring, and sparring only."
Ranger looked to Bobby then over to Hal. "Get him out of here Tank."
Ranger nodded to Lester who help guide Alex out of the way so Tank could get Hal out of the workout room. He looked at Alex who was taking deeper breaths now. "You're going to get an x-ray this time. I'm sorry; we have rules when we spar, like you do in the dojo. Hal knows the rules. I'm sorry this happened, Alex."
Ranger reached under her chin and pulled the strap holding the head gear in place loose. He slipped off the head gear and tossed it. "Lester, why don't you and Bobby take her to go see Doc. His clinic has an x-ray machine in it."
Lester lowered her arms, and then took the gloves off. He tossed them aside with her head gear, he squatted and lifted her foot and started taking off the feet gear. Bobby walked over to them, "I don't want to piss you off, Alex. You go for blood when you get mad."
Ranger saw Alex look at Bobby, "He shouldn't have kicked me there."
"No, he shouldn't have." Ranger said. Ranger tapped her on the head, "You'll live, tiger."
He walked over to where Stephanie was back on the cell phone again. Ranger shook his head. This was my fault, I shouldn't have taken Stephanie's cell phone. Alex would have been able to block that kick, I'm as much responsible for what happened as Hal is. Damn that man. Serves him right he got his damn nose broken. Ranger thought. He watched as Stephanie was bouncing up and down with excitement.
"I got the name, I got the name." Stephanie said as she slapped Ranger on the chest. "Don't take my cell phone again."
Ranger looked over to see if Alex was gone, she wasn't in the room. He looked back at Stephanie. "Well? What's the name?"
"Sarah, that's it. Don't know anything else yet. There were several Sarah's in school, I just have to narrow down which one now." Stephanie said with a pleased gloat.
"Babe, why can't you let Morelli do this?" Ranger asked.
"He called me, he didn't ask me. But he gave hints, he couldn't talk openly. I know he wants me to help. I'm going to help." Stephanie said, "Besides, I'm tired of people calling and asking if she's mine now."
"The only thing I ask Babe, is don't let Alex hear."
"I'm not going to let her hear anything. My God, you think I want to tell her any of that. You saw what she did to Hal, she'd end up killing the person." Stephanie said. "I value my life more than that."
Ranger chuckled, "She won't kill anyone. It's just," Ranger reached down and pulled off the feet guards and the shin pads. "Babe, she is Morelli's daughter. If you just look at her, you can see it. Morelli needs to tell her who she is. I don't want anyone to take that away from him. Alex needs that more than he does, she needs to hear it from her father, Babe."
Stephanie came up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, "You're a softy inside all of that muscle." She kissed him.
Joe and Antoine walked into the offsite storage facility. The receptionist blushed when she looked up and saw both of them. Antoine grinned at her. "I'm back."
"What can we help you with now, Detective?" The redhead asked.
Joe watched as Antoine went over to the counter and leaned on it. Antoine smiled at the woman. "The file I picked up has a slight problem. It's not complete and there is a piece of another file with it."
"Oh no!" She looked around the office. "Nick isn't going to like this."
"Who is Nick?" Joe asked.
"Nick is the old coot around here. He's done the file systems for ages." She stood up, "can you let me see the files. If it turns out to be the years I think it is, you'll have to have Nick find this for you."
Antoine handed her the file. "We have the first thirteen pages of the one file. And page seventeen of the other. We need both files now, and complete files at that."
She took the file and then started typing in the file log numbers. "Exactly what I was afraid of."
"What?" Joe asked.
"Well, twenty years ago, everything from the hospital was moved to our facility. During that time, we never had problems with the files getting mixed up. You see the code on the hospital work, well Nick added codes to the paperwork for the file system." She looked up at Joe and Antoine. "Nick's system is a good one, several years ago we had several employees who were dumb as shit. The files all got screwed up, we still have files that come back in from fourteen to sixteen years ago that have to be restored back to their originals."
"How long will this take?" Antoine asked.
"I'm not sure. Only Nick is the miracle worker when it comes to finding this stuff. He can find a needle in a haystack."
"Who were the employees?" Joe asked.
She closed the file and handed it back to Antoine. "I don't know them, only Nick knows them. Let me call him for you. If you can have a seat, it'll take awhile."
Joe and Antoine moved over to the chairs in the waiting area and sat down. Joe looked over at Antoine.
"I don't like this." Antoine said.
"Smells fishy." Joe replied.
Antoine handed Joe the file. "So we have two babies. One is Ramono, and the other for sake of giving her a name is Alex. We don't know where Ramono is at or what became of Ramono."
Joe moved closer to Antoine and his voice just as low as Antoine's. "Ramono is probably dead. Alex was probably a replacement for Ramono."
Antoine nodded, "To cover up the replacement, the records were tampered with."
"Tampered with enough that whoever did it had to make it appear there was a problem with a lot of files to hide the files they really wanted no one looking for."
"Yes." Antoine leaned in his seat, "We need to find out who tampered with the files? Where is Ramono? Who Alex really is?"
"Not to mention why I am in the middle of this." Joe stated.
The door opened and an old man walked in, he stood no more than five feet. He had the brightest green eyes Joe had ever seen, his silver hair made him distinguished. He wore a brown cardigan over the white button up shirt he had on and his glasses hung down towards the end of his nose. Joe and Antoine stood up.
"Nick, these are the two detectives I was telling you about." The receptionist said loudly.
"Eh? What was that? Quit yer blasted mumble wimble." Nick graveled out.
Joe grit is teeth and closed his eyes trying to gain his composure.