Cold Case

Despite the frosty February weather outside, it was hot as fuck in the basement. The small 10” oscillating fan atop the metal filing cabinet did little to provide relief from the close sweltering heat in the small dingy subterranean office, the rustling of a handful of sheets of papers pinned to the tack board on the windowless wall to mark its passage as it moved back and forth. The ballast containing two fluorescent lights overhead hummed and the tube on the left occasionally flickered through the cracked plastic cover.

It was his first day back. Dropping the slender Manilla file folder on the desk, Abel Stafford slid into his chair, a darkened crescent moon shaped sweat stain already under each arm of his white dress shirt. Strumming his long fingers on the desk, he stared at the six inch tall worn file folder bound with elastic rubber bands sitting prominently on the blotter atop his cluttered desk, the outside covered in hand scribbled notes. He didn’t need to open the folder to know its contents. He knew it inside and out, front to back. It contained the dossiers and case information on twenty two unresolved missing persons. Lying next to it was the new file folder he had brought, a new missing person’s case though one not officially assigned to him, this one involved the all too recent and mysterious disappearance of his partner Gilbert Caine.

Thinking about Gil brought a ghost of smile to Abel’s flushed sweaty face. Only two short years ago Abel had completed his training at Quantico, a young hotshot gun toting FBI special agent eager for field assignment and ready to change the world. That drive, that ambition brought him into conflict with one of the senior instructors who, out of spite pulled a few strings, and instead of field duty for Abel, as he wanted, he found himself assigned to an office in the basement of the annex to the Justice Building with Gilbert as his partner. He didn’t know why the instructor had chosen this particular destination for assignment, other than maybe the old bastard thought it would be a funny play on names to team him with Gilbert, Caine and Abel. Whatever the reason, he wound up assigned to the shitty desk investigating missing persons cold case files, some dating back decades. Gil and he couldn’t be more unalike. Gil was a twenty three year veteran of the Bureau, short and fat to the point of almost being obese, while Abel was young, tall and leanly muscled. How Gil ever passed the original physical entry requirements to get into the FBI, Abel had no clue. Also, Abel wasn’t sure if Gil owned a razor or not, it seemed the stubble on his jowly face was always the same length. Despite his initial unfavorable impression of Gil based on appearance, Abel quickly discovered the man possessed an amazingly keen analytical mind with meticulous attention to subtle nuance.

As far as the cases the pair had been assigned, Gil had developed a theory over the years isolated in the basement, intimating there was something more nefarious at play, suggesting that thirteen of the cases were not only connected but not really missing persons at all. He fervently believed they should be treated as homicides and the work of a possible serial killer. Except, there were no bodies or other corroborating evidence supporting that assertion. None. The other special agents often mockingly referred to Gil as a fat Fox Mulder the conspiracy sensitive character from the TV program the X-Files, which of course had everyone referring to Abel as Mulder’s foil, Scully.

Good natured ribbing aside, even Abel had to concede, several of the threads Gil was using to try and connect the cases seemed pretty tenuous and a fair bit of a stretch. To make matter worse, Gil suggested the supposed identity of his shadowy killer was female. Given the infrequency of female serial killers, Aileen Wuornos, Jane Toppan, and Dorothea Puente notwithstanding, the notion was generally met with derision, with Rhett Dobson, one of the Bureau’s best profilers suggesting perhaps Gil had been too long in the perpetually overheated basement.

It was during one of those long afterhours nights of file review several weeks back, bored out of his skull, Abel suggested they take a break and go out and grab a bite, though somehow, at Gil’s insistence they found themselves at O’Shea’s draining a few too many pints. It was there Gil finally shared some of his more controversial thoughts regarding his theory about a lone female abductor with Abel.

“I’ve seen her, you know,” Gil slurred, nodding, bloodshot eyes glassy as he tilted his bottle to see if there was still some beer left in it.

“Who?” Abel queried, grinning back.

“The girl, the one taking all those people,” replied the old man, bringing the bottle up to his lips and draining it.

Abel chuckled, “What? You think one woman is responsible for more than half of those disappearances?” he asked, cheeky grin on his clean shaven face.

“She haunts me, in my dreams,” murmured the older man, expression forlorn.

“Who is she?”

Setting the now empty bottle back on the table, Gil nodded, or attempted to, his head flopping forward then back.

Laughing, Abel clapped a hand on his shoulder, “Yeah? Is she cute?”

The look coming across Gil’s face became almost serene, his voice low, “She is so beautiful,” he whispered. “I thought I had her one time, just before you were assigned to me, that’s when I caught an actual glimpse of her. I just missed,” he lamented, lips curling down into a face and etching lines deeply into his face.

“Did you get together with a sketch artist? You know, give us something a little more to go on,” Abel teased, finishing his own beer and holding the bottle up and making eye contact with the cocktail waitress.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t understand,” Gil hiccupped.

“Go on try me,” Abel encouraged.

“No, but I’ll tell you this much, she’s going to take another person soon. New Orleans during Mardi Gras,” he explained, bringing the empty bottle to his lips and trying to take another drink before looking at the bottle.

The girl Abel flagged appeared, smile on her pretty face as she set coasters down and placed the beers on them before removing the empties.

Handing the girl a bill, “Keep it,” Abel said, grinning at her.

Taking the bill between two slender fingers, she winked at him and vanished back into the bar.

“How do you know she is going to be New Orleans? You have a lead or something pointing you in that direction?” Abel asked.

Shaking his head, Gil shrugged, taking the fresh bottle, “I don’t know how I know, I just do,” he said, though his speech was becoming less coherent.

“You’re not giving us a whole lot to go on,” Abel chuckled, stumbling over his own words and feeling the effects of his own alcohol consumption.

“I don’t know if I should tell, no, I,” he said, exhaling and smacking his lips together and shaking his head.

Abel chuckled again, “I think the solution is simple, we just have to go to The Big Easy and check out every hot woman there, see if we can find her,” he said.

“She’ll make a point of letting me see her, to taunt me, it’s a game she plays,” he babbled.

“Does she have a name?”

Gil shook his head. “I don’t know, she changes it. I’ve got to take a piss,” he stated, pushing himself to his feet, teetering a moment before moving off toward the bathroom.

Abel chuckled to himself, dismissing the ramblings of a tired old drunkard.

And that had been that. As cryptic as the little tidbits of information had been, the old guy divulged nothing more about the mystery woman he claimed was haunting him. Instead, the day following, he submitted the appropriate forms and got the right clearances and just like that, two weeks later they were headed for Louisiana for a ten day field trip. How the old man had managed to sell the necessity of the trip to their supervisor Tom Trager, Abel never knew, not that he minded, he had never been to New Orleans before, though in all honestly, he was just glad to be anywhere other than in that accursed basement.

Mardi Gras in full swing was something to behold, the spectacle, pageantry, a truly amazing experience and feast for the senses. He hadn’t really known what they were looking for, but Gil had said he would know when he saw it as they weaved through the crowds for hours on end.

On the fourth day, the sun already down and night coming alive, Abel and Gil were out on the street amidst the milling throng of revelers. The sound of exploding fireworks sounded overhead, Abel glancing up to see a dazzling display of magenta and emerald colored pyrotechnic bursts. “Did you see that?” he asked, grinning and looking back down, but Gil was nowhere in sight. “Gil!” he called out, trying to catch a glimpse of the old man somewhere in the jubilant crowd. Maneuvering through the tight compacted mass of people, Abel ducked into an open alleyway, pulling out the cell phone from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Stepping back into the shadows, he swiped the screen and tried to call Gil’s number. Focused as he was, he didn’t hear the scantily clad woman approach from the darkness until she was right up on him, pressing her lean fit body into him. She was tallish, though not nearly as tall as his 6’3”. A bright green metal flecked masquerade mask with a lighter lime green plume concealed the upper part of her face, though he could clearly see her eyes, they appeared emerald in color, almost luminescent in the weak light spilling into the alley from the street. He got the impression of youth and vitality from her as she pressed amazingly firm breasts against him and leaned in, closing her luscious red painted lips over his mouth, her sweet tasting tongue slipping into his mouth and dancing over his. Breaking the buss, she took his bottom lip between her teeth, nipping him before pushing him back, mischievous grin on her face as she draped a string of pale amber colored glass beads over his head. Before he had recovered enough composure to speak, she was gone, disappeared into the sea of people moving through the streets leaving him with a hint of her gloss lingering on his taste buds and an erection in his pants.

That was also the night Gil vanished. He never returned to the hotel and didn’t answer his cell phone. Nothing. Abel checked with medical clinics and the hospital before going to the area field office, though he was re-directed to local police. There was no trace of the aged FBI special agent. Abel spent the remaining days searching for him, but it was fruitless, it was as if the city itself had just swallowed him up.