Weeks had passed since the incident in Truth, Montana. All those weeks and 95% of that time had been spent in the office, cases that Campbell deemed unimportant and or unworthy of his precious time were discarded to the shredder, and others that Campbell deemed worthy ended up being one wild goose chase after another. Bennet had chuckled every time one of these blew up in Campbell's face, but every case left Campbell more and more melancholic. Ever since Jacob Hampton's death and the subsequent disappearance of the body, Campbell had been more than short with him, and Bennet was too. He needed to get over it.
While Nea was off moping about trying to find a new case that would lead to "evidence" of the paranormal, and not watch "research" on the television down in the office. Bennet sat idly, forcing himself to complete the information transfer of one of the x-files into the FBI's main database. Why hadn't someone done this years ago? Probably because someone like Bennet has scoffed and decided that files like these weren't important enough to transcribe. He was about to give up for the day when a knock at the office door came and Bennet glanced away from the computer screen. Kind of a pudgy man, his last name was Daley, Bennet remembered that much, they had worked together a handful of times.
"What brings you to Hell, Daley?" Bennet scoffed.
"Is this really where they put you? God it's like prison," the other man responded.
"If prison involved babysitting and a gun," Bennet chuckled.
"Right! Anyway, I was given a case, but it falls more under your department's jurisdiction."
Daley placed a file on the desk. Bennet rolled over and flipped it open
"What is this?" Bennet asked not looking once back up at his colleague.
"People have been going missing in a coastal town, nobody seems to know why, Young people too, only in their early twenties."
"How coastal are we talking cause if you don't say Miami I'm not taking the job Daley," Bennet joked.
"Ah no dice. Massachusetts."
"Damn, well I guess I'll take it anyway." Daley chuckled as Bennet said that. "From the little information it has, college students have been going missing left and right without a trace. Daley, I think the cold case file section would have more use for this than me."
"Its been sitting in our office for weeks, every time someone takes it, they come back empty handed." Daley responded. "Essentially, they are a set of cold cases, but not officially. I thought you'd like a head start on this before the Spooks gets a hold of it you know."
Bennet sighed. Spooks,q was that Campbell's nickname with the rest of the bureau? He chuckled.
"Alright, thanks Daley."
He had returned to entering data into the bureau's database when Nea returned, a popsicle held tightly in his hand. Bennet sat dumbfounded, and yet the only thing his brain could process was, how was it fair that Campbell got a popsicle for dicking around while he had been doing work for these past hours.
"Look who decided to return to his post," Bennet managed after distracting himself from the popsicle.
"Oh fuck off," Nea muttered. Bennet could hear the annoyance practically drip off the other man's voice, probably still because of the incident in Montana even though Bennet had saved his life.
"Save it for later, we have a case."
"What is it?"
"A set of cold cases," Bennet responded.
"Not interested," Nea said flatly. "Put it back in the filing cabinet, it's not worth the effort."
"It's not from the filing cabinet. It comes from the criminal investigation department. Kids have been going missing, and every time someone goes missing, witness claim that they're seen talking to a young child or a teenager. I did some intelligence work for a case similar to this a while back, people using children to lure women into human trafficking rings."
"Then the criminal investigations department should keep the case," Nea said licking the popsicle before biting off the tip.
Bennet furrowed his brow and frowned as Nea disregarded his statement. "Every agent that gets sent there comes back completely empty handed, as if these people vanished like a puff of smoke."
"So?"
"It's in Salem, Massachusetts." Bennet watched as Campbell's reaction completely changed. The melancholy from moments ago disappeared replaced with a look of ae and excitement, so much so that a piece of Popsicle slipped of its wooden stick and straight onto Nea's pant leg.
"Oh damnit!"
Bennet could only raise an eyebrow because if he said anything he would start laughing on the spot. How was he a grown man? Bennet cleared his throat. "Well, Campbell, are we taking the case or am I returning it?"
"Absolutely! Get your things we'll go now!"
"Now?!" Bennet sputtered.
An hour of hasty packing Bennet once again found himself in a car with Nea Campbell driving to another strange case.
The ride was awkward and silent, even though another case had been found, Bennet still had a sneaking suspicion that it was because what happened on that frozen lake. Bennet grumbled for a second before speaking.
"I get it, you're mad at me for shooting Hampton." Him being the bigger man was probably for the better.
"We lost that creature because you shot at it," Nea said, not taking his eyes off the road.
"Would you rather Jacob Hampton eaten you too?" Bennet hissed.
"No! But you could have wa-" Nea began to shout, turning away from the road for a split second.
"Watch where you're fucking driving!" Bennet yelled as they swerved slightly into the other lane on the highway. "You're going to get us killed at this rate, Campbell, and it's only been three weeks!"
"Listen, Specs, if you want me to say sorry, then fine, sorry. But please imagine wanting to find out something your entire life, and every single time you get even somewhat close to figuring it out, it gets further and further away."
"Just try harder to not to get us killed in this search of yours, because if you get me killed I'll haunt you," Bennet said, only to get a chuckle out of the other man.
Honestly Bennet hated any car ride that lasted more than twenty minutes when he wasn't driving, watching the farm lands and cities flying past him was just boring. He must have dosed off because the next thing he knew he was jolted awake when Nea hit a speed bump a little too quickly. They were pulling into a parking lot in a residential side of a town, the Salem Police station he assumed.
Nea proceeded to park in the visitor parking, one which has a sign that read '15 minutes only'. Bennet glared at Nea.
"What?" Nea asked noticing the annoyance in the other man's face. "They won't mind."
Bennet released a sigh. "Fine." He reluctantly took the lead and Nea followed him into the police station.
The building was just as he suspected, a busy police station, phones ringing nonstop, detectives busy at their desks; the smell of cheap coffee filled the building.
Bennet walked up to the secretary and asked her to speak to the detective on the case, but the secretary didn't even look up from her IBM, she brushed Bennet off and told him to sit and wait until she came for him.
Bennet grumbled slightly but did as he was told, walking over to a chair. Across the room, Nea was busy chatting up someone else who sat handcuffed to a chair. It looked like something out of a second rate cop show. A man in a suit chatting up a rough looking thug in handcuffs, asking what he was there for and sympathizing when the man told him….Property damage, typical.
That scruffy thug probably thought Nea was some big shot lawyer taking sympathy on him, and that made Bennet chuckle. The man barely had the right mind to be an agent, let alone be a lawyer. He continued to snicker about it when the secretary approached from behind her desk.
"You're the FBI agent, right?" she asked. "The next unfortunate sucker sent to cross our T's and dot our I's on these cold cases?"
"Yes and it's a pleasure to meet you too." He didn't bother to introduce himself.
"That your partner? Get him and follow me." The woman motioned to Nea before turning back and heading to a doorway where she waited, folding her arms across her chest and beginning to tap her foot.
"Hey! Robert Shapiro, we have a case, remember?" Bennet shouted across the lobby.
Nea quickly said goodbye to his friendly thug and regrouped with Bennet.
"No, but honestly what's not interesting about a guy handcuffed to a chair rather than in a cell, and in a police station of all places?" Nea asked.
"Everything? What did you find out? Anything witch related?" Bennet's tone was nothing but mocking. Nea only responded with a smile that hid none of his annoyance.
"No…" He dragged it out in his annoyance. "But you're right, why I thought he was handcuffed there and why he actually was handcuffed there were two very different things, and the latter was a disappointment."
They followed the secretary back through the doorway and began to pass rows of desks sans a few detectives, and any there were chuckling at the sight of Bennet and Nea arriving. Bennet bristled, it felt like the academy all over again. He glanced at Nea who was still babbling about his convict friend, it felt as if he had been thrown eight years into the past.
"So what was it in the end?" Bennet asked.
"Dented car, slashed tires and a few busted rear lights," Nea responded cheerfully. "He's convinced he'll get away with it."
"Innocent until proven guilty, what proof does the Salem PD have?" Bennet asked, skeptical as always.
"Broken pieces of tail light caught in the folds of his pants."
"God, are all petty criminals that moronic? Are you going to tell the Salem police?"
"No, they'll notice."
"And if they don't?" Bennet proded.
"Then they're stupider than petty criminals."
Bennet grimaced. "You're a menace, and obstructing justice."
"It's not like she can't hear us," Nea said, motioning to the secretary.
"Alright boys, enjoy," The woman said as she pushed the door to a small, cramped office.
Bennet felt his heart drop to his feet when he saw into the room. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes of paperwork. How could twenty missing people accumulate this much paperwork? Nea whistled, behind them the remaining detectives sat giggling and chattering amongst themselves. Bennet could hear them taking bets on how long the FBI agents would last and whether they would catch a lead in the case.
Bennet scowled.
"You sure now how to pick them, Specs." Nea said, a nervous laugh creaking into his voice.
"Shove it, Campbell. It looks better than your office the first day I got there," Benent hissed, fighting his coat off and throwing it onto the only empty chair in the room. "Let's get to work."
After a few hours the boxes had been stacked and organized by sex, amount of evidence, and the location of the disappearance.
Bennet poured himself over the case, every single page he read contained a person's life that had just abruptly stopped going on the course it was supposed to. College students, fast food workers, people who didn't even know what they were going to do. Bennet looked up to see Nea staring at him like some kind of barn owl and he scowled. Nea broke eye contact with him and took a sip of coffee only to make a sour face, gagging a little afterward.
"You'd think that Salem's police would be able to brew a better cup of coffee than a small town in Montana," Bennet said, not turning back to look at the other man.
"Right?" Nea laughed a little, looking at the fine coffee grounds left in the bottom of the mug.
"Okay, I've narrowed down the locations of the disappearances with the most evidence and you should have the disappearances with the least." He turned back to see a large stack of files next to Nea's hand. "Have you been working at all?" Bennet hissed standing up and glaring at Nea.
"I have!" Nea protested, "You had less than me!"
"All you had to do was check location!"
"I got distracted!"
"By what?!"
Bennet saw Nea pause and think over his answer carefully, almost as if to pick the right dialogue option in a choose your own adventure novel before finally responding, "By shitty coffee."
"Great. You're a real agent," Bennet deadpanned.
"I am!" Nea said almost shouting. "Here! These are the locations of the missing people. Without any information, other than the last location they were seen and the fact that they were seen talking to children." He got up out of the chair and moved to the whiteboard to take a marker and begin marking the board, a mark for where each victim was found.
"A few outliers in this, far from the disappearances that I've looked for, but I'm not sure what you want to do about those, Specs."
"Leave them for now," Bennet said. "Are those all the ones you got through?"
Nea nodded moving away from the whiteboard as Bennet pushed passed him to reach the whiteboard.
"So what outlandish theories do you have so far? Any sexy succubi, stealing people to force them to become part of their sex slaves?"
"Actually if this were the work of Succubi and Incubi, that could very well be their mot-Wait! You're making fun of me!" Nea shouted, almost jumping at Bennet who stood there snickering.
"I think it's well-deserved considering you were slacking off not even five minutes ago." Bennet responded, a shit eating grin spreading across his face.
"Fine!" Nea said. "These two were last seen in the west part of the Salem woods."
"The others?" Bennet asked putting the locations of the board in blue marker.
Bennet chuckled watching Nea work rapidly out of a pure sense of spite.
"The rest are outliers, and you said we were leaving those out for the time being," Nea muttered.
"Give them to me, might as well put them on the board."
"Alright. The first one is in Gallows Hill Park Woods," Nea put the final sheets of paper back into their folder. "They all seem to be located in that area... that's weird…centered around the park…" Nea said, taking the blue marker from Bennet and marking them himself.
"That's odd…"
"We should start investigating there."
"A stake out?"
"Exactly, let's go, Specs."
"Stop calling me Specs."
How did they always end up in a car? At this point they weren't any better than a couple of horny teenagers based on the amount of time they'd been parked in the secluded woods.
Bennet had found himself freezing again, because of course stake outs involved sitting in an off car a week before the first day of spring. He was thankful they had stopped to get thermal mugs and filled them up at the nearest coffee shop, but even after all that coffee Bennet felt like he could crash right there in his seat without the heat on, the car in the middle of what remained of a pile of snow. It was already a little past three in the morning, Bennet had just let his eyes close completely when Nea grumbled something before shoving the binoculars onto him.
"I'm going to check it out," Nea said opening the car door. The interior lights almosted blinded Bennet as soon as he opened the door.
"You don't have to, the other agents have combed through this area already… fuck, as recently as two weeks ago."
"It doesn't matter, come on," Nea said fixing his coat a little before slamming the door to the car.
Bennet grumbled but reluctantly pushed open the car door. Flashlight in hand and having to basically climb over the car because Nea just had to park way too close to the snow pile. After a bit of trudging in the snow he caught up to Nea.
"What are you looking for?" he asked Nea, watching him wave his flashlight up and down every wall and window in the abandoned house they passed.
"An opening," Nea responded before spotting a window that was clearly not completely covered in glass. "Bingo!"
"I'm telling you, the other agents have investigated this house already. Campbell!" Bennet watched the other man began to slide himself through the broken, half open window. Bennet grumbled but followed suit only to find himself, flashlight in hand, dusting cobwebs off himself in a dusty damp basement.
"This is the place that connects all of the missing persons." Nea whispered, wandering carefully. "That means something has to be here…"
"Campbell! We don't even have a warrant! Let alone probable cause!" Bennet hissed. "It's abandoned, and what if the cops show up?!"
"Good to see they haven't surgically removed that stick from your ass since the academy, Specs."
"So you do remember me."
"I mean with that stick wedged so far up there it's kind of hard to forget, Spe-"
"You don't remember my name do you?" Bennet tried not to shout.
Nea automatically clammed up at that point, descending the stairs to a lower part of the basement.
"That's exactly what I thought, you bastard." Bennet followed Nea closely as they went deeper into the house. The stairs creaked with every step and Bennet had his hand on his holster, ready to draw his pistol if anything decided to jump out on them.
"Easy there, Trigger," The purple haired man said as he reached the bottom of the staircase. The flashlight illuminated what turned out to be a cellar. The floor was rubble and the walls looked old and battered, and in the deepest part of the cellar there was a door. Suddenly the temperature dropped, causing Bennet to shiver.
Nea motioned forward and put his finger to his mouth, lifting the gun from his waist. He reached out to the door handle, pushing his weight into opening the door.
Bennet didn't have to see the content of the room, he knew.
The smell gave it away.
His stomach attempted to reject its contents. Bennet turned away, having to crouch onto the floor. He covered his nose as he gasped for air that wasn't tainted, attempting to calm himself when he heard Nea gasp for breath.
The smell, that sickening smell washed over Bennet once more, He didn't dare look back. He caught glimpses, but he knew.
In the room lay the bodies, more than just a handful of victims. Their corpses lay decomposing, bloody, completely nude; they were pale and blue before they dissolved into the surrounding floor.
"Shit," Nea muttered, rushing to Bennet and pulling him to his feet. The man took out his cell phone quickly, ushering Bennet upstairs.
"Hello, Chief? We're going to need a few ambulances…and you and your best men. We've found you missing persons."
They arrived outside, through the front door of the abandoned house and into the fresh salted air of the Atlantic, washing away the smell of decomposing flesh.
Bennet could hear the mumbling on Nea on the phone and then the soft click of the flip phone closing. He struggled to catch his breath as nausea washed over him, but eventually one final whiff from the house overcame him. The sound of sirens rose from the distance. Bennet looked back at Nea. How did this happen, how did they find what no one else had…what was worse was on top of that pile of bodies, lay a fresh one… a young woman, the most recent victim. Bennet jolted as he heard Nea slam his fist into one of the houses wooden columns.