The reports on this branch of the investigation accounted for more than half of the documents in the file in front of me. Though I could tell that I did not have the complete investigative file, it was clear that agents on the case left no stone uncovered in seeking a possible link to Gessler’s disappearance. Cases ranging back to Gessler’s first years in the Los Angeles field office were examined for potential links to the investigation. Partners and colleagues from all her years in the bureau were questioned about potential enemies and threats she might have received. Among these reports was a summary of an interview with former agent Eleanor Wish, my former wife, conducted in Las Vegas. She had not spoken with Gessler in nearly ten years before the disappearance. She had no recollection of any threats or anything else that might help in the investigation.

Every criminal Gessler ever put in jail or testified against was run down and checked. Most were cleared through alibis. None surfaced as a prime suspect.

According to the reports, Gessler had become the go-to agent in the L.A. field office for any and all requests for computer-related searches and investigations. It was to be expected in a giant bureaucracy like the FBI. Most requests by L.A. agents for computer-based expertise would be shipped to bureau offices in Washington and Quantico, sometimes taking days before being approved and then weeks before any results were shipped back. But Gessler was part of a growing breed of agents with high computer skills who liked to do things for herself. The special agent in charge of the L.A. office became aware of this and, consequently, Gessler was taken off the street, where she had worked for several years in the bank robbery unit. She was placed in a newly formed computer unit, where she handled requests from street agents while developing her own computer programs.

This meant Gessler had her finger in a lot of investigative pies at the time she disappeared. I checked my watch and quickly skimmed through dozens of reports detailing work she had done on different cases in just the month before her disappearance. Lindell and other agents working for him backtracked on these jobs, looking for anything that was a clue to why Gessler had disappeared. The closest it appeared they came to finding something was when they reviewed Gessler’s work on an investigation of an escort service that advertised women for hire on a website. Gessler’s work was part of the organized crime unit’s investigation into the eastern mob’s ties to prostitution in Los Angeles.

According to what I read, Gessler was able to find Internet connections between websites advertising women in more than a dozen cities. Women were being moved from city to city and client to client. Money generated by the escort services flowed to Florida and then to New York. Seven weeks before Gessler disappeared a grand jury indicted nine men under the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. Exactly one week before her disappearance, Gessler testified about her part in the investigation during a pretrial hearing in the case. Her testimony was described as effective and it was assumed she would testify when the case went to trial. She was not, however, a key witness. Her testimony was seemingly part of the linkage between the websites and the defendants. The key witness was one of the members of the ring who had cut a deal with prosecutors to escape a stiff sentence.