TnT Ch. 07

Just so much bullshit, Riaz thought at one point, after pouring through the printed document Forensics had sent up concerning the brothers' bank accounts. What the hell am I going to learn about them from looking at a hundred-and-thirty-dollar payout to a pet store? So they got Rufus some dog food and toys. Big fucking deal.

He sagged back in his chair, feeling the strain of it as his weight shifted. He stared at the ceiling, listened without processing the chatter throughout the large room. At the least, he was glad that no one else was stopping by his desk to wish their condolences for his missing partner.

Sitting back up, he forced his mind to focus on the present, on what he could do. He looked to June's desk, so much more organized than his own. Half-buried beneath several documents in her inbox was the edge of the leather-bound journal taken from the twins' apartment. He cocked his head with a frown, wondering how that had managed to remain even after the over-priced lawyer had filed for a return of all property.

Easing forward, he reached across the desk and slipped the journal from the plastic basket. He snapped it open, casually and aimlessly flipping through the pages. After more than two decades as a police officer and detective, it no longer resulted in chills whenever he read the diary or letters or what have you of a dead person. But as he leafed through it, he became slowly but assuredly aware that there was something he was looking for.

He was just not sure what it was.

He skipped to the end and read backwards, chaotically skimming through random lines in the handwritten text. Inexplicably, he focused on the first line of a journal entry dated just a few weeks before the twins' mother committed suicide.

"I took them there today. I didn't really want to, but something told me I should. They're only four years old. They can't understand where they came from. But I took them anyway. Funny; when they saw all the rocks and gravel around the quarry buildings they thought it was playtime. I had to grab their hands and drag them with me inside.

"The hardest part was going through the door and into the tunnels. I could almost hear my own screams, and Noah's voice. 'Don't worry, little one, I'll take care of you.' God, that made me cringe and smile at the same time. What the fuck is wrong with me? The man kidnapped me, raped me, got me pregnant! And I still smile when I think about him? About what he did to me?

"I'm sick, I know I am. Maybe my parents were right. Maybe Noah really was the Devil, or some other evil demon. But that would mean my darling little boys are the sons of evil. I don't think I could live with myself if that was true."

Riaz placed his thumb on the page and closed the book, thinking. She took them there, he thought. She showed Talon and Thorne where their mother was taken and ravished. Why?

He opened the journal once more and resumed reading.

"When we got to the room, I got a tight feeling in my stomach. It almost made me double over. The table was still there, even the refrigerator, the little stove, all the little odds and ends Noah had to make the place seem more domestic than a hole in the ground should be. And then the pit.

"They ran to see what was in it. I couldn't stop them. They jerked their hands from mine and ran over to the edge. Holy shit, I thought they were going to jump right in, or fall in.

"And as soon as they got to the edge and looked down, I could hear it. The shaking of the rattles. Oh, God, they were still there. Noah's snakes were still there! Not many, just a few. I guess the strongest ones ate the others to stay alive, or maybe there were just enough rodents in the tunnels to feed the few that remained. I don't know. I don't care.

"'Can we take them home, mommy?' Talon asked me. 'I think they want to come home with us.' Thorne didn't say anything, but the way he looked at me, I knew he was thinking the same. God, it's like they have the same mind, the same soul, just different bodies.

"'We can't take snakes home, honey,' I told Talon. 'There aren't enough mice around the house or even in the fields to feed them.'

"So, of course, with the logic of a four-year-old, he says, 'can't we get some at a mouse store?'

"I had enough. I just wanted to get home. I dragged them out, screaming and kicking. They wanted to stay. Part of me wanted to leave them there. God, what kind of mother am I to even think that? But I didn't. I took them home and I threw them in their room and then I took a bath. And I started praying to God to wipe my memory of all of this."

Riaz sighed through his nose and tossed the journal on his desk. He rubbed his eyes, stretched his limbs, popped his back. He was no stranger at discomfort, given his age, though he staved off a majority of the effects of aging through exercise. But what he felt was not typical discomfort. It was something else. His brain was mulling through a problem, and it was gathering resources from the rest of his body to work out the answer.

He leaned back, lacing fingers behind his neck, and cracked his head left and right. The sound suddenly made him think of rattlesnakes.

Shk-hk-hk-hk-hk-hk-hk . . . .

"Can't we get some at a mouse store?"

One hundred and thirty dollars paid out to a pet store . . . .

He shot up in his chair, mind and senses suddenly and alarmingly alive. He searched through the chaotic array of printed pages before him before finding the record he was looking for. Thankfully, the financial document included a billing address, and a phone number. He made a quick call, confirmed the address, then bolted for the door.

* * * *

Pauly's Pet & Feed was located on a side road just off the highway at the edge of Morris County. There were only two other cars parked in the white gravel lot before the country house-style building when Riaz pulled in.

Marching inside, he found the checkout counter, surrounded by various kinds of aquariums and terrariums, and approached with purpose. The young man clad in a blue T-shirt looked up with wide eyes at the detective's approach.

"Help you find something, man?"

Riaz glowered and flashed his badge. "Your manager," he snapped.

The young man paled. "Uh, sure . . . hold on a sec."

The kid stepped quickly to the back and returned less than ten seconds later with an older man in tow. The kid found something else to do as the older man faced Riaz.

"What can I do for you, officer?"

Riaz did not bother to correct the man. "You keep all your transactions on record?" he asked curtly.

Intimidated, the man nodded. "Uh, sure. Everything's on file in our computer."

"Talon Tolomeo," Riaz said. "Eleven days ago, he made a purchase in the amount of around a hundred and thirty dollars. I want to know what he bought."

The man thought a moment, brow furrowing. "Talon Tolomeo?" he asked.

Riaz nodded.

The man managed a small laugh. "Don't need a computer for that," he said. "Kid's pretty distinctive. Comes in with his twin brother sometimes. They ain't easy to miss."

"What do they buy?"

The man rolled his shoulders. "Mice," he said.

"Mice."

"Yep. Special kind. White field mice. Bred for high protein. Best thing for snakes, you know."

Riaz's eyes narrowed. "What kind of snakes?"

Again, the man shrugged. "Really, any kind. Mr. Tolomeo said he has a snake farm. About twenty snakes. Rattlers, I think. Yeah. Rattlers. Pretty sure."

Riaz gritted his teeth. "He comes in often?"

The man nodded. "About every other week. I give him a price cut 'cause he's a regular. Forty white mice for one-twenty. Plus tax, of course. Normally, the damn things are four bucks a head."

Riaz gave a short, shallow nod as he stepped back. "Thanks for the information," he said, then turned and left just as purposefully as he had arrived.

The sky was dark with the threat of a torrent as he tapped on his phone while standing beside the sedan. "Captain," he said in a brusque tone. He spoke over the man on the other end. "I know where the Tolomeo boys are. They're at the old quarry on Solms Mill Road in Morris County, and they've got June. I'm on my way. Get that fucking deadbeat sheriff to send every unit he's got. I'm not gonna wait for them, so they better God damned hurry."

He switched off the phone, dropped it into his pocket, and took out the pistol from the holster just behind his right hip. Extracting the clip, Riaz counted the rounds within, then shoved it back home and racked the slide, chambering the first round.

A quick glance at his watch gave him the time, mockingly reminding him it had been nearly five hours since June had been taken from the Richards Family farm.

You better not be dead, he thought morbidly, then jerked open the door of the sedan and slid inside.

* * * *

June squirmed against the bonds that held her. She lay face-down upon a soiled old mattress that reeked of mildew and other unpleasant odors. Shackled by handcuffs -- her own, ironically -- her ankles and wrists were even more immobilized by the heavy, rusted old chains with their ends anchored into the earthen floor. Even more unpleasantly, as if to hint at the worst of indignities yet to come, a rolled-up towel had been positioned beneath her pelvis, elevating it obscenely.

The cold air elicited goosebumps from her naked flesh. Her clothes had been stripped away and taken elsewhere before Thorne and Talon had secured her, kicking and screaming, to her current confinements. Then they had left.

She had looked about the room she was in. It was little more than a rough-hewn cavern, with uneven walls, dirt floor, and a gathering of simple appliances at one end. A small refrigerator, an aging stove that looked to belong in some 1970s sitcom, and a small square table with four metal-framed chairs about that had seen better days.

But all of that was circumspect compared to the brick-lined edge of the pit some twenty feet away. She could not see what lay within, but she could hear it.

Shk-hk-hk-hk-hk-hk-hk . . . .

It was the sort of sound a roomful of babies with their rattles would make, or perhaps the sound of a drunken mariachi band without the guitars and trumpets. It had taken June a while to realize the source of the sound, and once she had done so, a new fear had blossomed in her heart.

Rattlesnakes.

Oh, God, they're going to feed me to a bunch of fucking rattlesnakes!

Footsteps sounded across the rough floor. Automatically, June clenched, balling her fingers into fists, tightening her buttocks, trying to pull her legs closer together. She gritted her teeth. But her efforts resulted in nothing but dark, dry chuckles from the figure who stepped into her field of vision. Unable to lift her head much, all she could see were sneaker-clad feet beneath pale denim legs.

"I gotta say, you're not much to look at," a calmly cruel voice said from above. "Kind'a like a skinny boy . . . just without a dick. Guess God must'a hated you big time. Made you an ugly woman."

June said nothing. Her focus was on the shackles that bound her.

The man squatted low, bringing his face into her view. His expression was one of mocking contempt. "Comfy?" he asked.

She glared up at him. "Fuck you," she growled.

Talon chuckled, reaching out to tousle her short blonde hair. "Got the wrong brother," he said. "See, I'm not much into domination and all that. But my brother, here . . ." his gaze drifted over her head for a moment, accompanied by a smile, before coming back. "Well, he just can't get it out of his head. He wants to fuck you."

June squirmed even more. "You'll have to kill me, first."

Talon laughed, even as Thorne suddenly fell atop the slender-framed detective, making her flinch and gasp. Talon could not help but notice the prominent erection that jutted over the woman's small round buttocks. He grinned as his brother dribbled ample amounts of lubricant from a vial between the detective's cheeks.

"I don't think so," Talon responded with a dark smile. He cupped June's chin, making her look up at him. "He much prefers his pussy alive and well . . . at least at first."

June glowered for a moment, but then winced, gritted, and cried as she felt Thorne's cock shoving into her body. She tried to push back, to expel him, but it was to no avail. She felt every intrusive, violent, and unwanted invasion . . . and there was nothing she could do about it but to endure the torture.

* * * *

There was a part of him that wanted to drive right into the heart of the decrepit old quarry and announce his fierce presence to the world. He would kick down doors, shoot anything that moved, and save the day. But such a scenario would mean instant death for his partner, Riaz knew.

So he parked the sedan just inside the curving main road into what had once been a bustling compound processing limestone. It had been shut down since the seventies, leaving the steel frames of its towering constructions to slowly rust away beneath the sun. The attached buildings were of wood, warped by age and weathering. Most of the signs, more than three decades old, had faded or broken. The place was a secluded ghost town.

A perfect location, Riaz thought, for someone like the Rattlesnake Man to set up shop. Or, to be more recent, for his sons to do the same. A woman could scream at the top of her lungs, and the sound would never reach beyond the hundred-foot-high quarry walls.

Approaching on foot, Riaz spied the black Toyota parked between two of the wooden buildings. Unless someone ventured this far into the property, they would never see the vehicle. The buildings looked to have at one time been the headquarters for the now-defunct company that ran the quarry. In fact, one of the doors still sported a sign which was barely discernible, reading, "Office."

Senses keen, Riaz approached the black vehicle, pistol held low and ready to bear. He did not try the doors, lest the twins had the SUV alarmed; he contented himself with peering through the rear window and the windshield, which were not tinted. He touched the hood, finding it cool. The truck had not been driven in hours.

He fished out his phone, finding no reception. That did not surprise him. The reality that he was alone until -- or even if -- the Morris county sheriff's department arrived was like the weight of all the limestone ever taken from the quarry upon his shoulders. He knew that the right thing to do -- the political thing to do -- would be to wait for the cavalry.

But every moment that passed was one in which his partner, his friend, was left to the whims of a pair of murdering, sociopathic twins who had already proven their brutality time and again.

He could not wait. His conscience was stronger than any law or procedure.

He approached the door to the dilapidated office. Dirt and dust were everywhere, but leading up to, and around, the door, it had recently been disturbed. Carefully, he tested the door, finding it unlocked. Knowing a thing or two about warped doors and old hinges, Riaz quickly turned the knob and shoved the door open, lifting up on the knob as he did so, and stepping quickly within.

The door barely made a sound.

As he had expected, the room beyond was devoid of life. There were old desks positioned about the long, narrow interior, most caked in dust. But a path lead through them toward another doorway, which hung open. Stepping gingerly, Riaz ventured forward, ready to react at the slightest sound.

The doorway was dark, the room beyond even more so. But within the far wall, about twenty feet away, was another open portal that glowed gently from amber light somewhere further within. Leading with his pistol raised, Riaz quickly realized that the opening in the far wall was made from earthen dirt and stone, and the passage beyond sloped downward. A string of low-watt bulbs hung from the ceiling, which was no more than six and a half feet high.

As Riaz crept further, two things became obvious. One, the temperature dropped the further he stepped, and two, someone was lightly sobbing somewhere ahead.

June? Riaz wondered, and for a moment, he wanted to charge forward to find her. But her forced himself to stay calm. Sudden, rash movements would only lead to disaster.

Planting his feet carefully so as not to make a sound, he crept further along. The tunnel turn first to the left, and then the right, before opening into a T-section. To the right, a pair of openings faced each other about twenty feet down, and to the left lay a large room. It was from the latter that the sobbing drifted toward him.

Following the sound, Riaz found himself in a large earthen chamber, musty and foul, a stench of death floating through the air. To one side was a large pit, ringed with brick, and to other . . . .

Oh, God.

June.

She lay naked, face-down upon an old, soiled mattress. Her wrists and ankles were cuffed, with heavy, aged loose chains also attached which lay across the barren floor, their ends secured to thick rusted plates. She did not see him. Her body shuddered as she wept quietly.

I don't know what they did to you, Riaz thought. But I can guess. His features darkened; his heart hardened. A sudden irrevocable decision was made within the core of his being that would not be denied.

He stepped to the edge of the pit, grimacing as he looked within. More than a dozen large rattlesnakes lay coiled within a pit about six or seven feet deep. At his presence, a few of the rattles began shaking, casting their unmistakable, unsettling sound into the air.

Feeling a sudden urgency, Riaz darted to June's side. Upon sensing someone close to her, she suddenly shrieked and pulled back, rolling onto her side. Wide, fearful, pain-filled eyes stared up at him.

"It's me," he said in a quick, hushed tone, digging for his handcuff keys. "It's me, June."

Her eyes quivered. "R-Riaz?"

He nodded. "I'm getting you out of here."

"Oh, Jesus!" she gasped with relief.

He jerked keys from his pocket and quickly had the cuffs undone. But the heavy rusted shackles were another matter. He cursed in frustration as he quickly unbuttoned his shirt and jerked the tails from his slacks.

With the slack of the chain, June was able to sit up. She crossed her arms over her chest, crossed her legs before her. "H-he . . . he r-r-raped me," she managed to say with quivering lips as Riaz draped her shoulders with his shirt. Fresh tears began welling within her eyes.

Her partner gritted his teeth, steeling back the rage that blossomed within like a bonfire kindled by June's words. He knew he needed to be calm for her now, to be the rock she had always relied upon. Gently, he smudged away the tears trickling down June's cheeks. "It's not going to happen again," he vowed. "You and I are going home, and those two bastards are going into the ground. Got it?"

June trembled, both mind and body chilled. She nodded numbly, clutching the edges of the shirt closed.

Riaz looked around. The cavern held nothing which he thought could be used to pry the shackles from the ground. Even if he could, they were of thick iron links, too heavy to expect June to bear even with his help. He needed the key.

"I have to find them, and get the key," he told his partner.

Her eyes flashed fearfully. "Don't leave me!" she hissed. She desperately grabbed handfuls of Riaz's undershirt. "Get me the fuck out of here!"

He clasped her face, forcing her to meet his gaze. "I can't," he said firmly. "Not until I can get these chains off you. Do you understand that?"

June sputtered with fear. "Don't leave me," she repeated hoarsely. "D-don't leave me . . . ."