"Well, I see you finally found out the family secret," boomed Marion's voice from behind us.
I wheeled around and ended up on my butt, my knees still shaky from trying to absorb too much information at once.
"Hey, little brother, it's not that bad," she grinned teasingly. "Of course, I've known about this little room for years, so I can imagine it must be quite a shock to you to imagine Mom and Dad down here, doing, well..." Marion ended by sweeping her hand around to include the various devices in the cavernous room.
Especially Mom! "How ... How did you find out?"
Marion looked a little sheepish. "Just about the same way I came down now. They left the door open one night when they were, well, you know ... I went looking for Mom for something and found them down here. I was about 13 or so. Life hasn't been the same since..." she ended, somewhat wistfully. I belatedly noticed the housewarming plant she was carrying.
"Did you ever... ?" I couldn't bring myself to ask.
" ... use this stuff?" She guffawed. "Once. Well, kind of. Mom and Daddy were away, you were out with Mac somewhere. I had been obsessed with what I saw down here. It was all I could think about, day and, uh, well, night."
My stoic sister actually blushed!
"Since I had the house to myself, I snuck down here and tried some of the stuff out. It was hot. I pretended I was imprisoned down here, typical teenage fantasy stuff. Everything was OK until I jiggled something on the stocks over there and couldn't get out. I was completely naked by that time and totally exposed, helpless."
"What happened then?" Nicole asked breathlessly. She was totally wrapped up in this yarn Marion was spinning. At least, I was sincerely hoping it was a yarn. I mean, this was Mom we were talking about...
Marion gave a wry grin, remembering. "Mom found me. I had left the door ajar and she knew I was down here. I think she must have known I had found out about the cellar. She wasn't mad at all. She didn't laugh at me, either, when she found me trapped. She just said, 'That's my favorite one, too, ' and, then brought me upstairs. She never said another word about it."
I sat there on the cold stone floor, astounded at the revelations I was hearing. All my childhood heroes, not to mention my sainted mother, were falling from their pedestals and I was left speechless. I just sat on the cold floor, gumming the air, looking like a fish with my mouth opening and closing.
Marion continued her survey of the room, "I do like the improvements you've made, though. It seems bigger, too." It was kind of a question, but not really.
I looked around again, paying a bit more attention this time. Ah, yes! Some of the equipment strategically came in pairs, particularly the pieces I preferred to use on them or the things that they liked me to use on them. Most of those were newer than some of the solitary units. Two stations, no waiting, if I knew my impatient wenches. The various winches on the wall and the wires that criss-crossed the ceiling were new, too. The ropes were all fresh and the chains were shining. I idly wondered who the Hell they had hired to do this contracting job. And could he keep his mouth shut? But that was a worry for another time.
Struggling up from my sitting position, I hugged Sally first and then Nicole, reassuring them that this was a good thing, even though I still didn't trust myself to talk. I was still a little stunned about Mom. And Marion. As we wound our way up the stairway to the bedroom, I began to have serious doubts about having moved back in with my sister. As unconventional as my life appeared to be, adding my sister to the equation was not something I wanted to even contemplate.
I shut the heavy door to this new family twist firmly behind me.
We continued with the tour of the house, now with Marion in tow. The third floor of our new home was mine, or at least one end of it. Sally had made my new office up there into a masterpiece, though I could also see Nicole's touch here and there. Sure, it was way up on the third floor and all. In fact, it was the only room that was currently used up on that level, but it was perfect. It spanned the entire width of the back end of our wing of the house. I could see Marion thinking about a similar office on her wing.
Sally had completely knocked out the outside walls on three sides and windowed them in floor to ceiling. Walking into my office was like walking into a rooftop paradise. I had a sweeping panoramic view overlooking the manicured grounds all the way down to the river in the back. I also had an unobstructed view of just over 60 to 70% of the rest of estate. The windows were made out of that photo-gray glass that turns darker in bright light, so I didn't even need blinds.
A beautiful blonde wood desk and matching chairs completed the office furnishings Sally had provided, together with some matching butter soft leather couches and chairs gathered in a conversation grouping around a small table in one of the far corners. Everything else, all my files and the manly stuff that normally cluttered up the floor around my desk, I could keep in an adjoining workroom that had bookshelves and tables and even a small bathroom. The main office was for show. This was my 'home court advantage.' This room was for me, a wedding gift from Sally and Nicole. I checked the invoices later. There was not a single charge for this room, which was why it was such a special surprise. They had been planning this for a long time.
My girls, all four of them, had decided amongst themselves that this office was to be my sanctuary. They would come into it uninvited only in the direst emergencies and even then, under the threat of certain punishment. It was a rule they wanted and that they had insisted upon. Their reasoning was that I had provided each of them a place of their own they could escape to for sanctuary, quiet time or whatever. Sally and Janey had their house and Nicole and Simone had their apartment for quiet time. This office was to be my space.
I wasn't sure I liked that arrangement, yet. It was still too new and we were continually working out the kinks of the changes in our relationship. The other kind, too. I joked that that rule was just their way of getting away from me. It was a poor joke. Sally looked especially hurt and Nicole even teared up. Talk about feeling like shit.
I was sitting in my chair later that afternoon, enjoying the new smell of the carpets, expensive leather and fresh paint. Sally knocked on the doorsill.
"You like it, Master?"
My grin was couldn't get any bigger. "Yes, I do. Very much. Thank you, again."
"I'm glad you like it." She stood silently, enjoying watching me enjoy her gift to me. Then she continued, "I brought this up for you. Where do you want it?"
"Where do I want what? I thought the movers had gotten everything put away."
I knew my office stuff was complete. I had marked and sealed and numbered all the boxes personally, then counted them at the new house and checked the seals. Twice. Old habit.
"This metal case," she said, holding it up higher for me to see. "It's not Janey's, Nicole's or mine. Simone said you'd know what to do with it. She got kind of a strange look on her face when she saw it, like she knew what it was but didn't want to remember."
She was holding a large aluminum briefcase, heavy by the way she was standing. The one Mac had given me at the wedding. Given back, more accurately. It slowly came back to me where I had first seen it. Stinking, dark, clouded memories of flashing knives, death, fire, screams, empty men hurting Simone...
I shook my head to clear it of those searing memories.
"Just put it there, by the door. I'll take care of it."
It stayed where she put it for about an hour. I couldn't bring myself to open it, but I couldn't get that nagging feeling out of my head that it was somehow important. I had ignored the damn thing long enough and now that it was finally out in the open, I had to deal with it.
I took it into the workroom and, using some of the tools I had left over from my time at the agency, I opened it. It was an expensive case and the locks were more than a cut above average. Still, they were no problem for me to open. I was a little worried that the case might have been booby-trapped or something, but you really only see that in the movies and spy novels. Right, and they only used the X-Ray machine in the bomb-squad unit to check the kids' candy at Halloween, too...
The lid popped open with a slight creak and the old smell of musty air assaulted my nose. I lifted the top up slowly, revealing the hidden contents. I wish I hadn't.
What I found inside sickened me all over again. I had more flashbacks of glinting knives, the stench of human waste and acrid smoke. My knees felt a bit rubbery as the contents brought back the memories of those sleepless days of searching for and then finding Simone, her hair stapled to a wooden post, her body bearing ugly marks as well as the feces, piss and ejaculates of dozens of men.
At first I thought the case was just stuffed full with untidy bundles of money, thousands of dollars. Then I saw the corner of a white square. Using the eraser end of a pencil, I carefully lifted up the clumps of cash covering it up.
The first thing I thought was that it was a stack of family or vacation Polaroid snapshots. I was so in denial. What I saw in the case, when I finally opened my eyes and my mind, was a thick stack of photos of girls and young women and surprisingly, one or two boys. Donning a pair of latex gloves, I quickly sorted through the pile of pictures and estimated that there must have been about 30 or more different females pictured in them, most of them in much the same shape I had found Simone. A couple were actually in worse shape and I hadn't thought that that was even possible.
My stomach finally revolted. I had to rush to the bathroom, afterwards rinsing out my mouth to get rid of the sour taste of bile. Not an auspicious initiation of the new facilities in that room.
I laid out the several wads of money stuffed in the case by denomination. The top layer was mostly $20 bills, probably the price they charged for the use of the girls, but underneath that top layer were several stacks of very large denomination bills. These were the cash payments for the children, when they were sold and probably for payoffs to accomplices. This would have to be a cash business, after all and cash and carry, at that. They would have had to have a lot of cash handy. The larger denominations raised the value in the case to staggering levels.
I carefully bagged the cash in several large Zip-Lock bags. The fingerprint people in the lab would have a field day with all the clean prints on the bills. All the time I was working on the contents, carefully bagging the evidence, I didn't even realize I had made the decision to take this to the agency. By this time I was running purely on instinct.
There was a vial of clear fluid in the case, stuffed down along one side, semi-protected by being wrapped up in an old rag along with a couple of syringes. It was probably the drug they used on the girls to make them easier to handle at first. There was no label, so it went into another bag along with the two syringes. The lab would figure out what it was and, with any luck, what company had made it. If it was rare enough or a narcotic, they might even get a lead on the source.
Not surprisingly, there were no new needles in the case. Only the two used ones and I could actually see dried blood on them. They obviously didn't care about blood-borne diseases like hepatitis or AIDS or a hundred other minor medical maladies. I had a feeling that the girls would have been used up way before anything like that became a problem and those bastards knew it. They counted on it.
I was closing the case back up when I noticed a shadow on the bottom of the case. There was an unusual bump in the lining. I wasn't expecting anything to be hidden in the case, so I hadn't looked that close. My mistake. Running my fingers carefully around the edge of the case, I finally found a discrete cut hidden along the back seam of the lining material. I ripped it open. I didn't give a shit about the damage to the lining, as they wouldn't need it back. OK, so I was a little pissed I'd missed it in the first place.
I stared at the exposed bottom of the case. I couldn't believe it. It was a fucking notebook. The kind they use in the labs, with numbered pages. We used to have to use them in school. A dull, chewed up pencil was jammed down the spine for safekeeping. I remember I had done the same with my pencils so I wouldn't lose them.
I stared at the damn thing for a long time. I knew- I just knew I didn't want to know what was inside of it. I had this horrible premonition, a burning feeling in the pit of my stomach and it wasn't because I had just vomited.
But I had to know. As repulsed as I was by the little book, at the same time, I was irresistibly drawn to it. Not just because it might have some useful information. It was more than that. It was as if this briefcase and particularly this little book were my future, my destiny, in some mysterious way. And somehow, I knew it. Not with my link, not any parapsychological stuff. I just knew. In my gut.
I think I had known what it was, how bad it was going to be for a long time, too. That's why I had shut the existence of the battered briefcase out of my consciousness until now. Even though I hadn't known the little book was hidden in the bottom of the briefcase, I couldn't bring myself to open the case. And now I knew in the same way that this little book would change my life. I mean, just think of everything that could have happened that would have kept it from me, for me not to have found it. All this time, it could have been lost or forgotten, burned in the building or trashed by looters only interested in the cash. But here it was. Just sitting there in front of me. Like a death sentence.
I eased open the cover, hoping I wasn't opening a Pandora's Box.
The handwriting in the book was a childish print, the letters large and laborious, the words short and simple. I tried to think back to that night, to the characters I had met and killed in the cellar.
I dismissed the buyer, the third man. This wasn't his case. Then there was 'Yellow Hat, ' the flamboyant pimp wanna-be. But he would have either written with a girlish script or would not have been able to write at all, probably the latter. He would have beaten up the smarter kids in school and threatened them to get them to do his homework. Yeah, he would have done that, at least until he figured out that he could bully most of the inner city teachers easier and not have any homework at all and then finally figured out that school was a waste of his time.
That left just the bodyguard. And that made sense, when I thought about it. Not too bright, but smart enough to know that he had to write things down to remember them, to get them right. And smart enough to keep it a secret that he was keeping a journal of sorts, a record of everything. As I skimmed through the notebook, his record was more than just a little incriminating. Even this dummy knew it was a stupid thing to do. Simone must have seen him writing in the notebook when Yellow Hat wasn't there and realized what it was. That was why she had known the case was important. Not because of the pictures or the money but because of the incriminating history in this dog-eared journal.
Important was an understatement. As the extent of what I was reading sunk in I was filled with a tremendous sense of dread. It was too horrible, too ghastly, too God damned easy for the bastards to do this and get away clean.
Yellow Hat and 'Dumbo', as I had dubbed the author of the book, subsisted at the lowest end of a long food chain, a large organization of human flesh peddlers. These two were the bottom-feeders, the lowest of the low in a despicable network of white-slavers. But that wasn't an entirely honest characterization of them, if the Polaroid pictures were any indication. They didn't seem care what color the victim was.
These people were the scum of the earth. Flotsam in the septic tank. You get the idea. This pair took delivery of various 'goods' and delivered or bartered them to others higher up the chain. They were opportunistic and indiscriminate. Drugs, kids, video tapes, money, or sealed envelopes - it made no difference to them. They just picked up and delivered and, if they could turn a little profit on the side, so much the better. No one cared if the merchandise was a little damaged. It was only going to get used up anyway.
Dumbo, being the deliveryman, had written down addresses, descriptions of cars, license plate numbers, descriptions of the contacts, telephone numbers, dates, amounts paid in and out, and what was picked up and delivered. The level of detail in the list was astounding and beyond incriminating.
I reined my excitement in as I read the list of names of the victims. Simone's name was the last one on his list. I stifled the urge to vomit again. As dead as these two were, I didn't think that Simone's was the last snatch the larger group would have made. It was too well organized, too slick, too hidden. It either existed completely hidden from the authorities or it was supported by them. I didn't even want to think about the latter.
I kept reading, wondering all the while if there was another reason why he had written everything down. I didn't think he was keeping the log for blackmail. He wasn't smart enough to pull that kind of a scheme off. No, he wasn't trying to rat out his boss. Dumbo was just trying to do a good job, the loyal oaf. He simply didn't want to forget anything. The thin book was organized more like a cheap daytimer, a calendar with the important dates up front, a list of contacts along with addresses and telephone numbers in the back and the directions to various places in the middle along with other notes.
As I read more of the pages, I could better understand the thought patterns of Dumbo. I was able to organize what I learned and it was stunning. I had to sit down.
It was appalling. From the entries in the ledger, there appeared to be at least two primary sources of 'goods' for this duo, two specific revenue streams. Each source provided a different kind of merchandise, but both were equally lucrative.
The first source, the one Yellow Hat obviously preferred, was the simplest kind of snatch. This was the type of crime they were most familiar with and it's what they were probably doing when they were recruited for the second, more complicated criminal activity.
The 'easy' crimes were actually initiated by the serendipitous procurers like the man that had picked up Simone. Those were the non-descript men who took the biggest risks. They appeared to be 'cruisers, ' never in one place very long, as there were only vague descriptions of their vans. The cash transactions always occurred at deserted intersections. The relatively small amounts paid for a snatch surprised me. With the economic law of Supply and Demand at work, what that meant was that there was a readily available supply of young victims, keeping the price low. I could see from his list of buyers that there was a sickeningly strong demand for the kids, once they had snatched one.
Dumbo's notebook supported my theory that this happened more than anyone in authority either knew or admitted. These cruisers were generally single men, opportunistic vultures that prowled the vicinity of popular nighttime events like ball games, concerts, state and county fairs, and such. Anything that would attract young people.
We've all seen them, too, their prey, those lone waifs wandering aimlessly among the crowds, as they seemed to be destined to do for life. There always seems to be at least one foolish young kid who needs to get home or who will strike out alone in anger or rebellion or sometimes just to get away. It didn't seem to matter to these cruisers if the straggler was male or female, though they seemed to prefer girls. Young and alone was enough to attract their attention.
Yellow Hat had several of these loners that would turn up with a snatch on a fairly regular basis. It didn't seem to be often enough for him to keep a regular place to break the victims, like a safe house. On the other hand, Yellow Hat may just have been a cheap son-of-a-bitch and just didn't want the expenses of securing a regular place. Either way could explain why they were in the abandoned warehouse when I found them. Readily accessible, quiet, and cheap.
The frequency of the abductions bothered me. According to these books, this happened regularly. If this was so organized and sinister, why wasn't there more of an outcry? Or maybe there was and nobody was listening? Or perhaps no one had put together yet that this was an orchestrated crime wave...
Once in the clutches of these two, the victims would be rapidly debased and demoralized by the constant inhuman treatment they were subjected to. No water to drink, only piss. No food to eat, only shit. Constant sexual abuse and humiliation. The victims had no way to rest, no chance to regroup once they were handed off to Yellow Hat, if their treatment of Simone was any indication. The young kids probably went irreversibly insane in short order, probably within two or three days. Nothing they would have encountered before could possible prepare them to resist this inhumanity. They wouldn't be any problem to handle after that point, as they would most likely be in a near-catatonic state. The drug or whatever it was they injected into the victims no doubt helped speed the process along.
Dumbo had kept a careful list of buyers of this kind of merchandise, along with a simple preference of 'boy' or 'girl' or 'both.' Since these kids could turn up missing at some point in time when they didn't return home, I figured their life span was pretty short after the snatch. I mean, how many missing kids could the authorities simply discount as simple run-aways? Someone was bound to report one missing and insist the kid hadn't run away, sooner or later. So this initial process would have to be short and fast. There were several buyers in Dumbo's book who were ready at the drop of hat, opportunistic vultures. It appeared I had located Simone just in time. Another hour or even less and she would have been gone.
As horrible as this first scheme was, it was their other source of material and what that material was and how it was so easily obtained, that filled me with the greater dread, however. I had to get a grip on my terror several times as it became clear to me that this was, in fact, happening right here. In fact, unless I missed my bet, I knew at least one person who was one of their victims. Possibly more.
As I worked my way through the notebook, I recognized a chillingly logical and frightening pattern emerging. It gradually dawned on me that I had battled against this same kind of organized evil once before. The targets were different but the tactics were the same. I suspected many of the people were the same, too, at least at the top. There were too many similarities, too many of the same quirks in the organizational structure and the recruitment methods. I had witnessed the same insidious tendrils of slime winding the hallways of more than one government I had been involved with and not just mine.
As it became apparent to me to what extent these bastards had penetrated into the very fabric of our society and the level of sophistication needed to pull off what these people were doing right under our noses, I realized I didn't have the access in my home office that I needed. I needed to be sure of my suspicions. Fuck, I was sure. I needed to be positive. Absolutely. People were going to die because of this. I had to be sure.
Instinctively, I wrote up my report, just like I had been trained so many years before. I never even gave a thought that I was no longer an active agent, I just wrote it up. On paper with a pen. I wasn't going to trust electronic media with this one, not with all the hidden Internet connections and hackers out there. The only safe way was hardcopy, one copy and hand delivered.
I got in my car and took it to the anonymous building downtown. I hand-carried my report in through security and placed it personally into the hands of the Analyst, along with the briefcase, notebook, photos, money and drugs.
I also handed him a sealed envelope separately. It was a game we had played since we had started working together. I would do the field work on some project, then try to do his job, too, by writing out what I suspected the analysis would turn up. I was often wrong and it had pleased him to no end to 'educate' me, pointing out where I had gone wrong in my assessments. I didn't like his attitude that much but I did listen to him. And I learned. I don't think he realized that I hadn't been wrong very often towards the end of my service.
This time, I had written a name on a piece of paper and sealed it inside. I asked him to do his analysis first, then see if he came to the same conclusion I had, with respect to this one name. He grinned confidently, knowing the rules of the game.
I didn't know if I wanted to be right or wrong.