The Torso Murders

by Lee Perry

  Catherine looked up from the page she furiously wrote on, “Yes, you were there to protect me.”

  “Funny,” Jordan shuffled to the door, “I thought I was in bed.”

  Catherine smiled as she wrote, “Same difference.”

  New York City, NY

  Catherine sat with her elbows on her desk and her earbuds tucked in her ears. She was watching an interview with Brandon Kimura that aired on the news the night before.

  “It only took a tiny fraction of a second for my trade to reach the next exchanges on the network, but the high-speed traders were able to jump in front of me, buy the stock and drive the price up before my order arrived, making them a small profit of just one or two pennies.

  The interviewer said, And that’s happening to everyone's trades millions of times a day.

  Kimura nodded, And that adds up.

  You make it sound like a scam.

  What else would you call it? One hedge fund manager said, ‘I was running a hedge fund of nine billion dollars and we figured out our inability to make the trades the market said we should be able to make was costing us three hundred million a year.’

  And that’s three hundred million dollars a year in someone else's pocket.

  And it’s not even illegal, that's the thing that's so shocking about all this because it should be.

  Earlier you used the word front running. Front running's illegal, is it not?

  Unfortunately, this form isn’t; it's legalized front running. It's crazy that it's legal for some people to get advance news on prices and what investors are doing. It's just wrong and we knew the only way to beat the high-frequency traders was to take away their millisecond advantage that allowed them to find the slower trades and beat them to the exchange. I had a really smart guy working for me that had an idea how to do it and he said, ‘You're probably better off trying to go slower.’

  And that meant what?

  It meant finding a way to send the order to the exchange located the farthest away first, and send the order to the one that's located closest to you last. So stagger when you send them out with the goal of arriving at all places, as close to the same time as possible.”

  Stewart knocked and stuck his head on the door, “Ready?”

  Jordan stood, “Hey Stewart, yep, we’re ready.”

  Catherine pulled the buds from her ears, “Hi Stewart,” she smiled, “enjoy your trip to New Jersey?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he grinned, leaning on the open door, “the best part was being able to fly there and not sit in traffic.”

  She shut down her workstation, grabbed her phone and tablet and together she, Jordan, and Stewart crossed the hall to the large auditorium with its wide, curved wall screen.

  “Can I go first?” He pointed at the podium, “I have a department head meeting after this.”

  “Of course,” Jordan sat next to Catherine in the front row, “tell us all about Mister Bachman.”

  “Okay,” Stewart connected his tablet to the podium and grabbed the remote, “just let me open some files here…” He clicked open a picture file of the victim’s driver’s license, “Are you alright with seeing crime scene photos now Catherine?”

  “Yep,” she nodded, “I really am.”

  “Great.” He stood to one side of the screen, “So this is Torso Victim Number Six; Eric Bachman, Vice President of Market Development for the Threshold Exchange in Wall Township, New Jersey.” He clicked open a bookmarked browser page for Threshex that opened to the victim’s biography page. “You know if you look at these company websites their employees are either ordinary traders or vice presidents of some made-up-sounding bullshit department.” Jordan and Catherine snickered and he continued, “With some help from the brilliant Doctor Bernard,” he turned to give her a slight bow, “we know from the victim’s email and social media pages he was likely abducted from The Cocktail Exchange two nights ago as that was the last place he was seen by anyone…” He clicked open a slideshow of the crime scene in the middle of the wide screen, “until his torso was discovered by a carload of carpoolers on Possumtown Road in Piscataway, New Jersey. It was found on the side of the road, lying under some trees.”

  He clicked past the crime scene photos taken by Mary’s team, “As with all the others, this torso has been emasculated and the head, both legs and left arm removed.” He closed the open windows on the screen, “And that’s really all I have. I’ve already forwarded everything to you both on this one,” he shrugged, “and I really don’t have anything of any personal observational value to add other than it was nice to get out of the office…”

  Jordan stood and joined him at the podium, plugging in her tablet he when unplugged his, “It is curious though; the first three victims were all traders, then we have three more come in, the last two on the same day and these three are all VP’s at high frequency exchanges.”

  “He’s upping his game.” Stewart said.

  “For sure,” Jordan tapped open some files, “but why?”

  “Your killer has to be a pissed off customer, Jordan.” He lifted a shoulder in an exasperated shrug, “Why would a trader kill other traders and then suddenly go after executives from a bunch of different companies?”

  “Mitch Ryan and Darrel Lesous worked at the same company.”

  “And Ryan is for sure a victim in this?”

  “Mister Ryan is definitely missing.” Jordan said, “His parents and sister live in Milwaukee, they haven’t talked to him since Christmas and his bank accounts and credit cards show no activity since he suddenly stopped coming to work and he hasn’t been seen by anyone who knows him.” She lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, “So yeah, I’d say he’s a victim too.”

  “Then you’d better get started investigating every customer starting at Ryan and Lesous’s exchange and see if any of them have the other exchanges in common for doing business.”

  Jordan shook her head, “As a motive, it’s a pretty weak one, and we’ve checked their company and personal emails for unhappy customers and there’s just nothing there, Stewart.” She turned to the screen, “Our torso was John McChristy, Victim Number Five and Vice President of Strategic Relations at BuzzTrade in Parsippany, New Jersey. Given what his FaceBook page said that night, we think he was abducted from the nearby Tipsy Cow Bar & Grill. Like everyone else, his torso was found in some trees in Cedar Knolls, New Jersey.” Stewart shook his head but she continued, using the remote to click open more files center screen. “Victim Number Four; Bobby Kanther, Vice President of US Sales at Straight Edge Exchange in Edison, New Jersey. Possibly abducted from the employee parking lot, we can’t say conclusively as the security cameras very conveniently lost their wifi connectivity during a thirty minute period the night of his disappearance. His torso was found in Secaucus, New Jersey on Hartz Way.”

  “So how is any of this helpful?” Stewart checked his watch, sounding exasperated.

  Jordan snorted and walked around the podium, folding her arms across her chest and stared up at the wide screen and the dozen or so files she had scattered across it. “Well, none of it is yet. I think the only thing that matters here is that the killer is rending his victims down to torsos with only the right arm still attached.” He shrugged and she said, “It’s obviously symbolic, but of what?” She waved her hand at the screen, “The only thing these victims are pointing at are the trees they’re dumped in…”

  Catherine had been sitting quietly throughout and she suddenly became aware of a tingly feeling in her hands, “What if they’re pointing at something else?”

  Stewart turned to her, “But they’re not, they all pointed at trees.”

  While they spoke, Jordan opened the photos of the torso found in Wall Township and Catherine stood, pointing, “Was the one you went to pointing inward, away from the road at the trees?”

  Jordan clicked through the picture files until she stopped on one taken farther away, clearly showing the victim’s arm pointing away from the trees and towards the st
reet.

  Stewart craned his neck to look up at the screen, “No… it was pointed at the road. So if positioning was important to the killer he must have been in a hurry on that one... although what symbolism could there be in pointing at a tree?” He sounded skeptical, “Leaving the right arm attached certainly means something to this killer, but I think he’s leaving the torsos on these roads because they are tree-lined streets in industrial areas where he can have enough privacy, in the middle of the night, to dump his victims.” He checked his watch, “That’s it, I’m late, I gotta’ go.” He waved over his shoulder as he left, “Good luck figuring out your wacko…”

  Catherine crossed to the podium and plugged in her tablet.

  “You can disconnect mine…” Jordan said.

  “Not necessary.” Her voice sounded distant as she tapped furiously on her screen. “So maybe what we need to understand the placement of the killer’s victims is a different point of view.” She looked up at her, “Every time I have one of my weird dreams I always try to both write a description of what I saw and draw some pictures too. For these dreams I’ve been drawing aerial views of what I think is the suspect’s home, right?”

  Jordan returned to her seat, “Right.”

  She placed three windows of Google Earth satellite maps side by side across the top of the wide screen. “These are the locations for the first three victims…” She added three more maps just below, “And these are the sites of the last three, our most recent.” She sat next to Jordan again, “For all but Mister Bachman, found in Mill Township, the arms are…”

  “Hey…” Jordan pointing, “They all pointed at trees but behind all those trees are white office buildings…” she turned to her, “and Bachman is pointing across the street to a huge white office building behind trees too.”

  Catherine smiled and using the remote, zoomed in on the first map until the company identifiers appeared, “This very large building on Grover’s Mill Road is owned by Stealth Networks…” She stood and quickly crossed to the podium. She tapped rapidly on her tablet’s screen, opening a browser window, “And Stealth Networks is…” She flashed Jordan a brilliant smile.

  “Holy shit,” Jordan groaned, “it’s a datacenter.”

  “It is.” Catherine muttered as her fingers flew across her tablet’s screen as she zoomed in on each location on the other five maps, “All of these torsos were dumped with their accusing fingers pointing at datacenters. Two of the six are owned by The Vanguard Network, and the other four by Stealth.” She shrugged, “Who knows if that breakdown is significant though,” she tapped back to the web browser, “look at the long list of datacenters Stealth Networks has just in New Jersey.” She snorted, “And as I recall, I did see the tops of big white buildings in my dreams when I saw the torsos but I didn’t think it meant anything because I’d look from the torso’s hand to the tree, to the tops of the trees, and the white building behind it and the blue sky above that…”

  “Okay, well,” Jordan pointed, “Plainsboro Township… it’s an hour drive, but let’s hit that one.”

  “Where the first torso was found?”

  “Yes,” she stood and crossed to the podium to disconnect her tablet, “Paul McConnell… let’s go see the one he was pointing at.”

  Plainsboro Township, NJ

  “Grover’s Mill Road…” Jordan muttered under her breath, turning into the wide driveway. “Didn’t the aliens land in Grover’s Mill in War of the Worlds?”

  “In the radio broadcast, but that one was in West Windsor Township…” Catherine briefly squeezed her eyes closed in concentration, “about five miles from here, I think.”

  Jordan pulled up to a gated guard shack and stopped, “It looks like the datacenter Jeffers took over... I guess they all look alike.”

  “They all serve the same purpose,” Catherine shuddered at the memory, “leasing space for thousands of servers.”

  A guard stepped out of the shack, his hands either resting on or holding up his heavy utility belt, “Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” Jordan held up her badge wallet, “I’m from the FBI and I need to speak to the building manager about a tour.”

  “This is a privately owned, high security building… no admittance for a tour.”

  “I appreciate that.” She smiled, noting he was armed. “But if you don’t make that call I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice in a murder investigation.”

  Catherine waited while the guard ingested his options and pulling the two-way radio from his belt, called in to his command center, “Yeah, I got the FBI here says they need to come in about a murder investigation.”

  Jordan and Catherine exchanged secret smiles and she turned back when the guard approached the bureau car again.

  “You can go in, park in a visitor spot by the lobby.”

  “Thank you.” Jordan waited for him to raise the gate then drove slowly into the large parking lot. “The aerial view didn’t pick up the razor wire on the cyclone fence around this place…”

  “Yeah,” Catherine’s voice was quiet, “It certainly gives it a creepy vibe.”

  Jordan parked and by the time they approached the huge glass doors a balding man greeted them.

  “Please come in.” He held the door open for them then held his hand out to Jordan, “I’m Stanley Hanchett; I’m an engineer and the building manager here.”

  Jordan introduced herself and Catherine and slipped her badge wallet back into her jacket pocket, “I appreciate your time,” she smiled, “Doctor Bernard and I are investigating a murder…”

  “Oh, I know!” His eyes grew wide, “The Torso Murders! I’ve been following that story, so gruesome, the first one was found right out on our road out here.”

  “Yes,” Jordan nodded, “we’re getting a feel for the neighborhood so I was hoping you could give us a tour of your facility.”

  “Oh, most certainly,” he nodded, “come with me.” He led them across the cavernous lobby and through two huge metal doors, “This building,” gestured, “is one of twenty-one datacenters owned by Stealth Networks…” They followed him as he walked down a long corridor lined with rows and rows of blinking servers. “I’ve been here for seven years now, long enough to see this industry really boom.”

  “And what industry is that?” Jordan asked.

  “The principle business of Stealth is to provide the fastest speed to HFT exchanges.” He turned to them, “That’s high frequency stock exchanges.”

  Catherine bit the smile from her lips at the man’s slightly condescending tone and when she craned her neck to look around her, she suddenly gasped, “Wow!”

  Jordan followed her gaze, “Wow is right.”

  Above their heads, attached to the ceiling was a maze of cages, packed with cables, Oh jeez, Catherine stared in awe at the jammed metal cages, I think that’s what I saw when I touched the torso… Wires and cables of every color were bundled and stuffed inside barred metal boxes; thick blue cables entwined amid thin white, red and orange wires. “Those blue ones are high quality fiber optic cables.”

  “Why, yes they are.” Mr. Hanchett looked surprised, “There are literally hundreds of miles of cable and wire in here, connecting our customers to…”

  “But the high speed optical cables all connect to these little black boxes.” Catherine pointed to them, caged in locked black mesh cabinets, stacked six feet high, each one with dozens of cables trailing up from their backsides and disappearing into the caged mass above.

  “That’s right,” he enthused, “we use Dedicated Wave Fiber, a state-of-the-art optic fiber, and all of our colocation facilities have fully redundant environmental, security and power systems so we can insure full performance twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five.” He led them on a slow walk down a row of the black cages, red lights blinking dully behind the black mesh screens. “Network reliability and security is, of course, our first priority in all our optical amplification facilities.” He clasped his hands together as he walked and he t
urned back to them, coming to a stop, “Which is why our facilities are spaced one hundred and twenty kilometers apart…” Neither Jordan nor Catherine said anything and he added, “It significantly lowers both network latency and cost.”

  Catherine smiled politely, “Yes, and that’s saying a lot considering Stealth Networks spent nearly four hundred million dollars laying that high-speed fiber optic cable all the way from the futures market in Chicago to the exchanges here in New Jersey in the straightest line possible, just so they could shave a few milliseconds off the fastest route.” She pointed through the dark mesh at the boxes and stickers identifying the fiber service platform, “This is the American stock market now, it's just computer signals going into a box.”

  “Uh…” Mr. Hanchett suddenly felt uncomfortable, “yes, that’s correct.”

  “And Stealth leases their high speed access to high-frequency trading firms for a mere twenty million dollar annual fee.” Her smile was pleasant and she turned to Jordan, “The sums involved are quite vast and add up to tens of billions of dollars a year.”

  “But this building is enormous.” Jordan said, noting privately how perspiration began beading on the building manager’s bald head. “So why is this place so big if the stock exchange is now just a box?”

  Catherine waved a hand at the devices, “It has to be enormous in order to house all the equipment owned by the high-frequency traders who want to be physically near the exchange so they can get information from it more quickly than you or me.”

  Jordan turned a slow circle, taking in the endless rows of stacked servers and densely packed bundled cables, “Holy merde.”

  Mr. Hanchett opened his mouth to speak but Catherine beat him to it, “Remember, it's a couple of millisecond edge they need to do that, and the way they do it is by minimizing the physical distance between themselves and the exchange.” She pointed at the bundled cables overhead, “Literally, the high speed fiber optic cable that is carrying the high frequency trader’s trading decisions to the actual exchanges is just shorter and faster than everybody else's cable. So HFT firms are happy to pay the twenty million to get physically closer,” she waved her arms in a wide arc, “leasing space for their servers here, so they can get the signals from the exchange before everybody else, and then find out what the prices are before everybody else.”