by Lee Perry
“So their servers are within a few feet of the exchanges,” Jordan pointed, “which are these black boxes… The trader’s proximity makes them physically close, and the high speed fiber-optic cables,” she pointed overhead, “make them faster than everyone else.”
The color had drained from Mr. Hanchett’s face but Catherine just smiled and continued, “Yes, it’s physics; light traveling over distance still takes time, but to a trader in the stock market now, the difference between getting the information in three milliseconds as opposed to four milliseconds is the difference between knowing the prices before everybody else and not.”
“And that’s how they’re skimming eleven billion a year in profits.”
Catherine nodded, “Precisely.”
“Being able to stand here and see it really helps all that make sense.” She smiled; acutely aware Mr. Hanchett was extremely uncomfortable.
“Well, now…” he held up his hands in protest, “wait a minute, that’s…”
“HFT traders are buying and selling stock in less than a half a millionth of a second, Jordan. It’s hard for us to understand that one millisecond is a long time for a computer when we need one hundred milliseconds just to blink our eyes really fast. For a human mind, one millionth of a second is imperceptible, and the algorithms used by HFT firms can execute and complete stock trades, by the thousands, a million times faster than the human mind can make a decision.”
Jordan’s phone vibrated and she pulled it from her pocket, “It’s Mary.” She answered, “Hey Mare…”
Catherine drew in a deep breath and turned to Mr. Hanchett, “Nice place you have here.” She said her tone conversational.
“Yes, well…” he shrugged, “I’m not really sure how I can help you any further so…”
Jordan hung up, “Thank you for your time, Mister Hanchett.” Her smile was professional, “I’m afraid we have to go.”
“Oh,” he nervously gestured the way they came in, “not at all, I’m sure you’re quite busy… glad I could help…”
Once they got back in the car, Jordan leaned across the seat to plant a kiss on her lips, “Thank you, I finally, finally feel like I understand this whole high speed stock market thing now.”
Catherine chuckled, “Mmm, you’re very welcome; trying to explain these concepts during sex just doesn’t work.”
“Not for understanding Wall Street, no.”
“So? What’s up with Mary?’
“Mary’s on her way back from Middletown… She just collected a skeletonized torso from an industrial neighborhood there.”
“It’s bony right hand pointing at a datacenter?” Catherine asked drolly.
Jordan grinned, “Probably.”
New York City, NY
Dr. Lucas held out her hand, “Doctor Bernard.”
She shook it, “Please call me Catherine.”
She smiled, “Only if you call me Sam.”
“Okay.”
Jordan pointed to the torso on the autopsy table, “So that’s it?”
“Yes.” She followed them to the remains, “he was left in the open, there’s evidence of scavenging; bite marks on the bone and remaining sinew. And in this area, at this time of year, it would only take a couple of weeks to skeletonize so I can’t pin down at TOD for you, not yet anyway.”
Catherine looked down at the discolored bones with interest; I think I know where you’ve been.
“Most of the flesh is gone; obviously, the remaining stubborn tendons and sinew were cut at the shoulder and hip joints with a serrated blade. The head and limbs were then simply pulled and twisted off from the torso.” Dr. Lucas continued, turning to some x-rays mounted on a lightbox on the wall, “The cervical vertebrae show nicks at the C2 and C3 made at time of death…”
Jordan had followed and stood next to her and Catherine quickly pulled a latex glove from her pocket and pulling it on her hand, took a deep silent breath, Okay so, hurry up now; you may speak to me but not through me… and touched the skeletonized hand. Are you who I think you are? She asked silently and waited. Behind closed eyes, she could see a gray fog envelop her inner vision… So, is that it? After a moment, the fog seemed to lift and looking down, she could see a full skeleton, clothed in a torn and rotted shirt and tattered slacks and when she looked up, she saw the white house… She opened her eyes, the images had come to an abrupt halt and she quickly withdrew her hand. She quietly stripped off the glove inside out and tossed it into a trashcan as she crossed the room to join Lucas and Jordan.
“He was stabbed in the throat,” she continued, “you can see the nicks in the bone here,” she pointed, “and here, by something very sharp and narrow. The ribs show evidence of stabbing too.” She pointed at another x-ray, “And that can be seen here… and here. DNA analysis will take a couple of weeks.” She turned to Jordan, “I take it you think you know who this is, can you get me a sample from a relative?”
“From either his sister or parents, I’ll have an agent from the Milwaukee bureau collect it.” She looked down at Catherine, raising an eyebrow in query but Catherine only returned the glance with an innocent look. “So,” she turned back to Lucas, “what are the odds that skeletonized torso is Mitch Ryan?”
“Because the skull is absent I can only guess the victim could be Caucasian, however, based on the pelvic girdle, the torso is definitely male.” She turned back to the table, “I can infer the victim’s height by utilizing an established formula that multiplies the length of the humerus,” she pointed at the long arm bone between the shoulder and elbow, “in centimeters by 32.69 and then adding 59.4 centimeters to the total, I can give you an approximate height of 170.18 centimeters.”
Jordan planted her hands on her hips, “Okay, but how tall is that?”
“Five foot seven.”
“Mitch Ryan’s height listed on his driver’s license.”
“It’s not a positive ID, Jordan. I won’t sign off on who this is ‘til I can match the DNA to a family member.”
“I know.” she gave her a pat on the back, “Have you already sent me your work on this one?”
“It’s all in your inbox,” she turned to Catherine, “yours too.”
“Thanks, Sam.” Catherine smiled and followed Jordan out the door.
“Anytime.”
When they got to the elevator Jordan grinned, “So?”
Catherine gave her a shy look, “So what?”
“I saw you touching it…”
“Nuts.” Catherine looked back at the door they just exited, “Did Sam see me too?”
“Don’t think so.” Jordan snickered, “Get anything?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, “it’s Ryan.”
Part 4
“I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.
I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.”
– Malcolm X
Bethlehem, NJ
He was careful to jam the wifi security cameras just long enough for him to enter the four-story underground parking garage beneath Stealth’s office building and park as close to Boehne’s Mercedes as possible. He didn’t want to arouse suspicion so he closed the jamming program, restoring full function to the security cameras as soon as he cut the engine. He used his cell phone to broadcast the signal that jammed wifi, but he brought his laptop too; he had hacked every digital tool and application used by Mike Boehne, the CEO of Stealth Networks. This would have been more of a challenge if their corporate offices had the kind of security their datacenters do. Jonas smiled, careful not to chuckle aloud as he booted up his laptop, sitting on the passenger seat next to him.
According to Mr. Boehne’s private emails, he and his fiancé/secretary were going out for a late dinner after his late video conference with a subscriber in Tokyo. Careful not to hack the conference call itself, he instead hacked Boehne’s cell phone and monitored the texts sent between Boehne and Teresa, the fiancé, and watched for when the call ended so he could activate the program on his laptop that tracked the
physical location of Boehne’s cell phone once he left the office.
He placed his phone next to his laptop and waited, slumping down in the seat while he checked for the taser in his right coat pocket, and revolver in the left. I am a Peaceful Being, he thought, gazing down at his laptop, I am Destroyer, I am He Who Oppresses, I am Accomplished, a Gift from God, a Wise Old Friend. The Dark Fiber that carries on the evil Wall Street has become… Its extinction is near.
He waited almost thirty minutes before Boehne sent his fiancé/secretary a text saying the conference call had ended and to meet him at the elevator. Jonas followed the beacon that blinked on his map of Stealth’s corporate offices, watching intently as the signal from Boehne’s cell phone moved from the topmost floor down through the building. When it passed the ground level, he reactivated his program that jammed the wifi security cameras. He exited his vehicle, walking rapidly past Boehne’s car and concealed himself behind a concrete support. He heard the elevator arrive with a familiar bell sound and the doors slid open. He could hear a man and a woman talking and Jonas stole a quick look around the pillar to make sure the couple was alone and the man looked like the pictures Jonas had studied of Mike Boehne. That’s him. As soon as they passed his hiding spot he ducked down behind the parked car and walking quietly in his sneakers, caught up to the couple and tasered the woman in her lower back.
Mike Boehne jumped at the loud clacking noise and turned to Jonas, looking confused, “What…?”
He jammed the taser into his chest and pulled the trigger, watching as Boehne twitched and jerked as he fell to the concrete, his neuromuscular control incapacitated by the clacking electrical current. Jonas quickly grabbed the woman by the arm and dragged her limp form unceremoniously between two parked cars. Returning to Boehne, he dragged him to his own car and popping the trunk lid with his remote, heaved the unconscious man inside.
He quickly secured him with his trusty plastic ties, muttering, “That will hold you…” and slammed the trunk closed.
He saw no one else when he left and his smile was relaxed as he pulled his car out onto the street, knowing the signal that jammed the security cameras would lose contact a block from Stealth’s building. If the oblivious security guards look at them at all, all they’ll notice is the staticky white noise that filled their screens on the garage level cameras have cleared and come back online.
New York City, NY
Jordan and Catherine had just booted up their workstations when Jordan’s phone rang.
“Hey, it’s Stewart,” he spoke in a rush, “a CEO of some big ass company called Stealth Networks in New Jersey got abducted overnight… the bureau task force is up and running, I’m on my way there now, want to attend in case it’s your guy?”
“Crap,” Jordan jammed the phone between her ear and shoulder and she began furiously typing on her keyboard, “No, we’ll check in from here.”
Catherine had opened her copies of Ryan and Lesous’s company datastreams to study and she peered worriedly around her monitor.
“Think it’s your guy?”
“I think he’s been escalating to something like this, yes.”
Catherine waited until Jordan hung up and simply cocked an eyebrow in query.
“Someone abducted the CEO of Stealth Networks.” Jordan watched Catherine’s eyes open wide.
“Oh, my god…”
“Yeah, Stewart wants us to join up with the task force, but I think we’ll get farther on our own.” She accessed the bureau file already begun on the case by the FBI’s kidnapping task force and quickly scanned the first page, “Initial police report says the CEO, Mike Boehne had a late night conference call with a subscriber in Tokyo and he left with his girlfriend/secretary, Teresa Morgan for a late dinner just before midnight… Teresa says they were walking to his car in the building’s underground garage when she was evidently tasered.” Jordan shook her head in both sympathy and frustration, “All she remembers is that it hurt… she didn’t see anyone.”
“Do you want me to try a psychometry thing in the garage?”
“No,” Jordan shook her head and stared at her screen for a moment. “I think we need to start over.”
“Really?’ Catherine sounded bemused, “From where?”
Jordan sat back in her chair, “Well,” she folded her arms across her chest, “let’s start at the beginning and go have a look at what we think was the abduction site for our first victim…”
“Mitch Ryan.”
“We don’t know exactly when he was killed or if he was last seen at work or in Artie’s Bar like Lesous, but he was first, he was killed and left intact somewhere and only recently made into a torso. The first killed… this whole thing may have started off as a mistake but maybe we should still begin there…”
Catherine warmed to her approach, “But McConnell was the first torso…”
“The first one found.” Jordan brows bounced temptingly, “Say he killed Ryan first, then decided he had a taste for it, maybe… and the next time, for McConnell, he’s prepared.”
“Prepared for abducting and killing and has a ritual for preparing the torsos?” Catherine’s face twisted in disgust, “Jordan, I saw the torso and body parts stacked teepee style in his garage…”
“Oh yeah,” she sounded distracted while she typed, “he’s bananas, for sure.” She stared at the screen for a moment then suddenly stood, “Let’s go have another look at Artie’s Bar.”
Red Bank, NJ
They exited the bar, “Well, that was a bust.” Catherine sighed.
“If Ryan was a mistake, somehow, then the killer was very lucky no one around here has any exterior cameras at all.” Jordan grumped, looking up and down the street.
“This was only one of two neighborhoods out of the six suspected abduction sites that had businesses with no exterior security cameras.”
“The Stealth building had wifi security cameras on all their garage levels…”
Catherine stared at the parking lot across the street, “And they were all jammed during the abduction last night.”
“Those programs are too damn easy to find online.” Jordan grumped. “So he has a plan after his first kill and is smart enough to figure out he has to case the area first.”
“So he would be smart enough not to pull this on a street with hard-wired cameras.”
“Yeah… most of our victim’s co-workers saw them last in the neighborhood bar after work, or they at least think they saw them there.” She turned to look up at the four-story building behind them, “SAEx has the top three floors of this building and Artie’s Bar is their hangout on the ground floor and they all park in that big lot,” she turned, pointing, “across the street. Bad lighting… it’d be dark at night.” Catherine waited patiently while she thought aloud, “McConnell and Thackeray were the second and third killed, maybe he had a scare somewhere in there and he decided to come back here, a place he knew had no security…”
“For Lesous?”
She shrugged, “Or anyone who came out alone.” her voice trailed away as she turned a slow circle, scanning the store fronts on both sides of the street and gestured at the liquor store next to the bar, the double glass doors propped open, “Let’s have a look in here.”
Catherine followed her inside Wine & Spirits Liquors and Jordan winced at the piercing door activated bell chime when they entered.
An older man entered from an open doorway behind the counter, “Can I help you?”
She held up her badge wallet, “Yes,” she pointed to the security camera above his head that pointed out the door towards the street, “we’re investigating an abduction case… does that work?”
He turned to glance at the camera mounted on the wall behind him, “Oh, hell yeah, I didn’t get those for kicks. You wanna look at the tapes?”
Catherine winced internally, Oh, please not VHS tapes.
“If we could,” Jordan smiled, “yes, please.”
“You bet,” he returned the way he came, thru
the open doorway behind the counter; “this way…” he waved over his shoulder.
They followed him and Jordan looked up at the camera as they passed, “It says it’s high def, is it?”
“Oh yeah, it’s pretty good, I got three of them on eBay and my son got ‘em all hooked up.” The back room had a desk and plastic chair and he sat briefly and clicked open the camera icon on the desktop, “I don’t do passwords and stuff.” He stood and waved his hand at it, “It’s pretty easy software to use…”
Catherine took his place on the chair and began clicking open files.
“Is it that guy that got kidnapped last night?”
“No, actually,” Jordan turned to him, “it’s someone else who’s been missing for a while.
“Huh.” He grunted when they heard the electronic door chime in the store. “Have at it.” He waved a hand and left.
Jordan turned back to Catherine, “How far back do they go?” She asked in a quiet voice.
“Well,” she murmured, “since we don’t know when Ryan was taken, let alone if it was from here...”
“But we know when Lesous was…” Jordan peered over her shoulder, “Do the recordings go back that far?”
Catherine slid the grimy mouse across a worn mouse pad and smiled, “Yes…” She clicked open the file for that night and began playback.
Jordan held her breath, the camera was angled in such a way that customers standing at the counter were photographed from the mid-chest up so the entryway beyond could also be recorded. “Too many variables…” she muttered under her breath, “through the window, the glass doors… this’ll never work.”