Murder in the Dorm

by C. G. Prado

  “Richard, this has been a great help. I definitely will keep you informed and we’ll have lunch again soon.”

  With that Baynes and Charlie left their table and started on their way out of the Club. By then Jones was gone from the Club table, as were most of the others who’d been lunching there, so Charlie couldn’t thank him. He’d see him later. Charlie accompanied Baynes to his car, thanked him again, and returned to his office.

  It seemed things were coming together, but it was still all speculation. DeVries had to find that external drive or one or more of the computers, preferably both. With that thought Charlie wondered if inviting Kim Berger to lunch might not loosen her tongue a bit. He didn’t know how much DeVries would tell him, and it would be very useful to learn what sort of level McDermott’s day trading reached on average.

  That evening Charlie told Kate what he’d learned that day. She then asked the key question.

  “What sort of money do you think was involved? If McDermott was moving a lot of bucks around, it shouldn’t be hard for DeVries to gauge the scale of his activity. It’s another matter, though, whether she’ll tell you.”

  “I know. I was thinking of inviting Berger for lunch and seeing if I could worm anything out of her about McDermott’s trading.”

  “Waste of time, Charlie. She’s not about to risk her job to whisper secrets in your shell-like ear, not for a Club lunch.”

  Chapter 9

  The Second Friday

  Charlie was just pouring his breakfast coffee when the phone rang. It was DeVries.

  “Charlie. Hope it’s not too early for you, but I felt I had to tell you: we found McDermott’s external drive. It’s impressive what he did; he’d actually removed the lintel of his bedroom door. You know, the top part that goes across, and had the drive hidden in it. Our guy was getting desperate but then thought the lintel looked just a tad off. It wasn’t perfectly level because McDermott had put in a catch so he could remove it by pulling down on it and snap it back in place. It was cleverly done. I think our guy got lucky.”

  “That’s great. Do you know what’s on it?”

  “That’s where it gets hairy. It’s encrypted and, I’m told, very professionally. We have a couple of techies on it, but it’ll probably take some time. They think it might even have to be sent off somewhere. I’m hoping they’ll crack it. Anyway, I know I shouldn’t be blabbing so much, but really wanted to tell you.”

  After DeVries rang off Charlie started thinking hard about what he knew and surmised. What was likely was that the scam involved hacking into a brokerage or more than one and messing with trades and accounts. That would take the sort of expertise McDermott and Kelsey had. The more he thought about it, the more confident Charlie became that he was on the right track. It wouldn’t hurt to shore things up, though, so he called Mason Blake.

  “I’ll buy you lunch if I can pick what’s left of your brain. Club at noon?”

  “Only if this is aside from my other sundaes.”

  “It is.”

  “Noon.”

  With that out of the way, Charlie spent the rest of the morning making good progress on his paper. The only interruption came a bit after eleven, when a student from the epistemology class needed some help with Foucault’s somewhat slippery multi-faceted view of truth. Charlie and the student had a good talk and wrapped up just before noon. Charlie walked to the Club and found Blake waiting for him at a table for two.

  “Okay, what’s this about?”

  Charlie explained his thinking about the sort of scam Kelsey and McDermott probably had going.

  “Hmmm. I think you’re right. If it were something involving people producing money, like a Ponzi scheme, computer use would be fairly basic. Mainly to advertise and keep records. I think a hotshot like McDermott would find that boring, regardless of the money. No, you’ve got it right. It had to do with hacking. The big question, though, is what they hacked. To be serious money, it’d have to be a bank or brokerage.”

  “Can you think of an example?”

  “One that intrigued me when I read about it a year or so ago had to do with currency conversion and fractions.”

  “Fractions?”

  “Yeah. Look, you convert dollars to pounds or euros or whatever or the other way around and the bank rounds up or down to the nearest cent in debits and credits, but the computers carry the fractions. So you hack in and transfer the fractions to your account.”

  “Is that really worth the time and effort?”

  “Oh, definitely. I read about it in the New Scientist and some guy took a British bank for thirty thousand pounds before they caught on.” (Vol, 220, No. 2937, pg. 22)

  “That’s quite something.”

  “Certainly is. The tough part is hacking into the bank. Once you’re in, you’re good because no one will notice anything for a long while. And when they do, you move on to another bank.”

  “There’s something else. We know that at least one of these guys had an account with Raymond, Teller. Is that important?”

  “Very. Raymond, Teller is Kingsford’s biggest brokerage. Having an account with them he’d know how things work. He could hack his own account pretty much with impunity and learn whatever codes it used as well as internal addresses. Then they could hack into automated sell orders, trigger them, buy the stocks, then sell them after the triggered sell orders were corrected. Mutual funds, financial companies, and some individuals regularly place automatic-sell orders on stocks at a certain point to protect against sudden losses. Say a stock is trading at ten bucks and they trigger an auto-sell order at eight bucks. Kelsey and McDermott then buy the stock at eight and sell it at ten when the correction is made and make two bucks a share. Now, how about my sundae?”

  Back in his office Charlie thought he’d made real progress. What Blake had said convinced him he was right about the sort of scam Kelsey and McDermott had been running. Did he have enough to call DeVries? It was really all speculation. As he was trying to decide the phone rang and it was DeVries.

  “Charlie, our techies got into the files on the drive. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there wasn’t much on it, and some of what there is makes no sense, even unencrypted. First of all, we found his electronic statements from Raymond, Teller. They’re of interest, but it’s the rest that’s puzzling. It’s a bunch of files, each devoted to a particular month. There are eleven, ending with last month and going back ten more. That part is clear enough, but the files are just three columns of numbers. There are no names, no text. The left hand column has eight and ten digit numbers and most of them repeat once or twice down the column. One techie thought they’re probably account numbers. The middle and right hand columns could be dollar amounts, but there are no decimals, so it’s not clear. The numbers run from five to seven digits, with most being six digits. What’s most puzzling is that there are two numbers in the right hand column, separated by a dash. The two numbers in the right hand column add up to about two-thirds of the number in the center column. The second of the two numbers on the right is always lower than the first.”

  “That’s all there is?”

  “Yes. The only other thing is that the techies say the numbers files were overwritten dozens of times, which means each was updated often before the next one was started. What we’re doing now, and it’ll take a while, is comparing the numbers in the left hand column to credit card accounts, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and anything else we can think of. I don’t understand the lengths to which McDermott went to hide the drive, given both the encryption and the puzzling nature of the contents. I’ve got to go. If you think of anything, give me a call.”

  Charlie thought the techie was right; that the left hand column was account numbers. The middle and right hand columns sounded like dollars. No need for decimals. Either McDermott hadn’t been concerned with cents or hadn’t bothered with periods, simply reading the first two figures on the right as cents. If the numbers ran from five to seven digits, that would
make them hundreds of dollars, allowing two digits for cents, and up to tens of thousands, again allowing two digits for cents. Charlie didn’t think it likely that cents weren’t represented because that would make the seven digit numbers millions, which wasn’t credible.

  What about the entries in the right hand column? The higher and lower numbers could be McDermott and Kelsey’s shares and the difference of the two from the middle-column number could be the third party’s share. Why the caution about the drive? That wasn’t hard. The key thing about the files was the account numbers because they could be checked, even if it took a good while to do it.

  That evening Charlie filled Kate in on what he’d learned and how it all fit his idea about a hacking scam. Kate took several minutes to think about what he’d told her and then made a telling point.

  “Do you think Kelsey knew everything that was in McDermott’s files? Could that lower figure in the right hand column have been what McDermott told Kelsey they’d made, when what they’d actually made was the higher figure? Or the higher figure on the right was what McDermott took and the lower one what he gave Kelsey?”

  “You know, you’re getting into this as much as I am.”

  “Trouble is, if McDermott was the one cheating, why argue with and kill Kelsey?”

  “I’d say Kelsey caught on, started the argument, and got killed for his trouble.”

  Before sleep that night Charlie grinned at Kate’s interest in the case. She’d come up with a couple of good points and probably would come up with more. As he shifted a bit to get more comfortable something niggled at him. It was something DeVries had said earlier. But what was it? Charlie tried to put the thought aside and go to sleep.

  It was as he was just dropping off that it happened. In his mind’s eye he saw a dumpster. What was important about a dumpster? Then he had it. DeVries had said McDermott’s body had been found behind a dumpster, not in a dumpster. Why would the killer not do a better job of hiding the body? Perhaps it was because the killer couldn’t lift six-foot McDermott into the dumpster and could only push the body behind it? That meant the third party was likely a woman.

  Chapter 10

  The Second Weekend

  Saturday morning Charlie awoke wondering if it was it okay to call DeVries on a Saturday. She’d obviously been working last weekend, but she might be off on this one. He decided he’d wait till ten to be on the safe side.

  Charlie got up, careful not to wake Kate, and went downstairs to fix some breakfast. He thought some more about the differences in the right-hand column that DeVries had mentioned. If McDermott was skimming, if he was cheating Kelsey, then their argument made sense. Somehow Kelsey had found out or at least suspected. They argued. McDermott hit Kelsey with the bookend. Then the third party had reason to get rid of McDermott. He or she may have guessed why Kelsey and McDermott argued. McDermott would have suddenly looked like a risk. Probably the scam wouldn’t work without Kelsey or someone to replace him, and if there was need to get someone new, might as well not take any chances and replace McDermott, too.

  Charlie was halfway through his second cup of coffee when Kate entered the kitchen. He knew better than to start chatting so waited till she had her coffee.

  “Do you think I’ve got enough to call DeVries?”

  “I think so. You don’t have to spend a lot of time talking to her; just fill her in on your idea about the scam and explain you think McDermott was short-changing Kelsey.”

  Charlie finished his coffee and went to shower. Just after ten he called DeVries.

  The woman answering the phone said that DeVries was in her office but had someone with her and would call Charlie back.

  A good forty minutes went by while Charlie frittered. Finally the phone rang and it was DeVries. Charlie first gave her a brief account of the sort of scam Blake had described and how it fit in with McDermott and Kelsey’s computer expertise. Then he told her that he and Kate thought the right-hand column of figures might indicate that McDermott was cheating Kelsey. DeVries asked Charlie to wait while she had a look at the figures.

  “Charlie, you may be onto something. I’ve worked out several right-hand column pairs at random and they all come up differing by almost exactly twenty percent. It looks like McDermott may have been skimming a fifth of what they got, assuming the larger figures were his cut.”

  After hanging up, Charlie felt frustrated. On Monday he’d talk to Sommers again, but that seemed too far off. He tried to think of what he might do now. After stewing a bit he went to the Merritt directory and found Sommers’ home number. It wouldn’t hurt to speed things up a bit. First he’d check with Kate.

  Kate suggested they take Sommers to lunch or for drinks later that afternoon, as she was interested in what Sommers might have to say.

  Charlie called Sommers. He explained to her that he’d learned some things since their last conversation and that he and Kate would welcome her ideas on what they’d learned. He proposed lunch or drinks later.

  “Sorry, Charlie, but I have something on this afternoon; my nephew is visiting. How about brunch tomorrow? We could meet at eleven. He wants to see some friends before I drive him to his train at five-thirty.”

  “That sounds good. What about meeting at The Eggnest? They do a great brunch, complete with champagne spritzers.”

  Arrangements made, Charlie read through the paper while Kate dressed for their Saturday lunch and a little shopping.

  Sunday morning was clear and sunny. Kate and Charlie were at The Eggnest early and took a table by the window. Charlie ordered three EggBursts, the doctored-up spritzers. The server had just delivered the drinks when Sommers turned up.

  “Janice, this Kate; Kate, Janice. Do sit down; the drinks just came.”

  Charlie watched the two women size one another up while exchanging pleasantries, an unspoken ritual Charlie thought was hardwired into double-X chromosomes. The usual innocuous chitchat ensued, the menu was perused and discussed, orders placed, and then Charlie filled Sommers in on what he’d learned, particularly the scams Blake had described.

  “That sounds interesting, but I assume you’re hoping I might help with more details?”

  “Since you teach senior courses in computing I thought you might discuss some scams to warn off students.”

  “Well, it’s not so much to warn them off. The fact is that scams have become part of the material we need to cover. The latest one is scary. Users are conned into downloading email attachments that secretly install software. When the software is installed, it encrypts all the data files on the computer’s drive. Then users get emails telling them that in return for payment their files will be unencrypted. Virus programs don’t seem to be coping with this new scam. What the authorities are trying to do is to trace and block the payments. Amazing how many people don’t back up their files and have no choice but to pay a ransom for their files.”

  Their orders arrived at that point and little was said while they started on their dishes. After a bit Charlie prompted Sommers a little and she continued.

  “One scam that we discussed in class was pretty much what you said Blake described, but maybe a bit more complex. It involved two people, a hacker and someone who worked for a brokerage firm. What they were doing was triggering or delaying automatic-sell orders. These orders are all computer exercised because their point is to prevent losses on stocks, so don’t involve anyone actually executing them.”

  “I understand that much. What were these two doing?”

  “Two things; they found auto-sell orders lower that a stock’s price then triggered the sell orders and bought the stock themselves at the auto-sell price. They’d wait a few minutes and sell the stock at the corrected price. That’s pretty much what Blake described to you. The added fillip was that they also sold stocks short, you know, essentially borrowing shares from their brokers as people do when they think a stock is going to drop. Then they triggered the auto-sell orders and bought the stock at the auto-sell price. They paid back
the borrowed shares and kept the difference.

  “Certainly big money could be made that way.”

  “Definitely, but it wasn’t easy. One guy had to hack into the auto-sell computers and trigger or delay the orders while the brokerage insider exercised and doctored their own orders. They were caught because all brokerages have multiple backup systems and the insider couldn’t doctor them all. But they made a lot in just a few months.”

  “Janice, this has been very helpful. The detectives I’m trying to help need to know as much as they can about the possibilities, and this auto-order scam you’ve just described seems to me the best idea of what Kelsey and McDermott were doing.”

  Kate, Charlie, and Sommers talked a bit more. She told them about her nephew and they finished brunch. It was getting on to one o’clock and Sommers said she really should be going. Kate and Charlie stayed for more coffee and discussed what Sommers had told them. Both agreed DeVries should be told, but both wished there was more to tell her.

  “You know, Charlie, Janice said that in the scam she described one of the scammers worked for a brokerage company. I’m willing to bet that even if Kelsey was doing the actual account stuff, the third party is in a brokerage and was providing information for Kelsey and McDermott.”

  “Yes, given their expertise, I can see McDermott doing the hacking of the auto-order computers and Kelsey doing the buying and selling, but they’d either need or could do better with information provided about the accounts. I can’t help thinking that Kim Berger works in a brokerage. Trouble is, she’d hardly volunteer that McDermott had an account with Raymond, Teller if she was in on the scam.”

  “You said she blurted out McDermott was a client to Janice.”

  “Yeah, but if she were involved I doubt she’d have blurted anything to Sommers. I did spend a little time looking up Berger in the social media. She wasn’t on Facebook or Twitter but does have a LinkedIn account. Unfortunately, it’s all business contacts.”