Silver Justice

Chapter 8

The room was full, with Richard and Seth sitting on either side of Silver, and the rest of the agents, mostly male, gathered around the table. Sam stood and moved to a laptop that had been set up with an overhead projection system. Seth flipped off the lights, and Sam began the rundown.

“Cause of death was decapitation. Instrument appears to have been a sharp blade used in a chopping manner — looks like four blows. Probably a hatchet. Sharp one, that’s for sure. Time of death narrowed to around four a.m.. The bruising and lacerations were sustained prior to death, and the head had a nasty bump on the front that was caused by a blow, which likely rendered the victim unconscious for a while.” Sam stopped, looking around the room. “The condo locks had been picked, so best guess is that the killer broke in while the victim was asleep, hit him over the head to knock him out, tied him to the bed with the same electrical wire that he used in the house fire, then slapped him around before doing the chop job.”

Silver glanced at Sam, indicating that he should move it along.

“While processing the site, we recovered a number of fibers that don’t match anything in the room, and also may have gotten lucky. We have a single hair, which doesn’t belong to either the victim or the maid,” Sam revealed.

“Girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

“The report says it’s male, inch and a half long, and medium brown. We’re still checking, but neither the maid nor the doormen think the victim had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, for that matter. Whatever he was doing, he didn’t do it at home.”

“Superintendent? Maintenance guy?” Seth suggested.

“We’re working on those, but the building superintendent is Chinese and in his late thirties, which means it isn’t his. We’re looking over the log of all visitors for the last three months. The doorman records everyone, so at least there’s that.”

“What does forensics think about the fibers?” Silver asked.

“They aren’t definitive, but they believe they could have come from the perp’s clothing. Nothing in the condo resembles them. The report spends three paragraphs describing length, density and all, but in the end it concludes that they’re probably from an area rug — they’re synthetic fibers of the same sort used in cheap carpets and floor coverings.”

“Great. Doesn’t leave us with a lot,” Seth said.

“The contusions raise a question in my mind, though,” Sam continued. “If this isn’t a single perp, and these killings are being staged to look like the random acts of a serial, then perhaps the team carrying them out was extracting information from the victim. That would explain binding him to the bed and beating him.”

“As would a single perp who was mad as hell,” Silver observed. “So far, the theory that these are staged has exactly zero basis in any of the evidence. And nothing about this one is changing that.”

“True, but I’m just saying-”

“I think we’re all clear on where you’re going with this. You like the idea that the killings are somehow tied to terrorist funding. The problem is there’s nothing to support that idea.” Silver enjoyed stopping him in his tracks, but then changed the discussion. “What the profiling group has come up with to date is available for everyone to study, but it’s pretty generic. Many of the usual vague assertions are made — that he’s a loner, single or estranged from his mate, highly organized, has studied forensics or read about it in depth, is skilled with locks and plans carefully. He also has reasonable physical strength given that he’s been able to subdue multiple adult male victims. Although he uses a stun gun, at least sometimes, which we know from the trace evidence from the first, and now the latest, victim.”

“Maybe we’ll get some hits from the traffic cams,” Seth suggested. “How’s that going, Sam?”

“It’s a laborious process. We’re comparing three feed sources from this latest killing, to see whether there are any multiple appearances by a single suspect. The problem is that there are usually tons of multiples because people stay in their neighborhood and are coming and going. That’s a busy area of the park. But we’ve narrowed it down to around sixty multiples who appear between ten p.m. and eight the next morning. Most are probably going home then to work the next day, but it needs more study…”

Silver nodded. “I’d back it up to more like six p.m.. The killer could have slipped into the building earlier and been waiting for the victim to go to sleep. I think it’s a mistake to limit the timing.”

Sam groaned. “That will quadruple the number of people we’ll need to track.”

“Yes, Sam, it will increase the number, but it is also what we will need to do to ensure we don’t miss anyone. Nobody said that this was going to be an easy job. I can put someone else on it if you’re too busy with other duties. Which I want a list of, if I have to hand it over or request more staff…”

Sam seemed ready to take the bait, then backed down. “No need. I was just pointing out that it’s going to take longer the larger the data set we have to scan. If you want it from six, then six it is.”

Silver’s gaze roved over the room again. “If it doesn’t belong to anyone we can place at the victim’s condo, then the hair is a major move forward in getting a conviction. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we still need to make an arrest, and we’re a long way from doing so without a suspect. Anybody got any further ideas?” she asked.

Richard cleared his throat. “Have we considered putting out some sort of partial information or incorrect statement to draw the killer out? He’s clearly following the press coverage. Maybe try to get him angry so he makes a mistake?” he ventured.

“Like what?” Silver asked.

“I don’t know. Like a profile that’s insulting — hypothesizes that there’s a sexual component to the killings, perhaps some sort of homo-erotic element that our pet shrinks believe is a driver? That we believe we are looking for someone with a deep-seated emotional disturbance, likely due to being molested as a child, and that we’re presuming that he’s acting out some sort of disturbed ritual where the victims are his father? I don’t know the exact bullshit, but something to get him seeing red so he’ll get sloppy?”

Seth shook his head. “If we were dealing with a more impulsive killer, I’d say that might have some legs. But this one is a planner, and a meticulous one at that. That implies above average intelligence, which means that he would see through a ruse within minutes.”

Silver nodded. “I tend to agree. But it’s a good idea. Just the wrong killer to try it on…”

“That’s why I work in Financial Crimes,” Richard said with a grin, and a few of the agents laughed.

Silver waited for the rumblings to subside. “Which brings us to the part of the meeting where I ask whether you’ve made any progress on the victims’ backgrounds.”

All eyes turned to Richard, who opened his notebook and scribbled something with his pen.

“First off, I want to establish for everyone that the financial industry is a big world, but once you’re at a certain level, not nearly as big as you might imagine. Having said that, I’ve discovered a few connections between the first and second victims that might be coincidental, but certainly raised my eyebrows. How many of you know anything about Benjamin Masenkoff?” Richard asked, and almost every hand in the room raised.

“Ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, right?” Sam replied. “Whole thing fell apart during the financial crisis. Bilked investors out of billions.”

“Yes, he stole billions and ruined quite a few people’s lives. What many don’t know is that he was long suspected by most of the large brokerage houses of being a crook, but nobody said anything. One of the industry’s largest had a policy of advising its clients not to invest with him, even as it processed his trades for him. The reason that he was treated with such deference is that he was one of the most influential men on Wall Street. In fact, he wrote key regulations for the SEC governing stock manipulation and abusive short selling, where he drafted loopholes that were used for years by stock manipulators. One section of code was even referred to as ‘The Masenkoff Exemption’ inside the SEC and on Wall Street.”

“Does this go anywhere that’s germane to our killer?” Sam asked, looking around the room.

“That depends on why he’s killing, I guess. Masenkoff was both a complete criminal and also instrumental in shaping the regulations that supposedly protect the markets. And here we have a serial killer who’s calling himself The Regulator, who is issuing statements to the press about Wall Street being a den of thieves. So yes, I would say that it’s germane in the sense that Masenkoff was a pillar of the financial system and yet operated a con game that harmed many — maybe including our man. You have to look at that and wonder, how did he get away with it for so long, and yet nobody caught on to him?” Richard paused. “The answer is nobody wanted to blow the whistle because he was too high-profile and important to the industry. Too connected.”

Silver made a hurry-up gesture.

“Masenkoff was a very bad man. And guess what? Both victim number one and victim number two can be put in the same room as him at some point in the last decade.” Richard paused for effect. “Think about that. You have two men, one burned to death in his home in Connecticut, the other stabbed to death in his car in Florida, both sanctioned by the SEC, and both more than passingly familiar with the biggest crook in financial history. It took some digging, but when I found that, I stopped and wondered what it meant.”

Seth leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So what does it mean?”

Richard tossed his pen down and sighed. “I don’t know. But here’s what I learned. Victim number one was a feeder to Masenkoff’s fund. He directed investors to Masenkoff, and what we now know is that Masenkoff paid hefty finders’ fees for doing so. And victim number two’s hedge fund cleared its trades through Masenkoff’s brokerage firm. So there’s that name, popping up in both men’s histories. Now, true, both had also been sanctioned by the SEC, but that was nothing compared to the Masenkoff thing. Remember, thousands were destroyed when his Ponzi scheme collapsed. Charities. Pension plans. High net worth investors. I’m wondering if the killer might have been materially damaged by him.”

Nobody said a word. Then Sam spoke up.

“You just said that was thousands of people. How does that narrow anything down for us?”

“Sam. I’ve only been here a couple of days. I never claimed I could solve your case for you in under a week. But what I’ve done is discovered a link that nobody found until I started digging. Not you. Not anyone. That’s why I’m here. Now I’m wondering how deep this goes. We have a hedge fund that was doing business with Masenkoff’s brokerage, we have one of his feeders, and we have a software provider who just so happened to create the electronic exchanges that most of the manipulative trading the Masenkoff exemption enabled was done on. Oh, and whose partner was spitting distance from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Now maybe it’s just me, but that seems like it’s an awful lot of very unusual connections for three random victims,” Richard said evenly, although it was obvious that he was annoyed with Sam’s attitude.

“I agree. Did the last victim have any obvious connection with Masenkoff,” Silver asked. “or is it more by association?”

“I’m still rooting around to see what I can find. So far, nothing, but my nose is telling me that the victims are all somehow related — even the son who was caught in the house fire worked at the father’s hedge fund, so his connection is the same as his dad’s. As of now, three of four victims are linked to Masenkoff in some way. And the fourth is about as close as you can get to some pretty sketchy Middle Eastern black hats without being a card-carrying Jihadist.” Richard picked up his pen and tapped his folder with it. “Another little factoid I know from my work is that some of Masenkoff’s investors were criminal syndicates. The Russian mob features prominently. And when you hear Russian mob, that’s usually synonymous with the former KGB. So now what it starts looking like is that three of the four are connected to a conduit for Russian mob money laundering, and the fourth is connected to terrorist funding and money laundering, some of which could be intermingled with mob money. You see how this gets increasingly interesting as we peel the onion?” Richard asked.

Sam nodded. “Now I get it. I totally get it. Apologies for busting your chops earlier. It actually supports the terrorist/criminal funding theory and gets us further from a single individual serial killer. Or am I misconstruing this?”

Richard closed his file. “That’s right. Or it could all be completely unrelated to the killings, and could just be one of those weird coincidences that can pop up. Personally, that seems like a stretch. There has to be something to all this. I just don’t have enough information yet to know what I’m looking at. But now all of you know everything I do, so I’m hoping that your collective brain trust will be more powerful than just me sitting in a cubicle,” Richard concluded.

After some back and forth discussion amongst the agents, Silver could feel the agenda slipping into tangential areas. She let them have some room for conjecture and then skillfully guided the room back on point, away from speculations and back to the hard facts of the case.

The meeting went on for another hour, as the minutiae of the forensics report were digested by the group and every element of the evidence was re-examined. When Silver stood and thanked everyone for coming, she was drained. It felt like they were standing still, waiting for the next ugly shoe to drop. For all the titillation of Richard’s bombshell and the promise held by having a potential evidentiary gold mine in the single strand of hair and its DNA, they were still light years from keeping the killer from striking again. As everyone filed out, she pulled Richard and Seth aside, and waited until the room cleared before tackling the next subject.

“The partner. Do you think we have enough to justify putting him under surveillance — for his own protection?” she asked.

“Boy, that’s where you earn the big bucks, chief,” Seth said.

“It’s not clear cut. I’m asking if we have enough to make a credible argument that he may be in imminent danger from the killer. If so, I’ll ramrod this up the ladder and get it done. So what do you think?”

“I think that the connections in their backgrounds are interesting and certainly inflammatory, but not a lock. In the end, it probably couldn’t hurt to put him under relaxed surveillance, but I wouldn’t count on it leading anywhere. My entire presentation was a loose interpretation of partial data, not a coherent case for the partner being a target. If it was me, I’d wait to see what else we discover, and keep my powder dry,” Richard advised.

Seth nodded grudgingly, and Silver ran a hand through her hair, combing it back with her fingers.

“You’re probably right. But I think I’ll put a team on him, just in case. Richard, it really feels like you’re on to something with all the connections in their backgrounds. How did we miss this?” she lamented.

“All due respect, this is a pretty specialized area we’re talking about. Half of the agents in Financial Crimes might not have connected these dots. The only reason I did is because market fraud is sort of my hobby — I actually wrote a paper on it, many moons ago, comparing the financial raiders of the Roaring Twenties to those of modern times. And one of the last cases I worked was peripherally associated with terrorist money laundering by a group of related pawn shops and restaurants in the Midwest, so when I saw the names involved my antenna quivered. Otherwise it would have just flown completely over my head.” Richard hesitated. “I just hope I’m not tilting at windmills here. One of those cases of where you see zebras everywhere…”

Silver nodded. “Understood. But sometimes there are actually zebras everywhere.”