The Torso Murders

by Lee Perry

  “It’s just… I saw an arm in a dream early this morning,” she booted her computer, “I’ll have to check my journal, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I saw.”

  Jordan’s brows raised, “Okay, that’s a good start.”

  “Really?” she scoffed, checking her email.

  “Yeah, it’s something, and I’ll take every little bit of info that comes in right now. Torso Number Two is Christopher Thackeray; thirty-one years old, worked as a trader at the Barrett Group for the past two years. I sent you what I have so far… His car and home were clean. He was last seen at a bar near work, no one remembers seeing him leave.”

  She read the email Jordan sent her, “Killed by the same person...”

  She shrugged as she typed, “That would be my bet. It could be two or more people working together… but unless it’s mafia or something that’s not how these things usually work. Both bodies were completely dismembered and emasculated except for the right arm, so I’ll be surprised if this left arm doesn’t belong to one of them. The torsos are obviously posed, but I haven’t got a clue why yet.”

  “Victims were both stock traders…” Catherine muttered, staring at her screen.

  “Yes, I’ve checked their email and social media pages and there’s nothing to link them together.”

  “Paul McConnell worked at the Getchell Exchange…” Her fingers flew over the keyboard, “and Christopher Thackeray worked for the Barrett Group.”

  Jordan was silent for a moment, watching Catherine’s eyes as they quickly scanned whatever it was she was looking at on her monitor, “What?” She finally asked.

  “Don’t know, really,” she frowned, “both exchanges are high frequency trading firms, but then,” she resumed typing, “the ones with the highest profits are all HFT’s now.”

  Jordan rolled her chair around to the side of her desk and opened a bottom drawer so she could prop a booted foot on it, “I’m focusing on the competition between traders for a suspect.” She shrugged, “I’ve been looking for disgruntled customers too but the victims have nothing in their emails or voice mails or anything else to point in that direction.”

  “Wow, GEX and BGX certainly rank high in the profits arena.” Catherine sounded distracted as she stared at the screen.

  Jordan gestured frustratedly, “The killer clearly has some kind of theme working here, but even if this is a trader or customer gone off the deep end, I have a bad feeling this is going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Nebraska.”

  “There has to be something in this culture…” Catherine mused, “It’s such an otherworldly existence these people live in. Although…” Jordan remained silent and she continued, “that CEO from the Investor’s Exchange’s …” She quickly clicked open a program, “Come here a minute.” Jordan rolled her chair next to hers and she pointed at the screen, “I have audio files of Bea’s briefings… and I bookmarked some interesting passages from Brandon Kimura’s talk that day.”

  “I’ve read about him,” Jordan nodded, “people love him.”

  “Some do, but investment bankers and traders do not. Listen to what he said here…” She adjusted the volume and clicked the play function:

  “Today, financial firms use sophisticated algorithms that fight for fractions of a penny. Designed by computer nerds and math geniuses, these programs exploit minute movements and long-term patterns in the markets, buying a stock at a dollar and selling it at one dollar and one-ten thousandth of a cent. Do this ten thousand times a second and the profits add up. Constantly moving into and out of securities for those minuscule slivers of profit, the traders at these exchanges end their day owning no stock, but they’re a whole lot richer… and that is what’s known as high-frequency trading.”

  Catherine stopped the recording with a click of her mouse, “He says it’s the traders who are making all the money, so I don’t know that you can dismiss their customers. What if there’s a customer out there who’s figured out how rigged the stock market really is and has decided to get even?”

  Jordan’s nose wrinkled, “What was it he said about computer nerds and math geniuses designing programs that exploit minute movements and patterns? They’re enabling traders to make miniscule profits but,” she shook her head, “it seems like a lot of work to make fractions of a penny… and if their customers knew what was really going on, why would they care?”

  “Okay, so the stock market's rigged, remember? It’s been rigged by stock exchanges, big Wall Street banks and high-frequency traders and the victims are every person who has an investment in the stock market.” She quickly clicked up a video of stock traders in colored coats shouting at each other against a backdrop of electronic ticker screens. “Remember this,” she pointed at the screen, “exists mostly as a photo op and stock trading today exists mostly in these,” she clicked up a picture of a black box, “robot computers. The bottom line here is that Bea’s group has figured out, and mostly from Kimura, that the insiders, the traders, are able to move faster than investors. They're able to see buy and sell orders and play them against other orders in ways that front run the order.”

  “Oy…” Jordan leaned back in her chair and stretched, rubbing her temples, “and what’s front run?”

  Catherine snickered, “It means high frequency traders are digitally able to identify orders to buy stock before they get to the market, then they rush ahead of the investor, buy up the shares and sell them to the investor at a higher price. Or if the person is looking to sell shares they run ahead of them and flood the market for sell orders so the seller has to sell their shares at a lower price to the predatory traders, who will then buy them and sell them to someone else at a higher price. And all of this happens in infinitesimally small periods of time. The fastest high speed traders have the advantage of only milliseconds and fractions of milliseconds, but it’s enough for them to identify what investors are going to do so they do it before the investors can at the investor’s expense.”

  “So it drives investor’s prices up.”

  “Investors pay a higher price, and that is what Brandon Kimura figured out. Granted,” she emitted a derisive snort, “it took him and his colleagues a year and a half of digging to figure out what I just told you.” She cued up another audio file, “This is from a news interview he did…” She clicked the play button.

  “The best analogy I can think of is ordering tickets to a concert; you order two tickets online for forty dollars each, but when you get to the theater the price of the tickets has now gone up to sixty bucks each.

  So I paid a visit to one of the most sophisticated hedge funds in the world and discovered they were also having the same problem of being front-runned… I was determined to get to the bottom of it because it just didn't feel right that people who are investing on behalf of pension funds and retirement funds should be getting bait and switched every single day in the stock market…”

  Catherine stopped the recording and Jordan said, “I’ve read about him; he left the bank he worked for, opened his own exchange and fixed the unfair speed advantage by figuring out how to slow everyone down and level the playing field, right?”

  “He did.”

  “Do you suspect him… or someone who works for him?”

  “No…” Catherine chuckled, “I’m just saying he’s getting a lot of press right now about how rigged the market is, so what if some investor, or trader not working for an HFT firm, is out there who feels like he’s been betrayed by this industry…”

  “Okay…” Jordan surrendered, “but I’m still left with a really long suspect base I can only narrow down at the moment to someone in New Jersey.”

  “But both McConnell and Thackeray worked for HFT exchanges…”

  “In New Jersey… and that’s all I really have so far.”

  Belmar, NJ

  He had retrieved the wheelbarrow from his dock locker and loaded up his gear and bags from the car. The sun had just come up and he was careful as he guided the sing
le-wheeled carrier in the growing light. A slightly stooped figure approached from farther down the floating dock and he recognized the marina resident,

  “Hey Bill, headed for the showers?”

  “Hey there, Jonas.” The older man smiled, “Yeah, gonna’ go into town for supplies later on.” He carried a towel and shower kit in his hands, “You headed out?”

  He nodded, “My boss said to spend down my accumulated sick and vacation time.”

  “Good for you,” he smiled, “life is short and you got a beautiful boat there, you should enjoy it.”

  They passed each other, “I sure will.” He assured him and they walked on.

  Considered one of the premier marinas on the Atlantic coast, Belmar Marina provided more than two hundred slips and Jonas parked the wheelbarrow next to his boat, the Fair Winds & Following Seas. Each slip came with electrical service and water hookup, and a specialized building landside provided showers, bathrooms and laundry facilities for marina residents like Bill who lived on their vessels.

  He quickly swung his gear bag onto the deck and grabbing the four large brown plastic garbage bags from the wheelbarrow, carried them onboard. He lifted the cushions on the aft lounger compartment and stowed the bags then quickly secured his wheelbarrow in the dock locker before jumping back onboard. He started the twin engines, letting them warm up on idle while he loosed the lines from the dock and standing at the wheel, slowly eased the thirty-two foot pleasure craft from her slip. He always strictly observed the speed limit in the marina and when he finally left it behind him he drew the salt sea air deep into his lungs and increased speed, heading east on Shark River.

  Ah, it’s beautiful… His smile was relaxed and he sat back in the cushioned seat, “I am a Peaceful Being,” he said, his words lost in the noise of the twin engines and sound of the waves against the sides of his boat, “I am Accomplished, a Gift from God, a Wise Old Friend…”

  It was his mother, Gwen Alden, who taught him what his first and last names meant. One night when he was six he had tried in vain, as he always did, to engage his father in play whether it was with his Tonka trucks or deck of worn playing cards. But Richard Alden was a standoffish man, and when young Jonas had yanked insistently on the plaid sleeve that fateful Saturday night, he was unprepared for the angry glare and hot stench of alcohol panted in his face when his father growled, “Fuck off!” Terrified, he had cried and his mother quickly came to his rescue, “Come, my Jonas…” She had taken him by the hand to the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid, holding him on her lap. “Jonas…” she whispered against the baby soft hair, “Do you know what your name means?” He vividly remembered shaking his head miserably and she had chuckled, “When you were born we gave you two very special and powerful names; Jonas means Peaceful Being, Accomplished, a Gift from God. And Alden means a Wise Old Friend…” She rocked him back and forth and crooned the words repeatedly until his tears stopped and he began to recite them too. “There now,” she had chuckled, “you feel better, don’t you?” He nodded and she hugged him tightly, “That’s all you need to remember, Jonas. Any time you’re feeling scared or nervous or sad, just remind yourself, in your mind, who you are, and you will find your strength again.”

  Richard Alden wasn’t a cruel man, not deliberately. He had fallen in love with and married the lithe and winsome Gwen while they were still in college, but he was shy and had never been the affectionate sort, either publically or privately. He drank, but only on Saturday nights and only while watching TV, where he spent every night after dinner. When he achieved inebriation he never became abusive, he simply retreated further into himself, if that was possible, and sitting stone-faced in front of the TV, continued drinking until he fell asleep. He always woke late Sunday mornings, miserably hung-over and spent the day and evening recuperating, leaving his son to play quietly in the backyard.

  When he turned seven, Jonas discovered the only thing that gave Richard Alden’s life any enjoyment was his fishing boat, the Amicus. Nearly every Saturday morning, his dad got up early and hitched the trailer with his boat to the back of his pickup truck and left to spend the day on the Seekonk River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island where they lived. On his seventh birthday, his mother presented him with a new lifejacket and told him he was finally old enough to go fishing with his father. He was scared, but she told him all he had to do was remember what his names meant and he would be fine.

  The twenty-foot Fiberglass craft was his father’s pride and joy, and it was only when he was on the river that Richard Alden showed any real animation. In fact, it was during his first trip with his father on the Amicus that Jonas saw him smile for the first time. Terrified, he had strapped himself into the seat next to him and sat mesmerized when he saw his father push on the throttle and smile into the wind as the craft glided across the water’s surface with exhilarating speed. He had little to say under any circumstances, but in spite of the cold emotional distance between them, it was Richard Alden who taught Jonas seamanship, how to fish and take care of the fishing gear, how to read currents, and to pay strict attention to the sky and weather reports. “Always respect mother nature,” he’d tell him, “she has no respect for you.”

  Gwen Alden died from breast cancer during Jonas’s eighteenth summer, one week after graduation. She had put off having the lump in her breast checked until it was too late and after only three weeks following the diagnosis, Jonas found himself alone in the house with his father until that September when he left for Brown University. The relationship between Jonas and his father remained cool and distant, but he would always be grateful for the only gift of any consequence, outside of his college education, that Richard Alden ever gave him; his love for boating and seamanship.

  Once clear of the inlet, Jonas steered the Fair Winds & Following Seas southeast, toward the bight. Draping an arm lazily over back of his seat he occasionally glanced starboard, watching the land recede into the western horizon.

  He graduated from Brown with honors and a Masters degree in computer science, and in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, he attended a job fair in the student commons and became intrigued by a banner that hung from the front of one of the dozens of card tables,

  BLOW PEOPLE’S MINDS

  Write the most exquisite, excellent, awesome code of your life at the SAEx.

  The recruiter certainly knew how to appeal to the computer nerds; “We have every freaking benefits package you could ever want, plus banker’s hours!” He had pushed the company’s brochures into his hands and when he finished his pitch by dangling a starting salary of one hundred thousand a year plus matching yearend bonuses Jonas had signed up on the spot. He didn’t care who he worked for, he was fascinated with the elegant nature of algorithms, all he cared about was writing code and when he finished taking his finals he moved to a dirt-cheap apartment near his new job at the Superior Alternative Exchange. He had been hired to write code that executed the firm’s daily transactions with blinding speed and he happily buried himself in the work. By the end of his first year, his salary doubled and by the end of his second, his annual salary increased again to three hundred thousand a year. After three years, when he realized his paychecks and yearend bonuses were piling up, he bought the Larson Cabrio.

  He bought the vessel as a kind of homage, remembering the fishing trips he and his father made to the lake, but when he realized how luxurious the onboard living amenities were compared to his apartment, he gave it up and lived on Fair Winds and Following Seas fulltime. During his off hours he poured himself into learning about his new boat and immersing himself in seamanship once again; he studied navigational charts and learned about tidal datums, sea surface topography and memorized sea grids before embarking on weekend adventures onto and beyond Shark River. Once he had the courage to venture out on the Atlantic, he became convinced nature possessed mystical elemental powers and that he, Jonas Alden, had the power to discern the mathematical secrets hidden in the ebb and flow that controlled life in and
beyond the sea.

  Like most of the technologists at SAEx, Jonas mostly kept to himself, content to immerse himself in code. He was the head writer and while most of the other techs wrote code too they were mostly responsible for maintaining the workstations for the traders, either fixing or replacing the computers, monitors and keyboards on a daily, as needed basis. The class system at SAEx was common to high frequency stock exchanges everywhere; the traders treated the techs like their servants, and Mitch Ryan was no exception. Mitch considered himself an up and comer, a future bigwig in the making, and he treated those he considered beneath him accordingly. His cubicle was located on the same floor as Jonas and the other techs and he delighted in tormenting them whenever they walked by. Jonas only left his cubicle when he absolutely had to, but one day on his way back from the bathroom Mitch taunted him, calling to him in a singsong voice,

  “Oh Joanie! Have to go pee-pee didja’?”

  The other traders laughed and snickered but Jonas ignored them. Jerry, a neighboring technologist, rolled his chair into Jonas’s cubicle and extended his middle finger in Mitch’s general direction, “Mitch the Bitch is such an asshole…” He murmured quietly, “He thinks he’s a big fuckin’ deal right now because he was mentioned briefly in High Finance magazine.” Jonas only looked at him and he continued, “Didn’t you see it? These fuckers can only rake in the mountains of money they do because of us and yet we don’t make anywhere near what they do…”

  Jonas had shrugged, “I make three hundred k a year plus…”

  Jerry shook his head, his lips pursed in annoyance, “You know how much they get? Try seven figures,” he hissed, “most of them start at three mil a year.”

  When Jerry rolled his chair back to his cubicle, Jonas looked up the magazine article online. He had never cared about the stock market, all he cared about was writing code and for the first time in his career, he finally learned how what he did for a living served the traders of SAEx. He read and reread Mitch’s brief mention where he spoke boastfully of the superiority of the new stock market, “We should praise and give thanks to the revolution of high frequency trading for improving security and increasing profits for investors.” He bookmarked the article then devoured everything he could find on high frequency trading and when he went home, he spent the night online learning everything he could about the stock market.