Silver Justice

by Russell Blake

  When she entered the cubicle area where most of the agents worked, the receptionist stopped her and handed her a stack of yellow message slips. Monique had been there for three years and was always a sunny personality, as well as a friend.

  “You have a visitor waiting for you in conference room one. Hubba hubba,” she said with an exaggerated wink. Monique was aggressively single and let every male within shouting distance know it. Not a bad strategy, Silver had to admit. Better than hers of playing hermit at home every night with her daughter.

  Silver honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a date — actually, not true. It had been fourteen months ago and ended in disaster. He was an attorney, good looking and smart, but during the few hours of dinner it had become obvious that he was neurotic and self-involved, and he didn’t hold his liquor well. When she’d begged off on a nightcap at a bar a few blocks from the restaurant, he hadn’t gotten the hint and had made a fumbled attempt at kissing her that she’d dodged, but that had sealed the night as a failure.

  He’d called the next day to apologize and proposed trying again on another date, but she’d politely shut that down.

  “Visitor?” Silver asked, ignoring Monique’s customary lewd innuendo.

  “Agent from Financial Crimes in Washington. A hottie. I was going to sit on his lap and keep him company while he waited, but who would answer the phones?” Monique offered.

  “That’s mighty hospitable of you, M,” Silver agreed.

  “No wedding ring, mid to late thirties, looks like he works out.” She rolled her eyes as if swooning. “Big hands.”

  Silver shook her head in wonder. Monique had always been the same. In some ways, Silver envied her single-minded focus.

  “I’ll be in there within a few minutes. Got to drop my junk off.”

  “If you don’t want him, tell him I’m free for lunch, or dinner, or anything else he can think of,” Monique trilled as Silver wove her way to her small office.

  Upon heading up the task force, she’d been upgraded from a cubicle to a ten by twelve box with no window and the most unattractive fluorescent lighting in history, but at least it gave her a modicum of privacy, which she badly needed right now.

  She flipped on the lights and tossed her purse and briefcase onto her gunmetal gray credenza and glanced at the row of photos of Kennedy that occupied the shelves of her Ikea bookcase, alongside textbooks on investigation procedures, forensics, and related arcana. Kennedy as a baby, Kennedy as a toddler, and then transforming into her current state, an adolescent goth phase fueled more by boredom and pre-teen rebellion than anything. For the last six months, all she’d wanted to wear was black, and she’d taken to painting her nails the same inky color. Rather than fighting her on it, Silver had been non-judgmental, all the while scouring the web for confirmation that her daughter wasn’t going to become a dope fiend or a schoolyard killer.

  At ten years old, Kennedy was frighteningly smart and quick to read people, but with a snotty smart-aleck bent.

  In other words, very much like Silver had been as a child.

  She supposed that the universe chose its punishments fittingly.

  Realizing that she was meandering, she gathered the case file, a yellow legal tablet and her trusty iPad, and strode purposefully to the bank of conference rooms at the far end of the work area.

  When she opened the door, Supervisory Special Agent Richard Gale looked up from his notebook, pushed back his chair, and stood. Silver took him in with a quick appraising glance — six, maybe six one, black wavy hair cut conservatively, lean and fit, brown eyes. A good-looking man, but Monique had oversold him. Monique found every new potentially-eligible bachelor fascinating, so Silver was hardly surprised.

  “Agent Cassidy? Richard Gale from Financial Crimes.”

  Richard extended a hand, which she shook firmly before pulling up a seat opposite him.

  “Call me Silver. I’m glad you could make it over. I need someone who’s tuned in to the financial industry, who’s familiar with the ins and outs as well as the players. How much do you know about our task force?”

  “Just what I was told. You have a serial working on a three-week calendar, apparently taking out financial players. First one a financial planner, second and third hedge fund managers, the latest, this morning’s…well, the pattern seems to fall apart there, right?”

  “Yes and no. He was a financial industry software provider. But I don’t see anything obvious in terms of connections.”

  “The first two had been sanctioned by the SEC. And this latest one?” Richard asked.

  “We’re checking, but first round didn’t show anything. Here’s the file. Go ahead and read through it, and let me know your thoughts,” Silver said, sliding it across the table to him.

  “Do you have it in electronic format? That would be way faster. Oh, and it’s Richard.”

  He smiled — a kind, warm expression that extended to his eyes. She could have sworn they twinkled. She didn’t see a lot of twinkling in New York. Maybe Monique hadn’t been over-selling after all.

  “Sure, but today’s notes won’t be written up for a few hours. Old-fashioned, I know, but that’s how I do it. Pen and paper, then put it in the computer.” She cocked her head. “What’s your background?”

  “CPA and JD from Georgetown. Joined the Bureau at twenty-five. Been in the trenches ever since. My specialty is forensic accounting, with an emphasis on fraud. Most of my work involves Wall Street these days, with an occasional corporation thrown in for diversity.”

  “Sounds like the skillset we’re lacking. My team has a lot of depth on violent crime and serials but not much on the financial end. I hope you can find something we missed.”

  “Let me take a look at the file, and I’ll offer any thoughts that come up.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll arrange for you to have a cubicle here while you’re part of the task force. Welcome aboard. Do you have any problem with living arrangements?”

  “No. Washington set me up temporarily at one of the Bureau apartments in mid-town.”

  “Good. Well, I’ll leave you to it. I need to go update the file on today’s developments. I’ll shoot it to you as soon as I’m done, then come back to see what you make of all this.” Silver rose, gathering her computer.

  “I’ll want to pull all of the victims’ financial records and look for anything unusual in them — you never know what you’ll run into when you follow the money. I’ll also research their backgrounds and see if there’s something that could indicate a motive. Right now there doesn’t seem to be much.”

  “It’s true. But then again, it’s early in the case.”

  “Not for at least four victims.” Richard flipped open the manila file. “The Regulator, huh?”

  “Doesn’t have quite the ring of The Terminator, but hey…”

  “Let me get to work. Who can I ask if I need something?”

  Silver considered Monique, but bit her tongue. “You can give me a buzz. My office is over on the far side, second from the left corner. Extension eighty-eight.”

  “Thanks, Silver. Let’s hope something jumps out at me,” he said, nodding towards the file.

  Silver involuntarily thought of Monique again, pouncing like a cougar on Richard. The image made her grin to herself. Richard appeared perplexed by the expression on her face, and she banished the thought as she turned to leave. The departure from her usual no-nonsense inner dialogue was no doubt due to stress. Eric’s broadside had thrown her, no question.

  “Here’s to hoping,” she said as she let herself out, leaving Richard to digest the data.

  “Looks like we have a hunter here,” Special Agent in Charge Brett Matthews said as he read the report on the latest killing. His office was in the corner, on the far side from Silver’s modest one, and he had a window, along with real wood furniture. The perks of power. Then again, he rarely got to go into the field anymore and was chained to a desk most of the time. That wasn’t for Silver. E
ven as a supervisor she still got to get her hands dirty, which was more her speed.

  “Yes, a vigilante type. But what worries me is that he’s not sticking to the same MO. Each time he kills it’s in a different way. That’s unusual.”

  “Agreed. If they’re cutters, they stick to the knife. Shooters like guns. But this guy is all over the place.”

  Neither had to state the obvious out loud — that the lack of a pattern would make the killer much more difficult to catch.

  Brett’s hair had gotten grayer over the last few years. The job could do that to you. As well she knew.

  He tossed the manila folder onto his desk and eyed Silver. “I got you the additional resource you wanted. Maybe that will help.”

  “Yes, thank you. I just met our new Financial Crimes adjunct. Seems smart. I hope he can put something together here that we’ve missed.”

  “He comes highly recommended. Supposedly one of the best. Financial Crimes was reluctant to let him go, even for a short while.” Brett rose from behind his desk and moved to the window to look out over the lower East Side of Manhattan.

  “That’s good to know.” Silver hesitated. “We don’t have much to go on here.”

  “I got that from the file. Forty-five pages of crime scene descriptions and victim backgrounds but not a lot of meat on the bone. This isn’t going to get solved easily, is it?”

  Silver didn’t say anything.

  “Just our luck that this kind of nutjob had to show up on our beat. Couldn’t have been in California, where most of the crazies go to play.” Brett turned to face her. “So what’s the next step?”

  “By the book. Daily meetings, wait for forensics to come up with anything we can use, pore over any security footage, interview witnesses. But I agree that this one will be more difficult than the usual freeway slasher. All we can do is keep gathering evidence and pray for a break,” Silver said.

  “Prayer has proved a lousy strategy for case management.”

  “I know. But we don’t have anything solid right now, so all we can do is stick to the routine until something pops up.”

  “All right. Thanks for the update. See to it that I get regular status reports. I’ll run interference with the press and the city. You don’t really need them in your hair.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  Chapter 4

  Silver stood at the head of the table in the crowded conference room, the day having sped by in a whirlwind. After glancing around to silence the murmured discussion, she introduced Richard to the task force.

  Seth launched into a review of the case then mopped his brow and sighed before drawing his conclusions.

  “Time of death was four a.m., give or take. Nobody saw anything, no suspicious activity, no shady characters skulking around. The maid only knows what I have there in the report. Found the body; the boss was a wonderful man; nobody would want to hurt him.”

  “All right. So he was a saint. Any ideas on how the perp got in and out?” Silver asked.

  “The service entrance deadbolt shows indeterminate signs of having been picked. It’s not conclusive, but it looks like that was the way out. As far as gaining entrance, it looks like he got through the front door while the doorman was in the can. Same scratches on the lock levers, but only from the outside. The service entrance has abrasions on the inside.”

  “I don’t suppose we got lucky with any security footage?”

  “It’s an older building, so there is none,” Seth reported.

  “How about traffic cams in the area?”

  “We’ve pulled the feeds, but there are hundreds of people from the time of the killing until nine, when the maid arrived. Thousands, actually. I’m hoping we can narrow the time down some, but even so…”

  Silver tried to contain her frustration. “What else?”

  Richard cleared his throat. All eyes swiveled to the new team member. He got to his feet, studying a piece of paper.

  “Ali Kurup, age forty-two, single, never married, lived alone. Was one of two principals in a software company that created custom applications for the financial industry. A wealthy man, with homes in Aruba, New York, Paris and Buenos Aires.”

  “Was he ever investigated by the SEC?” Silver asked, fearing she knew the answer. “Two of the other victims had been.”

  “Nope. Clean as a whistle. At least on the surface. But some interesting threads start to appear if you dig deeper,” Richard said.

  “Like what?” Seth asked.

  “Well, Ali wasn’t just a software guru. He had another sideline that made his software empire seem like small potatoes. Our victim was the principal architect, along with another man, of virtually every electronic trading platform in the United States. All the electronic exchanges — every one — were designed by him.”

  The room was silent for a few moments.

  “I don’t understand,” said Tom Brandt, one of the agents who worked with Seth.

  “It means that all of the exchanges that popped up over the last fifteen years, that do huge amounts of trading — competition to the American and New York Stock Exchanges — were created either by Ali, or using his software. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that over half the trading in the U.S. markets goes over one of his platforms.”

  “Wow.” Silver spoke for the group.

  “Yes. Wow is right.”

  “And yet nobody has ever heard of him.”

  “Correct,” Richard said. “But it gets even stranger from there. Because of his partner and his associates.” At this point he had the room’s full attention. “His partner was a gentleman by the name of Farouk Iben Al Azir, who is also an unknown. But not his brother, Sharif, who is on the government’s watch list of suspected terrorist financiers supporting Muslim fundamentalist organizations hostile to the United States’ interests.”

  Richard sat back down, having said his piece. Nobody spoke.

  “Wait a minute. You’re saying that one of the two men who created the trading platforms used for the majority of trades in the United States is the brother of a known terrorist financier?” Silver pronounced each word carefully.

  “Suspected. Brother of a suspected terrorist financier. Born in Lebanon. When he goes back there, he’s routinely in the company of several clerics who call for terrorist attacks against the U.S.. Known to frequent a mosque in Chicago that’s a who’s who of suspected financiers. Big on causes like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad,” Richard explained.

  “And the only reason that anyone cares is because his partner got killed? Not because it seems like a generally bad idea that a group as anti-American as it gets is one degree of separation from the guys who created the wiring for the modern stock market? Am I missing something here?” Silver asked, trying to process the information so it made sense.

  “I’m unaware of any ongoing investigations. Nothing came up. I ran Ali through the computers and the partnership and past business interests were there along with about twenty shell companies suspected of being tied to them — but no hard evidence linking them. The terrorism connection only came up because I went beyond what we normally would have done for a homicide. My forensic accounting background, I guess,” Richard said sheepishly.

  “But you would agree that this is alarming?”

  Richard sighed. “Of course it is. And it opens a whole other can of worms. If there’s a foreign terrorism element, then the entire serial killing premise could be a ruse — a cover for some sort of covert operation. I’d say it warrants going back and seeing if there are any connections in the other victims’ pasts. It may be nothing, but in my line of work there are no such things as coincidences. When I go in and do an audit, I just assume that nothing is as it appears and that everyone is lying. I approached this case the same way, starting with the identity of the victim. Now, maybe world-class baddies being so close to him is immaterial. But I wouldn’t bet on it. I think we need to keep turning over rocks and see what we find. Could be the other victims are angel
s. But given the SEC settlements, my money is on that they aren’t.”

  “Right, then. The question is what bad apples pop up when we really go in-depth. How long do you think it will take to put some muscle behind this?” Silver asked.

  “If I can get one of my analysts on it, that would speed things along. But nothing happens fast. We need to look at every aspect of all four victims, going back to their school years. Maybe even further back. There’s literally no telling what we’ll find, or if there’s a connection, where or how it’s hidden.”

  “Let’s discuss the other three victims. The second one, David Petron. A hedge fund manager living in Connecticut. Fifty-nine. Married, although the wife was in Europe at the time of the killing. Two kids — son and a daughter. The son was in the house with him and was victim number three. He worked with his dad at the same hedge fund. Richard, maybe you can give us an overview of what a hedge fund is and how they operate?” Silver prompted.

  Richard cleared his throat. “A hedge fund is basically a big investment pool — an anonymous fund of cash. It’s an entity that collects money from investors and then invests however its charter allows. There’s virtually no regulation on the industry, and it is estimated hedge funds control two trillion dollars.”

  “Why no regulation?” Seth asked.

  “Because the industry is tremendously rich and powerful. Its political clout kills any attempts to impose regulation. Aside from a few token nuisance requirements, the reality is that they’re black boxes with no transparency. And that’s how they like it — they have an army of lobbyists that fight any regulation tooth and nail. Hedge funds are also by far the largest players in the markets. One fund alone is estimated to account for over fifty percent of the trading on the NYSE, many days. It is mind-boggling, the amount of money we’re talking.”

  “And victim number two ran one?” Silver asked, more a statement than question.

  “Yes,” Richard confirmed, “but he was relatively small potatoes. His fund was eight hundred million.”