Silver Justice

by Russell Blake

  So Eric was lobbying Kennedy about custody. He was such a lowlife. That was as below the belt as you could get.

  Any hesitation she had about coming up with the money for Ben to do a full court press on the private detectives evaporated. This was war. One she would win no matter what.

  The next morning, as Silver made her way to her office through the maze of cubicles, coffee and briefcase in hand, she heard Richard’s voice followed by a tinkling peal of female laughter from the far end. It couldn’t be Monique — she wasn’t due in yet. Silver turned and walked down the aisle to where she could just make out the distinctive top of Richard’s head.

  When she got to his work area, sensing a presence behind him, Richard swung around to greet her. A woman in her late twenties was seated in one of the only two chairs, a laptop computer in front of her. She was gorgeous, Silver noted — even in business attire, her blond hair and symmetrical features would have stopped traffic.

  The woman stood and Richard made introductions. “Good morning, Silver. This is Stacy Burroughs. Stacy, Assistant Special Agent In Charge Silver Cassidy — who is running this show,” Richard said with a smile.

  Silver tried not to telegraph her sizing up Stacy but was sure she was failing. She was five seven or so, with curves in all the right places — not a bombshell like Monique, just a very attractive female. No wedding ring or jewelry of any kind.

  Stacy extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” Stacy said, and Silver noted a southern twang. Georgia?

  Silver fumbled with her coffee then shook her hand, noting the cool, confident grip.

  “Stacy just got in on the morning train from D.C.. She’s made progress on the background checks, and I thought it would be a good idea to have her back for another day,” Richard explained. “We can get more accomplished at this stage in person than over e-mail.”

  Richard was wearing a pale blue oxford shirt with a maroon and yellow tie, and appeared to shimmer with good health and sex appeal. His teeth gleamed against the contrast of his tan, and Silver noted that he was wearing the understated aftershave that suited him so well.

  “Welcome to our humble offices. I’m sure Richard knows his way around well enough by now to get you anything you need. Are you just down for the day again?”

  Silver hoped it hadn’t sounded like she wanted her to leave soon. Although she knew that in spite of her best efforts there was certainly a little of that in her tone.

  “That’s the plan, unless something comes up that requires me to stay here,” Stacy responded neutrally, eyes shifting for a half-second to Richard.

  Like what? An erection?

  Silver stopped her inner voice before it could kick into high gear. It was unprofessional and catty. Besides, she didn’t have any interest in Richard’s romantic life, and certainly had no reason to be concerned about who he was or wasn’t entangled with.

  That was her official position, anyway. Although she was feeling suddenly territorial, which was unlike her.

  “Well, nice to meet you. I hope you make progress. We could certainly use some,” Silver said, glancing at the time and taking a sip of her coffee. She’d seen about all she wanted to of Richard’s research assistant and suddenly couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Stacy chirped enthusiastically.

  Silver decided she hated Stacy.

  “I’ll let you know what we come up with later,” Richard said, and there was an uneasy pause.

  “All right, then. Off to work. You know where to find me if you need me,” Silver said, the words sounding vapid even as she spoke them.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  This was another agent — a peer — and an analyst she’d approved to work on the case. Not her boyfriend and some hooker from south of Broadway.

  She turned and left them, her thoughts contradictory. It was probably the residue of her uneasy night, when she’d tossed and turned, worried over the Eric situation. There had been so many unpleasant confrontations with him leading up to the divorce. That had probably colored her attitude this morning, so when she met Stacy, who was without a doubt beautiful and available, with Richard, who she had to admit was very attractive…

  Silver didn’t have the luxury of turning her team into a tawdry soap opera. She was the boss — she admonished herself that she’d better start thinking like one. Rounding the corner to her office, she made a mental effort to banish any further speculations about Richard and his…his analyst. Besides, it was probably just an innocent work relationship.

  Where Stacy might have to burn the midnight oil with him, and perhaps soothe the kinks out of his strong back with her capable…

  Enough.

  She reached her door and pushed it open with her toe, setting her briefcase down on the meeting table and switching on the lights. It was a little early for chocolate, especially the rich Belgian variety she had stashed — but was it ever really too early?

  She rounded her desk, plopped down in the seat, and slid her drawer open.

  Silver spent the morning updating the paperwork associated with operating the task force — not her favorite part of the job, but a necessary evil. Her computer pinged a warning at her, signaling that her meeting to go over the forensics report from the latest killing was in five minutes.

  A soft knock at the door disrupted her. She put her pen down with an exasperated sigh.

  “Yes.”

  Seth poked his head in. “We still on at eleven?”

  “Yes. My automated taskmaster just flagged me.” Silver gestured at her screen.

  Seth stepped into the office. “I began the search for like incidences, but it will take a while. I had no idea there were so many house fires every year.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Once you’re done, it would be interesting to focus on only those where two people were killed — remember that there were two victims in Connecticut.”

  “One of which could have been an unintended collateral victim…”

  “That’s always bothered me a little,” she reflected. “I’m not so sure it was accidental. Our killer is sophisticated, smart, and has so far made no mistakes. And yet he leaves the son where he won’t burn. That doesn’t make any sense. Why not just lock him in the basement where he would be guaranteed to be safe?”

  “Maybe he was in a hurry?”

  “Maybe. But he took the time to tie him up, drag a chair there… No, I’m beginning to believe he had a reason. When you sort the results, look for father/son deaths in fires. Or fires where only one of the people in the house died from the fire, and the other or others died from smoke inhalation or the structure collapsing. Call it intuition, but I don’t believe anything the killer is doing is unplanned. If that’s correct, then he wanted the son to die in precisely the way he did.”

  “I’m all for intuition, Silver. I get where you’re going with this. It kind of makes sense, in a weird, twisted serial-killer-thinking kind of way. Remind me never to piss you off.” Seth checked the time. “Now, I think we’ve got a meeting to go to?”

  “I know. I’ll be there in four or five minutes. I just have a few more things I have to sign.”

  “All right. See you in the conference room in five.”

  Silver organized her notes for the meeting and tried to clear her head. She was over the Stacy/Richard thing by now, but she was having a problem putting aside the other nagging matter that had been preoccupying her thoughts — how to fund her legal bills.

  Two hours of filling out forms at the bank had resulted in promises of an answer on her loan application — a second mortgage for two hundred thousand dollars she could draw down as needed. That would more than fund an adequate war chest, although even as she had signed the application she had understood that her income wasn’t really strong enough to make the payments if she had to use more than about fifty grand of it, which she would burn through quickly based on what Ben had said.

  She needed to hear
something soon — the money issue was beginning to distract her, and she couldn’t afford to be anything but completely on. Which reminded her that she needed to get moving. She grabbed her computer and the case files and strode to the door. Time to go find out what forensics had come up with.

  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 cl
ients 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.”