The Torso Murders Read online

  When bureau psychiatrist Dr. Lianna Sackette determined Catherine had what appeared to be a budding psychic ability to remote view murder scenes in her dreams, she gave her an affirmation of sorts so the images would be informational instead of frightening. Each night when they went to bed Catherine faithfully recited that her dreams could speak to her but not through her, and Jordan was grateful she found her newfound ability empowering. But then Helga Lynch spoke directly to her in her dreams… and since then… Now when she says her directive she stops… and it’s like something else is happening. She lay on her side and studied Catherine’s profile in the dark, I should schedule a session for myself with Lianna, see what she thinks… Her brow knitted in a frown; Catherine’s eyes moved beneath closed lids and Jordan noted how her respiration increased. She’s dreaming. She thought and adjusted the pillow slightly; content to watch over her until she fell asleep.

  The grass tickled her nose and when she raised her head, she squinted at the object in front of her, willing her dream eyes to focus; It’s an arm… she thought, A man’s arm… Her eyes traveled its length, and when she saw the hand and the forefinger pointing through the green grass, she raised her eyes to a white building and the blue sky beyond.

  Howell Township, NJ

  The marine weather station had forecasted heavy winds and rain, and he had been careful to get an early start so he could get home far ahead of the storm. He delivered the torso by two a.m. then drove thirty miles to Belmar Marina where he docked his thirty-two foot cruiser, the Fair Winds and Following Seas. An experienced sailor since childhood when his father took him fishing, after Jonas purchased his own boat he spent all his weekends on the water. He had memorized the currents in Shark River and beyond the inlet into the Atlantic and he believed he could discern their complex, intimate properties, hearing them against the sides of his boat. Such swift currents this morning, he mused, fortunate to have them carry me home so quickly, ahead of the tempest.

  He sat at his workbench, putting the final buffering touches on his two-handled cheese knife. I may have to buy another one of these. He held up the gleaming, newly re-sharpened blade up to the light of the bare bulb hanging overhead. It really cannot hold an edge with this kind of work. He cocked his head to one said, listening to the marine weather channel app on his phone, It’s going to be a strong one. He placed the long knife on the tarp before picking up his hunting knife and checking the edge. Deciding it could use a brief touch up on the sharpening wheel; he turned back to his bench grinder and pulled the protective goggles back over his eyes. Focusing on the edge of the blade, he held it against the spinning sharpener disk.

  Currents… nature’s expression of algorithmic perfection. He pulled the blade from the grinder and held it close so he could inspect the uniformity of the re-honed edge. Created by barometric pressure, the physical pressure exerted by the earth’s atmosphere. Ocean currents are generated by wind, water mass, density, and the differences caused by gravity, temperature, salinity, and seismic events. He mentally recited the encyclopedia’s entry on oceanic currents he memorized as a child and a smile tugged at his lips, And I can feel them… He sheathed his hunting knife and stood, placing it next to the cheese knife and rolled them in the tarp.

  Wind largely generates surface currents, and their patterns are determined by the wind’s direction. Surface currents are also created by Coriolis forces from the Earth’s rotation and the position of landforms that interact with them. Surface wind-driven currents generate upwelling currents in conjunction with landforms, creating deepwater currents… He checked his taser for fully charged batteries then replaced it in the soft-sided tackle bag he now thought of as his Fishing Kit. I can hear them when I cut the engines… but even when they’re still running I can still feel them. I can feel their direction and speed. He pulled the small .38 revolver and checked the cylinder, verifying it was loaded before returning it to the bag and checking the side pocket for the palm-sized canister of pepper spray. Ocean currents resonate… they represent synchronicity and the connection that exists between every molecule.

  He pulled some long and short zip ties from the bags on a shelf under his bench and after placing the long ties in his kit; he made a loop with a short tie then looped another inside the first, careful to keep the loops big enough to easily pass over a man’s hand. He placed his makeshift handcuffs in the kit and zipped it closed. All of it, he mused and stood, all matter exists in this universal soup, organized with precise, algorithmic perfection. The drip pan was standing against the wall and he checked to make sure it was clean and dry before placing it back in the middle of the garage floor. But the world is peopled with the ignorant who chart their lives by dead reckoning. He planted his hands on narrow hips and slowly shook his head from side to side; So flawed, but my arithmos is immaculate, mathematical elegance.

  A gust of wind rattled the garage doors, disrupting his reverie and he grabbed his phone and kit, shutting off the lights and locking the door behind him as he headed for the house.

  New York Bight, Atlantic Ocean

  The captain nervously chewed his lip, resisting the urge to push the throttle any harder. He steered his trawler south-southwest, in as straight a course for Point Pleasant as possible. He heard the forecast for the squall headed their way but dragged his nets along the sandy bottom for another fifteen minutes, tempting the fates, before pulling them up and heading for home, Pop always said it, “Don’t fuck around; come about and make ye haste for safe harbor…”

  He spent the day trawling along the western edge of the New York Bight, an indentation along the coastline that extended northeasterly from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island. The sea floor of the bight consisted mostly of continental shelf and included the Hudson Canyon, an undersea Pleistocene submarine canyon formed by the Hudson River during ice ages when the sea level was lower. The bight’s geography included a bend at the mouth of the Hudson River, a major concern of meteorologists studying tropical storm patterns along the east coast since storms created easterly cyclonic winds laterally along the New Jersey coastline. Here, squalls quickly blew into raging storms, and only novice sailors failed to recognize the well-traveled shipping lane could in a moment reveal its true nature; as the deadly and unforgiving Deep.

  Salvatore, “Sonny” Pescetti inherited his father’s fishing boat, The Horn of Plenty, when he was only twenty-three years old and for thirty-three years bad weather days were the only days he never set out to sea. His trawler cut through the rising waves and he scolded silently, Shoulda’ fuckin’ quit when I heard the alert… I fucking know better! The aged trawler had moored at the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey since his father’s time, and he wished with his soul he and his boat were safely snug in her berth.

  He hugged the current, following it, letting it and the rising winds push the commercial fishing vessel even faster, and his stomach lurched in time with waves that slapped ever harder against the sides of his boat. He always left his marine radio turned up high so he could hear the latest weather updates while they worked and the gale force wind warnings had come in thirty minutes before, due to arrive within the hour, But that don’t mean it won’t get here in a minute. He looked worriedly over his shoulder for his son, his namesake, and flipping the switch to intercom, grabbed the radio mic, “Hey Sal!” He shouted, “Sally!”

  “Yo’,” he heard the crackled reply, “what’s up, pop?”

  “Where the fuck are you?”

  “Below, stowin’ our catch, whaddaya’ think?”

  He shook his head, sighing in relief, “Checkin’… we’ll pull-in in an hour… stay below.”

  A grueling forty-five minutes later, The Horn of Plenty pulled alongside the block-long packinghouse, empty due to the weather and regulations limiting the size of catches in order to protect dwindling over-fished species. His sole hand, his son, unloaded the few dozen orange baskets to a crew of three dockworke
rs, who weighed the fish and moved them down the conveyor belt to be packed in ice. He watched his cell phone for the email to appear with his packing slip; his son had convinced him it was a lot quicker and just as legal to check his electronically recorded catch against his own inventory instead of jumping from the boat to get a paper copy. He clicked it open the second it appeared on the screen; on this day, they came in with five hundred pounds of fluke, one hundred and seventy-eight pounds of sand sharks, and two sea robins weighing ten pounds, a modest haul to be sure.

  “Alright, Sal, shove off!” He waved to him and revved the engine, impatient to put in and secure his vessel before the storm arrived. He heard Sal call to him they were clear but just as he pushed the throttle he saw the dockworkers run back, yelling and waving their hands over their heads. He cut back on the throttle and called to his son, “What the fuck do they want?”

  He stuck his head in the cabin, looking bemused, “They say we got an arm in our catch?”

  Sonny turned his impatient frown from the shouting workers and back to his son, “An arm of what?”

  He shrugged, “I think they mean from a person.”

  The radio crackled to life, “Hey Sonny,” he recognized the harbormaster, Mark Belfi’s voice, “come on, Son, you know the drill; we have to report body parts.”

  He rolled his eyes and grabbed the mic, “Yeah, I know, let me put in before this fucking storm destroys my fuckin’ boat will ya’? I’ll come by after.” He jammed the mic back on its hook and gunned the throttle, “Jesus Christ! What’s the big fuckin’ deal?” He shook his head in exasperation, “It’s not like that never fuckin’ happened before…” He gave his son a look and steered his vessel from the dock, smiling when he heard Sal chuckle behind him.

  Part 2

  “Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation.

  For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.”

  - Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Howell Township, NJ

  He was aware of the huge smile on his face and he chuckled softly. He pulled down the garage door and grabbing his kit from the car, entered the garage again through the side door. He placed it next to the rolled tarp of knives that waited for him on his workbench and unrolled it, taking a moment to straighten the blades before walking over to the catch he had carefully positioned on the drip pan.

  Darrel Lesous was of medium build and when Jonas tasered him, he only had to grab him by the waistband of his jeans when he fell to make him topple neatly into the trunk of his car. He gazed down at his catch with disgust; This man treated me like shit… and he was the one who fired me that day. His eyes narrowed, Asshole. Unlike Mitch, Jonas monitored Darrel’s emails to make sure he intended to knock back a few downstairs at Artie’s Bar before going home, and he hacked the motor vehicle commission’s database for Lesous’s vehicle registration so he could make sure he parked between his car in the parking lot and the bar across the street. The fact that I got the space right next to his car made it meant to be… Lesous mumbled something and he shoved his hip with the tip of his boot, rolling him onto his back so he could look up at him. “Hey, Darrel…” he called to him softly, “Do you remember me?”

  Lesous squinted and grunted softly, “You fucking lasered me!”

  “Tasered you,” he corrected, “I tasered you.”

  “Dude, whatever…” He struggled against the bonds on his wrist, legs and ankles, “What the fuck?”

  “Do you remember me?” he asked again.

  “Look,” Lesous glared up at him, “I don’t give a fuck who you are…”

  “I am Jonas Alden,” his head tilted to one side, “you fired me the day of the flash crash.”

  Lesous’s brow knit in a frown then arched high and he laughed, “Oh, you have got to be shittin’ me! “ He sneered, “Joanie? Is that you?” He laughed and struggled against the unforgiving plastic ties, “That’s what Mitch called you, right? Joanie?”

  Jonas closed his eyes so he could concentrate, “All I did was pause part of the program that morning so I could install the upgrades.” His voice was calm, but his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, “I checked after, there was no way I or any other tech could have known the algorithm would go rogue.” His eyes opened and he stared down at him, “No one!”

  “We lost ten mil a minute!” Lesous sputtered, incredulous, “We almost lost the company that day because of you! REMEMBER?”

  “It wasn’t my fault, the al….”

  “OF COURSE IT WAS YOUR FAULT!” He shouted, veins bulging in his face and neck while he strained against the ties, “IT WAS YOUR FUCKING PROGRAM!” Jonas only glared at him and he emitted a sudden bark of laughter, “Look, I get it, you couldn’t take the pressure, but you still deserved to lose your job that day so don’t blame me!”

  “I did,” Jonas murmured quietly, glaring at the floor, “I did write that code, but you have no intellectual capacity to understand what an algorithm even is let alone…”

  “Really?” His voice dripped with sarcasm, “That’s your defense? I’m the stupid one? Well, okay then, if you’re such a fucking genius then it shouldn’t be hard for you to get a job at the Apple store...” He grunted, snickering, “or tech support at iTunes, that should be a fucking no-brainer.” His eyes suddenly bored into Jonas’s and he sneered, “Now untie me; your little stunt isn’t funny anymore.”

  “No,” he agreed, whispering, “it isn’t funny. SAEx paid me a fraction of what you got and I worked my ass off,” his voice rose, “so you could make even more money faster while doing NOTHING!” He shouted his face mottled with rage. Lesous stared at him in disbelief and Jonas fought to calm himself, “This is no stunt, understand? This… this is the end of you.” He spoke through tightly clenched teeth and turning on his heel, walked to the workbench and retrieved the two-handled cheese knife. “I’ve been practicing since Mitch,” He returned to stand over him, “and now I’m ready to pay you back too, in full, for how you treated me.”

  Lesous’s eyes opened wide, “Oh my god…” he whispered fearfully, “Mitch is gone because you killed him?”

  “Ahhh...” Jonas finally smiled, “Now you’re getting it!” He knelt, planting a knee on Lesous’s chest.

  “Holy fuck, wait… WAIT!” He shrieked, “YOU CAN’T BE FUCKING SERIOUS!”

  “You’re an asshole, Darrel,” he stated matter-of-factly, “and you spend your days screwing ordinary investors and big banks alike out of as much of their money as you can… but that’s over now, and you’ll never steal from or mistreat anyone else ever again.” Jonas quickly placed the blade against Darrel’s throat, both hands on the double handles.

  “YOU’LL NEVER GET AWAY WITH THIS!” Lesous screamed, his eyes wild.

  Jonas smiled, “I already have.”

  “It won’t last…” he sobbed, “you think you can get away with this forever?”

  He leaned his weight onto his hands and smiled when he felt the blade slice into the windpipe. He gazed down into Darrel Lesous’s eyes, watching life fade from them, “Forever.” He whispered.

  New York City, NY

  “Thankfully I got a hit on a fingerprint search.”

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “In the California Department of Motor Vehicles database; his name is Christopher Jonathan Thackeray, thirty-one years old, worked as a trader at the Barrett Group for the past two years. Found his car in a parking lot of a bar where he was last seen; the car was clean, like his home.”

  “No murder scene?”

  “No.”

  “Leads from the bar?”

  “Co-workers saw him there, but no one remembers seeing him leave.”

  “Leads?”

  “Not really, no.”

  Stewart exhaled heavily, “Okay that sucks.”

  “Yeah, it really does.” Jordan stood, “I’ll keep you in the loop when the next one turns up.”

  He gave her a look, “Oh, great.”

  “
You know there’s more coming.” She said as she left.

  “Yeah,” he muttered to his empty office, “I know.”

  She took the elevator back to her office and sat heavily at her desk. She checked her email and clicked open the one bearing the subject line, “Found an arm for you.” It was from the bureau’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Samantha Lucas:

  “Had assistant searching local and national databases for found body parts; a left arm has been recovered by a New Jersey commercial fisherman. I have requested the arm and DNA profile; fingerprints were not recoverable due to scavenging sea life. The arm was disarticulated at the shoulder and matching the appendage at that point to one of the torsos may prove futile due to scavenged flesh on that end as well. Only have forensic photos, (attached) and can only speculate, presently, that the appendage came from a male. Sorry, will likely have to wait for a DNA match. More when data comes in.”

  Jordan clicked open the file and sighed dejectedly at the pictures of a severed human arm and hand, the digits mostly stripped of flesh. Yep, those fingers definitely look snacked on…

  The door opened and Catherine entered, “Hey!” She greeted her, “what’s up?”

  “Got an ID on the torso and a commercial fisherman caught a left arm in his net.”

  “Wow,” Catherine sat at her desk, “from this uh, last… victim?” She sounded uncertain.

  “Probably.” Jordan noted her thoughtful expression, “What?”