Daemon

one of her full-length nightgowns.
    ‘Laura, I have to jump in the shower first. I’ve got a full day ahead.’
    ‘Fine, Pete.’
    ‘I won’t be long. Go back to sleep.’
    Sebeck ran through his ablutions in fifteen minutes, dressed, and tied his tie on the way downstairs. He ducked into the kitchen.
    His son, Chris, sat reading the morning paper. The kid was getting big – muscular big. Sixteen. Almost the age Sebeck was when he and Laura conceived the boy. Had it really been sixteen years? ‘Why don’t you get a shovel, Chris?’
    Chris had a bulging mouthful of cereal. The boy grabbed at his dad’s suit jacket as he walked past. Chris flipped the paper over to reveal the front page. There was a color picture of Sebeck over the headline: ‘Internet Killings Spark Federal Investigation.’ Mantz was also in the picture to his left. Sebeck stopped short and picked up the page, reading slowly as he sank down into a seat at the table.
    Chris chewed his way back to speech. ‘L.A.
Times
. That’s big.’
    Sebeck just kept reading.
    Laura walked into the kitchen.
    Sebeck glanced up. ‘Did you see this?’
    She looked down at the page. ‘Not a great picture of Nathan.’ She went over to the stove to make tea.
    Sebeck handed the paper back to Chris but kept looking at Laura. ‘I won’t be able to pick up Chris from practice today. I’ve got the FBI here, the national media, and God knows what else.’
    ‘We’ll manage.’
    Chris lowered the paper. ‘The Feds are interrogating the insurance guys. You think they did it?’
    ‘I’m not the one questioning them, Chris.’ Sebeck stood. ‘From here on out, I’ll be lucky to be in the loop at all.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I gotta go.’
    Sebeck headed down the hall to the den. Once there, he dropped into the desk chair and hit the power switch on the computer. While the computer booted, he moved a gaming joystick off to the side and tossed two soda cans into the trash. He called to the kitchen, ‘Chris, I won’t keep asking you to clean up in here when you’re done!’ No answer.
    The computer desktop came up. Sebeck launched his e-mail program, then clicked the get mail button. He waited as 132 messages downloaded.
Goddamned spam
. When it finished, the message subject lines ranged from ‘Barely Legal Teens’ to ‘Nigerian Exile Needs Help’ to ‘Lolitas Take Horse Cock.’
    He searched his inbox for the FBI message. It was near thetop and had the subject line ‘Case #93233 – CyberStorm/Pavlos’ from
[email protected]
. Sebeck double-clicked on it.
    Strangely, as the e-mail opened, the screen went black. Then the words ‘Testing Audio’ faded in. The hard drive strained. Sebeck stared in confusion. What did he do? In a moment, the words faded out and were replaced by a grainy video image of a man. It was hard to tell his age or precise appearance due to the poor video quality. It was amateurish – poorly lit and off-center.
    The man looked thin and pale – a condition emphasized by his standing against a featureless white background. He was completely bald and wore what looked to be a medical gown.
    What the hell was this, some sort of FBI lab report?
    It took Sebeck a moment to realize that the video was already playing. The man swayed unsteadily – his pixels adjusting like colored tiles. Then he looked directly into the camera and nodded as if in greeting.
    ‘Detective Sebeck. I was Matthew Sobol. Chief technology officer of CyberStorm Entertainment. I am dead.’
    Sebeck leaned forward – his eyes fixed on the monitor.
    ‘I see you’ve been assigned to the Josef Pavlos and Chopra Singh murder cases. Let me save you some time; I killed both men. Soon you’ll know why. But you have a problem: Because I’m dead, you can’t arrest me. More importantly: You can’t stop me.’
    Sebeck stared in stunned silence.
    Sobol continued. ‘Since you have no choice but to try and stop me, I want to take this moment to wish you luck, Sergeant – because you’re going to need it.’
    The image disappeared, revealing the e-mail inbox again.
    Sebeck didn’t move for several moments. When he finally did, it was to forward the message to his sheriff’s e-mail address.

Chapter 8:// Escalation
    ‘Mr Ross, help us understand this: You have no permanent address, and yet you’ve got nearly three hundred thousand dollars in liquid assets. Am I to believe you live with your parents?’
    Jon Ross rubbed his tired eyes and tried to