Daemon

me.’ Both men climbed back into the Range Rover and sped off, perhaps to find a better wireless signal.
    Sebeck looked along the length of cable. Would someone really have built this just to kill a person? He could think of easier ways to kill someone.
    He clamped back a smile. This wasn’t a murder-suicide or a botched drug deal. It might actually be a premeditated killing. Was it wrong to hope so? Accident or murder, the victim was dead. Nothing would change that. So what was wrong with hoping it was murder?
    Pondering this, Sebeck turned and walked back to the front gate.

Chapter 3:// Black Box
    Sebeck, Mantz, and three county deputies crowded around a Post-it-note-slathered computer monitor in the cubicle of a nondescript company, in a generic office park in Thousand Oaks. Tractor-trailers hissed by on the freeway just beyond the thin stucco walls, but the officers were intent, leaning over the shoulders of Deputy Aaron Larson, the County Sheriff’s only computer fraud specialist.
    Larson was in his late twenties with an air of military orderliness – buzz-cut hair, athletic build, and a square jaw. He had a boyish enthusiasm for ferreting out larceny. At such times he’d smile and shake his head in slow-motion disbelief over what people thought they could get away with.
    Larson’s computer screen scrolled rows of text. ‘This log lists IP addresses making connections to their server. Notice that we’ve got a number of connections at around the time our target work ticket was created.’
    He alt-tabbed over to a custom property management program. ‘I spoke with the secretary, and she said they’re able to accept work tickets from clients through a secure Web page.’
    Sebeck nodded. ‘So the request didn’t necessarily come from this office.’
    ‘Right.’ Larson flipped back to the custom application. ‘The
Requestor
field, here, claims the ticket was submitted by this Chopra Singh person at CyberStorm Entertainment. But wait – that’s not where the connection actually originated.’
    Larson minimized all the windows except the Web log. He highlighted a single line. ‘This was the connection that created the work order. When I do a Whois lookup on the IP address …’ He switched screens. ‘Voilà.’
    A Whois lookup page displayed the domain as owned by Alcyone Insurance Corporation of Woodland Hills, California.
    Sebeck read the small type. ‘Then the work order originated from this company in Woodland Hills.’
    ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
    ‘You think the address was spoofed?’
    ‘The only way to find out is to get a warrant for their Web logs.’
    Another deputy entered the cramped office. ‘Sergeant, there’s a news van outside.’
    Sebeck waved him off and kept his gaze on Larson. ‘So no one in this management firm created the work order that killed Pavlos?’
    ‘Seems unlikely.’
    Sebeck eyed the screen. ‘Is this sort of Internet work order system typical for a hole-in-the-wall company like this?’
    Larson shook his head slowly and smiled. ‘No, it’s not. This is pretty slick. The office manager said their parent company developed it for them. You’ll never guess who the parent company is.’
    ‘CyberStorm Entertainment.’
    Larson touched his finger to his nose. ‘Very good, Sergeant.’
    Just then the radios crackled to life again. Sebeck turned to listen.
    ‘Units in vicinity of Westlake. 10-54 at 3000 Westlake Boulevard reported. Be advised, 10-29h. 11-98 with building security.’
    Sebeck exchanged looks with the other officers. Another dead body had been found. ‘What the hell …’
    The address tugged at Sebeck’s memory. He pulled Gordon Pietro’s business card out of his pocket. At least his memory hadn’t failed him; the new body had been found at CyberStorm Entertainment.
    As far as Sebeck could tell, entertainment companies came in two flavors: shady operations skirting tax, drug, andracketeering laws, and phenomenally successful corporate empires wielding immense influence worldwide. There was very little middle ground, and the transformation from one to the other seemed to happen in the wee hours. With signage rights on a ten-story office building, CyberStorm had evidently made that transformation.
    The latest body had been found in a security vestibule – a tiny room controlling access to what the employees called a server farm. The small entry chamber reminded Sebeck of an air lock. The server farm was filled with rack-mounted servers –