Daemon

unasked question: How many white lilies can you cram onto this stage? This many.
    An easel to the left of the coffin held a foam-core poster of Matthew Sobol, in younger and saner days. He looked like an accountant or an insurance broker. His hair was short anddusty brown. He was smiling good-naturedly, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he would kill fifteen people – most of them law officers.
    An eternal flame – which someone had spitefully extinguished or never lit – stood next to the easel on a trestle table. Apparently the authorities had a different eternal flame in mind for Sobol.
    Scattered around the room in groups of two and three were what looked to be FBI agents. Sebeck felt sure they were trying to figure out a way to declare a funeral illegal. Certainly Sebeck felt like putting Sobol’s body through a mulcher.
    Ross tapped his shoulder. ‘I want to see him.’
    Sebeck nodded, and they both stepped out across the pews. All eyes turned on them. Carpeting absorbed most of the sound of their footfalls, but they still seemed deafening in the stillness of this place. Ross nodded to serious-looking men who watched them pass. The men stared back.
    Sebeck led Ross to the dais steps. They ascended slowly, and as they did, the mortal remains of Matthew Sobol came into view from beyond the rim of the coffin.
    Sebeck came here filled with hate. He despised this diseased freak who had slain Deputy Larson and all the others. He was wholly unprepared for his reaction upon first sight of Sobol’s corpse.
    Sobol was practically a skeleton already. It was shocking how the cancer had wasted him away. His disease was readily apparent from the massive scar tracing along the left side of his bald head. It looked like they had opened his skull to attempt surgical resection. The scar was so long it descended to the orbital socket of Sobol’s left eye – where a black patch indicated that his eye had been removed. No other effort had been made to make Sobol presentable. His cheeks were sunken and pale, his neck lost in the spaciousness of a stiff white shirt collar and a Victorian jacket and tie. His dead hands clutched a golden cross against his chest. Most alarming of all wasSobol’s one remaining eye – oddly open and staring milky blue at the ceiling. It was a window to madness and terror.
    Nothing had prepared Sebeck for this. A seed of pity took root in him. Sobol had endured the tortures of the damned. Surely Sebeck wanted Sobol to burn in Hell – but he’d never considered Sobol had been living in Hell for some time already.
    Ross croaked, ‘Jesus.’
    A woman spoke from behind them. ‘What did you expect to find, Mr Ross?’
    Ross and Sebeck spun around to regard a young black woman sitting in the first pew. She was neither beautiful nor unattractive. She wore an immaculate dark blue pantsuit, but she did not have the telltale earphone of the Feds. A white guy sat in the pew behind her, leaning forward to join her symbolically. He had buzz-cut blond hair and wore a dark plaid sports jacket and a black sweater. He didn’t look uncomfortable in the jacket, but somehow the jacket appeared uncomfortable with him.
    Ross looked to Sebeck and then back to the woman. ‘Do I know you?’
    ‘No. But I know you. You’re Jon Frederick Ross, son of Harold and Ivana. Graduated with honors 1999 from the University of Illinois at Urbana with a master’s in computer science. President and CEO of Cyberon Systems, Inc., a one-man Delaware Service Corporation founded in 2003.’ She reached into her jacket pocket and produced a badge folder. ‘Natalie Philips. National Security Agency.’
    ‘Oh shit.’ Ross looked to the nearby Jesus for mercy.
    Sebeck stepped in. ‘I’m trying to keep Jon’s name out of the news. He’s worried that Sobol will come after him.’
    ‘Interesting.’ She stood up and approached the dais. ‘Egotistical, but interesting.’
    She was lean and fit – probably about thirty years old. Sebeck couldn’t help but notice her body and cursed his libido.
    She gestured to the coffin. ‘I’m surprised you’d come hereif you thought Sobol was after you. He might have packed the coffin with C-four.’
    Ross stepped away from the casket warily.
    She laughed. ‘Relax. We T-rayed it and swept the whole chapel for computers and wireless transmitters. Came up empty.’ She walked up and stood looking over Sobol’s remains. ‘Apparently Sobol anticipated his unpopularity and left behind a