Daemon Read Free Page A

point forward.” He looked up at Haime. “Haime, we’re going to want to chat with you at the sheriff’s station.”
    “Señor, I didn’t do anything.”
    “I know, Haime. That’s why you want to cooperate while we arrange a search warrant for your employer.”
    Pietro interposed himself. “Detective Sebeck—”
    “Counselor, this cable assembly was maintained by your property management firm—which would indicate they had prior knowledge of it. Would you prefer to make CyberStorm the responsible party, or does CyberStorm want to cooperate with my investigation?”
    Pietro pursed his lips, then turned to Haime. “Haime, don’t worry. Go with them. Do everything they say. Tell them everything you know.”
    “I don’t know anything, Señor Pietro.”
    “I know that, Haime. But I think it best that you do what Detective Sebeck says.”
    “I am a U.S. citizen. Am I under arrest?”
    Sebeck looked to Mantz. Mantz stepped in. “No, Haime. We’re just gonna talk. You can leave the pickup truck here. We’ll take care of that.” Mantz motioned for Haime to move toward the patrol cars and started escorting him away.
    Pietro nodded to Massey. “Detective Sebeck, we’ll contact your office for a copy of the police report. You know where to reach 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
    S ebeck, 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