"Okay, I'll admit I have a technology problem. I'm in a twelve-step program."

Sebeck looked around at the car interior again. "How much is a car like this?"

"About a hundred and thirty. But I talked them down to a hundred and twenty."

Sebeck winced. That was a third higher than his annual salary. A pang of jealousy stole over him. Surely police work was vital. Why did the white-collar professions earn so much more? It was a puzzle to him. One he didn't think he was going to resolve.

The Audi raced north, giving him plenty of time to try.

Ross had a turn-by-turn map to the funeral home, but they could just as easily have followed the satellite news trucks. As they drove past the manicured front lawn of the funeral home, the parking lot overflowed with camera-ready protestors holding up signs reading BURN IN HELL, SOBOL, American flags, and yellow ribbons-while still others bore banners with anarchy symbols and pentagrams. It was a flea market of anger. Police and reporters with microphones vied with each other, alternately shoving back competing protestors and interviewing them. The side streets leading to the funeral home were blocked off by SBP traffic cops and sawhorses. No cars were allowed in.

Ross turned to Sebeck. "I'm not sure about this."

"This is where I come in. Pull up to the roadblock."

Ross turned into the side street, and two policemen held up their hands to stop them, then pointed back at the main street.

Sebeck lowered his passenger window and showed his badge. One of the cops came up to the window. Sebeck spoke with authority. "Detective Sergeant Sebeck, Ventura County Sheriff's Department. I was heading the murder investigation in Thousand Oaks."

"Welcome to Santa Barbara, Sergeant. I saw you on the news. Park around back." He waved to the other cop to move the barrier aside. The first cop leaned down to Sebeck again. "The Feds are running the show inside."

Sebeck nodded and motioned for Ross to drive on through.

They entered the funeral home through the rear door. After a brief discussion, one of the federal agents at the door peeled off to escort them to the chapel.

As they moved through the rear hallways, the acrid smell of embalming chemicals and cleansers assaulted them. Men and women in suits were everywhere, going through files and computers in side offices and interviewing a man who appeared to be a mortician in a lab coat.

Soon they passed through a double set of automated doors that let out onto an ornate hallway with marble tile floors. They could hear funerary music playing ahead, and another doorway brought them through a side entrance into a churchlike room with a podium, rows of pews, mountains of flowers, and a raised dais whereupon sat a bronze coffin on a pedestal draped in white satin. The lid of the coffin was partitioned for viewings, and the upper portion was raised-although the body within could not be seen from this vantage point.

Everyone in the place looked like an FBI agent-including the dozen or so people sitting in the nearly empty pews up front. A crime scene photographer was busy taking photos of the room from every angle-although it wasn't apparent what crime was being committed just now. Apparently the Feds didn't want to wait.

Ross gestured to the coffin. "Behold the devil himself."

The FBI agent escorting them excused himself to resume his post, leaving Sebeck and Ross standing in the doorway relatively alone. The sonorous tones of funeral Muzak were punctuated by the occasional squawking of police radios.

Sebeck glanced around the room. It was remarkably unremarkable. Tapestries depicting generic salvation-lots of light beams coming from on high-hung down between the unexceptional stained glass windows. A stylized statue of Jesus stood at the head of the chapel, set into an alcove. It was eroded in a modern art sort of way to render it theologically inoffensive and appeared to be fashioned out of cheap, imitation-stone resin-stuff that would last until the Second Coming. Its hands were outstretched like an Australian-rules football referee signaling a goal, with robes hanging down.

The room was modern and provided no sense of history or permanence. The floor sounded hollow under the heels, and on the whole the room reminded him more of a library annex than a chapel. It was sterile and unfeeling, except for the banks of flowers-all white lilies-which through their sheer numbers answered the 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 and dusty 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 was Sobol'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."