Sheriff's office, pointing a gun at two men in uniform, one dead, one quite explosively dying. Though his gun hand was a hundred-fingered blur, his head was held as still as if he was posing for the picture.
Cundieffe opened up the first file and held up another picture. It showed Storch's pickup truck. "This truck was found on July Sixth along Highway 190. It was identified as your vehicle and impounded as evidence in the murder of Sheriff James Twombley and Deputy Kenny Landis on the Fifth, though there were several discrepancies observed between the vehicle's condition and the statements of Deputy Danny Asaro and the Death Valley Junction Sheriff's deputies who pursued the alleged murderer. Is this your vehicle, Sgt. Storch?"
No response.
Another photo. The same truck, down to the license plates, but shot through with bullet-holes and shotgun spray. Tipped over in an arroyo, half-buried in dried mud. "This vehicle was discovered by myself and another agent on July Tenth, less than two hours before the Mission dropped napalm on Radiant Dawn Hospice Village. Note that the condition of the vehicle matched the aforementioned statement. There were two trucks with your license plates. One was used to murder two peace officers, the other was found abandoned by the side of the road in the middle of Death Valley. Which vehicle was yours, Sgt. Storch?"
No response.
He closed the file and picked another. He held up a full-color crime scene photo of a male corpse propped up in a chair. An astounding variety of sharp instruments buried in the skull. "This unfortunate gentleman was named Charles Walter Angell, leader of the School Of Night sect in Colma. While the group's twenty-six members were all found dead by some sort of apparent biofeedback mass suicide, Mr. Angell was brutally murdered and suffered considerable postmortem desecration. They are content to believe that you did this."
He laid this photo down before Storch and picked up another. It showed a residential interior, the walls draped in tie-dyed tapestries and beaded curtains. Two bodies lay splayed out side by side in the center of the room. Every sharp object in the house and many not found in any healthy home were jammed into the skulls of the victims. They looked as if they were wearing steel war-bonnets.
"This is Sky and Chrysanthemum Angulo, of Santa Cruz, California. Both were convicted manufacturers of hallucinogens, and they were found murdered in their home, in January of 1988. There were signs of missing property, particularly electronics and narcotics, but their seventeen-year old son, Baron Angulo, was never found. Local authorities proceeded on the assumption that gang drug dealers had killed the Angulos and that their son had either fled or been abducted by the gang. The FBI's San Jose field office concluded that the sole perpetrator was the son, but there has never been an indictment handed down for want of evidence and what records they do have keep disappearing from the NCIC database. He's never been arrested or even sighted. This is the last known photo of Angulo. Do you recognize this boy?"
Storch's eyes might've flicked around in their bottomless sockets. Cundieffe took another look at the photo himself. Bright, mischievous eyes, and the crooked smile of one who has never been punished.
"Several of your former neighbors in Thermopylae positively identified the young man in this photograph as one Ely Buggs, a former employee of yours. Is that correct?"
Nothing.
"In 1996, a hacker penetrated the databases of the Human Genome Project at UC Berkeley, and copied all data in a section of classified research and proprietary DNA-parsing compounds. The FBI's computer crime specialists tracked the source of the incursion to a computer tied into a server network in Mountain View, California. The property owners were a small computer security firm and had no idea about the computer's presence, let alone its purpose. Upon accessing the server, they
Cundieffe opened up the first file and held up another picture. It showed Storch's pickup truck. "This truck was found on July Sixth along Highway 190. It was identified as your vehicle and impounded as evidence in the murder of Sheriff James Twombley and Deputy Kenny Landis on the Fifth, though there were several discrepancies observed between the vehicle's condition and the statements of Deputy Danny Asaro and the Death Valley Junction Sheriff's deputies who pursued the alleged murderer. Is this your vehicle, Sgt. Storch?"
No response.
Another photo. The same truck, down to the license plates, but shot through with bullet-holes and shotgun spray. Tipped over in an arroyo, half-buried in dried mud. "This vehicle was discovered by myself and another agent on July Tenth, less than two hours before the Mission dropped napalm on Radiant Dawn Hospice Village. Note that the condition of the vehicle matched the aforementioned statement. There were two trucks with your license plates. One was used to murder two peace officers, the other was found abandoned by the side of the road in the middle of Death Valley. Which vehicle was yours, Sgt. Storch?"
No response.
He closed the file and picked another. He held up a full-color crime scene photo of a male corpse propped up in a chair. An astounding variety of sharp instruments buried in the skull. "This unfortunate gentleman was named Charles Walter Angell, leader of the School Of Night sect in Colma. While the group's twenty-six members were all found dead by some sort of apparent biofeedback mass suicide, Mr. Angell was brutally murdered and suffered considerable postmortem desecration. They are content to believe that you did this."
He laid this photo down before Storch and picked up another. It showed a residential interior, the walls draped in tie-dyed tapestries and beaded curtains. Two bodies lay splayed out side by side in the center of the room. Every sharp object in the house and many not found in any healthy home were jammed into the skulls of the victims. They looked as if they were wearing steel war-bonnets.
"This is Sky and Chrysanthemum Angulo, of Santa Cruz, California. Both were convicted manufacturers of hallucinogens, and they were found murdered in their home, in January of 1988. There were signs of missing property, particularly electronics and narcotics, but their seventeen-year old son, Baron Angulo, was never found. Local authorities proceeded on the assumption that gang drug dealers had killed the Angulos and that their son had either fled or been abducted by the gang. The FBI's San Jose field office concluded that the sole perpetrator was the son, but there has never been an indictment handed down for want of evidence and what records they do have keep disappearing from the NCIC database. He's never been arrested or even sighted. This is the last known photo of Angulo. Do you recognize this boy?"
Storch's eyes might've flicked around in their bottomless sockets. Cundieffe took another look at the photo himself. Bright, mischievous eyes, and the crooked smile of one who has never been punished.
"Several of your former neighbors in Thermopylae positively identified the young man in this photograph as one Ely Buggs, a former employee of yours. Is that correct?"
Nothing.
"In 1996, a hacker penetrated the databases of the Human Genome Project at UC Berkeley, and copied all data in a section of classified research and proprietary DNA-parsing compounds. The FBI's computer crime specialists tracked the source of the incursion to a computer tied into a server network in Mountain View, California. The property owners were a small computer security firm and had no idea about the computer's presence, let alone its purpose. Upon accessing the server, they
Similar Books
