Damnation Code (William Massa) - William Massa Page 0,31
of the mainstream nowadays, but cult killings veered into the weird and carried the whiff of homegrown terrorism. As the bodies kept piling up and the crimes grew more elaborate, her superiors couldn’t ignore the mounting evidence.
The notion of a dark cyberpunk cult might sound fantastical, but it also made sense in a weird way to Serrone. San Francisco was a Mecca for anyone who wanted to make computers their career and possessed the technical talent to back up that ambition. A computer-science aesthetic would be a powerful hook for the designated target audience. Satanism, with its traditional occult trappings, was so last century. Binary numbers that spelled out 666 might be the kind of crazy twist on an old formula that would appeal to San Francisco’s tech elite.
Serrone rose and followed Grell into the adjoining living room. A different scene awaited her in here. Blood speckled the plastic tarp spread out on the floor. The donors still wore their robot masks, one sporting a cyclopean eye where the round had entered. “Looks like these two were caught off guard. One was taken out by a headshot, the other fella appears to have offed himself. Nasty piece of business.”
Serrone eyed the tarp. “They were interrupted. What I want to know is where’s the victim and who’s our vigilante with the itchy trigger finger?”
As she posed the question, a theory was already forming in her mind. The kills were clean, clinical. The work of a professional.
Perhaps the work of a Special Forces soldier out for payback?
Her thoughts turned back to the shellshocked military man she’d faced in the interrogation room two days earlier. When she first laid eyes upon Talon, she had experienced a disturbing sense of déjà vu. Her gut immediately pegged the shell of a man before her as a soldier. His hair was longish and his leather jacket and jeans were a far cry from military fatigues, but she couldn’t shake the feeling. Maybe it was the way he carried himself or the intensity of his gaze, but on a subconscious level he reminded her of her Marine husband.
Bobby had been killed by an IED in Afghanistan, two years ago, leaving her a single mom with a young daughter that she was raising on her own. Even stranger was the simultaneous sensation that she was staring at herself. She had worn his shell-shocked expression for the first year after Bobby’s death. For months the same empty stare had gazed back at her from the mirror.
Losing Bobby hadn’t merely signaled the loss of a lover and best friend but also the end of all her hopes for the future. She knew she might be projecting her own feelings onto the situation, but the memory of the grieving soldier had haunted her ever since.
His file was redacted, which suggested special ops. Possibly a Seal or Ranger. A professional warrior who’d returned from battle to spend time with someone he loved, only to realize death had followed him home.
Had Mark Talon chosen to take that pain and redirect it at the men who’d murdered his girlfriend? It seemed like a far-fetched notion but the bodies sprawled on the floor told their own blood-soaked story. She made a mental note to pay Talon a visit. She was doubtful that anything would directly link the soldier to these murders, but maybe a part of her wanted to peer into those enigmatic eyes again. Did she secretly hope the ghost of her old lover might glance back at her once more?
Grell sidled up to her and pulled her back to reality. ”Check this out.”
Serrone followed him to a nearby computer workstation. The Omicron desktop was on and logged into Facebook. It showed an instant message: “3 PM. Apple Store on Freemont. Hope to see you there.”
Serrone realized that the message had come from a Facebook user named Jenna, a smiling twenty-something. Like the dead coders with the bloody Halloween masks, she worked in Silicon Valley. Had one of the victims been cheating on his girlfriend with this woman? Or could there be more to the meeting? Did the cult gather at Apple Stores to spread its wacky gospel and recruit new members?
“What do you make of it? Think it’s related to this cult, or was roboboy breaking hearts online?”
“I don’t know,” Serrone replied. “It can’t hurt to crash the party and see who shows up.”
Had they finally caught a break in the case?
Serrone sure hoped so.
***
Talon’s wish for a night unencumbered by nightmares was