The Blue Nowhere

  Gillette shook his head.

  Phate coughed and continued in a feeble voice, "'To thine own self be true. . . .'" Then his head dipped forward and his breathing stopped.

  Gillette couldn't help but feel a sense of loss and sorrow. Sure, Jon Patrick Holloway deserved his death. He was evil and could take the life of a human being as easily as he'd lift a fictitious character's digital heart from his body in a MUD game. Yet within the young man was another person: someone who wrote code as elegant as a symphony, in whose keystrokes could be heard the silent laughter of hackers and could be seen the brilliance of an unbound mind, which--had it been directed on a slightly different course years ago--could have made Jon Holloway a computer wizard admired around the world.

  He'd also been someone with whom Gillette had carried out some, yes, truly moby hacks. Whatever direction your life takes, you never quite lose the bond that develops among fellow explorers of the Blue Nowhere.

  Then Patricia Nolan stood and looked at Gillette.

  He thought, I'm dead.

  She drew some more liquid into the needle, sighing. This murder, at least, was going to bother her.

  "No," he whispered. Shaking his head. "I won't say anything."

  He tried to scrabble away from her but his muscles were still haywire from the electrical charges. She crouched beside him, pulled his collar down and massaged his neck to find the artery.

  Gillette looked across the room to where Bishop lay, still unconscious. The detective would be the next victim, he understood.

  Nolan leaned forward with the needle.

  "No," Gillette whispered. He closed his eyes, his thoughts on Ellie. "No! Don't do it!"

  Then a man's voice shouted, "Hey, hold up there!"

  Without a second's pause Nolan dropped the hypodermic, pulled a pistol from her laptop case and fired toward Tony Mott, who stood in the doorway.

  "Jesus," the young cop cried, flinching. "What the hell're you doing?" He dropped to the floor.

  Nolan lifted her gun once more but before she could fire, several huge explosions shook the air and she fell backward. Mott was firing at her with his glitzy silver automatic.

  None of the bullets had struck her and Nolan rose fast, again firing her own pistol--a much smaller one--at Mott.

  The CCU cop, wearing his biking shorts, a Guess shirt and with his Oakley sunglasses dangling from his neck, crawled farther into the warehouse. He fired again, keeping Nolan on the defensive. She fired several times but missed as well.

  "What the hell's going on? What's she doing?"

  "She killed Holloway. I was next."

  Nolan fired again then eased toward the front of the warehouse.

  Mott grabbed Gillette by the pants cuff and dragged him to cover then emptied the clip of the automatic in the woman's direction. For all his love of SWAT teams the cop seemed panicked to be in a real shoot-out. He was also a really bad shot. As he reloaded, Nolan disappeared behind some cartons.

  "Are you hit?" Mott's hands were shaking and he was breathless.

  "No, she got me with a stun gun or something. I can't move."

  "What about Frank?"

  "He's not shot. But we've got to get him to a doctor. How did you know we were here?"

  "Frank called and told me to check the records on this place."

  Gillette remembered Bishop's making the call from Nolan's hotel room.

  Scanning the warehouse for Nolan, the young cop continued, "That prick Backle knew Frank and you took off together. He had a tap on the phone. He heard the address here and called some of his people to pick you up. I came over here to warn you."

  "But how'd you get through all the traffic?"

  "My bike, remember?" Mott crawled to Bishop, who was starting to stir. Then, from across the dinosaur pen, Nolan rose and fired a half-dozen shots in their direction. She fled out the front door.

  Mott reluctantly started after her.

  Gillette called, "Be careful. She can't get away through the traffic either. She'll be outside, waiting. . . ."

  But his voice faded as he heard a distinctive sound, growing closer. He realized that, like hackers, people with jobs like Patricia Nolan must be experts at improvising; a countywide traffic jam wasn't going to interfere with her plans. The noise was the roar of the helicopter, undoubtedly the one disguised as a press chopper that he'd seen before, the one that had delivered her here.

  In less than thirty seconds the craft had picked her up and was in the air again, speeding away, the chunky sound of the rotors soon replaced by the curiously harmonic orchestra of car and truck horns filling the late-afternoon sky.

  CHAPTER 00101010 / FORTY-TWO

  Gillette and Bishop were back at the Computer Crimes Unit.

  The detective was out of the urgent-care facility. A concussion, a fierce headache and eight stitches were the only evidence of his ordeal--along with a new shirt to replace the bloody one. (This one fit somewhat better than its predecessor but it too seemed largely tuck-resistant.) The time was 6:30 P.M. and public works had managed to reload the software that controlled the traffic lights. Much of the congestion in Santa Clara County was gone. A search of San Jose Computer Products turned up a gasoline bomb and some information about the fire alarm system of Northern California University. Aware of Phate's love of diversion, Bishop was concerned that the killer had planted a second device on the campus. But a thorough search of the dormitories and other school buildings revealed nothing.

  To no one's surprise Horizon On-Line claimed they'd never heard of a Patricia Nolan. The company executives and the head of corporate security in Seattle said they'd never contacted California state police headquarters after the Lara Gibson killing--and no one had sent Andy Anderson any e-mails or faxes about Nolan's credentials. The Horizon On-Line number that Anderson had called to verify her employment was a working Horizon phone line but, according to the phone company in Seattle, all calls going into that number were forwarded--to a Mobile America cell phone with unassigned numbers, which was no longer in use.

  The security staff at Horizon knew of no one fitting her description either. The address under which she'd registered at her hotel in San Jose was fake and the credit card was phony too. All the phone calls she'd made from the hotel were to that same hacked Mobile America number.

  Not a soul at CCU believed Horizon's denial, of course. But proving a connection between HOL and Patricia Nolan was going to be difficult--as was finding her in the first place. A picture of the woman, lifted from a security tape in CCU headquarters, went out on ISLEnet to state police bureaus around the country and to the feds for posting to VICAP. Bishop, however, had to include the embarrassing disclaimer that even though the woman had spent several days in a state police facility they had no samples of her fingerprints and that her appearance was probably considerably different from what the tape showed.

  At least the whereabouts of the other coconspirator had been discovered. The body of Shawn--Stephen Miller--had been found in the woods behind his house; he'd shot himself with his service revolver after he learned that they'd caught on to his identity. His remorseful suicide note had, naturally, been in the form of an e-mail.

  CCU's Linda Sanchez and Tony Mott were trying to piece together the extent of Miller's betrayal. The state police would have to issue a statement that one of their officers had been an accomplice in the hacker murder case in Silicon Valley, and Internal Affairs wanted to find out how much damage Miller had done and how long he'd been Phate's partner and lover.

  Department of Defense agent Backle was still intent on collaring Wyatt Gillette for a laundry list of offenses involving the Standard 12 encryption program and he now wanted to arrest Frank Bishop as well--for breaking a federal prisoner out of custody.

  As for the charges against Gillette for the Standard 12 hack, Bishop explained to Captain Bernstein, "It's pretty clear, sir, that Gillette either seized root at one of Holloway's FTP sites and downloaded a copy of the script or just telneted direc
tly into Holloway's machine, broke through the firewall and got a copy that way."

  "What the hell does that mean?" the grizzled, crew-cut cop had snapped.

  "Sorry, sir," Bishop had said, then translated the techno-speak. "What I'm saying is I think it was Holloway who broke into the DoD and wrote the decryption program. Gillette stole it from him and used it because we asked him to."

  "You think," Bernstein had muttered cynically. "Well, I don't understand all this computer crap that's been going around." But he picked up the phone and called the U.S. attorney, who agreed to review whatever evidence CCU could offer supporting Bishop's theory before proceeding with charges against either Gillette or Bishop (both of whose stock was pretty high at the moment for having nailed the "Silicon Valley Kracker," as the local TV stations were describing Phate).

  Agent Backle grudgingly returned to his office in San Francisco's Presidio.

  At the moment, however, the attention of all the law enforcers had turned from Phate and Stephen Miller to the MARINKILL case. Several recent bulletins reported that the killers had been spotted again--this time right next door, in San Jose--apparently staking out several other banks. Bishop and Shelton had been conscripted into the joint FBI/state police task force. They'd spend a few hours with their families for dinner and then report to the bureau's San Jose office later tonight.

  Bob Shelton was home at the moment (his only farewell to Gillette had been a cryptic glance, whose meaning was completely lost on the hacker). Bishop, however, had delayed his own departure home and was sharing a Pop-Tart and coffee with the hacker while they waited for the troopers to arrive to transport him back to San Ho.

  The phone rang. Bishop answered, "Computer Crimes."

  He listened for a moment. "Hold on." He looked at Gillette, lifted an eyebrow. Handed the receiver to him. "It's for you."

  He took it. "Hello?"

  "Wyatt."

  Elana's voice was so familiar to him that he could almost feel it beneath his compulsively keying fingers. The timbre of her voice alone had always revealed to him the entire range of her soul, and he needed to hear only a single word to know whether she was playful, angry, frightened, sentimental, passionate. Today he could tell from her greeting that she'd called very reluctantly and that her defenses were up like the shields on the spacecrafts of the sci-fi movies they'd watched together.

  On the other hand, she had called.

  She said, "I heard that he's dead. Jon Holloway. I heard it on the news."

  "That's right."

  "Are you all right?"

  "Fine."

  A long pause. As if looking for something to fill the silence, she added, "I'm still going to New York."

  "With Ed."

  "That's right."

  He closed his eyes and sighed. Then, with an edge in his voice, he asked, "So why'd you call?"

  "I guess just to say that if you wanted to stop by, you could."

  Gillette wondered: Why bother? What was the point?

  He said, "I'll be there in ten minutes."

  They hung up. He turned to find Bishop looking at him cautiously. Gillette said, "Give me an hour. Please."

  "I can't take you," the detective said.

  "Let me borrow a car."

  The detective debated, looked around the dinosaur pen, considering. He said to Linda Sanchez, "You have a CCU car he can use?"

  Reluctantly she handed him the keys. "This isn't procedure, boss."

  "I'll take responsibility."

  Bishop tossed the keys to Gillette then pulled out his phone and called the troopers who'd be transporting him back to San Ho. He gave them Elana's address and said he'd okayed Gillette's being there. The prisoner would be returning to CCU in one hour. He hung up.

  "I'll come back," the hacker said.

  "I know you will."

  The men faced each other for a moment. They shook hands. Gillette nodded and started for the door.

  "Wait," Bishop asked, frowning. "You have a driver's license?"

  Gillette laughed. "No, I don't have a driver's license."

  Bishop shrugged and said, "Well, just don't get stopped."

  The hacker nodded and said gravely, "Right. They might send me to jail."

  The house smelled of lemons, as it always had.

  This was thanks to the deft culinary touch of Irene Papandolos, Ellie's mother. She wasn't the traditional wary, silent Greek matron but a sharp businesswoman who owned a successful catering company and still managed to find the time to cook every meal for her family from scratch. It was now dinnertime and she wore a stained apron over a rose-colored business suit.

  She greeted Gillette with a cool, unsmiling nod and gestured him into the den.

  He sat on a couch, beneath a picture of the waterfront at Piraeus. Family being ever important in Greek households, two tables were filled with photographs of relatives in a variety of frames, some cheap, some heavy silver and gold. Gillette saw a picture of Elana in her wedding dress. He didn't recognize the shot and he wondered if it had originally shown the two of them and had been cropped to remove him.

  Elana entered the room.

  "You're here by yourself?" she asked, not smiling. No other greeting.

  "How do you mean?"

  "No police baby-sitters?"

  "Honor system."

  "I saw a couple of police cars go past. I wondered if they were with you." She nodded outside.

  "No," Gillette said. Though he supposed that troopers might in fact be keeping tabs on him.

  She sat and picked uneasily at the cuff of the Stanford sweatshirt she wore.

  "I'm not going to say goodbye," he said. She frowned and he continued, "Because I want to talk you out of leaving. I want to keep seeing you."

  "Seeing me? You're in prison, Wyatt."

  "I'll be out in a year."

  She laughed in surprise at his effrontery.

  He said, "I want to try again."

  "You want to try again. What about what I want?"

  "I can give you what you want. I will. I've done a lot of thinking. I can make you love me again. I don't want you out of my life."

  "You chose machines over me. You got what you wanted."

  "That's in the past."

  "My life's different now. I'm happy."

  "Are you?"

  "Yes," Elana said emphatically.

  "Because of Ed."

  "He's part of it. . . . Come on, Wyatt, what can you offer me? You're a felon. You're addicted to those goddamn computers of yours. You don't have a job and the judge said that even when you get out of jail you can't go online for a year."

  "And Ed's got himself a good job? Is that it? I didn't know that a good income was important to you."

  "It's not a question of support, Gillette. It's about responsibility. And you're not responsible."

  "I wasn't responsible. I admit that. But I will be." He tried to take her hand but she eased away. He said, "Come on, Ellie. . . . I saw your e-mails. When you talk about Ed it doesn't exactly sound like he's perfect husband material."

  She stiffened and he saw he'd touched a nerve here. "Leave Ed out of this. I'm talking about you and me."

  "Me too. That's exactly who I'm talking about. I love you. I know I made your life hell. It won't be that way again. You wanted children, a normal life. I'll find a job. We'll have a family."

  Another hesitation.

  He pressed forward. "Why are you leaving tomorrow? What's the hurry?"

  "I'm starting a new job next Monday."

  "Why New York?"

  "Because it's as far away from you as I can get."

  "Wait a month. Just one month. I get two visits a week. Come see me." He smiled. "We can hang out. Eat pizza."

  Her eyes swept the floor and he sensed that she was debating.

  "Did your mother cut me out of that picture?" He grinned and nodded at the snapshot of her in her wedding gown.

  She gave a faint smile. "No. That was the one Alexis took--on the law
n. It was just of me. Remember, the one where you can't see my feet."

  He laughed. "How many brides lose their shoes at the wedding?"

  She nodded. "We always wondered what happened to them."

  "Oh, please, Ellie. Just postpone it for a month. That's all I'm asking."

  Her eyes studied some of the pictures. She began to say something but her mother stepped into the doorway suddenly. Her dark face was even darker than before. "There's a call for you."

  "Me?" Gillette asked.

  "It's somebody named Bishop. He says it's important."

  "Frank, what's--"

  The detective's voice was raw with urgency. "Listen to me carefully, Wyatt. We could lose the line any minute. Shawn isn't dead."

  "What? But Miller--"

  "No, we were wrong. Stephen Miller isn't Shawn. It's somebody else. I'm at CCU. Linda Sanchez found a message for me on the main CCU voice mail. Before he died Miller called and left it. Remember when Phate broke into CCU and went after you?"

  "Right."

  "Miller was just coming back from the medical center then. He was in the parking lot and saw Phate run out of the building and jump in a car. He followed him."

  "Why?"

  "To collar him."

  "By himself?" Gillette asked.

  "The message said he wanted to bring the killer in on his own. He said he'd screwed up so many times that he wanted to prove that he could do something right."

  "Then he didn't kill himself?"

  "Nope. They haven't done the autopsy yet but I had a medical examiner check for traces of powder burns on his hands. There weren't any--if he'd killed himself there would've been plenty of trace. Phate must've seen Miller following and then killed him. Then he pretended to be Miller and intentionally got caught cracking into the State Department. He hacked into Miller's workstation at CCU and planted those fake e-mails and took his machines and disks out of his house. We're sure the suicide note was false too. It was all to stop us from looking for the real Shawn."