The Blue Nowhere

CHAPTER 0001010 / TEN

At 1:00 P.M. a tall man in a gray suit walked into the Computer Crimes Unit.

He was accompanied by a stocky woman wearing a forest-green pantsuit. Two uniformed state troopers were beside them. Their shoulders were damp from the rain and their faces were grim. They walked to Stephen Miller's cubicle.

The tall man said, "Steve."

Miller stood, brushed his hand through his thinning hair. He said, "Captain Bernstein."

"I've got something to tell you," the captain said in that tone that Wyatt Gillette recognized immediately as the precursor to tragic news. His look included Linda Sanchez and Tony Mott. They joined him. "I wanted to come in person. We just found Andy Anderson's body in Milliken Park. It looks like the perp – the one in the Gibson woman's killing – got him."

"Oh," Sanchez choked, her hand going to her mouth. She began to cry. "Not Andy… No!"

Mott's face grew dark. He muttered something Gillette couldn't hear.

Patricia Nolan had spent the past half hour sitting with Gillette, speculating about what software the killer might've used to invade Lara Gibson's computer. As they'd talked she'd opened her purse, taken out a small bottle and, incongruously, started applying nail polish. Now, the tiny brush drooped in her hand. "Oh, my God."

Stephen Miller closed his eyes momentarily. "What happened?" he asked in a shaky voice.

The door pushed open and Frank Bishop and Bob Shelton hurried into the room. "We heard," Shelton said. "We got back here as fast as we could. It's true?"

The tableau of shocked faces before them, though, left little doubt.

Sanchez asked through the tears, "Have you talked to his wife? Oh, God, and he's got that little girl, Connie. She's only five or six."

"The commander and a counselor are on their way over to the house right now."

"What the hell happened?" Miller repeated.

Captain Bernstein said, "We have a pretty good idea -there was a witness, a woman walking her dog in the park. Seems like Andy'd just collared somebody named Peter Fowler."

"Right," Shelton said. "He was the dealer we think supplied the perp with some of his weapons."

Captain Bernstein continued, "Only it looks like he must've thought that Fowler was the killer. He was blond and wearing a denim jacket. Those denim fibers crime scene found on Lara Gibson must've been stuck to the knife the killer bought from Fowler. Anyway, while Andy was busy cuffing Fowler, a white male came up behind him. He was late twenties, dark hair, navy blue suit and carrying a briefcase. He stabbed Andy in the back. The woman went to call for help and that was all she saw. The killer stabbed Fowler to death too."

"Why didn't he call for backup?" Mott asked.

Bernstein frowned. "Well, now, that was odd – we checked his cell phone and the last number he'd dialed was to dispatch. It was a completed three-minute call. But there was no record of central receiving it and none of the dispatchers talked to him. Nobody can figure out how that happened."

"Easy," the hacker said. "The killer cracked the switch."

"You're Gillette," the captain said. He didn't need a nod to verify his identity; the tracking anklet was very evident. "What's that mean, 'cracked the switch'?"

"He hacked into the cell phone company's computer and had all of Andy's outgoing calls sent to his own phone. Probably pretended he was the dispatcher and told him a squad car was on the way. Then he shut down Andy's phone service so he couldn't call anyone else for help."

The captain nodded slowly. "He did all that? Jesus, what the hell're we up against?"

"The best social engineer I've ever heard of," Gillette said.

"Goddamit!" Shelton shouted at him. "Why don't you just can the fucking computer buzzwords?"

Frank Bishop touched his partner's arm, said to the captain, "This'd be my fault, sir."

"Your fault?" Captain Bernstein asked the thin detective. "What do you mean?"

Bishop's slow eyes moved from Gillette to the floor. "Andy was a white-collar cop. He wasn't qualified for a takedown."

"He was still a trained detective," the captain said.

"Training's a lot different than what goes down on the street." Bishop looked up. "In my opinion, sir."

The woman who'd accompanied Bernstein stirred. The captain glanced at her and then announced, "This is Detective Susan Wilkins from Homicide in Oakland. She'll be taking over the case. She's got a task force of troopers – crime scene and tactical – up and running at headquarters in San Jose."

Turning to Bishop, the captain said, "Frank, I've okayed that request of yours – for the MARINKILL case. There's a report that the perps were spotted an hour ago outside a convenience store ten miles south of Walnut Creek. It looks like they're headed this way." He glanced at Miller. "Steve, you'll take over what Andy was doing – the computer side of the case. Working with Susan."

"Of course, Captain. You bet."

The captain turned to Patricia Nolan. "You're the one the commander called us about, right? The security consultant from that computer outfit? Horizon On-Line?"

She nodded.

"They asked if you'd stay on board too."

"They?"

"The powers-that-be in Sacramento."

"Oh. Sure, I'd be happy to."

Gillette didn't merit a direct address. The captain said to Miller, "The troopers here'll take the prisoner back to San Jose."

"Look," Gillette protested, "don't send me back."

"What?"

"You need me. I have to-"

The captain dismissed him with a wave and turned to Susan Wilkins, gesturing at the white-board and talking to her about the case.

"Captain," Gillette called, "you can't send me back."

"We need his help," Nolan said emphatically.

But the captain glanced at the two large troopers who'd accompanied him here. They cuffed Gillette, positioned themselves on either side – as if he himself were the murderer – and started out of the office.

"No," Gillette protested. "You don't know how dangerous this man is!"

Another look from the captain was all it took. The troopers escorted him quickly toward the exit. Gillette started to ask Bishop to intervene but the detective was elsewhere mentally, apparently already on his MARINKILL assignment. He stared vacantly at the floor.

"All right," Gillette heard Detective Susan Wilkins say to Miller, Sanchez and Mott. "I'm sorry for what's happened to your boss but I've been through this before and I'm sure you've been through it before and the best way to show that you cared for him is to apprehend this perpetrator and that's what we're going to do. Now, I think we're all on the same page in terms of our approach. I'm up to speed on the file and the crime scene report and I've got a proactive plan in mind. The preliminary report is that Detective Anderson – as well as this Fowler individual – were stabbed. Cause of death was trauma to the heart. They-"

"Wait!" Gillette shouted just as he was about to be led out the door.

Wilkins paused. Bernstein gestured to the cops to get him out. But Gillette said quickly, "What about Lara Gibson? Was she stabbed in the chest too?"

"What's your point?" Bernstein asked.

"Was she?" Gillette asked emphatically. "And the victims in the other killings – in Portland and in Virginia?"

No one said anything for a moment. Finally Bob Shelton glanced at the report on the Lara Gibson killing. "Cause of death was a stab wound to-"

"The heart, right?" Gillette asked.

Shelton glanced at his partner then to Bernstein. He nodded. Tony Mott reminded, "We don't know about Virginia and Oregon – he erased the files."

"It'll be the same," Gillette said. "I guarantee it."

Shelton asked, "How'd you know that?"

"Because I know his motive now."

"Which is?" Bernstein asked.

"Access."

"What does that mean?" Shelton muttered belligerently.

Patricia Nolan said, "That's what all hackers're after. Access to information, to secrets, to data."

"When you hack," Gillette said, "access is God."

"What's that got to do with the stabbings?"

"The killer's a MUDhead."

"Sure," Tony Mott said. "I know MUDs." Miller did too, it seemed. He was nodding.

Gillette said, "Another acronym. It stands for multiuser domain or dimension. It's a bunch of specialized chat rooms – places on the Internet where people log on for role-playing games. Adventure games, knights' quests, science fiction, war. The people who play MUDs're, you know, pretty decent – businessmen, geeks, a lot of students, professors. But three or four years ago there was a big controversy about this game called Access."

"I heard about that," Miller said. "A lot of Internet providers refused to carry it."

Gillette nodded. "The way it worked was that there was a virtual city. It was populated with characters who carried on a normal life – going to work, dating, raising a family, whatever. But on the anniversary of a famous death – like John Kennedy's assassination or the day Lennon was shot or Good Friday – a random number generator picked one of the players to be a killer. He had one week to work his way into people's lives and kill as many of them as he could.

"The killer could pick anyone to be his victim but the more challenging the murder the more points he got. A politician with a bodyguard was worth ten points. An armed cop was worth fifteen. The one limitation on the killer was that he had to get close enough to the victims to stab them in the heart with a knife – that was the ultimate form of access."

"Jesus, that's our perp in a nutshell," Tony Mott said. "The knife, stab wounds to the chest, the anniversary dates, going after people who're hard to kill. He won the game in Portland and Virginia. And here he is, playing it in Silicon Valley." The young cop added cynically, "He's at the expert level."

"Level?" Bishop asked.

"In computer games," Gillette explained, "you move up in the degree of challenge from the beginning level to the hardest – the expert – level."

"So, this whole thing is a fucking game to him?" Shelton said. "That's a little hard to believe."

"No," Patricia Nolan said. "I'm afraid it's pretty easy to believe. The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico considers criminal hackers compulsive, progressive offenders. Just like lust-driven serial killers. Like Wyatt said, access is God. They have to find increasingly intense crimes to satisfy themselves. This guy's spent so much time in the Machine World he probably doesn't see any difference between a digital character and a human being." With a glance at the white-board Nolan continued, "I'd even say that, to him, the machines themselves're more important than people. A human death is nothing; a crashed hard drive, well, that's a tragedy."

Bernstein nodded. "That's helpful. We'll consider it." He nodded at Gillette. "But you've still got to go back to the prison."

"No!" the hacker cried.

"Look, we're already in deep water getting a federal prisoner released under a John Doe order. Andy was willing to take that risk. I'm not. That's all there is to it."

He pointed at the troopers and they led the hacker out of the dinosaur pen. It seemed to Gillette that they gripped him harder this time – as if they could sense his desperation and desire to flee. Nolan sighed and shook her head, gave a mournful smile of farewell to Gillette as he was led out.

Detective Susan Wilkins started up her monologue again but her voice soon faded as Gillette stepped outside. The rain was coming down steadily. One of the troopers said, "Sorry about that," though whether it was for his failed attempt to stay at CCU or the absence of an umbrella Gillette didn't know.

The trooper eased him down into the backseat of the squad car and slammed the door.

Gillette closed his eyes, rested his head against the glass. Heard the hollow sound of the rain pelting the top of the car.

He felt utter dismay at this defeat.

Lord, how close he'd come…

He thought of the months in prison. He thought of all the planning he'd done. Wasted. It was all -

The car door opened.

Frank Bishop was crouching down. Water ran down his face, glistening on his sideburns and staining his shirt, but his sprayed hair, at least, was impervious to the drops. "Got a question for you, sir."

Sir?

Gillette asked, "What's that?"

"That MUD stuff. That's not hogwash?"

"Nope. The killer's playing his own version of that game – a real-life version."

"Is anybody still playing it now? On the Internet, I mean."

"I doubt it. Real MUDheads were so offended by it that they sabotaged the games and spammed the players until they stopped."

The detective glanced back at the rusting soda machine in front of the CCU building. He then asked, "That fellow in there, Stephen Miller – he's a lightweight, isn't he?"

Gillette thought for a moment and said, "He's from the elder days."

"The what?"

The phrase meant the sixties and seventies – that revolutionary era in the history of computing that ended more or less with the release of Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-10, the computer that changed the face of the Machine World forever. But Gillette didn't explain this. He said simply, "He was good, I'd guess, but he's past his prime now. And in Silicon Valley that means, yeah, he's a lightweight."

"I see." Bishop straightened up, looking out at the traffic that sped along the nearby freeway. He then said to the troopers, "Bring this man back inside, please."

They looked at each other and, when Bishop nodded emphatically, hustled Gillette out of the squad car.

As they walked back into the CCU office Gillette heard Susan Wilkins's voice still droning on, "… liaise with security at Mobile America and Pac Bell if need be and I've established lines of communication with the tactical teams. Now, in my estimation it's probably sixty-forty more efficient to be located closer to main resources so we'll be moving the Computer Crimes Unit to headquarters in San Jose. I understand you're missing some administrative support in terms of your receptionist and at HQ we'll be able to mitigate that…"

Gillette tuned out the words and wondered what Bishop was up to.

The cop walked up to Bob Shelton, with whom he whispered for a moment. The conversation ended with Bishop's asking, "You with me on this?"

The stocky cop surveyed Gillette with a disdainful gaze and then muttered something grudgingly affirmative.

As Wilkins continued to speak, Captain Bernstein frowned and walked up to Bishop, who said to him, "I'd like to run this case, sir, and I want Gillette here to work it with us."

"You wanted the MARINKILL case."

"I did, sir. But I changed my mind."

"I know what you said before, Frank. But Andy's death

– that wasn't your fault. He should've known his limits. Nobody forced him to go after that guy alone."

"I don't care if it was my fault or not. That's not what this is about. It's about collaring a dangerous perp before someone else gets killed."

Captain Bernstein caught his meaning and glanced at Wilkins. "Susan's run major homicides before. She's good."

"I know she is, sir. We've worked together. But she's textbook. She's never worked in the trenches, the way I have. I ought to be running the case. But the other problem is that we're way out of our league here. We need somebody sharp on this one." The stiff hair nodded toward Gillette. "And I think he's as good as the perp."

"Probably he is," Bernstein muttered. "But that's not my worry."

"I'll ride point on this one, sir. Something goes bad, it can all come down on me. Nobody else has to take any heat."

Patricia Nolan joined them and said, "Captain, stopping this guy's going to take more than fingerprints and canvassing witnesses."

Shelton sighed. "Welcome to the new fucking millennium."

Bernstein reluctantly nodded to Bishop. "Okay, you got the case. You'll have full tactical and crime scene backup. And pick some people from Homicide in San Jose to help you."

"Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan," Bishop said without hesitating. "I'd like them here ASAP if you could arrange that, sir. I want to brief everybody."

The captain called HQ to summon the detectives here. He hung up. "They're on their way."

Bernstein then broke the news to Susan Wilkins and, more perplexed than upset at the loss of the new assignment, she left. The captain asked Bishop, "You want to move the operation back to headquarters?"

Bishop said, "No, we'll stay here, sir." He nodded toward a row of computer screens. "This's where we'll do most of the work, I've got a feeling."

"Well, good luck, Frank."

Bishop said to the troopers who'd come to take Gillette back to San Ho, "You can take the cuffs off."

One of the men did this then he pointed at the hacker's leg. "How 'bout the anklet?"

"No," Bishop said, offering a very uncharacteristic smile. "I think we'll keep that on."

A short while later two men joined the team in CCU: a broad, swarthy Latino who was extremely muscular, Gold's Gym muscular, and a tall, sandy-haired detective in one of those stylish four-button men's suits, dark shirt and dark tie. Bishop introduced Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan, the detectives from headquarters Bishop had requested.

"Now, I'd like to say a word," Bishop said, tucking his unruly shirt into his slacks and stepping in front of the team. He looked over everybody, holding their gazes for a moment. "This fellow we're after – he's somebody who's perfectly willing to kill anybody in his way and that includes law enforcers and innocents. He's an expert at social engineering." A glance toward the newcomers, Ramirez and Morgan. "Which is basically disguise and diversion. So it's important that you continually remind yourself what we know about him."

Bishop continued his low, unhesitant monologue. "I think we have enough confirmation to place him in his late twenties. He's medium build, maybe blond but probably dark-haired, clean shaven but sometimes disguised with fake facial hair. He prefers a Ka-bar as a murder weapon and wants to get close enough to his victims to inflict a fatal chest wound. He can break into the phone company and interrupt service or transfer calls. He can hack into law enforcement computers" – Gillette now received a glance – "excuse me, crackinto computers and destroy police records. He likes challenges, he thinks of killing as a game. He's spent a lot of time on the East Coast and he's somewhere in the Silicon Valley area but we have no exact locale. We think he's bought some items for his disguises at a theatrical supply store on Camino Real in Mountain View. He's a progressive, lust-driven sociopath who's lost touch with reality and is treating what he's doing like it's some big computer game."

Gillette was astonished. The detective's back was to the white-board as he recited all of this information. The hacker realized that he'd misjudged the man. All the time that the detective had seemed to stare absently out the window or at the floor he'd been absorbing the evidence.

Bishop lowered his head but kept his eyes on them all. "I'm not going to lose anybody else on this team. So watch your backs and don't trust another living soul – even people you think you know. Go on this assumption: Nothing is what it seems to be."

Gillette found himself nodding along with the others.

"Now – about his victims… We know that he's going after people who're hard to get close to. People with bodyguards and security systems. The harder to get to the better. We'll have to keep that in mind when we're trying to anticipate him. We're going to keep to the general plan for the investigation. Huerto and Tim, I want you two to run the Anderson crime scene in Palo Alto. Canvass everybody you can find in and around Milliken Park. Bob and I didn't get a chance to find that witness who might've seen the killer's vehicle outside the restaurant where Ms. Gibson was killed. That's what he and I'll do. And, Wyatt, you're going to head up the computer side of the investigation."

Gillette shook his head, not sure he'd understood Bishop correctly. "I'm sorry?"

"You," Bishop responded, "are going to head up the computer side of the investigation." No further explanation. Stephen Miller said nothing though his eyes stared coldly at the hacker as he continued to pointlessly rearrange the sloppy piles of disks and paperwork on his desk.

Bishop asked, "Should we be worried about him listening to our phones? I mean, that's how he killed Andy."

Patricia Nolan replied, "It's a risk, I suppose, but the killer'd have to monitor hundreds of frequencies for the numbers of our cell phones."

"I agree," Gillette said. "And even if he cracked the switch he'd have to sit with a headset all day long, listening to our conversations. Doesn't sound like he's got the time to do that. In the park he was close to Andy. That's how he got his specific frequency."

Besides, as it turned out there wasn't much to do about the risk. Miller explained that, while the CCU did have a scrambler, it would only work when the caller on the other end of the line had a scrambler as well. As for secure cell phones Miller explained, "They're five thousand bucks each." And said nothing more. Meaning, apparently, that such toys weren't in the CCU budget and never would be.

Bishop then sent Ramirez and the GQ cop, Tim Morgan, to Palo Alto. After they'd left, Bishop asked Gillette, "You were telling Andy that you thought you could find out more about how this killer got into Ms. Gibson's computer?"

"That's right. Whatever this guy is doing has to've caused some buzz in the hacker underground. What I'll do is go online and-"

Bishop nodded to a workstation. "Just do what you have to do and give us a report in a half hour."

"Just like that?" Gillette asked.

"Make it less if you can. Twenty minutes."

"Uhm." Stephen Miller stirred.

"What is it?" the detective asked him.

Gillette was expecting the cybercop to make a comment about his demotion. But that wasn't what he had in mind. "The thing is," Miller protested, "Andy said he wasn't ever supposed to go online. And then there's that court order that said he couldn't. It was part of his sentencing."

"That's all true," Bishop said, eyes scanning the whiteboard. "But Andy's dead and the court isn't running this case. I am." He glanced over at Gillette with a look of polite impatience. "So I'd appreciate it if you'd get going."

CHAPTER 00001011 / ELEVEN

Wyatt Gillette settled himself in the cheap office chair. He was in a dim workstation cubicle in the back of the CCU, quiet, away from the others on the team.

Staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, he rolled the chair closer and wiped his hands on his pants. Then his callused fingertips rose and began pounding furiously on the black keyboard. His eyes never left the screen. Gillette knew the location of every character and symbol on the keyboard and touch-typed a 110 words a minute with perfect accuracy. When he was starting to hack years ago he found that eight fingers were too slow so he'd taught himself a new keyboarding technique in which he used his thumbs on certain keys too, not just reserving them for the space bar.

Weak otherwise, his forearms and fingers were pure muscle; in prison, where most inmates spend hours lifting iron in the yard, Gillette had done only fingertip push-ups to stay in shape for his passion. Now, the plastic keyboard danced under his hammering as he prepared to go online.

Most of today's Internet is a combination shopping mall, USA Today, multiplex cinema and amusement park. Browsers and search engines are populated with cartoon characters and decorated with pretty pictures (plenty of those damn ads too). The point-and-click technology of the mouse can be mastered by a three-year-old. Simpleminded Help menus await at every new window. This is the Internet as packaged for the public through the glossy facade of the commercialized World Wide Web.

But the real Internet – the Internet of the true hacker, lurking behind the Web – is a wild, raw place, where hackers use complicated commands, telnet utilities and communications software stripped bare as a dragster to sail throughout the world at, literally, the speed of light.

This is what Wyatt Gillette was about to do.

There was a preliminary matter to take care of, though. A mythological wizard wouldn't go off on a quest without his magic wands and book of spells and potions; computer wizards have to do the same.

One of the first skills hackers learn is the art of hiding software. Since you have to assume that an enemy hacker, if not the police or FBI, will at some point seize or destroy your machine, you never leave the only copy of your tools on your hard drive and backup disks in your home.

You hide them in a distant computer, one that has no link to you.

Most hackers store their stash in university computers because their security is notoriously lacking. But Gillette had spent years working on his software tools, writing code from scratch in many cases, as well as modifying existing programs to suit his needs. It'd be a tragedy for him to lose all that work – and pure hell for many of the world's computer users since Gillette's programs would help even a mediocre hacker crack into nearly any corporate or government site.

So he cached his tools in a slightly more secure location than the data-processing department of Dartmouth or the University of Tulsa. With a glance behind him now to make sure that no one was "shoulder surfing" – standing behind him and reading the screen – he typed a command and linked the CCU's computer with another one several states away. After a moment these words scrolled onto the screen:

Welcome to the United States Air Force

Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Research Facility

#Username?

In response to this request he typed Jarmstrong. Gillette's father's name was John Armstrong Gillette. It was generally abad idea for a hacker to pick a screen name or username that had any connection with his real life but he'd allowed himself this one concession to his human side. The computer then asked:

#Password?

He typed 4%xTtfllk5$$60%4Q, which was, unlike the user-name, pure, stone-cold hacker. This series of characters had been excruciating to memorize (part of his mental daily calisthenics in prison was recalling two dozen passwords as long as this one) but it would be impossible for someone to guess and, because it was seventeen characters long, would take a supercomputer weeks to crack. An IBM-clone personal computer would have to work continuously for hundreds of years before it spit out a password this complicated.

The cursor blinked for a moment then the screen shifted and he read:

Welcome, Capt. J. Armstrong

In three minutes he'd downloaded a number of files from the fictional Captain Armstrong's account. His weaponry included the famous SATAN program (the Security Administer Tool for Analyzing Networks, used by both sysadmins and hackers to check the "hackability" of computer networks), several breaking and entering programs that would let him grab root access on various types of machines and networks, a custom-made Web browser and newsreader, a cloaking program to hide his presence while he was in someone else's computer and which would delete traces of his activities when he logged off, sniffer programs that would "sniff out" – find – user-names, passwords and other helpful information on the Net or in someone's computer, a communications program to send that data back to him, encryption programs and lists of hacker Web sites and anonymizer sites (commercial services that would in effect "launder" e-mails and messages so that the recipient couldn't trace Gillette).

The last of the tools he downloaded was a program he'd hacked together a few years ago, HyperTrace, which could track down other users on the Net.

With these tools downloaded onto a high-capacity disk Gillette logged out of the Los Alamos site. He paused for a moment, flexed his fingers and then sat forward. Pounding on the keys with the subtlety of a sumo wrestler once more, Gillette entered the Net. He began the search in the multiuser domains because of the killer's apparent motivation – playing a Real World version of the infamous Access game. No one Gillette queried on the subject, however, had played Access or knew anyone who had -or so they claimed. Still, Gillette came away with a few leads.

From the MUDs he moved to the World Wide Web, which everyone talks about but few could define. The WWW is simply an international network of computers, accessed through special computer protocols that let users see graphics and hear sounds and leap through a Web site, and to other sites, by simply clicking on certain places on their screen – hyperlinks. Prior to the Web most of the information on the Net was in text form and navigating from one site to another was extremely cumbersome. The Web is still in its adolescence, having been born a little over a decade ago at CERN, the Swiss physics institute.

Gillette searched through the underground hacking sites on the Web – the eerie, Tenderloin districts of the Net. Gaining entry to some of these sites required an answer to an esoteric question on hacking, finding and clicking on a microscopic dot on the screen or supplying a passcode. None of these barriers, though, barred Wyatt Gillette for more than a minute or two.

From site to site to site, losing himself further and further in the Blue Nowhere, prowling through computers that might have been in Moscow or Cape Town or Mexico City. Or right next door in Cupertino or Santa Clara.

Gillette sped through this world so quickly that he was reluctant to take his fingers off the keys for fear of losing his stride. So rather than jotting notes with pen and paper, as most hackers did, he copied material he thought was useful and pasted it into a word-processing window he kept open on the screen.

From the Web he searched the Usenet – the collection of 80,000 newsgroups, in which people interested in a particular subject can post messages, pictures, programs, movies and sound clips. Gillette scoured the classic hacking newsgroups like alt.2600, alt.hack, alt.virus and alt.binaries.hacking.utilities, cutting and pasting whatever seemed relevant. He found references to dozens of newsgroups that hadn't existed when he'd gone to jail. He jumped to those groups, scrolled through them and found mention of still others.

More scrolling, more reading, more cutting and pasting.

A snap under his fingers and on the screen he saw:

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

One of his powerful keystrokes had jammed the keyboard, which had often happened when he'd been hacking. Gillette unplugged it, tossed it on the floor behind him, hooked up another keyboard and started typing again.

He then moved to the Internet Relay Chat rooms. The IRC was an unregulated no-holds-barred series of networks where you could find real-time discussions among people who had similar interests. You typed your comment, hit the ENTER key and your words appeared on the screens of everyone who was logged into the room at that time. He logged into the room #hack (the rooms were designated by a number sign followed by a descriptive word). It was in this same room where he'd spent thousands of hours, sharing information, arguing and joking with fellow hackers around the world.

After the IRC Gillette began searching through the BBS, bulletin boards, which are like Web sites but can be accessed for only the cost of a local phone call – no Internet service provider is required. Many were legitimate but many others – with names like DeathHack and Silent Spring – were the darkest parts of the online world. Completely unregulated and unmonitored, these were the places to go for recipes for bombs and poisonous gases and debilitating computer viruses that would wipe the hard drives of half the population of the world.

Following the leads – losing himself in Web sites, newsgroups, chat rooms and archives. Hunting…

This is what lawyers do when they paw through hoary old shelves searching for that one case that will save their client from execution, what sportsmen do easing through the grass toward where they thought they heard the snarl of a bear, what lovers do seeking the core of each other's lust…

Except that hunting in the Blue Nowhere isn't like searching library stacks or a field of tall grass or on your mate's smooth flesh; it's like prowling through the entire ever-expanding universe, which contains not only the known world and its unshared mysteries but worlds past and worlds yet to come.

Endless.

Snap.

He had broken another key – the all-important E. Gillette flung this keyboard into the corner of the cubicle, where it joined its dead friend.

He plugged in a new one and kept going.

At 2:30 P.M. Gillette emerged from the cubicle. His back was racked with pure fiery pain from sitting frozen in one place. Yet he could still feel the exhilarating rush from that brief time he'd spent online and the fierce reluctance at leaving the machine.

In the main part of the CCU he found Bishop talking with Shelton; the others were on telephones or standing around the white-board, looking over the evidence. Bishop noticed Gillette first and fell silent.

"I've found something," the hacker said, holding up a stack of printouts.

"Tell us."

"Dumb it down," Shelton reminded. "What's the bottom line?"

"The bottom line," Gillette responded, "is that there's somebody named Phate. And we've got a real problem."

CHAPTER 00001100 / TWELVE

"Fate" Frank Bishop asked.

A Gillette said. "That's his username – his screen name. Only he spells it p-h-a-t-e. Like p-h phishing, remember? The way hackers do."

It's all in the spelling…

"What's his real name?" Patricia Nolan asked.

"I don't know. Nobody seems to know much about him – he's a loner – but the people who've heard of him're scared as hell."

"A wizard?" Stephen Miller asked.

"Definitely a wizard."

Bishop asked, "Why do you think he's the killer?"

Gillette flipped through the printouts. "Here's what I found. Phate and a friend of his, somebody named Shawn, wrote some software called Trapdoor. Now, 'trapdoor' in the computer world means a hole built into a security system that lets the software designers get back inside to fix problems without needing a passcode. Phate and Shawn use the same name for their script but this's a little different. It's a program that somehow lets them get inside anybody's computer."

"Trapdoor," Bishop mused. "Like a gallows, too."

"Like a gallows," Gillette echoed.

Nolan asked, "How does it work?"

Gillette was about to explain it to her in the language of the initiated then glanced at Bishop and Shelton.

Dumb it down.

The hacker walked to one of the blank white-boards and drew a chart. He said, "The way information travels on the Net isn't like on a telephone. Everything sent online – an e-mail, music you listen to, a picture you download, the graphics on a Web site – is broken down into small fragments of data called 'packets.' When your browser requests something from a Web site it sends packets out into the Internet. At the receiving end the Web server computer reassembles your request and then sends its response – also broken into packets – back to your machine."

"Why're they broken up?" Shelton asked.

Nolan answered, "So that a lot of different messages can be sent over the same wires at the same time. Also, if some of the packets get lost or corrupted your computer gets a notice about it and resends just the problem packets. You don't have to resend the whole message."

Gillette pointed to his diagram and continued, "The packets are forwarded through the Internet by these routers – huge computers around the country that guide the packets to their final destination. Routers have real tight security but Phate's managed to crack into some of them and put a packet-sniffer inside."

"Which," Bishop said, "looks for certain packets, I assume."

"Exactly," Gillette continued. "It identifies them by somebody's screen name or the address of the machines the pack-ets're coming from or going to. When the sniffer finds the packets it's been waiting for it diverts them to Phate's computer. Once they're there Phate adds something to the packets." Gillette asked Miller, "You ever heard of stenanography?"

The cop shook his head. Tony Mott and Linda Sanchez weren't familiar with the term either but Patricia Nolan said, "That's hiding secret data in, say, pictures or sound files you're sending online. Spy stuff."

"Right," Gillette confirmed. "Encrypted data is woven right into the file itself – so that even if somebody intercepts your e-mail and reads it or looks at the picture you've sent all they'll see is an innocent-looking file and not the secret data. Well, that's what Phate's Trapdoor software does. Only it doesn't hide messages in the files – it hides an application."

"A working program?" Nolan said.

"Yep. Then he sends it on its way to the victim."

Nolan shook her head. Her pale, doughy face revealed both shock and admiration. Her voice was hushed with awe as she said, "No one's ever done that before."

"What's this software that he sends?" Bishop asked.

"It's a demon," Gillette answered, drawing a second diagram to show how Trapdoor worked.

"Demon?" Shelton asked.

"There's a whole category of software called 'bots,'" Gillette explained. "Short for 'robots.' And that's just what they are – software robots. Once they're activated they run completely on their own, without any human input. They can travel from one machine to another, they can reproduce, they can hide, they can communicate with other computers or people, they can kill themselves."

Gillette continued, "Demons are a type of bot. They sit inside your computer and do things like run the clock and automatically back up files. Scut work. But the Trapdoor demon does something a lot scarier. Once it's inside your computer it modifies the operating system and, when you go online, it links your computer to Phate's."

"And he seizes root," Bishop said.

"Exactly."

"Oh, this is bad," Linda Sanchez muttered. "Man…"

Nolan twined more of her unkempt hair around a finger. Beneath the fragile designer glasses her green eyes were troubled – as if she'd just seen a terrible accident. "So if you surf the Web, read a news story, read an e-mail, pay a bill, listen to music, download pictures, look up a stock quotation – if you're online at all – Phate can get inside your computer."

"Yep. Anything you get via the Internet might have the Trapdoor demon in it."

"But what about firewalls?" Miller asked. "Why don't they stop it?"

Firewalls are computer sentries that keep files or data you haven't requested out of your machine. Gillette explained, "That's what's brilliant about this: Because the demon's hidden in data that you've asked for, firewalls won't stop it."

"Brilliant," Bob Shelton muttered sarcastically.

Tony Mott drummed his fingers absently on his bike helmet. "He's breaking rule number one."

"Which is?" Bishop asked.

Gillette recited, "Leave the civilians alone."

Mott, nodding, continued, "Hackers feel that the government, corporations and other hackers are fair game. But you should never target the general public."

Sanchez asked, "Is there any way to tell if he's inside your machine?"

"Only little things – your keyboard seems a little sluggish, the graphics look a little fuzzy, a game doesn't respond quite as quickly as usual, your hard drive engages for a second or two when it shouldn't. Nothing so obvious that most people'd notice."

Shelton asked, "How come you didn't find this demon thing in Lara Gibson's computer?"

"I did – only what I found was its corpse: digital gibberish. Phate built some kind of self-destruct into it. If the demon senses you're looking for it, it rewrites itself into garbage."

"How did you find all this out?" Bishop asked.

Gillette shrugged. "Pieced it together from these." He handed Bishop the printouts.

Bishop looked at the top sheet of paper.

To: Group

From: Triple-X

I heard that Titan233 was asking for a copy of Trapdoor. Don't do it, man. Forget you heard about it. I know about Phate and Shawn. They're DANGEROUS. I'm not kidding.

"Who's he?" Shelton asked. "Triple-X? Be good to have a talk with him in person."

"I don't have any clue what his real name is or where he lives," Gillette said. "Maybe he was in some cybergang with Phate and Shawn."

Bishop flipped through the rest of the printouts, all of which gave some detail or rumor about Trapdoor. Triple-X's name was on several of them.

Nolan tapped one. "Can we trace the information in the header back to Triple-X's machine?"

Gillette explained to Bishop and Shelton, "Headers in newsgroup postings and e-mails show the route the message took from the sender's computer to the recipient's.

Theoretically you can look at a header and trace a message back to find the location of the sender's machine. But I checked these already." Nodding at the sheet. "They're fake. Most serious hackers falsify the headers so nobody can find them."

"So it's a dead end?" Shelton muttered.

"I just read everything quickly. We should look at them again carefully," Gillette said, nodding at the printouts. "Then I'm going to hack together a bot of my own. It'll search for any mention of the words Phate,' 'Shawn,' 'Trapdoor'or Triple-X.'"

"A fishing expedition," Bishop mused. "P-h phishing."

It's all in the spelling…

Tony Mott said, "Let's call CERT. See if they've heard anything about this."

Although the organization itself denied it, every geek in the world knew that these initials stood for the Computer Emergency Response Team. Located on the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh, CERT was a clearinghouse for information about viruses and other computer threats. It also warned systems administrators of impending hacker attacks.

After the organization was described to him Bishop nodded. "Let's give them a call."

Nolan added, "But don't say anything about Wyatt. CERT's connected with the Department of Defense."

Mott made the call and spoke to someone he knew at the organization. After a brief conversation he hung up. "They've never heard about Trapdoor or anything similar. They want us to keep them posted."

Linda Sanchez was staring at the picture of Andy Anderson's daughter on his desk. In a troubled whisper she said, "So nobody who goes online is safe."

Gillette looked into the woman's round brown eyes. "Phate can find out every secret you've got. He can impersonate you or read your medical records. He can empty your bank accounts, make illegal political contributions in your name, give you a phony lover and send your wife or husband copies of fake love letters. He could get you fired."

"Or," Patricia Nolan added softly, "he could kill you."

"Mr. Holloway, are you with us?… Mr. Holloway!"

"Huh?"

"'Huh?' 'Huh?' Is that the response of a respectful student? I've asked you twice to answer the question and you're staring out the window. If you don't do the assignments we're going to have a prob-

"What was the question again?"

"Let me finish, young man. If you don't do the assignments then we're going to have some problems. Do you know how many deserving students're on the waiting list to get into this school? Of course you don't and you don't care either. Did you read the assignment?"

"Not exactly."

"'Not exactly.' I see. Well, the question is: Define the octal number system and give me the decimal equivalent of the octal numbers 05726 and 12438. But why do you want to know the question if you haven't read the assignment? You can hardly answer-

"The octal system is a number system with eight digits, like the decimal system has ten and the binary system has two."

"So, you remember something from the Discovery Channel, Mr. Holloway."

"No, I-

"If you know so much why don't you come up to the board and try to convert those numbers for us. Up to the board, up you go!"

"I don't need to write it out. The octal number 05726 converts to decimal 3030. You made a mistake with the second number – 12438 isn't an octal number. There's no digit 8 in the octal system. Only zero through seven."

"I didn't make a mistake. It was a trick question. To see if the class was on its toes."

"If you say so."

"Okay, Mr. Holloway, time for a visit to the principal."

Sitting in the dining room office of his house in Los Altos, listening to a CD of James Earl Jones in Othello, Phate was roaming through the files of the young character, Jamie Turner, and planning that evening's visit to St. Francis Academy.

But thinking of the student had brought back memories of his own academic history – like this difficult recollection of freshman high school math. Phate's early schooling fell into a very predictable pattern. For the first semester he'd get straight A's. But in the spring his grades would plunge to D's or F's. This was because he could stave off the boredom of school for the first three or four months but after that even going to class was too tedious for him and he'd invariably miss most of the second-semester.

Then his parents would ship him off to a new school. And the same thing would happen again.

Mr. Holloway, are you with us?

Well, that had been Phate's problem all along. No, basically he hadn't been with anyone ever; he was light-years ahead of them.

His teachers and counselors would try. They'd put him into gifted-and-talented classes and then advanced G &T programs but even those didn't hold his interest. And when he grew bored he became sadistic and vicious. His teachers – like poor Mr. Cummings, the freshman math teacher of the octal number incident – stopped calling on him, for fear that he'd mock them and their own limitations.

After some years of this his parents – both scientists themselves – pretty much gave up. Busy with their own lives (Dad, an electrical engineer; Mom, a chemist for a cosmetics company), they were happy to hand off their boy to a series of tutors after school – in effect, buying themselves a couple of extra hours at their respective jobs. They took to bribing Phate's brother, Richard, two years older, into keeping him occupied – which usually amounted to dropping the boy off on the Atlantic City boardwalk video arcades or at nearby shopping malls with a hundred dollars in quarters at 10:00 A.M. and picking him up twelve hours later.

As for his fellow students… they, of course, disliked him on first meeting. He was the "Brain," he was "Jon the Head," he was "Mr. Wizard." They avoided him during the early days of class and, as the semester wore on, teased and insulted him unmercifully. (At least no one bothered to beat him up because, as one football player said, "A fucking girl could pound the crap out of him. I'm not gonna bother.")

And so to keep the pressure inside his whirling brain from blowing him to pieces he spent more and more time in the one place that challenged him: the Machine World. Since mom and dad were happy to spend money to keep him out of their hair he always had the best personal computers that were available.

A typical high school day would find him tolerating classes then racing home at three P.M. and disappearing into his room, where he would launch himself into bulletin boards or crack the phone company's switches or slip into the computers of the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the Pentagon, Los Alamos, Harvard and CERN. His parents weighed the $800 monthly phone bills against the alternative – missed work and an endless series of meetings with teachers and counselors – and happily opted to write a check to New Jersey Bell.

Still, though, it was obvious that the boy was on a downward spiral – his increasing reclusiveness and vicious outbursts whenever he wasn't online.

But before he bottomed out and, as he'd thought back then, "did a Socrates" with some clever poison whose recipe he'd downloaded from the Net, something happened.

The sixteen-year-old stumbled onto a bulletin board where people were playing a MUD game. This particular one was a medieval game – knights on a quest for a magic sword or ring, that sort of thing. He watched for a while and then shyly keyed, "Can I play?"

One of the seasoned players welcomed him warmly and then asked, "Who do you want to be?"

Young Jon decided to be a knight and went off happily with his band of brothers, killing orcs and dragons and enemy troops for the next eight hours. That night, as he lay in bed, after signing off, he couldn't stop thinking about that remarkable day. It occurred to him that he didn't have to be Jon the Head, he didn't have to be the scorned Mr. Wizard. All day long he'd been a knight in the mythical land of Cyrania and he'd been happy. Maybe in the Real World he could be someone else too.

Who do you want to be?

The next day he signed up for an extracurricular activity at school, something he'd never done before. What he picked was drama club. He soon learned that he had a natural ability to act. The rest of his time at that particular school didn't improve – there was too much bad blood between Jon and his teachers and fellow students – but he didn't care; he had a plan. At the end of the semester he asked his parents if he could transfer to yet a different school for the next, his junior, year. Since he said he'd take care of all the paperwork himself and the transfer wouldn't disrupt their lives they agreed.

The next fall, among the eager students registering for classes at Thomas Jefferson High School for the Gifted was a particularly eager youngster named Jon Patrick Holloway.

The teachers and counselors reviewed the documentation e-mailed to them from his prior schools – the transcripts, which showed his consistent B+ performance in all grades since kindergarten, counselors' glowing reports describing a well-adjusted and -socialized child, his outstanding placement test scores and a number of recommendation letters from his former teachers. The in-person interview with the polite young man – cutting quite a figure in tan slacks, powder blue shirt and navy blazer – went very well and he was heartily welcomed into the school.

The boy always did his assignments and rarely missed a class. He was consistently in the upper-B and lower-A range – pretty much like the other students at Tom Jefferson. He worked out diligently and took up several sports. He'd sit on the grassy hill outside the school, where the in-crowd gathered, and sneak cigarettes and make jokes about the geeks and losers. He dated, went to dances, worked on homecoming floats.

Just like everybody else.

He sat in Susan Coyne's kitchen and fumbled under her blouse and tasted her braces. He and Billy Pickford took his dad's vintage Corvette out onto the highway, where they got the car up to a hundred, and then sped home, where they dismantled and reset the odometer.

He was happy some, moody some, boisterous some.

Just like everybody else.

At the age of seventeen Jon Holloway social engineered himself into one of the most normal and popular kids in school.

He was so popular, in fact, that the funeral of his parents and brother was one of the most widely attended in the history of the small New Jersey town where they were living. (It was a miracle, friends of the family remarked, that young Jon just happened to be taking his computer to a repair shop early Saturday morning when the tragic gas explosion took the lives of his family.)

Jon Holloway had looked at life and decided that God and his parents had fucked him up so much that the only way he could survive was to see it as a MUD game.

And he was now playing again.

Who do you want to be?

In the basement of his pleasant suburban house in Los Altos Phate washed the blood off his Ka-bar knife and began sharpening it, enjoying the hiss of the blade against the sharpening steel he'd bought at Williams-Sonoma.

This was the same knife he'd used to tease to stillness the heart of an important character in the game – Andy Anderson.

Hiss, hiss, hiss…

Access…

As he swiped the knife against the steel Phate's perfect memory recalled a passage from the article, "Life in the Blue Nowhere," which he'd copied into one of his hacking notebooks several years ago:

The line between the real world and the machine world is becoming more and more blurred every day. But it's not that humans are turning into automatons or becoming slaves to machines. No, humans and machines are simply growing toward each other. We're bending machines to our purposes and nature. In the Blue Nowhere, machines are taking on our personalities and culture – our language, myths, metaphors, philosophy and spirit.

And those personalities and cultures are in turn being changed more and more by the Machine World itself.

Think about the loner who used to return home from work and spend the night eating junk food and watching TV all night. Now, he turns on his computer and enters the Blue Nowhere, a place where he interacts – he has tactile stimulation on the keyboard, verbal exchanges, he's challenged. He can't be passive anymore. He has to provide input to get some response. He's entered a higher level of existence and the reason is that machines have come to him. They speak his language.

For good or bad, machines now reflect human voices, spirits, hearts and goals.

For good or bad, they reflect human conscience, or the lack of conscience, too.

Phate finished honing the blade and wiped it clean. He replaced it in his footlocker and returned upstairs to find that his taxpayer dollars had been well spent; the Defense Research Center 's supercomputers had just finished running Jamie Turner's program and had spit out the passcode to St. Francis Academy 's gates. He was going to get to play his game tonight.

For good or bad…

After twenty minutes of poring over the printouts from Gillette's search the team could find no other leads. The hacker sat down at a workstation to write code for the bot that would continue to search the Net for him.

Then he paused and looked up. "There's one thing we have to do. Sooner or later Phate's going to realize that you've got a hacker looking for him and he might try to come after us." He turned to Stephen Miller. "What external networks do you have access to from here?"

"Two – the Internet, through our own domain: cspccu.gov. That's the one you've been using to get online. Then we're also hooked to ISLEnet."

Sanchez explained the acronym. "That's the Integrated Statewide Law Enforcement Network."

"Is it quarantined?"

A quarantined network was made up of machines connected only to one another and only by hardwire cables – so that no one could hack in via a phone line or the Internet.

"No," Miller said. "You can log on from anywhere – but you need passcodes and have to get through a couple of firewalls."

"What outside networks could I get to from ISLEnet?"

Sanchez shrugged. "Any state or federal police system around the country – the FBI, Secret Service, ATF, NYPD… even Scotland Yard and Interpol. The works."

Mott added, "Since we're a clearing house for all computer crimes in the state, CCU has root authority on ISLEnet. So we have access to more machines and networks than anybody else."

Gillette said, "Then we'll have to cut our links to it."

"Hey, hey, hey, backspace, backspace," Miller said, using the hacker term for hold on a minute. "Cut the link to ISLEnet? We can't do that."

"We have to."

"Why?" Bishop asked.

"Because if Phate gets inside them with a Trapdoor demon he could jump right to ISLEnet. If he does that he'll have access to every law enforcement network it's connected to. It'd be a disaster."

"But we use ISLEnet a dozen times a day," Shelton protested. "The automatic fingerprint identification databases, warrants, suspect records, case files, research…"

"Wyatt's right," Patricia Nolan said. "Remember that this guy's already cracked VICAP and two state police databases. We can't risk him getting into any other systems."

Gillette said, "If you need to use ISLEnet you'll have to go to some other location – headquarters, or wherever."

"That's ridiculous," Stephen Miller said. "We can't drive five miles to log on to a database. It'll add hours to the investigation."

"We're already swimming upstream here," Shelton said. "This perp is way ahead of us. He doesn't need any more advantages." He glanced at Bishop imploringly.

The lean detective glanced down at his sloppy shirttail and tucked it in. After a moment he said, "Go ahead. Do what he says. Cut the connection."

Sanchez sighed.

Gillette quickly keyed in the commands severing the outside links, as Stephen Miller and Tony Mott looked on unhappily. He also renamed the CCU domain caltourism.gov to make it much harder for Phate to track them down and crack their system. When he finished the job he looked up at the team.

"One more thing… From now on nobody goes online but me."

"Why?" Shelton asked.

"Because I can sense if the Trapdoor demon's in our system."

"How?" the rough-faced cop asked sourly. "Psychic Friends' Hotline?"

Gillette answered evenly, "The feel of the keyboard, the delays in the system's responses, the sounds of the hard drive – what I mentioned before."

Shelton shook his head. He asked Bishop, "You're not going to agree to that, are you? First, we weren't supposed to let him get near the Net at all but he ended up roaming all over the fucking world online. Now, he's telling us that he's the only one who can do that and we can't. That's backwards, Frank. Something's going on here."

"What's going on," Gillette argued, "is that I know what I'm doing. When you're a hacker you get the feel for machines."

"Agreed," Bishop said.

Shelton lifted his arms helplessly. Stephen Miller didn't look any happier. Tony Mott caressed the grip of his big gun and seemed to be thinking less about machines and more about how much he wanted a clear shot at the killer.

Bishop's phone rang and he took the call. He listened for a moment and, while he didn't exactly smile, the cop's face grew animated. He picked up a pen and paper and started taking notes. After five minutes of jotting he hung up and glanced at the team.

"We don't have to call him Phate anymore. We've got his name."

CHAPTER 00001101 / THIRTEEN

"Jon Patrick Holloway."

"It's Holloway?" Patricia Nolan's voice rose in surprise.

"You know him?" Bishop asked.

"Oh, you bet. Most of us in computer security do. But nobody's heard from him in years. I thought he'd gone legit or was dead."

Bishop said to Gillette, "It was thanks to you we found him – that suggestion about the East Coast version of Unix. The Massachusetts State Police had positive matches on the prints." Bishop read his notes. "I've got a little history. He's twenty-seven. Born in New Jersey. Parents and only sibling – a brother – are dead. He went to Rutgers and Princeton, good grades, brilliant computer programmer. Popular on campus, involved in a lot of activities. After he graduated he came out here and got a job at Sun Microsystems doing artificial intelligence and supercomputing research. Left there and went to NEC. Then he went to work for Apple, over in Cupertino. A year later he was back on the East Coast, doing advanced phone-switch design at Western Electric in New Jersey. Then he got a job with Harvard's Computer Science Lab. Looks like he was pretty much your perfect employee – team player, United Way campaign captain, things like that."

"Typical upper middle-class Silicon Valley codeslinger/chip-jockey," Mott summarized.

Bishop nodded. "Except there was one problem. All the while he looked like he was Mr. Upstanding Citizen he'd been hacking at night and running cybergangs. The most famous was the Knights of Access. He founded that with another hacker, somebody named Valleyman. No record of his real name."

"The KOA?" Miller said, troubled. "They were bad news. They took on Masters of Evil – that gang from Austin. And the Deceptors in New York. He cracked both gangs' servers and sent their files to the FBI's Manhattan office. Got half of them arrested."

"The Knights were probably the gang that shut down nine-one-one in Oakland for two days." Looking through his notes, Bishop said, "A few people died because of that- medical emergencies that never got reported. But the D.A. could never prove they did it."

"Pricks," Shelton spat out.

Bishop continued, "Holloway didn't go by Phate then. His username was CertainDeath." He asked Gillette, "Do you know him?"

"Not personally. But I've heard of him. Every hacker has. He was at the top of the list of wizards a few years ago."

Bishop returned to his notes.

"Somebody snitched on him when he was working for Harvard and the Massachusetts State Police paid him a visit. His whole life turned out to be fake. He'd been ripping off software and supercomputer parts from Harvard and selling them. The police checked with Western Electric, Sun, NEC – all his other employers – and it seemed he'd been doing the same thing there. He jumped bail in Massachusetts and nobody's seen or heard from him for three or four years."

Mott said, "Let's get the files from the Mass. State Police. There's bound to be some good forensics in there that we can use."

"They're gone," Bishop replied.

"He destroyed those files too?" Linda Sanchez asked grimly.

"What else?" Bishop replied sarcastically then glanced at Gillette. "Can you change that hot of yours – the search program? And add the names Holloway and Valleyman?"

"Piece of cake." Gillette began keying in code once more.

Bishop called Huerto Ramirez and spoke to him for a few moments. When they hung up he said to the team, "Huerto said there're no leads from the Andy Anderson crime scene. He's going to run the name Jon Patrick Holloway through VICAP and state networks."

"Be faster to just use ISLEnet here," Stephen Miller muttered.

Bishop ignored the dig and continued, "Then he's going to get a copy of Holloway's booking picture from Massachusetts. He and Tim Morgan are going to leave some pictures around Mountain View, near the theatrical supply store, in case Phate goes shopping. Then they'll call all the employers Phate used to work for and get any internal reports on the crimes."

"Assuming they haven't been deleted too," Sanchez muttered pessimistically.

Bishop looked up at the clock. It was nearly 4:00. He shook his head. "We've gotta move. If his goal is killing as many people as he can in a week he might already have somebody else targeted." He picked up a marker and began transcribing his handwritten notes on the white-board.

Patricia Nolan nodded at the board, where the word "Trapdoor" was prominently written in black marker. She said, "That's the crime of the new century. Violation."

"Violation?"

"In the twentieth century people stole your money. Now, what gets stolen is your privacy, your secrets, your fantasies."

Access is God…

"But on one level," Gillette reflected, "you've got to admit that Trapdoor's brilliant. It's a totally robust program."

A voice behind him asked angrily, "'Robust'? What does that mean?" Gillette wasn't surprised to find that the questioner was Bob Shelton.

"I mean it's simple and powerful software."

"Jesus," Shelton said. "It sounds like you wish you'd invented the fucking thing."

Gillette said evenly, "It's an astonishing program. I don't understand how it works and I'd like to. That's all. I'm curious about it."

"Curious? You happen to forget a little matter like he's killing people with it."

"I -"

"You asshole… It's a game to you too, isn't it? Just like him." He stalked out of CCU, calling to Bishop, "Let's get the hell out of here and find that witness. That's how we're going to nail this prick. Not with this computer shit." He stormed off.

No one moved for a moment. The team looked awkwardly at the white-board or computer terminals or the floor.

Bishop nodded for Gillette to follow him into the pantry, where the detective poured some coffee into a Styrofoam cup.

"Jennie, that's my wife, keeps me rationed," Bishop said, glancing at the dark brew. "Love the stuff but I've got gut problems. Pre-ulcer, the doctor says. Is that a crazy way to put it, or what? Sounds like I'm in training."

"I've got reflux," Gillette said. He touched his upper chest. " Lot of hackers do. From all the coffee and soda."

"Look, about Bob Shelton… He had a thing happen a few years ago." The detective sipped the coffee, glanced down at his blossoming shirt. He tucked it in yet again. "I read those letters in your court file – the e-mails your father sent to the judge as part of the sentencing hearing. It sounds like you two have a good relationship."

"Real good, yeah," Gillette said, nodding. "Especially after my mom passed away."

"Well, then I think you'll understand this. Bob had a son."

Had?

"He loved the kid a lot – like your dad loves you, sounds like. Only the kid was killed in a car accident a few years ago. He was sixteen. Bob hasn't been the same since then. I know it's a lot to ask but try to cut him some slack."

"I'm sorry about that." Gillette thought suddenly about his own ex-wife. How he'd spent hours and hours in prison wishing he were still married, wishing that he and Ellie had had a son or daughter, wondering how the hell he'd screwed up so badly and ruined his chances for a family. "I'll try."

"Appreciate that."

They walked back to the main room. Gillette returned to his workstation. Bishop nodded toward the parking lot. "Bob and I'll be checking out that witness at Vesta's Grill."

"Detective," Tony Mott said, standing up. "How 'bout if I come along with you?"

"Why?" Bishop asked, frowning.

"Thought I could help – you've got the computer side covered here, with Wyatt and Patricia and Stephen. I could help canvassing witnesses maybe."

"You ever do any canvassing?"

"Sure." After a few seconds he grinned. "Well, not post-crime on the street exactly. But I've interviewed plenty of people online."

"Well, maybe later, Tony. I think Bob and I'll just go alone on this one." He left the office.

The young cop returned to his workstation, clearly disappointed. Gillette wondered if he was upset that he'd been left to report to a civilian or if he really wanted to get a chance to use that very large pistol of his, the butt of which kept nicking the office furniture.

In five minutes Gillette had finished hacking together his bot.

"It's ready," he announced. He went online and typed the commands to send his creation out into the Blue Nowhere.

Patricia Nolan leaned forward, staring at the screen. "Good luck," she whispered. "Godspeed." Like a ship captain's wife bidding her husband farewell as his vessel pulled out of port on a treacherous voyage to uncharted waters.

Another beep on his machine.

Phate looked up from the architectural diagram he'd downloaded – St. Francis Academy and the grounds surrounding it – and saw another message from Shawn. He opened the mail and read it. More bad news. The police had learned his real name. He was momentarily concerned but then decided this wasn't critical; Jon Patrick Hollow ay was hidden beneath so many layers of fake personas and addresses that there were no links to him as Phate. Still, the police could get their hands on a picture of him (some parts of our past can't be erased with a delete command) and they'd undoubtedly distribute it throughout Silicon Valley. But at least he was now forewarned. He'd use more disguises.

Anyway, what was the point of playing a MUD game if it wasn't challenging?

He glanced at the clock on his computer: 4:15. Time to get to St. Francis Academy for tonight's game. He had over two hours but he'd have to stake out the school to see if the patrol routes of the security guards had changed. Besides, he knew little Jamie Turner might be feeling antsy and want to slip out of the school before the appointed hour for a stroll around the block while he waited for his brother.

Phate walked down to the basement of his house and took what he needed from his footlocker – his knife, a pistol, some duct tape. Then he went into the downstairs bathroom and pulled a plastic bottle from under the sink. It contained some liquids he'd mixed together earlier. He could still detect the pungent aroma of the chemicals it contained.

When his tools were ready he returned to the dining room of his house and checked the computer once more in case there were more warnings from Shawn. But he had no messages. He logged off and left the room, shutting out the overhead light in the dining room.

As he did so the screen saver on his computer came on and glowed brightly in the dim room. The words scrolled up the screen slowly. They read:

ACCESS IS GOD.

CHAPTER 00001110 / FOURTEEN

"Here, brought you this."

Gillette turned. Patricia Nolan was offering him a cup of coffee. "Milk and sugar, right?"

He nodded. "Thanks."

"I noticed that's how you like it," she said.

He was about to tell her how prisoners in San Ho would trade cigarettes for packages of real coffee and brew it in hot water from the tap. But as interesting as this trivia might be, he decided he wasn't eager to remind everyone – himself included – that he was a convict.

She sat down beside him, tugged at the ungainly knit dress. Pulled the nail polish out of her Louis Vuitton purse again and opened it. Nolan noticed him looking at the bottle.

"Conditioner," she explained. "All the keying is hell on my nails." She glanced into his eyes once then looked down, examining her fingertips carefully. She said, "I could cut them short but that's not part of my plan." There was a certain emphasis on the word "plan." As if she'd decided to share something personal with him – facts that he, however, wasn't sure he wanted to know.

She said, "I woke up one morning earlier this year – New Year's Day, as a matter of fact – after I'd spent the holiday on a plane by myself. And I realized that I'm a thirty-four-year-old single geek girl who lives with a cat and twenty thousand dollars' worth of semiconductor products in her bedroom. I decided I was changing my ways. I'm no fashion model but I thought I'd fix some of the things that could be fixed. Nails, hair, weight. I hate exercise but I'm at the health club every morning at five. The step-aerobics queen at Seattle Health and Racquet."

"Well, you've got really nice nails," Gillette said.

"Thanks. Really good thigh muscles too," she said with averted eyes. (He decided that her plan should probably include a little work on flirtation; she could use some practice.)

She asked, "You married?"

"Divorced."

Nolan said, "I came close once…" She let it go at that but glanced at him to gauge his reaction.

Gillette gave her no response but he thought, Don't waste your time on me, lady. I'm a no-win proposition. Yet at the same time he saw that her interest in him was palpable and Wyatt Gillette knew that it didn't matter that he was a skinny, obsessive geek with a year left on a prison term. He'd seen her adoring gaze as he'd hacked together his bot and he knew that her attraction to him was rooted in his mind and his passion for his craft. Which'll ultimately beat a handsome face and a Chippendale body any day.

But the topic of romance and single life put in his mind thoughts of his ex-wife, Elana, and that depressed him. He fell silent and nodded as Nolan told him about life at Horizon On-Line, which really was, she kept asserting, more stimulating than he might think (though nothing she said bore out that proposition), about life in Seattle with friends and her tabby cat, about the bizarre dates she'd had with geeks and chip-jocks.

He absorbed all the data politely, if vacantly, for ten minutes. Then his machine beeped loudly and Gillette glanced at the screen.

Search results:

Search Request: Phate

Location: alt.pictures.true.crime

Status: newsgroup reference

"My bot caught a fish," he called. "There's a reference to Phate in a newsgroup."

Newsgroups – those collections of special-interest messages on every topic under the sun – are contained on a subdivision of the Internet known as Usenet, which stands for Unix user network. Started in 1979 to send messages between the University of North Carolina and Duke University, the Usenet was purely scientific at first and contained strict prohibitions against topics like hacking, sex and drugs. In the eighties, though, a number of users thought these limitations smacked of censorship. The "Great Rebellion" ensued, which led to the creation of the Alternate category of newsgroups. From then on the Usenet was like a frontier town. You can now find messages on every subject on earth, from hard-core porn to literary criticism to Catholic theology to pro-Nazi politics to irreverent swipes at popular culture (such as alt.barney.the.dinosaur.must.die).

Gillette's bot had learned that someone had posted a message that included Phate's name in one of these alternate newsgroups, alt.pictures.true.crime, and had alerted its master.

The hacker loaded up his newsgroup reader and went online. He found the group and then examined the screen. Somebody with the screen name Vlast453 had posted a message that mentioned Phate's name. He'd included a picture attachment.

Mott, Miller and Nolan crowded around the screen.

Gillette clicked on the message. He glanced at the header:

From: "Vlast" Newsgroups: alt.pictures.true.crime.

Subject: A old one from Phate. Anyboddy have others.

Date: 1 April 23:54:08 + 0100

Lines: 1323

Message-ID: ‹8hj345d6f7$@newsg3.svr.pdd.co.uk›

References: ‹20000606164328.26619.00002274-Eng-fml.hcf.com›

NNTP-Posting-Host: modem-76.flonase.dialup.pol.co.uk

X-Trace: newsg3.svr.pdd.co.uk 960332345 11751 62.136.95.76

X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211

X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211

Path: news.Alliance-news.com!traffic.Alliance-news.com!Buda pest.usenetserver.com!Newsout.usenetserver.com!diablo.theWorld.net!news.theWorld.net!newspost.theWorld.net!

Then he read the message that Vlast had sent.

To The Group:

I am receved this from our friend Phate it was sixths months ago, I am not hearing from him after then. Can anyboddy post more like this.

– Vlast

Tony Mott observed, "Look at the grammar and spelling. He's from overseas."

The language people used on the Net told a great deal about them. English was the most common choice but serious hackers mastered a number of languages – especially German, Dutch and French – so they could share information with as many fellow hackers as possible.

Gillette downloaded the picture that accompanied Vlast's message. It was an old crime scene photograph and showed a young woman's naked body – stabbed a dozen times.

Linda Sanchez, undoubtedly mindful of her own daughter and her fetal grandchild, looked at the picture once and then quickly away. "Disgusting," she muttered.

It was, Gillette agreed. But he forced himself to think past the image. "Let's try to trace this guy," he suggested. "If we can get to him maybe he can give us some leads to Phate."

There are two ways to trace someone on the Internet. If you have the real header of an e-mail or newsgroup posting you can examine the path notation, which will reveal where the message entered the Internet and the route it followed to get to the computer from which you have downloaded it. If presented with a court order, the sysadmin of that initial network might give the police the name and address of the user who sent the message.

Usually, though, hackers use fake headers so that they can't be traced. Vlast's header, Gillette noted immediately, was bogus – real Internet routes contain only lowercase words and this one contained uppercase and lowercase. He told the CCU team this then added, however, that he'd try to find Vlast with the second type of trace: through the man's Internet address – Vlast453@euronet.net. Gillette loaded up HyperTrace. He typed in Vlast's address and the program went to work. A map of the world appeared and a dotted line moved outward from San Jose – the location of CCU's computer – across the Pacific. Every time it hit a new Internet router and changed direction the machine gave an electronic tone called a "ping" – named after a submarine's sonar beep, which is just what it sounded like.

Nolan said, "This is your program?"

"Right."

"It's brilliant."

"Yeah, it was a fun hack," Gillette said, noting that his prowess had earned him a bit more adoration from the woman.

The line representing the route from CCU to Vlast's computer headed west and finally stopped in central Europe, ending in a box that contained a question mark.

Gillette looked at the graph and tapped the screen. "Okay, Vlast isn't online at the moment or he's cloaking his machine's location – that's the question mark where the trail ends. The closest we can get is his service provider: Euronet.bulg.net. He's logging on through Euronet's Bulgarian server. I should've guessed that."

Nolan and Miller nodded their agreement. Bulgaria probably has more hackers per capita than any other country. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Central European Communism the Bulgarian government tried to turn the country into the Silicon Valley of the former Soviet Bloc and imported thousands of codeslingers and chip-jocks. To their dismay, however, IBM, Apple, Microsoft and other U.S. companies swept through the world markets. Foreign tech companies failed in droves and the young geeks were left with nothing to do except hang out in coffee shops and hack. Bulgaria produces more computer viruses annually than any other country in the world.

Nolan asked Miller, "Do the Bulgarian authorities cooperate?"

"Never. The government doesn't even answer our requests for information." Stephen Miller then suggested, "Why don't we e-mail him directly, Vlast?"

"No," Gillette said. "He might warn Phate. I think this's a dead end."

But just then the computer beeped as Gillette's hot signaled yet another catch.

Search results:

Search Request: "Triple-X"

Location: IRC, #hack

Status: Currently online

Triple-X was the hacker Gillette had tracked down earlier, the one who seemed to know a great deal about Phate and Trapdoor.

"He's in the hacking chat room on the Internet Relay Chat," Gillette said. "I don't know if he'll give up anything about Phate to a stranger but let's try to trace him." He asked Miller, "I'll need an anonymizer before I log on. I'd have to modify mine to run on your system."

An anonymizer, or cloak, is a software program that blocks any attempts to trace you when you're online by making it appear that you're someone else and are in a different location from where you really are.

"Sure, I just hacked one together the other day."

Miller loaded the program into the workstation in front of Gillette. "If Triple-X tries to trace you all he'll see is that you're logging on through a public-access terminal in Austin. That's a big high-tech area and a lot of Texas U students do some serious hacking."

"Good." Gillette returned to the keyboard, examined Miller's program briefly and then keyed his new fake user-name, Renegade334, into the anonymizer. He looked at the team. "Okay, let's go swimming with some sharks," he said. And hit the ENTER key.

"That's where it was," said the security guard. "Parked right there, a light-colored sedan. Was there for about an hour, just around the time that girl was kidnapped. I'm pretty sure somebody was in the front seat."

The guard pointed to a row of empty parking spaces in the lot behind the three-story building occupied by Internet Marketing Solutions Unlimited, Inc. The spaces overlooked the back parking lot of Vesta's Grill in Cupertino where Jon Holloway, aka Phate, had social engineered Lara Gibson to her death. Anyone in the mystery sedan would have had a perfect view of Phate's car, even if they hadn't witnessed the actual abduction itself.

But Frank Bishop, Bob Shelton and the woman who ran Internet Marketing's human resources department had just interviewed all of the thirty-two people who worked in the building and hadn't been able to identify the sedan.

The two cops were now interviewing the guard who'd noticed it to see if they could learn anything else that would help them find the car.

Bob Shelton asked, "And it had to belong to somebody who worked for the company?"

"Had to," the tall guard confirmed. "You need an employee pass to get through the gate into this lot."

"Visitors?" Bishop asked.

"No, they park in front."

Bishop and Shelton shared a troubled glance. Nobody's leads were panning out. After leaving the Computer Crimes Unit they'd stopped by state police headquarters in San Jose and picked up a copy of Jon Holloway's booking picture from the Massachusetts State Police. It showed a thin young man with dark brown hair and virtually no distinguishing features – a dead ringer for 10,000 other young men in Silicon Valley. Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan had also drawn a blank when they'd canvassed Ollie's Theatrical Supply in Mountain View; the only clerk on hand didn't recognize Phate's picture.

The team at CCU had found a lead – Wyatt Gillette's bot had turned up a reference to Phate, Linda Sanchez had told Bishop in a phone call – but that too was a dead end.

Bulgaria, Bishop thought cynically. What kind of case is this?

The detective now said to the security guard, "Let me ask you a question, sir. Why'd you notice the car?"

"I'm sorry?"

"It's a parking lot. It'd be normal for a car to be parked here. Why'd you pay any attention to the sedan?"

"Well, the thing is, it's not normal for cars to be parked back here. It was the only one I've seen here for a while." He looked around and, making sure the three men were alone, added, "See, the company ain't doing so well. We're down to forty people on the payroll. Was nearly two hundred last year. The whole staff can park in the front lot if they want. In fact, the president encourages it – so the company don't look like it's on its last legs." He lowered his voice. "You ask me, this dot-corn Internet crap ain't the golden egg everybody makes it out to be. I myself am looking for work at Costco. Retail… now, that's a job with a future."

Okay, Frank Bishop told himself, gazing at Vesta's Grill. Think about it: a car parked here by itself when it doesn't have to be parked here. Do something with that.

He had a wisp of a thought but it eluded him.

They thanked the guard and returned to their car, walking along a gravel path that wound through a park surrounding the office building.

"Waste of time," Shelton said. But he was stating a simple truth – most investigating is a waste of time – and didn't seem particularly discouraged.

Think, Bishop repeated silently.

Do something with that.

It was quitting time and some employees were walking along the path to the front lot. Bishop saw a businessman in his thirties walking silently beside a young woman in a business suit. Suddenly the man turned aside and took the woman by the hand. They laughed and vanished into a stand of lilac bushes. In the shadows they threw their arms around each other and kissed passionately.

This liaison brought his own family to mind and Bishop wondered how much he'd see of his wife and son over the next week. He knew it wouldn't be much.

Then, as happened sometimes, two thoughts merged in his mind and a third was born.

Do something…

He stopped suddenly.

…with that.

"Let's go," Bishop called and started running back the way they'd come. Far thinner than Shelton but not in much better shape he puffed hard as they returned to the office building, his shirt enthusiastically untucking itself once again.

"What the hell's the hurry?" his partner gasped.

But the detective didn't answer. He ran through the lobby of Internet Marketing, back to the human resources department. He ignored the secretary, who rose in alarm at his blustery entry, and opened the door of the human resources director's office, where the woman sat speaking with a young man.

"Detective," the surprised woman said. "What is it?"

Bishop struggled to catch his breath. "I need to ask you some questions about your employees." He glanced at the young man. "Better in private."

"Would you excuse us, please?" She nodded at the man across from her and he fled the office.

Shelton swung the door closed.

"What sort of questions? Personnel?"

"No,"Bishop replied, "personal"

CHAPTER 00001111 / FIFTEEN

Here is the land of fulfillment, here is the land of plenty.

The land of King Midas, where the golden touch, though, isn't the sly trickery of Wall Street or the muscle of Midwest industry but pure imagination.

Here is the land where some secretaries and janitors are stock-option millionaires and others ride the number 22 bus all night long on its route between San Jose and Menlo Park just so they can catch some sleep – they, like one third of the homeless in this area, have full-time jobs but can't afford to pay a million dollars for a tiny bungalow or $3,000 a month for an apartment.

Here is Silicon Valley, the land that changed the world.

Santa Clara County, a green valley measuring twenty-five by ten miles, was dubbed "The Valley of the Heart's Delight" long ago though the joy referred to when that phrase was coined was culinary rather than technological. Apricots, prunes, walnuts and cherries grew abundantly in the fertile land nestled fifty miles south of San Francisco. The valley might have remained linked forever with produce, like other parts of California – Castroville with its artichokes, Gilroy with garlic – except for an impulsive decision in 1909 by a man named David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford University, which was located smack in the middle of Santa Clara Valley. Jordan decided to put some venture capital money on a little-known invention by a man named Lee De Forrest.

The inventor's gadget – the audion tube – wasn't like the phonograph player or the internal-combustion engine. It was the type of innovation that the general public couldn't quite understand and, in fact, didn't care about one bit at the time it was announced. But Jordan and other engineers at Stanford believed that the device might have a few practical applications and before long it became clear how stunningly correct they were – the audion was the first electronic vacuum tube, and its descendants ultimately made possible radio, television, radar, medical monitors, navigation systems and computers themselves.

Once the tiny audion's potential was unearthed nothing would ever be the same in this green, placid valley.

Stanford University became a breeding ground for electronics engineers, many of whom stayed in the area after graduation – David Packard and William Hewlett, for instance. Russell Varian and Philo Farnsworth too, whose research gave us the first television, radar and microwave technologies. The early computers like ENIAC and Univac were East Coast inventions but their limitations – massive size and scalding heat from vacuum tubes – sent innovators scurrying to California, where companies were making advances with tiny devices known as semiconductor chips, far smaller, cooler and more efficient than tubes. Once chips were developed, in the late 1950s, the Machine World raced forward like a spaceship, from IBM to Xerox's PARC to Stanford Research Institute to Intel to Apple to the thousands of dot-corn companies scattered throughout this lush landscape today.

The Promised Land, Silicon Valley…

Through which Jon Patrick Holloway, Phate, now drove southeast on the rain-swept 280 freeway, toward St. Francis Academy and his appointment with Jamie Turner for their Real World MUD game.

In the Jaguar's CD player was a recording of yet another play, Hamlet -Laurence Olivier's performance. Reciting the words in unison with the actor, Phate turned off the freeway at a San Jose exit and five minutes later he was cruising past the brooding Spanish colonial St. Francis Academy. It was 5:15 and he had more than an hour to stake out the structure.

He parked on a dusty commercial street, near the north gate, through which Jamie was planning on making his escape. Unfurling a planning and zoning commission diagram of the building and a recorder of deeds map of the grounds, Phate pored over the documents for ten minutes. Then he got out of the car and circled the school slowly, studying the entrances and exits. He returned to the Jaguar.

Turning the volume up on his CD, he reclined the seat, and watched people stroll and bicycle along the wet sidewalk. He squinted at them with fascination. They were no more – or less – real to him than the tormented Danish prince in Shakespeare's play and Phate was not sure for a moment whether he was in the Machine World or the Real. He heard a voice, maybe his own, maybe not, reciting a slightly different version of a passage from the play. "What a piece of work is a machine. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form, in moving, how express and admirable. In operation how like an angel. In access how like a god…"

He checked his knife and the squeeze bottle containing the pungent liquid concoction, all carefully arranged in the pockets of his gray coveralls, on whose back he'd carefully embroidered the words "AAA Cleaning and Maintenance Company."

He looked at his watch, then closed his eyes again, leaning back in the sumptuous leather of his car. Thinking: only forty minutes till Jamie Turner sneaks into the school yard to meet his brother.

Only forty minutes until Phate would find out if he'd win or lose this round of the game.

He rubbed his thumb carefully against the razor-sharp blade of the knife.

In operation how like an angel.

In access how like a god.

In his persona as Renegade334, Wyatt Gillette had been lurking – observing but saying nothing – in the #hack chat room.

Before you social engineer someone you have to learn as much about them as you can to make the scam credible.

He'd call out observations and Patricia Nolan would jot down whatever Gillette had deduced about Triple-X. The woman sat close to him. He smelled a very pleasant perfume and he wondered if this particular scent had been part of her makeover plan.

So far Gillette had learned this about Triple-X:

He was currently in the Pacific time zone (he'd made a reference to cocktail happy hour in a bar nearby; it was nearly 5:50 P.M. on the West Coast).

He was probably in Northern California (he'd complained about the rain – and according to CCU's high-tech meteorology source, the Weather Channel, most of the rain on the West Coast was currently concentrated in and around the San Francisco Bay area).

He was American, older and probably college educated (his grammar and punctuation were very good for a hacker – too good for a high school cyberpunk – and his use of slang was correct, indicating he wasn't your typical Eurotrash-hacker, who often tried to impress others with their use of idioms and invariably got them wrong).

He was probably in a shopping mall, dialing into the Internet Relay Chat from a commercial Internet access location, a cybercafe probably (he'd referred to a couple of girls he'd just seen go into Victoria's Secret; the happy-hour comment too suggested this).

He was a serious, and potentially dangerous, hacker (ditto the shopping center public access – most people doing risky hacks tended to avoid going online out of their houses on their own machines and used public dial-up terminals instead).

He had a huge ego and he considered himself a wizard and an older brother to the youngsters in the group (tirelessly explaining esoteric aspects of hacking to novices in the chat room but having no patience for know-it-alls).

With this profile in mind, Gillette was now almost ready to trace Triple-X.

It's easy to find someone in the Blue Nowhere if they don't mind being found. But if they're determined to remain hidden then tracing is an arduous and usually unsuccessful task.

To track a connection back to an individual's computer while he's online you need an Internet tracing tool – like Gillette's HyperTrace – but you might also need a phone company trace.

If Triple-X's computer was hooked up to his Internet service provider via a fiberoptic or other high-speed cable connection, rather than a telephone line, then HyperTrace could lead them to the exact longitude and latitude of the shopping mall where the hacker's computer sat.

If, however, Triple-X's machine was connected to the Net over a standard phone line via a modem – a dial-up connection, like most personal computers at home – Gillette's HyperTrace could trace the call back only to Triple-X's Internet service provider and would stop there. Then the phone company's security people would have to trace the call from the service provider to Triple-X's computer itself.

Tony Mott then snapped his fingers, looked up from his phone with a grin and said, "Okay, Pac Bell's set to trace."

"Here we go," said Gillette. He typed a message and hit ENTER. On the screens of everyone logged on to the #hack chat room appeared this message:

Renegade334: Hey Triple how you doing.

Gillette was now "imping" – pretending to be someone else. In this case he'd decided to be a seventeen-year-old hacker with marginal education but plenty of balls and adolescent attitude – just the sort you'd expect to find in this room.

Triple-X: Good, Renegade. Saw you lurking.

In chat rooms you can see who's logged on even if they're not participating in the conversation. Triple-X was reminding Gillette that he was vigilant, the corollary of which was: Don't fuck with me.

Renegade334: Im at a public terminal and people keep walking bye, its pissing me off.

Triple-X: Where you hanging?

Gillette glanced at the Weather Channel.

Renegade334: Austin, man the heat sucks. You ever been hear.

Triple-X: Only Dallas.

Renegade334: Dallas sucks, Austin rules!!!!

"Everybody ready?" Gillette called. "I'm going to try to get him alone."

Affirmative responses from around him. He felt Patricia Nolan's leg brush his. Stephen Miller sat next to her. Gillette keyed a phrase and hit ENTER.

Renegade334: Triple – How bout ICQ?

ICQ (as in "I seek you") was like instant messaging – it would link their machines together so that no one else would be able to see the conversation. A request to ICQ suggested that Renegade might have something illegal or furtive to share with Triple-X – a temptation that few hackers could resist.

Triple-X: Why?

Renegade334: can't go into it hear.

A moment later a small window opened on Gillette's screen.

Triple-X: So what's happening, dude?

"Run it," Gillette called to Stephen Miller, who started HyperTrace. Another window popped up on the monitor, depicting a map of Northern California. Blue lines appeared on the map as the program traced the route from CCU back to Triple-X.

"It's tracing," Miller called. "Signal goes from here to Oakland to Reno to Seattle…"

Renegade334: thanks man for the ICQ. Thing is I got a problem and Im scared. This dudes on my case and the word is your a total wizard and I heard you might know somthing.

You can never massage a hacker's ego too much, Wyatt Gillette knew.

Triple-X: What dude?

Renegade334: His names Phate.

There was no response.

"Come on, come on," Gillette urged in a whisper. Thinking: Don't vanish. I'm a scared kid. You're a wizard. Help me…

Triple-X: What aobut him? I mean, about.

Gillette glanced at the window on his computer screen that showed HyperTrace's progress in locating the routing computers. Triple-X's signal was jumping all over the western United States. Finally it ended at the last hub, Bay Area On-Line Services, located in Walnut Creek, which was just north of Oakland.

"Got his service provider," Stephen Miller called. "It's a dial-in service."

"Damn," Patricia Nolan muttered. This meant that a phone company trace was necessary to pinpoint the final link from the server in Walnut Creek to the computer cafe where Triple-X was sitting.

"We can do it," Linda Sanchez called enthusiastically, a cheerleader. "Just keep him on the line, Wyatt."

Tony Mott called Bay Area On-Line and told the head of the security department what was going on. The security chief in turn called his own technicians, who would coordinate with Pacific Bell and trace the connection from Bay Area back to Triple-X's location. Mott listened for a moment then called, "Pac Bell's scanning. It's a busy area. Might take ten, fifteen minutes."

"Too long, too long!" Gillette said. "Tell 'em to speed it up."

But from his days as a phone phreak, breaking into Pac Bell himself, Gillette knew that phone company employees might have to physically run through the switches – which are huge rooms filled with electrical relays – visually finding the connections, in order to trace a call back to its source.

Renegade334: I heard about this totally robust hack of Phates I mean totally and I saw him online and I asked him about it only he just dissed me. then Weird stuff started happening after that and I heard about this script he wrote called trapdoor and now Im totally paranoyd.

A pause, then:

Triple-X: So what're you asking?

"He's scared," Gillette said. "I can feel it."

Renegade334: this trapdoor thing, does it really get him in your machine and go through all your shit, I mean like EVERYTHING, and you don't even know it.

Triple-X: I don't think it really exists. Like an urban legend.

Renegade334: I don't know man I think its real, I saw my fucking files OPENING and no way was I doing it.

"We've got incoming," Miller said. "He's pinging us."

Triple-X was, as Gillette had predicted, running his own version of HyperTrace to check out Renegade334. The anonymizing program that Stephen Miller had hacked together, however, would make Triple-X's machine think Renegade was in Austin. The hacker must have gotten this report and believed it because he didn't log off.

Triple-X: Why do you care about him? You're at a public terminal. He can't get into your files there.

Renegade334: I'm just hear today cause my fucking parents' took away my Dell for a week cause a my grades. At home I was online and the keyboard was fucked up and then files started opening all by themself. I freaked. I mean, totally.

Another long pause. Then finally the hacker responded.

Triple-X: You oughta be freaked. I know Phate.

Renegade334: Yeah how?

Triple-X: Just started talking to him in a chat room. Helped me debug some script. Traded some warez.

"This guy is gold," Tony Mott whispered.

Nolan said, "Maybe he knows Phate's address. Ask him."

"No," Gillette said. "We can't scare him off." There was no message for a moment then:

Triple-X: BRB

Chat room regulars have developed a shorthand of initials that represent phrases – to save keyboarding time and energy. BRB meant Be right back.

"Is he headed for the hills?" Sanchez asked.

"The connection's still open," Gillette said. "Maybe he just went to take a leak or something. Keep Pac Bell on the trace."

He sat back in the chair, which creaked loudly. Moments passed. The screen remained unchanged.

BRB .

Gillette glanced at Patricia Nolan. She opened her purse, as bulky as her dress, took out her fingernail conditioner again and absently began to apply it.

The cursor continued to blink. The screen remained blank.

The ghosts were back and this time there were plenty of them.

Jamie Turner could hear them as he moved along the corridors of St. Francis Academy.

Well, the sound was probably only Booty or one of the teachers, making certain that windows and doors were secure. Or students, trying to find a place to sneak a cigarette or play their Game Boys.

But he couldn't get ghosts out of his mind: the spirits of Indians tortured to death and the student murdered a couple of years ago by that crazy guy who broke in – the one who, Jamie now realized, also added to the ghost population by getting shot dead by the cops in the old lunchroom.

Jamie Turner was certainly a product of the Machine World – a hacker and scientist – and he knew ghosts and mythical creatures and spirits didn't exist. So why did he feel so damn scared?

Then this weird idea occurred to him. He wondered if maybe, thanks to computers, life had returned to an earlier, more spiritual – and more witchy – time. Computers made the world seem like a place out of one of those books from the 1800s by Washington Irving or Nathaniel Hawthorne. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and The House of the Seven Gables. Back then people believed in ghosts and spirits and weird stuff going on that you couldn't exactly see. Now, there was the Net and code and bots and electrons and things you couldn't see – just like ghosts. They could float around you, they could appear out of nowhere, they could do things.

These thoughts scared the hell out of him but he forced them away and continued down the dark corridors of St. Francis Academy, smelling the musty stucco, hearing the muted conversations and music from the students' rooms recede as he left the residence area and slipped past the gym-Ghosts…

No, forget it! he told himself.

Think about Santana, think about hanging out with your brother, think about what a great night you're going to have.

Think about backstage passes.

Then, finally, he came to the fire door, the one that led out into the garden.

He looked around. No sign of Booty, no sign of the other teachers who occasionally wandered through the halls like guards in some prisoner-of-war movie.

Dropping to his knees, Jamie Turner looked over the alarm bar on the door the way a wrestler sizes up his opponent.

WARNING: ALARM SOUNDS IF DOOR IS OPENED.

If he didn't disable the alarm, if it went off when he tried to open the door, bright lights would come on throughout the school and the police and the fire department would be here in minutes. He'd have to sprint back to his room and his entire evening would be fucked. He now unfolded a small sheet of paper, which contained the wiring schematic of the alarm that the door manufacturer's service chief had kindly sent him.

Playing a small flashlight over the sheet he studied the diagram once more. Then he caressed the metal of the alarm bar, observing how the triggering device worked, where the screws were, how the power supply was hidden. In his quick mind he matched what he saw in front of him with the schematic.

He took a deep breath.

He thought of his brother.

Pulling on his thick glasses to protect his precious eyes, Jamie Turner reached into his pocket, pulled out the plastic case containing his tools and selected a Phillips head screwdriver. He had plenty of time, he told himself. No need to hurry.

Ready to rock 'n' roll…

CHAPTER 00010000 / SIXTEEN

Frank Bishop parked the unmarked navy blue Ford in front of the modest colonial house on a pristine plot of land – only an eighth of an acre, he estimated, yet being in the heart of Silicon Valley it'd be worth an easy million dollars.

Bishop noted that a new, light-colored Lexus sedan sat in the driveway.

They walked to the door, knocked. A harried forty-something woman in jeans and a faded floral blouse opened the door. The smell of cooking onions and meat escaped. It was 6:00 P.M. – the Bishop family's normal suppertime – and the detective was struck by a blast of hunger. He realized he hadn't eaten since that morning.

"Yes?" the woman asked.

"Mrs. Cargill?"

"That's right. Can I help you?" Cautious now.

"Is your husband home?" Bishop asked, displaying his shield.

"Uhm. I-"

"What is it, Kath?" A stocky man in chinos and a button-down pink dress shirt came to the door. He was holding a cocktail. When he noticed the badges the men displayed he put the liquor out of sight on an entry way table.

Bishop said, "Could we talk to you for a minute, please, sir?"

"What's this about?"

"What's going on, Jim?"

He glanced at her with irritation. "I don't know. If I knew I wouldn't've asked now, would I?"

Grim-faced, she stepped back.

Bishop said, "It'll just take a minute." He and Shelton walked halfway down the front path and paused.

Cargill followed the detectives. When they were out of earshot of the house Bishop said, "You work for Internet Marketing Solutions in Cupertino, right?"

"I'm a regional sales director. What's this-

"We have reason to believe that you may have seen a vehicle we're trying to track down as part of a homicide investigation. Yesterday at about seven P.M., this car was parked in the lot behind Vesta's Grill, across the street from your company. And we think you might've gotten a look at it."

He shook his head. "Our human resources director asked me about that. But I told her I didn't see anything. Didn't she tell you that?"

"She did, sir," Bishop said evenly. "But I have reason to believe you weren't telling her the truth."

"Hey, hold on a minute-

"You were parked in the lot behind the company around that time in your Lexus, engaging in sexual activity with Sally Jacobs, from the company's payroll department."

The priceless look of shock, morphing into horror, told Bishop that he was right on the money but Cargill said what he had to. "That's bullshit. Whoever told you that's lying. I've been married for seventeen years. Besides, Sally Jacobs… if you saw her you'd know how idiotic that suggestion is. She's the ugliest girl on the sixteenth floor."

Bishop was aware of the fleeting time. He recalled Wyatt Gillette's description of the Access game – to murder as many people as possible in a week. Phate could already be close to another victim. The detective said shortly, "Sir, I don't care about your personal life. All I care about is that yesterday you saw a car parked in the lot behind Vesta's. It belonged to a suspected killer and I need to know what kind of car it was."

"I wasn'tthere," Cargill said adamantly, looking toward the house. His wife's face was peering at them from behind a lace curtain.

Bishop said calmly, "Yes, sir, you were. And I know you got a look at the killer's car."

"No, I didn't," the man growled.

"You did. Let me explain why I know."

The man gave a cynical laugh.

The detective said, "A late-model, light-colored sedan -like your Lexus – was parked in the back lot of Internet Marketing yesterday around the time the victim was abducted from Vesta's. Now, I know that the president of your company encourages employees to park in front of the building so that clients don't notice that you're down to less than half the staff. So, the only logical reason to park in the back portion of the lot is to do something illicit and not be seen from the building or the street. That would include use of some controlled substances and/or sexual relations."

Cargill stopped smiling.

Bishop continued, "Since it's an access-controlled lot, whoever was parked there was a company employee, not a visitor. I asked the personnel director which employee who owns a light-colored sedan either has a drug problem or was having an affair. She said you were seeing Sally Jacobs. Which, by the way, everybody in the company knows."

Lowering his voice so far that Bishop had to lean forward to hear, Cargill muttered, "Fucking office rumors – that's all they are."

Twenty-two years as a detective, Bishop was a walking lie detector. He continued, "Now, if a man is parked with his mistress-"

"She's not my mistress!"

"-in a parking lot he's going to check out every car nearby to make sure it's not his wife's or a neighbor's. So, therefore, sir, you saw the suspect's car. What kind was it?"

"I didn't see anything," the businessman snapped.

It was Bob Shelton's turn. "We don't have time for any more bullshit, Cargill." He said to Bishop, "Let's go get Sally and bring her over here. Maybe the two of them together can remember a little more."

The detectives had already talked to Sally Jacobs – who was far from being the ugliest girl on the sixteenth, or any other, floor of the company – and she'd confirmed her affair with Cargill. But being single and, for some reason, in love with this jerk she was far less paranoid than he and hadn't bothered to check out nearby cars. She'd thought there'd been one but she couldn't remember what type. Bishop had believed her.

"Bring her here?" Cargill asked slowly. "Sally?"

Bishop gestured to Shelton and they turned. He called over his shoulder, "We'll be back."

"No, don't," Cargill begged.

They stopped.

Disgust flooded into Cargill's face. The most guilty always look the most victimized, street-cop Bishop had learned. "It was a Jaguar convertible. Late model. Silver or gray. Black top."

"License number?"

" California plate. I didn't see the number."

"You ever see the car in the area before?"

"No."

"Did you see anybody in or around the car?"

"No, I didn't."

Bishop decided he was telling the truth.

Then a conspiratorial smile blossomed in Cargill's face. "Say, Officer, man-to-man, you know how it is… We can keep this between you and me, right?" He glanced back at house, indicating his wife.

The polite fagade remained on Bishop's face as he said, "That's not a problem, sir."

"Thanks," the businessman said with massive relief.

"Except for the final statement," the detective added. "That willhave a reference to your affair with Ms. Jacobs."

"Statement?" Cargill asked uneasily.

"That our evidence department'll mail to you."

"Mail? To the house?"

"It's a state law," Shelton said. "We have to give every witness a copy of their final statement."

"You can't do that."

Unsmiling by nature, unsmiling because of circumstance now, Bishop said, "Actually we have to, sir. As my partner said. It's a state law."

"I'll drive down to your office and pick it up."

"Has to be mailed – comes from Sacramento. You'll be getting it within the next few months."

"Few months? Can't you tell me when exactly?"

"We don't know ourselves, sir. Could be next week, could be July or August. You have a nice night. And thanks for your cooperation, sir."

They hurried back to their navy-blue Crown Victoria, leaving the mortified businessman undoubtedly thinking up wild schemes for intercepting the mail for the next two or three months so his wife didn't see the report.

"Evidence department?" Shelton asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"Sounded good to me." Bishop shrugged. Both men laughed.

Bishop then called central dispatch and requested an EVL – an emergency vehicle locator on Phate's car. This request pulled all Department of Motor Vehicles records on late-model silver or gray Jaguar convertibles. Bishop knew that if Phate used this car in the crime it would either be stolen or registered under a fake name and address, which meant that the DMV report probably wouldn't help. But an EVL would also alert every state, county and local law enforcer in the Northern California area to immediately report any sightings of a car fitting that description.

He nodded for Shelton, the more aggressive – and faster driver of the two, to get behind the wheel. "Back to CCU," he said.

Shelton mused, "So he's driving a Jag. Man, this guy's no ordinary hacker."

But, Bishop reflected, we already knew that.

A message finally popped up on Wyatt Gillette's machine at CCU.

Triple-X: Sorry, dude. This guy had to ask me some shit about breaking screen saver passcodes. Some luser.

For the next few minutes Gillette, in his persona as the alienated Texas teenager, told Triple-X about how he defeated Windows screen saver passcodes and let the hacker give him advice on better ways to do it. Gillette was digitally genuflecting before the guru when the door to the CCU opened and he glanced up to see Frank Bishop and Bob Shelton returning.

Patricia Nolan said excitedly, "We're close to finding Triple-X. He's in a cybercafe in a mall somewhere around here. He said he knows Phate."

Gillette called to Bishop, "But he's not saying anything concrete about him. He knows things but he's scared."

"Pac Bell and Bay Area On-Line say they'll have his location in five minutes," Tony Mott said, listening into his headset. "They're narrowing down the exchange. Looks like he's in Atherton, Menlo Park or Redwood City."

Bishop said, "Well, how many malls can there be? Get some tactical troops into the area."

Bob Shelton made a call and then announced, "They're rolling. Be in the area in five minutes."

"Come on, come on," Mott said to the monitor, fondling the square butt of his silver gun.

Bishop, reading the screen, said, "Steer him back to Phate. See if you can get him to give you something concrete."

Renegade334: man this phste dude, isnt their some thing I can do I mean to stop him. I'd like to fuck him up.

Triple-X: Listen, dude. You don't fuck up Phate. He fucks YOU up.

Renegade334: You think?

Triple-X: Phate is walking death, dude. Same with his friend Shawn. Don't go close to them. If Phate got you with Trapdoor, burn your drive and install a new one. Change your screen name.

Renegade334: Could he get to me do you think, even in texas? Wheres he hang?

"Good," said Bishop.

But Triple-X didn't answer right away. After a moment this message appeared on the screen:

Triple-X: I don't think he'd get to Austin. But I ought tell you something, dude…

Renegade334: Whats that?

Triple-X: Your ass ain't the least bit safe in Northern California, which is where you're sitting right at the moment, you fucking poser!!!!

"Shit, he made us!" Gillette snapped.

Renegade334: Hey man I'm in Texas.

Triple-X: "Hey, man" no, you're not. Check out the response times on your anonymizer. ESAD!

Triple-X logged off.

"Goddamn," Nolan said.

"He's gone," Gillette told Bishop and slammed his palm onto the workstation desktop in anger.

The detective glanced at the last message on the screen. He nodded toward it. "What's he mean by response times?"

Gillette didn't answer right away. He typed some commands and examined the anonymizer that Miller had hacked together.

"Hell," he muttered when he saw what had happened. He explained: Triple-X had been tracing CCU's computer by sending out the same sort of tiny electronic pings that Gillette was sending to find him. The anonymizer did tell Triple-X that Renegade was in Austin, but, when he'd typed BRB, the hacker must've run a further test, which showed that the length of time it took the pings to get to and from Renegade's computer was far too short for the electrons to make the round-trip all the way to Texas and back.

This was a serious mistake – it would have been simple to build a short delay into the anonymizer to add few milliseconds and make it appear that Renegade was a thousand miles farther away. Gillette couldn't understand why Miller hadn't thought of it.

"Fuck!" the cybercop said, shaking his head when he realized his mistake. "That's my fault. I'm sorry… I just didn't think."

No, you sure as hell hadn't, Gillette thought.

They'd been so close.

In a soft, discouraged voice, Bishop said, "Recall SWAT."

Shelton pulled out his cell phone and made the call.

Bishop asked, "That other thing Triple-X typed. 'ESAD.' What does that mean?"

"Just a friendly acronym," Gillette said sourly. "It means Eat Shit And Die."

"Bit of a nasty temper," Bishop observed.

Then a phone rang – it was his cell – and the detective answered. "Yes?" Then tersely he asked, "Where?" He jotted notes and then said, "Get every available unit in the area over there now. Call the San Jose metro police too. Move on it and I mean big."

He hung up then looked at the team. "We got a break. There was a response to our emergency vehicle locator. A traffic cop in San Jose saw a parked gray late-model Jag about a half hour ago. It was in an old area of town where you don't see expensive cars very often." He walked to the map and made an Xat the intersection where the car had been seen.

Shelton said, "I know the area a little. There're a lot of apartments near there. Some bodegas, a few package stores. Pretty low-rent district."

Then Bishop tapped a small square on the map. It was labeled " St. Francis Academy."

"Remember that case a few years ago?" the detective asked Shelton.

"Right."

"Some psycho got into the school and killed a student or teacher. The principal put in all kinds of security, real high-tech stuff. It was in all the papers." He nodded at the white-board. "Phate likes challenges, remember?"

"Jesus," Shelton muttered in fury. "He's going after kids now."

Bishop grabbed the phone and called in an assault-in-progress code to central dispatch.

No one dared to mention out loud what everybody was thinking: that the EVL report had placed the car there a half hour ago. Which meant Phate had already had plenty of time to play his macabre game.

It was just like life, Jamie Turner reflected.

With no fanfare, no buzzing, no satisfying ka-chunks like in the movies, without even a faint click, the light on the alarmed door went out.

In the Real World you don't get sound effects. You do what you set out to do and there's nothing to commemorate it except a light silently going dark.

He stood up and listened carefully. From far off down the halls of St. Francis Academy he heard music, some shouting, laughter, tinny arguing on a talk-radio show -which he was leaving behind, on his way to spend a totally perfect evening with his brother.

Easing the door open.

Silence. No alarms, no shouts from Booty.

The smell of cold air, fragrant with grass, filled his nose. It reminded him of those long, lonely hours after dinner at his parents' house in Mill Valley during the summer – his brother Mark in Sacramento where he'd taken a job to get away from home. Those endless nights… His mother giving Jamie desserts and snacks to keep him out of their hair, his father saying, "Go outside and play," while they and their friends told pointless stories that got more and more fuzzy as everybody guzzled local wines.

Go outside and play…

Like he was in fucking kindergarten!

Well, Jamie hadn't gone outside at all. He'd gone inside and hacked like there was no tomorrow.

That's what the cool spring air reminded him of. But at the moment he was immune to these memories. He was thrilled that he'd been successful and that he was going to spend the night with his brother.

He taped the door latch down so that he could get back inside when he returned to the school later that night. Jamie paused and turned back, listening. No footsteps, no Booty, no ghosts. He took a step outside.

His first step to freedom. Yes! He'd made it! He -

It was then that the ghost got him.

Suddenly a man's arm gripped him painfully around the chest and a powerful hand covered his mouth.

God god god…

Jamie tried to leap back into the school but his attacker, wearing some kind of maintenance man uniform, was strong and wrestled him to the ground. Then the man pulled the thick safety glasses off the boy's nose.

"What've we got here?" he whispered, tossing them on the ground and caressing the boy's eyelids.

"No, no!" Jamie tried to raise his arms to protect his eyes. "What're you doing?"

The man took something from the coveralls he wore. It looked like a spray bottle. He held it close to Jamie's face. What was -?

A stream of milky liquid shot from the nozzle into his eyes.

The terrible burn started a moment later and the boy began to cry and shake in utter panic. His worst fear was coming true. Blindness!

Jamie Turner shook his head furiously to fling off the pain and horror but the stinging only got worse. He was screaming, "No, no, no," the words muffled under the strong grip of the hand around his mouth.

The man leaned close and began to whisper in the boy's ear but Jamie had no idea what he said; the pain – and the horror – consumed him like fire in dry brush.

CHAPTER 00010001 / SEVENTEEN

Frank Bishop and Wyatt Gillette walked through the old archway of the entrance to St. Francis Academy, their shoes sounding in gritty scrapes on the cobblestones.

Bishop nodded a greeting to Huerto Ramirez, whose massive bulk filled half the archway, and asked, "It's true?"

"Yep, Frank. Sorry. He got away."

Ramirez and Tim Morgan, who was presently canvassing witnesses along the streets around the school, had been among the first at the scene.

Ramirez turned and led Bishop, Gillette and, behind them, Bob Shelton and Patricia Nolan into the school proper. Linda Sanchez, pulling a large wheelie suitcase, joined them.

Outside were two ambulances and a dozen police cars, their lights flashing silently. A large crowd of the curious stood on the sidewalk across the street.

"What happened?" Shelton asked him.

"As near as we can tell, the Jaguar was outside that gate over there." Ramirez pointed into a yard separated from the street by a high wall. "We were all on silent roll-up but it looks like he heard we were coming and sprinted out of the school and got away. We set up roadblocks eight and sixteen blocks away but he got through them. Used alleys and side-streets probably."

As they walked through the dim corridors Nolan fell into step beside Gillette. She seemed to want to say something but changed her mind and remained silent.

Gillette noticed no students as they walked down the hallways; maybe the teachers were keeping them in their rooms until parents and counselors arrived.

"Crime scene finding anything?" Bishop asked Ramirez.

"Nothing that, you know, jumps up and gives us the perp's address."

They turned a corner and at the end of it saw an open door, outside of which were dozens of police officers and several medical technicians. Ramirez glanced at Bishop and then whispered something to him. Bishop nodded and said to Gillette, "It's pretty unpleasant in there. It was like Andy Anderson and Lara Gibson. The killer used his knife again – in the heart. But it looks like it took him a while to die. It's pretty messy. Why don't you wait outside? When we need you to look at the computer I'll let you know."

"I can handle it," the hacker replied.

"You sure?"

"Yep."

Bishop asked Ramirez, "How old?"

"The kid? Fifteen."

Bishop lifted an eyebrow at Patricia Nolan, asking her if she too could tolerate the carnage. She answered, "It's okay."

They walked inside the classroom.

Despite his measured response to Bishop's question Gillette stopped in shock. There was blood everywhere. An astonishing amount – on the floor, walls, chairs, picture frames, white-board, the lectern. The color was different depending on what substance the blood covered, ranging from bright pink to nearly black.

The body lay under a dark-green rubberized blanket on the floor in the middle of the room. Gillette glanced at Nolan, expecting her to be repulsed too. But after a glance at the crimson spatters and streaks and puddles around the room, her eyes simply scanned the classroom, maybe looking for the computer they were going to analyze.

"What's the boy's name?" Bishop asked.

A woman officer from the San Jose Police Department said, "Jamie Turner."

Linda Sanchez walked into the room and inhaled deeply when she saw the blood and the body. She seemed to be deciding if she was going to faint or not. She stepped outside again.

Frank Bishop walked into the classroom next door to the murder site, where a teenage boy sat clutching himself and rocking back and forth in a chair. Gillette joined the detective.

"Jamie?" Bishop asked. "Jamie Turner?"

The boy didn't respond. Gillette noticed that his eyes were bright red and the skin around them seemed inflamed. Bishop glanced at another man in the room. He was thin and in his mid-twenties. He stood beside Jamie and had his arm on the boy's shoulder. The man said to the detective, "This is Jamie, that's right. I'm his brother. Mark Turner."

"Booty's dead," Jamie whispered miserably and pressed a damp cloth on his eyes.

"Booty?"

Another man – in his forties, wearing chinos and an Izod shirt – identified himself as the assistant principal at the school and said, "It was the boy's nickname for him." He nodded toward the room where the body bag rested. "For the principal."

Bishop crouched down. "How you feeling, young man?"

"He killed him. He had this knife. He stabbed him and Mr. Boethe just kept screaming and screaming and running around, trying to get away. I…" He lost his voice to a cascade of sobbing. His brother gripped his shoulders tighter.

"He all right?" Bishop asked one of the medical techs, a woman whose jacket was adorned with a stethoscope and hemostat clamps. She said, "He'll be fine. Looks like the perp squirted him in the eyes with water that had a little ammonia and Tabasco mixed in. Just enough to sting, not enough to do any damage."

"Why?" Bishop asked.

She shrugged. "You got me."

Bishop pulled up a chair and sat down. "I'm sorry this happened, Jamie. I know you're upset. But it's real important you tell us what you know."

After a few minutes the boy calmed and explained that he'd broken out of the school to go to a concert with his brother. But as soon as he'd gotten the door open this man in a uniform like a janitor's grabbed him and squirted some stuff in his eyes. He'd told Jamie it was acid and that if the boy led him to where Mr. Boethe was he'd give him an antidote. But if he didn't the acid'd eat his eyes away.

The boy's hands shook and he started to cry.

"It's his big fear," Mark said angrily, "going blind. The bastard found that out somehow."

Bishop nodded and said to Gillette, "The principal was his target. It's a big school – Phate needed Jamie to find the victim fast."

"And it hurt so much! It really, really did… I told him I wasn't going to help him. I didn't want to, I tried not to but I couldn't help it. I…" He fell silent.

Gillette felt there was something more that Jamie wanted to say but couldn't bring himself to.

Bishop touched the boy's shoulder. "You did exactly the right thing. You did just what I would've done, son. Don't you worry about it. Tell me, Jamie, did you e-mail anybody about what you were going to do tonight? It's important that we know."

The boy swallowed and looked down.

"Nothing's going to happen to you, Jamie. Don't worry. We just want to find this guy."

"My brother, I guess. And then…"

"Go ahead."

"What it was, I kind of went online to find some pass-codes and stuff. Passcodes to the front gate. He must've hacked my machine and seen them and that's how he got into the courtyard."

"How about you being afraid of going blind?" Bishop asked. "Could he have read about that online?"

Jamie nodded again.

Gillette said, "So Phate made Jamie himself a trapdoor – to get inside."

"You've been real brave, young man," Bishop said kindly.

But the boy was beyond consoling.

The medical examiner's technicians took the principal's body away and the cops conferred in the corridor, Gillette and Nolan with them. Shelton reported what he'd learned from the forensic techs. "Crime scene doesn't have dick. A few dozen obvious fingerprints – they'll run those but, hell, we already know it's Holloway. He was wearing shoes without distinctive tread marks. There're a million fibers in the room. Enough to keep the bureau's lab busy for a year. Oh, they found this. It's the Turner kid's."

He handed a sheet of paper to Bishop, who read it and passed it on to Gillette. It appeared to be the boy's notes about cracking the passcode and deactivating the door alarm.

Huerto Ramirez told them, "Nobody was exactly sure where the Jaguar was parked. In any case, the rain's washed away any tread marks. We got a ton of trash by the roadside but whether our perp dropped any of it or not, who knows?"

Nolan said, "He's a cracker. That means he's an organized offender. He's not going to be pitching out junk mailers with his address on them while he's staking out a victim."

Ramirez continued, "Tim's still pounding the pavement with some troopers from HQ but nobody's seen anything at all."

Bishop glanced at Nolan, Sanchez and Gillette. "Okay, secure the boy's machine and check it out."

Linda Sanchez asked, "Where is it?"

The assistant principal said he'd lead them to the school's computer department. Gillette returned to the room where Jamie was sitting and asked him which machine he'd used.

"Number three," the boy sullenly replied and continued pressing the cloth into his eyes.

The team started down the dim corridor. As they walked, Linda Sanchez made a call on her cell phone. She learned – Gillette deduced from the conversation – that her daughter still hadn't started labor. She hung up, saying, "Dios."

In the basement computer room, a chill and depressing place, Gillette, Nolan and Sanchez walked up to the machine marked NO. 3. Gillette told Sanchez not to run any of her excavation programs just yet. He sat down and said, "As far as we know the Trapdoor demon hasn't self-destructed. I'm going to try to find out where it's resident in the system."

Nolan looked around the damp, gothic room. "Feels like we're in The Exorcist… Spooky atmosphere and demonic possession."

Gillette gave a faint smile. He powered up the computer and examined the main menu. He then loaded various applications – a word processor, a spreadsheet, a fax program, a virus checker, some disk-copying utilities, some games, some Web browsers, a password-cracking program that Jamie had apparently written (some very robust code-writing for a teenager, Gillette noticed).

As he typed he'd stare at the screen, watching how soon the character he typed would appear in the glowing letters on the monitor. He'd listen to the grind of the hard drive to see if it was making any sounds that were out of sync with the task it was supposed to be performing at that moment.

Patricia Nolan sat close to him, also gazing at the screen.

"I can feel the demon," Gillette whispered. "But it's odd – it seems to move around. It jumps from program to program. As soon as I open one it slips into the software – maybe to see if I'm looking for it. When it decides that I'm not, it leaves… But it has to be resident somewhere."

"Where?" Bishop asked.

"Let's see if we can find out." Gillette opened and closed a dozen programs, then a dozen more, all the while typing furiously. "Okay, okay… This is the most sluggish directory." He looked over a list of files then gave a cold laugh. "You know where Trapdoor hangs out?"

"Where?"

"The games folder. At the moment it's in the Solitaire program."

"What?"

"The card game."

Sanchez said, "But games come with almost every computer sold in America."

Nolan said, "That's probably why Phate wrote the code that way."

Bishop shook his head. "So anybody with a game on his computer could have Trapdoor in it?"

Nolan asked, "What happens if you disabled Solitaire or erased it?"

They debated this for a moment. Gillette was desperately curious about how Trapdoor worked and wanted to extract the demon and examine it. If they deleted the game program the demon might kill itself – but knowing that this would destroy it would give them a weapon; anyone who suspected the demon was inside could simply remove the game.

They decided to copy the contents of the hard drive from the computer Jamie had used and then Gillette would delete Solitaire and they'd see what happened.

Once Sanchez was finished copying the contents Gillette erased the Solitaire program. But he noticed a faint delay in the delete operation. He tested various programs again then laughed bitterly. "It's still there. It jumped to another program and's alive and well. How the hell does it do that?" The Trapdoor demon had sensed its home was about to be destroyed and had delayed the delete program just long enough to escape from the Solitaire software to another program.

Gillette stood up and shook his head. "There's nothing more I can do here. Let's take the machine back to CCU and-"

There was a blur of motion as the door to the computer room swung open fast, shattering glass. A raging cry filled the room and a figure charged up to the computer. Nolan dropped to her knees, giving a faint scream of surprise.

Bishop was knocked aside. Linda Sanchez fumbled for her gun.

Gillette dove for cover just as the chair swung past his head and crashed into the monitor he'd been sitting at.

"Jamie!" the assistant principal cried sharply. "No!"

But the boy drew back the heavy chair and slammed it into the monitor again, which imploded with a loud pop and scattered glass shards around them. Smoke rose from the carcass of the unit.

The administrator grabbed the chair and ripped it from Jamie's hand, pulling the boy aside and shoving him to the floor. "What the hell are you doing, mister?"

The boy scrambled to his feet, sobbing, and made another grab for the computer. But Bishop and the administrator restrained him. "I'm going to smash it! It killed him! It killed Mr. Boethe!"

The assistant principal shouted, "You cut that out this minute, young man! I'm not going to have that kind of behavior in my students."

"Get your fucking hands off me!" the boy raged. "It killed him and I'm going to kill it!" The boy shook with anger.

"Mr. Turner, you will calm down this instant! I'm not going to tell you again."

Mark, Jamie's brother, ran into the computer room. He put his arm around the boy, who collapsed against him, sobbing.

"The students have to behave," the shaken administrator said, looking at the cool faces of the CCU team. "That's the way we do things around here."

Bishop glanced at Sanchez, who was surveying the damage. She said, "Central processor's okay. The monitor's all he nailed."

Wyatt Gillette pulled a couple of chairs into the corner and motioned Jamie over to him. The boy looked at his brother, who nodded, and he joined the hacker.

"I think that fucks up the warranty," Gillette said, laughing and nodding at the monitor.

The boy flashed a weak smile but it vanished almost immediately.

After a moment the boy said, "It's my fault Booty died." The boy looked at him. "I hacked the passcode to the gate, I downloaded the schematic for the alarms… Oh, I wish I was fucking dead!" He wiped his face on his sleeve.

There was more on the boy's mind, Gillette could see once again. "Go on, tell me," he encouraged softly.

The boy looked down and finally said, "That man? He said that if I hadn't been hacking, Mr. Boethe'd still be alive. It was me who killed him. And I should never touch another computer again because I might kill somebody else."

Gillette was shaking his head. "No, no, no, Jamie. The man who did this is a sick fuck. He got it into his head that he was going to kill your principal and nothing was going to stop him. If he hadn't used you he would've used somebody else. He said those things to you 'cause he's afraid of you."

"Afraid of me?"

"He's been watching you, watching you write script and hack. He's scared of what you might do to him someday."

Jamie said nothing.

Gillette nodded at the smoking monitor. "You can't break all the machines in the world."

"But I can fuck up that one!" he raged.

"It's just a tool," Gillette said softly. "Some people use screwdrivers to break into houses. You can't get rid of all the screwdrivers."

Jamie sagged against a stack of books, crying. Gillette put his arm around the boy's shoulders. "I'm never going on a fucking computer again. I hate them!"

"Well, that's going to be a problem."

The boy wiped his face again. "Problem?"

Gillette said, "See, we need you to help us."

"Help you?"

The hacker nodded at the machine. "You wrote that script? Crack-er?"

The boy nodded.

"You're good, Jamie. You're really good. There are sysadmins who couldn't run the hacks you did. We're going to take that machine with us so we can analyze it at headquarters. But I'm going to leave the other ones here and I was hoping you'd go through them and see if there's anything you can find that might help us catch this asshole."

"You want me to do that?"

"You know what a white-hat hacker is?"

"Yeah. A good hacker who helps find bad hackers."

"Will you be our white hat? We don't have enough people at the state police. Maybe you'll find something we can't."

The boy now seemed embarrassed he'd been crying. He angrily wiped his face. "I don't know. I don't think I want to."

"We sure could use your help."

The assistant principal said, "Okay, Jamie, it's time to get back to your room."

His brother said, "No way. He's not staying here tonight. We're going to that concert and then he can spend the night with me."

The assistant principal said firmly, "No. He needs written permission from your parents and we couldn't get in touch with them. We have rules here and, after all this" – he waved his hands vaguely toward the crime scene – "we're not deviating from them."

Mark Turner leaned forward and whispered harshly, "Jesus Christ, loosen up, will you? The kid's had the worst night of his life and you're-"

The administrator responded, "You have no say about how I deal with my students."

Then Frank Bishop said, "But I do. And Jamie's not doing either – staying here or going to any concerts. He's coming to police headquarters and making a statement. Then we'll take him to his parents."

"I don't want to go there," the boy said miserably. "Not my parents."

"I'm afraid I don't have any choice, Jamie," said the detective.

The boy sighed and looked like he was going to start crying again.

Bishop glanced at the assistant principal and said, "I'll take care of it from here. You're going to have your hands full with the other boys tonight."

The man glanced distastefully at the detective – and at the broken door – and left the computer room.

After he was gone Frank Bishop smiled and said to the boy, "Okay, young man, you and your brother get on out of here now. You might miss the opening act but if you move fast you'll probably make the main show."

"But my parents? You said-"

"Forget what I said. I'll call your mom and dad and tell them you're spending the night with your brother." He looked at Mark. "Just make sure he's back here in time for classes tomorrow."

The boy couldn't smile – not after everything that had happened – but he offered a faint, "Thanks." He walked toward the door.

Mark Turner shook the detective's hand.

"Jamie," Gillette called.

The boy turned.

"Think about what I asked – about helping us."

Jamie looked at the smoking monitor for a moment. He turned and left without responding.

Bishop asked Gillette, "You think he can find something?"

"I don't have any idea. That's not why I asked him to help. I figured that after something like this he needs to get back on the horse." Gillette nodded at Jamie's notes. "He's brilliant. It'd be a real crime if he got gun-shy and gave up machines."

The detective gave a brief laugh. "The more I know you, the more you don't seem like the typical hacker."

"Who knows? Maybe I'm not."

Gillette helped Linda Sanchez go through the ritual of disconnecting the computer that had been a co-conspirator in the death of poor Willem Boethe. She wrapped it in a blanket and strapped it onto a wheelie cart carefully, as if she were afraid that jostling or rough treatment would dislodge any fragile clues to the whereabouts of their adversary.

At the Computer Crimes Unit the investigation stalled.

The. bot's alarm that would alert them to the presence of Phate or Shawn on the Net hadn't gone off, nor had TripleX gone back online.

Tony Mott, who still seemed unhappy at missing a chance to play "real cop," was grudgingly poring over sheets of legal paper on which he and Miller had taken numerous notes while the rest of the team had been at St. Francis Academy. He announced, "There was nothing helpful in VICAP or the state databases under the name 'Holloway.' A lot of the files were missing and the ones still there don't tell us shit."

Mott continued, "We talked to some of the places that Holloway'd worked: Western Electric, Apple, and Nippon

Electronics – that's NEC. A few of the people who remember him say that he was a brilliant codeslinger… and a brilliant social engineer."

"TMS," Linda Sanchez recited, "IDK."

Gillette and Nolan laughed.

Mott translated yet another acronym from the Blue Nowhere for Bishop and Shelton. "Tell me something 1 don't know." He continued, "But – surprise, surprise – all the files were gone from their personnel and audit departments."

"I can see how he hacks in and erases computer files," Linda Sanchez said, "but how's he get rid of the dead-tree stuff?"

"The what?" Shelton asked.

"Paper files," Gillette explained. "But that's easy: he hacks into the file-room computer and issues a memo to the staff to shred them."

Mott added that several of the security officers at Phate's former employers believed he'd made his living – and might still be making it now – by brokering stolen supercomputer parts, for which there was huge demand, especially in Europe and third-world nations.

Their hopes blossomed for a moment when Ramirez called in to say that he'd finally heard from the owner of Ollie's Theatrical Supply. The man had looked at the booking picture of young Jon Holloway and confirmed that he'd come into the store several times in the past month. The owner couldn't recall exactly what he'd bought but he remembered the purchases were large and had been paid for with cash. The owner had no idea where Holloway lived but he did remember a brief exchange. He'd asked Holloway if he was an actor and, if so, wasn't it hard to get jobs?

The killer had replied, "Nope, it's not hard at all. I act every single day."

A half hour later Frank Bishop stretched and looked around the dinosaur pen.

The energy was low in the room. Linda Sanchez was on the phone with her daughter. Stephen Miller sat sullenly by himself, looking over notes, perhaps still troubled by the mistake he'd made with the anonymizer, which had let Triple-X get away. Gillette was in the analysis lab, checking out the contents of Jamie Turner's computer. Patricia Nolan was in a nearby cubicle, making phone calls. Bishop wasn't sure where Bob Shelton was.

Bishop's phone rang and he took the call. It was from the highway patrol.

A motorcycle officer had found Phate's Jaguar in Oakland.

There wasn't any direct evidence linking the car to the hacker but it had to be his; the only reason to douse a $60,000 vehicle with copious amounts of gasoline and set it aflame was to destroy evidence.

Which the fire did with great efficiency, according to the crime scene unit; there were no clues that might help the team.

Bishop turned back to the preliminary crime scene report from St. Francis Academy. Huerto Ramirez had compiled it in record time but there wasn't much that was helpful here either. The murder weapon had again been a Ka-bar knife. The duct tape used to bind Jamie Turner was untraceable, as were the Tabasco and ammonia that had stung his eyes. They'd found plenty of Holloway's fingerprints – but those were useless now since they already knew his identity.

Bishop walked to the white-board and gestured to Mott for the marker, who pitched it to him. The detective wrote these details on the board but when he started to write "Fingerprints," he paused.

Phate's fingerprints…

The burning Jaguar…

These facts troubled him for some reason. Why? he wondered, brushing his sideburns with his knuckles.

Do something with that…

He snapped his fingers.

"What?" Linda Sanchez asked. Mott, Miller and Nolan looked at him.

"Phate didn't wear gloves this time."

At Vesta's, when he'd kidnapped Lara Gibson, Phate had carefully wrapped a napkin around his beer bottle to obscure his prints. At St. Francis he hadn't bothered. "That means he knows we have his real identity." Then the detective added, "And the car too. The only reason to destroy it is if he knew that we'd found out he was driving a Jaguar. How'd he do that?"

The press hadn't mentioned his name or the fact that the killer was driving a Jaguar.

"We have ourselves a spy, you think?" Linda Sanchez said.

Bishop's eyes fell again on the white-board and he noticed the reference to Shawn, Phate's mysterious partner. He tapped the name and asked, "What's the whole point of this game of his? It's to find some hidden way of getting access to your victim's life."

Nolan said, "You're thinking Shawn's a trapdoor? An insider?"

Tony Mott shrugged. "Maybe he's a dispatcher at headquarters? Or a trooper?"

"Or somebody from California State Data Management?" Stephen Miller suggested.

"Or maybe," a man's voice growled, "Gillette is Shawn."

Bishop turned and saw Bob Shelton standing in front of a cubicle toward the back of the room.

"What're you talking about?" Patricia Nolan asked.

"Come here," he said, gesturing them toward the cubicle.

Inside, on the desk, a computer monitor glowed with text. Shelton sat down and scrolled through it as the others on the team crammed into the cubicle.

Linda Sanchez looked over the screen. With some concern she said, "You're on ISLEnet. Gillette said we weren't supposed to log on from here."

"Of course he said that," Shelton spat out bitterly. "Know why? Because he was afraid we'd find this-" He scrolled a little further down and gestured toward the screen. "It's an old Department of Justice report I found in the Contra Costa County archives. Phate might've erased the copy in Washington but he missed this one." Shelton tapped the screen. "Gillette was Valleyman. He and Holloway ran that gang – Knights of Access – together. They founded it."

"Shit," Miller muttered.

"No," Bishop whispered. "Can't be."

Mott spat out, "He fucking social engineered us too!"

Bishop closed his eyes, seared by the betrayal.

Shelton muttered, "Gillette and Holloway've known each other for years. 'Shawn' could be one of Gillette's screen names. Remember that the warden said he'd been caught going online. He was probably contacting Phate. Maybe this whole thing was a plan to get Gillette out of prison. What a fucking son of bitch."

Nolan pointed out, "But Gillette programmed his bot to search for Valleyman too."

"Wrong." Shelton pushed a printout toward Bishop. "Here's how he modified his program."

The printout read:

Search: IRC, Undernet, Dalnet, WAIS, gopher, Usenet, BBSs, WWW, FTP, ARCHIVES

Search for: (Phate OR Holloway OR "Jon Patrick Holloway" OR "Jon Holloway") BUT NOT Valleyman OR Gillette

Bishop shook his head. "I don't understand it."

"The way he wrote the request," Nolan said, "his bot would retrieve anything that had a reference to Phate, Holloway or Trapdoor in it unless it also referred to Gillette or Valleyman. Those it would ignore."

Shelton continued, "He's the one who's been warning Phate. That's why he got away from St. Francis in time. And Gillette told him that we knew what kind of car he was driving, so he burned it."

Miller added, "And he was so desperate to stay and help us, remember?"

"Sure he was," Shelton said, nodding. "Otherwise, he'd lose his chance to-"

The detectives looked at each other.

Bishop whispered, "- escape."

They sprinted down the corridor that led to the analysis lab. Bishop noticed that Shelton had drawn his weapon.

The door to the lab was locked. Bishop pounded but there was no response. "Key!" he called to Miller.

But Shelton growled, "Fuck the key-" and kicked the door in, raising his gun.

The room was empty.

Bishop continued to the end of the corridor and pushed into a storeroom in the back of the building.

He saw the fire door, which led outside into the parking lot. It was wide open. The fire alarm in the door-opener bar had been dismantled – just as Jamie Turner had done to escape from St. Francis Academy.

Bishop closed his eyes and leaned against the damp wall. He felt the betrayal deep within his heart, as sharp as Phate's terrible knife.

"The more I know you, the more you don't seem like the typical hacker."

"Who knows? Maybe I'm not."

Then the detective turned and hurried back into the main area of the CCU. He picked up the phone and called the Department of Corrections Detention Coordination Office at the Santa Clara County Building. The detective identified himself and said, "We've got a fugitive on the run wearing an anklet. We need an emergency trace. I'll give you the number of his unit." He consulted his notebook. "It's-"

"Could you call back later, Lieutenant?" came the weary response.

"Call back? Excuse me, sir, you don't understand. We just had an escape. Within the last thirty minutes. We need to trace him."

"Well, we're not doing any tracing. The whole system's down. Crashed like the Hindenberg. Our tech people can't figure out why."

Bishop felt the chill run through his body. "Tell them you've been hacked," he said. "That's why."

The voice on the other end of the line gave a condescending laugh. "You've been watching too many movies, Detective. Nobody can get into our computers. Call back in three or four hours. Our people're saying we should be up and running by then."