The Blue Nowhere Part 28

She didn't appear the least put out - or even surprised -that her husband had brought a felon home to spend the night and Gillette supposed she'd received a phone call earlier about their houseguest.

"Have you eaten?" she asked.

"No," Bishop said.

But Gillette held up the paper bag containing what they'd stopped for on the way here from CCU. "I'm fine with these."

Jennie unabashedly took the bag from him, looked inside. She laughed. "You're not having Pop-Tarts for dinner. You need real food."

"No, really--" With a smile on his face and sorrow in his heart Gillette watched the pastry disappear into the kitchen.

So near, yet so far...

Bishop unlaced his shoes, pulled them off and put on moccasin slippers. The hacker also took his shoes off and, in stocking feet, stepped into the living room, looking around.

The place reminded Gillette of his own childhood homes. White wall-to-wall carpet in need of replacing. Furniture from JCPenney or Sears. An expensive TV and a cheap stereo. The chipped dining room table doubled tonight as a desk; this seemed to be bill-paying day. A dozen envelopes were carefully laid out to be mailed. Pacific Bell, Mervyn's, MasterCard, Visa.

Gillette looked over some of the many framed pictures on the mantelpiece. There were four or five dozen of them. More on the walls, tables and bookshelves. The couple's wedding picture revealed a young Frank Bishop identical to today's, sideburns and sprayed hair included (though the white shirt under the tuxedo jacket was held firmly in place by a c.u.mmerbund).

Bishop saw Gillette studying them. "Jennie calls us World O' Frames. We've got more pictures than any two families on our block combined." He nodded toward the back of the house. "Plenty more in the bedroom and bathroom too. That one you're looking at - that's my father and mother."

"Was he a cop? Wait, do you mind being called a cop?"

"Do you mind being called a hacker?"

Gillette shrugged. "Nope. It fits."

"Same with 'cop.' But, no, Dad owned a printing company in Oakland. Bishop and Sons. The 'sons' part isn't exactly accurate since two of my sisters run it along with most of my brothers."

'"Two of?" Gillette said, lifting an eyebrow. '"Most of?"

Bishop laughed. "I'm the eighth of nine. Five boys and four girls."

"That's quite a family."

"I've got twenty-nine nieces and nephews," the detective said proudly.

Gillette looked at a picture of a lean man in a shirt as baggy as Bishop's, standing in front of a one-story building, on the f.a.gade of which was a sign, BISHOP & SONS PRINTING AND TYPESETTING.

"You didn't want to be in the business?"

"I like the idea of a company staying in the family." He picked up the picture and gazed at it himself. "I think family's the most important thing in the world. But, I tell you, I'd've been pretty bad at the printing business. Boring, you know. The thing about being a cop is that it's... how do I say it? It's like it's infinite. There's always something new, every day. As soon as you think you've figured out the criminal mind, bang, you find a whole new perspective."

There was motion nearby. They turned.

"Look who we have here," Bishop said.

A boy of about eight was peeking into the living room from the corridor.

"Come on in here, young man."

Wearing pajamas decorated with tiny dinosaurs, the boy walked into the living room, looking up at Gillette.

"Say hi to Mr. Gillette, son. This's Brandon."

"h.e.l.lo."

"Hi, Brandon," Gillette said. "You're up late."

"I like to say good night to my dad. If he doesn't get home too late mom lets me stay up."

"Mr. Gillette writes software for computers."

"You write script?" the boy asked enthusiastically.

"That's right," Gillette said, laughing at the way the programmer's shorthand for software tripped easily off his tongue.

The boy said, "We write programs at our computer lab in school. The one we did last week made a ball bounce around the screen."

"That sounds like fun," Gillette offered, noting the boy's round, eager eyes. His features were mostly his mother's.

"Naw," Brandon said, "it was totally boring. We had to use QBasic. I'm gonna learn O-O-P."

Object-oriented programming - the latest trend, exemplified by the sophisticated C++ language.

The boy shrugged. "Then Java and HTML for the Net. But, like, everybody oughta know that."

"So you want to go into computers when you grow up."

"Naw, I'm going to play pro baseball. I just want to learn O-O-P 'cause it's where everything's happening now."

Here was a grade-schooler who was already tired of Basic and had his eyes set on the cutting edge of programming.

"Why don't you go show Mr. Gillette your computer."

"You play Tomb Raider?" the boy asked. "Or Earthworm Jim?"

"I don't play games much."

"I'll show you. Come on."

Gillette followed the boy into a room cluttered with books, toys, sports equipment, clothes. The Harry Potter books sat on the bedside table, next to a Game Boy, two 'N Sync CDs and a dozen floppy disks. Well, here's a snapshot of our era, Gillette thought.

In the center of the room was an IBM-clone computer and dozens of software instruction manuals. Brandon sat down and, with lightning-fast keystrokes, booted up the machine and loaded a game. Gillette recalled that when he was the boy's age the state of the art in personal computing was the Trash-80 he'd selected when his father had told him he could pick out a present for himself at Radio Shack. That tiny computer had thrilled him but it was, of course, just a rudimentary toy compared with even this cheap, mailorder machine he was now looking at. At that time - just a few years ago - only a handful of people in the world had owned machines as powerful as the one on which Brandon Bishop was now directing a beautiful woman in a tight green top through caverns with a gun in her hand.

"You want to play?"

But this brought to mind the terrible game of Access and Phate's digital picture of the murdered girl (her name, Lara, was the same as that of the heroine of this game of Brandon's); he wanted nothing to do with violence, even two-dimensional, at the moment.

"Maybe later."

He watched the boy's fascinated eyes dance around the screen for a few minutes. Then the detective stuck his head in the door. "Lights out, son."

"Dad, look at the level I'm at! Five minutes."

"Nope. It's bedtime."

"Aw, Dad..."

Bishop made sure the boy's teeth were brushed and his homework was in his book bag. He kissed his son good night, powered down the computer and shut out the overhead light, leaving a Star Wars s.p.a.ceship night-light as the only source of illumination in the room.

He said to Gillette, "Come on. I'll show you the back forty."

"The what?"

"Follow me."

Bishop led Gillette through the kitchen, where Jennie was making sandwiches, and out the back door.

The hacker stopped abruptly on the back porch, surprised at what he saw in front of him. He gave a laugh.

"Yep, I'm a farmer," Bishop announced.

Rows of fruit trees - probably fifty altogether - filled the backyard.

"We moved in eighteen years ago - just when the Valley was starting to take off. I borrowed enough to buy two lots. This one had some of the original farm on it. These're apricot and cherry."

"What do you do, sell it?"

"Give it away mostly. At Christmas, if you know the Bishops, you're going to get preserves or dried fruit. People we really like get brandied cherries."

Gillette examined the sprinklers and smudge pots. "You take it pretty seriously," the hacker observed.

"Keeps me sane. I come home and Jennie and I come out here and tend to the crop. It kind of shuts out all the bad stuff I deal with during the day."

They walked through the rows of trees. The backyard was filled with plastic pipes and hoses, the cop's irrigation system. Gillette nodded at them. "You know, you could make a computer that ran on water."

"You could? Oh, you mean a waterfall'd run a turbine for the electricity."

"No, I mean instead of current going through wires you could use water running through pipes, with valves to shut the flow on or off. That's all computers do, you know. Turn a flow of current on or off."

"Is that right?" Bishop asked. He seemed genuinely interested.

"Computer processors are just little switches that let bits of electricity through or don't let them through. All the pictures you see on a computer, all the music, movies, word processors, spreadsheets, browsers, search engines, the Internet, math calculations, viruses... everything a computer does can be boiled down to that. It's not magic at all. It's just turning little switches on or off."

The cop nodded then he gave Gillette a knowing look. "Except that you don't believe that, do you?"

"How do you mean?"

"You think computers're pure magic."

After a pause Gillette laughed. "Yeah, I do."

They remained standing on the porch for a few minutes, looking out over the glistening branches of the trees. Then Jennie Bishop summoned them to dinner. They walked into the kitchen.

Jennie said, "I'm going to bed. I've got a busy day tomorrow. Nice meeting you, Wyatt." She shook his hand firmly.

"Thanks for letting me stay. I appreciate it."

To her husband she said, "My appointment's at eleven tomorrow."

"You want me to go with you? I will. Bob can take over the case for a few hours."

"No. You've got your hands full. I'll be fine. If Dr.

Williston sees anything funny I'll call you from the hospital. But that's not going to happen."

"I'll have my cell phone with me."

She started to leave but then she turned back with a grave look. "Oh, but there is something you have to do tomorrow."

"What's that, honey?" the detective asked, concerned.

"The Hoover." She nodded toward a vacuum cleaner sitting in the corner, the front panel off and a dusty hose hanging from the side. Several other components lay nearby on a newspaper. "Take it in."

"I'll fix it," Bishop said. "There's just some dirt in the motor or something."

She chided, "You've had a month. Now it's time for the experts."

Bishop turned toward Gillette. "You know anything about vacuum cleaners?"

"Nope. Sorry."

The detective glanced at his wife. "I'll get to it tomorrow. Or the next day."

A knowing smile. "The address of the repair place is on that yellow sticky tab there. See it?"

He kissed her. "Night, love." Jennie disappeared into the dim hallway.

Bishop rose and walked to the refrigerator. "I guess I can't get into any more trouble than I'm already in if I offer a prisoner a beer."

Gillette shook his head. "Thanks but I don't drink."

"No?"

"That's one thing about hackers: We never drink anything that'll make us sleepy. Go to a hacking newsgroup sometime - like alt.hack. Half the postings are about taking down Pac Bell switches or cracking into the White House and the other half are about the caffeine content of the latest soft drinks."

Bishop poured himself a Budweiser. He glanced at Gillette's arm, the tattoo of the seagull and the palm tree. "That's mighty ugly, I have to say. That bird especially. Why'd you have it done?"