The Blue Nowhere Part 37

CHAPTER 00100011 / THIRTY-FIVE.

"Are you all right?" Patricia Nolan asked, looking at the blood on Gillette's face, neck and pants.

"I'm fine," he said.

But she didn't believe him and played nurse anyway, disappearing into the canteen and returning with damp paper towels and liquid soap. She bathed his eyebrow and cheek where he'd been cut in the fight with Phate. He smelled fresh nail conditioner on her strong hands and wondered when, in light of Phate's a.s.sault on the hospital and here, she'd found time for cosmetics.

She made him tug his pants cuff up and she cleaned the small gash on his leg, holding his calf firmly. She finished and offered him an intimate smile.

Forget it, Patty, he thought once more... I'm a felon, I'm out of work, I'm in love with another woman. Really, don't bother.

"That doesn't hurt?" she asked, touching the damp cloth to the cut.

It seared like a dozen bee stings. "Just itches a little," he said, hoping to discourage the relentless mothering.

Tony Mott ran back inside CCU, bolstering his ma.s.sive weapon. "No sign of him."

Shelton and Bishop walked inside a moment later. All three men had returned to CCU from the medical center and had spent the last half hour scouring the area, looking for any signs of Phate or witnesses who'd seen him arrive at or flee the CCU. But the homicide partners' faces revealed that they'd had no more luck than Mott.

Bishop sat wearily in an office chair. "So what happened?" he asked the hacker.

Gillette briefed them about Phate's attack on CCU.

"He say anything that's helpful?"

"No. Not a thing. I almost got his wallet but just ended up with that." He nodded at the CD player. A tech from the Crime Scene Identification Unit had printed it and found that the only prints were Phate's and Gillette's.

Then the hacker delivered the news that Triple-X was dead.

"Oh, no," Frank Bishop said, looking heartsick that a civilian who'd taken a risk to help them had been killed. Bob Shelton sighed angrily.

Mott walked to the evidence board and wrote the name Triple-X next to Lara Gibson and Willem Boethe.

But Gillette stood - unsteadily thanks to his wounded shin - and walked to the board. He erased the name.

"What're you doing?" Bishop asked.

Gillette took a marker and wrote "Peter Grodsky." He said, "That's his real name. He was a programmer who lived in Sunnyvale." He looked at the team. "I just think we should remember that he was more than a screen name."

Bishop called Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan and told them to find Grodsky's address and run the crime scene.

Gillette noticed a pink phone message slip. He said to Bishop, "I took a message for you just before you got back from the hospital. Your wife called." He read the note. "Something about the test results coming back and it's good news. Uhm, I'm not sure I got this right - I thought she said she's got a serious infection. I'm not sure why that's good news."

But the look of immense joy in Bishop's face - a rare beaming smile - told him that, yes, the message was right.

He was happy for the detective but felt his own personal disappointment that Elana hadn't called him. He wondered where she was right now. Wondered if Ed was with her. Gillette's palms sweated with angry jealousy.

Agent Backle walked into the office from the parking lot.

His fastidiously tidy hair was mussed and he walked stiffly. He'd had his own medical treatment - but his had been administered by professionals with the Emergency Medical Services, whose ambulance was outside in the parking lot. He'd suffered a slight concussion when he'd been attacked in the coffee room. He now wore a large white bandage on the side of his head.

"How you feeling?" Gillette asked blithely.

The agent didn't respond. He noticed his gun sitting on a desk near Gillette and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the weapon. He checked it with exaggerated care then slipped it into his belt holster.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?" he asked.

Bishop said, "Phate broke in, blindsided you and got your weapon."

"And you took it away from him?" the agent asked Gillette skeptically.

"Yep."

"You knew I was in the coffee room," Backle snapped. "The perp didn't."

"But I guess he did know, didn't he?" Gillette responded. "Otherwise how could he blindside you and get your weapon?"

"It seems to me," the agent said slowly, "that you somehow got this idea he was going to come here. You wanted a weapon and helped yourself to mine."

"Well, that's not what happened," Gillette said then glanced at Bishop, who c.o.c.ked an eyebrow in a way that suggested that the agent might not be completely wrong. The detective, though, said nothing.

"If I find out that it was you--"

Bishop said, "Hey, hey, hey... I think you ought to be a little more grateful, sir. There's a good argument to be made that Wyatt here saved your life."

The agent tried to stare down the cop but gave up, walked to a chair and sat down in it gingerly. "I'm still watching you, Gillette."

Bishop took a phone call. He hung up then reported, "That was Huerto again. He said they got a report from Harvard. There were no records of anybody named Shawn who was a student or working at the school around the same time Holloway was. He checked the other places Holloway worked too - Western Electric, Apple and the rest of them. Negative on an employee named Shawn." He glanced at Shelton. "He also said it's getting hot and heavy with the MARINKILL case. The perps were spotted in our backyard. Santa Clara, just off the 101."

Bob Shelton gave an uncharacteristic laugh. "Doesn't matter whether you wanted a piece of that case or not, Frank. Looks like it's d.o.g.g.i.ng you."

Bishop shook his head. "Maybe, but I sure don't want it around here, not for the time being. It's going to pull off resources and we need all the help we can get." He looked at Patricia Nolan. "What'd you find at the hospital?"

She explained how she and Miller had looked through the medical center's network and, while they found signs that Phate had cracked into the system, she couldn't find any indication of where he'd been hacking in from.

"The sysadmin printed these out." She handed Gillette a large stack of printouts. "The log in and log out activity reports for the past week. I thought you might be able to find something."

Gillette began poring over the hundred or so pages.

Then Bishop looked around the dinosaur pen and frowned. "Say, where is Miller?"

Nolan said, "He left the hospital computer center before me. He said he was coming straight back here."

Without looking up from the printouts Gillette said, "I haven't seen him."

"He might've gone over to the computer center at Stanford," Mott said. "He books supercomputer time there a lot. Maybe he was going to check out a lead." He tried the cop's cell phone but there was no answer and he left a message on Miller's voice mail.

Gillette was scanning through the printouts when he came to a particular entry and his heart thudded with alarm. He read it again to make sure. "No..."

He'd spoken softly but everyone on the team stopped talking and looked toward him.

The hacker looked up. "Once he seized root at Stanford-Packard, Phate logged into other systems that were connected with the hospital's - that's how he shut the phone system off. But he also jumped from the hospital to an outside computer. It recognized Stanford-Packard as a trusted system so he waltzed right though the firewalls and seized root there too."

"What's the other system?" Bishop asked.

"Northern California University in Sunnyvale." Gillette looked up. "He got files on security procedures and personnel information on every security guard who works for the school." The hacker sighed. "He also downloaded the files of twenty-eight hundred students."

"So he's got his next pool of victims all lined up," Bishop said and dropped heavily into a shabby office chair.

Someone was following him...

Who was it?

Phate looked in his rearview mirror at the cars behind him on the 280 freeway as he fled from CCU headquarters. He was badly shaken that Valleyman had outmaneuvered him again and was desperate to get home.

He was already thinking of his next attack - on Northern California University. It was less challenging than some targets he might've picked but the security at the dorms was high and the school had a computer system that the chancellor of the school had once declared in an interview was hacker-proof. One of the more interesting features of this system was that it controlled the state-of-the-art fire alarm and sprinkler systems throughout the twenty-five dorms that provided the bulk of student housing.

An easy hack, not as challenging as either the Lara Gibson or St. Francis one. But at the moment Phate needed a victory. He was losing this level of the game and that was shaking his confidence.

And fueling his paranoia: Another glance in the rearview mirror.

Yes, someone was there! Two men in the front seat, staring at him.

Eyes back to the road, then he looked again.

But the car he'd seen - or thought he'd seen - was just a shadow or reflection.

No, wait! It was back... But now it was being driven by a woman alone.

When he looked a third time there was no driver at all. My G.o.d, it was a creature of some sort!

A ghost.

A demon.

Yes, no...

You were right, Valleyman: When computers are the only life that sustains you, when they're the only totems that ward off the deadly curse of boredom, then sooner or later the borderline between the two dimensions vanishes and characters from the Blue Nowhere begin to appear in the Real World.

Sometimes those characters are your friends.

And sometimes not.

Sometimes you see them driving behind you, sometimes you see their shadows in alleyways you're approaching, you see them hiding in your garage, your bedroom, your closet. You see them in a stranger's gaze.

You see them in the reflection of your monitor as you sit in front of your machine at the witching hour.

Sometimes they're just your imagination.

Another glance in the rearview mirror.

But sometimes, of course, they really are there.

Bishop pushed END on his cell phone.

"The dorms on the Northern California U campus have typical university security, which means it's pretty easy to get through."

"I thought he wanted challenges," Mott said.

Gillette said, "I'd guess he's going for an easy kill this time. He's probably p.i.s.sed off we've gotten so close to him the last few times and wants blood."

Nolan added, "This might also be another diversion."

Gillette agreed that that was a possibility.

Bishop said, "I told the chancellor they should cancel cla.s.ses and send everybody home. But he wasn't inclined to - the students start finals in two weeks. So we'll have to blanket the campus with troopers and county police. But that'll just mean more strangers on campus - and more of a chance for Phate to social engineer his way into a dorm."

"What do we do?" Mott asked.

Bishop said, "Some more old-fashioned police work." He picked up Phate's CD player. The detective opened it up. Inside was a recording of a play - a performance of Oth.e.l.lo. He turned the machine over and jotted down the serial number. "Maybe Phate bought it in the area. I'll call the company and see where this unit was shipped to."

Bishop started making phone calls to the Akisha Electronic Products Company's various sales and distribution centers around the country. He was transferred and put on hold for an interminable period of time and was having trouble getting through to someone who could - or was willing to - help.

As the detective argued with someone on the other end of the line Wyatt Gillette spun around in a swivel chair to a nearby computer terminal and began keyboarding. A moment later he stood and pulled a piece of paper from the printer.

As Bishop's irritated voice was saying into the phone, "We can't wait two days for that information," Gillette handed the sheet to the detective.

Akisha Electronic Products Shipped - First Quarter Model: HB Heavy Ba.s.s Portable Compact Disc Player Unit Serial Shipping Numbers Date Recipient HB40032- 1/12 Mountain View Music & Electronics HB40068 9456 Rio Verde, #4 Mountain View, CA The phone sagged in the detective's hand and he said into the receiver, "Never mind," and hung up. "How'd you get this?" Bishop asked Gillette. Then held up a hand. "On second thought, I'd rather not know." He chuckled. "Old-fashioned police work, like I said."

Bishop picked up the phone and called Huerto Ramirez again. He told him to send somebody else to run the scene at Triple-X's house and then directed him and Tim Morgan to Mountain View Music with a picture of Phate to see if they could find out if he lived in the area. "Also, tell the clerk that our boy seems to like plays. He's got a recording of Oth.e.l.lo. That might help jog their memories."

A trooper from the state police headquarters in San Jose dropped off an envelope for Bishop.

He opened it and summarized for the team, "FBI report on the details from the picture of Lara Gibson that Phate posted. They said it's a Tru-Heat gas furnace, model GST3000. The model was introduced three years ago and it's popular in new developments. Because of its BTU capacity that model is usually used in detached houses that're two or three stories high, not town houses or ranches. The techs also computer enhanced the information stamped on the Sheetrock in the bas.e.m.e.nt and found a manufacturing date: January of last year."

"New house in a recently developed tract," Mott said and wrote these details on the evidence board. "Two to three stories high."

Bishop gave a faint laugh and raised an eyebrow in admiration. "Our federal tax dollars are being well spent, boys and girls. Those folks in Washington know what they're doing. Listen to this. The agents found significant irregularities in the grouting and placement of tiles on the floor and think that suggests the house was sold with an unfinished bas.e.m.e.nt and the homeowner himself laid the tile."

Mott added on the board: "Sold with unfinished bas.e.m.e.nt."

"We're not through yet," the detective continued. "They also enhanced a portion of a newspaper that was in the trash bin and found out that it was a giveaway shopper, The Silicon Valley Marketeer. It's home delivered and only goes to houses in Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara."

Gillette asked, "Can we find out about new developments in those towns?"

Bishop nodded. "Just what I was about to do." He looked at Bob Shelton. "You still have that buddy of yours at Santa Clara County P and Z?"