The Blue Nowhere Part 7

It was a moment before Anderson recalled what the letters stood for. Confidential informants. Snitches.

Bishop said in his soft, unemotional voice, "Somebody named Peter Fowler, white male about twenty-five, from Bakersfield's been seen selling guns in this area. Been hawking Ka-bars too." A nod at the white-board. "Like the murder weapon. He was seen an hour ago near the Stanford campus in Palo Alto. Some park near Page Mill, a quarter mile north of 280."

"Hacker's Knoll, boss," Linda Sanchez said. "In Milliken Park."

Anderson nodded. He knew the place well and wasn't surprised when Gillette said that he did too. It's a deserted gra.s.sy area near the campus where computer science majors, hackers and chip-jocks hang out. They trade warez and swap stories, smoke weed.

"I know some people there," Anderson said. "I'll go check it out when we're through here."

Bishop consulted his notes again and said, "The report from the lab shows that the adhesive on the bottle is the type of glue used in theatrical makeup. A couple of our people checked the phone book for stores. There's only one in the immediate area - Ollie's Theatrical Supply on El Camino Real in Mountain View. They sell a lot of the stuff, the clerk said. They don't keep records of the sales but they'll let us know if anybody comes in to buy some.

"Now," Bishop continued, "we might have a lead on the perp's car. A security guard in an office building across the street from Vesta's, the restaurant where he picked up the Gibson woman, noticed a late-model, light-colored sedan parked in the company lot around the time the victim was in the bar. He thought somebody was inside the sedan. If there was, the driver may've gotten a good view of the perp's vehicle. We should canva.s.s all the employees in the company."

Anderson said to Bishop, "You want to check that out while I'm at Hacker's Knoll?"

"Yessir, that's what I had in mind." Another look at his notes. Then he nodded his crisp hair toward Gillette. "Some crime scene techs did find a receipt for a light beer and martini in the trash bins behind the restaurant. They've lifted a couple of prints. They're sending 'em to the bureau for APIS."

Tony Mott noticed Gillette's frown of curiosity. "Automated Fingerprint Identification System," he explained to the hacker. "It'll search the federal system and then do a state-by-state search. Takes time to do the whole country but if he's been collared for anything in the past eight or nine years we'll probably get a match."

Although he had a real talent for computers Mott was fascinated with what he called "real police work" and was constantly hounding Anderson for a transfer to Homicide or Major Crimes so he could go chase "real perps." He was undoubtedly the only cybercop in the country who wore as his sidearm a car-stopping .45 automatic.

Bishop said, "They'll concentrate on the West Coast first. California, Washington, Oregon and--"

"No," Gillette said. "Go east to west. Do New Jersey, New York, Ma.s.sachusetts and North Carolina first. Then Illinois and Wisconsin. Then Texas. Do California last."

"Why?" Bishop asked.

"Those Unix commands he typed? They were the East Coast version."

Patricia Nolan explained that there were several versions of the Unix operating system. Using the East Coast commands suggested that the killer had Atlantic seaboard roots. Bishop nodded and called this information into headquarters. He then glanced at his notebook and said, "There's one other thing we should add to the profile."

"What's that?" Anderson asked.

"The ID division said that it looks like the perp was in an accident of some kind. He's missing the tips of most of his fingers. He's got enough of the pads to leave prints but the tips end in scar tissue. The ID tech was thinking maybe he'd been injured in a fire."

Gillette shook his head. "Callus."

The cops looked at him. Gillette held up his own hands. The fingertips were flat and ended in yellow calluses. "It's called a 'hacker manicure,'" he explained. "You pound keys twelve hours a day, this's what happens."

Shelton wrote this on the white-board.

Gillette said, "What I want to do now is go online and check out some of the renegade hacking newsgroups and chat rooms. Whatever the killer's doing is the sort of thing that's going to cause a big stir in the underground and--"

"No, you're not going online," Anderson told him.

"What?"

"Nope," the cop repeated adamantly.

"I have to."

"No. Those're the rules. You stay offline."

"Wait a minute," Shelton said. "He was online. I saw him."

Anderson's head swiveled toward the cop. "He was?"

"Yeah, in that room in the back - the lab. I looked in on him when he was checking out the victim's computer." He glanced at Anderson. "I a.s.sumed you okayed it."

"No, I didn't." Anderson asked Gillette, "Did you log on?"

"No," Gillette said firmly. "He must've seen me writing my kludge and thought I was online."

"Looked like it to me," Shelton said.

"You're wrong."

Shelton smiled sourly and appeared unconvinced.

Anderson could have checked out the log-in files of the CCU computer to find out for certain. But then decided that whether or not he'd gone online didn't really matter. Gillette's job here was finished. He picked up the phone and called HQ. "We've got a prisoner here to be transferred back to the San Jose Correctional Facility."

Gillette turned toward him, dismay in his eyes. "No," he said. "You can't send me back."

"I'll make sure you get that laptop we promised you."

"No, you don't understand. I can't stop now. We've got to find out what this guy did to get into her machine."

Shelton grumbled, "You said you couldn't find anything."

"That's exactly the problem. If I had found something we could understand it. But I can't. That's what's so scary about what he did. I need to keep going."

Anderson said, "If we find the killer's machine - or another victim's - and if we need you to a.n.a.lyze it we'll bring you back."

"But the chat rooms, the newsgroups, the hacker sites... there could be a hundred leads there. People have to be talking about software like this."

Anderson saw the addict's desperation in Gillette's face, just as the warden had predicted.

The cybercop pulled on his raincoat and said firmly, "We'll take it from here, Wyatt. And thanks again."

CHAPTER 00001000 / EIGHT.

He wasn't going to make it, Jamie Turner realized with dismay.

The time was nearly noon and he was sitting by himself in the cold, dim computer room, still in his damp soccer outfit (playing in the mist doesn't build character at all, Booty; it just makes you f.u.c.king wet). But he didn't want to waste the time on a shower and change of clothes. When he'd been out on the playing field all he'd been able to think about was whether the college computer he'd hacked into had cracked the outer-gate pa.s.scode.

And now, peering at the monitor through his thick, misted gla.s.ses, he saw that the Cray probably wasn't going to spit out the decrypted pa.s.sword in time. It would take, he estimated, another two days to crack the code.

He thought about his brother, about the Santana concert, about the backstage pa.s.ses - all just out of reach - and he felt like crying. He began to type some commands to see if he could log on to another of the school's computers -a faster one, in the physics department. But there was a long queue of users waiting to get into that one. Jamie sat back and, out of frustration, not hunger, wolfed down a package of M&Ms.

He felt a painful chill and he looked quickly around the dark, musty room. He shivered in fear.

That d.a.m.n ghost again...

Maybe he should just forget the whole thing. He was sick of being scared, sick of being cold. He should get the h.e.l.l out of here, go hang with Dave or Totter or some of the guys from French club. His hands went to the keyboard to stop Crack-er and run the cloaking program that would destroy the evidence of his hack.

Then something happened.

On the screen in front of him the root directory of the college's computer suddenly appeared. Way bizarre! Then, all by itself, the computer dialed out to another one, outside of the school. The machines electronically shook hands and a moment later Jamie Turner's Crack-er and Booty's pa.s.sword file were transferred to the second computer.

How the h.e.l.l had that happened?

Jamie Turner was very savvy in the ways of computers but he'd never seen this. The only explanation was that the first computer - the college's - had some kind of arrangement with other computer departments so that tasks that took a long time were automatically transferred to speedier machines.

But what was totally weird was that the machine Jamie's software had been transferred to was the Defense Research Center's ma.s.sive parallel array of supercomputers in Colorado Springs, one of the fastest computer systems in the world. It was also one of the most secure and was virtually impossible to crack (Jamie knew; he'd tried it). It contained highly cla.s.sified information and no civilian had ever been allowed to use it in the past. Jamie supposed they'd started renting out the system to defray the huge cost of maintaining a parallel array. Ecstatic, he peered at the screen and saw that the DRC's machines were cracking Booty's pa.s.scode at a blistering rate.

Well, if there was a ghost in his machine, he decided, maybe it was a good ghost after all. Maybe it was even a Santana fan, he laughed to himself.

Jamie now turned to his next task, the second hack he needed to complete before the Great Escape. In less than sixty seconds he'd transformed himself into a middle-aged overworked service tech employed by West Coast Security Systems, Inc., who'd unfortunately misplaced the schematic diagram for an WCS Model 8872 alarmed fire door he was trying to repair and needed some help from the technical supervisor. The man was all too happy to oblige.

Phate, sitting at his dining room office, was watching Jamie Turner's program hard at work in the Defense Research Center's supercomputers, where he'd just sent it, along with the pa.s.sword file.

Unknown to the sysadmins at the DRC the huge computers were presently under his root control and were burning about $25,000 of computer time for the sole purpose of letting a soph.o.m.ore in high school open a single locked gate.

Phate had examined the progress of the first supercomputer Jamie had used at a nearby college and had seen at once that it wasn't going to spit out the pa.s.scode in time for the boy to escape from the school for his 6:30 rendezvous with his brother.

Which meant that he'd stay safely tucked away at St. Francis and Phate would lose this round of the game. And that wasn't acceptable.

But, as he'd known, the DRC's parallel array would easily crack the code before the deadline.

If Jamie Turner had actually gotten to the concert that night - which wasn't going to happen now - he'd have had Phate to thank.

Phate then hacked into the San Jose City Planning and Zoning Board computer files and found a construction proposal, submitted by the princ.i.p.al of St. Francis Academy, who'd wanted to put up a gated wall and needed P&Z approval. Phate downloaded the doc.u.ments and printed out diagrams of the school itself and the grounds.

As he was examining the diagrams his machine beeped and a box flashed onto the screen, alerting him that he'd received an e-mail from Shawn.

He felt the ping of excitement he always did when Shawn sent a message. This reaction struck him as significant, an important insight into Phate's - no, make that Jon Holloway's - personal development. He'd grown up in a household where love was as rare as money was plentiful and he knew that he'd developed into a cold, distant person.

He'd felt this way toward everyone - his family, fellow workers, cla.s.smates and the few people he'd tried to have relationships with. And yet the depth of what Phate felt for Shawn proved that he wasn't emotionally dead, that he had within him a vast well of love.

Eager to read the message he logged off the planning and zoning network and called up the e-mail.

But as he read the stark words the smile slipped from his face, his breath grew rapid, his pulse increased. "Oh, Christ," he muttered.

The gist of the e-mail was that the police were much further along on his trail than he'd antic.i.p.ated. They even knew about the killings in Portland and Virginia.

Then he glanced at the second paragraph and got no further than the reference to Milliken Park.

No, no...

He now had a real problem.

Phate rose from his desk and hurried downstairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt of his house. He glanced at another smear of dried blood on the floor - from the Lara Gibson character - and then opened a footlocker. From it he took his dark, stained knife. He walked to the closet, opened it and flicked the light on.

Ten minutes later he was in his Jaguar, speeding onto the freeway.

In the beginning G.o.d created the Advanced Research Projects Agency network, which was called ARPAnet, and the ARPAnet flourished and begat the Milnet, and the ARPAnet and the Milnet begat the Internet, and the Internet and its issue, Usenet newsgroups and the World Wide Web, became a trinity that changed the life of His people forever and ever.

Andy Anderson - who'd described the Net thus when he taught cla.s.ses on computer history - thought of this slightly too-witty description now as he drove through Palo Alto and saw Stanford University ahead of him. For it was at the nearby Stanford Research Inst.i.tute that the Department of Defense had established the Internet's predecessor in 1969 to link the SRI with UCLA, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.

The reverence he felt for the site, however, faded quickly as he drove on through misty rain and saw the deserted hill of Hacker's Knoll ahead of him, in John Milliken Park. Normally the place would be crowded with young people swapping software and tales of their cyber exploits. Today, though, the cold April drizzle had emptied the place.

He parked, pulled on the rumpled gray rain hat his six-year-old daughter had given him as a birthday present and climbed out of the car, striding through the gra.s.s, as streamers of rain flew from his shoes. He was discouraged by the lack of possible witnesses who might have a lead to Peter Fowler, the gunrunner. Still, there was a covered bridge in the middle of the park; sometimes kids hung out there when it was rainy or cold.

But as Anderson approached he saw that the bridge too was deserted.

He paused and looked around. The only people here clearly weren't hackers: an elderly woman walking a dog, and a businessman making a cell phone call under the awning of one of the nearby university buildings.

Anderson recalled a coffee shop in downtown Palo Alto, near the Hotel California. It was a place where geeks gathered to sip strong coffee and swap tales of their outrageous hacks. He decided to try the restaurant and see if anyone had heard about Peter Fowler or somebody selling knives in the area. If not, he'd try the computer science building and ask some of the professors and grad students if they'd seen anybody whoa"

Then the detective saw motion nearby.

Fifty feet away was a young man, walking furtively through the bushes toward the bridge. He was looking around uneasily, clearly paranoid.

Anderson ducked behind a thick stand of juniper, his heart pounding like a pile driver - because this was, he knew, Lara Gibson's killer. He was in his twenties and was wearing the blue jean jacket that must've shed the denim fibers found on the woman's body. He had blond hair and was clean shaven; the beard and mustache he'd worn in the bar had been fake, glued on with the theatrical adhesive.

Social engineering...

Then the man's jacket fell away for a moment and Anderson could see, protruding from the waistband of the man's jeans, the k.n.o.bby hilt of a Ka-bar knife. The killer quickly pulled the jacket closed and continued to the covered bridge, where he stepped into the shadows and peered out.

Anderson remained out of sight. He made a call to the state police's field operations central dispatch. A moment later he heard the dispatcher answer and ask for his badge number.

"Four three eight nine two," Anderson whispered in reply. "Request immediate backup. I've got a visual on a suspect in a homicide. I'm in John Milliken Park, Palo Alto, southeast corner."

"Copy, four three eight," the man replied. "Is suspect armed?"

"I see a knife. I don't know about any firearms."

"Is he in a vehicle?"

"Negative," Anderson said. "He's on foot at the moment."

The dispatcher asked him to hold on. Anderson stared at the killer, squinting hard, as if that would keep him frozen in place. He whispered to central, "What's the ETA of that backup?"