The Blue Nowhere

Nowhere’?”
    “I remember,” Bishop said. “It means cyberspace.”
    “But it also means something else,” Gillette said slowly.
    N-O-W-H-E-R-E.
    “What?”
    “My father was air force, like I said. And when I was really young he’d have some of his military buddies over and they’d get drunk and loud and a couple of times they’d sing the air force song, ‘The Wild Blue Yonder.’ Well, after he left I kept hearing that song in my head, over and over, only I changed ‘yonder’ to ‘nowhere,’ the ‘Wild Blue Nowhere,’ because he was gone. He was nowhere.” Gillette swallowed hard. He looked up. “Pretty stupid, huh?”
    But Frank Bishop didn’t seem to think there was anything stupid about this at all. With his voice filled with the sympathy that made him a natural family man he asked, “You ever hear from him? Or hear what happened to him?”
    “Nope. Have no clue.” Gillette laughed. “Every once in a while I think I should track him down.”
    “You’d be good at finding people on the Net.”
    Gillette was silent. Then he finally said, “But I don’t think I will.”
    Fingers moving furiously. The ends were so numb because of the calluses that he couldn’t feel the cold of the soda can he was tapping them against.
    O-F-F W-E G-O, I-N-T-O T-H-E
    “It gets even better—I learned Basic, the programming language, when I was nine or ten, and I’d spend hours writing programs. The first ones made the computer talk to me. I’d key, ‘Hello,’ and the computer’d respond, ‘Hi, Wyatt. How are you?’ Then I’d type, ‘Good,’ and it would ask, ‘What did you do in school today?’ I tried to think of things for the machine to say that’d be what a real father would ask.”
    A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G Y-O-U W-A-N-T . . .
    “All those e-mails supposedly from my father to the judge and those faxes from my brother about coming to live with him in Montana, all the psychologists’ reports about what a great family life I had, about my dad being the best? . . . I wrote them all myself.”
    “I’m sorry,” Bishop said.
    Gillette shrugged. “Hey, I survived. It doesn’t matter.”
    “It probably does,” Bishop said softly.
    They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then the detective rose and started to wash the dishes. Gillette joined him and they chatted idly—about Bishop’s orchard, about life in San Ho. When they’d finished drying the plates Bishop drained his beer then glanced coyly at the hacker. He said, “Why don’t you give her a call.”
    “Call? Who?”
    “Your wife.”
    “It’s late,” Gillette protested.
    “So wake her up. She won’t break. Doesn’t sound to me like you’ve got a lot to lose anyway.” Bishop pushed the phone toward the hacker.
    “What should I say?” He lifted the receiver uncertainly.
    “You’ll think of something.”
    “I don’t know . . .”
    The cop asked, “You know the number?”
    Gillette dialed it from memory—fast, before he balked—thinking: What if her brother answers? What if her mother answers? What if—
    “Hello.”
    His throat seized.
    “Hello?” Elana repeated.
    “It’s me.”
    A pause while she undoubtedly checked a watch or clock. No comment about the lateness of the hour was forthcoming, however.
    Why wasn’t she saying anything?
    Why wasn’t he?
    “Just felt like calling. Did you find the modem? I left it in the mailbox.”
    She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “I’m in bed.”
    A searing thought: Was she alone in bed? Was Ed next to her? In her parents’ house? But he pushed the jealousy aside and asked softly, “Did I wake you up?”
    “Is there something you want, Wyatt?”
    He looked at Bishop but the cop merely gazed at him with an eyebrow raised in impatience.
    “I . . .”
    Elana said, “I’m going to sleep now.”
    “Can I call you tomorrow?”
    “I’d rather you didn’t call the house. Christian saw you the other night and he wasn’t very happy about it.”
    Her twenty-two-year-old brother, an honors marketing student with a Greek fisherman’s temperament, had actually threatened to beat up Gillette at the trial.
    “Then you call me when you’re alone. I’ll be at that number I gave you yesterday.”
    Silence.
    “Have you got it?” he asked. “The number?”
    “I’ve got it.” Then: “Good night.”
    “Don’t forget to call a lawyer about that—”
    The phone clicked silent and Gillette hung up.
    “I didn’t handle that too well.”
    “At least