The Blue Nowhere

she didn’t hang up on you right away. That’s something.” Bishop put the beer bottle in the recycling bin. “I hate working late—I can’t have supper without my beer but then I have to wake up a couple times during the night and pee. That’s ’cause I’m getting old. Well, we’ve got a tough day tomorrow. Let’s get some shut-eye.”
    Gillette asked, “You going to handcuff me somewhere?”
    “Escaping twice in two days’d be bad form, even for a hacker. I think we’ll forgo the bracelet. Guest room’s in there. You’ll find towels and a fresh toothbrush in the bathroom.”
    “Thanks.”
    “We get up at six-fifteen around here.” The detective disappeared down the dim hallway.
    Gillette listened to the creak of boards, the sound of water in pipes. A door closing.
    Then he was alone, surrounded by the particularly thick silence of someone else’s house late at night, his fingers absently keying a dozen messages on an invisible machine.
    B ut it wasn’t six-fifteen when his host woke him. It was just after five.
    “Must be Christmas,” the detective said, clicking on the overhead light. He was wearing brown pajamas. “We got a present.”
    Gillette, like most hackers, felt that sleep should be avoided like the flu but he wasn’t at his best upon waking. Eyes still closed, he muttered, “A present?”
    “Triple-X called me on my cell phone five minutes ago. He’s got Phate’s real e-mail address. It’s [email protected].”
    “MOL? Never heard of an Internet provider with that name.” Gillette rolled from bed, fighting the dizziness.
    Bishop continued, “I called everybody on the team. They’re on their way to the office now.”
    “Which means us too?” the hacker muttered sleepily.
    “Which means us too.”
    Twenty minutes later they were showered and dressed. Jennie had coffee ready in the kitchen but they passed on food; they wanted to get to the CCU office as soon as possible. Bishop kissed his wife. He took her hands in his and said, “About that appointment thing of yours. . . . All you have to do is say the word and I’ll be at the hospital in fifteen minutes.”
    She kissed his forehead. “I’m having a few tests done, honey. That’s all.”
    “No, no, no, you listen,” he said solemnly. “If you need me I’ll be there.”
    “If I need you,” she conceded, “I’ll call. I promise.”
    As they were heading toward the door a sudden roaring filled the kitchen. Jennie Bishop rolled the reassembled Hoover back and forth over the rug. She shut it off and gave her husband a hug.
    “Works great,” Jennie said. “Thanks, honey.”
    Bishop frowned in confusion. “I—”
    Gillette interrupted quickly. “A job like that must’ve taken half the night.”
    “And he cleaned up afterward,” Jennie Bishop said with a wry smile. “That’s the miraculous part.”
    “Well—” Bishop began.
    “We better be going,” Gillette interrupted.
    Jennie waved them off and started making breakfast for Brandon, glancing affectionately at her resurrected vacuum.
    As the two men walked outside Bishop whispered to the hacker, “So? Did it take you half the night?”
    “To fix the vacuum?” Gillette replied. “Naw, only ten minutes. I could’ve done it in five but I couldn’t find any tools. I had to use a dinner knife and a nutcracker.”
    The detective said, “I didn’t think you knew anything about vacuum cleaners.”
    “I didn’t. But I was curious why it didn’t work. So now I know all about vacuum cleaners.” Gillette climbed into the car then turned to Bishop. “Say, any chance we could stop at that 7-Eleven again? As long as it’s on the way.”

CHAPTER 00011101 / TWENTY-NINE
    B ut, despite what Triple-X had told Bishop in his phone call, Phate—in his new incarnation as Deathknell—continued to remain out of reach.
    Once Gillette was back at the Computer Crimes Unit he booted up HyperTrace and ran a search for MOL.com. He found that the full name of the Internet service provider was Monterey Internet On-Line. Its headquarters were in Pacific Grove, California, about a hundred miles south of San Jose. But when they contacted Pac Bell security in Salinas about tracing the call from MOL to Phate’s computer it turned out that there was no Monterey Internet On-Line and the real geographic location of the server was in Singapore.
    “Oh, that’s smart,” a groggy Patricia Nolan muttered, sipping a Starbucks coffee. Her morning voice was low; it