The Blue Nowhere

computers; they didn’t need to be connected through a network.
    “I’ve got an alert on our machine. If Phate opens the picture myvirus’ll go active and a tone sounds here. I’ll get into his computer and we’ll see if we can find anything that’ll lead us to him or Shawn . . . or to the next victim.”
    The phone rang and Miller answered. He listened and said to Bishop, “For you. It’s Charlie Pittman.”
    Bishop, pouring milk in his coffee, hit the speaker button on the phone.
    “Thanks for calling back, Officer Pittman.”
    “Not a problem, Detective.” The man’s voice was distorted by the cheap speaker. “What can I do for you?”
    “Well, Charlie, I know you have that Peter Fowler investigation open. But next time we have an operation under way, I’m going to have to ask that you or somebody at the county police come to me first so we can coordinate.”
    Silence. Then: “How’s that?”
    “I’m speaking of the operation at the Bay View Motel yesterday.”
    “The, uh, what?” The voice in the tinny speaker was perplexed.
    “Jesus,” Bob Shelton said, turning his troubled eyes toward his partner. “He doesn’t know about it. The guy you saw wasn’t Pittman.”
    “Officer,” Bishop asked urgently, “did you introduce yourself to me two nights ago in Sunnyvale?”
    “We got a misunderstanding going on here, sir. I’m in Oregon, fishing. I’ve been on vacation for a week and I’ll be here for another three days. I just called the office to get messages. I heard yours and called you back. That’s all I know.”
    Tony Mott leaned toward the speaker. “You mean you weren’t at the state police Computer Crimes Unit headquarters yesterday?”
    “Uh, no, sir. Like I said. Oregon. Fishing.”
    Mott looked at Bishop. “This guy claiming to be Pittman was outside yesterday. Said he’d had a meeting here. I didn’t think anything of it.”
    “No, he wasn’t here,” Miller said.
    Bishop asked Pittman, “Officer, was there some kind of memo about your vacation?”
    “Sure. We always send one around.”
    “On paper? Or was it on e-mail?”
    “We use e-mails for everything nowadays,” the officer said defensively. “People think the county’s not as up-to-date as everybody else but that’s not so.”
    Bishop explained, “Well, somebody’s been using your name. With a fake shield and ID.”
    “Damn. Why?”
    “Probably has to do with a homicide investigation we’re running.”
    “What should I do?”
    “Call your commander and get a report on the record. But for the moment we’d appreciate it if you’d keep this to yourself otherwise. It’d be helpful if the perp doesn’t know we’re onto him. Don’t send anything by e-mail. Only use the phone.”
    “Sure. I’ll call my HQ right now.”
    Bishop apologized to Pittman for the dressing-down and hung up. He glanced at the team. “Social engineered again.” He said to Mott, “Describe him, the guy you saw.”
    “Thin, mustache. Wore a dark raincoat.”
    “Same one we saw in Sunnyvale. What was he doing here?”
    “Looked like he was leaving the office but I didn’t actually see him come out the door. Maybe he was snooping around.”
    Gillette said, “It’s Shawn. Has to be.”
    Bishop concurred. He said to Mott, “Let’s you and me come up with a picture of what he looks like.” He turned to Miller. “You have an Identikit here?”
    This was a briefcase containing plastic overlays of different facial attributes that could be combined so witnesses could reconstruct an image of a suspect—essentially it was a police artist in a box.
    But Linda Sanchez shook her head. “We don’t usually do much with facial IDs.”
    Bishop said, “I’ve got one in the car. I’ll be right back.”
    I n his dining room office Phate was typing contentedly away when a flag rose on screen, indicating that he had an e-mail—one sent to his private screen name, Deathknell.
    He noticed that it’d been sent by Vlast, his Bulgarian friend. An attachment was included. They’d traded snuff pictures regularly at one time but hadn’t for a while and he wondered if that’s what his friend had sent him.
    Phate was curious what the man had sent but he’d have to wait until later to find out. At the moment he was too excited about his latest hunt with Trapdoor. After an hour of serious passcode cracking on borrowed supercomputer time Phate had finally seized root in a computer system not far away from his house in Los Altos.