The Blue Nowhere

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 snatched up the weapon. He checked it with exaggerated care then slipped it into his belt holster.
    “What the hell 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 cocked 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 norecords 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 dogging 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. But he