The Blue Nowhere

not shot. But we’ve got to get him to a doctor. How did you know we were here?”
    “Frank called and told me to check the records on this place.”
    Gillette remembered Bishop’s making the call from Nolan’s hotel room.
    Scanning the warehouse for Nolan, the young cop continued, “That prick Backle knew Frank and you took off together. He had a tap on the phone. He heard the address here and called some of his people to pick you up. I came over here to warn you.”
    “But how’d you get through all the traffic?”
    “My bike, remember?” Mott crawled to Bishop, who was starting to stir. Then, from across the dinosaur pen, Nolan rose and fired a half-dozen shots in their direction. She fled out the front door.
    Mott reluctantly started after her.
    Gillette called, “Be careful. She can’t get away through the traffic either. She’ll be outside, waiting. . . .”
    But his voice faded as he heard a distinctive sound, growing closer. He realized that, like hackers, people with jobs like Patricia Nolan must be experts at improvising; a countywide traffic jam wasn’t going to interfere with her plans. The noise was the roar of the helicopter, undoubtedly the one disguised as a press chopper that he’d seen before, the one that had delivered her here.
    In less than thirty seconds the craft had picked her up and was in the air again, speeding away, the chunky sound of the rotors soon replaced by the curiously harmonic orchestra of car and truck horns filling the late-afternoon sky.

CHAPTER 00101010 / FORTY-TWO
    G illette and Bishop were back at the Computer Crimes Unit.
    The detective was out of the urgent-care facility. A concussion, a fierce headache and eight stitches were the only evidence of his ordeal—along with a new shirt to replace the bloody one. (This one fit somewhat better than its predecessor but it too seemed largely tuck-resistant.)
    The time was 6:30 P.M. and public works had managed to reload the software that controlled the traffic lights. Much of the congestion in Santa Clara County was gone. A search of San Jose Computer Products turned up a gasoline bomb and some information about the fire alarm system of Northern California University. Aware of Phate’s love of diversion, Bishop was concerned that the killer had planted a second device on the campus. But a thorough search of the dormitories and other school buildings revealed nothing.
    To no one’s surprise Horizon On-Line claimed they’d never heard of a Patricia Nolan. The company executives and the head of corporate security in Seattle said they’d never contacted California state police headquarters after the Lara Gibson killing—and no one had sent Andy Anderson any e-mails or faxes about Nolan’s credentials. The Horizon On-Line number that Anderson had called to verify her employment was a working Horizon phone line but, according to the phone company in Seattle, all calls going into that number were forwarded—to a Mobile America cell phone with unassigned numbers, which was no longer in use.
    The security staff at Horizon knew of no one fitting her description either. The address under which she’d registered at her hotel in San Jose was fake and the credit card was phony too. All the phone calls she’d made from the hotel were to that same hacked Mobile America number.
    Not a soul at CCU believed Horizon’s denial, of course. But proving a connection between HOL and Patricia Nolan was going to be difficult—as was finding her in the first place. A picture of the woman, lifted from a security tape in CCU headquarters, went out on ISLEnet to state police bureaus around the country and to the feds for posting to VICAP. Bishop, however, had to include the embarrassing disclaimer that even though the woman had spent several days in a state police facility they had no samples of her fingerprints and that her appearance was probably considerably different from what the tape showed.
    At least the whereabouts of the other coconspirator had been discovered. The body of Shawn—Stephen Miller—had been found in the woods behind his house; he’d shot himself with his service revolver after he learned that they’d caught on to his identity. His remorseful suicide note had, naturally, been in the form of an e-mail.
    CCU’s Linda Sanchez and Tony Mott were trying to piece together the extent of Miller’s betrayal. The state police would have to issue a statement that one of their officers had been an accomplice in the