The Blue Nowhere

Linda Sanchez, a short, stocky, middle-aged Latina in a lumpy tan suit. She was the unit’s SSL officer—seizure, search and logging, she explained. She was the one who secured a perpetrator’s computer, checked it for booby traps, copied the files and logged hardware and software into evidence. She also was a digital evidence recovery specialist, an expert at “excavating” a hard drive—searching it for hidden or erased data (accordingly, such officers were also known as computer archaeologists). “I’m the team bloodhound,” she explained to Gillette.
    “Any word, Linda?”
    “Not yet, boss. That daughter of mine, she’s the laziest girl on earth.”
    Anderson said to Gillette, “Linda’s about to be a grandmother.”
    “A week overdue. Driving the family crazy.”
    “And this is my second in command, Sergeant Stephen Miller.”
    Miller was older than Anderson, close to fifty. He had bushy, graying hair. Sloping shoulders, bearish, pear-shaped. He seemed cautious. Because of his age, Gillette guessed he was from the second generation of computer programmers—men and women who were innovators in the computer world in the early seventies.
    The third person was Tony Mott, a cheerful thirty-year-old with long, straight blond hair and Oakley sunglasses dangling from a green fluorescent cord around his neck. His cubicle was filled with pictures of him and a pretty Asian girl, snowboarding and mountain biking. A crash helmet sat on his desk, snowboarding boots in the corner. He’d represent the latest generation of hackers: athletic risk-takers, equally at home hacking together script at a keyboard and skateboarding half-pipes at extreme-sport competitions. Gillette noticed too that of all the cops at CCU Mott wore the biggest pistol on his hip—a shiny silver automatic.
    The Computer Crimes Unit also had a receptionist but the woman was out sick. CCU was low in the state police hierarchy (it was referred to as the “Geek Squad” by fellow cops) and headquarters wouldn’t spring for a temporary replacement. The members of the unit had to take phone messages, sift through mail and file paperwork by themselves and none of them, understandably, was very happy about this.
    Then Gillette’s eyes slipped to one of several erasable white-boards against the wall, apparently used for listing clues. A photo was taped to one. He couldn’t make out what it depicted and walked closer. Then he gasped and stopped in shock. The photo was of a young woman in an orange-and-red skirt, naked from the waist up, bloody and pale, lying in a patch of grass, dead. Gillette had played plenty of computer games—Mortal Kombat and Doom and Tomb Raider—but, as gruesome as those games were, they were nothing compared to this still, horrible violence against a real victim.
    Andy Anderson glanced at the wall clock, which wasn’t digital, as would befit a computer center, but an old, dusty analog model—with big and little hands. The time was 10:00 A.M. The cop said, “We’ve got to get moving on this. . . . Now we’re taking a two-prong approach to the case. Detectives Bishop and Shelton are going to be running a standard homicide investigation. CCU’ll handle the computer evidence—with Wyatt’s help here.” He glanced at a fax on his desk and added, “We’re also expecting a consultant from Seattle, an expert on the Internet and online systems. Patricia Nolan. She should be here any minute.”
    “Police?” Shelton asked.
    “No, civilian,” Anderson said.
    Miller added, “We use corporate security people all the time. The technology changes so fast we can’t keep up with all the latest developments. Perps’re always one step ahead of us. So we try to use private consultants whenever we can.”
    Tony Mott said, “They’re usually standing in line to help. It’s real chic now to put catching a hacker on your résumé.”
    Anderson asked Linda Sanchez, “Now, where’s the Gibson woman’s computer?”
    “In the analysis lab, boss.” The woman nodded down one of the dark corridors that spidered out from the central room. “A couple of techs from crime scene are fingerprinting it—just in case the perp broke into her house and left some nice, juicy latents. Should be ready in ten minutes.”
    Mott handed Frank Bishop an envelope. “This came for you a few minutes ago. It’s the preliminary crime scene report.”
    Bishop brushed at his stiff hair with the backs of his fingers. Gillette could see the