The Blue Nowhere

into the computer’s basic input-output system—the BIOS—which checked to see if Wyatt Gillette had pressed the SHIFT, CONTROL or ALTERNATE keys at the same time he’d hit the d key.
    Assured that he hadn’t, the BIOS translated the letter’s keyboard code for the lowercase d into another one, its ASCII code, which was then sent into the computer’s graphics adapter.
    The adapter in turn converted the code to a digital signal, which it forwarded to the electron guns located in the back of the monitor.
    The guns fired a burst of energy into the chemical coating on the screen. And, miraculously, the white letter d burned into existence on the black monitor.
    All this in that fraction of a second.
    And in what remained of that second Gillette typed the rest of the letters of his command, e-t-e-c-t-i-v-e.e-x-e, and then hit the ENTER key with his right little finger.
    More type and graphics appeared, and soon, like a surgeon on the trail of an elusive tumor, Wyatt Gillette began probing carefully through Lara Gibson’s computer—the only aspect of the woman that had survived the vicious attack, that was still warm, that retained at least a few memories of who she was and what she’d done in her brief life.

CHAPTER 00000111 / SEVEN
    H e walks in a hacker’s slump, Andy Anderson thought, watching Wyatt Gillette return from the analysis lab.
    Machine people had the worst posture of any profession in the world.
    It was nearly 11:00 A.M. The hacker had spent only thirty minutes looking over Lara Gibson’s machine.
    Bob Shelton, who now dogged Gillette back to the main office, to the hacker’s obvious irritation, asked, “So what’d you find?” The question was delivered in a chilly tone and Anderson wondered again why Shelton was riding the young man so hard—especially considering that the hacker was helping them out on a case the detective had volunteered for.
    Gillette ignored the pock-faced cop and sat down in a swivel chair, flipped open his notebook. When he spoke it was to Anderson. “There’s something odd going on. The killer was in her computer. He seized root and—”
    “Dumb it down,” Shelton muttered. “Seized what?”
    Gillette explained, “When somebody has root that means they have complete control over a computer network and all the machines on it.”
    Anderson added, “When you’re root you can rewrite programs, delete files, add authorized users, remove them, go online as somebody else.”
    Gillette continued, “But I can’t figure out how he did it. The only thing unusual I found were some scrambled files—I thought theywere some kind of encrypted virus but they turned out to be just gibberish. There’s not a trace of any kind of software on her machine that would let him get inside.”
    Glancing at Bishop, he explained, “See, I could load a virus in your computer that’d let me seize root on your machine and get inside it from wherever I am, whenever I want to, without needing a passcode. They’re called ‘back door’ viruses—as in sneaking in through the back door.
    “But in order for them to work I have to somehow actually install the software on your computer and activate it. I could send it to you as an attachment to an e-mail, say, and you could activate it by opening the attachment without knowing what it was. Or I could break into your house and install it on your computer then activate it myself. But there’s no evidence that happened. No, he seized root some other way.”
    The hacker was an animated speaker, Anderson noticed. His eyes were glowing with that absorbed animation he’d seen in so many young geeks—even the ones who were sitting in court, more or less convicting themselves as they excitedly described their exploits to a judge and jury.
    “Then how do you know he seized root?” Linda Sanchez asked.
    “I hacked together this kludge.” He handed Anderson a floppy disk.
    “What’s it do?” Patricia Nolan asked, her professional curiosity piqued, as was Anderson’s.
    “It’s called Detective. It looks for things that aren’t inside a computer.” He explained for the benefit of the non-CCU cops. “When your computer runs, the operating system—like Windows—stores parts of the programs it needs all over your hard drive. There’re patterns to where and when it stores those files.” Indicating the disk, he said, “That showed me that a lot of those bits of programs’d been moved to places on the hard drive that make sense only if