The Blue Nowhere

remarried and didn’t seem to have much of a personal life—put in the longest hours in the department and could be found in the dinosaur pen long after everyone else had left. He also took work “home,” that is, to some of the local university computer departments, where friends would let him run CCU projects on state-of-the-art supercomputers for free.
    “What’s that mean for us?” Shelton asked. “That he knows this Unix stuff.”
    Anderson said, “It’s bad for us. That’s what it means. Hackers who use Windows or Apple systems are usually small-time. Serious hackers work in Unix or Digital Equipment’s operating system, VMS.”
    Gillette concurred. He added, “Unix is also the operating system of the Internet. Anybody who’s going to crack into the big servers and routers on the Net has to know Unix.”
    Bishop’s phone rang and he took the call. Then he looked around and sat down at a nearby workstation to jot notes. He sat upright; no hacker’s slouch here, Anderson observed. When he disconnected the call Bishop said, “Got some leads. One of our troopers heard from some CIs.”
    It was a moment before Anderson recalled what the letters stood for. Confidential informants. Snitches.
    Bishop said in his soft, unemotional voice, “Somebody named Peter Fowler, white male about twenty-five, from Bakersfield’s been seen selling guns in this area. Been hawking Ka-bars too.” A nod at the white-board. “Like the murder weapon. He was seen an hour ago near the Stanford campus in Palo Alto. Some park near Page Mill, a quarter mile north of 280.”
    “Hacker’s Knoll, boss,” Linda Sanchez said. “In Milliken Park.”
    Anderson nodded. He knew the place well and wasn’t surprised when Gillette said that he did too. It’s a deserted grassy area near the campus where computer science majors, hackers and chip-jocks hang out to trade warez, swap stories and smoke weed.
    “I know some people there,” Anderson said. “I’ll go check it out when we’re through here.”
    Bishop consulted his notes again and said, “The report from the lab shows that the adhesive on the bottle is the type of glue used in theatrical makeup. A couple of our people checked the phone book for stores. There’s only one in the immediate area—Ollie’s Theatrical Supply on El Camino Real in Mountain View. They sell a lot of the stuff, the clerk said. They don’t keep records of the sales, but they’ll let us know if anybody comes in to buy some.
    “Now,” Bishop continued, “we might have a lead on the perp’s car. A security guard in an office building across the street from Vesta’s, the restaurant where he picked up the Gibson woman, noticed a late-model, light-colored sedan parked in the company lot around the time the victim was in the bar. He thought somebody was inside the sedan. If there was, the driver may’ve gotten a good view of the perp’s vehicle. We should canvass all the employees in the company.”
    Anderson said to Bishop, “You want to check that out while I’m at Hacker’s Knoll?”
    “Yessir, that’s what I had in mind.” Another look at his notes. Then he nodded his crisp hair toward Gillette. “Some crime scene techs did find a receipt for a light beer and martini in the trash bins behind the restaurant. They’ve lifted a couple of prints. They’re sending ’em to the bureau for AFIS.”
    Tony Mott noticed Gillette’s frown of curiosity. “Automated Fingerprint Identification System,” he explained to the hacker. “It’ll search the federal system and then do a state-by-state search. Takes time to do the whole country but if he’s been collared for anything in the past eight or nine years we’ll probably get a match.”
    Although he had a real talent for computers Mott was fascinated with what he called “real police work” and was constantly hounding Anderson for a transfer to Homicide or Major Crimes so he could go chase “real perps.” He was undoubtedly the only cybercop in the country who wore as his sidearm a car-stopping .45 automatic.
    Bishop said, “They’ll concentrate on the West Coast first. California, Washington, Oregon and—”
    “No,” Gillette said. “Go east to west. Do New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and North Carolina first. Then Illinois and Wisconsin. Then Texas. Do California last.”
    “Why?” Bishop asked.
    “Those Unix commands he typed? They were the East Coast version.”
    Patricia Nolan explained that there were several