The Blue Nowhere

thought I was fucked. Get me out of these things, will you? I—”
    “Shhhh,” the businessman said and turned back to the CCU cop, who was struggling to reach the terrible pain in his back, trying to touch it. If he could only touch it then the searing agony would go away.
    The attacker crouched down next to him.
    “ You’re the one,” Anderson whispered to the businessman. “You killed Lara Gibson.” His eyes flicked to the man he’d handcuffed. “And he’s Fowler.”
    The man nodded. “That’s right.” Then he said, “And you’re Andy Anderson.” The awe in his voice was genuine. “I didn’t think it’d be you coming after me. I mean, I knew you worked for the Computer Crimes Unit and’d be investigating the Gibson case. But not here, not in the field. Amazing . . . Andy Anderson. You’re a total wizard.”
    “Please . . . I’ve got a family! Please.”
    Then the killer did something odd.
    Holding the knife in one hand, he touched the cop’s abdomen with the other. Then he slid his fingers up slowly to Anderson’s chest, counting ribs, beneath which his heart was beating so very quickly.
    “Please,” Anderson pleaded.
    The killer paused and lowered his head to Anderson’s ear. “You never know somebody the way you know them at a moment like this,” he whispered, then resumed his eerie reconnaissance of the cop’s chest.

II
    DEMONS
    He was a new generation of hacker, not the third generation inspired by innocent wonder . . . but a disenfranchised fourth generation driven by anger.
    —Jonathan Littman,
    The Watchman

CHAPTER 0001010 / TEN
    A t 1:00 P.M. a tall man in a gray suit walked into the Computer Crimes Unit.
    He was accompanied by a stocky woman wearing a forest-green pantsuit. Two uniformed state troopers were beside them. Their shoulders were damp from the rain and their faces were grim. They walked to Stephen Miller’s cubicle.
    The tall man said, “Steve.”
    Miller stood, brushed his hand through his thinning hair. He said, “Captain Bernstein.”
    “I’ve got something to tell you,” the captain said in that tone that Wyatt Gillette recognized immediately as the precursor to tragic news. His look included Linda Sanchez and Tony Mott. They joined him. “I wanted to come in person. We just found Andy Anderson’s body in Milliken Park. It looks like the perp—the one in the Gibson woman’s killing—got him.”
    “Oh,” Sanchez choked, her hand going to her mouth. She began to cry. “Not Andy . . . No!”
    Mott’s face grew dark. He muttered something Gillette couldn’t hear.
    Patricia Nolan had spent the past half hour sitting with Gillette, speculating about what software the killer might’ve used to invade Lara Gibson’s computer. As they’d talked she’d opened her purse, taken out a small bottle and, incongruously, started applying nail polish. Now, the tiny brush drooped in her hand. “Oh, my God.”
    Stephen Miller closed his eyes momentarily. “What happened?” he asked in a shaky voice.
    The door pushed open and Frank Bishop and Bob Shelton hurried into the room. “We heard,” Shelton said. “We got back here as fast as we could. It’s true?”
    The tableau of shocked faces before them, though, left little doubt.
    Sanchez asked through the tears, “Have you talked to his wife? Oh, God, and he’s got that little girl, Connie. She’s only five or six.”
    “The commander and a counselor are on their way over to the house right now.”
    “What the hell happened?” Miller repeated.
    Captain Bernstein said, “We have a pretty good idea—there was a witness, a woman walking her dog in the park. Seems like Andy’d just collared somebody named Peter Fowler.”
    “Right,” Shelton said. “He was the dealer we think supplied the perp with some of his weapons.”
    Captain Bernstein continued, “Only it looks like he must’ve thought that Fowler was the killer. He was blond and wearing a denim jacket. Those denim fibers crime scene found on Lara Gibson—they must’ve been stuck to the knife the killer bought from Fowler. Anyway, while Andy was busy cuffing Fowler, a white male came up behind him. He was late twenties, dark hair, navy blue suit and carrying a briefcase. He stabbed Andy in the back. The woman went to call for help and that was all she saw. The killer stabbed Fowler to death too.”
    “Why didn’t he call for backup?” Mott asked.
    Bernstein frowned.
    “Well, now, that was odd—we checked his cell phone