The Blue Nowhere

voice soon faded as Gillette stepped outside. The rain was coming down steadily. One of the troopers said, “Sorry about that,” though whether it was for his failed attempt to stay at CCU or the absence of an umbrella Gillette didn’t know.
    The trooper eased him down into the backseat of the squad car and slammed the door.
    Gillette closed his eyes, rested his head against the glass. Heard the hollow sound of the rain pelting the top of the car.
    He felt utter dismay at this defeat.
    Lord, how close he’d come. . . .
    He thought of the months in prison. He thought of all the planning he’d done. Wasted. It was all—
    The car door opened.
    Frank Bishop was crouching down. Water ran down his face, glistening on his sideburns and staining his shirt, but his sprayed hair, at least, was impervious to the drops. “Got a question for you, sir.”
    Sir?
    Gillette asked, “What’s that?”
    “That MUD stuff. That’s not hogwash?”
    “Nope. The killer’s playing his own version of that game—a real-life version.”
    “Is anybody still playing it now? On the Internet, I mean.”
    “I doubt it. Real MUDheads were so offended by it that they sabotaged the games and spammed the players until they stopped.”
    The detective glanced back at the rusting soda machine in front of the CCU building. He then asked, “That fellow in there, Stephen Miller—he’s a lightweight, isn’t he?”
    Gillette thought for a moment and said, “He’s from the elder days.”
    “The what?”
    The phrase meant the sixties and seventies—that revolutionary era in the history of computing that ended more or less with the release of Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP-10, the computer that changed the face of the Machine World forever. But Gillette didn’t explain this. He said simply, “He was good, I’d guess, but he’s past his prime now. And in Silicon Valley that means, yeah, he’s a lightweight.”
    “I see.” Bishop straightened up, looking out at the traffic that sped along the nearby freeway. He then said to the troopers, “Bring this man back inside, please.”
    They looked at each other and, when Bishop nodded emphatically, hustled Gillette out of the squad car.
    As they walked back into the CCU office Gillette heard Susan Wilkins’s voice still droning on, “. . . liaise with security at Mobile America and Pac Bell if need be and I’ve established lines of communication with the tactical teams regarding tasking priorities. Now, in my estimation it’s probably sixty-forty more efficient to be located closer to main resources so we’ll be moving the Computer Crimes Unit to headquarters in San Jose. I understand you’re absent some administrative support in terms of your receptionist and at HQ we’ll be able to mitigate that . . .”
    Gillette tuned out the words and wondered what Bishop was up to.
    The cop walked up to Bob Shelton, with whom he whispered for a moment. The conversation ended with Bishop’s asking, “You with me on this?”
    The stocky cop surveyed Gillette with a disdainful gaze and then muttered something grudgingly affirmative.
    As Wilkins continued to speak, Captain Bernstein frowned and walked up to Bishop, who said to him, “I’d like to run this case, sir, and I want Gillette here to work it with us.”
    “You wanted the MARINKILL case.”
    “I did, sir. But I changed my mind.”
    “I know what you said before, Frank. But Andy’s death—that wasn’t your fault. He should’ve known his limits. Nobody forced him to go after that guy alone.”
    “I don’t care if it was my fault or not. That’s not what this is about. It’s about collaring a dangerous perp before someone else gets killed.”
    Captain Bernstein caught his meaning and glanced at Wilkins. “Susan’s run major homicides before. She’s good.”
    “I know she is, sir. We’ve worked together. But she’s textbook. She’s never worked in the trenches, the way I have. I ought to be running the case. But the other problem is that we’re way out of our league here. We need somebody sharp on this one.” The stiff hair nodded toward Gillette. “And I think he’s as good as the perp.”
    “Probably he is,” Bernstein muttered. “But that’s not my worry.”
    “I’ll ride point on this one, sir. Something goes bad, it can all come down on me. Nobody else at headquarters’s got to take any heat.”
    Patricia Nolan joined them and said, “Captain, stopping this guy’s going to take more than