The Blue Nowhere

his head, not sure he’d understood Bishop correctly. “I’m sorry?”
    “You,” Bishop responded, “are going to head up the computer side of the investigation.” No further explanation. Stephen Miller said nothing though his eyes stared coldly at the hacker as he continued to pointlessly rearrange the sloppy piles of disks and paperwork on his desk.
    Bishop asked, “Should we be worried about him listening to our phones? I mean, that’s how he killed Andy.”
    Patricia Nolan replied, “It’s a risk, I suppose, but the killer’d have tomonitor hundreds of frequencies for the numbers of our cell phones.”
    “I agree,” Gillette said. “And even if he cracked the switch he’d have to sit with a headset all day long, listening to our conversations. Doesn’t sound like he’s got the time to do that. In the park he was close to Andy. That’s how he got his specific frequency.”
    Besides, as it turned out there wasn’t much to do about the risk. Miller explained that, while the CCU did have a scrambler, it would only work when the caller on the other end of the line had a scrambler as well. As for secure cell phones, Miller explained, “They’re five thousand bucks each.” And said nothing more. Meaning, apparently, that such toys weren’t in the CCU budget and never would be.
    Bishop then sent Ramirez and the GQ cop, Tim Morgan, to Palo Alto. After they’d left, Bishop asked Gillette, “You were telling Andy that you thought you could find out more about how this killer got into Ms. Gibson’s computer?”
    “That’s right. Whatever this guy is doing has to’ve caused some buzz in the hacker underground. What I’ll do is go online and—”
    Bishop nodded to a workstation. “Just do what you have to do and give us a report in a half hour.”
    “Just like that?” Gillette asked.
    “Make it less if you can. Twenty minutes.”
    “Uhm.” Stephen Miller stirred.
    “What is it?” the detective asked him.
    Gillette was expecting the cybercop to make a comment about his demotion. But that wasn’t what he had in mind. “The thing is,” Miller protested, “Andy said he wasn’t ever supposed to go online. And then there’s that court order that said he couldn’t. It was part of his sentencing.”
    “That’s all true,” Bishop said, eyes scanning the white-board. “But Andy’s dead and the court isn’t running this case. I am.” He glanced over at Gillette with a look of polite impatience. “So I’d appreciate it if you’d get going.”

CHAPTER 00001011 / ELEVEN
    W yatt Gillette settled himself in the cheap office chair. He was in a dim workstation cubicle in the back of the CCU, quiet, away from the others on the team.
    Staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, he rolled the chair closer and wiped his hands on his pants. Then his callused fingertips rose and began pounding furiously on the black keyboard. His eyes never left the screen. Gillette knew the location of every character and symbol on the keyboard and touch-typed 110 words a minute with perfect accuracy. When he was starting to hack years ago he found that eight fingers were too slow so he’d taught himself a new keyboarding technique in which he used his thumbs on certain keys too, not just reserving them for the space bar.
    He was weak otherwise, but his forearms and fingers were pure muscle; in prison, where most inmates spend hours lifting iron in the yard, Gillette had done only fingertip push-ups to stay in shape for his passion. Now, the plastic keyboard danced under his hammering as he prepared to go online.
    Most of today’s Internet is a combination shopping mall, USA Today, multiplex cinema and amusement park. Browsers and search engines are populated with cartoon characters and decorated with pretty pictures (plenty of those damn ads too). The point-and-click technology of the mouse can be mastered by a three-year-old. Simpleminded Help menus await at every new window. This is the Internet as packaged for the public through the glossy façade of the commercialized World Wide Web.
    But the real Internet—the Internet of the true hacker, lurking behind the Web—is a wild, raw place, where hackers use complicated commands, telnet utilities and communications software stripped bare as a dragster to sail throughout the world at, literally, the speed of light.
    This is what Wyatt Gillette was about to do.
    There was a preliminary matter to take care of, though. A mythological wizard wouldn’t go off