The Blue Nowhere

get to from ISLEnet?”
    Sanchez shrugged. “Any state or federal police system around the country—the FBI, Secret Service, ATF, NYPD . . . even Scotland Yard and Interpol. The works.”
    Mott added, “Since we’re a clearinghouse for all computer crimes in the state, the CCU has root authority on ISLEnet. So we have access to more machines than anybody else.”
    Gillette said, “Then we’ll have to cut our links to it.”
    “Hey, hey, hey, backspace, backspace,” Miller said, using the hacker term for hold on a minute. “Cut the link to ISLEnet? We can’t do that.”
    “We have to.”
    “Why?” Bishop asked.
    “Because if Phate gets inside them with a Trapdoor demon he could jump right to ISLEnet. If he does that he’ll have access to every law enforcement network it’s connected to. It’d be a disaster.”
    “But we use ISLEnet a dozen times a day,” Shelton protested. “The automatic fingerprint identification databases, warrants, suspect records, case files, research. . . .”
    “Wyatt’s right,” Patricia Nolan said. “Remember that this guy’s already cracked VICAP and two state police databases. We can’t risk him getting into any other systems.”
    Gillette said, “If you need to use ISLEnet you’ll have to go to some other location—headquarters, or wherever.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Stephen Miller said. “We can’t drive five miles to log on to a database. It’ll add hours to the investigation.”
    “We’re already swimming upstream here,” Shelton said. “This perp is way ahead of us. He doesn’t need any more advantages.” He glanced at Bishop imploringly.
    The lean detective glanced down at his sloppy shirttail and tucked it in. After a moment he said, “Go ahead. Do what he says. Cut the connection.”
    Sanchez sighed.
    Gillette quickly keyed in the commands severing the outside links as Stephen Miller and Tony Mott looked on unhappily. He also renamed the CCU domain caltourism.gov to make it much harder for Phate to track them down and crack their system. When he finished the job he looked up at the team.
    “One more thing. . . . From now on nobody goes online but me.”
    “Why?” Shelton asked.
    “Because I can sense if the Trapdoor demon’s in our system.”
    “How?” the rough-faced cop asked sourly. “Psychic Friends’ Hotline?”
    Gillette answered evenly, “The feel of the keyboard, the delays in the system’s responses, the sounds of the hard drive—what I mentioned before.”
    Shelton shook his head. He asked Bishop, “You’re not going to agree to that, are you? First, we weren’t supposed to let him get near the Net at all but he ended up roaming all over the fucking world online. Now, he’s telling us that he’s the only one who can do that and we can’t. That’s backwards, Frank. Something’s going on here.”
    “What’s going on,” Gillette argued, “is that I know what I’m doing. When you’re a hacker you get the feel for machines.”
    “Agreed,” Bishop said.
    Shelton lifted his arms helplessly. Stephen Miller didn’t look any happier. Tony Mott caressed the grip of his big gun and seemed to be thinking less about machines and more about how much he wanted a clear shot at the killer.
    Bishop’s phone rang and he took the call. He listened for a moment and, while he didn’t exactly smile, the cop’s face grew animated. He picked up a pen and paper and started taking notes. After five minutes of jotting he hung up and glanced at the team.
    “We don’t have to call him Phate anymore. We’ve got his name.”

CHAPTER 00001101 / THIRTEEN
    “J on Patrick Holloway.”
    “It’s Holloway? ” Patricia Nolan’s voice rose in surprise.
    “You know him?” Bishop asked.
    “Oh, you bet. Most of us in computer security do. But nobody’s heard from him in years. I thought he’d gone legit or was dead.”
    Bishop said to Gillette, “It was thanks to you we found him—that suggestion about the East Coast version of Unix. The Massachusetts State Police had positive matches on the prints.” Bishop read his notes. “I’ve got a little history. He’s twenty-seven. Born in New Jersey. Parents and only sibling—a brother—are dead. He went to Rutgers and Princeton, good grades, brilliant computer programmer. Popular on campus, involved in a lot of activities. After he graduated he came out here and got a job at Sun Microsystems doing artificial intelligence and supercomputing research. Left there and went