The Blue Nowhere

said the detective.
    The boy sighed and looked like he was going to start crying again.
    Bishop glanced at the assistant principal and said, “I’ll take care of it from here. You’re going to have your hands full with the other boys tonight.”
    The man glanced distastefully at the detective—and at the broken door—and left the computer room.
    After he was gone Frank Bishop smiled and said to the boy, “Okay, young man, you and your brother get on out of here. You might miss the opening act but if you move fast you’ll probably make the main show.”
    “But my parents? You said—”
    “Forget what I said. I’ll call your mom and dad and tell them you’re spending the night with your brother.” He looked at Mark. “Just make sure he’s back here in time for classes tomorrow.”
    The boy couldn’t smile—not after everything that had happened—but he offered a faint “Thanks.” He walked toward the door.
    Mark Turner shook the detective’s hand.
    “Jamie,” Gillette called.
    The boy turned.
    “Think about what I asked—about helping us.”
    Jamie looked at the smoking monitor for a moment. He turned and left without responding.
    Bishop asked Gillette, “You think he can find something?”
    “I don’t have any idea. That’s not why I asked him to help. I figured that after something like this he needs to get back on the horse.” Gillette nodded at Jamie’s notes. “He’s brilliant. It’d be a real crime if he got gun-shy and gave up machines.”
    The detective gave a brief laugh. “The more I know you, the more you don’t seem like the typical hacker.”
    “Who knows? Maybe I’m not.”
    Gillette helped Linda Sanchez go through the ritual of disconnecting the computer that had been a co-conspirator in the death of poor Willem Boethe. She wrapped it in a blanket and strapped it onto a wheelie cart carefully, as if she were afraid that jostling or rough treatment would dislodge any fragile clues to the whereabouts of their adversary.
    A t the Computer Crimes Unit the investigation stalled.
    The bot’s alarm that would alert them to the presence of Phate or Shawn on the Net hadn’t gone off, nor had Triple-X gone back online.
    Tony Mott, who still seemed unhappy at missing a chance to play “real cop,” was grudgingly poring over sheets of legal paper on which he and Miller had taken numerous notes while the rest of the team had been at St. Francis Academy. He announced, “There was nothing helpful in VICAP or the state databases under the name ‘Holloway.’ A lot of the files were missing and the ones still there don’t tell us shit.”
    Mott continued, “We talked to some of the places that Holloway’d worked: Western Electric, Apple, and Nippon Electronics—that’s NEC. A few of the people who remember him say that he was a brilliant codeslinger . . . and a brilliant social engineer.”
    “TMS,” Linda Sanchez recited, “IDK.”
    Gillette and Nolan laughed.
    Mott translated yet another acronym from the Blue Nowhere for Bishop and Shelton. “Tell me something I don’t know.” He continued, “But—surprise, surprise—all the files were gone from their personnel and audit departments.”
    “I can see how he hacks in and erases computer files,” Linda Sanchez said, “but how’s he get rid of the dead-tree stuff?”
    “The what?” Shelton asked.
    “Paper files,” Gillette explained. “But that’s easy: he hacks into the file-room computer and issues a memo to the staff to shred them.”
    Mott added that several of the security officers at Phate’s former employers believed he’d made his living—and might still be making it now—by brokering stolen supercomputer parts, for which there was huge demand, especially in Europe and third-world nations.
    Their hopes blossomed for a moment when Ramirez called in to say that he’d finally heard from the owner of Ollie’s Theatrical Supply. The man had looked at the booking picture of young Jon Holloway and confirmed that he’d come into the store several times in the past month. The owner couldn’t recall exactly what he’d bought but he remembered the purchases were large and had been paid for with cash. The owner had no idea where Holloway lived but he did remember a brief exchange. He’d asked Holloway if he was an actor and, if so, wasn’t it hard to get jobs?
    The killer had replied, “Nope, it’s not hard at all. I act every single day.”
    A half hour later Frank Bishop stretched and looked