The Blue Nowhere

the smile he offered seemed just a little off, like an eerie gloat. But the woman decided she was wrong and put the look down to the terrible stress the poor man had to be under.
    “R ise and shine,” the snappy voice said.
    Gillette opened his eyes and looked up at Frank Bishop, who was shaved and showered and absently tucking in his ornery shirttail.
    “It’s eight-thirty,” Bishop said. “They let you sleep late at prison?”
    “I was up till four,” the hacker grumbled. “I couldn’t get comfortable. But that’s not really a surprise, is it?” He nodded at the large iron chair that Bishop had handcuffed him to.
    “It was your idea, the cuffs and the chair.”
    “I didn’t think you’d take it literally.”
    “What’s to take literally?” Bishop asked. “Either you handcuff somebody to a chair or you don’t.”
    The detective unhooked Gillette and the hacker rose stiffly, rubbing his wrist. He went into the kitchen and got coffee and a day-old bagel.
    “By any chance, you ever get any Pop-Tarts around here?” Gillette called, returning to the main room of CCU.
    “I don’t know,” Bishop responded. “This isn’t my office, remember? Anyway, I’m not much for sweets. People should have bacon and eggs for breakfast. You know, hearty food.” He sipped his coffee. “I was watching you—when you were asleep.”
    Gillette didn’t know what to do with that. He lifted an eyebrow.
    “You were typing in your sleep.”
    “They call it keying nowadays, not typing. ”
    “Did you know you did that?”
    The hacker nodded. “Ellie used to tell me I did. I sometimes dream in code.”
    “You do what?”
    “I see script in my dreams—you know, lines of software source code. In Basic or C++ or Java.” He looked around. “Where is everybody?”
    “Linda and Tony’re on their way. Miller too. Linda’s still not a grandmother. Patricia Nolan called from her hotel.” He held Gillette’s eyes for a moment. “She asked if you were okay.”
    “She did?”
    The detective nodded with a smile. “Gave me hell for cuffing you to the chair. She said you could’ve spent the night on the couch in her hotel room. Make of that what you will.”
    “Shelton?”
    Bishop said, “He’s at home with his wife. I called him but there was no answer. Sometimes he just has to disappear and spend time with her—you know, because that trouble I told you about before. His son dying.”
    A beep sounded from a nearby workstation. Gillette rose and went to look at the screen. His tireless bot had worked through the night, traveling the globe, and it now had another prize to show for its efforts. He read the message and told Bishop, “Triple-X’s online again. He’s back in the hacker chat room.”
    Gillette sat down at the computer.
    “We going to social engineer him again?” Bishop asked.
    “No. I’ve got another idea.”
    “What?”
    “I’m going to try the truth.”
    T ony Mott sped his expensive Fisher bicycle east, along Stevens Creek Boulevard, outpacing many of the cars and trucks, and turned fast into the Computer Crimes Unit parking lot.
    He always rode the 6.3 miles from his home in Santa Clara to the CCU building at a good pace—the lean, muscular cop bicycled as fast as he did all his other sports, whether he was skiing the chutes at A-basin in Colorado, heli-skiing in Europe, white-water rafting or rapelling down the sheer rock faces of the mountains he loved to climb.
    But today he’d biked particularly fast, thinking that sooner or later he’d wear down Frank Bishop—the way he hadn’t been able to wear down Andy Anderson—and strap on body armor and do some real police work. He’d worked hard at the academy and, though he was a good cybercop, his assignment at CCU wasn’t any more exciting than working on a graduate thesis. It was as if he were being discriminated against just because of his 3.97 grade-point average at MIT.
    Hooking the old, battered Kryptonite lock through the frame of his cycle, he glanced up to see a slim, mustachioed man in a raincoat striding up to him.
    “Hi,” the man offered, smiling.
    “Hi, there.”
    “I’m Charlie Pittman, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department.”
    Mott shook the offered hand. He knew many of the county detectives and didn’t recognize this man but he gave a fast glance at the ID badge dangling from his neck and saw that the picture matched.
    “You must be Tony Mott.”
    “Right.”
    The county cop admired the Fisher. “I