The Blue Nowhere

heard that you cycle like a son of a bitch.”
    “Only when I’m going downhill,” Mott said, smiling modestly, eventhough the truth was that, yes, he did cycle like a son of a bitch, whether it was downhill, uphill or on the flats.
    Pittman laughed too. “I don’t get half the exercise I should. Especially when we’re after some perp like this computer guy.”
    Funny—Mott hadn’t heard anything about somebody from the county working the case. “You going inside?” Mott pulled off his helmet.
    “I was just in there. Frank was briefing me. This is one crazy case.”
    “I hear that,” Mott agreed, stuffing the shooting gloves that doubled as biking gloves in the waistband of his spandex shorts.
    “That guy that Frank’s been using—that consultant? The young guy?”
    “You mean Wyatt Gillette?”
    “Yeah, that’s his name. He really knows his stuff, doesn’t he?”
    “The man is a wizard,” Mott said.
    “How long’s he going to be helping you out?”
    “Till we catch this asshole, I guess.”
    Pittman looked at his watch. “I better run. I’ll check in later.”
    Tony Mott nodded as Pittman walked away, pulling out his cell phone and placing a call. The county cop walked all the way through the CCU parking lot and into the one next door. Mott noticed this and thought momentarily that it was odd he’d parked that far away when there were plenty of spaces right in front of CCU. But then he started toward the office, thinking of nothing except the case and how, one way or another, he was going to finagle a spot on the dynamic entry team when they kicked in the door to collar Jon Patrick Holloway.
    “A ni, Ani, Animorphs,” the little girl said.
    “What?” Phate asked absently. They were driving in an Acura Legend, which had been recently stolen but was duly registered to one of his identities, en route to the basement of his house in Los Altos, where duct tape, the Ka-bar knife and a digital camera awaited little Samantha Wingate’s arrival.
    “Ani, Ani, Animorphs. Hey, Uncle Irv, you like Animorphs?”
    No, not one fucking little bit, thought Phate. But Uncle Irv said, “You bet I do.”
    “Why was Mrs. Gitting upset?” Sammie Wingate asked.
    “Who?”
    “The lady at the front desk.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Like, are Mom and Dad in Napa already?”
    “That’s right.”
    Phate didn’t have a clue where they were. But wherever it was he knew they’d be enjoying the last moments of peace before the storm of horror descended. It was only a matter of minutes before somebody from the Junípero Serra School started calling the Wingates’ friends and family and would learn that there’d been no accident.
    Phate wondered who’d feel the greatest level of panic: the parents of the missing child or the principal and teachers who’d released her to a killer?
    “Ani, Ani, Ani, Ani, Animorphs. Who’s your favorite?”
    “Favorite what?” Phate asked.
    “What do you think?” little Samantha asked—a bit disrespectfully, thought both Phate and Uncle Irv.
    The girl said, “Favorite Animorph. I think Rachel’s my favorite. She turns into a lion. I made up this story about her. And it was totally cool. What happened was—”
    Phate listened to the inane story as the girl continued to drone on and on. The little brat kept up the prattle without the least encouragement from old Uncle Irv, whose only comfort at the moment was the razor-sharp knife at home and the anticipation of Donald Wingate’s reaction when the businessman received the plastic bag containing a rather gruesome present later that day. In accordance with the point system in the Access game, Phate himself would be the UPS deliveryman who dropped off the package and got the signature of D. Wingate on the receipt. This would earn him 25 points, the highest for any particular murder.
    He reflected on his social engineering at the school. Now that hadbeen a good hack. Challenging yet clean (even though uncooperative Uncle Irv apparently had shaved off his mustache after his last driver’s license photo).
    The girl bounced obnoxiously on her seat. “You think we can ride that pony Dad got me? Man, that is so neat. Billy Tomkins was talking all about this stupid dog he got, like, who doesn’t have a dog? I mean, everybody has a dog. But I’ve got a pony.”
    Phate glanced at the girl. Her perfectly done hair. The expensive watch whose leather band she’d defaced with indecipherable pictures drawn in ink. The shoes