The Blue Nowhere

that Valleyman was among his adversaries was gone and had turned to electric excitement. Phate was now thrilled that the game he was playing had taken a dramatic twist, one that was familiar to anybody who’d ever played Access or other MUD games: This was the moment when the plot turned 180 degrees and the hunters became the prey.
    C ruising through the Blue Nowhere like a dolphin, in coves close to shore, in open sea, breaking the surface or nosing through dim vegetation on the impenetrable bottom, Wyatt Gillette’s tireless bot sent an urgent message back to its master.
    In CCU headquarters the computer beeped.
    “What do we have?” Patricia Nolan asked.
    Gillette nodded at the screen.
    Search results:
    Search request: “Phate”
    Location: Newsgroup: alt.pictures.true.crime
    Status: Posted message
    Gillette’s face bristled with excitement. He called to Bishop, “Phate’s posted something himself.” He called up the message.
    Message-ID: <1000423454210815.NP16015@k2rdka>
    X-Newsposter: newspost-1.2
    Newsgroups: alt.pictures.true.crime
    From:
    To: Group
    Subject: A recent character
    Encoding: .jpg
    Lines: 1276
    NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 April
    Date: 2 Apr 11:12 a.m.
    Path:news.newspost.com!southwest.com!newscom.mesh.ad.jp!counter culturesystems.com!larivegauche.fr.net!frankfrt.de.net!swip.net!news serve.deluxe.interpost.net!internet.gateway.net!roma.internet.it!global systems.uk!
    Remember: All the world’s a MUD, and the people in it merely characters.
    No one could figure out what Phate’s paraphrase of Shakespeare might mean.
    Until Gillette downloaded the picture that was attached to the message.
    It slowly appeared on the screen.
    “Oh, my God,” Linda Sanchez muttered, her eyes fixed on the terrible image.
    “Son of a bitch,” Tony Mott whispered. Stephen Miller said nothing then he looked away.
    On the screen was a picture of Lara Gibson. She was half naked and lying on a tile floor—in a basement somewhere, it appeared. There were slashes on her body and she was covered with blood. Her dim eyes were gazing hopelessly at the camera. Gillette, sickened by the picture, supposed that it had been taken when she’d had only a few minutes left to live. He—like Stephen Miller—had to turn away.
    Bishop asked, “That address? [email protected]? Any chance it’s real?”
    Gillette ran his HyperTrace and checked the address.
    “Fake,” he said, not surprising anyone with this news.
    Miller suggested, “The picture—we know Phate’s in the area here somewhere. How about if you send troopers to canvass the one-hour photo-processing places? They might recognize it.”
    Before Gillette could respond Patricia Nolan said impatiently, “He’s not going to risk taking film to a photo lab. He’ll use a digital camera.”
    Even nontechnical Frank Bishop had figured this out.
    “So, this isn’t any help to us,” the detective said.
    “Well, it might be,” Gillette said. He leaned forward and tapped the screen, indicating the line that was labeled Path. He reminded Bishop about the pathway in e-mail headers, which identified the networks that Phate’s message had made its way through to get to the computer server they’d downloaded it from.
    “They’re just like street directions. The hacker in Bulgaria? Vlast? His path listings were all faked. But this one might be real or at least have some networks that Phate really used to upload the Gibson woman’s picture.”
    Gillette began checking every network listed in the Path headingwith HyperTrace. The program revealed that one was legitimate.
    “ That’s the network Phate’s computer was actually connected to: newsserve.deluxe.interpost.net.”
    Gillette ordered HyperTrace to dig up more information about the company. In a moment, this popped up on the screen:
    Domain Name: Interpost.net
    Registered to: Interpost Europe SA
    23443 Grand Palais
    Bruges, Belgium
    Services: Internet Service Provider, Web hosting, anonymous browsing and remailing.
    “It’s a chainer,” Gillette said, shaking his head. “I’m not surprised.”
    Nolan explained to Bishop why this was discouraging: “It’s a service that hides your identity when you send e-mails or post messages.”
    Gillette continued, “Phate sent the picture to Interpost and their computers stripped out his real return address, added the fake ones in place of his and then sent it on its way.”
    “We can’t trace it?” Bishop asked.
    “No,” Nolan said. “It’s a