The Blue Nowhere

of which he’d downloaded from ISLEnet.
    The Computer Crimes Unit believed Phate had been inside ISLEnet for only forty-two seconds. What they didn’t know, however, was that as soon as he’d gotten inside the system one of Trapdoor’s clever demons had taken over the internal clock and rewritten all the connection and download logs. In reality Phate had spent a leisurely fifty-two minutes inside ISLEnet, downloading gigabytes of information.
    Some of this intelligence was mundane but—because CCU’s machine had root access—some was so classified that only a handful of law enforcers in the state and federal governments were allowed to see it: access numbers and passcodes to top-secret government computers; tactical assault codes; encrypted files about ongoing operations; surveillance procedures; rules of engagement; and classified information about the state police, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Secret Service and most other law enforcement agencies.
    Now, as soft rain streaked the windows of his house, Phate was scrolling through one of these classified folders—the state police human resource files. These contained information on every individualemployed by the California State Police. There were many, many subfolders but at the moment Phate was interested only in the one he was looking through now. It was labeled Detective Division and it contained some very useful data.

IV
    ACCESS
    The Internet is about as safe as a convenience store in East L.A. on Saturday night.
    —Jonathan Littman,
    The Fugitive Game

CHAPTER 00011011 / TWENTY-SEVEN
    F or the rest of the evening the Computer Crimes Unit team pored over the reports from the Bay View Motel, continuing to search for any leads to Phate and listening in anxious anticipation to the police-band scanners for reports of more killings.
    There’d been a report that a young girl had been kidnapped from a private school that morning by a man impersonating her uncle and then released. It was certainly Phate’s M.O. but when Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan checked out the school and interviewed the girl they came away with no leads. The hysterical student couldn’t even remember the color of the kidnapper’s car.
    Other officers had canvassed most of the guests at the Bay View Motel and surrounding areas and had found no witnesses who’d seen what kind of car or truck Phate had been driving.
    A clerk in a 7-Eleven in Fremont had sold two six-packs of Mountain Dew to someone fitting Phate’s description several hours ago. But the killer hadn’t said anything that would help in tracing him. No one inside or outside the convenience store got a look at his car either.
    The crime scene search of the motel room had revealed nothing useful in tracing Phate to a specific location.
    Wyatt Gillette had helped Stephen Miller, Linda Sanchez and Tony Mott perform the forensic analysis on the computer left in the room. The hacker reported that it was indeed a hot machine, loaded with just enough software for the break-in. There was nothing contained in it that gave any indication where Phate might be. The serial number ofthe Toshiba indicated that it had been part of a shipment to Computer World in Chicago six months ago. The purchaser had paid cash and had never filled out the warranty registration card or registered online. All of the computer disks Phate had left in the room were blank. Linda Sanchez, queen of the computer archaeologists, tested each one with the Restore8 program and found that none had ever contained any data.
    Sanchez continued to be preoccupied with her daughter and called her every few hours to see how she was doing. She clearly wanted to visit the poor girl and so Bishop sent her home. He dismissed the rest of the troops too and Miller and Mott—the blond cop in much better spirits now after his SWAT experience—left to get some dinner and sleep.
    Patricia Nolan, on the other hand, was in no hurry to return to her hotel. She sat next to Gillette and together they scrolled through ISLEnet files, trying to find out more about the Trapdoor demon. There was, however, no sign of it and Gillette reported that the bot had apparently killed itself.
    Once, Gillette leaned back wearily, cracked his knuckles and stretched. Bishop watched him spot a wad of pink phone-message slips. His face brightened and he picked them up eagerly. He was clearly disappointed that none were for him—probably upset that his ex-wife hadn’t