The Blue Nowhere: A Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  And now, peering at the monitor through his thick, misted glasses, he saw that the Cray probably wasn’t going to spit out the decrypted password in time. It would take, he estimated, another two days to crack the code.

  He thought about his brother, about the Santana concert, about the backstage passes—all just out of reach—and he felt like crying. He began to type some commands to see if he could log on to another of the school’s computers—a faster one, in the physics department. But there was a long queue of users waiting to get into that one. Jamie sat back and, out of frustration, not hunger, wolfed down a package of M&Ms.

  He felt a painful chill and looked quickly around the dark, musty room. He shivered in fear.

  That damn ghost again . . .

  Maybe he should just forget the whole thing. He was sick of being scared, sick of being cold. He should get the hell out of here, go hang with James Nance or Totter or some of the guys from French club. His hands went to the keyboard to stop Crack-er and run the cloaking program that would destroy the evidence of his hack.

  Then something happened.

  On the screen in front of him the root directory of the college’s computer suddenly appeared. Way bizarre! Then, all by itself, the computer dialed out to another one, outside of the school. The machines electronically shook hands and a moment later Jamie Turner’s Crack-er and Booty’s password file were transferred to the second computer.

  How the hell had that happened?

  Jamie Turner was very savvy in the ways of computers but he’d never seen this. The only explanation was that the first computer—the college’s—had some kind of arrangement with other computer departments so that tasks that took a long time were automatically transferred to speedier machines.

  But what was totally weird was that the machine Jamie’s software had been transferred to was the Defense Research Center’s massive parallel array of supercomputers in Colorado Springs, one of the fastest computer systems in the world. It was also one of the most secure and was virtually impossible to crack (Jamie knew; he’d tried it). It contained highly classified information and no civilian had ever been allowed to use it in the past. Jamie supposed they’d started renting out the system to defray the huge cost of maintaining a parallel array. Ecstatic, he peered at the screen and saw that the DRC’s machines were cracking Booty’s passcode at a blistering rate.

  Well, if there was a ghost in his machine, he decided, maybe it was a good ghost after all. Maybe it was even a Santana fan, he laughed to himself.

  Jamie now turned to his next task, the second hack he needed to complete before the Great Escape. In less than sixty seconds he’d transformed himself into a middle-aged overworked service tech employed by West Coast Security Systems, Inc., who’d unfortunately misplaced the schematic diagram for a WCS Model 8872 alarmed fire door he was trying to repair and needed some help from the manufacturer’s technical supervisor.

  The man was all too happy to oblige.

  Phate, sitting at his dining room office, was watching Jamie Turner’s program hard at work in the Defense Research Center’s supercomputers, where he’d just sent it, along with the password file.

  Unknown to the sysadmin at the DRC the huge computers were presently under his root control and were burning about $25,000 of computer time for the sole purpose of letting a sophomore in high school open a single locked gate.

  Phate had examined the progress of the first supercomputer Jamie had used at a nearby college and had seen at once that it wasn’t going to spit out the passcode in time for the boy to escape from the school for his 6:30 rendezvous with his brother.

  Which meant that he’d stay safely tucked away at St. Francis and Phate would lose this round of the game. And that wasn’t acceptable.

  But, as he’d known, the DRC’s parallel array would easily crack the code before the deadline.

  If Jamie Turner had actually gotten to the concert that night—which wasn’t going to happen now—he’d have had Phate to thank.

  Phate then hacked into the San Jose City Planning and Zoning Board computer files and found a construction proposal, submitted by the principal of St. Francis Academy, who’d wanted to put up a gated wall and needed P&Z approval. Phate downloaded the documents and printed out diagrams of the school itself and the grounds.

  As he was examining the diagrams his machine beeped and a box flashed onto the screen, alerting him that he’d received an e-mail from Shawn.

  He felt the ping of excitement he always did when Shawn sent a message. This reaction struck him as significant, an important insight into Phate’s—no, make that Jon Holloway’s—personal development. He’d grown up in a household where love was as rare as money was plentiful and he knew that he’d developed into a cold, distant person. He’d felt this way toward everyone—his family, fellow workers, classmates and the few people he’d tried to have relationships with. And yet the depth of what Phate felt for Shawn proved that he wasn’t emotionally dead, that he had within him a vast well of love.

  Eager to read the message he logged off the P&Z network and called up the e-mail.

  But as he read the stark words the smile slipped from his face, his breath grew rapid, his pulse increased. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered.

  The gist of the e-mail was that the police were much further along on his trail than he’d anticipated. They even knew about the killings in Portland and Virginia.

  Then he glanced at the second paragraph and got no further than the reference to Milliken Park.

  No, no. . . .

  He now had a real problem.

  Phate rose from his desk and hurried downstairs to the basement of his house. He glanced at another smear of dried blood on the floor—from the Lara Gibson character—and then opened a footlocker. From it he took his dark, stained knife. He walked to the closet, opened it and flicked the light on.

  Ten minutes later he was in his Jaguar, speeding onto the freeway.

  In the beginning God created the Advanced Research Projects Agency network, which was called ARPAnet, and the ARPAnet flourished and begat the Milnet, and the ARPAnet and the Milnet begat the Internet, and the Internet and its issue, Usenet newsgroups and the World Wide Web, became a trinity that changed the life of His people forever and ever.

  Andy Anderson—who’d described the Net thus when he taught classes on computer history—thought of this slightly too-witty description now as he drove through Palo Alto and saw Stanford University ahead of him. For it was at the nearby Stanford Research Institute that the Department of Defense had established the Internet’s predecessor in 1969 to link the SRI with UCLA, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.

  The reverence he felt for the site, however, faded quickly as he drove on through misty rain and saw the deserted hill of Hacker’s Knoll ahead of him, in John Milliken Park. Normally the place would be crowded with young people swapping software and tales of their cyber exploits. Today, though, the cold April drizzle had emptied the place.

  He parked, pulled on the rumpled gray rain hat his six-year-old daughter had given him as a birthday present and climbed out of the car. He hurried through the grass as streamers of rain flew from his shoes. He was discouraged by the lack of possible witnesses who might have a lead to Peter Fowler, the gunrunner. Still, there was a covered bridge in the middle of the park; sometimes kids hung out there when it was rainy or cold.

  But as Anderson approached he saw that the bridge too was deserted.

  He paused and looked around. The only people here clearly weren’t hackers: an elderly woman walking a dog, and a businessman making a cell phone call under the awning of one of the nearby university buildings.

  Anderson recalled a coffee shop in downtown Palo Alto, near the Hotel California. It was a place where geeks gathered to sip strong coffee and swap tales of their outrageous hacks. He decided to try the restaurant and see if anyone had heard about Peter Fowler or somebody selling knives in the area. If not, he’d try the com
puter science building and ask some of the professors and grad students if they’d seen anybody who—

  Then the detective saw motion nearby.

  Fifty feet away was a young man, walking furtively through the bushes toward the bridge. He was looking around uneasily, clearly paranoid.

  Anderson ducked behind a thick stand of juniper, his heart pounding like a pile driver—because this was, he knew, Lara Gibson’s killer. He was in his twenties and was wearing the blue jean jacket that must’ve shed the denim fibers found on the woman’s body. He had blond hair and was clean shaven; the beard and mustache he’d worn in the bar had been fake, glued on with the theatrical adhesive.

  Social engineering . . .

  Then the man’s jacket fell away for a moment and Anderson could see, protruding from the waistband of the man’s jeans, the knobby hilt of a Ka-bar knife. The killer quickly pulled the jacket closed and continued to the covered bridge, where he stepped into the shadows and peered out.

  Anderson remained out of sight. He made a call to the state police’s field operations central dispatch. A moment later he heard the dispatcher answer and ask for his badge number.

  “Four three eight nine two,” Anderson whispered in reply. “Request immediate backup. I’ve got a visual on a suspect in a homicide. I’m in John Milliken Park, Palo Alto, southeast corner.”

  “Copy, four three eight,” the man replied. “Is suspect armed?”

  “I see a knife. I don’t know about any firearms.”

  “Is he in a vehicle?”

  “Negative,” Anderson said. “He’s on foot at the moment.”

  The dispatcher asked him to hold on. Anderson stared at the killer, squinting hard, as if that would keep him frozen in place. He whispered to central, “What’s the ETA of that backup?”

  “One moment, four three eight. . . . Okay, be advised, they’ll be there in twelve minutes.”

  “Can’t you get somebody here faster than that?”

  “Negative, four three eight. Can you stay with him?”

  “I’ll try.”

  But just then the man began walking again. He left the bridge and started down the sidewalk.

  “He’s on the move, central. He’s heading west through the middle of the park toward some university buildings. I’ll stay with him and keep you posted on his location.”

  “Copy that, four three eight. CAU is on its way.”

  CAU? he wondered. What the hell was that again? Oh, right: closest available unit.

  Hugging the trees and brush, Anderson moved closer to the bridge, keeping out of the killer’s sight. What had he come back here for? To find another victim? To cover up some traces of the earlier crime? To buy more weapons from Peter Fowler?

  He glanced at his watch. Less than a minute had passed. Should he call back and tell the unit to roll up silently? He didn’t know. There were probably procedures for handling this sort of situation—procedures that cops like Frank Bishop and Bob Shelton would surely know well. Anderson was used to a very different kind of police work. His stakeouts were conducted sitting in vans, staring at the screen of a Toshiba laptop connected to a Cellscope radio directional-finding system. He didn’t believe he’d had either his weapon or his handcuffs out of their respective leather holsters in a year.

  Which reminded him: weapon . . .

  He looked down at the chunky butt of the Glock. He pulled it off his hip and pointed it downward, finger outside the trigger, as he vaguely remembered he ought to do.

  Then, through the mist, he heard a faint electronic trill.

  The killer had gotten a phone call. He pulled a cell phone off his belt and held it to his ear. He glanced at his watch, spoke a few words. Then he put the phone away and turned back the way he’d come.

  Hell, he’s going back to his car, the detective thought. I’m going to lose him. . . .

  Ten minutes till the backup gets here. Jesus. . . .

  Andy Anderson decided he had no choice. He was going to do something he’d never done: make an arrest alone.

  CHAPTER 00001001 / NINE

  Anderson moved next to a low bush.

  The killer was walking quickly along the path, hands in his pockets.

  That was good, Anderson decided—the hands encumbered, which would make it more difficult to get to the knife.

  But wait, he wondered: What if he was hiding a pistol in his pocket?

  Okay, keep that in mind.

  And remember too that he might have Mace or pepper spray or tear gas.

  And remember that he might simply turn and sprint away. The cop wondered what he’d do then. What were the fleeing felon rules? Could he shoot the killer in the back?

  He’d busted dozens of criminals but he’d always been backed up by cops like Frank Bishop, for whom guns and high-risk arrests were as routine as compiling a program in C++ was for Anderson.

  The detective now moved closer to the killer, thankful the rain was obscuring the sound of his footsteps. They were paralleling each other now on opposite sides of a row of tall boxwood. Anderson kept low and squinted through the rain. He got a good look at the killer’s face. An intense curiosity coursed through him: What made this young man commit the terrible crimes he was responsible for? This curiosity was similar to what he felt when examining software code or puzzling over the crimes CCU investigated—but it was stronger now because, though he understood the principles of computer science and the crimes that that science made possible, a criminal like this was a pure enigma to Andy Anderson.

  Except for the knife, except for the gun he might or might not be clutching in his hidden hand, the man looked benign, almost friendly.

  The detective wiped his hand on his shirt to dry some of the rain and gripped the pistol firmly once more. He continued on. This’s a hell of a lot different from taking down hackers at a public terminal in the mall or serving warrants in houses where the biggest dangers were the plates of putrid food sitting stacked next to a teenager’s machine.

  Closer, closer . . .

  Twenty feet farther on, their paths would converge. Soon Anderson would have no more cover and he’d have to make his move.

  For an instant his courage broke and he stopped. He thought of his wife and daughter. And how alien he felt here, how completely out of his depth he was. He thought: Just follow the killer back to his car, get the license plate and follow as best you can.

  But then Anderson thought of the deaths this man had caused and the deaths that he’d cause again if not stopped. This might be the only chance to capture him.

  He started forward again along the path that would intersect with the killer’s.

  Ten feet.

  Eight . . .

  A deep breath.

  Watch the hand in the pocket, he reminded himself.

  A bird flew close—a gull—and the killer turned to look at it, startled. He laughed.

  And that was when Anderson burst from the bushes, shoving the pistol toward the killer, shouting, “Freeze! Police! Hands out of your pockets!”

  The man spun around to face the detective, muttering, “Shit.” He hesitated for a moment.

  Anderson brought the gun even with the killer’s chest. “Now! Move slow!”

  The hands appeared. Anderson stared at the fingers. They were clutching something! What?

  The detective tensed. But then he got a clear look. The man held a rabbit’s foot. A lucky key chain.

  “Drop it.”

  He did and then lifted his hands in the resigned, familiar way of someone who’s been through an arrest before. Anderson struggled to keep from looking too relieved as he glanced again at the rabbit’s foot; he didn’t want the killer to think he was new to this.

  “Lie down on the ground and keep your arms spread.”

  “Jesus,” the man spat out. “Jesus. How the fuck did you find me?”

  “Do it,” Anderson shouted in a quaking voice.

  The killer lay down on the ground, half on the grass and half on the si
dewalk. Anderson was kneeling over him, shoving his gun into the man’s neck as he put the cuffs on, an awkward feat that took several tries. He then frisked the killer and relieved him of the Ka-bar knife and cell phone and wallet. He had been carrying a small pistol, it turned out, but that had been in the pocket of his jacket. The weapons, wallet, phone and rabbit’s foot went into a pile on the grass nearby. Anderson stepped back, his hands shaking from the adrenaline.

  “Where the fuck d’you come from?” the man muttered.

  Anderson didn’t respond but just stared at his prisoner as the shock of what he’d done was replaced with euphoria. What a story he’d have to tell! His wife would love it. He wanted to tell his little daughter but that would have to wait a few years. Oh, and Stan, his neighbors, who—

  Then Anderson realized that he’d forgotten the Miranda warning. He didn’t want to blow an arrest like this by making a technical mistake. He found the card in his wallet and read the words stiffly.

  The killer muttered that he understood his rights.

  “Officer, you okay?” a man’s voice called. “You need any help?”

  Anderson glanced behind him. It was the businessman he’d seen under the awning. His dark suit, expensive-looking, was dampened by the rain. “I’ve got a cell phone. You need to use it?”

  “No, no, that’s okay, everything’s under control.” Anderson turned back to his prisoner. He holstered his weapon and pulled out his own cell phone to report in. He hit redial but for some reason the call wouldn’t go through. He glanced at the screen and the phone reported, NO SIGNAL.

  That was odd. Why—

  And in an instant—an instant of pure horror—he realized that no street cop in the world would’ve let an unidentified civilian get behind him during an arrest. As he groped for his pistol and started to turn, the businessman grabbed his shoulder and the detective felt an explosion of pain in his back.