The Blue Nowhere: A Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  He shook his head. “Our human resources director asked me about that. But I told her I didn’t see anything. Didn’t she tell you that?”

  “She did, sir,” Bishop said evenly. “But I have reason to believe you weren’t telling her the truth.”

  “Hey, hold on a minute—”

  “You were parked in the lot behind the company around that time in your Lexus, engaging in sexual activity with Sally Jacobs, from the company’s payroll department.”

  The priceless look of shock, morphing into horror, told Bishop that he was right on the money but Cargill said what he had to. “That’s bullshit. Whoever told you that’s lying. I’ve been married for seventeen years. Besides, Sally Jacobs . . . if you saw her you’d know how idiotic that suggestion is. She’s the ugliest girl on the sixteenth floor.”

  Bishop was aware of the fleeting time. He recalled Wyatt Gillette’s description of the Access game—to murder as many people as possible in a week. Phate could already be close to another victim. The detective said shortly, “Sir, I don’t care about your personal life. All I care about is that yesterday you saw a car parked in the lot behind Vesta’s. It belonged to a suspected killer and I need to know what kind of car it was.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Cargill said adamantly, looking toward the house. His wife’s face was peering at them from behind a lace curtain.

  Bishop said calmly, “Yes, sir, you were. And I know you got a look at the killer’s car.”

  “No, I didn’t,” the man growled.

  “You did. Let me explain why I know.”

  The man gave a cynical laugh.

  The detective said, “A late-model, light-colored sedan—like your Lexus—was parked in the back lot of Internet Marketing yesterday around the time the victim was abducted from Vesta’s. Now, I know that the president of your company encourages employees to park in front of the building so that clients don’t notice that you’re down to less than half the staff. So, the only logical reason to park in the back portion of the lot is to do something illicit and not be seen from the building or the street. That would include use of some controlled substances and/or sexual relations.”

  Cargill stopped smiling.

  Bishop continued, “Since it’s an access-controlled lot, whoever was parked there was a company employee, not a visitor. I asked the personnel director which employee who owns a light-colored sedan either has a drug problem or was having an affair. She said you were seeing Sally Jacobs. Which, by the way, everybody in the company knows.”

  Lowering his voice so far that Bishop had to lean forward to hear, Cargill muttered, “Fucking office rumors—that’s all they are.”

  Twenty-two years as a detective, Bishop was a walking lie detector. He continued, “Now, if a man is parked with his mistress—”

  “She’s not my mistress!”

  “—in a parking lot he’s going to check out every car nearby to make sure it’s not his wife’s or a neighbor’s. So, therefore, sir, you saw the suspect’s car. What kind was it?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” the businessman snapped.

  It was Bob Shelton’s turn. “We don’t have time for any more bullshit, Cargill.” He said to Bishop, “Let’s go get Sally and bring her over here. Maybe the two of them together can remember a little more.”

  The detectives had already talked to Sally Jacobs—who was far from being the ugliest girl on the sixteenth, or any other, floor of the company—and she’d confirmed her affair with Cargill. But being single and, for some reason, in love with this jerk she was far less paranoid than he and hadn’t bothered to check out nearby cars. She’d thought there’d been one car but she couldn’t remember what type. Bishop had believed her.

  “Bring her here?” Cargill asked slowly. “Sally?”

  Bishop gestured to Shelton and they turned. He called over his shoulder, “We’ll be back.”

  “No, don’t,” Cargill begged.

  They stopped.

  Disgust flooded into Cargill’s face. The most guilty always look the most victimized, street-cop Bishop had learned. “It was a Jaguar convertible. Late model. Silver or gray. Black top.”

  “License number?”

  “California plate. I didn’t see the number.”

  “You ever see the car in the area before?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anybody in or around the car?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Bishop decided he was telling the truth.

  Then a conspiratorial smile blossomed in Cargill’s face and he shrugged, nodding toward his house. “Say, Officer, man-to-man, you know how it is. . . . We can keep this between you and me, right?”

  The polite façade remained on Bishop’s face as he said, “That’s not a problem, sir.”

  “Thanks,” the businessman said with massive relief.

  “Except for the final statement,” the detective added. “That will have a reference to your affair with Ms. Jacobs.”

  “Statement?” Cargill asked uneasily.

  “That our evidence department’ll mail to you.”

  “Mail? To the house?”

  “It’s a state law,” Shelton said. “We have to give every witness a copy of their final statement.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  Unsmiling by nature, unsmiling because of circumstance now, Bishop said, “Actually we have to, sir. As my partner said. It’s a state law.”

  “I’ll drive down to your office and pick it up.”

  “Has to be mailed—comes from Sacramento. You’ll be getting it within the next few months.”

  “Few months? Can’t you tell me when exactly?”

  “We don’t know ourselves, sir. Could be next week, could be July or August. You have a nice night. And thanks for your cooperation, sir.”

  They hurried back to their navy-blue Crown Victoria, leaving the mortified businessman undoubtedly thinking up wild schemes for intercepting the mail for the next two or three months so his wife didn’t see the report.

  “Evidence department?” Shelton asked with a cocked eyebrow.

  “Sounded good to me.” Bishop shrugged. Both men laughed.

  Bishop then called central dispatch and requested an EVL—an emergency vehicle locator—on Phate’s car. This request pulled all Department of Motor Vehicles records on late-model silver or gray Jaguar convertibles. Bishop knew that if Phate used this car in the crime it would either be stolen or registered under a fake name and address, which meant that the DMV report probably wouldn’t help. But an EVL would also alert every state, county and local law enforcer in the Northern California area to immediately report any sightings of a car fitting that description.

  He nodded for Shelton, the more aggressive—and faster—driver of the two, to get behind the wheel.

  “Back to CCU,” he said.

  Shelton mused, “So he’s driving a Jag. Man, this guy’s no ordinary hacker.”

  But, Bishop reflected, we already knew that.

  A message finally popped up on Wyatt Gillette’s machine at CCU.

  Triple-X: Sorry, dude. This guy had to ask me some shit about breaking screen saver passcodes. Some luser.

  For the next few minutes Gillette, in his persona as the alienated Texas teenager, told Triple-X about how he defeated Windows screen saver passcodes and let the hacker give him advice on better ways to do it. Gillette was digitally genuflecting before the guru when the door to the CCU opened and he glanced up to see Frank Bishop and Bob Shelton returning.

  Patricia Nolan said excitedly, “We’re close to finding Triple-X. He’s in a cybercafé in a mall somewhere around here. He said he knows Phate.”

  Gillette called to Bishop, “But he’s not saying anything concrete about him. He knows things but he’s scared.”

  “Pac Bell and Bay Area On-Line say they’ll have his location in five minutes,” Tony Mott said, listening into his headset. “They’re narrowing down the exchange. Looks like he’s in Atherton, Menlo Pa
rk or Redwood City.”

  Bishop said, “Well, how many malls can there be? Get some tactical troops into the area.”

  Bob Shelton made a call and then announced, “They’re rolling. Be in the area in five minutes.”

  “Come on, come on,” Mott said to the monitor, fondling the square butt of his silver gun.

  Bishop, reading the screen, said, “Steer him back to Phate. See if you can get him to give you something concrete.”

  Renegade334: man this phate dude, isnt their some thing I can do I mean to stop him. I’d like to fuck him up.

  Triple-X: Listen, dude. You don’t fuck up Phate. He fucks YOU up.

  Renegade334: You think?

  Triple-X: Phate is walking death, dude. Same with his friend Shawn. Don’t go close to them. If Phate got you with Trapdoor, burn your drive and install a new one. Change your screen name.

  Renegade334: Could he get to me do you think, even in texas? Wheres he hang?

  “Good,” said Bishop.

  But Triple-X didn’t answer right away. After a moment this message appeared on the screen:

  Triple-X: I don’t think he’d get to Austin. But I ought to tell you something, dude . . .

  Renegade334: Whats that?

  Triple-X: Your ass ain’t the least bit safe in Northern California, which is where you’re sitting right at the moment, you fucking poser!!!!

  “Shit, he made us!” Gillette snapped.

  Renegade334: Hey man I’m in Texas.

  Triple-X: “Hey, man” no, you’re not. Check out the response times on your anonymizer. ESAD!

  Triple-X logged off.

  “Goddamn,” Nolan said.

  “He’s gone,” Gillette told Bishop and slammed his palm onto the workstation desktop in anger.

  The detective glanced at the last message on the screen. He nodded toward it. “What’s he mean by response times?”

  Gillette didn’t answer right away. He typed some commands and examined the anonymizer that Miller had hacked together.

  “Hell,” he muttered when he saw what had happened. He explained: Triple-X had been tracing CCU’s computer by sending out the same sort of tiny electronic pings that Gillette was sending to find him. The anonymizer did tell Triple-X that Renegade was in Austin, but, when he’d typed BRB, the hacker must’ve run a further test, which showed that the length of time it took the pings to get to and from Renegade’s computer was far too short for the electrons to make the round-trip all the way to Texas and back.

  This was a serious mistake—it would have been simple to build a short delay into the anonymizer to add a few milliseconds and make it appear that Renegade was a thousand miles farther away. Gillette couldn’t understand why Miller hadn’t thought of it.

  “Fuck!” the cybercop said, shaking his head when he realized his mistake. “That’s my fault. I’m sorry. . . . I just didn’t think.”

  No, you sure as hell hadn’t, Gillette thought.

  They’d been so close.

  In a soft, discouraged voice, Bishop said, “Recall SWAT.”

  Shelton pulled out his cell phone and made the call.

  Bishop asked, “That other thing Triple-X typed. ‘ESAD.’ What does that mean?”

  “Just a friendly acronym,” Gillette said sourly. “It means Eat shit and die.”

  “Bit of a nasty temper,” Bishop observed.

  Then a phone rang—it was his cell—and the detective answered. “Yes?” Then tersely he asked, “Where?” He jotted notes and then said, “Get every available unit in the area over there now. Call the San Jose metro police too. Move on it and I mean big.”

  He hung up then looked at the team. “We got a break. There was a response to our emergency vehicle locator. A traffic cop in San Jose saw a parked gray late-model Jag about a half hour ago. It was in an old area of town where you don’t see expensive cars very often.” He walked to the map and made an X at the intersection where the car had been seen.

  Shelton said, “I know the area a little. There’re a lot of apartments near there. Some bodegas, a few package stores. Pretty low-rent district.”

  Then Bishop tapped a small square on the map. It was labeled “St. Francis Academy.”

  “Remember that case a few years ago?” the detective asked Shelton.

  “Right.”

  “Some psycho got into the school and killed a student or teacher. The principal put in all kinds of security, real high-tech stuff. It was in all the papers.” He nodded at the white-board. “Phate likes challenges, remember?”

  “Jesus,” Shelton muttered in fury. “He’s going after kids now.”

  Bishop grabbed the phone and called in an assault-in-progress code to central dispatch.

  No one dared to mention out loud what everybody was thinking: that the EVL report had placed the car there thirty minutes ago. Which meant Phate had already had plenty of time to play his macabre game.

  It was just like life, Jamie Turner reflected.

  With no fanfare, no buzzing, no satisfying ka-chunks like in the movies, without even a faint click, the light on the alarmed door went out.

  In the Real World you don’t get sound effects. You do what you set out to do and there’s nothing to commemorate it except a light silently going dark.

  He stood up and listened carefully. From far off down the halls of St. Francis Academy he heard music, some shouting, laughter, tinny arguing on a talk-radio show—which he was leaving behind, on his way to spend a totally perfect evening with his brother.

  Easing the door open.

  Silence. No alarms, no shouts from Booty.

  The smell of cold air, fragrant with grass, filled his nose. It reminded him of those long, lonely hours after dinner at his parents’ house in Mill Valley during the summer—his brother Mark in Sacramento where he’d taken a job to get away from home. Those endless nights. . . . His mother giving Jamie desserts and snacks to keep him out of their hair, his father saying, “Go outside and play,” while they and their friends told pointless stories that got more and more fuzzy as everybody guzzled local wines.

  Go outside and play. . . .

  Like he was in fucking kindergarten!

  Well, Jamie hadn’t gone outside at all. He’d gone inside and hacked like there was no tomorrow.

  That’s what the cool spring air reminded him of. But at the moment he was immune to these memories. He was thrilled that he’d been successful and that he was going to spend the night with his brother.

  He taped the door latch down so that he could get back inside when he returned to the school later that night. Jamie paused and turned back, listening. No footsteps, no Booty, no ghosts. He took a step outside.

  His first step to freedom. Yes! He’d made it!

  It was then that the ghost got him.

  Suddenly a man’s arm gripped him painfully around the chest and a powerful hand covered his mouth.

  God god god. . . .

  Jamie tried to leap back into the school but his attacker, wearing some kind of maintenance man uniform, was strong and wrestled him to the ground. Then the man pulled the thick safety glasses off the boy’s nose.

  “What’ve we got here?” he whispered, tossing them on the ground and caressing the boy’s eyelids.

  “No, no!” Jamie tried to raise his arms to protect his eyes. “What’re you doing?”

  The man took something from the coveralls he wore. It looked like a spray bottle. He held it close to Jamie’s face. What was—?

  A stream of milky liquid shot from the nozzle into his eyes.

  The terrible burn started a moment later and the boy began to cry and shake in utter panic. His worst fear was coming true—blindness!

  Jamie Turner shook his head furiously to fling off the pain and horror but the stinging only got worse. He was screaming, “No, no, no,” the words muffled under the strong grip of the hand around his mouth.

  The man leaned close and began to whisper in the boy’s ear but Jamie had no clue what he said; the
pain—and the horror—consumed him like fire in dry brush.

  CHAPTER 00010001 / SEVENTEEN

  Frank Bishop and Wyatt Gillette walked through the old archway of the entrance to St. Francis Academy, their shoes sounding in gritty scrapes on the cobblestones.

  Bishop nodded a greeting to Huerto Ramirez, whose massive bulk filled half the archway, and asked, “It’s true?”

  “Yep, Frank. Sorry. He got away.”

  Ramirez and Tim Morgan, who was presently canvassing witnesses along the streets around the school, had been among the first at the scene.

  Ramirez turned and led Bishop, Gillette and, behind them, Bob Shelton and Patricia Nolan into the school proper. Linda Sanchez, pulling a large wheelie suitcase, joined them.

  Outside were two ambulances and a dozen police cars, their lights flashing silently. A large crowd of the curious stood on the sidewalk across the street.

  “What happened?” Shelton asked him.

  “As near as we can tell, the Jaguar was outside that gate over there.” Ramirez pointed into a yard separated from the street by a high wall. “We were all on silent roll-up but it looks like he heard we were coming and sprinted out of the school and got away. We set up roadblocks eight and sixteen blocks away but he got through them. Used alleys and sidestreets probably.”

  As they walked through the dim corridors Nolan fell into step beside Gillette. She seemed to want to say something but changed her mind and remained silent.

  Gillette noticed no students as they walked down the hallways; maybe the teachers were keeping them in their rooms until parents and counselors arrived.

  “Crime scene finding anything?” Bishop asked Ramirez.

  “Nothing that, you know, jumps up and gives us the perp’s address.”

  They turned a corner and at the end of it saw an open door, outside of which were dozens of police officers and several medical technicians. Ramirez glanced at Bishop and then whispered something to him. Bishop nodded and said to Gillette, “It’s pretty unpleasant in there. It was like Andy Anderson and Lara Gibson. The killer used his knife again—in the heart. But it looks like it took him a while to die. It’s pretty messy. Why don’t you wait outside? When we need you to look at the computer I’ll let you know.”