The Blue Nowhere: A Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  “I can handle it,” the hacker replied.

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  Bishop asked Ramirez, “How old?”

  “The kid? Fifteen.”

  Bishop lifted an eyebrow at Patricia Nolan, asking her if she too could tolerate the carnage. She answered, “It’s okay.”

  They walked inside the classroom.

  Despite his measured response to Bishop’s question Gillette stopped in shock. There was blood everywhere. An astonishing amount—on the floor, walls, chairs, picture frames, white-board, the lectern. The color was different depending on what substance the blood covered, ranging from bright pink to nearly black.

  The body lay under a dark green rubberized blanket on the floor in the middle of the room. Gillette glanced at Nolan, expecting her to be repulsed too. But after a glance at the crimson spatters and streaks and puddles around the room, her eyes simply scanned the classroom, maybe looking for the computer they were going to analyze.

  “What’s the boy’s name?” Bishop asked.

  A woman officer from the San Jose Police Department said, “Jamie Turner.”

  Linda Sanchez walked into the room and inhaled deeply when she saw the blood and the body. She seemed to be deciding if she was going to faint or not. She stepped outside again.

  Frank Bishop walked into the classroom next door to the murder site, where a teenage boy sat clutching himself and rocking back and forth in a chair. Gillette joined the detective.

  “Jamie?” Bishop asked. “Jamie Turner?”

  The boy didn’t respond. Gillette noticed that his eyes were bright red and the skin around them seemed inflamed. Bishop glanced at another man in the room. He was thin and in his mid-twenties. He stood beside Jamie and had his arm on the boy’s shoulder. The man said to the detective, “This is Jamie, that’s right. I’m his brother. Mark Turner.”

  “Booty’s dead,” Jamie whispered miserably and pressed a damp cloth on his eyes.

  “Booty?”

  Another man—in his forties, wearing chinos and an Izod shirt—identified himself as the assistant principal at the school and said, “It was the boy’s nickname for him.” He nodded toward the room where the body bag rested. “For the principal.”

  Bishop crouched down. “How you feeling, young man?”

  “He killed him. He had this knife. He stabbed him and Mr. Boethe just kept screaming and screaming and running around, trying to get away. I . . .” He lost his voice to a cascade of sobbing. His brother gripped his shoulders tighter.

  “He all right?” Bishop asked one of the medical techs, a woman whose jacket was adorned with a stethoscope and hemostat clamps. She said, “He’ll be fine. Looks like the perp squirted him in the eyes with water that had a little ammonia and Tabasco mixed in. Just enough to sting, not enough to do any damage.”

  “Why?” Bishop asked.

  She shrugged. “You got me.”

  Bishop pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’m sorry this happened, Jamie. I know you’re upset. But it’s real important you tell us what you know.”

  The boy calmed and explained that he’d broken out of the school to go to a concert with his brother. But as soon as he’d gotten the door open this man in a uniform like a janitor’s grabbed him and squirted this stuff in his eyes. He’d told Jamie it was acid and that if the boy led him to where Mr. Boethe was he’d give him an antidote. But if he didn’t the acid’d eat his eyes away.

  The boy’s hands shook and he started to cry.

  “It’s his big fear,” Mark said angrily, “going blind. The bastard found that out somehow.”

  Bishop nodded and said to Gillette, “The principal was his target. It’s a big school—Phate needed Jamie to find the victim fast.”

  “And it hurt so much! It really, really did. . . . I told him I wasn’t going to help him. I didn’t want to, I tried not to but I couldn’t help it. I . . .” He fell silent.

  Gillette felt there was something more that Jamie wanted to say but couldn’t bring himself to.

  Bishop touched the boy’s shoulder. “You did exactly the right thing. You did just what I would’ve done, son. Don’t you worry about it. Tell me, Jamie, did you e-mail anybody about what you were going to do tonight? It’s important that we know.”

  The boy swallowed and looked down.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Jamie. Don’t worry. We just want to find this guy.”

  “My brother, I guess. And then . . .”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What it was, I kind of went online to find some passcodes and stuff. Passcodes to the front gate. He must’ve hacked my machine and seen them and that’s how he got into the courtyard.”

  “How about you being afraid of going blind?” Bishop asked. “Could he have read about that online?”

  Jamie nodded again.

  Gillette said, “So Phate made Jamie himself a trapdoor—to get inside.”

  “You’ve been real brave, young man,” Bishop said kindly.

  But the boy was beyond consoling.

  The medical examiner’s technicians took the principal’s body away and the cops conferred in the corridor, Gillette and Nolan with them. Shelton reported what he’d learned from the forensic techs. “Crime scene doesn’t have dick. A few dozen obvious fingerprints—they’ll run those but, hell, we already know it’s Holloway. He was wearing shoes without distinctive treads. There’re a million fibers in the room. Enough to keep the bureau’s lab techs busy for a year. Oh, they found this. It’s the Turner kid’s.”

  He handed a sheet of paper to Bishop, who read it and passed it on to Gillette. It appeared to be the boy’s notes about cracking the passcode and deactivating the door alarm.

  Huerto Ramirez told them, “Nobody was exactly sure where the Jaguar was parked. In any case, the rain’s washed away any tread marks. We got a ton of trash by the roadside but whether our perp dropped any of it or not, who knows?”

  Nolan said, “He’s a cracker. That means he’s an organized offender. He’s not going to be pitching out junk mailers with his address on them while he’s staking out a victim.”

  Ramirez continued, “Tim’s still pounding the pavement with some troopers from HQ but nobody’s seen anything at all.”

  Bishop glanced at Nolan, Sanchez and Gillette. “Okay, secure the boy’s machine and check it out.”

  Linda Sanchez asked, “Where is it?”

  The assistant principal said he’d lead them to the school’s computer department. Gillette returned to the room where Jamie was sitting and asked him which machine he’d used.

  “Number three,” the boy sullenly replied and continued pressing the cloth into his eyes.

  The team started down the dim corridor. As they walked, Linda Sanchez made a call on her cell phone. She learned—Gillette deduced from the conversation—that her daughter still hadn’t started labor. She hung up, saying, “Dios.”

  In the basement computer room, a chill and depressing place, Gillette, Nolan and Sanchez walked up to the machine marked NO. 3. Gillette told Sanchez not to run any of her excavation programs just yet. He sat down and said, “As far as we know the Trapdoor demon hasn’t self-destructed. I’m going to try to find out where it’s resident in the system.”

  Nolan looked around the damp, gothic room. “Feels like we’re in The Exorcist. . . . Spooky atmosphere and demonic possession.”

  Gillette gave a faint smile. He powered up the computer and examined the main menu. He then loaded various applications—a word processor, a spreadsheet, a fax program, a virus checker, some disk-copying utilities, some games, some Web browsers, a password-cracking program that Jamie had apparently written (some very robust code-writing for a teenager, Gillette noticed).

  As he typed he’d stare at the screen, watching how soon the character he typed would appear in the glowing letters on the monitor. He’d listen to the grind of the hard drive to see if it was making any sounds that were out of sync with the task it was su
pposed to be performing at that moment.

  Patricia Nolan sat close to him, also gazing at the screen.

  “I can feel the demon,” Gillette whispered. “But it’s odd—it seems to move around. It jumps from program to program. As soon as I open one it slips into the software—maybe to see if I’m looking for it. When it decides that I’m not, it leaves. . . . But it has to be resident somewhere.”

  “Where?” Bishop asked.

  “Let’s see if we can find out.” Gillette opened and closed a dozen programs, then a dozen more, all the while typing furiously. “Okay, okay. . . . This is the most sluggish directory.” He looked over a list of files then gave a cold laugh. “You know where Trapdoor hangs out?”

  “Where?”

  “The games folder. At the moment it’s in the Solitaire program.”

  “What?”

  “The card game.”

  Sanchez said, “But games come with almost every computer sold in America.”

  Nolan said, “That’s probably why Phate wrote the code that way.”

  Bishop shook his head. “So anybody with a game on his computer could have Trapdoor in it?”

  Nolan asked, “What happens if you disabled Solitaire or erased it?”

  They debated this for a moment. Gillette was desperately curious about how Trapdoor worked and wanted to extract the demon and examine it. If they deleted the game program the demon might kill itself—but knowing that this would destroy it would give them a weapon; anyone who suspected the demon was inside could simply remove the game.

  They decided to copy the contents of the hard drive from the computer Jamie had used and then Gillette would delete Solitaire and they’d see what happened.

  Once Sanchez was finished copying the contents Gillette erased the Solitaire program. But he noticed a faint delay in the delete operation. He tested various programs again then laughed bitterly. “It’s still there. It jumped to another program and’s alive and well. How the hell does it do that?” The Trapdoor demon had sensed its home was about to be destroyed and had delayed the delete program just long enough to escape from the Solitaire software to another program.

  Gillette stood up and shook his head. “There’s nothing more I can do here. Let’s take the machine back to CCU and—”

  There was a blur of motion as the door to the computer room swung open fast, shattering glass. A raging cry filled the room and a figure charged up to the computer. Nolan dropped to her knees, giving a faint scream of surprise.

  Bishop was knocked aside. Linda Sanchez fumbled for her gun.

  Gillette dove for cover just as the chair swung past his head and crashed into the monitor he’d been sitting at.

  “Jamie!” the assistant principal cried sharply. “No!”

  But the boy drew back the heavy chair and slammed it into the monitor again, which imploded with a loud pop and scattered glass shards around them. Smoke rose from the carcass of the unit.

  The administrator grabbed the chair and ripped it from Jamie’s hand, pulling the boy aside and shoving him to the floor. “What the hell are you doing, mister?”

  The boy scrambled to his feet, sobbing, and made another grab for the computer. But Bishop and the administrator restrained him. “I’m going to smash it! It killed him! It killed Mr. Boethe!”

  The assistant principal shouted, “You cut that out this minute, young man! I’m not going to have that kind of behavior in my students.”

  “Get your fucking hands off me!” the boy raged. “It killed him and I’m going to kill it!” The boy shook with anger.

  “Mr. Turner, you will calm down this instant! I’m not going to tell you again.”

  Mark, Jamie’s brother, ran into the computer room. He put his arm around the boy, who collapsed against him, sobbing.

  “The students have to behave,” the shaken administrator said, looking at the cool faces of the CCU team. “That’s the way we do things around here.”

  Bishop glanced at Sanchez, who was surveying the damage. She said, “Central processor’s okay. The monitor’s all he nailed.”

  Wyatt Gillette pulled a couple of chairs into the corner and motioned Jamie over to him. The boy looked at his brother, who nodded, and he joined the hacker.

  “I think that fucks up the warranty,” Gillette said, laughing and nodding at the monitor.

  The boy flashed a weak smile but it vanished almost immediately.

  After a moment the boy said, “It’s my fault Booty died.” The boy looked at him. “I hacked the passcode to the gate, I downloaded the schematic for the alarms. . . . Oh, I wish I was fucking dead!” He wiped his face on his sleeve.

  There was more on the boy’s mind, Gillette could see once again. “Go on, tell me,” he encouraged softly.

  The boy looked down and finally said, “That man? He said that if I hadn’t been hacking, Mr. Boethe’d still be alive. It was me who killed him. And I should never touch another computer again because I might kill somebody else.”

  Gillette was shaking his head. “No, no, no, Jamie. The man who did this is a sick fuck. He got it into his head that he was going to kill your principal and nothing was going to stop him. If he hadn’t used you he would’ve used somebody else. He said those things to you ’cause he’s afraid of you.”

  “Afraid of me?”

  “He’s been watching you, watching you write script and hack. He’s scared of what you might do to him someday.”

  Jamie said nothing.

  Gillette nodded at the smoking monitor. “You can’t break all the machines in the world.”

  “But I can fuck up that one!” he raged.

  “It’s just a tool,” Gillette said softly. “Some people use screwdrivers to break into houses. You can’t get rid of all the screwdrivers.”

  Jamie sagged against a stack of books, crying. Gillette put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “I’m never going on a fucking computer again. I hate them!”

  “Well, that’s going to be a problem.”

  The boy wiped his face again. “Problem?”

  Gillette said, “See, we need you to help us.”

  “Help you?”

  The hacker nodded at the machine. “You wrote that script? Crack-er?”

  The boy nodded.

  “You’re good, Jamie. You’re really good. There are sysadmins who couldn’t run the hacks you did. We’re going to take that machine with us so we can analyze it at headquarters. But I’m going to leave the other ones here and I was hoping you’d go through them and see if there’s anything you can find that might help us catch this asshole.”

  “You want me to do that?”

  “You know what a white-hat hacker is?”

  “Yeah. A good hacker who helps find bad hackers.”

  “Will you be our white hat? We don’t have enough people at the state police. Maybe you’ll find something we can’t.”

  The boy now seemed embarrassed he’d been crying. He angrily wiped his face. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to.”

  “We sure could use your help.”

  The assistant principal said, “Okay, Jamie, it’s time to get back to your room.”

  His brother said, “No way. He’s not staying here tonight. We’re going to that concert and then he can spend the night with me.”

  The assistant principal said firmly, “No. He needs written permission from your parents and we couldn’t get in touch with them. We have rules here and, after all this”—he waved his hands vaguely toward the crime scene—“we’re not deviating from them.”

  Mark Turner leaned forward and whispered harshly, “Jesus Christ, loosen up, will you? The kid’s had the worst night of his life and you’re—”

  The administrator responded, “You have no say about how I deal with my students.”

  Then Frank Bishop said, “But I do. And Jamie’s not doing either—staying here or going to any concerts. He’s coming to police headquarters and making a statement. Then we’ll take him to his parents.”<
br />
  “I don’t want to go there,” the boy said miserably. “Not my parents.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any choice, Jamie,” said the detective.

  The boy sighed and looked like he was going to start crying again.

  Bishop glanced at the assistant principal and said, “I’ll take care of it from here. You’re going to have your hands full with the other boys tonight.”

  The man glanced distastefully at the detective—and at the broken door—and left the computer room.

  After he was gone Frank Bishop smiled and said to the boy, “Okay, young man, you and your brother get on out of here. You might miss the opening act but if you move fast you’ll probably make the main show.”

  “But my parents? You said—”

  “Forget what I said. I’ll call your mom and dad and tell them you’re spending the night with your brother.” He looked at Mark. “Just make sure he’s back here in time for classes tomorrow.”

  The boy couldn’t smile—not after everything that had happened—but he offered a faint “Thanks.” He walked toward the door.

  Mark Turner shook the detective’s hand.

  “Jamie,” Gillette called.

  The boy turned.

  “Think about what I asked—about helping us.”

  Jamie looked at the smoking monitor for a moment. He turned and left without responding.

  Bishop asked Gillette, “You think he can find something?”

  “I don’t have any idea. That’s not why I asked him to help. I figured that after something like this he needs to get back on the horse.” Gillette nodded at Jamie’s notes. “He’s brilliant. It’d be a real crime if he got gun-shy and gave up machines.”

  The detective gave a brief laugh. “The more I know you, the more you don’t seem like the typical hacker.”

  “Who knows? Maybe I’m not.”

  Gillette helped Linda Sanchez go through the ritual of disconnecting the computer that had been a co-conspirator in the death of poor Willem Boethe. She wrapped it in a blanket and strapped it onto a wheelie cart carefully, as if she were afraid that jostling or rough treatment would dislodge any fragile clues to the whereabouts of their adversary.