"The best social engineer I've ever heard of," Gillette said.
"Goddamnit!" Shelton shouted at him. "Why don't you just can the fucking computer buzzwords?"
Frank Bishop touched his partner's arm, said to the captain, "This'd be my fault, sir."
"Your fault?" Captain Bernstein asked the thin detective. "What do you mean?"
Bishop's slow eyes moved from Gillette to the floor. "Andy was a white-collar cop. He wasn't qualified for a takedown."
"He was still a trained detective," the captain said.
"Training's a lot different than what goes down on the street." Bishop looked up. "In my opinion, sir."
The woman who'd accompanied Bernstein stirred. The captain glanced at her and then announced, "This is Detective Susan Wilkins from Homicide in Oakland. She'll be taking over the case. She's got a task force of troopers--crime scene and tactical--up and running at headquarters in San Jose."
Turning to Bishop, the captain said, "Frank, I've okayed that request of yours--for the MARINKILL case. There's a report that the perps were spotted an hour ago outside a convenience store ten miles south of Walnut Creek. It looks like they're headed this way." He glanced at Miller. "Steve, you'll take over what Andy was doing--the computer side of the case. Working with Susan."
"Of course, Captain. You bet."
The captain turned to Patricia Nolan. "You're the one the commander called us about, right? The security consultant from that computer outfit? Horizon On-Line?"
She nodded.
"They asked if you'd stay on board too."
"They?"
"The powers-that-be in Sacramento."
"Oh. Sure, I'd be happy to."
Gillette didn't merit a direct address. The captain said to Miller, "The troopers here'll take the prisoner back to San Jose."
"Look," Gillette protested, "don't send me back."
"What?"
"You need me. I have to--"
The captain dismissed him with a wave and turned to Susan Wilkins, gesturing at the white-board and talking to her about the case.
"Captain," Gillette called, "you can't send me back."
"We need his help," Nolan said emphatically.
But the captain glanced at the two large troopers who'd accompanied him here. They cuffed Gillette, positioned themselves on either side--as if he himself were the murderer--and started out of the office.
"No," Gillette protested. "You don't know how dangerous this man is!"
Another look from the captain was all it took. The troopers began hustling him quickly toward the exit. Gillette started to ask Bishop to intervene but the detective was elsewhere mentally, apparently already on his MARINKILL assignment. He stared vacantly at the floor.
"All right," Gillette heard Detective Susan Wilkins say to Miller, Sanchez and Mott. "I'm sorry for what's happened to your boss but I've been through this before and I'm sure you've been through it before and the best way to show that you cared for him is to apprehend this perpetrator and that's what we're going to do. Now, I think we're all on the same page in terms of our approach. I'm up to speed on the file and the crime scene report and I've got a proactive plan in mind. The preliminary report is that Detective Anderson--as well as this Fowler individual--were stabbed. Cause of death was trauma to the heart. They--"
"Wait!" Gillette shouted just as he was about to be led out the door.
Wilkins paused. Bernstein gestured to the cops to get him out. But Gillette said quickly, "What about Lara Gibson? Was she stabbed in the chest too?"
"What's your point?" Bernstein asked.
"Was she?" Gillette asked emphatically. "And the victims in the other killings--in Portland and in Virginia?"
No one said anything for a moment. Finally Bob Shelton glanced at the report on the Lara Gibson killing. "Cause of death was a stab wound to--"
"The heart, right?" Gillette asked.
Shelton glanced at his partner then to Bernstein. He nodded. Tony Mott reminded, "We don't know about Virginia and Oregon--he erased the files."
"It'll be the same," Gillette said. "I guarantee it."
Shelton asked, "How'd you know that?"
"Because I figured out his motive."
"Which is?" Bernstein asked.
"Access."
"What does that mean?" Shelton muttered belligerently.
Patricia Nolan said, "That's what all hackers're after. Access to information, to secrets, to data."
"When you hack," Gillette said, "access is God."
"What's that got to do with the stabbings?"
"The killer's a MUDhead."
"Sure," Tony Mott said. "I know MUDs." Miller did too, it seemed. He was nodding.
Gillette said, "Another acronym. It stands for multiuser domain or dimension. It's a bunch of specialized chat rooms--places on the Internet where people log on for role-playing games. Adventure games, knights' quests, science fiction, war. The people who play MUDs're, you know, pretty decent--businessmen, geeks, a lot of students, professors. But three or four years ago there was a big controversy about this game called Access."
"I heard about that," Miller said. "A lot of Internet providers refused to carry it."
Gillette nodded. "The way it worked was that there was a virtual city. It was populated with characters who carried on a normal life--going to work, dating, raising a family, whatever. But on the anniversary of a famous death--like John Kennedy's assassination or the day Lennon was shot or Good Friday--a random-number generator picked one of the players to be a killer. He had one week to work his way into people's lives and kill as many of them as he could.
"The killer could pick anyone to be his victim but the more challenging the murder the more points he got. A politician with a bodyguard was worth ten points. An armed cop was worth fifteen. The one limitation on the killer was that he had to get close enough to the victims to stab them in the heart with a knife--that was the ultimate form of access."
"Jesus, that's our perp in a nutshell," Tony Mott said. "The knife, stab wounds to the chest, the anniversary dates, going after people who're hard to kill. He won the game in Portland and Virginia. And here he is, playing it in Silicon Valley." The young cop added cynically, "He's at the expert level."
"Level?" Bishop asked.
"In computer games," Gillette explained, "you move up in the degree of challenge from the beginning level to the hardest--the expert--level."
"So, this whole thing is a fucking game to him?" Shelton said. "That's a little hard to believe."
"No," Patricia Nolan said. "I'm afraid it's pretty easy to believe. The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico considers criminal hackers compulsive, progressive offenders. Just like lust-driven serial killers. Like Wyatt said, access is God. They have to find increasingly intense crimes to satisfy themselves. This guy's spent so much time in the Machine World he probably doesn't see any difference between a digital character and a human being." With a glance at the white-board Nolan continued, "I'd even say that, to him, the machines themselves're more important than people. A human death is nothing; a crashed hard drive, well, that's a tragedy."
Bernstein nodded. "That's helpful. We'll consider it." He nodded at Gillette. "But you've still got to go back to the prison."
"No!" the hacker cried.
"Look, we're already in deep water getting a federal prisoner released under a John Doe order. Andy was willing to take that risk. I'm not. That's all there is to it."
He pointed at the troopers and they led the hacker out of the dinosaur pen. It seemed to Gillette that they gripped him harder this time--as if they could sense his desperation. Nolan sighed and shook her head, gave a mournful smile of farewell to Gillette as he was led out.
Detective Susan Wilkins started up her monologue again but her voice soon faded as Gillette stepped outside. The rain was coming down steadily. One of the troopers said, "Sorry about that," though whether it was for his failed attempt to stay at CCU or the absence of an umbrella Gillette didn't know.
The trooper eased him down into the backseat of the squad car and slammed the door.
Gillette closed his eyes, rested his head against the glass. Heard the hollow sound of the rain pelting the top of the car.
He felt utter dismay at this defeat.
Lord, how close he'd come. . . .
He thought of the months in prison. He thought of all the planning he'd done. Wasted. It was all--
The car door opened.
Frank Bishop was crouching down. Water ran down his face, glistening on his sideburns and staining his shirt, but his sprayed hair, at least, was impervious to the drops. "Got a question for you, sir."
Sir?
Gillette asked, "What's that?"
"That MUD stuff. That's not hogwash?"
"Nope. The killer's playing his own version of that game--a real-life version."
"Is anybody still playing it now? On the Internet, I mean."
"I doubt it. Real MUDheads were so offended by it that they sabotaged the games and spammed the players until they stopped."
The detective glanced back at the rusting soda machine in front of the CCU building. He then asked, "That fellow in there, Stephen Miller--he's a lightweight, isn't he?"
Gillette thought for a moment and said, "He's from the elder days."
"The what?"
The phrase meant the sixties and seventies--that revolutionary era in the history of computing that ended more or less with the release of Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-10, the computer that changed the face of the Machine World forever. But Gillette didn't explain this. He said simply, "He was good, I'd guess, but he's past his prime now. And in Silicon Valley that means, yeah, he's a lightweight."
"I see." Bishop straightened up, looking out at the traffic that sped along the nearby freeway. He then said to the troopers, "Bring this man back inside, please."
They looked at each other and, when Bishop nodded emphatically, hustled Gillette out of the squad car.
As they walked back into the CCU office Gillette heard Susan Wilkins's voice still droning on, ". . . liaise with security at Mobile America and Pac Bell if need be and I've established lines of communication with the tactical teams regarding tasking priorities. Now, in my estimation it's probably sixty-forty more efficient to be located closer to main resources so we'll be moving the Computer Crimes Unit to headquarters in San Jose. I understand you're absent some administrative support in terms of your receptionist and at HQ we'll be able to mitigate that . . ."
Gillette tuned out the words and wondered what Bishop was up to.
The cop walked up to Bob Shelton, with whom he whispered for a moment. The conversation ended with Bishop's asking, "You with me on this?"
The stocky cop surveyed Gillette with a disdainful gaze and then muttered something grudgingly affirmative.
As Wilkins continued to speak, Captain Bernstein frowned and walked up to Bishop, who said to him, "I'd like to run this case, sir, and I want Gillette here to work it with us."
"You wanted the MARINKILL case."
"I did, sir. But I changed my mind."
"I know what you said before, Frank. But Andy's death--that wasn't your fault. He should've known his limits. Nobody forced him to go after that guy alone."
"I don't care if it was my fault or not. That's not what this is about. It's about collaring a dangerous perp before someone else gets killed."
Captain Bernstein caught his meaning and glanced at Wilkins. "Susan's run major homicides before. She's good."
"I know she is, sir. We've worked together. But she's textbook. She's never worked in the trenches, the way I have. I ought to be running the case. But the other problem is that we're way out of our league here. We need somebody sharp on this one." The stiff hair nodded toward Gillette. "And I think he's as good as the perp."
"Probably he is," Bernstein muttered. "But that's not my worry."
"I'll ride point on this one, sir. Something goes bad, it can all come down on me. Nobody else at headquarters's got to take any heat."
Patricia Nolan joined them and said, "Captain, stopping this guy's going to take more than fingerprints and canvassing witnesses."
Shelton sighed. "Welcome to the new fucking millennium."
Bernstein reluctantly nodded to Bishop. "Okay, you got the case. You'll have full tactical and crime scene backup. And pick some people from Homicide in San Jose to help you."
"Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan," Bishop said without hesitating. "I'd like them here ASAP if you could arrange that, sir. I want to brief everybody."
The captain called HQ to summon the detectives here. He hung up. "They're on their way."
Bernstein then broke the news to Susan Wilkins and, more perplexed than upset at the loss of the new assignment, she left. The captain asked Bishop, "You want to move the operation back to headquarters?"
Bishop said, "No, we'll stay here, sir." He nodded toward a row of computer screens. "This's where we'll do most of the work, I've got a feeling."
"Well, good luck, Frank."
Bishop said to the troopers who'd come to take Gillette back to San Ho, "You can take the cuffs off."
One of the men did this then he pointed at the hacker's leg. "How 'bout the anklet?"
"No," Bishop said, offering a very uncharacteristic smile. "I think we'll keep that on."
A short while later two men joined the team in CCU: a broad, swarthy Latino who was extremely muscular, Gold's Gym muscular, and a tall, sandy-haired detective in one of those stylish four-button men's suits, dark shirt and dark tie. Bishop introduced Huerto Ramirez and Tim Morgan, the detectives from headquarters Bishop had requested.
"Now, I'd like to say a word," Bishop said, tucking his unruly shirt into his slacks and stepping in front of the team. He looked over everybody, holding their gazes for a moment. "This fellow we're after--he's somebody who's perfectly willing to kill anybody in his way and that includes law enforcers and innocents. He's an expert at social engineering." A glance toward the newcomers, Ramirez and Morgan. "Which is basically disguise and diversion. So it's important that you continually remind yourself what we know about him."
Bishop continued his low, unhesitant monologue. "I think we have enough confirmation to place him in his late twenties. He's medium build, maybe blond but probably dark haired, clean shaven but sometimes disguised with fake facial hair. He prefers a Ka-bar as a murder weapon and wants to get close enough to his victims to inflict a fatal chest wound. He can break into the phone company and interrupt service or transfer calls. He can hack into law enforcement computers"--Gillette now received a glance--"excuse me, crack into computers and destroy police records. He likes challenges, he thinks of killing as a game. He's spent a lot of time on the East Coast and he's somewhere in the Silicon Valley area but we have no exact locale. We think he's bought some items for his disguises at a theatrical supply store on Camino Real in Mountain View. He's a progressive, lust-driven sociopath who's lost touch with reality and is treating what he's doing like it's some big computer game."
Gillette was astonished. The detective's back was to the white-board as he recited all of this information. The hacker realized that he'd misjudged the man. All the time Bishop had seemed to stare absently out the window or at the floor he'd been absorbing the evidence.
Bishop lowered his head but kept his eyes on them all. "I'm not going to lose anybody else on this team. So watch your backs and don't trust another living soul--even people you think you know. Go on this assumption: Nothing is what it seems to be."
Gillette found himself nodding, along with the others.
"Now--about his victims . . . We know that he's going after people who're hard to get close to. People with bodyguards and security systems. The harder to get to, the better. We'll have to keep that in mind when we're trying to anticipate him. We're going to keep to the general plan for the investigation. Huerto and Tim, I want you two to run the Anderson crime scene in Palo Alto. Canvass everybody you can find in and around Mil
liken Park. Bob and I didn't get a chance to find that witness who might've seen the killer's vehicle outside the restaurant where Ms. Gibson was killed. That's what he and I'll do. And, Wyatt, you're going to head up the computer side of the investigation."
Gillette shook his head, not sure he'd understood Bishop correctly. "I'm sorry?"
"You," Bishop responded, "are going to head up the computer side of the investigation." No further explanation. Stephen Miller said nothing though his eyes stared coldly at the hacker as he continued to pointlessly rearrange the sloppy piles of disks and paperwork on his desk.
Bishop asked, "Should we be worried about him listening to our phones? I mean, that's how he killed Andy."
Patricia Nolan replied, "It's a risk, I suppose, but the killer'd have to monitor hundreds of frequencies for the numbers of our cell phones."
"I agree," Gillette said. "And even if he cracked the switch he'd have to sit with a headset all day long, listening to our conversations. Doesn't sound like he's got the time to do that. In the park he was close to Andy. That's how he got his specific frequency."
Besides, as it turned out there wasn't much to do about the risk. Miller explained that, while the CCU did have a scrambler, it would only work when the caller on the other end of the line had a scrambler as well. As for secure cell phones, Miller explained, "They're five thousand bucks each." And said nothing more. Meaning, apparently, that such toys weren't in the CCU budget and never would be.
Bishop then sent Ramirez and the GQ cop, Tim Morgan, to Palo Alto. After they'd left, Bishop asked Gillette, "You were telling Andy that you thought you could find out more about how this killer got into Ms. Gibson's computer?"
"That's right. Whatever this guy is doing has to've caused some buzz in the hacker underground. What I'll do is go online and--"
Bishop nodded to a workstation. "Just do what you have to do and give us a report in a half hour."
"Just like that?" Gillette asked.
"Make it less if you can. Twenty minutes."
"Uhm." Stephen Miller stirred.
"What is it?" the detective asked him.
Gillette was expecting the cybercop to make a comment about his demotion. But that wasn't what he had in mind. "The thing is," Miller protested, "Andy said he wasn't ever supposed to go online. And then there's that court order that said he couldn't. It was part of his sentencing."
"That's all true," Bishop said, eyes scanning the white-board. "But Andy's dead and the court isn't running this case. I am." He glanced over at Gillette with a look of polite impatience. "So I'd appreciate it if you'd get going."
The Blue Nowhere Page 9
