The Blue Nowhere

"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 know his motive now."

"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 a

"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 a

"Level?" Bishop asked.

"In computer games," Gillette explained, "you move up in the degree of challenge from the begi

"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 and desire to flee. 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 pla

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. 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 missing 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."