The Blue Nowhere Read Online Free PDF Page A

software and—”
    “No, no, no,” Gillette said firmly. “I can’t do it here.”
    “Why?”
    “I’ll need access to a mainframe—maybe a supercomputer. I’ll need tech manuals, software.”
    Anderson looked at Bishop, who didn’t seem to be listening to any of this.
    “No fucking way,” said Shelton, the more talkative of the homicide partners, even if he had a distinctly limited vocabulary.
    Anderson was debating with himself when the warden asked, “Can I see you gentlemen up the hall for a minute?”

CHAPTER 00000011 / THREE
    I t had been a fun hack.
    But not as challenging as he would’ve liked.
    Phate—his screen name, spelled in the best hacker tradition with a ph and not an f —now drove to his house in Los Altos, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
    He’d been busy this morning: He’d abandoned the blood-smeared white van that he’d used to light the fires of paranoia within Lara Gibson yesterday. And he’d ditched the disguises—the dreadlock wig, combat jacket and sunglasses of the stalker and the squeaky-clean chip-jockey costume of Will Randolph, Sandy Hardwick’s accommodating cousin.
    He was now someone entirely different. Not his real name or identity, of course—Jon Patrick Holloway, who’d been born twenty-seven years ago in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. No, he was at the moment one of six or seven fictional characters he’d created recently. They were like a group of friends to him and came complete with driver’s licenses, employee ID cards, social security cards and all the telltale documentation that is so indispensable nowadays. He’d even endowed his cast with different accents and mannerisms, which he practiced religiously.
    Who do you want to be?
    Phate’s answer to this question was: pretty much anybody in the world.
    Reflecting now on the Lara Gibson hack, he decided it’d been just a bit too easy to get close to someone who prided herself on being the queen of urban protection.
    And so it was time to notch the game up a bit.
    Phate’s Jaguar moved slowly through morning rush-hour traffic along Interstate 280, the Junípero Serra Highway. To the west mountains rose into the specters of fog slipping overhead toward the San Francisco Bay. In recent years droughts had plagued the Valley but much of this spring—like today, for instance—had been rainy and the flora was a rich green. Phate, however, paid the expansive scenery no mind. He was listening to a play on his CD player— Death of a Salesman. It was one of his favorites. Occasionally his mouth would move to the words (he knew all the parts).
    Ten minutes later, at 8:45, he was pulling up into the garage of his large, detached house in the Stonecrest development off El Monte Road in Los Altos.
    He parked in the garage, closed the door. He noticed a drop of Lara Gibson’s blood in the shape of a sloppy comma on the otherwise immaculate floor. Careless to miss it earlier, he chided himself. He cleaned the stain then went inside, closed and locked the door.
    The house was new, only about six months old, and smelled of carpet glue and sweet paint.
    If neighbors were to come a-calling to welcome him to the neighborhood and stand in the front hallway, glancing into the living room, they’d see evidence of an upper-middle-class family living the comfortable life that chip money has provided for so many people here in the Valley.
    Hey, nice to meet you. . . . Yeah, that’s right—just moved in last month. . . . I’m with a dot-com start-up over in Palo Alto. They brought me and half the furniture out from Austin early, before Kathy and the kids—they’ll be moving here in June after school’s over. . . . That’s them. Took that picture on vacation in Florida in January. Troy and Brittany. He’s seven. She’s going to be five next month.
    On the mantel and on the expensive end tables and coffee tables were dozens of pictures of Phate and a blond woman, posing at the beach, horseback riding, hugging