The Blue Nowhere-SA (37 page)

"There's no 'again' about it. I never told you what it was in the first place." The faint smile again. "Well, tell me, would you? I'm curious."

"An encryption/decryption program I downloaded from the HackerMart Web site and modified myself. It's freeware so I guess I'm not guilty of a copyright violation. Which isn't your jurisdiction anyway. Hey, you want to know the algorithm it uses?"

Backle didn't answer, just stared at the screen, making sure the half-smile was annoyingly lodged on his face.

Gillette said, "Tell you what, Backle, I need to do this. How 'bout if you go get some coffee and a bagel or whatever they have in the canteen up the hall there and let me do my job?" He added cheerfully, "You can look through it when I'm done and then arrest me on some more bullshit charges if you want."

"My, we're a little touchy here, aren't we?" Backle said, scraping the chair legs loudly. "I'm just doing my job."

"And I'm trying to do mine." The hacker turned back to the computer. Backle shrugged. The hacker's attitude didn't do a thing to diminish his irritation but he did like the idea of a bagel. He stood up, stretched and walked down the corridor, following the smell of coffee. Frank Bishop skidded the Crown Victoria into the parking lot of the Stanford-Packard Medical Center and leapt from the car, forgetting to shut the engine off or close the door. Halfway to the front entrance he realized what he'd done and stopped abruptly, turned back. But he heard a woman's voice call, "Go ahead, boss. I got it." It was Linda Sanchez. She, Bob Shelton and Tony Mott were in the unmarked car right behind Bishop's - because he'd been in such a hurry to get to his wife he'd left CCU without waiting for the rest of the team. Patricia Nolan and Stephen Miller were in a third car.

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He continued breathlessly on to the front door.

In the main reception area he sped past a dozen waiting patients. At the sign-in desk, three nurses were huddled around the receptionist, staring at a computer screen. No one looked at him right away. Something was wrong. They were all frowning, taking turns at the keyboard.

"Excuse me, this is police business," he said, flashing his shield. "I need to know which room Jennie Bishop is in."

A nurse looked up. "Sorry, Officer. The system's haywire. We don't know what's going on but there's no patient information available."

"I have to find her. Now."

The nurse saw the agonized look on his face and walked over to him. "Is she an in-patient?"

"What?"

"Is she staying overnight?"

"No. She's just having some tests. For an hour or two. She's Dr. Williston's patient."

"Oncology outpatient." The nurse understood. "Okay, that'd be the third floor, west wing. That way." She pointed and started to say something else but Bishop was already sprinting down the hall. A flash of white beside him. He glanced down. His shirt was completely untucked. He shoved it back into his slacks, never breaking stride.

Up the stairs, through the corridor which seemed to be a mile long, to the west wing. At the end of the hallway he found a nurse and she directed him to a room. The young blonde had an alarmed expression on her face but whether that was because of something she knew about Jennie or because of his concerned expression, Bishop didn't know.

He ran down the hall and burst through the doorway, nearly knocking into a trim young security guard sitting beside the bed. The man stood up fast, reaching for his pistol.

"Honey!" Jennie cried.

"It's okay," Bishop said to the guard. "I'm her husband." His wife was crying softly. He ran to her and enfolded her in his arms.

"A nurse gave me a shot," she whispered. "The doctor didn't order it. They don't know what it is. What's going on, Frank?"

He glanced at the security guard, whose name badge read "R. Hellman." The man said, "Happened before I got here, sir. They're looking for that nurse now."

Bishop was thankful the guard was here at all. The detective had had a terrible time getting through to the hospital security staff to have someone sent to Jennie's room. Phate had crashed the hospital phone
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switch and the transmissions on the radio had been so staticky he hadn't even been sure what the person on the other end of the radio was saying. But apparently the message had been received all right. Bishop was further pleased that the guard - unlike most of the others he'd seen at the hospital - was wearing a sidearm.

"What is it, Frank?" Jennie repeated.

"That fellow we're after? He found out you were in the hospital. We think he might be here someplace." Linda Sanchez jogged into the room fast. The guard looked at her police ID, dangling from a chain around her neck and motioned her in. The women knew each other but Jennie was too upset to nod a greeting.

"Frank, what about the baby?" She was sobbing now. "What if he gave me something that hurts the baby?"

"What'd the doctor say?"

"He doesn't know!"

"It's going to be all right, honey. You'll be okay."

Bishop told Linda Sanchez what happened and the stocky woman sat on Jennie's bed. She took the patient's hand, leaned forward and said in a friendly but firm voice, "Look at me, honey. Look at me" When Jennie did, Sanchez said, "Now, we're in a hospital, right?" Jennie nodded.

"So if anybody did anything he shouldn't've they can fix you up just fine in no time." The officer's dark, stubby fingers rubbed Jennie's arms vigorously as if the woman had just come inside from a freezing rainstorm. "There're more doctors here per square inch here than anywhere in the Valley. Right? Look at me. Am I right?"

Jennie wiped her eyes and nodded. She seemed to relax a bit.

Bishop did too, glad to partake in this reassurance. But that bit of relief sat right beside another thought: that if his wife or the baby were harmed in any way neither Shawn nor Phate would make it into custody alive.

Tony Mott jogged through the door, not the least winded from his sprint to the room, unlike Bob Shelton, who staggered into the doorway, leaning against the jamb, gasping for breath. Bishop said, "Phate might've done something with Jennie's medicine. They're checking on it now."

"Jesus," Shelton muttered. For once Bishop was glad that Tony Mott was at the front lines and that he carried that big chrome-plated Colt on his hip. His opinion now was that you couldn't have too many allies, or too much firepower, when you were up against perps like Phate and Shawn. Sanchez kept her comforting grip on Jennie's hand, whispering nonsense, telling her how good she looked and how terrible the food here would probably be and, man oh man, wasn't that orderly up the hall a hunk. Bishop thought what a lucky woman Sanchez's daughter was to have a mother like this - who would surely be stationed just like this, right beside her during labor when the girl finally brought her own
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lazy baby into the world.

Mott had had the foresight to bring photocopies of Holloway's Massachusetts booking picture. He'd handed these to some guards downstairs, he explained, and they were distributing them to hospital personnel. So far, though, no one had seen the killer.

The young cop added to Bishop, "Patricia Nolan and Miller're in the hospital's computer department, trying to figure out how bad the hack was."

Bishop nodded and then said to Shelton and Mott, "I want you to--" Suddenly the vital signs monitor on the wall began to buzz with a loud sound. The diagram showing Jennie's heart rate was jumping frantically up and down.

Then a message popped up on the screen in glowing red type.

WARNING: Fibrillation

Jennie gasped and tilted her head up, staring at the monitor. She screamed.

"Jesus!" Bishop cried and grabbed the call button. He began pushing it frantically. Bob Shelton ran into the hallway and started shouting, "We need help here! Here! Now!" Then the lines on the screen suddenly went flat. The warning tone changed to a piercing squeal and a new message burned onto the monitor.

WARNING: Cardiac Arrest

"Honey," Jennie sobbed. Bishop hugged her hard, feeling utterly helpless. Sweat poured from her face and she shivered but she remained conscious. Linda Sanchez ran to the door and cried, "Get a goddamn doctor in here now!"

A moment later Dr. Williston ran into the room. He glanced at the monitor and then at his patient and reached up, shut off the machine.

"Do something!" Bishop cried.

Williston listened to her chest then took her blood pressure. Then he stepped back and announced,

"She's fine."

"Fine?" Mott asked.

Sanchez looked as if she was about to grab the doctor by the jacket and drag him back to his patient.

"Check her again!"

"There's nothing wrong with her," he told the policewoman.

"But the monitor" Bishop stammered.

"Malfunction," the doctor explained. "Something happened in the main computer system. Every monitor on this floor's been doing the same thing."

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Jennie closed her eyes and pressed her head back in the pillow. Bishop held her tightly.

"And that injection?" the doctor continued. "I tracked it down. Somehow central pharmaceutical got an order for you to receive a vitamin shot. That's all it was."

"A vitamin?"

Bishop, trembling with relief, fought down the tears.

The doctor said, "It won't hurt you or the fetus in any way." He shook his head. "It was strange - the order went out under my name and whoever did it got my passcode to authorize it. I keep that in a private file in my computer. I can't imagine how anybody got it."

"Can't imagine," Tony Mott said with a sardonic glance at Bishop. A man in his fifties with a military bearing walked into the room. He wore a conservative suit. He introduced himself as Les Allen. He was head of security at the hospital. Hellman, the guard in the room, nodded to Allen, who didn't respond. He asked Bishop, "What's going on here, Detective?" Bishop told him about what had happened with his wife and the monitors. Allen said, "So he got into our main computer I'll bring that up with the security committee today. But at the moment what should we do? You think this guy's here someplace?"

"Oh, yeah, he's here." Bishop waved at the dark monitor above Jennie's head. "He did this as a diversion, to get us to focus on Jennie and this wing. Which means he's targeting a different patient."

"Or patients," Bob Shelton said.

Mott added, "Or somebody on the staff."

Bishop said, "This suspect likes challenges. What would be the hardest place in the hospital to break into?"

Dr. Williston and Les Allen considered this. "What do you think, Doctor? The operating suites? They all have controlled-access doors."

"That'd be my guess."

"And where are they?"

"In a separate building - you get to them through a tunnel from this wing."

"And most doctors and nurses there would be masked and gowned, right?" Linda Sanchez asked.

"Yes."

So Phate could roam his killing grounds freely. Bishop then asked, "Is there anyone being operated on right now?"

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Dr. Williston laughed. "Anyone? We've got probably twenty procedures going on I'd say." He turned to Jennie. "I'll be back in ten minutes. We'll get those tests over with and get you home." He left the room.

"Let's go hunting," Bishop said to Mott, Sanchez and Shelton. He hugged Jennie again. As he left, the young security guard pulled his chair closer to the bedside. Once they were in the corridor the guard swung the door shut. Bishop heard it latch.

They walked down the hall quickly, Mott keeping his hand near his automatic, looking around, as if he were about to draw and shoot anybody who bore the least resemblance to Phate. Bishop too felt unnerved, recalling that the killer was a chameleon and, with his disguises, could be walking past them right now and they might never know it.

They were at the elevator when something occurred to Bishop. Alarmed, he looked back toward the closed door of Jennie's room. He didn't go into the details of Phate's social engineering skills but said to Allen, "The thing about our suspect is that we're never quite sure what he'll look like next. I didn't pay much attention to that guard in my wife's room. He's about the perp's age and build. You're sure he works for your department?"

"Who? Dick Hellman back there?" Allen answered, nodding slowly. "Well, what I can tell you for sure is that he's my daughter's husband and I've known him for eight years. As far as the 'work' part of your question goes - if putting in a four-hour day during an eight-hour shift is work then I guess the answer's yes."

In the tiny canteen at the Computer Crimes Unit, Agent Art Backle rummaged futilely through the refrigerator for milk or half-and-half. Since Starbucks had arrived in the Bay area Backle hadn't drunk any other kind of coffee and he knew that the boiled-down burnt-smelling brew here would taste vile without something to take the edge off. With some disgust he poured a large dose of Coffee-mate into the cup. The liquid turned gray.

He took a bagel from the plate and bit down into what turned out to be rubber. Goddamn He flung the phony bagel across the room, realizing of course that Gillette had sent him back here as a practical fucking joke. He decided that when the hacker went back to prison he'dƒ

What was that noise?

He started to turn toward the doorway.

But by the time he identified the sound as sprinting footsteps his attacker was already on top of him. He slammed into the slim agent's back, pitching him into the wall and knocking the wind out of his lungs. The attacker flicked the lights out. The windowless room went completely black. Then the man grabbed Backle by the collar and flung him facedown to the floor. His head slammed into the concrete with a quiet thud.