"They're just like street directions. The hacker in Bulgaria? Vlast? His path listings were all faked. But this one might be real or at least have some networks that Phate really used to upload the Gibson woman's picture."

Gillette began checking every network listed in the Path heading with HyperTrace. The program revealed that one was legitimate.

"That's the network Phate's computer was actually connected to: newsserve.deluxe.interpost.net."

Gillette ordered HyperTrace to dig up more information about the company. In a moment, this popped up on the screen:

Domain Name: Interpost.net

Registered to: Interpost Europe SA

23443 Grand Palais

Bruges, Belgium

Services: Internet Service Provider, Web hosting, anonymous browsing and remailing.

"It's a chainer," Gillette said, shaking his head. "I'm not surprised."

Nolan explained to Bishop why this was discouraging: "It's a service that hides your identity when you send e-mails or post messages."

Gillette continued, "Phate sent the picture to Interpost and their computers stripped out his real return address, added the fake ones in place of his and then sent it on its way."

"We can't trace it?" Bishop asked.

"No," Nolan said. "It's a dead end. That's why Phate didn't bother to write a fake header, the way Vlast did."

"Well," the cop pointed out, "Interpost knows where Phate's computer is. Let's get their phone number, call them up and find out."

The hacker shook his head. "Chainers stay in business because they guarantee that nobody can find out who the sender is, even the police."

"So we're dead in the water," Bishop said.

But Wyatt Gillette said, "Not necessarily. I think we ought to do some more fishing." And he loaded one of his own search engines into the CCU machine.

As the computer at the state police's CCU was sending out a request for information about Interpost, Phate sat in the Bay View Motel, a decrepit inn along a sandy stretch of commercial sprawl in Freemont, California, just north of San Jose. Staring at the laptop's monitor, he was following the progress of Gillette's search.

Gillette would of course know that a foreign chainer like Interpost wouldn't give any U.S. cop as much as the courtesy of a reply to a request for a client's identity. So, as Phate had anticipated, Gillette had used a search engine to look for general information about Interpost, in hopes of retrieving something that might let the cops beg or bribe some cooperation from the Belgium Internet service.

Within seconds Gillette's search engine had found dozens of sites in which Interpost was mentioned and was shooting their names and addresses back to the CCU computer. But the packets of data that made up this information took a detour – they were diverted to Phate's laptop. Trapdoor then modified the packets to insert its hardworking demon and sent them on their way to CCU.

Phate now got this message:

TRAPDOOR

Link complete

Do you wish to enter subject's computer? Y/N

Phate keyed Y, hit ENTER and a moment later was wandering around inside CCU's system.

He typed more commands and began looking through files, reflecting that the cops at CCU had thought that, like some slobbering serial killer, Phate had posted the picture of the dying Gibson woman just to threaten them or to get off on some weird sado-sexual exhibitionist thing. But no, he'd posted the picture as bait – to find the Internet address of the CCU machine. Once he'd uploaded the picture he'd instructed a bot to tell him the address of everybody who'd downloaded it. One of those had been a California state government computer in the western San Jose area – which he'd guessed was the CCU office, even though the domain name suggested it was a tourism organization.

Phate now raced through the police computer, copying information, then he went straight to a folder labeled Personnel Records – Computer Crimes Unit.

The contents were – not surprisingly – encrypted. Phate pulled down a screen window on Trapdoor and clicked on Decrypt. The program went to work to crack the code.

As the hard drive moaned, Phate stood and fetched a Mountain Dew from a cooler sitting on the motel room floor. He stirred in a No-Doz and, sipping the sweet drink, walked to the window, where shafts of brilliant sunlight had momentarily broken through the storm clouds. The flood of jarring light agitated him and he pulled the shade down quickly, then turned back to the muted colors of the computer screen, which were far more pleasing to him than God's palette could ever be.

"We've got him," Gillette announced to the team. "Phate's inside our machine. Let's start the trace."

"All right!" Tony Mott said, offering a deafening whistle of victory.

Gillette began HyperTrace and, with faint pings, one by one the route between CCU's computer and Phate's appeared on the screen as a tiny yellow line.

"Our boy's good, whatta you say, boss?" Linda Sanchez offered, nodding an admiring head toward Gillette.

"Looks like he got it right," Bishop said.

Ten minutes before, Gillette had had a thought: that Phate's message was a feint. He decided that the killer had been setting them up like a master MUD player and that he'd posted the picture of Lara not to taunt or threaten them but so he could find out CCU's Internet address and get inside their computer.

Gillette had explained this to the team and then added, "And we're going to let him."

"So we can trace him," Bishop said.

"You got it," Gillette confirmed.

Waving a hand at the CCU machines, Stephen Miller protested, "But we can't let him in our system."

Gillette said shortly, "I'll transfer out all the real data to backup tapes and load some encrypted files. While he's trying to decrypt them we'll track him down."

Bishop agreed and Gillette had transferred all the sensitive data, like the real personnel files, to tape and replaced them with scrambled files. Then Gillette sent out a search request about Interpost and, when the results came back, the Trapdoor demon came with them.

"It's like he's a rapist," Linda Sanchez said, seeing the folders in their system opening and closing as Phate examined them.

Violation is the crime of the new century…

"Come on, come on," Gillette encouraged his HyperTrace program, which was issuing faint sonar pings each time another link in the chain of connection was identified.

"What if he's using an anonymizer?" Bishop asked.

"I doubt that he is. If I were him I'd be doing a hit and run, probably logging on from a pay phone or hotel room. And I'd be using a hot machine."

Nolan explained, "That's a computer you use once and abandon. It doesn't have anything on it that could be traced back to you."

Gillette sat forward, staring intently at the screen as the HyperTrace lines slowly made their way from CCU toward Phate. Finally they stopped at a location northeast of them. "I've got his service provider!" he shouted, reading the information on the screen. "He's dialing into ContraCosta On-Line in Oakland." He turned to Stephen Miller. "Get Pac Bell on it now!"

The phone company would complete the trace from ContraCosta On-Line to Phate's machine itself. Miller spoke urgently to the Pac Bell security staff.

"Just a few more minutes," Nolan said, her voice edgy. "Stay on the line, stay on the line… Please."