She watched the nurse draw some clear liquid into the hypodermic and asked, "Dr. Williston ordered an injection?"

"That's right."

"I'm only in for some tests."

Checking the printout again, the woman nodded. "This is what he ordered."

Jennie looked at the sheet of paper but it was impossible to make sense out of the words and numbers on it.

The nurse cleaned her arm with an alcohol wipe and injected the drug. After she withdrew the needle Jennie felt an odd tingle spread through her arm near the site of the injection – a burning coldness.

"The doctor be with you soon."

She left before Jennie could ask her what the injection was. It troubled her a little, the shot. She knew you had to be careful with medicines in her condition but then she told herself there wasn't anything to worry about. The fact that she was pregnant was clearly shown in the records, Jennie knew, and surely no one here would do anything to jeopardize the baby.

All I need is the numbers of the cell phone he's using and, oh, about one square mile to call my own. And I can walk right up this fellow's backside."

This reassurance came from Garvy Hobbes, a blond man of indeterminate age, lean except for a seriously round belly that suggested an affection for beer. He was wearing blue jeans and a plaid shirt.

Hobbes was the head of security for the main cellular phone service provider in Northern California, Mobile America.

Shawn's e-mail on cellular phone service, which Gillette had found in Phate's computer, was a survey of companies that provided the best service for people wishing to use their mobile phones to go online. The survey listed Mobile America as number one and the team assumed that Phate would follow Shawn's recommendation. Tony Mott had called Hobbes, with whom the Computer Crimes Unit had often worked in the past.

Hobbes confirmed that many hackers used Mobile America because to go online with a cellular phone you needed a consistently high-quality signal, which Mobile America provided. Hobbes nodded toward Stephen Miller, who was hard at work with Linda Sanchez getting the CCU computers hooked up and online again. "Steve and I were just talking about that last week. He thought we should change our company's name to Hacker's America."

Bishop asked how they could track down Phate now that they knew he was a customer, though probably an illegal one.

"All you need is the ESN and the MIN of the phone he's using," Hobbes said.

Gillette – who'd done his share of phone phreaking -knew what these initials meant and he explained: Every cell phone had both an ESN (the electronic serial number, which was secret) and an MIN (the mobile identification number – the area code and seven-digit number of the phone itself).

Hobbes went on to explain that if he knew these numbers, and if he was within a mile or so of the phone when it was being used, he could use radio direction finding equipment to track down the caller to within a few feet. Or, as Hobbes repeated, "Right up his backside."

"How do we find out what the numbers of his phone are?" Bishop asked.

"Ah, that's the hard part. Mostly we know the numbers 'cause a customer reports his phone's been stolen. But this fellow doesn't sound like the sort to pickpocket one. However you find out, though, we need those numbers -otherwise we can't do a thing for you."

"How fast can you move if we do get them?"

"Me? Lickety-split. Even faster if I get to ride in one of those cars with the flashing lights on top of it," he joked. He handed them a business card. Hobbes had two office numbers, a fax number, a pager and two cell phone numbers. He grinned. "My girlfriend likes it that I'm highly accessible. I tell her it's 'cause I love her but, fact is, with all the call jacking going on, the company wants me available. Believe you me, stolen cellular service is gonna be the big crime of the new century."

"Or one of them," Linda Sanchez muttered, her eyes on the desktop photo of Andy Anderson and his family.

Hobbes left and the team went back to looking over the few documents they'd had a chance to print out from Phate's computer before he encrypted the data.

Miller announced that CCU's improvised network was up and running. Gillette checked it out and supervised the installation of the most current backup tapes – he wanted to make sure there was still no link to ISLEnet from this machine. He'd just finished running the final diagnostic check when the machine started to beep.

Gillette looked at the screen, wondering if his hot had found something else. But, no, the sound was announcing an incoming e-mail. It was from Triple-X.

Reading the message out loud, Gillette said, "'Here's a phile with some good stuff on our phriend.'" He looked up. "File, p-h-i-1-e. Friend, p-h-r-i-e-n-d."

"It's all in the spelling," Bishop mused. Then said, "I thought Triple-X was paranoid – and was only going to use the phone." '

"He didn't mention Phate's name and the file itself's encrypted." Gillette noticed the Department of Defense agent stir and he added, "Sorry to disappoint you, Agent Backle – it's not Standard 12. It's a commercial public key encryption program." Then he frowned. "But he never sent us the key to open it. Did anybody get a message from Triple-X?"

No one had taken any calls from the hacker.

"Do you have his number?" Gillette asked Bishop.

The detective said no, that when Triple-X had called earlier with Phate's e-mail address the caller ID on Bishop's phone indicated the hacker was calling from a pay phone.

But Gillette examined the encryption program. He laughed and said, "I'll bet I can crack it without the key." He slipped the disk containing his hacker tools into one of the PCs and loaded a decryption cracker he'd hacked together a few years ago.

Linda Sanchez, Tony Mott and Shelton had been looking over the few pages of material that Gillette had managed to screen dump out of Phate's Next Projects folder before the killer stopped the download and encrypted the data.

Mott taped the sheets up on the white-board and the team stood in a cluster in front of them.

Bishop noted, "There're a lot of references to facilities management – janitorial, parking, security and food services, personnel, payroll. It sounds like the target is a big place."

Mott said, "The last page, look. Medical services."

"A hospital," Bishop said. "He's going after a hospital."

Shelton added, "Makes sense – high security, lots of victims to choose from.

Nolan nodded. "It fits his profile for challenges and game playing. And he could pretend to be anybody – a surgeon or nurse or janitor. Any clue which one he's thinking of?"

But no one could find any reference to a specific hospital on the pages.

Bishop pointed to a block of type on one of the printouts.

CSGEI Claims ID Numbers – Unit 44

"Something about that looks familiar."

Below the words was a long list of what seemed to be social security numbers.

"CSGEI," Shelton said, nodding, also trying to place it. "Yeah, I've heard that before."

Suddenly Linda Sanchez said, "Oh, sure, I know: It's our insurer – the California State Government Employees Insurance Company. Those must be the social security numbers of patients."

Bishop picked up the phone and called CSGEI's office in Sacramento. He told a claims specialist what the team had found and asked what the information designated. He nodded as he listened and then looked up. "They're recent claims for medical services by state employees." Bishop then spoke into the phone again. "What's Unit 44?"

He listened. Then a moment later he frowned. He glanced at the team. "Unit 44's the state police – the San Jose office. That's us. That information's confidential… How did Phate get it?"