Middle Of Nowhere

   "With the help of our competitors, we can run the software on data previously gathered. In terms of your needs that means we can . . . if you envision it as laying the TDOA software on top of information we've already collected . . . the software then analyzes that data and spits out a location for us, though that data is typically hours old because we've had to gather it elsewhere." He saw her disappointment register. "The only other technology available to us—log-on signals—is real-time, but allows no location accuracy whatsoever. To my knowledge no one's come up with anything for log-ons. But that's one of the areas we're looking into for you."

   "You said I might miss him," Daphne reminded, looking at her own watch, "which implied you had found him, or did I misinterpret?"

   Osbourne reached forward and tapped the man in front of him on the shoulder. The computer technician danced his fingers across the keyboard. Until that moment, Daphne had not realized this person was a part of their discussion. Osbourne said, "Eyes on the screen to the right."

   The screen was enormous, perhaps a hundred square feet, half the size of a small movie theater screen. On it appeared a color map of the city that Daphne clearly recognized. The dark green to the left she took to be Puget Sound.

   Osbourne said, "If the person you're interested in had been calling on a newer phone, our GPS technology would have done the work for us. The only shortcoming of GPS is line-of-sight interference, which TDOA gets around, and therefore ends up complementing the technology perfectly. But your suspect is calling out on an older model analog, I'm afraid. Each time he placed a call in the last eighteen hours, our network, and our competitors' networks, recorded those signal transmissions, for his and hundreds of thousands of other phones, all concurrently, twentyfour/seven. A tower receives his signal, and the computers time-stamp that arrival for the sake of billing records. Downtown, his transmission signal might light up six or eight towers, all at fractions-of-a-second differences. We have a record of all of that." He tapped the man's shoulder again. "What you see next are the various transmission locations of calls he has made. A red dot means he was standing still. A red line means he was moving. We shade that line pink to burgundy, to indicate direction—pink being the area of origin, burgundy, termination."

   Daphne then saw the screen fill randomly with a half dozen red dots and another dozen lines. Some of the lines were as short as half a block, others as long as a mile or more, turning corners repeatedly.

   Fascinated, Daphne studied the graphic. She could quickly identify the areas of town where Flek spent the most time. He seemed to avoid the downtown area near Public Safety altogether. No surprise there, she thought.

   To the left of the screen she noticed three long pink-to-burgundy lines in the middle of Puget Sound. She turned her head slightly toward these.

   "Time of transmission and termination are in parentheses alongside the respective dot or line."

   "So we know exactly when he was in each of these locations."

   Osbourne glanced over at her. "And I can see your interest lies properly in the lines to the left, those over the Sound."

   "What exactly are we looking at there?"

   Again, Osbourne tapped the man on the shoulder. He leaned forward and said softly, "Enlargement, please." A flashing box of dashes surrounded the lines in question and then that area of the Sound filled the screen entirely, so that the three colorful lines were between two and six feet long. The respective transmission times could be clearly read: 10:17.47; 20:36.16; 10:19.38. Osbourne explained, "I thought to understand the technology, to understand the situation and make an objective decision on how you wanted to evaluate the data, you needed to see this, Lieutenant, or I wouldn't have asked you to come over. But these three transmissions include the only two that occur at like times, offering the only overlap, the only possible site where you might locate the individual in question."

   Daphne shook her head, still not fully seeing what this offered her.