"All right!" "We got 473 matches." "If we spent just five minutes in each site, that would make... 39 hours of porn on the Internet." "Yeah!" "That is why Bill Gates should be president." "There." "That one. "100% Free Nasty Hardcore Coed Teenage Virgins. "" ""I understand I'll be exposed to images, verbal descriptions and audio sounds of a sexually orientated erotic nature. "" ""Under penalty of perjury, I affirm that I am an adult at least 21 years of age. "" " Yes." " Oh." "$9.95?" "That's false advertising." "It says, "100% free"." " And we said we were over 21." " It's OK." "One down, 472 to go." " Don't start without me." " You almost gave me a heart attack." "I thought you were my mom." " The pizza's cold." " I got something that'll make up for that." "I ran into Leahy." "He heard about it while lurking on a chatroom for perverts." " Heard about what?" " An address." " To a very special place." " Oh, yes." " S and M." " I don't know." "She doesn't look the type." "As if you'd know." "The higher the number, the less clothes." "So what happens at 37122?" "Full frontal?" "Better." "Watch." "This is getting kinda freaky." " God!" " We gotta tell somebody." "What are we gonna tell them?" "We need proof." "Hit "print"." "Did that really happen?" "The Group received reports from 24 police departments across the US." "All had complaints from citizens claiming to have witnessed a murder on a webcast." " The accounts are consistent?" " Yes." "Over a period of several hours a series of live still images updated." "They depicted this woman being restrained to a chair and then murdered when the number of hits on the website matched the one on the wall." " 37122." "And the website?" " It disappeared." "In your hands is the only visual record we have of the entire incident." "Some of the Group think it might have been staged." "Some kind of sick performance art." "No, it's real." "Though the elaborate nature of the murder shows he's performing for us." " Who has jurisdiction over this?" " Technically, nobody." "No agency can claim jurisdiction till we find out where it happened." "The law hasn't kept up with the technology." "No crime scene, no physical evidence and we don't know the identity of the victim." "Do you think he's gonna commit another murder?" "You can count on it." "The first step in finding the victim's identity is to deconstruct her face to give the computer something to compare to other faces." "We highlight the cardinal points of the victim's face, which creates an abstraction I can enhance by the minute degrees of pixel contrast." "Reducing her face to a string of numbers I can feed into the Missing Persons Registry." "This will take a minute." "Sorry about the mess." "It's the maid's day off." "Don't worry about it." "Your apartment's exactly how I imagined it would be." " Ooh!" "We got six maybes." " Show all of them." "Which of the missing women have an e-mail address?" "Three." "Claudia Vance, Rebecca Damsen and Patricia Viamonte." "Can you tell how active they were online before they went missing?" "Viamonte's got a CompuNetServe account which she's used twice." "Vance has got the same kind of account and logged in about once a week." "What about Damsen?" "She's posted hundreds of messages in every conceivable newsgroup." "Must have been online hundreds of hours." "My kinda woman." "A real net chick." " Is there a user profile?" " Uh-huh." "Female, 26." "Librarian at the Sheboygan Conservatory of Music." " She's the victim." " Just because she uses the computer?" "No." "Because he does." "The web has become his world." "He showed her off on the Internet." "He killed her on the Internet." "I believe he stalked her then made contact in cyberspace before abducting her in real life." "There may be a record of that contact." "I need access to her e-mail account." "We need permission from CompuNetServe and to go through the bureaucracy." " You'd get the files by the end of the week." " No good." "The killer's already trawling for his next victim." "I could try hacking into their system, but I need something with a lot more fire power." "Where can we get access to that equipment?" "I can think of two places." "The NSA data system at Vandenberg, level three clearance." "The other is even harder to get into." "Access is restricted to the Millennium Group but this is a special case, so anything you don't see, ask." "My God." "This is like a hacker's wet dream." "Dickey Bird told me about it, but I thought he was yanking my chain." "That's a T3 line." "It's like a fire hose compared to the soda straw we were sucking information out of." "You two may wanna leave the room." "What I'm doing isn't exactly legal." "Just get in as quick as you can." "Ding!" "11 seconds." "Her password was "password"." "Her pseudonym online was Queen Libido." "These are quite explicit." "Doesn't sync with a librarian from the Sheboygan." "Some people feel liberated when they adopt an Internet persona." "In cyberspace people are free to experiment." "Online I've changed my name, my appearance, sexual orientation." "Even gender." "That's more personal information than I need, Brian." "Her correspondents were two men and a woman." " Or so they claim." " We ought to interview them soon." " Who do you want to talk to first?" " Ideally all at once." "Otherwise they'll communicate and tip off the suspect." " But we can't be in three places at one time." " You can." "We have full duplex vid connections with every city now." "We can see and hear them." "These sliders allow you to turn up the volume on any of the satcasts." "If you wanna talk, hit this." "Otherwise you can't be heard." " Peter, can you hear me?" " Loud and clear." "Detective Brusky?" " Sergeant Collier?" " Mm-hm." "Let's go." "Yeah, that's me." "My onscreen name is Big One." "I never heard of a law against e-mail." " Ask him if he ever met Queen Libido." " Have you had contact with Queen Libido?" "Never have, never will." "Don't even want to see a picture." "I get off on their minds." "Physical attributes bore me." "Look at me." "Now close your eyes..." "Frank, this is Officer Dominic." "I don't think this Brandon Heygood llI is home." "Officer, time is of the essence." "Can you turn that away a sec?" "What do you know?" "He left the door unlocked." "There must be some mistake." "The person you're looking for is obviously female." "With a name like LadyLove." "Honey, have you been online?" "Brusky, I think you'd find more success if you isolated the husband." "Mrs O'Connor, do you think we might talk to your husband in private for a moment?" " Peter, anything of interest?" " Still looking." "It smells terrible in here." "Food rotting." "Like he hasn't been home for days." " Why not use your own name?" " It's a nom de plume." "It's common amongst authors and literary people." "LadyLove just happens to be my writing persona." "Peter, on the wall." "What was on the wall?" "Show him the wall." "Show him the pictures." "That's it." "The cemetery." "The victim." "That's where the girl is." " I can't do this on video." " You wanna come down after the storm?" "They're predicting heavy rains here." "El Niño." " A lot of evidence could be washed away." " Then go to the cemetery now." "Let us be your eyes and ears." "Tell us where to look." " Show me everything." " Just keep panning all around." "Try and tell me what you're thinking, put it into words." "I can't put it into words." "What I do exists somewhere on the other side of words." "It's gonna rain." "We won't get a second chance." "You slaughtered that young girl for no other reason than you wanted to." "You hate yourself but you feel like you're God at the same time." "But maybe the bitch had it coming." "I watched the life drain from her body." "And now she's mine forever." "I showed her to the world." "And now I have her in a safe place where I can see her any time I want." "There's a shed." "Over here." "Shed." " It hasn't been opened." " Show me the lock." "That's a new lock." "My lock." "I wanted to be careful." "He wanted to be careful." "Open it up." "Get in there." "God, it's both of them." "The girl and Heygood." "Heygood's not our killer." "He's another victim." "Those are numbers?" "3, 6, 2, 5, 8, 8, 9, 12." "Maybe passages from the Bible." " It's an IP." " It's an Internet address." "He's taken another victim." " Any changes on the website?" " Only the target number." "The chair's exactly the same." "On the floor the spray pattern is consistent with the carotid artery being cut." " Anything from the shack?" " No prints or useful fibres." "He was careful." "The FBI's prepared to mobilise when we find the location of the site." " It could be anywhere." " OK." "I'm set." "CompuNetServe is ready to help with the trace." "This shows how the web connection is routed." "We find out how the website gets to us and how the picture got to the website." "I've got to do the trace within one cycle." "Every time it updates, we're back to ground zero." " Go." " It travelled the fibre backbone." "Come on." "Just a second more." "The picture was routed to a server in Michigan." "Boston." "On the main server for the state of Massachusetts." "I've got it originating in a suburb called Wellesley." " Come on." " Boston." " Damn!" " Lost it." " We need an account number and a name." " I'm close." " The next one will give me an address." " Boston law enforcement's ready to move." "What?" "That's impossible." "No one can do this." " What's going on?" " This update is from a different server." "It's coming from Hawaii." "The server is in Honolulu." "What is it, Boston or Hawaii?" "I have to start over." "Tracking it back." "Came off the backbone." "That's right, come to Papa." "Routing information." "It's coming from..." "Canterbury, England." "I don't get it." "He's playing with us." "He gave us his address because he knew we couldn't trace it." "There are two million lines of code running CompuNetServe." "I'm sorry." "I can't identify the source of the call." " I can disconnect the website." " No." "Then we cut off our only source of information." "696314." "696314." "I have a feeling it's more than a target number." "It's a puzzle." " It's something we have to unravel." " Peter. 696314." "I know that number." "I practically lived with it when I was in the FBI." "San Francisco file, aka Avatar." "Still unsolved." "Does that ring a bell?" "You've taken a 12-year leap." "The last murder attributed to Avatar was in 1986." "He was the same kind of predator." "He killed couples, took souvenirs, taunted the police." "The unique aspect of this case is its public nature." "It's murder on display." " We've got to focus on that." " It's a new medium to vent the same old rage." "You take the technology out of it, it's the same crime." "696314." " It can't be a coincidence." " Mr Black, Mr Watts." "The picture changed." "This just came in." " Forward that to FBI Cryptography." " I already did." "A rotation substitution cipher." "Semaphore codes, horoscope symbols." "Just like Avatar." "Looks like we lost the signal." "That's not blank." "That's a curtain." "Like on the stage." "He's gonna open the curtain and show us something." " Print every frame." " Printing." "His next victim." "I don't know if I wanna see this." "If we can ID her, at least we can tell where she came from." "That's a first step to finding out where he's holding her." "No, he won't show us her face." "That's how we found the other two bodies." "The cipher's all he's gonna give us." "We sent the cipher to the Group's cryptographer." "They haven't had much luck." "Agent Tully, how's it going?" "We've run it through every known algorithmic solution." "Nothing." " Did you try my suggestion?" " Yeah, we tried it." "This code may look similar but it's not the same as the Avatar code sent ten years ago." "OK." "We'll be here if you come up with anything." "He could be a copycat." "Someone who was obsessed with the case, with him." "Obsessed enough to re-create it." "The most recent events are not a copy." "It's a whole new creation." "From the slipstream of electrons." "A world as real as life or death, but disappear in the blink of an eye." "The devil has a new playground." "696314... was a message." "This cipher was another message." "He found this important enough to send it twice." "First before the reveal of the victim and then again after." " What if he didn't send the same one twice?" " I've checked it." "Every symbol, every position." "Exactly the same." "To our eye, maybe, but at the pixel level there could be a slight difference." "Each point could be one of 64,000 colours." "We can't tell the difference between, say, colour 32,105 and colour 32,106." "It's just one small dot in a big picture." "So, two pictures which appear identical by sight, and they have the same file size, can conceal within them a hidden message?" "Yes, those two files may be different, not in a major way but in a minute way." "Least significant digit." "The imperceptible difference yields a binary number." "If we find that number, we'll find the message." "This is the cipher as we know it, and this is how we're gonna decode it." "We compare binaries in successive pairs of pictures until we find a difference." " There's a mismatch." "And another." " Thousands of bits." " Is the message in a recognisable file type?" " It's..." " A sound file." " Play it." " "Defer, defer to the Lord High Executioner. "" " The Mikado." "Yeah." "Avatar's favourite operetta." "This was never made public." "Maybe ten people in the nation knew about it." "What is it?" "Avatar sent four ciphers to the San Francisco newspapers." "Three of them are published." "An amateur cryptographer cracked it." " The fourth..." " Was never decoded." "That's what we led people to believe but we cracked it." ""We work in the dark." "We do what we can. "" ""We give what we have. "" ""Our doubt is our passion. "" ""Our passion is our task. "" ""And the rest is the madness of art. "" " Henry James." " Yeah, but Avatar changed one word." ""The rest is the madness of pain. "" "Brian, is there a way that we could send a message to his website?" "No." "There's no e-mail link." "But a newsgroup has gone crazy over this web death room." "It has over 300 new posts in the last two hours." " What do you think?" " Avatar may be monitoring the newsgroup." " We could take a shot." " We'll send our own cipher." "We'll do the Henry James without the last word." "We'll sign it "Sceptic"." "We address it to the Lord High Executioner." " Got that, Brian?" " Who is this Avatar anyway?" "That's a good question." "As many as 19 murders over seven years were attributed to Avatar." "The only survivor described Avatar as wearing a robe and a hood." "His eighth victim was a cab driver." "Avatar shot him on a crowded street." "Still covered with blood, he was seen heading into a public park." "40 police officers went to the park." "They searched all night, finding no one." "They gave up at dawn." "Days later, a letter arrived with a swatch of bloody clothing." "Avatar described dozens of officers searching for him, down to the badge numbers." "He was that close, but none of the officers saw him." "I was with the search team in the park, but I was younger and my instincts weren't as refined." "But I felt him." "I was too slow to react and he was gone." "Oh, my God." "He's back." "Time for breakfast before the video conference." "FBI set up links anywhere there was a girl missing who might match our victim." "Cancel it." "We're casting too wide a net." "Frank, the first victim was from Sheboygan, Wisconsin." "Yes, but her body was found in San Jose." "37122." "That was what was on the wall behind the first victim." "37 north. 122 west." "That's San Francisco in the atlas. 37122." "The counter on that website is above 600,000." "We've got a day." "If we direct our search across the US, we won't make it." "He told us who he is, what to look for." "Damn it, I should have seen it, felt it." "But I've been in front of this monitor and I don't feel a thing." "I cannot feel anything through those wires." "He has put us on the defensive and has been two steps ahead of us all along." "You know why?" "We're not taking control." "Maybe he told us where to look because he isn't there." "He's too arrogant for that kind of deception." "Avatar will tell us how to find him." "And then, after he escapes, it proves his superiority." "If we do what he wants, that may be his cue to kill this girl." "If we don't do something, it guarantees she dies." "OK, we'll take it one step at a time." "We'll narrow the search and brief San Francisco police." "No, the other way." "Turn the focus ring the other way." " He zoomed out instead of focusing." " I still can't programme my VCR." " Captain Bachman, can you see and hear us?" " Loud and clear." "We got the faxes." "And I gotta say I'm confused." "The first two bodies were found in a cemetery in San Jose." "What leads you to believe that this death room is located in San Francisco?" "That's where he's always been." "I believe we're dealing with Avatar here." "He targets couples." "He kills the male, kidnaps the girl, then enslaves her before the murder." "These are low-risk victims." " Most likely professionals." " Wait a minute." "Avatar?" " The maniac from the '80s?" " We have strong evidence..." "As a homicide detective when Avatar was active," "I know the fear he inspired in this city, this department, and, the truth be told, in me." "Not many people know this, but we had two suspects." "One worked in a hardware store, one construction." "Both were college dropouts, both highly intelligent and both are dead." "All this you've got here - the faxes, the computers, the Internet web room, this camera I'm speaking into - none of this can replace legwork." "With a bit of legwork, you would have found out what I already know." "If there's anything else I can help you gentlemen with, pick up a phone." "At the current rate, how long before the number of hits match the target number?" "It's been getting about 4,000 hits per hour." "That gives us maybe 21 hours." "4,000 people visit this site just because a girl might be killed." "There's a lot of repeat business." "Most of them just hope that she'll take off her clothes." "Yeah, but some of them know what's gonna happen." "They saw it on the previous site." "Their actions make them accessories to the crime." "Not to be even more downbeat, but the rate of web hits always increase the closer it gets to the anticipated event." "Damn it." "Peter." "What did I do?" "Just a little bit more and I'm done here." "Frank." "I've been in touch with CompuNetServe." "When we switch the feed from his side to ours, they've indicated a possibility of a lag lasting one to three seconds." " If he's looking at his monitor..." " He kills her." "We'll see Avatar's site but everyone else, including him, will be diverted to ours." "But we can ensure the hit counter never reaches its target." "At best it gives us about 18 hours before he decides something's wrong." " I'm ready." " It has to be a perfect match." "It has to appear perfect at 640 x 480." "Angela, move your right hand a hair to your left." "On the next update, we take over." "Do it." "Got it." "Now what?" "I wish I knew." "Angela, slide down a little and move to your left." "Thank God she moved." "I was beginning to lose feeling on the right side." " Uh, do you need any water or anything?" " Not right now." "There's usually a minute between updates." "I could give you a massage to get some of the circulation back." "Is this some kind of a sick come-on?" "I'm not enjoying myself." "I don't get tied up in real life." "Forget I even mentioned it." "Frank." "What's going on?" "Print it." "Got it." "The message hidden in the last webcast ciphers appear to be two URLs." "Two websites?" "Two more victims?" "It could represent an escalation." "Bring it up, Brian." "Not again." "I hate that chair." " The target number's gone down." " I'm not certain what that represents." "He killed the other girl before he reached target." "Bring up the other website." "350 million hits?" "That'll never happen." "If that's a live picture, we got a major break." "Modem all that information to the FBI." " What do you make of that number?" " It's too long to be a case file." " Special Agent Tully, please." "I'll hold." " Maybe it's a square root." "350... 047... 734." "Whoa." "Maybe it's a word." "Hellhouse." "Changed an O for a U." "We find that RV and we got him." " Bachman." " This is Frank Black." "I'm forwarding information to you from the FBI regarding the Internet killer." "You've finally given up the idea this is Avatar." "Regardless of his name, we believe he's located in a 20-square-mile area in and around San Francisco, adjacent to a body of water." "How did you come to determine that?" "This is Peter Watts." "We determined that from a picture." "The location of the sun on the horizon, the exact time of day, the angle of a shadow on a fixed object of standard height." "All these details are in the e-mail from the FBI." " I could talk to the commissioner." " No need to bother the commissioner." "If the FBI says that's where he is, that's where we'll find him." "I'll send down a couple of patrol cars right away." "He's covering his behind." "I'm going there." "I believe he's gonna send out those patrols." "It's not about him, it's about me." "I do better being there." " Frank Black." " That image is getting more specific." "The door is from a Casalette brand mobile home, manufactured between '69 and '74." "SFPD is canvassing every waterside trailer park and parking lot in the area." " Anything on the other website?" " No, it's still the chair so far." " Where are you heading?" " A few haunts where Avatar dropped bodies." "I don't know if it will get us anywhere." "Just being outside, I feel like my senses are finally working." "Leave your phone on." "I'll update you." "All right." "Mr Watts, I think you should see this." " Frank Black." " Frank, they found the RV." "It's at the Powell wrecking yard in Oakland." "6521 Alessandro." " Officers are there now." " I'm on my way." "San Francisco police." "Anyone home?" "This is Unit 4-19." "Shots fired." "Officer down." "Officer down at 6521 Alessandro." "Officer down." "Get out of there!" "Easy." "They got him, right?" "There's no way he could have got away." "There's Frank." "No, they didn't get him." "Don't move." "Oh." "You're safe now." "Nobody's gonna hurt you." "You all right?" "They found a badly burned body at the mobile home at the wrecking yard." "Identification's gonna be difficult, but police believe it was the Internet killer." "No, it's another victim." "Twice I've been close enough to stop him." "Twice I've failed, Pete." " You didn't fail." "You saved this girl." " He's still out there." " Is he gonna reappear?" " Not in this form." "Not in this medium." "But when he finds that next thing, that next weakness, that's when he'll be there again." "You can count on it."