9 Dragons

1

From across the aisle Harry Bosch looked into his partner’s cubicle and watched him conduct his daily ritual of straightening the corners on his stacks of files, clearing the paperwork from the center of his desk and finally placing his rinsed-out coffee cup in a desk drawer. Bosch checked his watch and saw it was only three-forty. It seemed that each day, Ignacio Ferras began the ritual a minute or two earlier than he had the day before. It was only Tuesday, the day after Labor Day weekend and the start of a short week, and already he was edging toward the early exit. This routine was always prompted by a phone call from home. There was a wife waiting there with a toddler and a brand-new set of twins. She watched the clock like the owner of a candy store watches the fat kids. She needed the break and she needed her husband home to deliver it. Even across the aisle from his partner, and with the four-foot sound walls separating work spaces in the new squad room, Bosch could usually hear both sides of the call. It always began with “When are you coming home?”

Everything in final order at his workstation, Ferras looked over at Bosch.

“Harry, I’m going to take off,” he said. “Beat some of the traffic. I have a lot of calls out but they have my cell. No need waiting around for that.”

Ferras rubbed his left shoulder as he spoke. This was also part of the routine. It was his unspoken way of reminding Bosch that he had taken a bullet a couple years before and had earned the early exit.

Bosch just nodded. The issue wasn’t really about whether his partner left the job early or what he had earned. It was about his commitment to the mission of homicide work and whether it would be there when they finally got the next call out. Ferras had gone through nine months of physical therapy and rehab before reporting back to the squad room. But in the year since, he had worked cases with a reluctance that was wearing thin for Bosch. He wasn’t committed and Bosch was tired of waiting for him.

He was also tired of waiting for a fresh kill. It had been four weeks since they’d drawn a case and they were well into the late summer heat. As certain as the Santa Ana winds blowing down out of the mountain passes, Bosch knew a fresh kill was coming.

Ferras stood up and locked his desk. He was taking his jacket off the back of the chair when Bosch saw Larry Gandle step out of his office on the far side of the squad room and head toward them. As the senior man in the partnership, Bosch had been given the first choice of cubicles a month earlier when Robbery-Homicide Division started to move over from the decrepit Parker Center to the new Police Administration Building. Most detective 3s took the cubicles facing the windows that looked out on City Hall. Bosch had chosen the opposite. He had given his partner the view and took the cube that let him watch what was happening in the squad room. Now he saw the approaching lieutenant and he instinctively knew that his partner wasn’t going home early.

Gandle was holding a piece of paper torn from a notepad and had an extra hop in his step. That told Bosch the wait was over. The call out was here. The fresh kill. Bosch started to rise.

“Bosch and Ferras, you’re up,” Gandle said when he got to them. “Need you to take a case for South Bureau.”

Bosch saw his partner’s shoulders slump. He ignored it and reached out for the paper Gandle was holding. He looked at the address written on it. South Normandie. He’d been there before.

“It’s a liquor store,” Gandle said. “One man down behind the counter, patrol is holding a witness. That’s all I got. You two good to go?”

“We’re good,” Bosch said before his partner could complain.

But that didn’t work.

“Lieutenant, this is Homicide Special,” Ferras said, turning and pointing to the boar’s head mounted over the squad room door. “Why are we taking a rob job at a liquor store? You know it was a banger and the South guys could wrap it up-or at least put a name on the shooter-before midnight.”

Ferras had a point. Homicide Special was for the difficult and complex cases. It was an elite squad that went after the tough cases with the relentless skill of a boar rooting in the mud for a truffle. A liquor store holdup in gang territory hardly qualified.

Gandle, whose balding pate and dour expression made him a perfect administrator, spread his hands in a gesture offering a complete lack of sympathy.

“I told everybody in the staff meeting last week. We’ve got South’s back this week. They’ve got a skeleton crew on while everybody else is in homicide school until the fourteenth. They caught three cases over the weekend and one this morning. So there goes the skeleton crew. You guys are up and the rob job is yours. That’s it. Any other questions? Patrol is waiting down there with a witness.”

“We’re good, Boss,” Bosch said, ending the discussion.

“I’ll wait to hear from you, then.”

Gandle headed back to his office. Bosch pulled his coat off the back of his chair, put it on and then opened the middle drawer of his desk. He took the leather notebook out of his back pocket and replaced the pad of lined paper in it with a new one. A fresh kill always got a fresh pad. That was his routine. He looked at the detective shield embossed on the notebook flap and then returned it to his back pocket. The truth was, he didn’t care what kind of case it was. He just wanted a case. It was like anything else. You fall out of practice and you lose your edge. Bosch didn’t want that.

Ferras stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the clock on the wall over the bulletin boards.

“Shit,” Ferras said. “Every time.”

“What do you mean, ‘every time?’” Bosch said. “We haven’t caught a case in a month.”

“Yeah, well, I was getting used to that.”

“Well, if you don’t want to work murders, there’s always a nine-to-five table like auto theft.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Then, let’s go.”

Bosch stepped out of the cubicle into the aisle and headed toward the door. Ferras followed, pulling his phone out so he could call his wife and give her the bad news. On the way out of the squad room, both men reached up and patted the boar on its flat nose for good luck.

2

Bosch didn’t need to lecture Ferras on the way to South L.A. His driving in silence was his lecture. His young partner seemed to wither under the pressure of what was not said and finally opened up.

“This is driving me crazy,” he said.

“What is?” Bosch asked.

“The twins. There’s so much work, so much crying. It’s a domino effect. One wakes up and that starts the other one up. Then my oldest kid wakes up. Nobody’s getting any sleep and my wife is…”

“What?”

“I don’t know, going crazy. Calling me all the time, asking when I’m coming home. So I come home and then it’s my turn and I get the boys and I get no break. It’s work, kids, work, kids, work, kids every day.”

“What about a nanny?”

“We can’t afford a nanny. Not with the way things are, and we don’t even get overtime anymore.”

Bosch didn’t know what to say. His daughter, Madeline, was a month past her thirteenth birthday and almost ten thousand miles away from him. He had never been directly involved in raising her. He saw her four weeks a year-two in Hong Kong and two in L.A.-and that was it. What advice could he legitimately give a full-time dad with three kids, including twins?

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “You know I’ve got your back. I’ll do what I can when I can. But-”

“I know, Harry. I appreciate that. It’s just the first year with the twins, you know? It will be a lot easier when they get a little older.”

“Yeah, but what I’m trying to say here is that maybe it’s more than just the twins. Maybe it’s you, Ignacio.”

“Me? What are you saying?”

“I’m saying maybe it’s you. Maybe you came back too soon-you ever think about that?”

Ferras did a slow burn and didn’t respond.

“Hey, it happens sometimes,” Bosch said. “You take a bullet and you start thinking that lightning might strike twice.”

“Look, Harry, I don’t know what kind of bullshit that is, but I’m fine that way. I’m good. This is about sleep deprivation and being fucking exhausted all the time and not being able to catch up because my wife is riding my ass from the moment I get home, okay?”

“Whatever you say, partner.”

“That’s right, partner. Whatever I say. Believe me, I get it enough from her. I don’t need it from you, too.”

Bosch nodded and that was enough said. He knew when to quit.

The address Gandle had given them was in the Seventieth block of South Normandie Avenue. This was just a few blocks from the infamous corner of Florence and Normandie, where some of the most horrible images of the 1992 riots had been captured by news helicopters and broadcast around the world. It seemed to be the lasting image of Los Angeles to many.

But Bosch quickly realized he knew the area and the liquor store that was their destination from a different riot and for a different reason.

Fortune Liquors was already cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape. A small number of onlookers were gathered but murder in this neighborhood was not that much of a curiosity. The people here had seen it before-many times. Bosch pulled their sedan into the middle of a grouping of three patrol cars and parked. After going to the trunk to retrieve his briefcase, he locked the car up and headed toward the tape.

Bosch and Ferras gave their names and serial numbers to a patrol officer with the crime scene attendance log and then ducked under the tape. As they approached the front door of the store, Bosch put his hand into his right jacket pocket and pulled out a book of matches. It was old and worn. The front cover said fortune liquors and it carried the address of the small yellow building before them. He thumbed the book open. There was only one match missing, and on the inside cover was the fortune that came with every matchbook:

Bosch had carried the matchbook with him for more than ten years. Not so much for the fortune, though he did believe in what it said. It was because of the missing match and what it reminded him of.

“Harry, what’s up?” Ferras asked.

Bosch realized he had paused in his approach to the store.

“Nothing, I’ve just been here before.”

“When? On a case?”

“Sort of. But it was a long time ago. Let’s go in.”

Bosch walked past his partner and entered the open front door of the liquor store.

Several patrol officers and a sergeant were standing inside. The store was long and narrow. It was a shotgun design and essentially three aisles wide. Bosch could see down the center aisle to a rear hallway and an open back door leading to a parking area behind the store. The cold-beverage cases ran along the wall on the left aisle and then across the back of the store. The liquor was on the right aisle, while the middle aisle was reserved for wine with red on the right and white on the left.

Bosch saw two more patrol officers in the rear hallway and he guessed they were holding the witness in what was probably a rear storage room or office. He put his briefcase down on the floor by the door. From the pocket of his suit coat he pulled two pairs of latex gloves. He gave a set to Ferras and they put them on.

The sergeant noticed the arrival of the two detectives and broke away from his men.

“Ray Lucas,” he said by way of greeting. “We have one vic down behind the counter here. His name is John Li, spelled L-I. Happened, we think, less than two hours ago. Looks like a robbery where the guy just didn’t want to leave a witness. A lot of us down here in the Seventy-seventh knew Mr. Li. He was a good old guy.”

Lucas signaled Bosch and Ferras over to the counter. Bosch held his coat so it wouldn’t touch anything when he went around and squeezed into the small space behind the counter. He squatted down like a baseball catcher to look more closely at the dead man on the floor. Ferras leaned in over him like an umpire.

The victim was Asian and looked to be almost seventy. He was on his back, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. His lips were pulled back from clenched teeth, almost in a sneer. There was blood on his lips, cheek and chin. It had been coughed up as he died. The front of his shirt was soaked with his blood and Bosch could see at least three bullet entry points in his chest. His right leg was bent at the knee and folded awkwardly under his other leg. He had obviously collapsed on the spot where he had been standing when he was shot.

“No casings that we can see,” Lucas said. “The shooter cleaned those up and then he was smart enough to pull the disc out of the recorder in the back.”

Bosch nodded. The patrol guys always wanted to be helpful but it was information Bosch didn’t need yet and could be misleading.

“Unless it was a revolver,” he said. “Then there would have been no casings to clean up.”

“Maybe,” Lucas said. “But you don’t usually see too many revolvers down here anymore. Nobody wants to be caught in a drive-by with just six bullets in their gun.”

Lucas wanted Bosch to know that he knew the lay of the land down here. Bosch was just a visitor.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Harry said.

Bosch focused on the body and studied the scene silently. He was pretty sure the victim was the same man he had encountered in the store so many years before. He was even in the same spot, on the floor behind the counter. And Bosch could see a soft pack of cigarettes in the shirt pocket.

He noticed that the victim’s right hand had blood smeared on it. He didn’t find this unusual. From earliest childhood people touch their hand to an injury to try to protect it and make it better. It is natural instinct. This victim had done the same here, most likely grabbing at his chest after the first shot hit him.

There was about a four-inch spatial separation between the bullet wounds, which formed the points of a triangle. Bosch knew that three quick shots from close range would usually have made a tighter -cluster. This led him to believe that the victim had likely been shot once and then fell to the floor. The killer had then probably leaned over the counter and shot him two more times, creating the spread.

The slugs tore through the victim’s chest, causing massive damage to the heart and lungs. The blood expectorated through the mouth showed that death was not immediate. The victim had tried to breathe. After all his years working cases Bosch was sure of one thing. There was no easy way to die.

“No headshot,” Bosch said.

“Right,” Ferras said. “What’s it mean?”

Bosch realized he had been musing out loud.

“Maybe nothing. Just seems like three in the chest, the shooter wanted no doubt. But then no headshot to be sure.”

“Like a contradiction.”

“Maybe.”

Bosch took his eyes off the body for the first time and looked around from his low angle. His eyes immediately held on a gun that was in a holster attached to the underside of the counter. It was located for easy access in case of a robbery or worse, but it had not even been pulled from its holster.

“We’ve got a gun under here,” Bosch said. “Looks like a forty-five in a holster, but the old man never got the chance to pull it.”

“The shooter came in quick and shot the old guy before he could reach for his piece,” Ferras said. “Maybe it was known in the neighborhood that the old man had the gun under the counter.”

Lucas made a noise with his mouth, as if he was disagreeing.

“What is it, Sergeant?” Bosch asked.

“The gun’s gotta be new,” Lucas said. “The guy’s been robbed at least six times in the last five years since I’ve been here. As far as I know, he never pulled a gun. This is the first I knew about a gun.”

Bosch nodded. It was a valid observation. He turned his head to speak over his shoulder to the sergeant.

“Tell me about the witness,” he said.

“Uh, she’s not really a witness,” Lucas said. “It’s Mrs. Li, the wife. She came in and found her husband when she was bringing him in his dinner. We’ve got her in the back room but you’ll need a translator. We called the ACU, asked for Chinese to go.”

Bosch took another look at the dead man’s face, then stood up and both his knees cracked loudly. Lucas had referred to what was once known as the Asian Crimes Unit. It had recently been changed to the Asian Gang Unit to accommodate concerns that the unit name besmirched the city’s Asian population by suggesting all Asians were involved in crime. But the old dogs like Lucas still called it the ACU. Regardless of name or acronym, the decision to call in an additional investigator of any stripe should have been left to Bosch as lead investigator.

“You speak Chinese, Sarge?”

“No, that’s why I called ACU.”

“Then, how did you know to ask for Chinese and not Korean or maybe even Vietnamese?”

“I’ve been on the job twenty-six years, Detective. And-”

“And you know Chinese when you see it.”

“No, what I’m saying is I have a hard time making it through a shift these days without a little jolt, you know? So once a day I stop by here to pick up one of those energy drinks. Five-hour boost it gives you. Anyway, I got to know Mr. Li a little bit from coming in. He told me he and his wife came from China and that’s how I knew.”

Bosch nodded and was embarrassed at his effort to embarrass Lucas.

“I guess I’ll have to try one of those boosts,” he said. “Did Mrs. Li call nine-one-one”

“No, like I said, she doesn’t have much English. From what I got from dispatch, Mrs. Li called her son and he’s the one who called nine-one-one.?”

Bosch stepped out and around the counter. Ferras lingered behind it, squatting to get the same view of the body and the gun that Bosch had just had.

“Where is the son?” Bosch asked.

“He’s coming but he works up in the Valley,” Lucas said. “Should be here anytime now.”

Bosch pointed to the counter.

“When he gets here, you and your people keep him away from this.”

“Got it.”

“And we’re going to have to try to keep this place as clear as possible now.”

Lucas got the message and took his officers out of the store. Finished behind the counter, Ferras joined Bosch near the front door, where he was looking up at the camera mounted on the ceiling at the center of the store.

“Why don’t you check out the back?” Bosch said. “See if the guy really pulled the disc, and look in on our witness.”

“Got it.”

“Oh, and find the thermostat and cool it down in here. It’s too warm. I don’t want that body to turn.”

Ferras headed down the center aisle. Bosch looked back to take in the scene as a whole. The counter was about twelve feet long. The cash register was set up at center with an open space for customers to put down their purchases. On one side of this were racks of gum and candy. On the other side of the register were other point-of-purchase products like energy drinks, a plastic case containing cheap cigars and a lotto display case. Overhead was a wire-mesh storage box for cigarette cartons.

Behind the counter were shelves where high-end liquors were stored, and which had to be asked for by customers. Bosch saw six rows of Hennessy. He knew the expensive cognac was favored by high-rolling gang members. He was pretty sure the location of Fortune Liquors would put it in the territory of the Hoover Street Criminals, a street gang that once was a Crips set but then became so powerful its leaders chose to forge their own name and reputation.

Bosch noticed two things and stepped closer to the counter.

The cash register had been turned askew on the counter, revealing a square of grit and dust on the Formica where it had been located. Bosch reasoned that the killer had pulled it toward him while he took the money from the drawer. This was a significant assumption because it meant that Mr. Li had not opened the drawer and given the robber the money. This likely meant he had already been shot. Ferras’s theory that the killer had come in shooting could be correct. And this could be significant in an eventual prosecution in proving intent to kill. More important, it gave Bosch a better idea of what had happened in the store and what kind of person they were looking for.

Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out the glasses he wore for close work. He put them on and without touching anything leaned over the counter to study the cash register’s keyboard. He saw no button that said open or any other obvious indication of how to open the cash drawer. Bosch was unsure how to open the register. He wondered how the killer knew.

He straightened back up and looked at the shelves of bottles on the wall behind the counter. The Hennessy was front and center, with easy access for Mr. Li when members of Hoover Street came in. But the rows were flush. No bottle was missing.

Again Bosch leaned forward across the counter. This time he tried to reach across to one of the bottles of Hennessy. He realized that if he put his hand down on the counter for balance he would be able to reach the row and take one of the bottles easily.

“Harry?”

Bosch straightened back up and turned to his partner.

“The sergeant was right,” Ferras said. “The camera system records to disc. There’s no disc in the machine. It was either pulled or he wasn’t recording to disc and the camera was just for show.”

“Are there any backup discs?”

“There’s a couple back there on the counter but it’s a one-disc system. It just records over and over on the same disc. I worked Robbery way back when and we saw a lot of these. They last about a day and then it records over it. You pull the disc if you want to check something but you have to do it in the same day.”

“Okay, make sure we get those extra discs.”

Lucas came back in through the front door.

“ACU is here,” he said. “Should I send him in?”

Bosch looked at Lucas for a long moment before answering.

“It’s AGU,” he finally said. “But don’t send him in. I’ll be right out.”

3

Bosch stepped out of the store into the sunlight. It was still warm though getting late in the day. The dry Santa Ana winds were passing through the city. Fires in the hills had put a pallor of smoke in the air. Bosch could feel the sweat drying on the back of his neck.

He was almost immediately met outside the door by a plainclothes detective.

“Detective Bosch?”

“That’s me.”

“Detective David Chu, AGU. Patrol called me down. How can I be of help?”

Chu was short and slightly built. There was no trace of an accent in his voice. Bosch signaled him to follow as he ducked back under the tape and headed to his car. He took off his suit jacket as he went. He took the matchbook out and put it in his pants pocket, then folded the jacket inside out and put it in a clean cardboard box he kept in the trunk of his work car.

“Hot in there,” he told Chu.

Bosch opened the middle button of his shirt and stuck his tie inside. He now planned to get fully involved in the crime scene investigation and didn’t want it to get in the way.

“Hot out here, too,” Chu said. “The patrol sergeant told me to wait until you came out.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Okay, what we’ve got is, the old man who has run this store for a number of years is dead behind the counter. Shot at least three times in what looks like a robbery. His wife, who does not speak English, came into the store and found him. She called their son, who then called it in. We obviously need to interview her and that’s where you come in. We may also need help with the son when he gets here. That’s about all I know at the moment.”

“And we’re sure they’re Chinese?”

“Pretty sure. The patrol sergeant who made the call knew the victim, Mr. Li.”

“Do you know which dialect Mrs. Li speaks?”

They headed back to the tape.

“Nope. Is that going to be a problem?”

“I am familiar with the five main Chinese dialects and proficient in Cantonese and Mandarin. These are the two we most often encounter here in L.A.”

This time Bosch held the tape up for Chu so he could go back under.

“Which are you?”

“I was born here, Detective. But my family is from Hong Kong and I was raised speaking Mandarin at home.”

“Yeah? I have a kid who lives in Hong Kong with her mother. She’s getting good at Mandarin.”

“Good for her. I hope it will be useful to her.”

They entered the store and Bosch gave Chu a quick view of the body behind the counter and then walked him to the rear of the store. They were met by Ferras and then Chu was used to make introductions to Mrs. Li.

The newly widowed woman appeared to be in shock. Bosch saw no indication that she had shed a single tear for her husband so far. She seemed to be in a dissociated state that Bosch had seen before. Her husband was lying dead in the front of the store. She was surrounded by strangers who spoke a different language. Bosch guessed she was waiting for her son to arrive, and then the tears would fall.

Chu was gentle with her and conversational at first. Bosch believed that they were speaking Mandarin. His daughter had told him that Mandarin was more singsong and less guttural than Cantonese and some of the other dialects.

After a few minutes Chu broke away to report to Bosch and Ferras.

“Her husband was alone in the store while she went home to prepare their supper. When she came back she thought the store was empty. Then she found him behind the counter. She saw no one in the store when she came in. She parked in the back and used a key to open the back door.”

Bosch nodded.

“How long was she gone? Ask her what time it was when she left the store.”

Chu did as instructed and turned back to Bosch with the answer.

“She leaves at two-thirty every day to pick up the supper. Then she comes back.”

“Are there other employees?”

“No, I asked that already. Just her husband and Mrs. Li. They work every day eleven to ten. Closed Sundays.”

A typical immigrant story, Bosch thought. They just weren’t counting on the bullets coming at the end of it.

Bosch heard voices coming from the front of the store and ducked his head into the rear hallway. The forensics team from SID had arrived and were going to work.

He turned back into the storage room, where the interview with Mrs. Li was continuing.

“Chu,” Bosch interrupted.

The AGU detective looked up at him.

“Ask about the son. Was he at home when she called?”

“I already asked. There is another store. It’s in the Valley. He was working there. The family lives together in the middle. In the Wilshire District.”

It seemed clear to Bosch that Chu knew what he was doing. He didn’t need Bosch to prompt him with questions.

“Okay, we’re going back up front. You deal with her and after her son arrives it might be better to take everybody downtown. You okay with that?”

“I’m fine with it,” Chu said.

“Good. Tell me if you need anything.”

Bosch and Ferras went down the hall and to the front of the store. Bosch already knew everybody on the forensics team. A team from the medical examiner’s office had also arrived to document the death scene and collect the body.

Bosch and Ferras decided to split up at that point. Bosch would stay on scene. As lead detective he would monitor the collection of forensic evidence and the removal of the body. Ferras would leave the store and go knock on doors. The liquor store was located in a commercial area of small businesses. He would go door-to-door in an effort to find someone who had heard or seen something related to the killing. Both investigators knew this would likely be a fruitless effort but it was one that needed to be made. A description of a car or a suspicious person could be the piece of the puzzle that would eventually break the case. It was basic homicide work.

“All right if I take one of the patrol guys?” Ferras asked. “They know the neighborhood.”

“Sure.”

Bosch thought that knowing the lay of the land was not Ferras’s true reason for taking a patrol officer with him. His partner thought he needed backup to knock on doors and visit stores in the neighborhood.

Two minutes after Ferras left, Bosch heard loud voices and a commotion coming from outside at the front of the store. He stepped out and saw two of Lucas’s patrol officers trying to physically detain a man at the yellow tape. The struggling man was Asian and in his midtwenties. He wore a tight-fitting T-shirt that displayed his lean build. Bosch quickly stepped toward the problem.

“Okay, stop it right there,” he said forcefully so no one would doubt who was in charge of the situation.

“Let him go,” he added.

“I want to see my father,” the young man said.

“Well, that’s not the way to go about doing it.”

Bosch stepped closer and nodded to the two patrolmen.

“I’ll take care of Mr. Li now.”

They left Bosch and the victim’s son alone.

“What is your full name, Mr. Li?”

“Robert Li. I want to see my father.”

“I understand that. I’m going to let you see your father if you really want to. But you can’t until it’s clear. I’m the detective in charge of this whole thing and I can’t even see your father yet. So I need you to calm down. The only way you will get what you want is if you calm down.”

The young man looked down at the ground and nodded. Bosch reached out and touched him on the shoulder.

“Okay, good,” Bosch said.

“Where’s my mother?”

“She’s inside in the back room being interviewed by another detective.”

“Can I at least see her?”

“Yes, you can. I’ll walk you around back in a minute. I just need to ask you a few questions first. Is that okay?”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

“First of all, my name is Harry Bosch. I’m the lead detective on this investigation. I’m going to find whoever killed your father. I promise you that.”

“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep. You didn’t even know him. You don’t care. He’s just another-never mind.”

“Another what?”

“I said, never mind.”

Bosch stared at him for a moment before responding.

“How old are you, Robert?”

“I’m twenty-six and I would like to see my mother now.”

He made a move to turn and head toward the back of the store but Bosch grabbed him on the arm. The younger man was strong but Bosch had a strength in his grip that was surprising. The young man stopped and looked down at the hand on his arm.

“Let me show you something and then I’ll take you to your mother.”

He let go of Li’s arm and then pulled the matchbook from his pocket. He handed it over. Li looked at it with no surprise.

“What about it? We used to give these away until the economy went bad and we couldn’t afford the extras.”

Bosch took the matchbook back and nodded.

“I got it in your father’s store twelve years ago,” he said. “I guess you were about fourteen years old then. We almost had a riot in this city. Happened right here. This intersection.”

“I remember. They looted the store and beat up my father. He should have never reopened here. My mother and me, we told him to open the store up in the Valley but he wouldn’t listen to us. He wasn’t going to let anybody drive him out and now look what happened.”

He gestured helplessly toward the front of the store.

“Yeah, well, I was here that night, too,” Bosch said. “Twelve years ago. A riot started but it ended pretty quick. Right here. One casualty.”

“A cop. I know. They pulled him right out of his car.”

“I was in that car with him but they didn’t get to me. And when I got to this spot I was safe. I needed a smoke and I went into your father’s store. He was there behind the counter but the looters had taken every last pack of cigarettes in the place.”

Bosch held up the book of matches.

“I found plenty of matches but no cigarettes. And then your father reached into his pocket and pulled out his own. He had one last smoke left and he gave it to me.”

Bosch nodded. That was the story. That was it.

“I didn’t know your father, Robert. But I’m going to find the person who killed him. That’s a promise I’ll keep.”

Robert Li nodded and looked down at the ground.

“Okay,” Bosch said. “Let’s go see your mother now.”

4

The detectives didn’t clear the crime scene and get back to the squad room until almost midnight. By then Bosch had decided not to bring the victim’s family to PAB for formal interviews. After appointments were made for them to come in Wednesday morning, he let them go home to grieve. Shortly after getting back to the squad Bosch also sent Ferras home so he could attempt to repair damages with his own family. Harry stayed behind alone to organize the evidence inventory and to contemplate things about the case for the first time without interruption. He knew that Wednesday was shaping up as a busy day, with appointments with the family in the morning and results of some of the forensic and lab work coming in, as well as the possible scheduling of the autopsy.

While the canvass of the nearby businesses by Ferras had proved fruitless as expected, the evening’s work had produced one possible suspect. On Saturday afternoon, three days before his murder, Mr. Li had confronted a young man he believed had been routinely shoplifting from the store. According to Mrs. Li and as translated by Detective Chu, the teenager had angrily denied ever stealing anything and drew the race card, claiming Mr. Li had only accused him because he was black. This seemed laughable, since ninety-nine percent of the store’s business came from neighborhood residents who were black. But Li did not call the police. He simply banished the teenager from the store, telling him never to return. Mrs. Li told Chu that the teen’s parting shot at the door was to tell her husband that the next time he came back it would be to blow the shopkeeper’s head off. Li in turn had pulled his weapon from beneath the counter and pointed it at the youth, assuring him that he would be ready for his return.

This meant the teenager was aware of the weapon Li had beneath the counter. If he were to make good on his threat, he would have to enter the store and act swiftly, shooting Li before he could get to his gun.

Mrs. Li would look through gang books in the morning in an effort to find a photo of the threatening youth. If he was associated with the Hoover Street Criminals, then chances were they had his photo in the books.

But Bosch wasn’t fully convinced it was a viable lead or that the kid was a valid suspect. There were things about the crime scene that didn’t add up to a revenge killing. There was no doubt that they had to run the lead down and talk to the kid but Bosch wasn’t expecting to close the case with him. That would be too easy and there were things about the case that defied easy.

Off the captain’s office, there was a meeting room with a long wooden table. This was primarily used as a lunchroom and occasionally for staff meetings or for private discussions of investigations involving multiple detective teams. With the squad empty, Bosch had commandeered the room and had spread several crime scene photographs, fresh from forensics, across the table.

He had laid the photos out in a disjointed mosaic of overlapping images that in a whole created the entire crime scene. It was much like the photo work of the English artist David Hockney, who had lived in Los Angeles for a while and had created several photo collages as art pieces that documented scenes in Southern California. Bosch became familiar with the photo mosaics and the artist because Hockney had been his neighbor for a time in the hills above the Cahuenga Pass. Though Bosch had never met Hockney, he drew a connection to the artist because it had always been Harry’s habit to spread crime scene photos out in a mosaic that allowed him to look for new details and angles. Hockney did the same with his work.

Looking at the photos now while sipping from a mug of black coffee he had brewed, Bosch was first drawn to the same things that had hooked him while he had been at the scene. Front and center were the bottles of Hennessy standing untouched in a row just across the counter. Harry had a hard time believing that the killing could be gang related because he doubted that a gangbanger would take the money and not a single bottle of Hennessy. The cognac would be a trophy. It was right there within reach, especially if the shooter had to lean over or go around the counter to grab bullet casings. Why not take the Hennessy, too?

Bosch’s conclusion was that they were looking for a shooter who didn’t care about Hennessy. A shooter who was not a gangbanger.

The next point of interest was the victim’s wounds. For Bosch, these alone excluded the mystery shoplifter as a suspect. Three bullets in the chest left no doubt that the intention was to kill. But there was no face shot and that seemed to put the lie to this being a killing motivated by anger or revenge. Bosch had investigated hundreds of murders, most of them involving the use of firearms, and he knew that when he had a face shot, the killing was most likely personal and the killer was someone known to the victim. Therefore, the opposite could be held true. Three in the chest was not personal. It was business. Bosch was sure that the unknown shoplifter was not their killer. Instead, they were looking for someone who was possibly a complete stranger to John Li. Someone who had coolly walked in and put three slugs into Li’s chest, then calmly emptied the cash register, picked up his brass and gone to the back room to grab the disc out of the camera-recorder.

Bosch knew it was likely that this was not a first-time crime. In the morning he would need to check for similar crimes in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

Looking at the image of the victim’s face, Bosch suddenly noticed something new. The blood on Li’s cheek and chin was smeared. Also, the teeth were clean. There was no blood on them.

Bosch held the photo up closer and tried to make sense of it. He had assumed the blood on Li’s face was expectorant. Blood that had come up from his destroyed lungs in his last fitful gasps for air. But how could that happen without getting blood on his teeth?

He put the photo down and moved across the mosaic to the victim’s right hand. It had dropped down at his side. There was blood on the fingers and thumb, a drip line to the palm of his hand.

Bosch looked back at the blood smeared on the face. He suddenly realized that Li had touched his bloody hand to his mouth. This meant a double transfer had taken place. Li had touched his hand to his chest, getting blood on it, and had then transferred blood from his hand to his mouth.

The question was why. Were these movements part of the final death throes, or had Li done something else?

Bosch pulled his cell and called the investigators’ line at the medical examiner’s office. He had it on speed dial. He checked his watch as the phone rang. It was ten past midnight.

“Coroner’s.”

“Is Cassel still there?”

Max Cassel was the investigator who had worked the scene at Fortune Liquors and collected the body.

“No, he just-wait a minute, there he is.”

The call was put on hold and then Cassel picked up.

“I don’t care who you are, I’m out the door. I just came back in because I forgot my coffee warmer.”

Bosch knew Cassel lived at least an hour’s commute out in Palmdale. Coffee mugs with warmers you plugged into the cigarette lighter were a must for downtown workers with long drive times.

“It’s Bosch. You put my guy in a drawer already?”

“Nope, all the drawers are taken. He’s in icebox three. But I’m done with him and going home, Bosch.”

“I understand. I just have one quick question. Did you check his mouth?”

“What do you mean, check his mouth? Of course I checked his mouth. That’s my job.”

“And there was nothing there? Nothing in the mouth or throat?”

“No, there was something there all right.”

Bosch felt the adrenaline start to kick in.

“Why didn’t you tell me? What was it?”

“His tongue.”

The adrenaline dried up and Bosch felt deflated as Cassel chuckled. Harry thought he had been on to something.

“Very funny. What about blood?”

“Yes, there was a small amount of blood on the tongue and in the throat. It’s noted in my report, which you will get tomorrow.”

“But three shots. His lungs must’ve looked like Swiss cheese. Wouldn’t there be a lot of blood”

“Not if he was already dead. Not if the first shot blew up the heart and it stopped beating. Look, I gotta go, Bosch. You’re on the sked tomorrow at two with Laksmi. Ask her these questions.”

“I will. But I’m talking to you now. I think we missed something.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bosch stared at the photos in front of him, his eyes moving from the hand to the face.

“I think he put something in his mouth.”

“Who did?”

“The victim. Mr. Li.”

There was a pause while Cassel considered this and probably also considered whether he had missed anything.

“Well, if he did, I did not see it in the mouth or throat. If it was something he swallowed, then that is not my jurisdiction. It’s -Laksmi’s and she’ll find it-whatever it is-tomorrow.”

“Would you make a note so she’ll see it?”

“Bosch, I’m trying to get out of here. You can tell her when you come for the cut.”

“I know, but just in case, make a note.”

“Fine, whatever, I’ll make a note. You know nobody’s gettin’ overtime around here anymore, Bosch.”

“Yeah, I know. Same over here. Thanks, Max.”

Bosch closed the phone and decided to put the photos aside for the time being. The autopsy would determine if his conclusion was correct, and there was nothing he could do about it until then.

There were two plastic evidence envelopes that contained the two discs that had been found next to the recorder. Each was in a flat plastic case. Each case was marked with a date scribbled with a Sharpie. One was marked 9/01, exactly a week earlier, and the other was dated 8/27. Bosch took the discs over to the AV equipment at the far end of the meeting room and put the 8/27 disc into the DVD player first.

The images were contained on a split screen. One camera angle showed the front of the store, including the cash register counter, and the other was on the rear of the store. A time and date stamp ran across the top. The activities in the store ran in real time. Bosch realized that, since the store was open from 11 A.M. to 10 P.M., he had twenty-two hours of video to watch unless he used the fast-forward button.

He checked his watch again. He knew he could work through the night and try to solve the mystery of why John Li had put these two discs aside or he could go home now and get some rest. You never knew where a case would take you and rest was always important. Added to that, there was nothing about these discs that suggested they had anything to do with the murder. The disc that had been in the machine had been taken. That was the important one and it was gone.

What the hell, Bosch thought. He decided to watch the first disc and see if he could solve the mystery. He pulled a chair over from the table, set himself up in front of the television and moved the playback speed to four times real time. He figured it would take him less than three hours to knock off the first disc. He would then go home, get a few hours sleep and be back at the same time as everybody else in the morning.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said to himself.

5

Bosch was roughly dragged out of sleep and opened his eyes to see Lieutenant Gandle staring down at him. It took Harry a moment to clear his head and understand where he was.

“Lieutenant?”

“What are you doing in my office, Bosch?”

Bosch sat up on the couch.

“I… I was watching video in the boardroom and it got so late it wasn’t worth going home. What time is it now?”

“Almost seven but that still doesn’t explain why you’re in my office. When I left yesterday, I locked my door.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Bosch nodded and acted like he was still clearing his head. He was happy he’d put his picks back in his wallet after he’d opened the door. Gandle had the only couch in RHD.

“Maybe the office cleaners came by and forgot to lock it,” he offered.

“No, they don’t have a key. Look, Harry, I don’t mind people using the couch to sleep. But if the door is locked, it’s for a reason. I can’t have people opening my door after I’ve locked it.”

“You’re right, Lieutenant. You think maybe we can get a couch out in the squad?”

“I’ll work on it but that’s not the point.”

Bosch stood up.

“I get the point. I’m going back to work now.”

“Not so fast. Tell me about this video that kept you here all night.”

Bosch briefly explained what he had seen when he spent five hours viewing the two discs through the middle of the night and how John Li had unintentionally left behind what looked like a solid lead.

“You want me to set it up for you in the conference room”

“Why don’t you wait till your partner’s here. We can all look at it together. Go get some coffee first.”

Bosch left Gandle and walked through the squad room. It was an impersonal maze of cubicles and sound barriers. It whispered like an insurance office and the truth was, it was so quiet that at times Bosch had trouble concentrating. It was still deserted but would now start to fill up quickly. Gandle was always the first man in. He liked to set the precedent for the squad.

Harry went down to the cafeteria, which had opened at seven but was empty because the bulk of the police department’s personnel were still working out of Parker Center. The move to the new Police Administration Building was progressing slowly. First some detective squads, then administrators and then the rest. It was a soft opening and the building would not be formally dedicated for another two months. For now it meant there were no lines in the cafeteria but there wasn’t a full menu either. Bosch got the cop’s breakfast: two doughnuts and a coffee. He also picked up a coffee for Ferras. He ate the doughnuts quickly while putting cream and sugar in his partner’s cup and then took the elevator back up. As expected, when he got back to the squad his partner was at his desk. Bosch put one of the coffees down in front of him and walked over to his own cubicle.

“Thanks, Harry,” Ferras said. “I should have known you’d be here before-hey, you wore that suit yesterday. Don’t tell me you’ve been working all night.”

Bosch sat down.

“I got a couple hours on the lieutenant’s couch. What time are Mrs. Li and her son coming in today?”

“I told them ten. Why?”

“I think I’ve got something we need to pursue. I watched the extra discs from the store’s cameras last night.”

“What did you find?”

“Grab your coffee and I’ll show you. The lieutenant wants to see it, too.”

Ten minutes later Bosch was standing with the remote control in front of the AV equipment while Ferras and Gandle sat at the end of the boardroom table. He cued the disc marked 9/01 to the right spot and then froze the playback until he was ready.

“Okay, our shooter took the disc out of the recorder, so we have no video of what happened in the store yesterday. But what was left behind were two extra discs marked August twenty-seven and September one. This is the disc from September one, which happens to be one week prior to yesterday. You follow?”

“Follow,” Gandle said.

“So what Mr. Li was doing was documenting a tag team of shoplifters. The commonality between these two discs is that on both days these same two guys come in and one goes to the counter and asks for cigarettes while the other goes down the liquor aisle. The first guy draws Li’s attention away from his partner and the camera screen he had behind the counter. While Li’s getting smokes for the guy at the counter the other guy slides a couple flasks of vodka into his pants, then takes a third to the counter for purchase. The guy at the counter pulls his wallet, sees he left his money at home or whatever and they leave without making a purchase. It happens on both these days with them alternating their roles. I think that is why Li kept the discs out.”

“You think he was trying to make a case or something?” Ferras asked.

“Maybe,” Bosch said. “If he got them on film he’d have something to give the police.”

“This is your lead?” Gandle said. “You worked through the night for this? I was reading the reports. I think I like the kid Li pulled the gun on better than this.”

“This is not the lead,” Bosch said impatiently. “I’m only telling you the reason for the discs. Li pulled the discs out of the camera because he must have known those two guys were up to something and he wanted to preserve the record of it. Inadvertently, he also preserved this on the September first tape.”

Bosch hit the playback and the image started to move. On the split screen both camera angles showed the store was empty except for Li behind the counter. The time stamp at the top showed that it was 3:03 P.M. on Tuesday, September 1.

The front door of the store opened and a customer entered. He waved casually to Li at the counter and proceeded to the rear of the store. The image was grainy but it was clear enough for the three viewers to tell the customer was an Asian man in his early thirties. He was picked up on the second camera as he went to one of the cold cases at the rear of the store and selected a single can of beer. He took it forward to the counter.

“What’s he doing?” Gandle asked.

“Just watch,” Bosch said.

At the counter the customer said something to Li and the store owner reached up to the overhead storage rack and pulled down a carton of Camel cigarettes. He put them on the counter and then put the can of beer into a small brown bag.

The customer had an imposing build. Though short and squat, he had thick arms and heavy shoulders. He dropped a single bill on the counter and Li took it and opened the cash register. He put the bill in the last slot of the drawer and then counted several bills out as change and handed the money across the counter. The customer took his money and pocketed it. He put the carton of cigarettes under one arm, grabbed the beer and with his remaining free hand pointed a finger like a gun at Li. He pumped his thumb as if shooting the gun and then left the store.

Bosch stopped the playback.

“What was that?” Gandle asked. “Was that a threat with the finger? Is that what you’ve got?”

Ferras didn’t say anything but Bosch was pretty sure his young partner had seen what Harry wanted them to see. He backed the video up and started to replay it.

“What do you see, Ignacio?”

Ferras stepped forward so he could point to the screen.

“First of all, the guy’s Asian. So he’s not from the neighborhood.”

Bosch nodded.

“I watched twenty-two hours of video,” he said. “This was the only Asian who came into the store besides Li and his wife. What else, Ignacio?”

“Watch the money,” Ferras said. “He gets back more than he gives.”

On the screen Li was taking bills out of the cash register.

“Look, he puts the guy’s money in the drawer and then he starts giving him money back, including what the guy gave him in the first place. So he gets the beer and smokes for free and then all the money.”

Bosch nodded. Ferras was good.

“How much does he get?” Gandle asked.

It was a good question because the video image was too grainy to make out the denominations on the currency being exchanged.

“There are four slots in the drawer,” Bosch said. “So you’ve got ones, fives, tens and twenties. I slowed this down last night. He puts the customer’s bill in the fourth slot. A carton of smokes and a beer, we assume that is the slot for twenties. If that is the case, he gives him a one, a five, a ten and then eleven twenties. Ten twenties if you don’t count the one the customer put in first.”

“It’s a payoff,” Ferras said.

“Two hundred thirty-six dollars?” Gandle asked. “Seems like an odd payoff and you can see there’s still money in the drawer. So it was like a set amount.”

“Actually,” Ferras said, “two sixteen if you subtract the twenty the customer gives in the first place.”

“Right,” Bosch said.

The three of them stared at the frozen screen for a few moments without speaking.

“So, Harry,” Gandle finally said. “You got to sleep on this for a couple hours. What’s it mean?”

Bosch pointed to the time stamp on the top of the screen.

“This payoff was made exactly one week before the murder. Three o’clock on Tuesday a week ago. This Tuesday at about three Mr. Li gets shot. Maybe this week he decided not to pay.”

“Or he didn’t have the money to pay,” Ferras offered. “The son told us yesterday that business has been way down and opening the store in the Valley has nearly bankrupted them.”

“So the old man says no and gets popped,” Gandle said. “Isn’t that a bit extreme? You kill the guy and as they say in high finance, you’ve lost your funding stream.”

Ferras shrugged.

“There’s always the wife and the son,” he said. “They’d get the message.”

“They’re coming in at ten to sign statements,” Bosch added.

Gandle nodded.

“So how are you going to handle this?” he asked.

“We’ll put Mrs. Li with Chu, the guy from AGU, and Ignacio and I will talk to the son. We find out what it’s about.”

Gandle’s usually dour expression brightened. He was pleased with the progress of the case and the lead that had surfaced.

“Okay, gentlemen, I want to know,” he said.

“When we know,” Bosch said.

Gandle left the meeting room, and Bosch and Ferras were left standing in front of the screen.

“Nice going, Harry. You made him happy.”

“He’ll be happier if we clear this thing.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we have some work to do before the Li family gets here. You check with the lab and see what they’ve got done. See if they’re finished with the cash register. Bring it over here if you can.”

“What about you?”

Bosch turned the screen off and ejected the disc.

“I’m going to go have a talk with Detective Chu.”

“You think he held something back on us?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

6

The AGU was part of the Gang and Operations Support Division, from which many undercover investigations and officers were directed. As such the GOSD was located in an unmarked building several blocks away from the PAB. Bosch decided to walk because he knew it would take longer to get his car out of the garage, fight the traffic and then have to find another place to park. He got to the front door of the AGU office at eight-thirty, pressed the buzzer but nobody answered. He pulled his phone, ready to try to call Detective Chu, when a familiar voice came from behind him.

“Good morning, Detective Bosch. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Bosch turned. It was Chu, arriving with his briefcase.

“Nice hours you guys get to keep over here,” Bosch replied.

“Yeah, we like to keep it light.”

Bosch stepped back so Chu could open the door with a card key.

“Come on in.”

Chu led the way to a small squad room with about a dozen desks and a lieutenant’s office on the right. Chu went behind one of the desks and put his briefcase down on the floor.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. “I was already planning to come by RHD at ten when Mrs. Li comes in.”

Chu started to sit down but Bosch stayed standing.

“I got something I want to show you. Do you guys have an AV room here?”

“Yeah, this way.”

The AGU had four interview rooms at the back of the squad room. One had been converted to an AV room with the standard rolling tower of television stacked on top of DVD. But Bosch saw that the stack also had an image printer and that was something they didn’t have yet in the new RHD squad room.

Bosch handed Chu the DVD from Fortune Liquors and he set it up. Bosch took the remote and fast-forwarded the playback to 3 P.M. on the time stamp.

“I wanted you to take a look at this guy who comes in,” he said.

Chu watched silently as the Asian man entered the store, bought a beer and a carton of cigarettes and got the big return on his investment.

“Is that it” he asked after the customer left the store.

“That’s it.”

“Can we play it again”

“Sure.”

Bosch replayed the two-minute episode, then froze the playback as the customer turned from the counter to leave. He then played with it, making slight advances on the playback, until he froze it on the best possible view of the man’s face as he turned from the counter.

“Know him?” Bosch asked.

“No, of course not.”

“What did you see there?”

“Obviously, a payoff of some kind. He got much more back than he gave.”

“Yeah, two hundred sixteen on top of his own twenty. We counted it.”

Bosch saw Chu’s eyebrows rise.

“What’s it mean?” Bosch asked.

“Well, it probably means he’s triad,” Chu said matter-of-factly.

Bosch nodded. He had never investigated a triad murder before but he was aware that the so-called secret societies of China had long ago jumped the Pacific and now operated in most major American cities. Los Angeles, with its large Chinese population, was one of the strongholds, along with San Francisco, New York and Houston.

“What makes you say he’s a triad guy?”

“You said the payoff was two hundred sixteen dollars, correct?”

“That’s right. Li gave the guy his own money back. He also gave him ten twenties, a ten, a five and a one. What’s it mean?”

“The triad extortion business relies on weekly payments from small shop owners seeking protection. The payment is usually one hundred eight dollars. Of course, two sixteen is a multiple of that. A double payment.”

“Why one oh eight? They charge tax on top of the tax? They send the extra eight bucks to the state or something?”

Chu did not register the sarcasm in Bosch’s voice and answered as if lecturing a child.

“No, Detective, the number has nothing to do with that at all. Let me give you a brief history lesson that hopefully will give you some understanding.”

“By all means,” Bosch said.

“The creation of the triads goes back to the seventeenth century in China. There were one hundred thirteen monks in the Shaolin monastery. Buddhist monks. Manchu invaders attacked and killed all but five of the monks. Those remaining five monks created the secret societies with the goal of overthrowing the invaders. The triads were born. But over the centuries, they changed. They dropped politics and patriotism and became criminal organizations. Much like the Italian and Russian mafias, they engage in extortion and protection rackets. To honor the ghosts of the slaughtered monks, the extortion amounts are usually a multiple of one hundred eight.”

“There were five remaining monks, not three,” Bosch said. “Why are they called triads?”

“Because each monk started his own triad. Tian di hui. It means ‘heaven and earth society.’ Each group had a flag in the shape of a triangle symbolizing the relationship between heaven, earth and man. From that they became known as the triads.”

“Great, and they brought it over here.”

“It’s been here a very long time. But they didn’t bring it over. Americans brought it over. It came with Chinese labor brought to build railroads.”

“And they victimize their own people.”

“For the most part, yes. But Mr. Li was religious. Did you see the Buddhist shrine in the storage room yesterday?”

“I missed that.”

“It was there and I talked to his wife about it. Mr. Li was very spiritual. He believed in ghosts. To him, paying the triad might have been like making an offering to a ghost. To an ancestor. You see, you are an outsider looking in, Detective Bosch. If all you knew from day one was that part of your money went to the triad just as simply as money goes to the IRS, then you would not view yourself as a victim. It was simply a given, a part of life.”

“But the IRS doesn’t put three slugs in your chest when you don’t pay.”

“Do you believe that Li was murdered by this man or the triad?”

Pointing at the man on the screen, Chu was almost indignant in asking the question.

“I believe it is the best lead we have at the moment,” Bosch countered.

“What about the lead we developed through Mrs. Li? The gangbanger who threatened her husband on Saturday.”

Bosch shook his head.

“Things don’t match up there. I still want her to look at the books and ID the kid but I think we are spinning our wheels there.”

“I don’t understand. He said he would come back and kill Mr. Li.”

“No, he said he would come back and blow his head off. Mr. Li was shot in the chest. It wasn’t a crime of rage, Detective Chu. It doesn’t fit. But don’t worry, we’ll run it down, even if it’s a waste of time.”

He waited for Chu to respond but the younger detective didn’t. Bosch pointed to the time stamp on the screen.

“Li was killed at the same time on the same day of the week. We have to assume that Li made regular payoffs. We have to assume that this man was there when Li was killed. I think that makes him the better suspect.”

The interview room was very small and they had left the door open. Bosch now stepped over and closed it, then looked back at Chu.

“So tell me you didn’t have any idea about this yesterday.”

“No, of course not.”

“Mrs. Li didn’t say anything about making payments to the local triad”

Chu stiffened. He was much smaller than Bosch but his posture suggested he was ready for a fight.

“Bosch, what are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that this is your world and you should have told me. I found this by accident. Li kept that disc because there’s a shoplifter on it. Not because of the payoff.”

They were now facing each other less than two feet apart.

“Well, there was nothing before me yesterday that even suggested this,” Chu said. “I was called out there to translate. You didn’t ask me my opinion about anything else. You deliberately shut me out, Bosch. Maybe if you had included me, I would have seen or heard something.”

“That’s bullshit. You’re not trained as a detective to stand there with your thumb in your mouth. You don’t need an invite to ask a question.”

“With you I thought I did.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I watched you, Bosch. How you treated Mrs. Li, her son…me.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“What was it, Vietnam? You served in Vietnam, right?”

“Don’t pretend you know anything about me, Chu.”

“I know what I see and I’ve seen it before. I’m not from Vietnam, Detective. I’m an American. Born right here, like you.”

“Look, can we just drop this so we can get on with the case”

“Whatever you say. You’re the lead.”

Chu put his hands on his hips and turned back to the screen. Bosch tried to back his emotions down. He had to admit Chu had a point. And he was embarrassed that he had been so easily pegged as someone who had come back from Vietnam with a racial prejudice.

“All right,” he said. “Maybe the way I dealt with you yesterday was a mistake. I’m sorry. But you’re in now and I need to know what you know. No holding back.”

Chu relaxed too.

“I just told you everything. The only other thing I was thinking was about the two hundred sixteen.”

“What about it?”

“It’s a double payment. Like maybe Mr. Li missed a week. Maybe he was having trouble paying. His son said business was bad there.”

“And so maybe that’s what got him killed.”

Bosch pointed to the screen again.

“Can you make me a hard copy?”

“I would like one myself.”

Chu moved to the printer and pushed a button twice. Soon two copies of the image of the man turning from the counter were printing.

“Do you have mug books?” Bosch asked. “Intelligence files?”

“Of course,” Chu said. “I will try to identify him. I will make inquiries.”

“I don’t want him to know we’re coming.”

“Thank you, Detective. But, yes, I assumed that.”

Bosch didn’t respond. It had been another misstep. He was having a hard time with Chu. He found himself unable to trust him, even though he carried the same badge.

“I would also like to get a print of the tattoo as well,” Chu said.

“What tattoo?” Bosch asked.

Chu took the remote from Bosch and tapped the rewind button. He eventually froze the picture at the moment the man was reaching his left hand out to take the cash from Mr. Li. Chu used his finger to trace a barely visible outline on the inside of the man’s arm. Chu was right. It was a tattoo, but the marking was so light on the grainy image that Bosch had completely missed it.

“What is that” he asked.

“It looks like the outline of a knife. A self-administered tattoo.”

“He’s been in prison.”

Chu pushed the button to make prints of the image.

“No, usually these are done on the boat. On the way across the ocean.”

“What does it mean to you?”

“Knife is kim. There are at least three triads that have a presence here in Southern California. Yee Kim, Sai Kim and Yung Kim. These mean Righteous Knife, Western Knife and Brave Knife. They are offshoots of a Hong Kong triad called Fourteen K. Very strong and powerful.”

“Over here or there?”

“Both places.”

“Fourteen K? Like fourteen-karat gold”

“No, fourteen is a bad-luck number. It sounds like the Chinese word for death. K is for kill.”

Bosch knew from his daughter and his frequent visits to Hong Kong that any permutation of the number 4 was considered bad luck. His daughter lived with his ex-wife in a condominium tower where there were no floors marked with the numeral 4. The fourth floor was marked P for parking and the fourteenth was skipped in the way the thirteenth floor was skipped in most western buildings. The floors in the building that were actually the fourteenth and twenty-fourth contained the residences of English speakers who did not hold the same superstitions as the Han-the Chinese people.

Bosch gestured to the screen.

“So you think this guy could be in one of the Fourteen K spinoffs?” he asked.

“Perhaps yes,” Chu said. “I will begin to make inquiries just as soon as you leave.”

Bosch looked at Chu and tried to read him again. He believed he understood the message. Chu wanted Bosch out of there so he could go to work. Harry stepped over to the DVD player, ejected the disc, and took it.

“Stay in touch, Chu,” he said.

“I will,” Chu responded curtly.

“As soon as you get something, you give it to me.”

“I understand, Detective. Perfectly.”

“Good, and I’ll see you at ten with Mrs. Li and her son.”

Bosch opened the door and left the tiny room.

7

Ferras had the cash register from Fortune Liquors on his desk and had run a wire from its side into the side of his laptop. Bosch put the photo printouts down on his desk and looked across at his partner.

“What’s happening?”

“I went over to forensics. They were through with this. No prints other than the victim’s. I’m just getting into the memory now. I can tell you the take for the day up until the murder was under two hundred bucks. The victim would have had a hard time making a payment of two hundred sixteen dollars, if that’s what you think happened.”

“Well, I’ve got some stuff on that to tell you. Anything else from forensics?”

“Not much. They’re still processing every-oh, the GSR on the widow came back negative. But I guess we were expecting that.”

Bosch nodded. Since Mrs. Li had discovered her husband’s body, it was routine to test her hands and arms for gunshot residue to determine if she had recently discharged a firearm. As expected, the test came back negative for GSR. Bosch was pretty sure she could now be scratched from the list of potential suspects, even though she was barely on it in the first place.

“How deep is the memory on that thing?” Bosch asked.

“It looks like it goes back a whole year. I ran some averages. The gross income on that place was slightly less than three thousand a week. You figure in overhead and cost of goods, insurance and stuff like that, and this guy was lucky if he was clearing fifty a year for himself. That ain’t no way to make a living. Probably more dangerous down there doing what he did than being a cop on those streets.”

“Yesterday the son said business was down lately.”

“Looking at this, I don’t see where it was ever up.”

“It’s a cash business. He could have pulled money out of it in other ways.”

“Probably. And then there was the guy he was paying off. If he was handing him two bills and change a week, that would add up. That would be ten grand off the top on an annual basis.”

Bosch told Ferras what he had learned from Chu and that he was hoping the AGU could come up with an ID. They both agreed that the focal point of the investigation was shifting toward the man in the grainy printout from the store’s surveillance camera. The triad bagman. Meanwhile, the possible gangbanger who had argued with John Li the Saturday before his murder still needed to be identified and interviewed, but the contradictions between the crime scene and an anger/revenge-type killing put that lead into second position.

They went to work on the statements and other voluminous paperwork that accompanied every murder investigation. Chu arrived first at ten o’clock, making his way right to Bosch’s desk unannounced.

“Yee-ling isn’t here yet?” he asked by way of greeting.

Bosch looked up from his work.

“Who’s Yee-ling?”

“Yee-ling Li, the mother.”

Bosch realized he had not known the full name of the victim’s wife. This bothered him because it was an indication of how little he really knew about the case.

“She’s not here yet. You come up with anything over there?”

“I checked through our photo albums. Didn’t see our guy. But we’re making inquiries.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that. What exactly does ‘making inquiries’ mean?”

“It means that the AGU has a network of connections within the community and we will make discreet inquiries about who this man is and what Mr. Li’s affiliation was.”

“Affiliation” Ferras asked. “He was being extorted. His affiliation was that he was a victim.”

“Detective Ferras,” Chu said patiently. “You are looking at it from the typical western point of view. As I explained to Detective Bosch this morning, Mr. Li may have had a lifelong relationship with a triad society. It is called quang xi, in his native dialect. It has no direct translation but it has to do with one’s social network, and a triad relationship would be included in that.”

Ferras just stared at Chu for a long moment.

“Whatever,” he finally said. “Over here I think we call that bullshit. The vic had lived here almost thirty years. I don’t care what they call it in China. Over here it’s extortion.”

Bosch admired his young partner’s adamant reaction. He was contemplating joining the fray, when the phone on his desk rang and he picked it up.

“Bosch.”

“This is Rogers downstairs. You’ve got two visitors, both named Li. They say they have an appointment.”

“Send them up.”

“On the way.”

Bosch hung up.

“Okay, they’re on their way up. This is how I want to play this. Chu, you take the old lady into one of the interview rooms and go over her statement and have her sign it. After she signs it I want you to ask her about the payoff and the guy on the video. Show her his photo. And don’t let her play dumb. She’s got to know about it. Her husband had to have talked about it.”

“You’d be surprised,” Chu said. “Husbands and wives wouldn’t necessarily talk about this.”

“Well, do your best. She could know a lot whether she and her husband talked about it or not. Ferras and I will talk to the son. I want to find out if he’s paying protection at the store up in the Valley. If so, that could be where we grab our guy.”

Bosch looked across the squad room and saw Mrs. Li enter but she was not with her son. She was with a younger woman. Bosch raised his hand to draw their attention and waved them over.

“Chu, who is this?”

Chu turned around as the two women approached. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know. As the two women got closer Bosch saw that the younger woman was in her midthirties and attractive in an understated, hair-behind-the-ears sort of way. She was Asian. She was dressed in blue jeans and a white blouse. She walked a half step behind Mrs. Li with her eyes cast down on the floor. The initial impression Bosch got was that she was an employee. A maid pressed into service as a driver. But the deskman downstairs had said they were both named Li.

Chu spoke to Mrs. Li in Chinese. After she responded, he translated.

“This is Mr. and Mrs. Li’s daughter, Mia. She drove her mother here because Robert Li is delayed.”

Bosch was immediately frustrated by the news and shook his head.

“Great,” he said to Chu. “How come we didn’t know there was a daughter?”

“We didn’t ask the right questions yesterday,” Chu said.

“You were the one asking questions yesterday. Ask Mia where she lives.”

The young woman cleared her throat and looked up at Bosch.

“I live with my mother and father,” she said. “Or I did until yesterday. I guess now I live with just my mother.”

Bosch felt embarrassed that he had assumed she spoke no English and she had heard and understood his annoyed response to her showing up.

“Sorry. It’s just that we need all the information we can get.”

He looked at the other two detectives.

“Okay, we are going to need to interview Mia. Detective Chu, why don’t you continue with the plan and take Mrs. Li into an interview room to go over her statement. I will talk with Mia and, Ignacio, you wait for Robert to show up.”

He turned back to Mia.

“Do you know how long your brother is delayed?”

“He should be on his way. He said he was going to leave the store by ten.”

“Which store?”

“His store. In the Valley.”

“Okay, Mia, why don’t you come with me, and your mother can go with Detective Chu.”

Mia spoke in Chinese to her mother and they proceeded toward the bank of interview rooms at the back of the squad. Bosch grabbed a yellow legal pad and the file containing the print off the camera video before leading the way. Ferras was left behind.

“Harry, you want me to start with the son when he gets here?” he asked.

“No,” Bosch said. “Come and get me. I’ll be in room two.”

Bosch led the victim’s daughter to a small, windowless room with a table in the middle. They sat down on either side of it and Bosch tried to put a pleasant expression on his face. It was hard. The morning was starting off with a surprise and he didn’t like surprises coming up in his murder investigations.

“Okay, Mia,” Bosch said. “Let’s start over. I am Detective Bosch. I am assigned as lead investigator on the case involving the murder of your father. I am very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

She had her eyes cast down to the tabletop.

“Can you tell me your full name?”

“Mia-ling Li.”

Her name had been westernized with her given name first and the family name last. But she had not taken a wholly western name like her father and brother. Bosch wondered if this was because the men were expected to integrate into western society while the women were held back from it.

“When is your birthday?”

“February fourteenth, nineteen eighty.”

“Valentine’s Day.”

Bosch smiled. He didn’t know why. He was just trying to start the relationship over. Then he wondered if they even had Valentine’s Day in China. He moved on with his thoughts and did the math. He realized that while she was still very attractive, Mia was younger than she looked, and only a few years older than her brother, Robert.

“You came here with your parents? When was that?”

“In nineteen eighty-two.”

“You were only two.”

“Yes.”

“And your father opened the store then?”

“He didn’t open it. He bought it from someone else and he renamed it Fortune Liquors. Before, it was called something else.”

“Okay. Are there any other brothers or sisters besides you and Robert?”

“No, just us.”

“Okay, good. Now, you said you have been living with your parents. For how long?”

She looked up briefly and then back down.

“My whole life. Except for about two years when I was younger.”

“Were you married?”

“No. What does this have to do with who killed my father? Shouldn’t you be finding the killer?”

“I’m sorry, Mia. I just need to get some basic information and then, yes, I will be out there looking for the killer. Have you talked to your brother? Did he tell you I knew your father?”

“He said you met him one time. You didn’t even really meet him. That’s not knowing him.”

Bosch nodded.

“You’re right. That was an exaggeration. I didn’t know him but because of the situation we were in when I…met him, I feel like I sort of knew him. I want to find his killer, Mia. And I will. I just need you and your family to help me wherever you can.”

“I understand.”

“Don’t hold anything back, because you never know what might help us.”

“I won’t.”

“Okay, what do you do for a living”

“I take care of my parents.”

“You mean at home? You stay home and take care of your parents”

Now she looked up and right into his eyes. Her pupils were so dark it was hard to read anything in them.

“Yes.”

Bosch realized he might have crossed into a cultural custom and standard he knew nothing about. Mia seemed to read him.

“It is tradition in my family for the daughter to care for her parents.”

“Did you go to school?”

“Yes, I went to university for two years. But then I came home. I cook and clean and keep the house. For my brother, too, though he wants to move to his own place.”

“But as of yesterday, everybody was living together.”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw your father alive?”

“When he left for work yesterday morning. He leaves about nine-thirty. I made him his breakfast.”

“And your mother left then, too?”

“Yes, they always go together.”

“And then your mother came back in the afternoon?”

“Yes, I make the supper and she comes for it. Every day.”

“What time did she come home?”

“She came home at three o’clock. She always does.”

Bosch knew that the family home was in the Larchmont area of the Wilshire District and at least a half-hour drive from the store. The direct route would have been on surface streets the whole way.

“How long before she took the supper and went back to the store yesterday?”

“She stayed about a half hour and then she left.”

Bosch nodded. Everything was jibing with the mother’s story and the timing and everything else they knew.

“Mia, did your father talk about anybody at work he was afraid of? Like a customer or anybody else?”

“No, my father was very quiet. He didn’t talk about work at home.”

“Did he like living here in Los Angeles?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“He wanted to go home to China but he couldn’t.”

“Why not?”?

“Because when you leave you do not come back. They left because Robert was coming.”

“You mean your family left because of Robert?”

“In our province you could only have one child. They already had me and my mother would not put me in the orphanage. My father wanted a son and when my mother became pregnant, we came to America.?”

Bosch did not know the specifics of China’s one-child policies but he was aware of them. It was a population containment plan that resulted in a higher value being placed on male births. Newborn females were often abandoned in orphanages or worse. Rather than giving up Mia, the Li family had left the country for the USA.

“So your father wished all along he could have stayed and kept his family in China?”

“Yes.?”

Bosch decided that he had gathered enough information in this regard. He opened the file and removed the printout of the image from the store camera. He placed it in front of Mia.

“Who is that, Mia?”

Her eyes narrowed as she studied the grainy image.

“I don’t know him. Did he kill my father?”

“I don’t know. You sure you don’t know who he is?”

“I’m sure. Who is he?”

“We don’t know yet. But we’ll find out. Did your father ever talk about the triads?”

“The triads?”

“About having to pay them”

She seemed very nervous about the question.

“I don’t know about this. We didn’t talk about it.”?

“You speak Chinese, right”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever hear your parents talking about it”

“No, they didn’t. I don’t know about this.”

“Okay, Mia, then I think we can stop now.”

“Can I take my mother home?”

“As soon as she’s finished talking to Detective Chu. What do you think will happen with the store now? Will your mother and brother run it”

She shook her head.

“I think it will be closed. My mother will work in my brother’s store now.”

“What about you, Mia? Will anything change for you now?”

She took a long moment to consider this, as if she had not thought about it before Bosch had asked.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Perhaps.”

8

Back in the squad room, Mrs. Li had already finished her interview with Chu and was waiting for her daughter. There was still no sign of Robert Li, and Ferras explained that he called and said he could not get away from his store because his assistant manager had called in sick.

After escorting the two women out to the elevator alcove, Bosch checked his watch and decided there was still time to get out to the Valley and speak to the victim’s son and then get back downtown for the scheduled 2 p.m. autopsy. Besides, he didn’t need to be at the medical examiner’s office for the preliminary procedures. He could roll in late.

It was decided that Ferras would stay behind to work with forensics on the return of evidence gathered the day before. Bosch and Chu would go out to the Valley to talk to Robert Li.

Bosch drove his Crown Vic with 220,000 miles on the odometer. The air conditioner worked but just barely. As they got closer to the Valley the temperature started rising and Bosch wished he had taken his suit jacket off before getting in the car.

Along the way, Chu spoke first and reported that Mrs. Li signed her statement and had nothing new to add to it. She had not recognized the man from the store video and claimed to know nothing about paying off the triad. Bosch then relayed what little information he had gleaned from Mia-ling Li and asked Chu what he knew of the tradition of keeping an adult daughter home to care for her parents.

“She’s a chinderella,” Chu said. “Stays home and does the cooking and cleaning, stuff like that. Almost like a servant to her parents.”

“They don’t want them to get married and leave the house?”

“No, man, it’s free labor. Why would they want her to get married? Then they’d have to hire a maid and a chef and a driver. This way they get them all and don’t have to pay.”

Bosch drove silently for a while after that, thinking about the life Mia-ling Li lived. He doubted anything would change with the death of her father. There was still her mother to care for.

He remembered something relating to the case and spoke again.

“She said the family would probably close the store now and just keep the one in the Valley.”

“It wasn’t making any money, anyway,” Chu said. “They might be able to sell it to somebody in the community and make a little bit.”

“Not much for almost thirty years there.”

“The Chinese immigrant story is not always a happy one,” Chu said.

“What about you, Chu? You’re a success.”

“I’m not an immigrant. My parents were.”

“Were?”

“My mother died young. My father was a fisherman. One time his boat went out and it never came back.”

Bosch was silenced by the matter-of-fact way Chu had told his family tragedy. He concentrated on the drive. Traffic was rough and it took them forty-five minutes to get to Sherman Oaks. Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor was on Sepulveda just a block south of Ventura Boulevard. This put it in an upscale neighborhood of apartments and condominiums below the even more upscale hillside residences. It was in a good location but there didn’t seem to be enough parking. Bosch found a spot on the street in front of a fire hydrant. He flipped down the visor, which had a card clipped to it showing a city vehicle identification code, and got out.

Bosch and Chu had worked out a plan during the long ride up. They believed that if anyone knew about the triad payoffs besides the victim, it would be the son and fellow shop manager, Robert. Why he would not have told the detectives about this the day before was the big question.

Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor was something completely different from its counterpart in South L.A. This store was at least five times bigger and it was brimming with the high-end touches that befit its neighborhood.

There was a do-it-yourself coffee bar. The wine aisles had overhead signs displaying varietals and world regions of wine, and there were no gallon jugs stacked at the end. The cold cases were well lighted with open shelves instead of glass doors. There were aisles of specialty foods and hot and cold counters where customers could order fresh steaks and fish or precooked meals of roast chicken, meatloaf and barbecued ribs. The son had taken his father’s business and advanced it several levels. Bosch was impressed.

There were two checkout stations and Chu asked one of the women behind them where Robert Li was. The detectives were directed to a set of double doors that led to a stockroom with ten- foot-high shelves against all the walls. To the far left was a door marked office. Bosch knocked and Robert Li promptly answered the door.

He looked surprised to see them.

“Detectives, come in,” he said. “I am so sorry about not getting downtown today. My assistant manager called in sick and I can’t leave the place without a supervisor. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bosch said. “We’re only trying to find your father’s killer.”

Bosch wanted to put the kid on the defensive. Interviewing him in his own surroundings put him at an advantage. Bosch wanted to bring some discomfort to the situation. If Li was on the defensive he’d be more forthcoming and willing to try to please his interviewers.

“Well, I am sorry. I thought all I needed to do was sign my statement, anyway.”

“We have your statement but it’s a little more involved than signing papers, Mr. Li. It’s an ongoing investigation. Things change. More information comes in.”

“All I can do is apologize. Have a seat, please. I’m sorry the space is so tight in here.”

The office was narrow and Bosch could tell it was a shared office. There were two desks side by side against the right wall. Two desk chairs and two folding chairs, probably for sales representatives and job interviews.

Li picked up the phone on his desk, dialed a number and told someone he was not to be disturbed. He then made an open-hands gesture, signaling he was ready to go.

“First of all, I’m a little surprised that you are working today,” Bosch said. “Your father was murdered yesterday.”

Li nodded solemnly.

“I am afraid that I have been given no time to grieve for my father. I must run the business or there will be no business to run.”

Bosch nodded and signaled to Chu to take over. He had typed up Li’s statement. As he went over it with Li, Bosch looked around the office. On the wall over the desks were framed licenses from the state, Li’s 2004 diploma from the business school at the University of Southern California and an honorable-mention certificate for best new store of 2007 from the American Grocers Association. There were also framed photos of Li with Tommy Lasorda, the former manager of the Dodgers, and a teenage Li standing at the steps of the Tian Tan Buddha in Hong Kong. Just as he had recognized Lasorda, Bosch recognized the one-hundred-foot-high bronze sculpture known as the Big Buddha. He had once journeyed with his daughter to Lantau Island to see it.

Bosch reached across and straightened the cockeyed frame of the USC diploma. In doing so he noticed that Li had graduated from the school with honors. He thought for a moment about Robert going off to the university and getting the opportunity to take his father’s business and turn it into something bigger and better. Meantime, his older sister dropped out of school, came home and made the beds.

Li asked for no changes to his statement and signed the bottom of each page. When he was finished he looked up at a wall clock hung over the door and Bosch could tell he thought they were done.

But they weren’t. Now it was Bosch’s turn. He opened his briefcase and removed a file. From it he took the photo print of the bagman who had collected money from Li’s father. Bosch handed it to Li.

“Tell me about this guy,” he said.

Li held the printout in both hands and knitted his eyebrows as he looked at it. Bosch knew that people did this to show they were earnestly concentrating, but it usually was a cover for something else. Bosch knew that he had probably taken a call in the last hour from his mother and had known that he might be shown the printout. However Li responded, Bosch knew he would not be truthful.

“I can’t tell you anything,” Li said after a few seconds. “I don’t recognize him. I’ve never seen him.”

He handed the printout back to Bosch but Harry didn’t take it.

“But you know who he is, don’t you.”

It wasn’t really said as a question.

“No, actually, I don’t,” Li said, mild annoyance in his voice.

Bosch smiled at him but it was one of those that carried no warmth or humor.

“Mr. Li, did your mother call you and tell you we would be showing you that picture?”

“No.”

“We can check the phones, you know.”

“So what if she did? She didn’t know who it was and neither do I.”

“You want us to find the person who killed your father, right?”

“Of course! What kind of question is that?”

“It’s the kind of question I ask when I know somebody is holding something back from me and that it-”

“What? How dare you!”

“-could be very useful to my investigation.”

“I am holding nothing back! I don’t know this man. I don’t know his name and I have never seen him before! That is the goddamn truth!”

Li’s face grew flushed. Bosch waited a moment and then spoke calmly.

“You might be telling the truth. You might not know his name and maybe you’ve never seen him before. But you know who he is, Robert. You know your father was making payoffs. Maybe you are, too. If you think there is any danger involved in talking to us, then we can protect you.”

“Absolutely,” Chu chimed in.

Li shook his head and smiled like he couldn’t believe the situation he had found himself in. He started breathing heavily.

“My father just died-he was killed. Can’t you leave me alone? Why am I being badgered? I’m a victim here, too.”

“I wish we could leave you alone, Robert,” Bosch said. “But if we don’t find the party responsible, there’s nobody else who will. You don’t want that, do you?”

Li seemed to compose himself and shook his head.

“Look,” Bosch continued. “We have a signed statement here. Nothing you tell us now has to go beyond this room. No one will ever know what you tell us.”

Bosch reached over and ticked the printout with his finger. Li was still holding it.

“Whoever killed your father took the disc out of the recorder in the back but left the old discs. This guy was on it. He took a payment from your father at the same time and on the same day a week before the murder. Your father gave him two hundred sixteen dollars as a payoff. The guy is triad and I think you know it. You have to help us out here, Robert. There’s nobody else who can.”

Bosch waited. Li put the printout on the desk and rubbed his sweating palms down the thighs of his blue jeans.

“Okay, yes, my father paid the triad,” he said.

Bosch breathed slowly. They had just made a big step. He wanted to keep Li talking.

“For how long?” he asked.

“I don’t know, all his life-all my life, I guess. It was just something he always did. To him, it was part of being Chinese. You paid.”

Bosch nodded.

“Thank you, Robert, for telling us this. Now, yesterday you told us that with the economy and everything, things were not going so well at the store. Do you know, was your father behind on his payments”

“I don’t know, maybe. He didn’t tell me. We didn’t see eye to eye on that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t think he should pay. I told him a million times. This is America, Pop, you don’t have to pay them.”

“But he still paid.”

“Yeah, every week. He was just old school.”

“So you don’t pay here?”

Li shook his head but his eyes darted to the side a moment. An easy giveaway.

“You do pay, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Robert, we need the-”

“I don’t pay, because he paid for me. Now I don’t know what will happen.”

Bosch leaned closer to him.

“You mean your father paid for both stores.”

“Yes.”

Li’s eyes were cast down. He rubbed his palms on his pants again.

“The double payment-one oh eight times two-was to cover both stores.”

“That’s right. Last week.”

Li nodded and Bosch thought he saw tears welling in his eyes. Harry knew the next question was the most important one.

“What happened this week?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you have an idea, right, Robert?”

He nodded again.

“Both stores are losing money. We expanded at the wrong time-right before the downturn. The banks get the government bailout but not us. We could lose everything. I told him…I told my father we couldn’t keep paying. I told him we were paying for nothing and we were going to lose the stores if we didn’t stop.”

“Did he say he would stop making the payments”

“He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. I thought that meant he was going to keep on paying until we were out of business. It was adding up. Eight hundred dollars a month is a lot in a business like this. My old man, he thought if he found other ways…”

His voice trailed off.

“Other ways of what, Robert?”

“Other ways of saving money. He became obsessed with catching shoplifters. He thought if he stopped the losses he’d make a difference. He was from a different time. He didn’t get it.”

Bosch leaned back in his chair and looked over at Chu. They had broken through and gotten Li to open up. It would now be Chu’s turn to move in with specific questions relating to the triad.

“Robert, you have been very helpful,” Chu said. “I want to ask you a few questions in regard to the man in the photo.”

“I was telling the truth. I don’t know who he is. I never saw him before in my life.”

“Okay, but did your father ever talk about him when, you know, you were discussing the payments?”

“He never used his name. He just said he would be upset if we stopped the payments.”

“Did he ever mention the name of the group he paid? The triad”

Li shook his head.

“No, he never-wait, yes, he did once. It was something about a knife. Like the name came from a kind of knife or something. But I don’t remember it.”

“Are you sure? That could help us narrow it.”

Li frowned and shook his head again.

“I’ll try to remember it. I can’t right now.”

“Okay, Robert.”

Chu continued the interview but his questions were too specific and Li continually answered that he didn’t know. All that was okay with Bosch. They had made a big breakthrough. He saw the case coming together with a stronger focus now.

After a while Chu finished up and passed the baton back to Bosch.

“Okay, Robert,” Harry said. “Do you think the man or men your father was paying will now come to you for the money?”

The question prompted a deep frown from Li.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Do you want protection from the LAPD?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Well, you have our numbers. If someone shows up, cooperate. Promise him the money if you have to.”

“I don’t have the money!”

“That’s the point. Promise him the money but say it will take you a day to get it. Then call us. We’ll take it from there.”

“What if he just takes it out of the cash registers? You told me yesterday that the cash drawer was empty in my father’s store?.”

“If he does that, let him and then you call us. We’ll get him when he comes back the next time.”

Li nodded and Bosch could see he had thoroughly spooked the young man.

“Robert, do you have a gun in the store”

It was a test. They had already checked gun records. Only the gun in the other store was registered.

“No, my father had the gun. He was in the bad area.”

“Good. Don’t bring a gun into this. If the guy shows up, just cooperate.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, why did your father buy that gun? He had been there for almost thirty years and then six months ago he buys the gun.”

“The last time he was robbed, they hurt him. Two gangbangers. They hit him with a bottle. I told him if he wouldn’t sell the store, then he had to get a gun. But it didn’t do him any good.”

“They usually don’t.”

The detectives thanked Li and left him in his office, a twenty-six-year-old who somehow seemed a couple decades older now. As they walked through the store Bosch checked his watch and saw it was now after one. He was starving and wanted to grab something before heading to the medical examiner’s office for the autopsy at two. He stopped in front of the hot case and zeroed in on the meatloaf. He pulled a service number out of the dispenser. When he offered to buy Chu a slice, he said he was a vegetarian.

Bosch shook his head.

“What?” Chu asked.

“I don’t think we could make it as partners, Chu,” Bosch said. “I don’t trust a guy who doesn’t eat a hot dog every once in a while.”

“I eat tofu hot dogs.”

Bosch cringed.

“They don’t count.”

He then saw Robert Li approaching them.

“I forgot to ask. When will my father’s body be released to us”

“Probably tomorrow,” Bosch said. “The autopsy is today.”

Li looked crestfallen.

“My father was a very spiritual man. Do they have to desecrate his body”

Bosch nodded.

“It’s a law. There’s an autopsy after any homicide.”

“When will they do it?”

“In about an hour.”

Li nodded in acceptance.

“Please don’t tell my mother this was done. Will they call me when I can have his body?”

“I’ll make sure they do.”

Li thanked them and headed back to his office. Bosch heard his number called by the man behind the counter.

9

On the way back downtown Chu informed Bosch that after fourteen years on the job he had yet to witness an autopsy and didn’t care to change course. He said he wanted to get back to the AGU office to continue efforts to identify the triad bagman. Bosch dropped him off and then headed over to the county coroner’s office on Mission Road. By the time he checked in, gowned up and got into suite 3, the autopsy of John Li was well under way. The coroner’s office performed six thousand autopsies a year. The autopsy suites were tightly scheduled and managed and the medical examiners didn’t wait for late-arriving cops. A good one could knock off a surgical autopsy in an hour.

All of this was fine with Bosch. He was interested in the findings of the autopsy, not the process.

John Li’s body was lying naked and violated on the cold stainless-steel autopsy table. The chest had been opened and the vital organs removed. Dr. Sharon Laksmi was working at a nearby table where she was putting tissue samples on slides.

“Afternoon, Doctor,” Bosch said.

Laksmi turned from her work and glanced back at him. Because of the mask and hair cap Bosch was wearing, she could not readily identify him. Long gone were the days when the detectives could just walk in and watch. County health regs required the full protection package.

“Bosch or Ferras?”

“Bosch.”

“You’re late. I started without you.”

Laksmi was small and dark. What was most noticeable about her was that her eyes were heavily made-up behind the plastic shield of her mask. It was as if she realized that her eyes were the only feature people saw behind all the safety garb she wore most of the time. She spoke with a slight accent. But who didn’t in L.A.? Even the outgoing chief of police sounded like he was from South Boston.

“Yes, sorry. I was with the victim’s son and it ran kind of long.”

He didn’t mention the meatloaf sandwich that had cost him some time as well.

“Here’s what you are probably looking for.”

She tapped the blade of her scalpel on one of four steel specimen cups lined up to her left on the counter. Bosch stepped over and looked down into them. Each held one piece of evidence extracted from the body. He saw three deformed bullets and a single bullet casing.

“You found a casing? Was it on the body?”

“In it, actually.”

“In the body?”

“That’s right. Lodged in the esophagus.”

Bosch thought of what he had discovered while looking at the crime scene pictures. Blood on the victim’s fingers, chin and lips. But not on his teeth. He had been right about his hunch.

“It appears you are looking for a very sadistic killer, Detective Bosch.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because either he shoved a casing down your victim’s throat or the ejected casing somehow landed in his mouth. Since the latter would be a million-to-one shot, I would go with the former.”

Bosch nodded. Not because he subscribed to what she was saying. But because he was thinking of a scenario Dr. Laksmi hadn’t considered. He thought he now had a bead on what had happened behind the counter at Fortune Liquors. One of the ejected casings from the shooter’s gun had landed on or near John Li as he lay dying on the floor behind the counter. Either he saw the shooter collecting the casings or knew they might be valuable evidence in the investigation of his own murder. With his last moment Li had grabbed the casing and tried to swallow it, to keep it from the shooter.

John Li’s final act was to attempt to provide Bosch with an important clue.

“Did you clean the casing, Doctor?” he asked.

“Yes, blood had backed up into the throat and the casing acted like a dam, keeping most of it out of the mouth. I had to clean it to see what it was.”

“Right.”

Bosch knew that the possibility of there being fingerprints on the casing were negligible, anyway. The explosion of gases when a bullet was fired almost always vaporized fingerprints on the casing.

Still the casing could be useful in determining a match to a weapon if the recovered slugs were too damaged. Bosch looked down into the evidence cups containing the slugs. He immediately determined they had been hollow points. They had mushroomed upon impact and were badly deformed. He could not tell if any of them would be useful for comparison purposes. But the casing was most likely a good solid piece of evidence. The marks made by the weapon’s extractor, firing pin and ejector could be useful in identifying and matching the gun if it was ever found. The casing would link the victim to the gun.

“You want to hear my summary and then be on your way?” Laksmi asked.

“Sure, Doctor, run it down.”

While Laksmi gave a preliminary report on her findings, Bosch grabbed clear plastic evidence envelopes off a shelf over the table and bagged the slugs and casing separately. The casing looked like it had come from a 9 millimeter round but he would wait for confirmation from ballistics on that. He marked each envelope with his name as well as Laksmi’s and the case number and then lifted his splatter gown and put them in his coat pocket.

“The first shot was to the upper left chest, the projectile piercing the right ventricle of the heart and impacting the upper vertebrae, severing the spinal cord. The victim would have immediately dropped to the floor. The next two shots were to the right and left lower sternum. It is impossible to place an order on these two shots. Right and left lobes of the lungs were pierced and the projectiles lodged in the back musculature. The result of the three shots was instant loss of cardiopulmonary function and subsequent death. I’d say he lasted no more than thirty seconds.”

The report on the spinal cord damage seemingly put in jeopardy Bosch’s working theory of the victim intentionally swallowing the bullet casing.

“With the spinal cord damage, could he have had any hand and arm movement?”

“Not for very long. Death was almost instantaneous.”

“But he wasn’t paralyzed, right? In those last thirty seconds, could he have picked up the casing and put it in his mouth?”

Laksmi considered the new scenario for a few moments before answering.

“I believe he would have indeed been paralyzed. But the projectile lodged in the fourth thoracic vertebra, cutting the cord there. This would have certainly caused paralysis but it would begin at that point. The arms could still function. It would be a matter of time. As I said, his body would have ceased function inside a minute.”

Bosch nodded. His theory still worked. Li could have quickly grabbed the casing with his last strength and put it in his mouth.

Bosch wondered if the shooter knew this. He most likely had to move around the counter to look for the casings. In that time Li could have grabbed one of them. Blood found underneath Li’s body indicated that it had been moved. Bosch realized that it most likely occurred during the search for the missing shell.

Bosch felt a growing excitement. The casing was a significant evidence find, but the idea that the shooter had made a mistake was even greater. He wanted to get the evidence over to Tool Marks and Ballistics as soon as possible.

“Okay, Doctor, what else is there?”

“There’s something you might want to look at now rather than wait for the photos. Help me turn him.”

They moved to the autopsy table and carefully rolled the body over. Rigor mortis had come and gone and the procedure was easy. Laksmi pointed to the ankles. Bosch moved down and saw that there were small Chinese symbols tattooed at the back of Li’s feet. It looked like either two or three symbols were on each foot, located on either side of the Achilles tendon.

“You photographed these?”

“Yes, they’ll be in the report.”

“Anybody around here who can translate these?”

“I don’t think so. Dr. Ming might be able to but he is on a vacay this week.”

“Okay, can we slide him down a bit so I can hook the feet over the edge and take a picture?”

She helped him move the body down the table. The feet went over the edge and Bosch positioned the ankles right next to each other so the Chinese symbols were in a line across. He reached under his gown and pulled out his cell phone. He switched it to camera mode and took two photos of the tattoos.

“Okay.”

Bosch put the phone down and they turned the body back over and moved it back up into place on the table.

Bosch took off his gloves and threw them into the medical waste receptacle, then picked his phone up and called Chu.

“What’s your e-mail? I want to send you a photo.”

“Of what?”

“Chinese symbols that were tattooed on Mr. Li’s ankles. I want to know what they mean.”

“Okay.”

Chu gave him his department e-mail. Bosch checked his camera work and sent the clearest photo to him, then put the phone away.

“Dr. Laksmi, is there anything else I need to know here?”

“I think you got it all, Detective. Except there’s one thing that maybe the family will want to know.”

“What’s that?”

She gestured to one of the organ bowls she had spread across the work counter.

“The bullets only brought about the inevitable. Mr. Li was dying of cancer.”

Bosch stepped over and looked into the tray. The victim’s lungs had been excised from the body for weighing and examination. Laksmi had opened them up to probe the bullet tracks and both lower lobes were dark gray with cancerous cells.

“He was a smoker,” Laksmi said.

“I know,” Bosch said. “How long do you think he had?”

“Maybe a year. Maybe longer.”

“Can you tell whether this had been treated?”

“It doesn’t look like it. Certainly no surgery. And I see no signs of chemotherapy or radiation. It may have been undiagnosed at this point. But he would have known soon enough.”

Bosch thought about his own lungs. He had not smoked in years but they say the damage is done early. Sometimes in the mornings his lungs felt heavy and full in his chest. He’d had a case a few years before that resulted in his being exposed to a high-level dose of radiation. He’d cleared medical on it but always sort of thought or hoped that the blast had knocked down anything that might be growing in his chest.

Bosch took out his cell phone again and once more put it on camera function. He leaned over the bowl and shot a photo of the ravaged organs.

“What are you doing?” Laksmi asked.

“I want to send it to somebody.”

He checked the photo and it was clear enough. He then sent it off in an e-mail.

“Who? Not the family, I hope.”

“No, my daughter.”

“Your daughter?”

There was a tone of outrage in her voice.

“She needs to see what smoking can do.”

“Nice.”

She said nothing else. Bosch put his phone away and checked his watch. It was a double display watch that gave him the time in L.A. and Hong Kong-a present from his daughter after too many miscalculated middle-of-the-night phone calls. It was just past three o’clock in L.A. His daughter was fifteen hours ahead and sleeping. She’d get up for school in about an hour and would get the photo then. He knew it would bring a protest call from her but even a call like that was better than none.

He smiled at the thought of it and then refocused on the work. He was ready to get moving again.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “For your records, I’m taking the ballistic evidence over to forensics.”

“Did you sign for it?”

She pointed to a clipboard on the counter and Bosch found she had already filled out the chain-of-evidence report. Bosch signed the line acknowledging he was now in possession of the evidence listed. He headed toward the autopsy suite’s door.

“Give me a couple days on the hard copy,” Laksmi said.

Meaning the formal autopsy report.

“You got it,” Bosch said as he went through the door.

10

On the way to forensics Bosch called Chu and asked about the tattoos.

“I haven’t translated them yet,” Chu said.

“What do you mean, did you look at them?”

“Yeah, I looked at them but I can’t translate them. I’m trying to find somebody who can.”

“Chu, I saw you talking to Mrs. Li. You translated for her.”

“Bosch, just because I speak it doesn’t mean I can read it. There are eight thousand Chinese symbols like these. All my schooling was in English. I spoke Chinese at home. Never read it.”

“Okay, then is there somebody there that can get me a translation? It is the Asian Crimes Unit, isn’t it?”

“Asian Gang Unit. And, yes, there are people here who can do it, but they don’t happen to be here right now. As soon as I have it I will call you.”

“Great. Call me.”

Bosch hung up. He was frustrated by the delay. A case had to move like a shark. It could never stop its momentum because that could be fatal. He checked his watch for the time in Hong Kong, then pulled to the curb and sent the photo of the ankle tattoos to his daughter in an e-mail. She would get it on her phone-right after she saw the photo of the lungs he had sent her.

Pleased with himself, Bosch pulled back into traffic. He was becoming more and more adept at digital communication thanks to her. She had insisted that they communicate on all modern levels: e-mail, text, video-she had even tried unsuccessfully to get him onto something called Twitter. He insisted in return that they also communicate the old-fashioned way-verbal conversation. He made sure their phones were covered by international call plans.

He made it back to the PAB a few minutes later and went straight to the Tool Marks and Ballistics unit on the fourth floor. He took his four plastic evidence bags to a technician named Ross Malone. His job was to take bullets and casings and use them to attempt to identify the make and model of the firearm they came from. Later, in the event that a gun was recovered, he would be able to match the bullets to it through ballistic testing and analysis.

Malone began with the casing, using a set of tweezers to take it from its packaging and then hold it under a high-powered magnifying glass with a lighted rim. He studied it for a long moment before speaking.

“Cor Bon nine-millimeter,” he said. “And you’re probably looking for a Glock.”

Bosch was expecting him to confirm the size of the round and identify the brand but not to name the make of weapon that had fired the bullet.

“How do you know that?”

“Take a look.”

Malone was on a stool in front of the magnifying glass, which was attached to an adjustable arm anchored to the worktable. He moved it over slightly so Bosch could look over his shoulder. He was holding the back end of the casing into the light and magnification. Bosch could read the words Cor Bon stamped into the outer edge of the cap. At center was a depression made when the gun’s firing pin had struck the primer, firing the bullet.

“You see how the impression is elongated, almost rectangular?” Malone asked.

“Yeah, I see it.”

“That’s Glock. Only Glocks have the rectangle because the firing pin is rectangular. So you are looking for a nine-millimeter Glock. They have several different models that would apply.”

“Okay, that helps. Anything else?”

Malone pulled the glass back over in front of him and turned the bullet casing underneath it.

“You have clear extractor and ejector marks here. You bring me the gun and I think I’ll be able to match it.”

“As soon as I find it. What about the slugs?”

Malone put the casing back in its plastic bag and one by one took out the slugs and studied them under the glass. He looked at each one quickly before putting it down. He then went back to the second one and took another look. Then he shook his head.

“These aren’t much use. They’re not in good shape. The casing is going to be your best bet for comparison. Like I said, you bring me the weapon, I’ll match it up.”

Bosch realized that John Li’s last act was growing in importance. He wondered if the old man could have known just how important it was turning out to be.

Bosch’s quiet contemplation prompted Malone to speak up.

“Did you touch this casing, Harry?”

“No, but Dr. Laksmi at the ME’s sprayed blood off it with water. It was found inside the victim.”

“Inside? That’s impossible. There’s no way a casing could-”

“I don’t mean he was shot with it. He tried to swallow it. It was in his throat.”

“Oh. That’s different.”

“Yeah.”

“And Laksmi would have been gloved up when she found it.”

“Right. What’s up, Ross?”

“Well, I was thinking. We got a flyer about a month ago from latents. It said they were getting ready to start using some new state-of-the-art, electro-something-or-other method of raising prints on brass casings, and they were looking for test cases. You know, to get it into court.”

Bosch stared at Malone. In all his years of detective work he had never heard of fingerprints being raised on a casing that had been fired in the chamber of a gun. Fingerprints were made of oils from the skin. They burned up in the millisecond of explosion in the chamber.

“Ross, you sure you’re talking about spent casings?”

“Yeah, that’s what it said. Teri Sopp is the tech over there handling it. Why don’t you go see her?”

“Give me back the casing and I will.”

Fifteen minutes later Bosch was with Teri Sopp in the SID’s latent fingerprints lab. Sopp was a senior examiner and had been around nearly as long as Harry. They had an easy comfort with each other but Bosch still felt he had to finesse the meeting and lead Sopp to the water.

“Harry, what’s the story?”

It was how she always greeted Bosch.

“The story is I caught a case yesterday down south and today we recovered a single bullet casing from the shooter’s gun.”

Bosch raised his hand, holding out the evidence bag with the casing in it. Sopp took it, held it up and squinted as she studied it through the plastic.

“Fired?”

“Yup. I know it’s a long shot but I was hoping maybe there’d be a print on it. I don’t have much else going on the case at the moment.”

“Well, let’s see. Normally, you’d have to wait your turn but seeing how we go back about five police chiefs?…”

“That’s why I came to you, Teri.”

Sopp sat down at an examination table and, like Malone, used a pair of tweezers to pull the casing from the evidence bag. She first fumed it with cyanoacrylate and then held it under an ultraviolet light. Bosch was watching over her shoulder and had the answer before Sopp voiced it.

“You have a smear here. Looks like somebody handled it after it was fired. But that’s all.”

“Shit.”

Bosch guessed that the smear had most likely been left on the casing when John Li grabbed it and put it in his mouth.

“Sorry, Harry.”

Bosch’s shoulders sagged. He knew it was a long shot, or maybe a no shot, but he was hoping to convey to Sopp how much he had counted on getting a print.

Sopp started to put the casing back into the evidence envelope.

“Tool Marks look at this yet?”

“Yeah, I just came from there.”

She nodded. Bosch could tell she was thinking about something.

“Harry, tell me about the case. Give me the parameters.”

Bosch summarized the case but left out the detail about the suspect they had pulled out of the surveillance video. He made it sound like the investigation was almost hopeless. No evidence, no suspect, no motive other than common robbery. Zip, nada, nothing.

“Well, there’s one thing we might be able to do,” Sopp said.

“What’s that?”

“We’ll be putting a bulletin out by the end of the month on this. We’re gearing up for electrostatic enhancement. This might be a good first case for us.”

“What the hell is electrostatic enhancement?”

Sopp smiled like the kid who still had candy after you were all out.

“It’s a process that was developed in England with the Northamptonshire police by which fingerprints can be raised on brass surfaces such as bullet casings by using electricity.”

Bosch looked around, saw an empty stool at one of the other workstations and dragged it over. He sat down.

“How’s it work?”

“Okay, here’s the deal. When you load bullets into a revolver or a magazine for an automatic, it is a precise process. You hold each bullet between your fingers and you push it in. You apply pressure. It would seem like a perfect setup for leaving prints, right?”

“Well, until the gun is fired?.”

“Exactly. A latent print is essentially a deposit of the sweat that builds between the grooves of your fingerprint. The problem is, when a gun is fired and the casing is ejected, the latent print usually disappears in the explosion. It’s rare that you pull a print off a spent shell, unless it belongs to the person who picked it up off the ground after.”

“All this I know,” Bosch said. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Okay, okay. Well, this process works best if the gun is not immediately fired. In other words, for this process to be successful, you need a situation where maybe the bullet was loaded into the gun but then allowed to sit in there for at least a few days. The longer, the better. Because if it’s sitting in there, the sweat that forms the latents is reacting with the brass. You understand?”

“You mean there’s a chemical reaction.”

“A microscopic chemical reaction. Your sweat is made up of a lot of different things but mostly sodium chloride-salt. It reacts with the brass-corrodes it-and leaves its mark. But we just can’t see it.”

“And the electricity lets you see it.”

“Exactly. We run a twenty-five-hundred-volt charge through the casing, dust it with carbon and then we see it. We’ve run several experiments so far. I’ve seen it work. It was invented by this guy named Bond in England.”

Bosch was growing excited.

“Then, why don’t we do it?”

Sopp spread her fingers in a calming gesture.

“Whoa, hold on, Harry. We can’t just do it.”

“Why not? What are you waiting for, a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the chief or something?”

“No, it’s not that. This kind of evidence and procedure has not been introduced in a California court yet. We’re working with the district attorney on protocols and nobody wants to go out with this for the first time on a case where it’s not a slam-dunk. We have to think of the future. The first time we use this process as evidence will set the precedent. If it’s not the right case, we’ll blow it and it would really set us back.”

“Well, maybe this is the case. Who decides that?”

“It’s first going to be up to Brenneman to pick the case and then he’ll take it to the DA.”

Chuck Brenneman was the commander of the Scientific Investigation Division. Bosch realized that the process of choosing the first case could take weeks, if not months.

“Look, you said you guys in here have been experimenting with it, right?”

“Yeah, we have to make sure we know what we’re doing.”

“Good, then experiment with this casing. See what you come up with.”

“We can’t, Harry. We’re using dummy bullets in a controlled experiment.”

“Teri, I need this. There might be nothing there but then again, the killer’s print might be on that shell. You can find out.”

Sopp seemed to realize that she had been cornered by someone who was not going to go away.

“All right, listen. The next set of experiments is not scheduled till next week. I can’t promise anything but I’ll see what I can do.?”

“Thanks, Teri.”

Bosch filled out the chain-of-evidence form and left the lab. He was excited about the possibility of using the new science to possibly get the killer’s print. It almost felt to him as if John Li had known about electrostatic enhancement all along. The thought sent a different kind of electricity down Bosch’s spine.

As he stepped out of the elevator on the fifth floor he checked his watch and saw that it was time to call his daughter. She would be walking down Stubbs Road to the Happy Valley Academy. If he didn’t get to her now he would have to wait until after school was out. He stopped in the hallway outside the squad room, pulled his phone and hit the speed dial. The transpacific call took thirty seconds to connect.

“Dad! What’s with the picture of a dead person?”

He smiled.

“Hello to you, too. How do you know he’s dead?”

“Um, let’s see. My dad investigates murders and he sends me bare feet on a steel table. And what is this other picture? The guy’s lungs? That is so gross!”

“He was a smoker. I thought you should see that.”

There was a moment of silence and then she spoke very calmly. There was no little girl in her voice now.

“Dad, I don’t smoke.”

“Yeah, well, your mother told me you smell like smoke when you come home from hanging out with your friends at the mall.”

“Yeah, that might be true, but it’s not true that I smoke with them.”

“Then who do you smoke with?”

“Dad, I don’t! My friend’s older brother hangs out sometimes to watch over her. I don’t smoke and neither does He.”

“He? I thought you said your friend was a her.”

She said the name again, this time putting a heavy Chinese accent on it. It sounded like He-yuh.

“He is a her. He is her name. It means ‘river.’”

“Then why don’t you call her River?”

“Because she’s Chinese and so I call her by her Chinese name.”

“Must get like Abbott and Costello. Calling a she He.”

“Like who?”

Bosch laughed.

“Never mind. Forget the lungs, Maddie. If you tell me you don’t smoke, I believe you. But that’s not why I’m calling. The tattoos on the ankles, could you read them?”

“Yes, it’s gross. I have a dead guy’s feet on my phone.”

“Well, you can delete it as soon as you tell me what the tattoos mean. I know you study that stuff in school.”

“I’m not going to delete it. I’m showing my friends. They’ll think it’s cool.”

“No, don’t do that. It’s part of a case I’m working and nobody else should see it. I sent it to you because I thought you could give me a quick translation.”

“You mean in all of the LAPD you don’t have one person who can tell you? You have to call your daughter in Hong Kong for such a simple thing?”

“At the moment, that’s about right. You do what you have to do. Do you know what the symbols mean or not?”

“Yes, Dad. They were easy.”

“Well, what do they mean?”

“It’s like a fortune. On the left ankle the symbols are Fu and Cai, which mean ‘luck’ and ‘money.’ Then on the right side you have Ai and Xi, which is ‘love’ and ‘family?.’”

Bosch thought about this. It seemed to him the symbols were the things that were important to John Li. He had hoped that these things would always walk with him.

Then he thought about the fact that the symbols were located on either side of Li’s Achilles tendons. Perhaps Li had placed the tattoos there intentionally, realizing that the things he hoped for also made him vulnerable. They were also his Achilles heel.

“Hello, Dad?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I’m just thinking.”

“Well, does it help? Did I crack the case?”

Bosch smiled but immediately realized she couldn’t see this.

“Not quite but it helps.”

“Good. You owe me.”

Bosch nodded.

“You’re a pretty smart kid, aren’t you? How old are you now, thirteen going on twenty?”

“Please, Dad.”

“Well, your mother must be doing something right.”

“Not much.”

“Hey, that’s no way to talk about her.”

“Dad, you don’t have to live with her. I do. And it’s not so much fun. I told you when I was in L.A.”

“She’s still seeing somebody?”

“Yeah, and I’m yesterday’s news.”

“It’s not like that, Maddie. It’s just that it’s been a long time for her.”

A long time for me, too, Bosch thought.

“Dad, don’t take her side. To her I’m just in the way all the time. But when I say, fine, I’ll live with Dad, she says no way.”

“You should be with your mother. She’s raised you. Look, in a month I’ll be coming over for a week. We can talk about all of this then. With your mother.”

“Whatever. I gotta go. I’m here at school.”

“All right. Say hello to He the she for me.”

“Funny, Dad. Just don’t send me any more pictures of lungs, okay?”

“Next time it will be a liver. Or maybe a spleen. Spleens photograph real nice.”

“Daaaadd!”

He closed the phone and let her go. He thought about what had been said during the conversation. It seemed to him that the weeks and months between seeing Maddie were getting more difficult. As she became her own person and grew more bright and communicative, he loved her more and missed her all the time. She had just been out to L.A. in July, taking the long flight for the first time on her own. Barely a teenager and already a world traveler, she was wise beyond her years. He’d taken off work and they’d enjoyed two weeks of doing things together, exploring the city. It had been a wonderful time for him and at the end it was the first time she had ever mentioned wanting to live in Los Angeles. With him.

Bosch was smart enough to realize that these sentiments were expressed after two weeks of full-time attention from a father who began each day by asking what she wanted to do. It was far different from the full-time commitment of her mother, who raised her day after day while making a living for them. Still, the toughest day Bosch had ever had as a part-time father was the day he took his daughter back to the airport and put her on the plane to fly home alone. He half expected her to bolt and run, but she got on under protest and then was gone. He’d felt a hollowness inside ever since.

Now his next vacation and trip to Hong Kong wasn’t scheduled for another month and he knew it was going to be a long, tough wait until then.

“Harry, what are you doing out here?”

Bosch turned. His partner, Ferras, was standing there, having come out of the squad room, probably to use the restroom.

“I was talking to my daughter. I wanted some privacy.”

“She all right?”

“She’s fine. I’ll meet you back in the squad.”

Bosch headed toward the door, putting his phone back in his pocket.

11

Bosch got home at eight that night, coming through the door with a to-go bag from the In-N-Out down on Cahuenga.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called out as he struggled with the key, the bag and his briefcase.

He smiled to himself and went directly into the kitchen. He put his briefcase down on the counter, grabbed a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and went out to the deck. Along the way he turned on his CD player, leaving the sliding door open so the music could mingle on the deck with the sound of the 101 Freeway down in the pass.

The deck was positioned with a northeasterly view stretching across Universal City, Burbank and on to the San Gabriel Mountains. Harry ate his two hamburgers, holding them over the open bag to catch drippings, and watched the dying sun change the colors of the mountain slopes. He listened to “Seven Steps to Heaven” off Ron Carter’s Dear Miles album. Carter was one of the most important bassists of the last five decades. He had played with everybody and Bosch often wondered about the stories he could tell, the sessions he’d sat in on and the musicians he knew. Whether on his own recordings or on somebody else’s, Carter’s work always stood out. Harry believed this was because as a bassist he could never really be a sideman. He was always the anchor. He always drove the beat, even if it was behind Miles Davis’s horn.

The song now playing had an undeniable momentum to it. Like a car chase. It made Bosch think about his own chase and the advances that had been made through the day. He was satisfied with his own momentum but uncomfortable with the realization that he had moved the case to a point where he was now reliant on the work of others. He had to wait for others to identify the triad bagman. He had to wait for others to decide whether to use the bullet casing as a test case for their new fingerprint technology. He had to wait for somebody to call.

Bosch was most at home in a case when he was pushing the action himself, setting the track for others to follow. He wasn’t a sideman. He had to drive the beat. And at this juncture he had pushed it just about as far as he could. He started thinking about his next moves and the options were few. He could start hitting Chinese-owned businesses in South L.A. with the photo of the triad bagman. But he knew it would likely be an exercise in futility. The cultural divide was wide. No one would willingly identify a triad member to the police.

Nevertheless, he was prepared to go that route if nothing else broke soon. It would at least keep him moving. Momentum was momentum, whether you found it in music or on the street or in the beat of your own heart.

As the light started to disappear from the sky, Bosch reached into his pocket and pulled out the book of matches he always carried. He thumbed it open and studied the fortune. Since the night he first read it he had taken it seriously. He believed that he was a man who had found refuge in himself. Over time, at least.

His cell rang as he was chewing his last bite. He pulled the phone and checked the screen. The ID was blocked but he answered anyway.

“Bosch.”

“Harry, David Chu. You sound like you’re eating. Where are you?”

His voice was tight with excitement.

“I’m at home. Where are you”

“Monterey Park. We got him!”

Bosch paused for a moment. Monterey Park was a city in the east county where nearly three-quarters of the population was Chinese. Fifteen minutes from downtown, it was like a foreign country with impenetrable language and culture.

“Who have you got?” he finally asked.

“Our guy. The suspect.”

“You mean you got an ID?”

“We got more than an ID. We got him. We’re looking right at him.”

There were several things about what Chu was saying that immediately bothered Bosch.

“First of all, who is we?”

“I’m with the MPPD. They IDed our guy off the video and then took me right to him.”

Bosch could feel the pulse pounding in his temple. No doubt, getting the ID of the triad bagman-if it was legit-was a big step in the investigation. But everything else he was hearing wasn’t. Bringing another police department into the case and moving in on the suspect were potentially fatal mistakes and should never have been even considered without the lead investigator’s knowledge and approval. But Bosch knew he couldn’t go off on Chu. Not yet. He had to stay calm and do his best to contain a bad situation.

“Detective Chu, listen closely to me. Did you make contact with the suspect?”

“Contact? No, not yet. We were waiting for the right moment. He’s not alone right now.”

Thank God for that, Bosch thought but didn’t say.

“Has the suspect seen you?”

“No, Harry, we’re across the street.”

Bosch let out some more air. He was beginning to think that the situation might be salvageable.

“Okay, I want you to hold where you are and tell me what moves you’ve made and where exactly we’re at. How did you get to Monterey Park”

“The AGU has a strong relationship with Monterey Park’s gang detail. Tonight after work I took by the photo of our guy to see if anybody recognized him. I got a positive ID from the third guy I showed it to.”

“The third guy. Who was that?”

“Detective Tao. I’m with him and his partner right now.”

“Okay, give me the name you got.”

“Bo-Jing Chang.”

He spelled the name out.

“So the last name is Chang?” Bosch asked.

“Right. And according to their intel, he’s in Yung Kim-Brave Knife. It fits with the tattoo.”

“Okay, what else?”

“That’s it at the moment. He’s supposedly a low-level guy. All these guys have real jobs. He works at a used-car lot here in MP. He has been here since ’ninety-five and has dual citizenship. No arrest record-over here, at least.”

“And you got a twenty on him right now?”

“I’m watching him play cards. Brave Knife is mostly centered here in MP. And there’s a club here where they like to get together at the end of the day. Tao and Herrera took me.”

Bosch assumed Herrera was Tao’s partner.

“You said you’re across the street?”

“Yeah, the club’s in a little strip mall. We’re across the street. We can see them in there playing cards. We can see Chang with the binoculars.”

“Okay, listen, I’m coming out there. I want you to back away until I get there. Move at least another block away.”

There was a long pause before Chu responded.

“We don’t need to move back, Harry. If we lose track of him he might get away.”

“Listen, Detective, I need you to back away. If he gets away, that will be on me, not you. I don’t want to risk him seeing a police presence.”

“We’re across the street,” Chu protested. “Four lanes.”

“Chu, you’re not listening. If you can see him, then he can see you. Back the fuck away. I want you to move at least a block down the street and wait for me. I’ll be there in less than thirty minutes.”

“This is going to be embarrassing,” Chu said in a near whisper.

“I don’t care what it is. If you’d handled this the right way, you would’ve called me the moment you had an ID on the guy. Instead, you’re out there cowboying my case and I’m going to stop it before you fuck things up.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Harry. I called you.”

“Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Now back away. I’ll call when I’m close. What’s the name of the place?”

After a pause Chu answered in a sulking voice.

“It’s called Club Eighty-eight. It’s on Garvey about four blocks west of Garfield. Take the ten out to-”

“I know how to get there. I’m on my way.”

He closed the phone to end any further dispute and debate. Chu was on notice. If he didn’t back off or control the two Monterey Park officers, then his ass would belong to Bosch in an internal complaint process.

12

Harry was out the door within two minutes. He drove down out of the hills and then took the 101 back through Hollywood into downtown. He hooked up with the 10 and headed east. Monterey Park was another ten minutes in light traffic. Along the way Bosch called Ignacio Ferras at home, apprised him of what was happening and offered him the opportunity to meet up in Monterey Park. Ferras declined, saying it might be better if one of them was fresh in the morning. Besides, he was knee-deep in the forensic analysis of the financial aspects of the case, trying to determine how bad business had gotten for John Li and how badly he might have been entrenched with the triad.

Bosch agreed and closed the phone. He had expected his partner to decline the invitation. His fear of the streets was becoming more and more evident and Bosch was just about out of time, waiting for him to come around. But Ferras seemed to go out of his way to find work that could be done inside the squad room. Paperwork, computer runs and financial backgrounding had become his specialties. Oftentimes Bosch had to recruit other detectives to go outside the building with him, even for simple assignments like interviewing witnesses. Bosch had done his best to give Ferras time to recover, but the situation had reached a point where he had to consider the victims who were not getting what they should get. It was hard to conduct a relentless investigation when your partner was tethered to a desk chair.

Garfield was a main north-south corridor and he got a full view of the city’s commercial district as he headed south. Monterey Park could easily pass for a neighborhood in Hong Kong. The neon, the colors, the shops and the language on the signs were geared toward a Chinese-speaking populace. The only thing missing were the towers rising high above. Hong Kong was a vertical city. Monterey Park was not.

He turned left on Garvey and pulled his phone to call Chu.

“Okay, I’m on Garvey. Where are you?”

“Come down and you’ll see the big supermarket on the south side. We’re in the lot. You’ll pass the club on the north side before you get here.”

“Got it.”

He closed the phone and kept driving, his eyes scanning the neon on the left side. Soon he saw the red 88 glowing above the door of a small club with no other demarcation on it. Seeing the numeral rather than hearing the spoken number from Chu prompted a realization. It was not the address of the place. It was a benediction. Bosch knew from his daughter and his many visits to Hong Kong that 8 was a lucky number in Chinese culture. The numeral symbolized -infinity-the infinity of luck or love or money or whatever it was you wanted in life. Apparently, the members of Brave Knife were hoping for double infinity by putting 88 over their door.

As he drove by he could see light behind the front plate-glass window. The slatted blinds were turned open slightly and Bosch could see about ten men either sitting or standing around a table. Harry kept going and three blocks later pulled into the parking lot of the Big Lau Super Market. He saw a government-model Crown Victoria at the far end of the lot. It looked too new to be LAPD and he figured Chu was riding with the MPPD. He pulled into the space next to it.

Everybody put their windows down and Chu made introductions from the backseat. Herrera was behind the wheel and Tao was riding shotgun. Neither of the Monterey Park officers was close to thirty years old but that was to be expected. The small cop shops in the outlying cities around Los Angeles acted as feeder departments for the LAPD. The cops signed up young, got a few years’ experience and then applied to the LAPD or the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, where carrying the badge was seen as more glamorous and fun and the added experience gave them an inside edge.

“You IDed Chang?” Bosch asked Tao.

“That’s right,” Tao said. “I pulled him over on an FI stop six months ago. When Davy came around with the photo, I remembered him.”

“Where was this?”

While Tao spoke his partner kept his eyes on Club 88 up the street. Occasionally, he raised a pair of binoculars to check out people going or coming more closely.

“I ran across him in the warehouse district down at the end of Garvey. It was late and he was driving a panel van. Looked like he was lost. He let us look and the van was empty but I figure he was going to make a pickup or something. A lot of counterfeit goods go through those warehouses. It’s easy to lose your way in there because there’s so many of them and they all look the same. Anyway, the van wasn’t his. It was registered to Vincent Tsing. He lives in South Pasadena but he’s pretty well known to us as a member of Brave Knife. He’s a familiar face. He has a car lot here in MP and Chang works for him.”

Bosch understood the procedure. Tao had pulled the van over but with no probable cause to search it or to arrest Chang, he was reliant on Chang’s volunteerism. They filled out a field interview card with information he provided and checked the back of the van after being given permission.

“And what, he just volunteered that he was in the Brave Knife triad?”

“No,” Tao said indignantly. “We noted his tattoo and the ownership of the vehicle. We put two and two together, Detective.”

“That’s good. Did he have a DL?”

“He did. But we already checked that address tonight. It’s no good. He moved.”

Bosch glanced back at Chu in the backseat. This meant that if the address on Chang’s driver’s license had been correct, they probably would have already encountered the suspect without Bosch.

Chu looked away from Bosch’s stare. Bosch checked himself and tried to stay cool. If he blew up on them, he would lose all cooperation and the case would suffer for it. He didn’t want that.

“You have the shake card with you?” he asked Tao.

Tao handed a 3 × 5 card out the window and across to Bosch. Harry put the overhead light on and read the information handwritten on the card. Since field interviews had been challenged repeatedly over the years by civil rights groups as unwarranted shakedowns, the information forms filled out by officers were universally referred to as “shake cards.”

Bosch studied the information on Bo-Jing Chang. Most of it had already been relayed to him. But Tao had conducted a very thorough field interview. There was a cell phone number written on the card. It was a watershed moment.

“This number is good”

“I don’t know about now-these guys dump phones all the time. But it was good then. I called it right on the spot to make sure he wasn’t fucking with me. So all I can tell you is that it was good back then.”

“Okay, we have to confirm it.”

“You’re just going to call the guy up and say, how ya doin?’”

“No, you are. Block your ID and call the number in five minutes. If he answers, tell him you’ve got a wrong number. Let me borrow the binocs and, Davy, you come with me.”

“Wait a minute,” Tao said. “What are we doing fucking with the phones”

“If the number’s still good we can go for a wire. Give me the glasses. You call while I’m watching and we confirm, get it?”

“Sure.”

Bosch handed the shake card back to Tao and took the binoculars in return. Chu got out of their car, came around to Bosch’s ride and got in.

Bosch pulled out onto Garvey and headed toward Club 88. He scanned the parking lots, looking for a place to get close.

“Where were you parked before?”

“Up there on the left.”

He pointed to a lot and Bosch turned in, circled around and killed the lights as he pulled into a space that was facing Club 88 across the street.

“Take the glasses and see if he answers his phone,” he told Chu.

As Chu zeroed in on Chang, Bosch studied the entire view of the club, looking for anyone who might be looking out the window in their direction.

“Which one is Chang?” he asked.

“He’s at the left end, next to the guy in the hat.”

Bosch picked him out. But he was too far away for Harry to make any confirmation of Chang as the man in the video from Fortune Liquors.

“You think it’s him or you just going with Tao’s ID?” he asked.

“No, it’s a good ID,” Chu said. “It’s him.”

Bosch checked his watch. Herrera should’ve made the call. He was growing impatient.

“What are we doing, anyway?” Chu asked.

“We’re building a case, Detective. We confirm that number, then we get a warrant for a wire. We start listening to him and we find things out. Who he talks to, what he’s up to. Maybe we hear him talk about Li. Maybe we don’t and we spook him and we see who he calls. We start closing in. The point is, we take our time and do it right. We don’t ride in on horses, shooting up the town.”

Chu didn’t respond. He kept the binoculars locked on his eyes.

“Tell me something,” Bosch said. “Do you trust those two guys, Tao and Herrera?”

Chu didn’t hesitate.

“I trust them. You don’t?”

“I don’t know them, so I can’t trust them. All I know is that you took my case and my suspect and showed everything all around that police department.”

“Look, I was trying to make a break in the case and I did. We got the ID.”

“Yeah, we got the ID and hopefully our suspect doesn’t find out about it.”

Chu lowered the binoculars and looked at Bosch.

“I think you’re just pissed because it wasn’t you.”

“No, Chu, I don’t care who makes the break as long as it’s handled right. Showing my cards to people I don’t know is not my idea of good case management.”

“Man, don’t you trust anybody?”

“Just watch the club,” Bosch responded sternly.

Chu put the binoculars back up as instructed.

“I trust myself,” Bosch said.

“I just wonder if this is something to do with me and Tao. Whether that’s the issue.”

Bosch turned toward him.

“Don’t start that shit again, Chu. I don’t care what you’re wondering. You can go back to AGU and stay the hell out of my case. I didn’t call you out in the first-”

“Chang just took a call.”

Bosch looked at the club. He thought he saw the man Chu had identified as Chang with a phone to his ear. He then dropped his arm.

“He put it away,” Chu said. “The number’s good.”

Bosch backed out of the space and started back to the super-market.

“I still don’t know why we’re fucking around with a phone number,” Chu said. “Why don’t we just go pick the guy up? We got him on tape. Same day, same time. We use it to break him.”

“And what if he doesn’t break? We’re left with nothing. The DA would laugh us right out the door if we went in with just that tape. We need more. That’s what I’m trying to teach you.”

“I don’t need a teacher, Bosch. And I still think we can turn him.”

“Yeah, go home and watch some more TV. Why the fuck would he say a single word to us? These guys are told from day one, you get popped, you say nothing. If you go down, you go down and we’ll take care of you.”

“You told me you never worked a triad case before.”

“I haven’t but some things are universal and this is one of them. You get one shot at these cases. You have to do it right.”

“Okay, so we do it your way. What’s next?”

“We go back to the parking lot and cut your friends loose. We’ll take it from here. It’s our case, not theirs.”

“They’re not going to like that.”

“I don’t care if they like it or not. That’s the way it’s going to be. You figure out a way of letting them down nice. Tell them we’ll bring them back in when we’re ready to make a move on the guy.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. You invited them in, you invite them out.”

“Thanks, Bosch.”

“Any time, Chu. Welcome to homicide.”

13

Bosch, Ferras and Chu sat on one side of the meeting table across from Lieutenant Gandle and Captain Bob Dodds, commander of the Robbery-Homicide Division. Spread across the polished surface between them were the case documents and photographs, most notably the shot of Bo-Jing Chang from the Fortune Liquors security camera.

“I’m not convinced,” Dodds said.

It was Thursday morning, just six hours after Bosch and Chu had ended their surveillance of Chang, with the suspect going to an apartment in Monterey Park and apparently retiring for the night.

“Well, Cap, you shouldn’t be convinced yet,” Bosch said. “That’s why we want to continue the surveillance and get the wire.”

“What I mean is, I’m not convinced it’s the way to go,” Dodds said. “Surveillance is fine. But a wire is a lot of work and effort for long-shot results.”

Bosch understood. Dodds had an excellent reputation as a detective but he was now an administrator and about as far removed from the detective work in his division as a Houston oil executive is from the gas pump. He now worked with personnel numbers and budgets. He had to find ways of doing more with less and never allowing a dip in the statistics of arrests made and cases closed. That made him a realist and the reality was that electronic surveillance was very expensive. Not only did it take double-digit man hours to carefully draft a fifty-plus-page affidavit seeking court permission, but once permission was granted, a wiretap room had to be staffed twenty-four hours a day with a detective monitoring the line. Often a single-number tap led to other numbers needing to be tapped and under the law each line had to have its own monitor. Such an operation quickly sucked up overtime like a giant sponge. With the RHD’s OT budget seriously down because of economic constraints on the department, Dodds was reluctant to give any of it up for what amounted to an investigation of the murder of a south side liquor store clerk. He would rather save it for a rainy day-a big-time media case that might come up and that would demand it.

Dodds, of course, would not say any of this out loud but Bosch knew, just as everyone else in the room knew, that this was the issue the captain wrestled with and which left him unconvinced. It had nothing to do with the particulars of the case.

Bosch took one last shot at convincing him.

“This is the tip of the iceberg, Captain,” he said. “We’re not just talking about a liquor store shooting. This is just a doorway. We could take down a whole triad before this is over.”

“Before this is over? I retire in nineteen months, Bosch. These sorts of things can last forever.”

Bosch shrugged.

“We could call in the bureau, go partners. They’re always up for an international case and they’ve got money to spend on wiretaps and surveillance.”

“But we’d have to share everything,” Gandle said, meaning the spoils of the bust. Headlines, press conferences, everything.

“I don’t like the idea of doing that,” Dodds said as he held up the photo of Bo-Jing Chang.

Bosch threw in his last card.

“What if we did it without overtime?” Bosch asked.

The captain was holding a pen in his hand. It probably reminded him of his authority. He was the one who signed off on things. He twiddled it now as he considered Bosch’s unexpected question but quickly shook his head.

“You know I can’t ask you to do that,” he said. “I can’t even know about that.”

It was true. The department had been sued so many times for unfair labor practices that no one in administration would ever give even tacit approval to detectives working off the clock.

Bosch’s frustration with budgets and bureaucracy finally got the best of him.

“Then, what do we do? Bring Chang in. We all know he’s not going to say a word to us and the case will die right there.”

The captain wiggled his pen.

“Bosch, you know what the alternative is. You work the case until something breaks. You work the witnesses. You work the evidence. There’s always a link. I spent fifteen years doing what you’re doing and you know there is always something. Find it. A wiretap is a long shot and you know it. Legwork is always the better bet. Now, is there anything else?”

Harry felt his face growing red. The captain was dismissing him. What burned was that deep down Bosch knew Dodds was right.

“Thanks, Captain,” he said curtly and stood up.

The detectives left the captain and the lieutenant in the conference room and convened in Bosch’s cubicle. Bosch threw a pen he was carrying down on his desk.

“Guy’s an ass,” Chu said.

“No, he’s not,” Bosch quickly said. “He’s right and that’s why he’s the captain.”

“Then, what do we do?”

“We stay with Chang. I don’t care about overtime and what the captain doesn’t know won’t hurt him. We watch Chang and we wait for him to make a mistake. I don’t care how long it takes. I can make a hobby of it if I have to.”

Bosch looked at the other two, expecting them to decline to participate in a surveillance that would likely go beyond the bounds of the eight-hour day.

To his surprise, Chu nodded.

“I already talked to my lieutenant. I’m detached to this case. I can do it.” Bosch nodded and at first considered that he had been wrong to be so suspicious of Chu. His next thought, however, was that the suspicion was valid and that Chu’s commitment to stay with the case was just a means of remaining close to the investigation and monitoring Bosch.

Harry turned to his partner.

“What about you?”

Ferras reluctantly nodded and gestured toward the conference room across the squad room. Through the glass wall, Dodds could be seen still talking with Gandle.

“You know they know this is what we’re doing,” he said. “They’re not going to pay us and they leave it to us to either step up or let it go. It’s not fucking fair.”

“Yeah, so?” Bosch said. “Life isn’t fair. Are you in or out?”

“I’m in, but with a limit. I’ve got a family, man. I’m not sitting on surveillance all night. I can’t do it-especially for nothing.”

“All right, fine,” Bosch said, even though his tone communicated his disappointment with Ferras. “You do what you can. You handle the inside work and Chu and I will stay with Chang.”

Noting Bosch’s tone, Ferras put a mild protest in his own tone.

“Look, Harry, you don’t know what it’s like. Three kids…you try selling it at home. That you’re going to sit in a car all night watching some triad guy and your paycheck is going to look the same no matter how many hours you’re gone.”

Bosch put his hands up as if to say enough said.

“You’re right. I don’t have to sell it. I just have to do it. That’s the job.”

14

From behind the wheel of his own car, Bosch watched Chang as he performed menial chores at Tsing Motors in Monterey Park. The car lot had formerly been a 1950s-style gas station with two garage bays and an attached office. Bosch was parked a half block away on busy Garvey Avenue and was in no danger of being made. Chu was in his own car half a block past the car lot in the other direction. Using their personal cars for the surveillance was a violation of departmental policy but Bosch had checked with the motor pool and there were no undercover vehicles available. The choice was to use their unmarked detective cruisers, which might as well have been painted black and white for all the camouflage they offered, or to break policy. Bosch didn’t mind breaking policy because he had a six-CD stack in his car. Today he had it loaded with music from his latest discovery. Tomasz Stan´ko was a Polish trumpeter who sounded like the ghost of Miles Davis. His horn was sharp and soulful. It was good surveillance music. It kept Bosch alert.

For almost three hours they had watched their suspect handle his mundane duties on the lot. He had washed cars, greased tires to make them look new, even taken the one prospective customer on a test drive of a 1989 Mustang. And for the past half hour he had been systematically moving each of the three dozen cars on the lot to new positions in an effort to make it appear that the inventory was changing, that there was sales activity and that business was good.

At 4 P.M. “Soul of Things” came out of the stack and Bosch couldn’t help but think that even Miles would grudgingly give Stan´ko his due. Harry was following the groove with his fingers on the steering wheel when he saw Chang go into the small office and change his shirt. When he stepped out he was finished for the day. He got into the Mustang and drove by himself off the lot.

Bosch’s phone immediately buzzed with a call from Chu. Harry killed the music.

“You got him?” Chu asked. “He’s moving.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“Heading up to the ten. You think he’s done for the day?”

“He changed his shirt. I think he’s done. I’ll take the lead and then you be ready to move up.”

Bosch followed five car lengths behind and then caught up as Chang headed west on the 10 toward downtown. He was not going home. Bosch and Chu had followed him the night before to an apartment in Monterey Park-also owned by Vincent Tsing-and had watched the place for an hour after the lights had gone out and they felt comfortable with the belief that he was in for the night.

Now he was heading into L.A. and Bosch’s instincts told him he was carrying out triad business. He sped up and passed by the Mustang, holding his cell phone up to his ear so Chang wouldn’t get a look at his face. He called Chu and told him he was now on point.

Bosch and Chu continued to trade off the point while Chang connected to the 101 Freeway and headed north through Hollywood toward the Valley. Traffic bogged down in the rush-hour crunch and following the suspect was easy. It took Chang nearly an hour to get up to Sherman Oaks, where he finally exited on the Sepulveda Boulevard ramp. Bosch called Chu.

“I think he’s going to the other store,” he told his surveillance partner.

“I think you’re right. Should we call Robert Li and warn him?”

Bosch paused. It was a good question. He had to decide whether Robert Li was in danger. If so, he should be warned. But if he was not in danger, a warning could blow the whole operation.

“No, not yet. Let’s see what happens. If Chang goes into the store, we go in with him. And we’ll step in if things go wrong.”

“You sure, Harry?”

“No, but that’s how we’ll play it. Make sure you make the light.”

They held the connection. The light at the bottom of the ramp had just turned green. Bosch was four cars behind Chang but Chu was at least eight.

Traffic moved slowly and Bosch crept along, watching the light. It turned yellow just as he hit the intersection. He made it but Chu wouldn’t.

“Okay, I got him,” he said into the phone. “No worries.”

“Good. I’ll be there in three minutes.”

Bosch closed the phone. Just then he heard a siren from directly behind him and saw flashing blues in the rearview.

“Shit!”

He looked ahead and saw Chang proceeding south on Sepulveda. He was four blocks from Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor. Bosch quickly pulled to the curb and hit the brake. He opened his door and jumped out. He was holding his badge up as he approached the officer on the motorcycle who had pulled him over.

“I’m on a surveillance! I can’t stop!”

“Talking on a cell phone is illegal.”

“Then write it up and send it to the chief. I’m not blowing a surveillance for this.”

He turned around and went back to his car. He bulled his way back into the traffic and looked ahead for Chang’s Mustang. It was gone. The next traffic signal turned red and he was stopped again. He banged the heel of his hand off the steering wheel and started wondering if he should call Robert Li.

His phone buzzed. It was Chu.

“I’m making the turn. Where are you?”

“I’m only a block ahead of you. I got pulled over by a motor cop for talking on a cell phone.”

“That’s just great! Where’s Chang?”

“Somewhere up ahead. I’m moving now.”

Traffic was slowly moving through the intersection. Bosch wasn’t panicked because the road was so glutted with vehicles that he knew Chang could not have gotten too far ahead. He stayed in his lane, knowing that he might draw attention in Chang’s mirrors if he started jockeying between lanes and cars to move up.

In another two minutes he got to the major intersection of Sepulveda and Ventura Boulevard. He could see the lights of Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor a block further down Sepulveda at the next intersection. He did not see Chang’s Mustang anywhere in front of him. He buzzed Chu.

“I’m at the light at Ventura and don’t see him. He might already be there.”

“I’m one light back. What do we do?”

“I’m going to park and go in. You stay out and look for his car. Buzz me when you see either him or the car.”

“You’re going right to Li?”

“We’ll see.”

As soon as the light turned green Bosch pinned the accelerator and jumped into the intersection, nearly broadsiding a red-light runner. He cruised up the next block and took a right into the market’s parking lot. He didn’t see Chang’s car or any open parking spaces other than the one clearly marked for handicapped motorists. Bosch pulled through the lot into the alley and parked behind a trash bin with a no parking sticker on it. He jumped out and trotted back through the parking lot to the market’s front door.

Just as Bosch was going through the automatic door marked ENTER, he saw Chang coming out the door marked exit. Bosch raised his hand and brushed it through his hair, blocking his face with his arm. He kept going and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

He walked between the two checkout counters. Two women, different from the ones the day before, stood at the cash registers waiting for customers.

“Where’s Mr. Li?” Bosch asked without stopping.

“In the back,” said one woman.

“His office,” said the other.

Bosch called Chu as he was walking quickly down the main aisle to the back of the store.

“He just walked out the front door. Stay with him. I’ll check on Li.”

“Got it.”

Bosch disconnected and pocketed the phone. He followed the same route to Li’s office as he had the day before. When he got there, the office door was closed. He felt adrenaline burst inside him as he reached for the knob.

Bosch pushed the door open without knocking and found Li and another Asian man sitting at the two desks. They were in a conversation that abruptly stopped when the door came open. Li jumped up and Bosch saw immediately that he was physically unharmed.

“Detective!” Li exclaimed. “I was just about to call you! He was here! That man you showed me was here!”

“I know. I was following him. Are you all right?”

“Just scared, that’s all.”

“What happened?”

Li hesitated for a moment to gather his words.

“Sit down and calm down,” Bosch said. “Then you can tell me. Who are you?”

Bosch pointed at the man seated at the other desk.

“This is Eugene, my assistant manager.”

The man stood up and offered his hand to Bosch.

“Eugene Lam, Detective.”

Bosch shook his hand.

“You were here when Chang came in?” he asked.

“Chang?” Li responded.

“That’s his name. The man in the photograph I showed you.”

“Yes, Eugene and I were both here. He just walked into the office.”

“What did he want?”

“He said I had to pay the triad now. He said my father was gone and I had to pay now. He said he would come back in one week and I had to pay.”

“Did he say anything about your father’s murder?”

“He just said that he was gone and now I had to pay.”

“Did he say what would happen if you didn’t pay?”

“He didn’t have to.”

Bosch nodded. Li was right. The threat was implicit, especially after what had happened to Li’s father. Bosch was excited. Chang’s coming to Robert Li widened the possibilities. He was attempting to extort Li and that could lead to an arrest that could ultimately lead to a murder charge.

Harry turned to Lam.

“And you witnessed this-everything that was said?”

Lam was clearly hesitant but then nodded. Bosch thought that maybe he was reluctant to be involved.

“You did or you didn’t, Eugene? You just told me you were here.”

Lam nodded again before responding.

“Yes, I saw the man, but…I don’t speak Chinese. I understand a little bit but not that much.”

Bosch turned to Li.

“He spoke to you in Chinese?”

Li nodded.

“Yes.”

“But you understood him and it was clear he was telling you that you had to start making weekly payments now that your father is gone.”

“Yes, that was clear. But…”

“But what?”

“Are you going to arrest this man? Will I have to appear in court?”

He was clearly scared of the possibility.

“Look, it’s too early to tell whether this ever even leaves this room. We don’t want the guy for extortion. If he killed your father, that’s what we want him for. And I am sure you will do what you need to do to help us put your father’s killer away.”

Li nodded but Bosch could still see the hesitation. Considering what had happened to his father, Robert clearly didn’t want to cross Chang or the triad.

“I need to make a quick call to my partner,” Bosch said. “I’m going to step out and make it, then I’ll be back in here.”

Bosch left the office and closed the door. He called Chu.

“You got him?”

“Yes, he’s heading back to the freeway. What happened?”

“He told Li he had to start making the payments his father had been making. To the triad.”

“Holy shit! We’ve got our case!”

“Don’t get too excited. A case of extortion maybe-and that’s only if the kid cooperates. We’re still a long way from a murder charge.”

Chu didn’t respond and Bosch suddenly felt bad about raining on his excitement.

“But you’re right,” he said. “We’re getting closer. Which way is he headed”

“He’s in the right lane for the southbound one oh one. It looks like he’s in a hurry. He’s tailgating the guy in front of him but it’s not doing him any good.”

It looked like Chang was heading back the way he had come.

“Okay. I’m going to talk to these guys a little longer and then I’ll clear. Call me when Chang stops somewhere.”

“‘These guys’? Who else besides Robert Li?”

“His assistant manager. Eugene Lam. He was in the office when Chang came in and told Li how things were going to be. Only, Chang was speaking Chinese and Lam only knows English. He won’t be a good witness other than to place Chang in the store?’s office.”

“Okay, Harry,” Chu said. “We’re on the freeway now.”

“Stay with him and I’ll call you as soon as I clear,” Bosch said.

Bosch closed the phone and went back into the office. Li and Lam were still at their desks, waiting for him.

“Do you have video surveillance in the store?” he asked first.

“Yes,” Li said. “Same system we have in the south end store. Only we have more cameras in this location. It records in multiplex. Eight screens at once.”

Bosch looked up at the ceiling and the upper walls.

“There is no camera in here, right?”

“No, Detective,” Li said. “Not in the office.”

“Well, I’m still going to need the disc so we can prove Chang came back here to see you.”

Li nodded hesitantly, like a boy being pulled onto the dance floor by somebody he didn’t want to dance with.

“Eugene, would you go get the disc for Detective Bosch?” he said.

“No,” Bosch said quickly. “I need to witness you pulling the disc. Chain of evidence and custody. I’ll go with you.”

“No problem.”

Bosch spent another fifteen minutes in the store. He first watched the playback of the surveillance video and confirmed that Chang had come in and made his way back to Li’s office, then left after three minutes off camera with Li and Lam. He then collected the disc and returned to the office to go over Li’s account of what happened with Chang one more time. Li’s reluctance seemed to grow with Bosch’s more detailed questioning. Harry began to believe that the murder victim’s son would eventually refuse to cooperate with a prosecution. Still, there was another positive aspect to this latest development. Chang’s attempted extortion could be used in other ways. It could provide probable cause. And with probable cause Bosch could arrest Chang and search his belongings for evidence in the murder, whether Li eventually cooperated with a prosecution or not.

As he walked out the store’s automatic door, Bosch was excited. The case had new life. He pulled his phone and checked on the suspect.

“We’re all the way back to his apartment,” Chu said. “No stops. I think he might be in for the night.”

“It’s too early. It’s not even dark.”

“Well, all I can tell you is that he booked it home. He pulled the curtains closed, too.”

“Okay. I’m heading that way.”

“You mind picking me up a tofu dog on the way, Harry?”

“No, you’re on your own there, Chu.”

Chu laughed.

“Figures,” he said.

Bosch closed the phone. Chu had obviously caught the case excitement, too.

15

Chang didn’t come out of his apartment until nine Friday morning. And when he did, he was carrying something that immediately put Bosch on high alert.

A large suitcase.

Bosch phoned Chu to make sure he was awake. They had split the overnight surveillance into four-hour shifts, each man taking a sleeping stint in his car. Chu had the four-to-eight sleep shift but Bosch hadn’t heard from him yet.

“You awake? Chang’s making a move.”

Chu still had sleep in his voice.

“Yeah, what move? You were supposed to call me at eight.”

“He put a suitcase in his car. He’s running. I think he was tipped.”

“To us?”

“No, to buying shares of Microsoft. Don’t play stupid.”

“Harry, who would tip him?”

Chang got into the car and started backing out of his space in the apartment complex parking lot.

“That’s a good goddamn question,” Bosch said. “But if anybody has the answer it’s you.”

“Are you suggesting I tipped off the subject of a major investigation?”

Chu’s voice carried the requisite outrage of the accused.

“I don’t know what you did,” Bosch said. “But you put our business out all over Monterey Park, so now it’s who knows who could’ve tipped this guy. All I know right now is that it looks like he’s splitting town.”

“All over Monterey Park? Are you just making this shit up?”

Bosch followed the Mustang north out of the parking lot, staying a block back.

“You told me the other night that the third guy you showed Chang’s photo to over there made the ID. Okay, so that’s three guys and they all have partners and they all have roll calls and they all talk.”

“Well, maybe this wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t tell Tao and Herrera to back off like we didn’t trust them.”

Bosch checked his mirror for Chu. He was trying not to let his anger distract him from the tail. They couldn’t lose Chang now.

“Move up. We’re heading to the ten. After he gets on, I want you to switch off with me and take the lead.”

“Got it.”

Chu’s voice still held anger. Bosch didn’t care. If Chang had been tipped to the investigation, then Harry would find out who had made the call and he would burn them to the ground, even if it was Chu.

Chang got on the westbound 10 Freeway and soon Chu passed Bosch to take the lead. Bosch glanced over and saw Chu flip him the bird.

Bosch moved over a lane, dropped back and made a call to Lieutenant Gandle.

“Harry, what’s up?”

“We’ve got problems.”

“Tell me.”

“The first one is that our guy put a suitcase in his trunk this morning and is on the ten heading toward the airport.”

“Shit, what else”

“It looks to me like he was tipped, maybe told to get out of town.”

“Or maybe he was told all along to split after he clipped Li. Don’t go off the deep end on that, Harry. Not until you know something for sure.”

It annoyed Bosch that his own lieutenant wasn’t backing him, but he could deal with it. If Chang had been tipped and somewhere along the line the cancer of corruption was in the investigation, Harry would find it. He was sure of that. He let it go for now and concentrated on the choices that involved Chang.

“Do we take Chang down?” he asked.

“You sure he’s flying? Maybe he’s making a delivery or something. How big’s the suitcase?”

“Big. The kind you pack when you’re not coming back.”

Gandle sighed as he put on his plate yet another dilemma and decision to be made.

“Okay, let me talk to some people and I’ll get back to you.”

Bosch assumed that would be Captain Dodds and possibly someone in the district attorney’s office.

“There is some good news, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Holy shit, imagine that,” Gandle exclaimed. “What good news?”

“Yesterday afternoon we tailed Chang to the other store. The one our victim’s son runs in the Valley. He extorted him, told the kid he had to start paying now that his old man was gone.”

“What, this is great! Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“I just did.”

“That gives us probable cause to arrest.”

“To arrest but probably not prosecute. The kid is a reluctant witness. He would have to come in to make the case and I don’t know if he’ll hold up. And either way, it’s not a murder charge. That’s what we want.”

“Well, at the very least, we could stop this guy from getting on a plane.”

Bosch nodded as the beginning of a plan started to form.

“It’s Friday. If we hold on to him and book him late in the day, he wouldn’t get a hearing till Monday afternoon. That would give us at least seventy-two hours to pull a case together.”

“With the extortion being the fallback position.”

“Right.”

Bosch was getting another call beeping in his ear and he assumed it was Chu. He asked Gandle to get back to him as soon as he had run the scenario by the powers that be.

Bosch took the other call without looking at the screen.

“Yeah?”

“Harry?”

It was a woman. He recognized the voice but couldn’t place it.

“Yeah, who’s this”

“Teri Sopp.”

“Oh, hi, I thought it was my partner calling. What’s up?”

“I just wanted you to know I convinced them to use the casing you gave me yesterday in the testing program for electrostatic enhancement. We’ll see if we can raise a print off it.”

“Teri, you’re my hero! Will that be today”

“No, not today. We’re not going back to that till next week. Probably Tuesday.”

Bosch hated to ask for a favor when he had just been given a favor, but he felt he had no choice.

“Teri, is there any way it can be done Monday morning?”

“Monday? I don’t think we’ll get to the actual application un-”

“The reason is, we may have our suspect in jail before the end of the day. We think he’s trying to leave the country and we might need to arrest him. That will give us till Monday to make the case, Teri. We’re going to need everything we can get.”

There was a hesitation before she responded.

“I’ll see what we can do. Meantime, if you arrest him, bring me down a print card so I can make the comparison as soon as I have something on this end. If I have something.”

“You got it, Teri. Thanks a million.”

Bosch closed his phone and searched the freeway in front of him. He saw neither Chu’s car-a red Mazda Miata-nor Chang’s silver Mustang. He realized he had fallen far behind. He hit Chu on speed dial.

“Chu, where are you?”

“South four oh five. He’s going to the airport.”

Bosch was still on the 10 Freeway and saw the 405 interchange up ahead.

“Okay, I’ll catch up.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’ve got Gandle making the call on whether we take Chang down or not.”

“We can’t let him go.”

“That’s what I say. We’ll see what they say.”

“You want me to get my boss involved?”

Bosch almost responded by saying he didn’t want to bring another boss into the mix with the possibility that there was a leak in the pipe somewhere.

“Let’s wait and see what Gandle says first,” he said diplomatically instead.

“You got it.”

Bosch hung up and worked his way through traffic in an effort to catch up. When he was on the overpass that took him from the 10 to the 405, he was able to pick out both Chu’s and Chang’s vehicles half a mile ahead. They were caught in the slowdown where lanes merged.

Switching off lead two more times, Bosch and Chu followed Chang to the LAX exit at Century Boulevard. It was now clear that Chang was leaving the city and they were going to have to stop him. He called Gandle back and was put on hold.

Finally, after a long two minutes Gandle picked up.

“Harry, whadaya got?”

“He’s on Century Boulevard four blocks from LAX.”

“I haven’t been able to talk to anybody yet.”

“I say we take him down. We book him for murder and worst-case scenario is on Monday we file on him for extortion. He’ll get bail but the judge will slap no travel on it, especially after him trying to leave today.”

“Your call, Harry, and I’ll back you.”

Meaning it would still be Bosch who had made the wrong call if by Monday everything fell apart and Chang waltzed out of jail a free man able to leave L.A. and never come back.

“Thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll let you know.”

Moments after Bosch closed his phone Chang turned right into a long-term parking lot that provided a shuttle service to all airport terminals. As expected, Chu called.

“This is it. What do we do?”

“We take him. We wait till he parks and he has that suitcase out of the trunk. We take him down then and we’ll get a look in the suitcase with a warrant.”

“Where?”

“I use this lot when I go to Hong Kong. There are endless rows and shuttle stations where they come pick you up. Let’s get in there and park. We act like we’re travelers and we get him at the shuttle station.”

“Roger that.”

They hung up. Bosch was in the lead at the moment, so he entered the lot directly behind Chang, taking a ticket out of an automatic feeder. The arm rose and he pulled through. He followed Chang down the main parkway and when Chang turned right into a tributary road Bosch kept going, thinking Chu would follow and take the right.

Bosch parked in the first space he saw, then jumped out and doubled back on foot to where Chang and Chu had turned. He saw Chang one lane over, standing behind the Mustang and struggling to pull his big suitcase out of the trunk. Chu was eight cars past him and parked.

Apparently realizing he would look suspicious without luggage in a long-term lot, Chu started walking toward a nearby shuttle stop, carrying a briefcase and a raincoat like a man on a business trip.

Bosch had no props to disguise himself with, so he moved down the center of the parking rows, using the vehicles as cover.

Chang locked his car and lugged the heavy suitcase to the shuttle stop. It was an old piece of luggage without the wheels that are almost standard on all sizes these days. When he got to the shuttle stop, Chu was already standing there. Bosch cut behind a minivan and came out two cars away. This would give Chang little time to recognize that the approaching man should have luggage in the long-term lot.

“Bo-Jing Chang,” Bosch said loudly as he got close.

The suspect jerked his body around to look at Bosch. Up close, Chang looked strong and wide, formidable. Bosch saw his muscles tense.

“You’re under arrest. Please place your hands behind your back.”

Chang’s fight-or-flight response never had a chance to kick in. Chu stepped behind him and expertly clipped one cuff to his right wrist while grabbing hold of the left wrist. Chang struggled for a moment, more in response to the surprise than anything else, but Chu cuffed the other wrist and the arrest was complete.

“What is this?” Chang protested. “What I do?”

He had a strong accent.

“We’re going to talk about all of that, Mr. Chang. Just as soon as we get you back to the Police Administration Building.”

“I have flight.”

“Not today.”

Bosch showed him his badge and ID, and then introduced Chu, making sure to mention that Chu was from the Asian Gang Unit. Bosch wanted to get that percolating in Chang’s head.

“Arrest for what?” the suspect asked.

“The murder of John Li.”

Bosch saw no surprise in Chang’s reaction. He saw him physically go into shut-down mode.

“I want lawyer,” he said.

“Hold on there, Mr. Chang,” Bosch said. “Let us tell you about your rights first?.”

Bosch nodded to Chu, who produced a card from his pocket. He read Chang his rights and asked if he understood them. Chang’s only response was to ask for a lawyer again. He knew the drill.

Bosch’s next move was to call for a patrol unit to transfer Chang downtown, and a tow truck to take his car to the downtown police garage. Bosch was in no hurry at this point; the longer it took to transport Chang downtown, the closer they were to 2 P.M., the cutoff time in felony arraignment court. If they delayed Chang from getting into court, he could be secured as a guest of the city jail through the weekend.

After about five minutes of standing in silence while Chang sat on a bench in the shuttle stop’s shelter, Bosch turned and gestured to the suitcase and spoke to him conversationally, as if the questions and answers didn’t matter.

“That thing looks like it weighs a ton,” he said. “Where were you going?”

Chang said nothing. There was no such thing as small talk when you were under arrest. He stared straight forward and did not acknowledge Bosch’s question in any way. Chu translated the question and got the same non-response.

Bosch shrugged his shoulders like it didn’t matter much to him whether Chang answered or not.

“Harry,” Chu said.

Bosch felt his phone vibrate twice, the signal that he had received a message. He signaled him a few yards away from the shelter so they could talk without Chang hearing.

“What do you think?” Chu asked.

“Well, it’s clear he isn’t going to talk to us and has asked for a lawyer. So that’s that.”

“So what do we do?”

“First of all, we slow things down. We take our time getting him downtown and then we take our time booking him. He doesn’t call his lawyer till he’s been processed and with any luck that won’t be till after two. Meantime, we get warrants. His car, suitcase and his cell phone, if he has it on him. After that, we hit his apartment and his place of work. Wherever the judge lets us go. And we hope like hell we come up with something like the gun by noon Monday. Because if we don’t, he’s probably going to walk.”

“What about the extortion?”

“It gives us PC but it won’t go anywhere if Robert Li doesn’t step up.”

Chu nodded.

“High Noon, Harry. That was a movie. A western.”

“I never saw it,” he said to Chu.

Bosch looked down the long row of parked cars and saw a patrol car make the turn toward them. He waved.

He pulled his phone to check the message. The screen said he had received a video from his daughter.

He would have to check it later. It was very late in Hong Kong and he knew his daughter should be in bed. She was probably unable to sleep and expecting him to respond. But he had work to do. He put the phone away as the patrol car stopped in front of them.

“I’m going to ride in with him,” he said to Chu. “In case he decides to say something.”

“What about your car?”

“I’ll get it later.”

“Maybe I should ride with him instead.”

Bosch looked at Chu. It was one of those moments. Harry knew it would be better for Chu to make the ride with Chang because he knew both languages and he was Chinese. But it would mean Bosch would be ceding some control of his case.

It would also mean he was showing trust in Chu, just an hour after pointing the finger of blame at him.

“Okay,” Bosch finally said. “You ride with him.”

Chu nodded, seeming to understand the significance of Bosch’s decision.

“But take the long way,” Bosch said. “These guys probably work out of Pacific. Go by the division first, then call me. I’ll tell you there’s a change of plans and we’re going to book him downtown. That ought to add an extra hour to the ride.”

“Got it,” Chu said. “That’ll work.”

“You want me to drive your car in?” Bosch asked. “I don’t mind leaving mine here.”

“No, it’s okay, Harry. I’ll leave mine and come get it later. You wouldn’t want to hear what I’ve got on the stereo, anyway.”

“The musical equivalent of tofu hot dogs?”

“To you, probably, yeah.”

“Okay, then I’ll take mine.”

Bosch told the two patrol officers to put Chang in the back of the patrol car and to load the suitcase into the trunk. Harry then got serious with Chu.

“I’m going to put Ferras to work on search warrants for Chang’s property. Any admission from him will help with the PC. Him telling us he had a flight is an admission that goes to his fleeing. Try to make him slip up like that when you’re riding in the back with him.”

“But he already said he wants a lawyer.”

“Make it conversational. Not an interrogation. Try to find out where he was going. That’ll help Ignacio. And remember, stretch everything out. Take the scenic route.”

“Got it. I know what to do.”

“Okay, I’m going to wait here for the tow truck. If you get to the PAB ahead of me, just put Chang in a room and let him stew. Make sure you turn the video on-Ignacio can show you how. You never know, sometimes these guys sit for an hour in a room by themselves and they start confessing to the walls.”

“Got it.”

“Good luck.”

Chu slipped into the back of the patrol car next to Chang and closed the door. Bosch slapped his palm twice on the roof and then watched the cruiser pull away.

16

It was almost one by the time Bosch got back to the squad room. He had waited for the tow truck and then taken his time coming in, stopping at the In-N-Out near the airport for a hamburger on the way. He found Ignacio Ferras in place in his cubicle, working on his computer.

“Where are we at?” he asked.

“I’m almost done with the search warrant app.”

“What are we going for?”

“I have one affidavit going for the suitcase, the phone and the car. I take it that the car is at the OPG?”

“Just towed it in. What about his apartment?”

“I called the DA’s help line and told the woman what we were doing. She suggested two waves. These three first and then we hopefully come up with something that will give us the PC for the apartment. She said the apartment was a stretch with what we have now.”

“Okay, you got a judge waiting on this?”

“Yeah, I called Judge Champagne’s clerk. She’s getting me in as soon as I’m ready.”

It sounded like Ferras had things in order and moving along. Bosch was impressed.

“Sounds good. Where’s Chu?”

“Last I knew he was in the video room, watching the guy.”

Before joining Chu, Bosch stepped into his cubicle and dropped his keys on his desk. He saw that Chu had left Chang’s heavy suitcase there and had bagged the suspect’s other possessions and left them all on the desk. There were evidence bags holding Chang’s wallet, passport, money clip, keys, cell phone and airline boarding pass, which he had apparently printed at home.

Bosch read the boarding pass through the plastic and saw that Chang had an Alaska Airlines ticket for a flight to Seattle. This gave Harry pause because he was expecting to learn that Chang had been headed to China. Flying to Seattle didn’t exactly sell an allegation of attempting to flee the country to avoid prosecution.

He put the bag back down and picked up the bag containing the phone. It would have been easy for him to quickly open the phone and scan the call log for the numbers of Chang’s associates. He might even find a call from a number belonging to a Monterey Park cop or Chu or whoever had tipped Chang off to the investigation surrounding him. Maybe the phone had e-mail or texts on it that would help them build the murder case against Chang.

But Bosch decided to play by the rules. It was a gray area and the department and DA’s office had both issued directives telling officers to seek court approval before viewing data contained in a suspect’s phone. Unless, of course, permission was granted by the suspect. Opening the phone was treated the same as opening the trunk of a car on a traffic stop. You had to do it correctly or whatever you found in that trunk might be taken out of the case by the courts.

Bosch put the phone down. It might contain the key to the case but he would wait for Judge Champagne’s approval. Just as he did so, the phone on his desk buzzed. The caller ID display said XXXXX, meaning it was a call transferred over from Parker Center. He picked up.

“This is Bosch.”

There was no one there.

“Hello. This is Detective Bosch, can I help you?”

“Bosch…you can help yourself.”

The voice was distinctly Asian.

“Who is this?”

“You do yourself the favor and you back off, Bosch. Chang is not alone. We are many. You back the fuck off. If not, there will be consequences.”

“Listen to me, you-”

The caller had hung up. Bosch dropped the phone into its cradle and stared at the empty ID screen. He knew he could go over to the communications center at Parker and pull up the number the call had come from. But he also knew that someone calling to threaten him would have blocked their number, used a pay phone or a throwaway cell. They would not be so stupid as to use a traceable number.

Instead of worrying about that, he concentrated on the timing of the call and its content. Somehow, Chang’s triad associates knew already that he had been picked up. Bosch rechecked the boarding pass and saw the flight was scheduled to take off at eleven-twenty. That meant the plane was still in the air and it couldn’t be that someone waiting in Seattle for Chang would know he wasn’t on the plane. Nevertheless, Chang’s people somehow knew that he was in the hands of the police. They also knew Bosch by name.

Once again dark thoughts entered Bosch’s brain. Unless Chang was meeting a fellow traveler at LAX or was being watched all the while Bosch was watching him, the evidence once more pointed to a leak inside the investigation.

He left the cubicle and walked directly back to the video center. This was a small electronics alcove between the RHD’s two interview rooms. The IRs were wired for sight and sound and the space in the middle was where suspects could be observed on the recording equipment.

Bosch opened the door and found both Chu and Gandle in the room watching Chang on the monitor. Bosch’s entrance made it crowded.

“Anything?” Bosch asked.

“Not a word so far,” Gandle said.

“What about in the car?”

“Nothing,” Chu said. “I tried to get a conversation going and he just said he wanted a lawyer. That killed it.”

“Guy’s a rock,” Gandle said.

“I looked at his plane ticket,” Bosch said. “Seattle doesn’t help us, either.”

“No, I think it does, actually,” Chu said.

“How?”

“I figured he was going to fly to Seattle and go across the border to Vancouver. I have a contact in the RCMP and he was able to check passenger lists for me. Chang’s booked on a flight tonight from Vancouver to Hong Kong. Cathay Pacific Airways. It clearly shows he tried to leave quickly and deceptively.”

Bosch nodded.

“Royal Canadian Mounted Police? You get around, Chu. Nice work.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you tell this to Ignacio? Chang’s attempt to smoke his trail will help with the PC for the search warrant.”

“He knows. He put it in.”

“Good.”

Bosch looked at the monitor. Chang was sitting at a table with his wrists now handcuffed in front of him to an iron ring bolted through the center of the table. His massive shoulders looked ready to burst the seams of his shirt. He was sitting ramrod straight and staring dead-eyed at the wall directly across from him.

“Lieutenant, how long are you comfortable with us stalling this before we book him?”

Gandle looked concerned. He didn’t like being put on the spot with something that could later hit him in the face with blowback.

“Well, I think we’re stretching it. Chu told me you already gave him the scenic tour coming in. You wait too much longer and a judge might take issue with it.”

Bosch looked at his watch. They needed another fifty minutes before allowing Chang to call his lawyer. The booking process involved paperwork, fingerprinting and then the physical transfer of the suspect to jail, at which point he would be given access to a phone.

“Okay, we can start the process. We just keep taking it slow. Chu, you go in and start filling out the sheet with him. If we’re lucky he won’t cooperate and that will just take up more time.”

Chu nodded.

“Got it.”

“We don’t put him into a cell until two at the earliest.”

“Right.”

Chu squeezed between the lieutenant and Bosch and left the room. Gandle started out after him but Bosch tapped him on the shoulder and signaled him to stay. Bosch waited until the door was closed before speaking.

“I just got a phone call. A threat. Somebody told me to back off.”

“Back off what?”

“The case. Chang. Back off everything.”

“How do you know the call was even about this case”

“Because the caller was Asian and he mentioned Chang. Said Chang was not alone, that I needed to back off or there would be consequences.”

“You try to trace it? You think it’s serious?”

“A trace would be a waste of time. And as far as the threat goes, let them come. I’ll be waiting. But the point is, how did they know?”

“Know what?”

“That we picked up Chang. We pull him in and then within two hours one of his asshole buddies from the triad calls up and tells me to back the fuck off. We’ve got a leak, Lieutenant. First Chang is tipped, now they know we grabbed him. Somebody’s talking to-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, we don’t know that, Harry. There could be explanations.”

“Yeah? Then how do they know we have Chang?”

“Could be a lot of reasons, Harry. He had a cell phone. Maybe he was supposed to check in from the airport. Could be anything.”

Bosch shook his head. His instincts told him otherwise. There was a leak somewhere. Gandle opened the door. He didn’t like this conversation and wanted to get out of the room. But he looked back at Bosch before leaving.

“You better be careful with this,” he said. “Until you have something like this nailed down, you be very careful.”

Gandle closed the door behind him, leaving Bosch alone in the room. Harry turned to the video screen and saw that Chu had entered the interview room. He sat down across from Chang with a pen and clipboard, ready to fill out the arrest form.

“Mr. Chang, I need to ask you some questions now.”

Chang did not answer. He showed no recognition in his eyes or body language that he had even heard the question.

Chu followed this with a Chinese translation but again Chang remained mute and motionless. This was no surprise to Bosch. He left the interview room and went back out to the squad, still feeling anxious and upset about the phone-call threat and Gandle’s seeming lack of concern about it or the leak that had to have spawned it.

Ferras’s cubicle was empty now and Bosch assumed he had already left with the search warrant application for his appointment with Judge Champagne.

Everything was riding on the search warrant. They had Chang on the attempted extortion of Robert Li-if Li agreed to file a complaint and testify-but weren’t even close on the murder. Bosch was left hoping for a daisy chain. The first search warrant would yield evidence that would support further search warrants and they would lead to the grand prize-the murder weapon-hidden somewhere in Chang’s apartment or workplace.

He sat down at his desk and thought about calling Ferras to see if the judge had signed the warrant, but he knew it was too soon and that Ferras would call the minute he got the permission for the searches. He pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes. Everything about the case was on hold until the judge signed. All he could do was wait.

But then he remembered he had gotten the video message from his daughter earlier and had not looked at it. He knew his daughter would be long asleep by now-it was after 4 A.M. Saturday in Hong Kong. Unless she was at a sleepover with friends, in which case she might be up all night but wouldn’t want her father calling in, anyway.

He pulled out his phone and opened it. He was still getting used to all the techno bells and whistles on it. On the last day of his daughter’s most recent visit to L.A. they had gone to the phone store and she had selected his-and-her cells, choosing a model that would allow them to communicate on multiple levels. He didn’t use it much for e-mail but he knew how to open and play the thirty-second videos she liked to send. He saved them all and often played them over again.

Bo-Jing Chang temporarily faded away. Concern about the leak receded. Bosch had a smile of anticipation on his face when he pushed the button and opened her latest video message.

17

Bosch stepped into the interview room and left the door open. Chu was in midquestion but stopped and looked up at the intrusion.

“Is he not answering” Bosch asked.

“Won’t say a word.”

“Let me give it a try.”

“Uh, sure, Harry.”

He stood up and Bosch moved to the side so he could leave the room. He handed Bosch the clipboard.

“Good luck, Harry.”

“Thanks.”

Chu left, closing the door behind him. Bosch waited a moment until he was sure he was gone, then moved swiftly around behind Chang. He slammed the clipboard off his head and then grabbed him around the neck with his arms. His rage grew uncontrolled. He locked his arms tightly in the choke hold long outlawed by the department. He felt Chang tense as he realized his air intake had been cut.

“Okay, motherfucker, the camera’s off and we’re in a soundproof room. Where is she? I will kill you right here if-”

Chang reared up from his seat, pulling the anchor bolt of the cuff ring right through the top of the table. He smashed Bosch back against the wall behind them and together they fell to the floor. Bosch kept his grip and cinched it even tighter. Chang fought like an animal, using his feet against one of the anchored legs of the table as leverage and he repeatedly smashed Bosch back into the corner of the room.

“Where is she?” Bosch yelled.

Chang was making grunting sounds but showing no sign of losing power. His wrists were cuffed together but he was still able to swing his arms together back over his head like a club. He was going for Bosch’s face at the same time he was using his body to crush Harry into the corner.

Bosch realized that the choke hold wasn’t going to work and that he had to release and attack. He let go and caught Chang’s wrist on one of his backward swings. He shifted his weight and turned the blow to the side. Chang’s shoulders turned with the shift in momentum and Bosch was able to get on top of him on the floor. Bosch raised his hands together and brought down a hammer blow on the back of Chang’s neck.

“I said, Where is-”

“Harry!”

The voice came from behind him. It was Chu’s.

“Hey!” Chu yelled into the squad room. “Help!”

The distraction allowed Chang to rise up and get his knees under his body. He then pushed up and Bosch was thrown into the wall and then down to the floor. Chu jumped on Chang’s back and was trying to wrestle him to the ground. There were running steps and soon more men squeezed into the tiny room. They piled onto Chang, roughly pinning him to the floor with his face smashed into the corner. Bosch rolled away, trying to catch his breath.

For a moment everyone was silent and the room filled with the sounds of all of the men gasping for breath. Lieutenant Gandle then appeared in the open doorway.

“What the hell happened?”

He leaned forward to look down through the hole in the top of the table. The bolt had obviously not been properly reinforced underneath. One of many kinks that were sure to surface in the new building.

“I don’t know,” Chu said. “I came back to get my jacket and all hell was breaking loose.”

All eyes in the room turned to Bosch.

“They’ve got my daughter,” he said.

18

Bosch stood in Gandle’s office. Not still. He couldn’t stand still. He paced back and forth in front of the desk. The lieutenant had told him twice to sit down but Bosch couldn’t do it. Not with the terror growing inside his chest.

“What’s this about, Harry?”

Bosch pulled his phone and opened it.

“They have her.”

He pushed the play command on the video program, then handed the phone to Gandle, who had sat down behind his desk.

“What do you mean, ‘They have-’”

He stopped as he watched the video.

“Oh, Jesus…Oh, Je-Harry, how do you know this is real?”

“What are you talking about? It’s real. They have her and that guy knows who and where!”

He pointed in the direction of the interview room. He was pacing more quickly now, like a caged tiger.

“How do you do this? I want to see it again.”

Bosch grabbed the phone and restarted the video.

“I need to get in there with him again,” Bosch said as Gandle watched. “I need to make him tell-”

“You’re not going anywhere near him,” Gandle said without looking up. “Harry, where is she, Hong Kong?”

“Yes, Hong Kong, and that’s where he was going. It’s where he’s from and it’s where the triad he’s in is based. On top of that, they called me. I told you. They said there were consequences if-”

“She doesn’t say anything here. Nobody says anything. How do you know it’s Chang’s people?”

“It’s the triad! They don’t have to say anything! The video says it all. They have her. That’s the message!”

“Okay, okay, let’s think this through. They have her and what’s the message? What are you supposed to do?”

“Let Chang go.”

“What do you mean, let him just walk out of here”

“I don’t know. Yeah, kick the case somehow. Lose the evidence or, better yet, stop looking for the evidence. Right now, we don’t have enough to hold him past Monday. That’s what they want, for him to walk. Look, I can’t just stand in here. I have to-”

“We have to get this to forensics. That’s the first thing. Have you called your ex to see what she knows?”

Bosch realized that in his immediate panic upon seeing the video, he had not called his ex-wife, Eleanor Wish. He had first tried to call his daughter. Then when he got no answer he had immediately gone to confront Chang.

“You’re right. Give me that.”

“Harry, it’s got to go to forens-”

Bosch leaned across the desk and grabbed the phone out of Gandle’s hand. He switched over to the phone program and hit a speed dial for Eleanor Wish. He checked his watch while he waited for the call to go through. It was almost 5 a.m. Saturday in Hong Kong. He didn’t understand why he wouldn’t have already heard from Eleanor if their daughter was missing.

“Harry”

The voice was alert. She had not been dragged from sleep.

“Eleanor, what’s going on? Where’s Madeline?”

He walked out of Gandle’s office and headed toward his cubicle.

“I don’t know. She hasn’t called me and doesn’t answer my calls. How do you know what’s going on?”

“I don’t but I got a…a message from her. Tell me what you know.”

“Well, what did her message say?”

“It didn’t say anything. It was a video. Look, just tell me what’s going on there.”

“She didn’t come home from the mall after school. It was Friday, so I let her go with her friends. She usually checks in about six and asks for more time, but this time she didn’t. Then when she didn’t come home I called and she wouldn’t answer my call. I left her a bunch of messages and I got really angry. You know her, she probably got angry back and she didn’t come home. I’ve called her friends and they all claim not to know where she is.”

“Eleanor, it’s after five in the morning there. Did you call the police?”

“Harry…”

“What?”

“She did this once before.”

“What are you talking about?”

Bosch dropped heavily into the seat at his desk and huddled down, holding the phone tight against his ear.

“She stayed with a friend all night to ‘teach me a lesson,’” Eleanor said. “I called the police then and it was all very embarrassing because they found her at her friend’s. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But she and I have been having problems. She’s at that age, you know? She acts much older than she really is. And it seems like she doesn’t like me very much right now. She talks about wanting to live in L.A. with you. She-”

Bosch cut her off.

“Listen, Eleanor, I understand all of that but this is different. Something’s happened.”

“What do you mean?”

Panic flooded her voice. Bosch recognized his own fear in it. He was reluctant to tell her about the video but felt he now had to. She needed to know. He described the thirty seconds of video, leaving nothing out. Eleanor made a high-pitched keening sound that only a mother could make for a lost daughter.

“Oh my God, oh my God.”

“I know, but we’re going to get her back, Eleanor. I-”

“Why did they send it to you and not me?”

He could tell she was starting to cry. She was losing it. He didn’t answer her question because he knew it would only make it worse.

“Listen to me, Eleanor, we need to keep it together. You have to do this for her. You’re there, I’m not.”

“What do they want?, money”

“No…”

“Then, what?”

Bosch tried to speak calmly, hoping it would be contagious over the phone when the impact of his words came through.

“I think it’s a message to me, Eleanor. They’re not asking for money. They’re just telling me that they have her.”

“You? Why? What do they-Harry, what did you do?”

She said the last question in a tone of accusation. Bosch feared it was a question he might be impaled on for the rest of his life.

“I’m on a case involving a Chinese triad. I think-”

“They took her to get to you? How did they even know about her?”

“I don’t know yet, Eleanor. I’m working on it. We have a suspect in cust-”

Again she cut him off, this time with another wail. It was the sound of every parent’s worst nightmare come to life. In that moment Bosch realized what he was going to do. He lowered his voice further when he spoke.

“Eleanor, listen to me. I need you to pull yourself together. You need to start making calls. I’m coming over. I’ll be there before dawn Sunday morning. In the meantime, you have to get to her friends. You have to find out who she was with at the mall and where she went. Anything you can find out about what happened. Do you hear me, Eleanor?”

“I’m hanging up and calling the police.”

“No!”

Bosch looked around and saw that his outburst had drawn attention from across the squad room. After the incident in the interview room, he was already the subject of concern across the whole squad. He slid further down into his seat and crouched over his desk so no one could see him.

“What? Harry, we have to-”

“Listen to me first and then you do what you think you need to do. I don’t think you should call the police. Not yet. We can’t take the chance that the people who have her will know. We might never get her back then.”

She didn’t respond. Bosch could hear her crying.

“Eleanor? Listen to me! Do you want to get her back or not? Get your shit together. You were an FBI agent! You can do this. I need you to work it like an agent until I get there. I’m going to have the video analyzed. In the video, she kicked at the camera and it moved. I saw a window. They might be able to work with it. I’m taking a plane tonight and will come directly to you when I land. You have all of that?”

There was a long moment before Eleanor responded. When she did, her voice was calm. She had gotten the message.

“I have it, Harry. I still think we have to call the Hong Kong police.”

“If that’s what you think, then, fine. Do it. Do you know anybody there? Anybody you can trust?”

“No, but they have a Triad Bureau. They’ve come into the casino.”

Almost twenty years removed from her time as an agent, Eleanor was a professional card player. For at least six years she had been living in Hong Kong and working for the Cleopatra Casino in nearby Macau. All the high rollers from the mainland wanted to play against the gweipo-the white woman. She was a draw. She played with house money, got a cut of the winnings and no part of the losses. It was a comfortable life. She and Maddie lived in a high-rise in Happy Valley and the casino sent a helicopter to pick her up on the roof when it was time to go to work.

Comfortable until now.

“Talk to your people at the casino,” Bosch said. “If there is someone you are told you can trust, then make the call. I need to hang up and get moving here. You’ll hear from me before I fly.”

She answered as if in a daze.

“Okay, Harry.”

“If you come up with something, anything at all, you call me.”

“Okay, Harry.”

“And Eleanor?”

“What?”

“See if you can get me a gun. I can’t take my own over.”

“They put you in prison for guns over here.”

“I know that, but you know people from the casino. Get me a gun.”

“I’ll try.”

Bosch hesitated before hanging up. He wished he could reach out and touch her, somehow try to calm her fears. But he knew that was impossible. He couldn’t even calm his own.

“All right, I’m going to go. Try to stay calm, Eleanor. For Maddie. We stay calm and we can do this.”

“We’re going to get her back, right, Harry?”

Bosch nodded to himself before answering.

“That’s right. We’re going to get her back.”

19

The digital image unit was one of the subgroups of the Scientific Investigation Division and was still located at the old police headquarters at Parker Center. Bosch traversed the two blocks between the old and new buildings like a man running late for a plane. By the time he pushed through the glass doors of the building where he had spent much of his career as a detective he was huffing and there was a shine of sweat on his forehead. He badged his way past the front desk and took the elevator up to the third floor.

SID was in the process of being readied for the move to the PAB. The old desks and work counters remained in place but the equipment, records and personal effects were being boxed up. The process was carefully orchestrated and was slowing the already plodding march of science in crime fighting.

DIU was a two-room suite in the back. Bosch stepped in and saw at least a dozen cardboard boxes in stacks on one side of the first room. There were no pictures or maps on the walls and a lot of the shelves were empty. He found one tech at work in the rear lab.

Barbara Starkey was a veteran who had jumped around among specialties in SID over nearly four decades in the department. Bosch had met her when he was a rookie cop on post guarding the burned-out remains of a house where police had engaged in a major gun battle with members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. The militant radicals had taken credit for the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. Starkey at the time was on the forensics team brought in to determine if the remains of Patty Hearst were amid the debris in the smoking shell of the house. Back then the department had a practice of moving female applicants into positions where physical confrontations and the need to carry a weapon were minimal. Starkey had wanted to be a cop. She ended up in the SID and as such had seen firsthand the explosive growth of technology in the use of crime detection. As she liked to tell the rookie techs, when she started in forensics, DNA were just three letters in the alphabet. Now she was an expert in almost all areas of forensics, and her son, Michael, was in the division as well, working as a blood spatter expert.

Starkey looked up from a twin-screen computer workstation where she was looking at grainy video from a bank robbery. On the screens were double images-one more in focus than the other-of a man pointing a gun at a teller’s window.

“Harry Bosch! The man with the plan.”

Bosch had no time for banter. He approached and got right to the point.

“Barb, I need your help.”

Starkey frowned when she noted the urgency in his voice.

“What’s up, darling?”

Bosch held his phone up.

“I’ve got a video on my phone. I need to blow it up and slow it down to see if I can identify location. It’s an abduction.”

Gesturing toward her screen, Starkey said, “I’m right in the middle of this two eleven in West?-”

“My daughter’s on it, Barbara. I need your help now.”

This time Starkey didn’t hesitate.

“Let me see it.”

Bosch opened the phone and started the video, then handed it to her. She viewed it wordlessly and kept any other nonprofessional response out of her face. If anything, Bosch saw her posture straighten and an aura of professional urgency emerge.

“Okay, can you send this to me?”

“I don’t know. I know how to send it to your phone.”

“Can’t you send e-mail on here with an attachment?”

“I can send e-mail but I don’t know about an attachment. I’ve never tried.”

Starkey walked him through it and he sent Starkey an e-mail with the video as an attachment.

“Okay, now we wait for it to come in.”

Before Bosch could ask how long that would be, there was a chime from her computer.

“There it is.”

Starkey closed her work on the bank robbery, then opened her e-mail and downloaded the video. Soon she had it playing on the left screen. In full-screen size the image was blurred by the pixel spread. Starkey reduced it to half-screen size and it became clearer. Much clearer and harsher than when Bosch had seen the images on his phone. Harry looked at his daughter and tried hard to stay focused.

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Starkey said.

“I know. Let’s not talk about it.”

On the screen, Maddie Bosch, thirteen years old, sat tied to a chair. A gag made of bright red cloth cut tightly across her mouth. She wore her school uniform, a blue plaid skirt and white blouse with the school crest above the left breast. She looked at the camera-her own cell phone camera-with eyes that tore Bosch’s heart out. Desperate and scared were only the first words of description that went through his mind.

There was no sound, or rather no one said anything at first on the video. For fifteen seconds the camera held on her and that was enough. She was simply on display for him. The rage came back to Bosch. And the helplessness.

Then the person behind the camera reached into the frame and pulled the gag temporarily loose from Maddie’s mouth.

“Dad!”

The gag was immediately replaced, muffling what was yelled after that single word and leaving Bosch unable to interpret it.

The hand then dropped down in an attempt to fondle one of the girl’s breasts. She reacted violently, shifting sideways in her bindings and kicking her left leg up at the outstretched arm. The video frame momentarily swung out of control and then was brought back to Maddie. She had fallen over in the chair. For the last five seconds of video the camera just held on her. The screen then went black.

“There’s no demand,” Starkey said. “They’re just showing her.”

“It’s a message to me,” Bosch said. “They’re telling me to back off.”

Starkey didn’t respond at first. She put both her hands on an editing deck attached to the computer’s keyboard. Bosch knew that by manipulating the dials, she was able to move the video forward and backward with precise control.

“Harry, I’m going to go through this frame by frame but it’s going to take some time,” she said. “You’ve got thirty seconds of video here.”

“I can go through it with you.”

“I think it would be better if you let me do my job and then I call you the moment I find anything. Trust me, Harry. I know she’s your daughter.”

Bosch nodded. He knew he had to let her work without breathing down her neck. It would bring the best results.

“Okay. Can we just take a look at the kick and then I’ll leave you to it? I want to see if there’s something there. He moved the camera when she kicked at him and there was a flash of light. Like a window.”

Starkey rolled the video back to the moment Maddie had kicked at her captor. In real time the video at that point had been a blur of sudden movement and light followed by a quick correction back to the girl.

But now in stop-action of frame-by-frame playback, Bosch saw that the camera had momentarily swept left across a room to a window, and then back.

“You’re good, Harry,” Starkey said. “We may have something here.”

Bosch bent down to look over her shoulder and get closer. Starkey backed up the video and rolled it slowly forward again. Maddie’s effort to kick at the outreached arm of her captor made the frame of the video go left and then jog down to the floor. It then came up on the window and corrected to the right again.

The room appeared to be a low-rent hotel room with a single bed and a table and lamp directly behind the chair Maddie was tied to. Bosch noted a dirty beige rug with a variety of stains on it. The wall over the bed was pockmarked with holes left by nails used to hold up wall hangings. The pictures or paintings had possibly been removed to make the location harder to identify.

Starkey backed the video up to the window and froze it there. It was a vertical window with a single pane that opened out like a door. There appeared to be no screen. It had been cranked open in full outward extension and in the glass was a reflection of an urban cityscape.

“Where do you think this is, Harry?”

“Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong?”

“She lives there with her mother.”

“Well…”

“Well, what?”

“It’s just going to make it harder for us to determine location. How well do you know Hong Kong?”

“I’ve been going twice a year for about six years. Just clean this up, if you can. Can you make that part bigger?”

Using the mouse, Starkey outlined the window and then moved a copy of that part of the video over to the second screen. She increased its size and then went through some focusing maneuvers.

“We don’t have the pixels, Harry, but if I run a program that sort of fills in what we don’t have, we can sort of sharpen it. Maybe you’ll recognize something in the reflection.”

Bosch nodded, even though he was behind her.

On the second screen, the reflection in the window became a sharper image with three different levels of depth. The first thing Bosch noted was that the location of the room was up high. The reflection showed a channel down a city street from at least ten stories up, he judged. He could see the sides of buildings lining the street and the edge of a large billboard or building sign with the English letters N-O. There was also a collage of street-level signs with Chinese characters. These were smaller and not as clear.

Beyond this reflection Bosch could see tall buildings in the distance. He recognized one of them by the two white spires on the roof. The twin radio antennas were braced by a crossbar and the configuration always reminded Bosch of football goalposts.

Outlining the buildings was the third level of reflection: a mountain ridgeline broken only by a structure that had a bowl shape -supported by two thick columns.

“Is this helping, Harry?”

“Yeah, yeah, definitely. This has to be Kowloon. The reflection goes across the harbor to Central and then the mountain peak behind it. This building with the goalposts is the Bank of China. Very famous part of the skyline. And that is Victoria Peak behind it. That structure you see up on the top through the goalposts is like a lookout spot next to the peak tower up there. So to reflect all of this I’m pretty sure you’d have to be across the harbor in Kowloon.”

“I’ve never been there, so none of this means anything to me.”

“Central Hong Kong is actually an island. But there are other islands surrounding it and across the harbor is Kowloon and an area called the New Territories.”

“Sounds too complicated for me. But if any of this helps you, then-”

“It helps a lot. Can you print this?”

He pointed to the second screen with the isolated view of the window.

“Sure thing. There’s one thing that’s sort of weird, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You see in the foreground this partial reflection of the sign”

She used the cursor to put a box around the two letters N and O that were part of a larger sign and word in English.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“You have to remember, this is a reflection in the window. It’s like a mirror, so everything is reverse. You understand”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so all the signs should be backwards but these letters aren’t backwards. Of course, with the O you can’t tell. It’s the same forward or backwards. But this N is not backwards, Harry. So when you remember this is a reverse reflection, then that means-”

“The sign is backwards?”

“Yes. It would have to be in order for it to show up correctly in a reflection.”

Bosch nodded. She was right. It was strange but not something he had the time to dwell on at the moment. He knew it was time to get moving. He wanted to call Eleanor and tell her he thought their daughter was being held in Kowloon. Maybe it would connect with something on her end. It was a start at least.

“Can I get that copy?”

“I’m already printing it. It takes a couple minutes because it’s a high-res printer.”

“Got it.”

Bosch stared at the image on the screen, looking for any other details that would help. Most notable was a partial reflection of the building his daughter was held in. A line of air-conditioning units protruded beneath the windows. That meant it was an older building and that might help him draw a bead on the place.

“Kowloon,” Starkey said. “Sounds sort of ominous.”

“My daughter told me it means ‘Nine Dragons.’”

“See, I told you. Who would name their neighborhood Nine Dragons unless they wanted to scare people away?”

“It comes from a legend. During one of the old dynasties the emperor was supposedly just a boy who got chased by the Mongols into the area that is now Hong Kong. He saw the eight mountain peaks that surrounded it and wanted to call the place Eight Dragons. But one of the men who guarded him reminded him that the emperor was a dragon too. So they called it Nine Dragons. Kowloon.”

“Your daughter told you this?”

“Yeah. She learned it in school.”

Silence followed. Bosch could hear the printer working somewhere behind him. Starkey got up and went behind a stack of boxes and pulled the printout of the window reflection out of the high-resolution graphics printer.

She handed it to Bosch. It was a glossy reprint on photo paper. It was as clear as the image on the computer screen.

“Thanks, Barbara.”

“I’m not done, Harry. Like I said, I’m going to look at every frame of that video-thirty per second-and if there’s something else that will help, I’ll find it. I’ll also take the audio track apart.”

Bosch just nodded and looked down at the printout in his hand.

“You’ll find her, Harry. I know you will.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

20

Bosch called his ex-wife on the speed dial while on the way back to the PAB. She answered the call with an urgent question.

“Harry, anything”

“Not a lot but we’re working on it. I am pretty sure the video I was sent was shot in Kowloon. Does that mean anything to you”

“No. Kowloon? Why there?”

“I have no idea. But we may be able to find the place.”

“You mean the police will?”

“No, I mean you and me, Eleanor. When I come. In fact, I still need to book my flight. Have you called anybody? What have you got?”

“I don’t have anything!” she yelled, surprising Bosch. “My daughter is somewhere out there and I don’t have anything! The police don’t even believe me!”

“What are you talking about? You called them?”

“Yes, I called them. I can’t sit here and just wait for you to show up tomorrow. I called the Triad Bureau.”

Bosch felt his insides tighten. He couldn’t bring himself to trust strangers, experts though they might be, with his daughter’s life.

“What did they say?”

“They put my name into the computer and got a hit. The police have a file on me. Who I am, who I work for. And they knew about the time before. When I thought she was kidnapped and it turned out she was staying at her friend’s. So they didn’t believe me. They think she ran away again and her friends are lying to me. They said to wait a day and call back if she doesn’t show up.”

“Did you tell them about the video?”

“I told them but they didn’t care. They said if there is no ransom demand, then it was probably staged by her and her friends to get attention. They don’t believe me!”

She started crying in frustration and fear but Bosch considered the police reaction and thought it could work in their favor.

“Eleanor, listen to me, I think this is good.”

“Good? How could it be good? The police are not even looking for her.”

“I told you before, I don’t want the police. The people who have her will see the police coming a mile away. But they won’t see me.”

“This isn’t L.A., Harry. You don’t know your way like you do there.”

“I’ll find my way and you’ll help me.”

There was a long silence before she responded. Bosch was almost back to the PAB.

“Harry, you have to promise me you’ll get her back.”

“I will, Eleanor,” he responded without hesitation. “I promise you. I’m going to get her back.”

He walked into the main lobby, holding his jacket open so the badge on his belt could be seen at the fancy new reception counter.

“I gotta go up an elevator now,” he said. “I’ll probably lose the connection.”

“Okay, Harry.”

But he stopped outside the elevator alcove.

“I just thought of something,” he said. “Was one of the friends you talked to named He?”

“He”

“Yeah, H-E. Maddie said it means ‘river.’ She told me that was the name of one of the friends she hangs out with in the mall.”

“When was this?”

“You mean when did she tell me? Just a few days ago. Must’ve been Thursday for you. Thursday morning when she was walking to school. I was talking to her and brought up the smoking you mentioned. She-”

Eleanor interrupted by making some kind of sound of disgust.

“What?” Bosch asked.

“That was why she’s treated me like shit lately,” she said. “You ratted me out.”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I sent her a photo I knew would bait her into calling me and the smoking would come up. It worked. And when I told her that she better not be smoking, she mentioned He. She said sometimes at the mall He’s older brother hangs out to watch over her, and he’s the one that smokes.”

“I don’t know any of her friends named He, or her brother. I guess that shows how out of touch I am with my own daughter.”

“Listen, Eleanor, at a time like this we’re both going to be second-guessing everything we ever did or said to her. But it’s a distraction from what we need to be focusing on now. Okay? Don’t get distracted by what you did or didn’t do. Let’s focus on getting her back.”

“Okay. I’ll go back to her friends that I do know. I’ll find out about He and her brother.”

“Find out if the brother’s got any connection to a triad.”

“I’ll try.”

“I’ve gotta go, but one more thing. Did you find out about that other thing yet?”

Bosch nodded to a couple other RHD detectives who walked by on the way to the elevator. They were from Open-Unsolved, which had its own squad room, and didn’t appear to look at him like they knew what was going on. This was good, Bosch thought. Maybe Gandle was keeping it under wraps.

“You mean the gun?” Eleanor asked.

“Yeah, that.”

“Harry, it’s not even dawn here. I’ll get on that when I am not calling people in their beds.”

“Right, okay.”

“I will call people about He, though. Right now.”

“Okay, good. Let’s call each other if we get something.”

“Good-bye, Harry.”

Bosch closed his phone and went into the alcove. The other detectives were gone and he caught the next elevator. On the way up alone he looked at the phone in his hand and thought about it being the predawn hours in Hong Kong. It had been daylight on the video message that had been sent to him. That meant that his daughter could have been abducted as long as twelve hours ago.

There had not been a second message. He pushed the speed dial for her and once again the call went directly to the message. He ended the call and put the phone away.

“She’s alive,” he said to himself. “She’s alive.”

He managed to get to his cubicle in RHD without drawing any attention. There was no sign of Ferras or Chu. Bosch pulled an address book out of a drawer and opened it to a page where he listed airlines that flew LAX to Hong Kong. He knew there were choices in airlines but not a lot of play on time. All the flights would leave between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. and they would land early Sunday morning. Between the fourteen-plus-hour flight and fifteen-hour time difference, all of Saturday would evaporate during the journey.

Bosch first called Cathay Pacific and was able to book a window seat on the first flight out. It would land at 5:25 Sunday morning.

“Harry?”

Bosch swiveled in his seat and saw Gandle standing in the entrance to the cubicle. Bosch signaled him to stand by and finished the call, writing down the record locator code for his ticket. He then hung up.

“Lieutenant, where is everybody?”

“Ferras is still at the courthouse and Chu’s booking Chang.”

“What’s the charge?”

“We’re going with murder as planned. But as of now we’ve got nothing to back it up.”

“What about attempting to flee jurisdiction”

“He added that, too.”

Bosch checked the clock on the wall over the bulletin boards. It was two-thirty. With a murder charge and the additional count of attempting to flee, bail would automatically be set at two million dollars for Chang. Bosch knew that it was too late in the day for a lawyer to get him into arraignment court to seek a reduction in bail or to question the lack of evidence for the charge. With the court offices closed over the weekend it was also unlikely Chang would be released without someone putting up the two million in cash. Collateral for a bond could not be verified until Monday. It all added up to meaning that they had until Monday morning to put together the evidence that would make the murder charge stick.

“How’d Ferras do?”

“I don’t know. He’s still over there and hasn’t called in. The question is, how are you doing? Did forensics look at the video”

“Barbara Starkey is working on it right now. She already got this.”

Bosch pulled the printout of the window from his coat pocket and unfolded it. He explained to Gandle what he thought it meant and how it was the only lead so far.

“It sounded like you were booking a flight. When do you go?”

“Tonight. I get there early Sunday.”

“You lose a whole day?”

“Yeah, but I gain it coming back. I have all of Sunday to find her. I then fly back Monday morning and get here Monday morning. We go to the DA and file on Chang. It will work, Lieutenant.”

“Look, Harry, don’t worry about a day. Don’t worry about the case. Just get over there and find her. Stay as long as you need. We’ll worry about the case.”

“Right.”

“What about the police? Your ex call them in?”

“She tried. They’re not interested.”

“What? Did you send them that video?”

“Not yet. But she told them. They took a pass.”

Gandle placed his hands on his hips. He did this when something bothered him or he needed to show his authority in a situation.

“Harry, what’s going on?”

“They think she’s a runaway and we should wait to see if she turns up. And that’s fine with me because I don’t want the police involved. Not yet.”

“Look, they must have entire units dedicated to the triads. Your ex probably called some dipshit on a desk. You need to bring in some expertise and they have it.”

Bosch nodded like he knew all of this already.

“Boss, I’m sure they have their experts. But the triads have survived for more than three hundred years. They’ve flourished. You don’t do that without having lines into the police department. If it was one of your daughters, would you call a bunch of people in you can’t trust or would you handle it yourself?”

He knew Gandle had two daughters. Both were older than Maddie. One was back east studying at Hopkins and he worried about her all the time.

“I hear you, Harry.”

Bosch pointed at the printout.

“I just want Sunday. I’ve got a bead on that place and I’m going to go over there and get her back. If I can’t find her, I’ll go to the police Monday morning. I’ll talk to their triad people, hell, I’ll even call the local FBI office over there. I’ll do whatever is necessary but I want Sunday to find her myself.”

Gandle nodded and looked down at the floor. It seemed like he wanted to say something else.

“What?” Harry asked. “Let me guess, Chang’s filing a beef on me for trying to choke him out. That’s funny because I ended up getting more than I gave in there. That fucker’s strong.”

“No, no, it’s not that. He still won’t say a goddamn word. It’s not that.”

“Then, what?”

Gandle nodded and picked up the printout.

“Well, I was just going to say that if things don’t work out on Sunday, you call me. The thing about these fuckers is that they never go straight. You know, another time, another crime. We can always get Chang later.”

Lieutenant Gandle was telling Bosch that he was willing to let Chang walk if it would get Harry’s own daughter safely home. On Monday, the DA could be informed that evidence would not be presented in support of the murder charge and Chang would be released.

“You’re a good man, Lieutenant.”

“And, of course, I didn’t just say any of that.”

“It’s not going to come to that, but I appreciate what you didn’t just say. Besides, the sad truth is, we may have to kick this guy loose Monday, anyway. Unless we come up with something over the weekend or on the searches.”

Bosch remembered that he had promised Teri Sopp that he’d get a copy of Chang’s print card to her so she would have it on hand if anything developed during the electrostatic enhancement test of the casing recovered from John Li’s body. He told Gandle to make sure Ferras or Chu got a card over to her. The lieutenant said he’d get it covered. He handed the printout of the video image back to Bosch and told him what he always told him, to stay in touch. Then he headed back to his office.

Bosch set the printout on his desk and put on his reading glasses. He also took a magnifying glass out of a drawer and began a study of every square inch of the image, looking for anything that might help and that he hadn’t seen before. He was ten minutes into it and finding nothing new when his cell rang. It was Ferras and he knew nothing about Bosch’s daughter being abducted.

“Harry, I got it. We got approval to search the phone, suitcase and car.”

“Ignacio, you’re a hell of a writer. Still pitching a perfect game.”

It was true. So far, in the three years they had been partnered, Ferras had yet to write a search warrant application that had been turned down by a judge for insufficient cause. He might be intimidated by the streets but he wasn’t cowed by the courthouse. He seemed to know just what to put in each search application and what to leave out.

“Thanks, Har.”

“You finished over there now?”

“Yeah, I’m coming back.”

“Why don’t you divert over to the OPG and handle that? I’ve got the phone and the suitcase right here. I’ll dive in now. Chu is booking Chang.”

Ferras hesitated. Going to the Official Police Garage to handle the search of Chang’s car would stretch the psychological tether to the squad room.

“Uh, Harry? Don’t you think I should take the phone? I mean, you just got your first multifunction phone about a month ago.”

“I think I can figure it out.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. And I’ve got it right here. You head over to the garage. Make sure they check the door panels and the air filter. I had a Mustang once. You could fit a forty-five in the filter.”

They referred to the staff at the OPG. They would be the ones who tore apart Chang’s car while Ferras supervised the search.

“Will do,” Ferras said.

“Good,” Bosch said. “Call me if you strike gold.”

Bosch closed the phone. He didn’t see the need to tell Ferras about his daughter’s plight yet. Ferras had three young kids of his own and a reminder of how vulnerable he really was wouldn’t be helpful at a time when Bosch was counting on his best work.

Harry pushed back from his desk and swiveled the chair to look at Chang’s big suitcase on the floor against the cubicle’s rear wall. Striking gold meant finding the murder weapon in your suspect’s possession or possessions. Bosch knew Chang was heading to a plane, so there would be no gold in the suitcase. If he still possessed the gun that killed John Li, it would likely be in his car or his apartment. Or it would be long gone.

But the suitcase could still yield valuable information and incriminating evidence-a drop of blood from the victim on the cuff of a shirt, for example. They could get lucky. But Bosch turned back to the desk and decided to go with the cell phone first. He would go for gold of a different kind. Digital gold.

21

It took Bosch less than five minutes to determine that Bo-Jing Chang’s cell phone would be of little use to the investigation. He easily found the call log but it contained a listing of only two recent calls, both to toll-free numbers, and one incoming call. All three were placed or received that morning. There was no record beyond that. The phone’s history had been wiped clean.

Bosch had been told that digital memories lasted forever. He knew a full forensic analysis of the phone could possibly result in the data wiped off the device being rebuilt, but for immediate purposes the phone was a bust. He called the 800 numbers and learned they belonged to Hertz Car Rental and Cathay Pacific Airways. Chang had probably been checking on his itinerary and his plan to drive from Seattle to Vancouver to catch the plane to Hong Kong. Bosch also checked the number from the incoming call in the reverse directory and learned it had come from Tsing Motors, Chang’s employer. While it was unknown what the call was about, the number certainly added no new evidence or information to the case.

Bosch had counted on the phone not only adding to the case against Chang but possibly providing a clue to where he was going in Hong Kong, and therefore to Madeline’s location. The disappointment hit him hard and he knew he had to keep his mind moving in order to avoid dwelling on it. He shoved the phone back into the evidence bag and then cleared his desk so he could place the suitcase on top of it.

He hoisted the suitcase onto the desk, estimating that it weighed at least sixty pounds. He then used a pair of scissors to cut the -evidence tape Chu had placed across the zipper. He found a small padlock was securing the zipper closed. He took out his picks and opened the cheap luggage-store lock in less than thirty seconds. He unzipped the bag and opened it across his desk.

Chang’s suitcase was partitioned equally into halves. He started on the left side, unsnapping two diagonal straps that held the contents in place. He removed and examined every item of clothing piece by piece. He stacked everything on a shelf that ran above his desk and which he had not had time to put anything on since moving into the new building.

It looked like Chang had thrown all his possessions into the suitcase. The clothes were bundled tightly together rather than folded as if for use on a trip. At the center of each bundle was a piece of jewelry or other personal possession. He found a watch in one bundle, an antique baby rattle in another. At the center of the last bundle he opened was a small bamboo frame containing a faded photo of a woman. Chang’s mother, Bosch presumed.

Chang was not coming back, Bosch concluded after searching only half of the suitcase.

The right side was secured with a divider that Bosch unsnapped and folded over the empty half. There were more clothing bundles and shoes here, plus a smaller zippered bag for toiletries. Bosch went through the bundles first, finding nothing unusual in the clothing. The first bundle was wrapped around a small jade statue of a Buddha that had a small bowl attached for burning incense or offerings. The second bundle was wrapped around a sheathed knife.

The weapon was a showpiece with a blade that was only five inches long and a handle made of carved bone. The carving was a depiction of a one-sided battle in which men with knives and arrows and axes slaughtered unarmed men who appeared to be praying instead of fighting. Bosch assumed this was the massacre of the Shaolin monks that Chu had told him was the origin of the triads. The shape of the knife was very much like the shape of the tattoo on the inside of Chang’s arm.

The knife was an interesting find and possibly proof of Chang’s membership in the Brave Knife triad, but it wasn’t evidence of any crime. Bosch put it up on the shelf with the other belongings and kept searching.

Soon he had emptied the suitcase. He felt the lining with his hands to make sure there was nothing hidden beneath and came up empty. He lifted the suitcase, hoping that it might feel too heavy to be empty. But it wasn’t and he was sure he had not missed anything.

The last thing he looked at were the two pairs of shoes Chang had packed. He had given each shoe an initial look but had then put it aside. He knew the only way to really search a shoe was to pull it apart. It wasn’t something he usually relished doing because it rendered them useless, and Bosch didn’t like taking away a man’s shoes, suspect or not. This time he didn’t care.

The first pair he zeroed in on was a pair of work boots he had seen Chang wearing the day before. They were old and worn but he could tell they were well liked. The laces were new and the leather had been oiled on repeated occasions. Bosch pulled the laces out so he could lift the tongue back all the way to look inside. Using the scissors, he pried up the cushioning in the instep to see if it hid any sort of secret compartment in the heel. There was nothing in the first boot but in the second he found a business card had been slipped between two layers of cushioning.

Bosch felt a kick of adrenaline as he put the work boot aside to look at the card. He had finally found something.

It was a two-sided card. Chinese on one side and English on the other. Bosch, of course, studied the English side.

JIMMY FONG

FLEET MANAGER

CAUSEWAY TAXI SERVICE

The card had an address in Causeway Bay and two phone numbers. Bosch sat down for the first time since starting the suitcase search and continued to study the card. He wondered what he had-if he had anything at all. Causeway Bay was not far from Happy Valley and the shopping mall from which his daughter was most likely abducted. And the fact that a business card for a taxi service fleet manager had been hidden in Chang’s work boot was cause to ask why.

He flipped the card over and studied the Chinese side. There were three lines of copy just like on the English side, plus the address and phone numbers in the corner. It appeared that the card said the same thing on both sides.

Bosch made a copy of the card and put the original in an evidence envelope so that Chu could take a look at it. He then moved on to the other pair of shoes. In another twenty minutes he was finished and had found nothing else. He remained intrigued by the business card but disappointed in the lack of returns from the search. He put all the belongings back in the suitcase as close to the way he found it all as he could. He then closed it and pulled the zipper.

After placing the suitcase back on the floor he called his partner. He was anxious to know if the search of Chang’s car had gone better than the search of his phone and suitcase.

“We’re only about halfway through,” Ferras said. “They started with the trunk.”

“Anything?”

“Not so far.”

Bosch felt his hopes beginning to ebb away. Chang was going to come up clean. And that meant he was going to walk the following Monday.

“Did you get anything out of the phone” Ferras asked.

“No, nothing. It was wiped. There wasn’t much in the suitcase either.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, like I said, we haven’t even gotten inside the car yet. Just the trunk. We’ll check the door panels and the air filter, too.”

“Good. Let me know.”

Bosch closed the phone and then immediately called Chu.

“You still at booking?”

“No, man, I cleared booking a half hour ago. I’m in the courthouse, waiting to see Judge Champagne and get the PCD signed.”

After booking a suspect for murder it was required that a judge sign a Probable Cause Detention document, which contained the arrest report and laid out the evidence that led to the suspect’s incarceration. The threshold for probable cause to arrest was much lower than the requirement to file charges. Getting a PCD signed was usually routine but nonetheless Chu had made a good move in going back to the judge who had already signed their search warrant.

“Good. I wanted to check on that.”

“Got it covered. What are you doing there, Harry? What’s going on with your daughter”

“She’s still missing.”

“I’m sorry. What can I do”

“You can tell me about the booking.”

It took Chu a moment to make the jump from Bosch’s daughter to Chang’s booking into the L.A. City Jail.

“There’s nothing really to tell. He never spoke a word. He grunted a few times and that was it. He’s booked into high power and that’s hopefully where he’ll stay till Monday.”

“He’s not going anywhere. Did he call a lawyer?”

“They were going to give him access to the phone after he was inside. So I don’t know for sure but I assume he did.”

“Okay.”

Bosch was just fishing around, looking for anything that might be a direction and would get the adrenaline flowing.

“We got the search warrant,” he said. “But there was nothing on the phone and nothing that helps in the suitcase. There was a business card hidden in one of his shoes. It’s got English on one side and Chinese on the other. I want to see if they match up. I know you don’t read Chinese, but if I faxed it over to the AGU could you have someone there take a look”

“Yeah, Harry, but do it now. That place is probably clearing out.”

Bosch looked at his watch. It was four-thirty on a Friday afternoon. Squad rooms across the city were turning into ghost towns.

“I’ll do it now. Call over there and tell them it’s coming.”

He closed the phone and left the cubicle for the copy office on the other side of the squad room.

Four-thirty. In six hours Bosch had to be at the airport. He knew that once he was on the plane his investigation would go on hold. For the next fourteen-plus hours while in flight, things would continue to happen with his daughter, and with the case, but Bosch would be in stasis. Like a space traveler in the movies who is put into hibernation during the long journey home from the mission.

He knew that he couldn’t get on that plane with nothing. One way or another he had to make a break.

After he faxed the business card over to the Asian Gang Unit, he went back to his cubicle. He had left his phone on his desk and he saw that he had missed a call from his ex-wife. There was no message but he called her back.

“You find something?” he asked.

“I’ve had very long conversations with two of Maddie’s friends. This time they were talking.”

“He?”

“No, not He. I don’t have a full name or a number for her. Neither of the other girls did either.”

“What did they tell you?”

“That He and her brother are not from the school. They met up with them at the mall but they’re not even from Happy Valley.”

“Do they know where they came from?”

“No, but they knew they weren’t local. They said Maddie seemed to get really tight with He and that brought her brother into the picture. This is all in the last month or so. Since she came back from her visit with you, in fact. Both girls said she had put some distance between her and them.”

“What’s the brother’s name?”

“All I got was Quick. He said his name was Quick but like with his sister, they never got a last name.”

“That’s not a lot of help. Anything else”

“Well, they confirmed what Maddie told you, that Quick was the one who smoked. They said he was sort of rough trade. He has tattoos and bracelets and I guess…well, I guess they sort of were attracted to the element of danger.”

“They or Madeline?”

“Maddie mostly.”

“Did they think she might have gone with him Friday after school?”

“They wouldn’t say so but, yes, I think that’s what they were trying to say.”

“Did you ask if Quick ever talked about triad affiliation?”

“I asked that and they said that never came up. It wouldn’t have, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t talk about that here. The triads are anonymous. They’re everywhere but anonymous.”

“Okay.”

“You know, you haven’t really told me what you think is going on. I’m not stupid. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying not to upset me with the facts but I think I need to know the facts now, Harry.”

“Okay.”

Bosch knew she was right. If he wanted her best effort, then she had to know all he knew.

“I’m working the murder of a Chinese man who owned a liquor store in the south end. He made regular protection payments to the triad. He was killed on the same day and during the same hour that the weekly payments were always made. That put us onto Bo-Jing Chang, the triad bagman. The trouble is, that’s all we’ve got. No evidence directly connecting him to the murder. Then today we had to take Chang down because he was about to get on a plane and flee the country. We had no choice. So what it comes down to is we have the weekend to get enough evidence to support the charge or we let him walk and he gets on a plane, never to be seen again.”

“And how does this connect to our daughter”

“Eleanor, I’m dealing with people I don’t know. The Asian Gang Unit in the LAPD and the Monterey Park Police. Somebody got the word to Chang directly or to the triad that we were onto him and that’s why he tried to bolt. They could just as easily have backgrounded me and zeroed in on Madeline as a way to get to me, to send the message that I need to stand down. I got a call. Somebody told me there would be consequences if I didn’t back off Chang. I never dreamed that the consequences would be…”

“Maddie,” Eleanor said, finishing the thought.

A long silence followed and Bosch guessed that his ex-wife was trying to control her emotions, hating Bosch at the same time she had to rely on him to save their daughter.

“Eleanor?” he finally asked.

“What?”

Her voice was clipped but very obviously filled with dark rage.

“Did Maddie’s friends give you an age on this kid Quick?”

“They both said they thought he was at least seventeen. They said he had a car. I spoke to them separately and they both said the same thing about all of this. I think they were telling me what they knew.”

Bosch didn’t respond. He was thinking.

“The mall opens in a couple hours,” Eleanor continued. “I plan to be there with photos of Maddie.”

“That’s a good idea. There might be video. If Quick was a problem in the past, mall security might have a jacket on him.”

“I thought about all of that.”

“Sorry, I know.”

“What does your suspect say about all of this?”

“Our suspect won’t talk and I’ve just been through his suitcase and his phone and we’re still working on the car. So far nothing.”

“What about where he lives”

“As of now we don’t have enough for a search warrant.”

That hung out there for a few moments, both of them knowing that with their daughter missing, legal formalities like search warrant approvals were not going to matter to Bosch.

“I should probably get back to it. I have six hours before I have to be at the airport.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll talk to you as soon-”

“Harry?”

“What?”

“I am so upset I don’t know what to say.”

“I understand, Eleanor.”

“If we get her back, you may never see her again. I just need to tell you that.”

Bosch paused. He knew she was entitled to her anger and everything else. Anger might make her sharper in her efforts.

“There is no if,” he finally said. “I’m going to get her back.”

He waited for her to respond but got only silence.

“Okay, Eleanor. I’ll call you when I know something.”

After closing the phone Bosch turned to his desktop computer and pulled up Chang’s booking photo. He then sent it over to the color printer. He wanted to have a copy of it with him in Hong Kong.

Chu called back after that and said he had gotten the PCD signed and was leaving the courthouse. He said he had spoken to an officer at the AGU who had taken Bosch’s fax and could confirm that both sides of the business card said the same thing. The card came from a manager of a taxi fleet based in Causeway Bay. Completely innocuous on its face, but Bosch was still bothered by the card being secreted in Chang’s shoe and by it being from a business located so close to where his daughter had last been seen by her friends. Bosch had never been a believer in coincidence. He wasn’t going to start now.

Bosch thanked Chu and hung up just as Lieutenant Gandle stopped by his cubicle on the way out.

“Harry, I feel like I’m leaving you in the lurch. What can I do for you?”

“There’s nothing that can be done that is not already being done.”

He updated Gandle on the searches and the lack of solid findings so far. He also reported that there was nothing new on his daughter’s whereabouts or abductors. Gandle’s face turned sour.

“We need a break,” he said. “We really need a break.”

“We’re working on it.”

“When do you leave?”

“In six hours.”

“Okay, you have my numbers. Call me anytime, day or night, if you need anything. I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Thanks, Boss.”

“You want me to stay here with you”

“No, I’m fine. I was about to head over to the OPG and let Ferras go home if he wants to.”

“Okay, Harry, let me know when you find something.”

“Will do.”

“You’ll get her back. I know you will.”

“I know it, too.”

Gandle then awkwardly put his hand out and Bosch shook it. It was probably the first time since they had met three years earlier that they shook. Gandle left then and Bosch surveyed the squad room. It looked like he was the only one left.

He turned and looked down at the suitcase. He knew he had to lug it to the elevator and get it down to evidence lockup. The phone had to be booked into evidence, too. After that, he would leave the building as well. But not for a leisurely weekend at home with the family. Bosch was on a mission. And he would stop at nothing to see it through. Even under Eleanor’s last threat. Even if it meant that saving his daughter might mean he’d never see her again.

22

Bosch waited until dark to break into Bo-Jing Chang’s home. It was a town house with a shared entry vestibule with the adjoining apartment. This offered him cover as he used his picks to turn the dead bolt and then the doorknob lock. As he worked, he felt no guilt and had no second thoughts about the line he was crossing. The searches of the car, suitcase and phone had all been busts and now Bosch was desperate. He wasn’t searching for evidence to make a case against Chang. He was searching for anything that would help him locate his daughter. She was missing for more than twelve hours now and breaking and entering, putting his livelihood and career on the line, seemed like minimal risks compared with what he would face within himself if he didn’t get her back safe.

Once the final pin moved into place, he opened the door and moved quickly into the apartment, closing and relocking the door behind him. The search of the suitcase had told Bosch that Chang had packed for good, that he wasn’t coming back. But he doubted Chang had fit everything into that one suitcase. He had to have left things behind. Things of less personal meaning to him, but possibly of value to Bosch. Chang had printed his boarding pass out at some point before heading to the airport. Since Chang had been under surveillance, Bosch knew he had made no other stops. He was sure there had to be a computer and printer in the apartment.

Harry waited thirty seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before moving from the door. Once he could see reasonably well, he moved into the living room, banging into a chair and almost knocking over a lamp before managing to find the switch and turn it on. He then stepped quickly to a pair of open drapes and pulled them closed across the front window.

He turned from the window and surveyed the room. It was a small living room and dining room combination with a pass-through window to a kitchen in the back. A stairwell on the right went up to a bedroom loft. On initial view, Bosch saw nothing of a personal nature left behind. No computer, no printer. It was just furniture. He quickly searched the room and then moved into the kitchen. Again, the place was barren of personal effects. The cabinets were bare, not even a cereal box left behind. Under the sink was a trash can but it was empty and freshly lined with a plastic garbage bag.

Bosch moved back into the living room and headed for the stairs. There was a light switch at the bottom of the staircase that had a dimmer and controlled a ceiling light in the loft. He turned it on low and then went back to the living room lamp and turned it off.

The loft was sparely furnished with just a queen-size bed and a bureau. There was no desk and no computer. Bosch quickly moved to the bureau and opened and closed every drawer, finding each had been cleared out. In the bathroom, the wastebasket was empty and medicine cabinet bare. He lifted the lid off the toilet tank but found nothing hidden there either.

The place had been cleaned out. It must have been after Chang had left, drawing the surveillance away. Bosch thought about the call from Tsing Motors that had been logged on the suspect’s phone. Maybe he had given Vincent Tsing the all-clear sign and the apartment had been cleared out and cleaned.

Disappointed and feeling that he had been expertly played, Bosch decided to locate the apartment complex’s refuse bin and attempt to find the trash bags that had been taken from the apartment. Maybe they had slipped up and left Chang’s trash behind. A thrown-away note or a scribbled phone number would be helpful.

He was three steps down the stairs when he heard a key hit the front door lock. He quickly turned around and moved back up into the loft and hid behind a support column.

Lights below were turned on and the apartment immediately filled with Chinese voices. His back to the column, Bosch counted the voices of two men and one woman. One of the men was dominating the conversation and whenever the other two spoke, they seemed to be asking questions.

Bosch moved to the edge of the column and risked a look down. He saw the dominant male gesturing to the furnishings. He then opened a closet door beneath the staircase and made a sweeping hand movement. Bosch realized he was showing the place to the couple. It was already for rent.

This told him that sooner or later the three people below would be coming up to the loft. He looked at the bed. It was a bare mattress on top of a thick box spring sitting on a frame a foot off the ground. He decided it was the only place he could possibly hide and not be discovered. He quickly got down to the floor and shimmied under the bed, his chest scraping on the underside of the box spring. He moved to the center and waited, tracking the apartment tour by the voices.

Finally, the entourage headed up the steps to the loft. Bosch held his breath as the couple moved around the room and both sides of the bed. He waited for someone to sit on the bed but that never happened.

Bosch suddenly felt a vibration in his pocket and realized that he had not muted his phone. Luckily the man showing the apartment was continuing what was probably the sales pitch about how great the place was. His voice covered any notice of the low-level vibration. Bosch quickly worked his hand into his pocket and pulled the phone to see if the call was from his daughter’s phone. He would have to answer such a call, no matter the circumstance.

He reached the phone up into the box spring so he could see it. The call was from Barbara Starkey, the video tech, and Bosch hit the call-decline button. That was a callback he could make later.

Opening the phone to check the call had activated the screen. The dim light illuminated the inside of the box spring and Bosch saw a gun jammed behind one of the wooden slats of the frame.

Bosch’s heart kicked its beat up a notch as he stared at the gun. But he decided not to touch it until the apartment was empty again. He closed the phone and waited. Soon he heard the visitors on the staircase going down. It sounded like they took another quick look around the lower level and then left.

Bosch heard the dead bolt being locked from the outside. He then pushed his way out from under the bed.

After waiting a few moments to make sure the rental party was gone for good, he turned the overhead light back on. He moved back to the bed and pushed the mattress off the box spring, leaning it against the rear wall of the loft. He then raised the box spring and leaned it against the mattress. He looked in at the gun, still held in place by the wood framework.

He still could not see it clearly so he pulled his phone again, opened it and used it as a flashlight by holding it in close to the weapon.

“Damn,” he said out loud.

He was looking for a Glock, the gun with a rectangular firing pin. The gun hidden under Chang’s bed was a Smith & Wesson.

There was nothing here of use to him. Bosch realized that once again he was at ground zero. As if to accentuate this point, a tiny beeping sound came from his watch. He reached to his wrist and turned it off. He had set the alarm earlier so as not to risk missing his flight. It was time for him to head to the airport.

After putting the bed back in place, Bosch turned the light off in the loft and quietly slipped out of the apartment. His plan was to go home first to pick up his passport and lock up his gun. He would not be allowed to carry the weapon into a foreign country without that country’s approval-a process that would take days if not weeks. He didn’t plan to pack any clothes because he didn’t see himself having time to change clothes in Hong Kong. He was on a mission that would begin the moment he stepped off the plane.

He got on the 10 west from Monterey Park and planned on taking the 101 up through Hollywood to his home. He started mulling over a plan for directing police to the gun hidden in Chang’s former apartment but as of now there was no probable cause to hit the place. Still, the gun needed to be found and examined. It was of no use to Bosch in the John Li investigation but that didn’t mean Chang had used it for good deeds and philanthropy. It had been used for triad business and it could very likely lead to something.

As he was taking the 101 north along the edges of the civic center, Bosch remembered the call from Barbara Starkey. He checked for a message on his phone and heard Starkey tell him to call her as soon as possible. It sounded like maybe she had made a break. Bosch hit the callback button.

“Barbara, it’s Harry.”

“Harry, yes, I was hoping to get to you before I go home.”

“You should’ve gone home about three hours ago.”

“Yeah, well, I told you I would look at this thing.”

“Thank you, Barbara. It means a lot. What did you find?”

“A couple things. First of all, I have a printout here that is a little sharper if you want it.”

Bosch was disappointed. It sounded like there wasn’t much more than what he already had and she just wanted to let him know there was a clearer picture of the view out the window of the room where his daughter was held. Sometimes, he had noticed, when somebody did a favor for you, they really wanted you to know it. But he decided he would just make do with what he had. A jog in off the freeway to pick up the picture would take too much time. He had a plane to catch.

“Anything else?” he asked. “I have to get to the airport.”

“Yes, I have a couple other visual and audio identifiers that might help you,” Starkey said.

Bosch paid full attention now.

“What are they?”

“Well, one I think might be a train or a subway. Another is a snippet of conversation that is not Chinese. And the last one I think is a silent helicopter.”

“What do you mean silent?”

“I mean literally silent. I have a flash reflection in the window of a helicopter going by, but I don’t have any real audio track to go with it.”

Bosch didn’t respond at first. He knew what she was talking about. The Whisper Jet helicopters that the rich and powerful used to move over and around Hong Kong. He had seen them. Commuting by helicopter wasn’t uncommon but he also knew only a few buildings in each district were allowed to operate landing pads on their roofs. One reason his ex-wife chose the building where she lived in Happy Valley was that it had a helicopter pad on the roof. She could get to the casino in Macau in twenty minutes door-to-door instead of the two hours it would take to leave the building, get to the ferry docks, take a boat across the harbor and then cab or walk from the dock to the casino.

“Barbara, I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said.

He exited on Los Angeles Street and headed over to Parker Center. Because of the late hour, Bosch had his pick of spaces in the garage behind the old police headquarters. He parked and then quickly crossed the street and entered through the back door. The elevator up seemed to take forever, and when he walked into the mostly abandoned SID lab, it had actually been seven minutes since he had closed the phone.

“You’re late,” Starkey said.

“Sorry, thanks for waiting.”

“I’m just giving you a hard time. I know you’re on the run, so let’s just look at this thing.”

She pointed to one of her screens where there was a frozen image of the window from the phone video. It was what Bosch had printed out. Starkey put her hands on the dials.

“Okay,” she said. “Keep your eyes up here at the top of the glass reflection. We didn’t see-or hear-this before.”

She turned one dial slowly, reversing the tape. In the murky glass reflection Bosch saw what he had not seen before. Just as the aim of the camera started its swing back toward his daughter, a helicopter moved across the top of the reflection like a ghost. It was a small black craft with some sort of unreadable insignia on its side.

“Now here it is in real time.”

She backed the video up until the camera was focused on Bosch’s daughter and she was kicking at it. Starkey hit a button and it went by in real time. The camera swung toward the window for a split second and then back. Bosch’s eyes registered the window but never the reflection of the city, let alone a passing helicopter.

It was a good find and Bosch was excited.

“The thing is, Harry, to be in that window that chopper has to be flying pretty low.”

“So it either just took off or it was landing.”

“I think it was ascending. It appears to rise slightly as it crosses the reflection. Nothing you can really see with the eye but I measured it. Considering the reflection shows right to left what is occurring left to right, it would have taken off from a location on the opposite side of the street from the building this video was taken in.”

Bosch nodded.

“Now when I look for an audio track…”

She switched to the other screen where there was an audiograph showing different isolated streams of audio she had taken from the video.

“…and take out as much of the competing sound as I can, I get this.”

She played a track with almost a flatline graph and all Bosch could hear was distant traffic noise that was chopped into waves.

“That’s rotor wash,” she said. “You don’t hear the helicopter itself but it’s disrupting the ambient noise. It’s like a stealth chopper or something.”

Bosch nodded. He had moved a step closer. He now knew his daughter was held in a building near one of the few rooftop helicopter pads in Kowloon.

“That help?” Starkey asked.

“You better believe it.”

“Good. I also have this.”

She played another track and it contained a low hissing sound that reminded Bosch of rushing water. It began, grew louder and then dissipated.

“What is it? Water?”

Starkey shook her head.

“This is with maximum amplification,” she said. “I had to work at this. It’s air. Escaping air. I would say you are talking about an entrance to an underground subway station or maybe a vent through which displaced air is channeled up and out when a train comes into the station. Modern subways don’t make a lot of noise. But there is a lot of air displacement when a train comes through the tunnel.”

“Got it.”

“Your location is up high here. Maybe twelve, thirteen stories, judging by the reflection. So this audio is hard to pinpoint. Could be ground level to this building or a block away. Hard to tell.”

“It still helps.”

“And the last thing is this.”

She played the first part of the video when the camera was holding on Bosch’s daughter and just showing her. She brought up the sound and filtered out competing audio tracks. Bosch heard a muffled line of dialogue.

“What is that?” he asked.

“I think it might be outside the room. I haven’t been able to clean it up any better. It’s muffled by structure and it doesn’t sound Chinese to me. But I don’t think that’s what is important.”

“Then, what is”

“Listen again to the end of it.”

She played it again. Bosch stared at his daughter’s scared eyes while concentrating on the audio. It was a male voice that was too muffled to be understood or translated and then it abruptly ended in what sounded like midsentence.

“Somebody cut him off?”

“Or maybe an elevator door closed and that cut him off.”

Bosch nodded. The elevator seemed like a more likely explanation because there had been no stress in the tone of the voice before the cutoff.

Starkey pointed at the screen.

“So when you find the building, you’ll find this room close to the elevator.”

Bosch stared at his daughter’s eyes for one last and long moment.

“Thank you, Barbara.”

He stood behind her and gave her shoulders a squeeze.

“You got it, Harry.”

“I gotta go.”

“You said you were heading to the airport. Are you going to Hong Kong?”

“That’s right.”

“Good luck, Harry. Go get your daughter.”

“That’s the plan.”

Bosch quickly returned to his car and raced back to the freeway. Rush-hour traffic had thinned out and he made good time as he headed through Hollywood to the Cahuenga Pass and home. He started focusing on Hong Kong. L.A. and everything here would soon be behind him. It would be all about Hong Kong now. He was going to find his daughter and bring her home. Or he was going to die trying.

All his life Harry Bosch believed he had a mission. And to carry out that mission he needed to be bulletproof. He needed to build himself and his life so that he was invulnerable, so that nothing and no one could ever get to him. All of that changed on the day he was introduced to the daughter he didn’t know he had. In that moment he knew he was both saved and lost. He would be forever connected to the world in the way only a father knew. But he would also be lost because he knew the dark forces he faced would one day find her. It didn’t matter if an entire ocean was between them. He knew one day it would come to this, that the darkness would find her and that she would be used to get to him.

That day was now.