Nine Dragons (17 page)

“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.