Michael Connelly - 9 Dragons

“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.