Michael Connelly - 9 Dragons

“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”