Nine Dragons (18 page)

21

I
t 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.”