Nine Dragons (36 page)

Bosch nodded at the end of the lecture.

“She’ll get whatever she needs. What would I need to do if she wants to go to school here?”

“Just call me. You’re in the district and we have the space. There will be some minor paperwork for enrollment and we’ll have to get her transcript from Hong Kong. You’ll need her birth certificate and that’s about it.”

Bosch realized that his daughter’s birth certificate was probably back in the apartment in Hong Kong.

“I don’t have her birth certificate. I’ll have to apply for one. I think she was born in Las Vegas.”

“You think?”

“I, uh, didn’t meet her until she was already four. At the time, she lived with her mother in Las Vegas and I assume she was born there. I can ask her.”

Bambrough looked even more puzzled.

“I have her passport,” Bosch offered. “It’ll say where she was born. I just haven’t looked at it.”

“Well, we can make do with that until you get the birth certificate. I think the important thing now is to take care of your daughter psychologically. This is a terrible trauma for her. You need to get her talking to a counselor.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

A chime sounded the change of classes and Bambrough stood up. They left the office and walked down a main hallway. The campus was long and narrow because it was built on the hillside. Bosch saw Bambrough still trying to absorb the idea of what Madeline had just been through and survived.

“She’s a strong kid,” he offered.

“She’ll have to be after an experience like that.”

Bosch wanted to change the subject.

“What classes has she been in?”

“She started in math and then had a short break before social studies. They then went to lunch and now she just finished Spanish.”

“She was learning Chinese in Hong Kong.”

“I’m sure this is just one of the many difficult changes she’ll be going through.”

“Like I said, she’s tough. I think she’ll make it.”

Bambrough turned and smiled as she walked.

“Like her father, I assume.”

“Her mother was tougher.”

Children were crowding the hallway as they changed classes. Bambrough saw Bosch’s daughter before he did.

“Madeline,” she called.

Bosch waved. Maddie had been walking with two girls and somehow seemed to be already making friends. She said good-bye to them and rushed over.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hey, how’d you like it?”

“It was all right, I guess.”

Her voice was reserved and Bosch didn’t know if that was because the assistant principal was standing right there with them.

“How was Spanish?” Bambrough asked.

“Um, I was kind of lost.”

“I heard you were learning Chinese. It’s a much more difficult language than Spanish. I think you’d pick up Spanish very quickly here.”

“I guess.”

Bosch decided to save her from the small talk.

“Well, are you ready, Mad? We’re going to go shopping today, remember?”

“Sure, I’m ready.”

Bosch looked at Bambrough and nodded.

“Thank you for doing this, and I’ll be in touch.”

His daughter chimed in with her own thanks and they left the school. Once they got in the car, Bosch started up the hill to their house.

“So, now that we’re alone, what did you really think, Mad?”

“Uh, it was okay. It’s just not the same, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. We can look at some private schools. There’s a few nearby on the Valley side.”

“I don’t want to be a Valley girl, Dad.”

“I kind of doubt you’ll ever be a Valley girl. It’s not about where you go to school, anyway.”

“I think that school will be fine,” she said after some thought. “I met some girls there and they were pretty nice.”

“You sure?”

“I think so. Can I start tomorrow?”

Bosch looked over at her and then back at the curving road.

“That’s sort of fast, isn’t it? You just got here last night.”

“I know, but what am I supposed to do? Sit up in that house and cry all day?”

“No, but I thought if we took things kind of slow, it might—”

“I don’t want to fall behind. School started last week.”

Bosch thought for a few moments about what Bambrough had said about kids knowing what they need to heal. He decided to trust his daughter’s instincts.

“Okay, if you feel it’s right. I’ll call Mrs. Bambrough back and tell her you want to enroll. By the way, you were born in Las Vegas, right?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Yeah, I know. I just wanted to make sure because I have to apply for a copy of your birth certificate. For the school.”

She didn’t respond. Bosch pulled into the carport next to the house.

“So, Vegas, right?”

“Yes! You really didn’t know, did you? God!”

Before he could work up a response, Bosch was saved by his phone. It buzzed and he pulled it out. Without looking at the screen, he told his daughter he had to take it.

It was Ignacio Ferras.

“Harry, I hear you’re back and your daughter’s safe.”

He sure was late getting the news. Bosch unlocked the kitchen door and held it open for his daughter.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

“You’re taking off a few days?”

“That’s the plan. What are you working on?”

“Oh, just a few things. Writing up some summaries on John Li.”

“What for? That one’s over. We blew it.”

“I know but we need to keep the file complete and I need to file the search warrant returns with the court. That’s sort of why I’m calling. You bugged out Friday without leaving any notes on what you found on the searches of the phone and the suitcase. I already wrote up the car search.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t find anything. That’s one reason why we didn’t have a case to file, remember?”

Bosch threw his keys on the dining room table and watched his daughter go down the hall to her room. He felt a growing annoyance with Ferras. At one point he had embraced the idea of mentoring the young detective and teaching him the mission. But he was now finally accepting the reality that Ferras would never recover from being wounded in the line of duty. Physically, yes. Mentally, no. He would never be the full package again. He would be a paper pusher.

“So put down zero returns?” Ferras asked.

Bosch momentarily thought of the business card from the taxi service in Hong Kong. It had been a dead end and wasn’t worth putting into the search warrant return that had to go back to the judge.

“Yeah, zero returns. There was nothing.”

“And nothing on the phone.”

Bosch suddenly realized something but also knew in the same instant that it was probably too late.

“Nothing
on
the phone, but did you guys go to the company for the records?”

Chang might have wiped all call records off his phone but he wouldn’t have been able to touch the records kept by his cellular service carrier. There was a pause before Ferras answered.

“No, I thought—you had the phone, Harry. I thought you contacted the phone company.”

“I didn’t, because I was heading to Hong Kong.”

All phone companies had established protocols for receiving and accepting search warrants. It usually amounted to faxing the signed search warrant to the legal affairs office. It was a simple thing to do but it had fallen through the cracks. Now Chang had been kicked loose and was probably long gone.

“Goddamnit,” Bosch said. “You should’ve been on that, Ignacio.”

“Me? You had the phone, Harry. I thought you did it.”

“I had the phone but you were on point with the warrants. You should have checked it off before you left Friday.”

“That’s bullshit, man. You’re going to blame me for this?”

“I’m blaming us both. Yeah, I could’ve done it, but you
should’ve
made sure it was done. You didn’t because you left early and you let it slide. You’ve been letting the whole job slide, partner.”

There, he had said it.

“And you are full of shit, partner. You mean because I’m not like you, losing my family to the job and then
risking
my family to the job, that I’m letting it slide? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bosch was stunned silent by the verbal shot. Ferras had hit him right in the spot where he had been living for the past seventy-two hours. Finally, he shook it off and came back.

“Ignacio,” he said calmly. “This isn’t working. I don’t know when I will be back into the squad this week, but when I get in there, we’re gonna talk.”

“Fine. I’ll be here.”

“Of course you will. You’re always in the squad. I’ll see you then.”

Bosch closed the phone before Ferras could protest his final shot. Bosch was sure Gandle would back him when he asked for a new partner. He went back into the kitchen to grab a beer and take the edge off the conversation. He opened the refrigerator and started to reach in but stopped. It was too early and he was going to be driving his daughter around the Valley shopping for the rest of the afternoon.

He closed the refrigerator and walked down the hallway. The door to his daughter’s room was closed.

“Maddie, you ready to go?”

“I’m changing. I’ll be out in a minute.”

She had answered in a clipped don’t-bother-me tone. Bosch wasn’t sure what to make of it. The plan was to go to the phone store first and then to get clothing and furniture and a laptop computer. He was going to get his daughter whatever she wanted and she knew it. Yet she was being short with him and he wasn’t sure why. One day on the job as a full-time father and he already felt like he was lost at sea.

41

T
he next morning Bosch and his daughter set to work assembling some of the purchases of the day before. Maddie was not in school yet because her enrollment would take an additional day to wind through public school bureaucracy—a delay Bosch welcomed because it gave them more time together.

First in line for assembly was the computer desk and chair they had bought at the IKEA store in Burbank. They had gone on a four-hour shopping spree, accumulating school supplies, clothes, electronics and furniture, completely filling Bosch’s car and leaving him with a feeling of guilt that was new to him. He knew that buying his daughter everything she pointed at or asked for was a form of trying to buy her happiness—and the forgiveness that would hopefully come with it.

He had moved the coffee table out of the way and spread the parts of the prefabricated desk out on the floor of the living room. The instructions said it could be completely assembled with only one tool—a small Allen wrench that came with it. Harry and Madeline sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to understand the assembly map.

“It looks like you start by attaching the side panels to the desktop,” Madeline said.

“You sure?”

“Yes. See, everything that is marked ‘one’ is part of the first step.”

“I thought that just meant you have one of those parts.”

“No, because there are two side panels and they’re marked ‘one.’ I think it means step one.”

“Oh.”

A phone rang and they looked at each other. Madeline had gotten a new phone the day before and it was once again a match to her father’s. The trouble was, she had not selected an individual ring tone, so both phones sounded the same. She had received a series of calls throughout the morning from friends in Hong Kong whom she had sent messages to, saying she had moved to Los Angeles.

“I think that’s you,” she said. “I left mine in my room.”

Bosch slowly climbed to his feet, his knees aching after being rescued from his cross-legged position. He made it over to the dining room table to grab the phone before the caller hung up.

“Harry, it’s Dr. Hinojos, how are you?”

“Plugging away, Doc. Thanks for the callback.”

Bosch opened the slider and stepped out onto the deck, closing the door behind him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get back until today,” Hinojos said. “Mondays are always brutal here. What’s up?”

Hinojos ran the department’s Behavioral Science Section, the unit that offered psychiatric services to the rank and file. Bosch had known her almost fifteen years, ever since she had been a frontline counselor assigned to evaluate him after he’d had a physical altercation with his supervisor at Hollywood Division.

Bosch kept his voice low.

“I wanted to ask if you would do something for me as a favor.”

“Depends on what it is.”

“I want you to talk to my daughter.”

“Your daughter? Last you talked to me about her she lived with her mother in Vegas.”

“They moved. She’s been living in Hong Kong for the past six years. Now she’s with me. Her mother’s dead.”

There was a pause before Hinojos responded. Bosch got a call-waiting beep in his ear but ignored the second call and waited her out.

“Harry, you know that we see police officers only here, not their families. I can give you a referral for a child practitioner.”

“I don’t want a child shrink. I’ve got the yellow pages here if I wanted that. That’s where the favor comes in. I want her to talk to you. You know me, I know you. Like that.”

“But Harry, it doesn’t work like that here.”

“She got abducted over there in Hong Kong. And her mother got killed trying to get her back. The kid’s got baggage, Doc.”

“Oh, my God! How long ago did this happen?”

“Last weekend.”

“Oh, Harry!”

“Yeah, not good. She needs to talk to somebody besides me. I want it to be you, Doctor.”

Another pause and again Bosch let it play out. There wasn’t much sense in pushing it with Hinojos. Bosch knew that from firsthand experience.

“I guess I could meet her off campus. Has she asked to talk to anyone?”

“She didn’t ask but I told her I wanted her to. She didn’t object. I think she’ll like you. When could you meet with her?”

Bosch was pushing it, he knew. But it was for a good cause.

“Well, I have some time today,” Hinojos said. “I could meet her after lunch. What is her name?”

“Madeline. What time?”

“Could she meet me at one?”

“No problem. Should I bring her there, or will that be a problem?”