“I understand.”

“Don’t hold anything back, because you never know what might help us.”

“I won’t.”

“Okay, what do you do for a living”

“I take care of my parents.”

“You mean at home? You stay home and take care of your parents”

Now she looked up and right into his eyes. Her pupils were so dark it was hard to read anything in them.

“Yes.”

Bosch realized he might have crossed into a cultural custom and standard he knew nothing about. Mia seemed to read him.

“It is tradition in my family for the daughter to care for her parents.”

“Did you go to school?”

“Yes, I went to university for two years. But then I came home. I cook and clean and keep the house. For my brother, too, though he wants to move to his own place.”

“But as of yesterday, everybody was living together.”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw your father alive?”

“When he left for work yesterday morning. He leaves about nine-thirty. I made him his breakfast.”

“And your mother left then, too?”

“Yes, they always go together.”

“And then your mother came back in the afternoon?”

“Yes, I make the supper and she comes for it. Every day.”

“What time did she come home?”

“She came home at three o’clock. She always does.”

Bosch knew that the family home was in the Larchmont area of the Wilshire District and at least a half-hour drive from the store. The direct route would have been on surface streets the whole way.

“How long before she took the supper and went back to the store yesterday?”

“She stayed about a half hour and then she left.”

Bosch nodded. Everything was jibing with the mother’s story and the timing and everything else they knew.

“Mia, did your father talk about anybody at work he was afraid of? Like a customer or anybody else?”

“No, my father was very quiet. He didn’t talk about work at home.”

“Did he like living here in Los Angeles?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“He wanted to go home to China but he couldn’t.”

“Why not?”?

“Because when you leave you do not come back. They left because Robert was coming.”

“You mean your family left because of Robert?”

“In our province you could only have one child. They already had me and my mother would not put me in the orphanage. My father wanted a son and when my mother became pregnant, we came to America.?”

Bosch did not know the specifics of China’s one-child policies but he was aware of them. It was a population containment plan that resulted in a higher value being placed on male births. Newborn females were often abandoned in orphanages or worse. Rather than giving up Mia, the Li family had left the country for the USA.

“So your father wished all along he could have stayed and kept his family in China?”

“Yes.?”

Bosch decided that he had gathered enough information in this regard. He opened the file and removed the printout of the image from the store camera. He placed it in front of Mia.

“Who is that, Mia?”

Her eyes narrowed as she studied the grainy image.

“I don’t know him. Did he kill my father?”

“I don’t know. You sure you don’t know who he is?”

“I’m sure. Who is he?”

“We don’t know yet. But we’ll find out. Did your father ever talk about the triads?”

“The triads?”

“About having to pay them”

She seemed very nervous about the question.

“I don’t know about this. We didn’t talk about it.”?

“You speak Chinese, right”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever hear your parents talking about it”

“No, they didn’t. I don’t know about this.”

“Okay, Mia, then I think we can stop now.”

“Can I take my mother home?”

“As soon as she’s finished talking to Detective Chu. What do you think will happen with the store now? Will your mother and brother run it”

She shook her head.

“I think it will be closed. My mother will work in my brother’s store now.”

“What about you, Mia? Will anything change for you now?”

She took a long moment to consider this, as if she had not thought about it before Bosch had asked.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Perhaps.”

8

Back in the squad room, Mrs. Li had already finished her interview with Chu and was waiting for her daughter. There was still no sign of Robert Li, and Ferras explained that he called and said he could not get away from his store because his assistant manager had called in sick.

After escorting the two women out to the elevator alcove, Bosch checked his watch and decided there was still time to get out to the Valley and speak to the victim’s son and then get back downtown for the scheduled 2 p.m. autopsy. Besides, he didn’t need to be at the medical examiner’s office for the preliminary procedures. He could roll in late.

It was decided that Ferras would stay behind to work with forensics on the return of evidence gathered the day before. Bosch and Chu would go out to the Valley to talk to Robert Li.

Bosch drove his Crown Vic with 220,000 miles on the odometer. The air conditioner worked but just barely. As they got closer to the Valley the temperature started rising and Bosch wished he had taken his suit jacket off before getting in the car.

Along the way, Chu spoke first and reported that Mrs. Li signed her statement and had nothing new to add to it. She had not recognized the man from the store video and claimed to know nothing about paying off the triad. Bosch then relayed what little information he had gleaned from Mia-ling Li and asked Chu what he knew of the tradition of keeping an adult daughter home to care for her parents.

“She’s a chinderella,” Chu said. “Stays home and does the cooking and cleaning, stuff like that. Almost like a servant to her parents.”

“They don’t want them to get married and leave the house?”

“No, man, it’s free labor. Why would they want her to get married? Then they’d have to hire a maid and a chef and a driver. This way they get them all and don’t have to pay.”

Bosch drove silently for a while after that, thinking about the life Mia-ling Li lived. He doubted anything would change with the death of her father. There was still her mother to care for.

He remembered something relating to the case and spoke again.

“She said the family would probably close the store now and just keep the one in the Valley.”

“It wasn’t making any money, anyway,” Chu said. “They might be able to sell it to somebody in the community and make a little bit.”

“Not much for almost thirty years there.”

“The Chinese immigrant story is not always a happy one,” Chu said.

“What about you, Chu? You’re a success.”

“I’m not an immigrant. My parents were.”

“Were?”

“My mother died young. My father was a fisherman. One time his boat went out and it never came back.”

Bosch was silenced by the matter-of-fact way Chu had told his family tragedy. He concentrated on the drive. Traffic was rough and it took them forty-five minutes to get to Sherman Oaks. Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor was on Sepulveda just a block south of Ventura Boulevard. This put it in an upscale neighborhood of apartments and condominiums below the even more upscale hillside residences. It was in a good location but there didn’t seem to be enough parking. Bosch found a spot on the street in front of a fire hydrant. He flipped down the visor, which had a card clipped to it showing a city vehicle identification code, and got out.

Bosch and Chu had worked out a plan during the long ride up. They believed that if anyone knew about the triad payoffs besides the victim, it would be the son and fellow shop manager, Robert. Why he would not have told the detectives about this the day before was the big question.

Fortune Fine Foods & Liquor was something completely different from its counterpart in South L.A. This store was at least five times bigger and it was brimming with the high-end touches that befit its neighborhood.