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.

“Can I get that copy?”

“I’m already printing it. It takes a couple minutes because it’s a high-res printer.”

“Got it.”

Bosch stared at the image on the screen, looking for any other details that would help. Most notable was a partial reflection of the building his daughter was held in. A line of air-conditioning units protruded beneath the windows. That meant it was an older building and that might help him draw a bead on the place.

“Kowloon,” Starkey said. “Sounds sort of ominous.”

“My daughter told me it means ‘Nine Dragons.’”

“See, I told you. Who would name their neighborhood Nine Dragons unless they wanted to scare people away?”

“It comes from a legend. During one of the old dynasties the emperor was supposedly just a boy who got chased by the Mongols into the area that is now Hong Kong. He saw the eight mountain peaks that surrounded it and wanted to call the place Eight Dragons. But one of the men who guarded him reminded him that the emperor was a dragon too. So they called it Nine Dragons. Kowloon.”

“Your daughter told you this?”

“Yeah. She learned it in school.”

Silence followed. Bosch could hear the printer working somewhere behind him. Starkey got up and went behind a stack of boxes and pulled the printout of the window reflection out of the high-resolution graphics printer.

She handed it to Bosch. It was a glossy reprint on photo paper. It was as clear as the image on the computer screen.

“Thanks, Barbara.”

“I’m not done, Harry. Like I said, I’m going to look at every frame of that video-thirty per second-and if there’s something else that will help, I’ll find it. I’ll also take the audio track apart.”

Bosch just nodded and looked down at the printout in his hand.

“You’ll find her, Harry. I know you will.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

20

Bosch called his ex-wife on the speed dial while on the way back to the PAB. She answered the call with an urgent question.

“Harry, anything”

“Not a lot but we’re working on it. I am pretty sure the video I was sent was shot in Kowloon. Does that mean anything to you”

“No. Kowloon? Why there?”

“I have no idea. But we may be able to find the place.”

“You mean the police will?”

“No, I mean you and me, Eleanor. When I come. In fact, I still need to book my flight. Have you called anybody? What have you got?”

“I don’t have anything!” she yelled, surprising Bosch. “My daughter is somewhere out there and I don’t have anything! The police don’t even believe me!”

“What are you talking about? You called them?”

“Yes, I called them. I can’t sit here and just wait for you to show up tomorrow. I called the Triad Bureau.”

Bosch felt his insides tighten. He couldn’t bring himself to trust strangers, experts though they might be, with his daughter’s life.

“What did they say?”

“They put my name into the computer and got a hit. The police have a file on me. Who I am, who I work for. And they knew about the time before. When I thought she was kidnapped and it turned out she was staying at her friend’s. So they didn’t believe me. They think she ran away again and her friends are lying to me. They said to wait a day and call back if she doesn’t show up.”

“Did you tell them about the video?”

“I told them but they didn’t care. They said if there is no ransom demand, then it was probably staged by her and her friends to get attention. They don’t believe me!”