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.”