22

Bosch waited until dark to break into Bo-Jing Chang’s home. It was a town house with a shared entry vestibule with the adjoining apartment. This offered him cover as he used his picks to turn the dead bolt and then the doorknob lock. As he worked, he felt no guilt and had no second thoughts about the line he was crossing. The searches of the car, suitcase and phone had all been busts and now Bosch was desperate. He wasn’t searching for evidence to make a case against Chang. He was searching for anything that would help him locate his daughter. She was missing for more than twelve hours now and breaking and entering, putting his livelihood and career on the line, seemed like minimal risks compared with what he would face within himself if he didn’t get her back safe.

Once the final pin moved into place, he opened the door and moved quickly into the apartment, closing and relocking the door behind him. The search of the suitcase had told Bosch that Chang had packed for good, that he wasn’t coming back. But he doubted Chang had fit everything into that one suitcase. He had to have left things behind. Things of less personal meaning to him, but possibly of value to Bosch. Chang had printed his boarding pass out at some point before heading to the airport. Since Chang had been under surveillance, Bosch knew he had made no other stops. He was sure there had to be a computer and printer in the apartment.

Harry waited thirty seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before moving from the door. Once he could see reasonably well, he moved into the living room, banging into a chair and almost knocking over a lamp before managing to find the switch and turn it on. He then stepped quickly to a pair of open drapes and pulled them closed across the front window.

He turned from the window and surveyed the room. It was a small living room and dining room combination with a pass-through window to a kitchen in the back. A stairwell on the right went up to a bedroom loft. On initial view, Bosch saw nothing of a personal nature left behind. No computer, no printer. It was just furniture. He quickly searched the room and then moved into the kitchen. Again, the place was barren of personal effects. The cabinets were bare, not even a cereal box left behind. Under the sink was a trash can but it was empty and freshly lined with a plastic garbage bag.

Bosch moved back into the living room and headed for the stairs. There was a light switch at the bottom of the staircase that had a dimmer and controlled a ceiling light in the loft. He turned it on low and then went back to the living room lamp and turned it off.

The loft was sparely furnished with just a queen-size bed and a bureau. There was no desk and no computer. Bosch quickly moved to the bureau and opened and closed every drawer, finding each had been cleared out. In the bathroom, the wastebasket was empty and medicine cabinet bare. He lifted the lid off the toilet tank but found nothing hidden there either.

The place had been cleaned out. It must have been after Chang had left, drawing the surveillance away. Bosch thought about the call from Tsing Motors that had been logged on the suspect’s phone. Maybe he had given Vincent Tsing the all-clear sign and the apartment had been cleared out and cleaned.

Disappointed and feeling that he had been expertly played, Bosch decided to locate the apartment complex’s refuse bin and attempt to find the trash bags that had been taken from the apartment. Maybe they had slipped up and left Chang’s trash behind. A thrown-away note or a scribbled phone number would be helpful.

He was three steps down the stairs when he heard a key hit the front door lock. He quickly turned around and moved back up into the loft and hid behind a support column.

Lights below were turned on and the apartment immediately filled with Chinese voices. His back to the column, Bosch counted the voices of two men and one woman. One of the men was dominating the conversation and whenever the other two spoke, they seemed to be asking questions.

Bosch moved to the edge of the column and risked a look down. He saw the dominant male gesturing to the furnishings. He then opened a closet door beneath the staircase and made a sweeping hand movement. Bosch realized he was showing the place to the couple. It was already for rent.

This told him that sooner or later the three people below would be coming up to the loft. He looked at the bed. It was a bare mattress on top of a thick box spring sitting on a frame a foot off the ground. He decided it was the only place he could possibly hide and not be discovered. He quickly got down to the floor and shimmied under the bed, his chest scraping on the underside of the box spring. He moved to the center and waited, tracking the apartment tour by the voices.

Finally, the entourage headed up the steps to the loft. Bosch held his breath as the couple moved around the room and both sides of the bed. He waited for someone to sit on the bed but that never happened.

Bosch suddenly felt a vibration in his pocket and realized that he had not muted his phone. Luckily the man showing the apartment was continuing what was probably the sales pitch about how great the place was. His voice covered any notice of the low-level vibration. Bosch quickly worked his hand into his pocket and pulled the phone to see if the call was from his daughter’s phone. He would have to answer such a call, no matter the circumstance.

He reached the phone up into the box spring so he could see it. The call was from Barbara Starkey, the video tech, and Bosch hit the call-decline button. That was a callback he could make later.

Opening the phone to check the call had activated the screen. The dim light illuminated the inside of the box spring and Bosch saw a gun jammed behind one of the wooden slats of the frame.

Bosch’s heart kicked its beat up a notch as he stared at the gun. But he decided not to touch it until the apartment was empty again. He closed the phone and waited. Soon he heard the visitors on the staircase going down. It sounded like they took another quick look around the lower level and then left.

Bosch heard the dead bolt being locked from the outside. He then pushed his way out from under the bed.

After waiting a few moments to make sure the rental party was gone for good, he turned the overhead light back on. He moved back to the bed and pushed the mattress off the box spring, leaning it against the rear wall of the loft. He then raised the box spring and leaned it against the mattress. He looked in at the gun, still held in place by the wood framework.

He still could not see it clearly so he pulled his phone again, opened it and used it as a flashlight by holding it in close to the weapon.

“Damn,” he said out loud.

He was looking for a Glock, the gun with a rectangular firing pin. The gun hidden under Chang’s bed was a Smith & Wesson.

There was nothing here of use to him. Bosch realized that once again he was at ground zero. As if to accentuate this point, a tiny beeping sound came from his watch. He reached to his wrist and turned it off. He had set the alarm earlier so as not to risk missing his flight. It was time for him to head to the airport.

After putting the bed back in place, Bosch turned the light off in the loft and quietly slipped out of the apartment. His plan was to go home first to pick up his passport and lock up his gun. He would not be allowed to carry the weapon into a foreign country without that country’s approval-a process that would take days if not weeks. He didn’t plan to pack any clothes because he didn’t see himself having time to change clothes in Hong Kong. He was on a mission that would begin the moment he stepped off the plane.

He got on the 10 west from Monterey Park and planned on taking the 101 up through Hollywood to his home. He started mulling over a plan for directing police to the gun hidden in Chang’s former apartment but as of now there was no probable cause to hit the place. Still, the gun needed to be found and examined. It was of no use to Bosch in the John Li investigation but that didn’t mean Chang had used it for good deeds and philanthropy. It had been used for triad business and it could very likely lead to something.