“I can’t rule him out. But it could have been anyone in his unit or another police department we were working with. At the moment, I don’t see where we have any choice.”

When he had the phone rebooted, he went to his contact list and found Chu’s cell number. He made the call and checked his watch. It was almost midnight Saturday night in Los Angeles.

Chu answered after one ring.

“Detective Chu.”

“David, it’s Bosch. Sorry to call so late.”

“Not late at all. I’m still working.”

Bosch was surprised.

“On the Li case? What’s happening”

“Yes, I spent a good part of the evening with Robert Li. I am trying to convince him to cooperate with a prosecution of Chang for extortion.”

“Is he going to?”

There was a pause before Chu answered.

“So far no. But I have till Monday morning to work on him. You’re still in Hong Kong, right? Have you found your daughter”

Chu’s voice picked up an urgent tone as he asked about Madeline.

“Not yet. But I have a line on her. That’s where I need your help. Can you run down a Hong Kong cell number for me?”

Another pause.

“Harry, the police there are much more capable of this than I am.”

“I know, but I am not working with the police on this.”

“You’re not.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I can’t risk the potential for a leak. I’m close. I’ve tracked her all day and it’s down to this number. I think it belongs to the man who has her. Can you help me?”

Chu didn’t respond for a long moment.

“If I help you, my source on this will be within the Hong Kong police, you know that, right?”

“But you don’t have to tell them the reason you need the information or who you are going to give it to.”

“But if things blow up over there, it could come back to me.”

Bosch began to lose his patience but tried to keep it out of his tone as he bluntly gave voice to the nightmare he knew was unfolding.

“Look, there isn’t a lot of time. Our information is that she is being sold. Most likely today. Maybe right now. I need this information, Dave. Can you get it for me or not?”

This time there was no hesitation.

“Give me the number.”

34

Chu said he would need at least an hour to run the cell number down through his contacts in the Hong Kong police. Bosch hated the idea of giving up so much time when every minute could be the minute his daughter changed to the next set of hands, but he had no choice. He believed that Chu well understood the urgency of the situation. He closed the phone call by telling Chu not to share Bosch’s request with anyone inside the department.

“You still think there’s a leak, Harry?”

“I know there is but now’s not the time to talk about it.”

“What about me? You trust me?”

“I called you, didn’t I?”

“I don’t think you trust anybody, Harry. You called me because there was no one else.”

“You know what? Just work that number and get back to me.”

“Sure, Harry. Whatever you say.”

Bosch closed the phone and looked at Sun.

“He said it might take as long as an hour.”

Sun remained impassive. He turned the key and started the car.

“You should get food while we wait.”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, I can’t eat. Not with her out there and…what happened. My stomach…I couldn’t keep anything down.”

Sun turned the car back off. They would wait there for Chu’s callback.

The minutes went by very slowly and felt very costly. Bosch reviewed his moves going back to the moments he crouched behind the counter at Fortune Liquors and examined the body of John Li. He came to fully realize that his relentless pursuit of the killer had put others in jeopardy. His daughter. His ex-wife. A whole family in faraway Tuen Mun. The burden of guilt he would now carry would be the heaviest of his life and he was not sure he was up to it.

For the first time he put if into the equation of his life. If he got his daughter back he would find a way to redeem himself. If he never saw her again, there could be no redemption.

All things would end.

These realizations made him physically shudder and he turned and opened the car door.

“I’m going to take a walk.”

He stepped out and closed the door before Sun could ask him a question. There was a path that went along the river and he started walking it. He had his head down, his mind on dark thoughts and he did not notice the people who passed him on the path or the boats that moved swiftly by him on the river.

Eventually, Bosch realized he wasn’t helping himself or his daughter by dwelling on things he could not control. He tried to shake off the dark shroud that was coming down on him and focus on something useful. The question about the memory card from his daughter’s phone was still open and bothersome. Why had Madeline stored the cell number marked Tuen Mun on her phone?

After grinding the question down he finally saw an answer that had escaped him earlier. Madeline had been abducted. Therefore, her phone would have been taken away from her. So it was probably her abductor, not Madeline, who had stored the number on her phone. This conclusion led to a cascade of possibilities. Peng had taken the video and sent it to Bosch. So he was in possession of the phone. He could very well have been using it rather than his own phone to complete the abduction and set up the exchange of Madeline for whatever he had bartered her for.

He probably saved the number to the card. Either because he was using it a lot in the negotiations or because he simply wanted to leave a trail just in case something happened. And this would be why he hid the card in the salt. So somebody would find it.

Bosch turned around to take his new conclusion back to Sun. He was a hundred yards away and could see Sun already standing outside the car, excitedly waving him back. Bosch looked down at the phone in his hand and checked the screen. He had not missed a call and there was no way Sun’s excitement could be related to his call to Chu.

Bosch started trotting back.

Sun dropped back into the car and closed the door. Bosch soon jumped in beside him.

“What?”

“Another message. A text.”

Sun held up his phone to show Bosch the message, even though it was in Chinese.

“What’s it say?”

“It says, ‘What problem? Who is this?’”

Bosch nodded. There was still a lot of deniability in the message. The sender was still feigning ignorance. He didn’t know what this was about, yet he had sent this text unbidden, and this told Bosch that they were closing in on something.

“How do we respond?” Sun asked.

Bosch didn’t answer. He was thinking.

Sun’s phone started to vibrate. He looked at the screen.

“This is a call. It’s him. The number.”

“Don’t answer,” Bosch said quickly. “That could blow it. We can always call back. Just see if he leaves a message first.”

The phone stopped vibrating and they waited. Bosch tried to think of the next move to make in this very delicate and deadly game. After a while, Sun shook his head.

“No message. It would have alerted me by now.”

“What’s your outgoing message say? Do you give your name on it?”

“No, no name. I use the robot.”

That was good. A generic outgoing message. The caller was probably hoping to pick up a name or a voice or some other sort of intel.

“Okay, send him back a text. Say, no talking on phones or text because it’s not safe. Say you want to meet in person.”

“That’s it? They ask what the problem is. I don’t answer”

“No, not yet. String it along. The longer we keep this going, the more time we give Maddie. You see?”

Sun nodded once.

“Yes, I see.”

He typed in the message Bosch had suggested and sent it.

“Now we wait again,” he said.