Bosch’s eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw that he was in an empty bunk room that opened on a central passageway running the length of the hull. The only light came from the overhead hatch all the way down in the bow. Between Harry and that point were six compartment hatches-three on each side-going down the length of the passageway. The last hatch down on the left was standing wide open. Bosch got up and stuck one of the guns back in his belt so he would have a free hand. He started to move, the remaining gun up and ready.

Each hatch had a four-point locking system for storing and sealing the catch. Arrows stenciled on the rusting steel told Bosch which way to turn each handle to unlock and open the compartment. He moved down the passageway, checking the compartments one by one, finding each empty but obviously not used recently to haul fish. Steel-walled and windowless, each chamber was filled with a ground layer of detritus of cereal and other food boxes and empty gallon water containers. Wooden crates overflowed with other trash. Fishnets-refashioned as hammocks-hung on hooks bolted to the walls. There was a putrid smell in each compartment that had nothing to do with the catch the vessel once hauled. This boat carried human cargo.

What bothered Bosch most were the cereal boxes. They were all the same brand, and smiling from the front of the package was a cartoon panda bear standing on the brim of a bowl that held a treasure of rice puffs sparkling with sugar. It was cereal for kids.

The last stop in the passageway was the open hatch. Bosch crouched low and moved into the compartment in one fluid stride.

It too was empty.

But it was different. There was no trash here. A battery-powered light hung from a wire attached to a hook on the ceiling. There was an upturned shipping crate stacked with unopened cereal boxes, packs of noodles and gallon jugs of water. Bosch looked for any indication that his daughter had been kept in the room, but there was no sign of her.

Bosch heard the hinges on the hatch behind him screech loudly. He turned just as the hatch banged shut. He saw the seal on the upper right corner turn into locked position and immediately saw that the internal handles had been removed. He was being locked in. He pulled the second gun and aimed both weapons at the hatch, waiting for the next lock to turn.

It was the lower right. The moment the bolt started to turn Bosch aimed and fired both guns repeatedly into the door, the bullets piercing metal wakened by years of rust. He heard someone call out as if surprised or hurt. He then heard a banging sound out in the hallway as a body hit the floor.

Bosch moved to the hatch and tried to turn the bolt on the upper right lock with his hand. It was too small for his fingers to find purchase. In desperation, he stepped back a pace and then threw his shoulder into the door, hoping to snap the lock assembly. But it didn’t budge and he knew by the feel of the impact on his shoulder that the door would not give way.

He was locked in.

He moved back close to the hatch and tilted his head to listen. There was only the sound of the engines running now. He banged the heel of one of the guns loudly on the metal hatch.

“Maddie?” he called out. “Maddie, are you here?”

There was no response. He banged again on the hatch, this time even louder.

“Give me a sign, baby. If you’re here, make some noise!”

Again there was no response. Bosch pulled his phone and opened it to call Sun. But he saw he had no signal. He tried the call anyway and got no response. He was in a metal-lined room and his cell phone was useless.

Bosch turned and banged one more time on the door and called out his daughter’s name.

There was no response. Harry leaned his sweating forehead against the rusty hatch in defeat. He was stuck in the metal box and trapped with the realization that his daughter wasn’t even on the boat. He had failed and had gotten what he deserved, what he had earned.

A physical pain shot across his chest, matching the pain in his mind. Sharp, deep and unrelenting. He started breathing heavily, and turned his back against the hatch. He opened his collar another button and slid down the rusting metal until he was sitting on the floor with his knees up. He realized he was in a place as claustrophobic as the tunnels he had once inhabited. The battery on the overhead light was dying and soon he would be left in darkness. Defeat and despair overtook him. He had failed his daughter and he had failed himself.

37

Bosch suddenly looked up from his contemplation of failure. He had heard something. Above the drone of the engines, he’d heard a banging sound. Not from above. It had come from down in the hull.

He jumped up and turned back to the hatch. He heard another banging sound and knew somebody was checking the compartments in the same way he had.

He pounded on the hatch with the heels of both guns. He yelled above the clanging echo of steel on steel.

“Sun Yee? Hey! Down here! Somebody! Down here!”

There was no response, but then the bolt of the upper right seal turned. The door was being unlocked. Bosch stepped back, wiped his face with his sleeves, and waited. The bottom left seal was turned next and then the hatch door slowly began to open. Bosch raised the guns, unsure how many bullets he had left to fire.

In the dim light of the passage he saw Sun’s face. Bosch moved forward and pushed the hatch all the way open.

“Where the fuck you been?”

“I was looking for a boat and-”

“I called you. I told you to come back.”

Once he was in the passageway, Bosch saw the Mercedes man lying facedown on the floor a few feet from the hatch. He quickly moved to him, hoping to find him still alive. Harry turned him over, rolling him into the slop of his own blood.

He was dead.

“Harry, where is Madeline?” Sun asked.

“I don’t know. Everybody’s dead and I don’t know!”

Unless…

One final plan began to work into Bosch’s brain. One final chance. The white Mercedes. Gleaming and new. The car would have all the extras, including a navigation system, and the first address in its stored data would be the Mercedes man’s home.

They would go there. They would go to the home of the Mercedes man and Bosch would do what was necessary to find his daughter. If he had to hold a gun to the head of that bored little boy he had seen at Geo, he would do it. And the wife would tell. She would give Bosch back his daughter.

Harry studied the body in front of him. He presumed he was looking at Dennis Ho, the man behind Northstar. He patted the dead man’s pockets, looking for car keys, but he found none and just as quickly as his plan had formed, Bosch began to feel it disappear. Where were the keys? He needed that computer to tell him where to go and how to find his way.

“Harry, what is it?”

“His keys! We need his keys or we-”

He suddenly stopped. He realized he had missed something. When he had made his run on the pier and ducked for cover behind the white Mercedes, he had heard and smelled the car’s diesel engine. The car had been left running.

At the time it meant little to Bosch because he was sure his daughter was on the crane boat. But now he knew different.

Bosch stood up and started moving down the passageway toward the ladder, his mind racing far ahead of him. He heard Sun following behind him.

There was only one reason why Dennis Ho would have left his car running. He intended to come back to it. Not with the girl, because she was not on the boat. But to get the girl once the storage compartment in the hull was ready and it was safe to transfer her.

Bosch charged out of the pilothouse and crossed the gangway to the pier. He ran to the driver’s door of the white Mercedes and flung it open. He checked the backseat and found it empty. He then studied the dashboard, looking for a button that would open the trunk.