Bosch was stunned silent by the verbal shot. Ferras had hit him right in the spot where he had been living for the past seventy-two hours. Finally, he shook it off and came back.

“Ignacio,” he said calmly. “This isn’t working. I don’t know when I will be back into the squad this week, but when I get in there, we’re gonna talk.”

“Fine. I’ll be here.”

“Of course you will. You’re always in the squad. I’ll see you then.”

Bosch closed the phone before Ferras could protest his final shot. Bosch was sure Gandle would back him when he asked for a new partner. He went back into the kitchen to grab a beer and take the edge off the conversation. He opened the refrigerator and started to reach in but stopped. It was too early and he was going to be driving his daughter around the Valley shopping for the rest of the afternoon.

He closed the refrigerator and walked down the hallway. The door to his daughter’s room was closed.

“Maddie, you ready to go?”

“I’m changing. I’ll be out in a minute.”

She had answered in a clipped don’t-bother-me tone. Bosch wasn’t sure what to make of it. The plan was to go to the phone store first and then to get clothing and furniture and a laptop computer. He was going to get his daughter whatever she wanted and she knew it. Yet she was being short with him and he wasn’t sure why. One day on the job as a full-time father and he already felt like he was lost at sea.

41

The next morning Bosch and his daughter set to work assembling some of the purchases of the day before. Maddie was not in school yet because her enrollment would take an additional day to wind through public school bureaucracy-a delay Bosch welcomed because it gave them more time together.

First in line for assembly was the computer desk and chair they had bought at the IKEA store in Burbank. They had gone on a four-hour shopping spree, accumulating school supplies, clothes, electronics and furniture, completely filling Bosch’s car and leaving him with a feeling of guilt that was new to him. He knew that buying his daughter everything she pointed at or asked for was a form of trying to buy her happiness-and the forgiveness that would hopefully come with it.

He had moved the coffee table out of the way and spread the parts of the prefabricated desk out on the floor of the living room. The instructions said it could be completely assembled with only one tool-a small Allen wrench that came with it. Harry and Madeline sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to understand the assembly map.

“It looks like you start by attaching the side panels to the desktop,” Madeline said.

“You sure?”

“Yes. See, everything that is marked ‘one’ is part of the first step.”

“I thought that just meant you have one of those parts.”

“No, because there are two side panels and they’re marked ‘one.’ I think it means step one.”

“Oh.”

A phone rang and they looked at each other. Madeline had gotten a new phone the day before and it was once again a match to her father’s. The trouble was, she had not selected an individual ring tone, so both phones sounded the same. She had received a series of calls throughout the morning from friends in Hong Kong whom she had sent messages to, saying she had moved to Los Angeles.

“I think that’s you,” she said. “I left mine in my room.”

Bosch slowly climbed to his feet, his knees aching after being rescued from his cross-legged position. He made it over to the dining room table to grab the phone before the caller hung up.

“Harry, it’s Dr. Hinojos, how are you?”

“Plugging away, Doc. Thanks for the callback.”

Bosch opened the slider and stepped out onto the deck, closing the door behind him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get back until today,” Hinojos said. “Mondays are always brutal here. What’s up”

Hinojos ran the department’s Behavioral Science Section, the unit that offered psychiatric services to the rank and file. Bosch had known her almost fifteen years, ever since she had been a frontline counselor assigned to evaluate him after he’d had a physical altercation with his supervisor at Hollywood Division.

Bosch kept his voice low.

“I wanted to ask if you would do something for me as a favor.”

“Depends on what it is.”

“I want you to talk to my daughter.”

“Your daughter? Last you talked to me about her she lived with her mother in Vegas.”

“They moved. She’s been living in Hong Kong for the past six years. Now she’s with me. Her mother’s dead.”

There was a pause before Hinojos responded. Bosch got a -call-waiting beep in his ear but ignored the second call and waited her out.

“Harry, you know that we see police officers only here, not their families. I can give you a referral for a child practitioner.”

“I don’t want a child shrink. I’ve got the yellow pages here if I wanted that. That’s where the favor comes in. I want her to talk to you. You know me, I know you. Like that.”

“But Harry, it doesn’t work like that here.”

“She got abducted over there in Hong Kong. And her mother got killed trying to get her back. The kid’s got baggage, Doc.”

“Oh, my God! How long ago did this happen?”

“Last weekend.”

“Oh, Harry!”

“Yeah, not good. She needs to talk to somebody besides me. I want it to be you, Doctor.”

Another pause and again Bosch let it play out. There wasn’t much sense in pushing it with Hinojos. Bosch knew that from firsthand experience.

“I guess I could meet her off campus. Has she asked to talk to anyone?”

“She didn’t ask but I told her I wanted her to. She didn’t object. I think she’ll like you. When could you meet with her”

Bosch was pushing it, he knew. But it was for a good cause.

“Well, I have some time today,” Hinojos said. “I could meet her after lunch. What is her name?”

“Madeline. What time?”

“Could she meet me at one?”

“No problem. Should I bring her there, or will that be a problem?”

“I think it will be fine. I won’t record it as an official session.”

Bosch’s phone beeped again. This time he pulled it away from his ear to check the caller ID. It was Lieutenant Gandle.

“Okay, Doc,” Bosch replied. “Thank you for this.”

“It will be good to see you, too. Maybe you and I should have a conversation. I know your ex-wife still meant a lot to you.”

“Let’s take care of my daughter first. Then we can worry about me. I’ll drop her with you and then get out of the way, maybe walk over to Philippe’s or something.”

“See you then, Harry.”

He hung up and checked to see if Gandle had left a message. There was none. He headed back inside and saw that his daughter had already assembled the main structure of the desk.

“Wow, girl, you know what you’re doing.”

“It’s pretty easy.”

“Didn’t seem that way to me.”

He had just gotten back down on the floor when the landline started to ring from the kitchen. He got up and hustled to get it. It was an old wall-mounted phone with no caller ID screen.

“Bosch, what are you doing?”

It was Lieutenant Gandle.

“I told you I was taking a few days.”

“I need you to come in, and bring your daughter.”

Bosch was looking down into the empty sink.

“My daughter? Why, Lieutenant?”

“Because there are two guys from the Hong Kong Police Department sitting in Captain Dodds’s office and they want to talk to you. You didn’t tell me that your ex-wife is dead, Harry. You didn’t tell me about all the dead bodies they say you left in your wake over there.”

Bosch paused as he considered his options.

“Tell them I’ll see them at one-thirty,” he finally said.

Gandle’s response was sharp.

“One-thirty? What do you need three hours for? Get down here now.”

“I can’t, Lieutenant. I’ll see them at one-thirty.”