as soon as he had run the scenario by the powers that be.
Bosch took the other call without looking at the screen.
“Yeah?”
“Harry?”
It was a woman. He recognized the voice but couldn’t place it.
“Yeah, who’s this”
“Teri Sopp.”
“Oh, hi, I thought it was my partner calling. What’s up?”
“I just wanted you to know I convinced them to use the casing you gave me yesterday in the testing program for electrostatic enhancement. We’ll see if we can raise a print off it.”
“Teri, you’re my hero! Will that be today”
“No, not today. We’re not going back to that till next week. Probably Tuesday.”
Bosch hated to ask for a favor when he had just been given a favor, but he felt he had no choice.
“Teri, is there any way it can be done Monday morning?”
“Monday? I don’t think we’ll get to the actual application un-”
“The reason is, we may have our suspect in jail before the end of the day. We think he’s trying to leave the country and we might need to arrest him. That will give us till Monday to make the case, Teri. We’re going to need everything we can get.”
There was a hesitation before she responded.
“I’ll see what we can do. Meantime, if you arrest him, bring me down a print card so I can make the comparison as soon as I have something on this end. If I have something.”
“You got it, Teri. Thanks a million.”
Bosch closed his phone and searched the freeway in front of him. He saw neither Chu’s car-a red Mazda Miata-nor Chang’s silver Mustang. He realized he had fallen far behind. He hit Chu on speed dial.
“Chu, where are you?”
“South four oh five. He’s going to the airport.”
Bosch was still on the 10 Freeway and saw the 405 interchange up ahead.
“Okay, I’ll catch up.”
“What’s happening?”
“I’ve got Gandle making the call on whether we take Chang down or not.”
“We can’t let him go.”
“That’s what I say. We’ll see what they say.”
“You want me to get my boss involved?”
Bosch almost responded by saying he didn’t want to bring another boss into the mix with the possibility that there was a leak in the pipe somewhere.
“Let’s wait and see what Gandle says first,” he said diplomatically instead.
“You got it.”
Bosch hung up and worked his way through traffic in an effort to catch up. When he was on the overpass that took him from the 10 to the 405, he was able to pick out both Chu’s and Chang’s vehicles half a mile ahead. They were caught in the slowdown where lanes merged.
Switching off lead two more times, Bosch and Chu followed Chang to the LAX exit at Century Boulevard. It was now clear that Chang was leaving the city and they were going to have to stop him. He called Gandle back and was put on hold.
Finally, after a long two minutes Gandle picked up.
“Harry, whadaya got?”
“He’s on Century Boulevard four blocks from LAX.”
“I haven’t been able to talk to anybody yet.”
“I say we take him down. We book him for murder and worst-case scenario is on Monday we file on him for extortion. He’ll get bail but the judge will slap no travel on it, especially after him trying to leave today.”
“Your call, Harry, and I’ll back you.”
Meaning it would still be Bosch who had made the wrong call if by Monday everything fell apart and Chang waltzed out of jail a free man able to leave L.A. and never come back.
“Thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll let you know.”
Moments after Bosch closed his phone Chang turned right into a long-term parking lot that provided a shuttle service to all airport terminals. As expected, Chu called.
“This is it. What do we do?”
“We take him. We wait till he parks and he has that suitcase out of the trunk. We take him down then and we’ll get a look in the suitcase with a warrant.”
“Where?”
“I use this lot when I go to Hong Kong. There are endless rows and shuttle stations where they come pick you up. Let’s get in there and park. We act like we’re travelers and we get him at the shuttle station.”
“Roger that.”
They hung up. Bosch was in the lead at the moment, so he entered the lot directly behind Chang, taking a ticket out of an automatic feeder. The arm rose and he pulled through. He followed Chang down the main parkway and when Chang turned right into a tributary road Bosch kept going, thinking Chu would follow and take the right.
Bosch parked in the first space