Pacific Airways. It clearly shows he tried to leave quickly and deceptively.”
Bosch nodded.
“Royal Canadian Mounted Police? You get around, Chu. Nice work.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you tell this to Ignacio? Chang’s attempt to smoke his trail will help with the PC for the search warrant.”
“He knows. He put it in.”
“Good.”
Bosch looked at the monitor. Chang was sitting at a table with his wrists now handcuffed in front of him to an iron ring bolted through the center of the table. His massive shoulders looked ready to burst the seams of his shirt. He was sitting ramrod straight and staring dead-eyed at the wall directly across from him.
“Lieutenant, how long are you comfortable with us stalling this before we book him?”
Gandle looked concerned. He didn’t like being put on the spot with something that could later hit him in the face with blowback.
“Well, I think we’re stretching it. Chu told me you already gave him the scenic tour coming in. You wait too much longer and a judge might take issue with it.”
Bosch looked at his watch. They needed another fifty minutes before allowing Chang to call his lawyer. The booking process involved paperwork, fingerprinting and then the physical transfer of the suspect to jail, at which point he would be given access to a phone.
“Okay, we can start the process. We just keep taking it slow. Chu, you go in and start filling out the sheet with him. If we’re lucky he won’t cooperate and that will just take up more time.”
Chu nodded.
“Got it.”
“We don’t put him into a cell until two at the earliest.”
“Right.”
Chu squeezed between the lieutenant and Bosch and left the room. Gandle started out after him but Bosch tapped him on the shoulder and signaled him to stay. Bosch waited until the door was closed before speaking.
“I just got a phone call. A threat. Somebody told me to back off.”
“Back off what?”
“The case. Chang. Back off everything.”
“How do you know the call was even about this case”
“Because the caller was Asian and he mentioned Chang. Said Chang was not alone, that I needed to back off or there would be consequences.”
“You try to trace it? You think it’s serious?”
“A trace would be a waste of time. And as far as the threat goes, let them come. I’ll be waiting. But the point is, how did they know?”
“Know what?”
“That we picked up Chang. We pull him in and then within two hours one of his asshole buddies from the triad calls up and tells me to back the fuck off. We’ve got a leak, Lieutenant. First Chang is tipped, now they know we grabbed him. Somebody’s talking to-”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, we don’t know that, Harry. There could be explanations.”
“Yeah? Then how do they know we have Chang?”
“Could be a lot of reasons, Harry. He had a cell phone. Maybe he was supposed to check in from the airport. Could be anything.”
Bosch shook his head. His instincts told him otherwise. There was a leak somewhere. Gandle opened the door. He didn’t like this conversation and wanted to get out of the room. But he looked back at Bosch before leaving.
“You better be careful with this,” he said. “Until you have something like this nailed down, you be very careful.”
Gandle closed the door behind him, leaving Bosch alone in the room. Harry turned to the video screen and saw that Chu had entered the interview room. He sat down across from Chang with a pen and clipboard, ready to fill out the arrest form.
“Mr. Chang, I need to ask you some questions now.”
Chang did not answer. He showed no recognition in his eyes or body language that he had even heard the question.
Chu followed this with a Chinese translation but again Chang remained mute and motionless. This was no surprise to Bosch. He left the interview room and went back out to the squad, still feeling anxious and upset about the phone-call threat and Gandle’s seeming lack of concern about it or the leak that had to have spawned it.
Ferras’s cubicle was empty now and Bosch assumed he had already left with the search warrant application for his appointment with Judge Champagne.
Everything was riding on the search warrant. They had Chang on the attempted extortion of Robert Li-if Li agreed to file a complaint and testify-but weren’t even close on the murder. Bosch was left hoping for a daisy chain. The first search warrant would yield evidence that would support further search warrants and they would lead to the grand prize-the murder