9 Dragons

keep the file complete and I need to file the search warrant returns with the court. That’s sort of why I’m calling. You bugged out Friday without leaving any notes on what you found on the searches of the phone and the suitcase. I already wrote up the car search.”
    “Yeah, well, I didn’t find anything. That’s one reason why we didn’t have a case to file, remember?”
    Bosch threw his keys on the dining room table and watched his daughter go down the hall to her room. He felt a growing annoyance with Ferras. At one point he had embraced the idea of mentoring the young detective and teaching him the mission. But he was now finally accepting the reality that Ferras would never recover from being wounded in the line of duty. Physically, yes. Mentally, no. He would never be the full package again. He would be a paper pusher.
    “So put down zero returns” Ferras asked.
    Bosch momentarily thought of the business card from the taxi service in Hong Kong. It had been a dead end and wasn’t worth putting into the search warrant return that had to go back to the judge.
    “Yeah, zero returns. There was nothing.”
    “And nothing on the phone.”
    Bosch suddenly realized something but also knew in the same instant that it was probably too late.
    “Nothing
on
the phone, but did you guys go to the company for the records?”
    Chang might have wiped all call records off his phone but he wouldn’t have been able to touch the records kept by his cellular service carrier. There was a pause before Ferras answered.
    “No, I thought-you had the phone, Harry. I thought you contacted the phone company.”
    “I didn’t, because I was heading to Hong Kong.”
    All phone companies had established protocols for receiving and accepting search warrants. It usually amounted to faxing the signed search warrant to the legal affairs office. It was a simple thing to do but it had fallen through the cracks. Now Chang had been kicked loose and was probably long gone.
    “Goddamnit,” Bosch said. “You should’ve been on that, Ignacio.”
    “Me? You had the phone, Harry. I thought you did it.”
    “I had the phone but you were on point with the warrants. You should have checked it off before you left Friday.”
    “That’s bullshit, man. You’re going to blame me for this?”
    “I’m blaming us both. Yeah, I could’ve done it, but you
should’ve
made sure it was done. You didn’t because you left early and you let it slide. You’ve been letting the whole job slide, partner.”
    There, he had said it.
    “And you are full of shit, partner. You mean because I’m not like you, losing my family to the job and then
risking
my family to the job, that I’m letting it slide? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    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
    T he 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