9 Dragons

lie when Haller leaned forward.
    “I don’t think I’m going to allow Detective Bosch to get into who-shot-whom theories,” he said. “I am sure your fine police department has tremendous forensic capabilities and has already been able to determine through firearm and ballistic analysis the answer to that question.”
    Wu moved on.
    “Was Sun Yee on the fifteenth floor?”
    “Not at that time.”
    “Can you give us more detail?”
    “About the shooting? No. But I can tell you something about the room where my daughter was held. We found tissue with blood on it. Her blood had been drawn.”
    Bosch studied them to see if they reacted to this information. They showed nothing.
    There was a file on the table in front of the men from Hong Kong. Wu opened it and took out a document with a paper clip on it. He slid it across the table to Bosch.
    “This is statement from Sun Yee. It has been translated into English. Please read and acknowledge for accuracy.”
    Haller leaned in next to Bosch and they read the two-page document together. Bosch immediately recognized it as a prop. It was their investigative theory disguised as a statement from Sun. About half of it was correct. The rest was assumption based on interviews and evidence. It attributed the murders of the Peng family to Bosch and Sun Yee.
    Harry knew they were either trying to bluff him into telling what really happened or had arrested Sun and forced him to sign his name to the story they preferred, namely that Bosch had been responsible for a bloody rampage across Hong Kong. It would be the best way to explain nine violent deaths on one Sunday. The American did it.
    But Bosch remembered what Sun had said to him at the airport.
I will handle these things and make no mention of you. This is my promise. No matter what happens, I will leave you and your daughter out of it.
    “Gentlemen,” Haller said, completing his read of the document first. “This document is-”
    “Total bullshit,” Bosch finished.
    He slid the document back across the table. It hit Wu in the chest.
    “No, no,” Wu said quickly. “This is very real. This is signed by Sun Yee.”
    “Maybe if you held a gun to his head. Is that how you do it over there in Hong Kong?”
    “Detective Bosch!” Wu exclaimed. “You will come to Hong Kong and answer these charges.”
    “I’m not going anywhere near Hong Kong ever again.”
    “You have killed many people. You have used firearms. You placed your daughter above all Chinese citizens and-”
    “They were blood-typing her!” Bosch said angrily. “They took her blood. You know when they do that? When they’re trying to match organs.”
    He paused and watched the growing discomfort on Wu’s face. Bosch didn’t care about Lo. Wu was the power and if Bosch got to him, he would be safe. Haller had been right. In the back of the Lincoln, he had set the subtle strategy for the interview. Rather than focus on defending Bosch’s actions as self-defense, make clear to the men from Hong Kong what would be brought to the international media stage should they pursue any sort of case against Bosch.
    Now was the time to make that play and Haller took over and calmly moved in for the kill.
    “Gentlemen, you can hang on to your signed statement there,” he said, a seemingly permanent smile playing on his face. “Let me summarize the facts that are supported by the actual evidence. A thirteen-year-old American girl was abducted in your city. Her mother dutifully called the police to report this crime. The police declined to investigate the crime and then-”
    “The girl had run away before,” Lo interjected. “There was no reas-”
    Haller held up a finger to cut him off.
    “Doesn’t matter,” he said, now a tone of contained outrage in his voice and the smile gone. “Your department was told an American girl was missing and chose,
for whatever reason,
to ignore the report. This forced the girl’s mother to look for her daughter herself. And the first thing she did was call in the girl’s father from Los Angeles.”
    Haller gestured to Bosch.
    “Detective Bosch arrived and together with his ex-wife and a friend of the family, Mr. Sun Yee, they began the search that the Hong Kong police had determined they would not be involved in. On their own, what they found was evidence that she had been kidnapped for her organs. This American girl, they were going to sell her for her organs!”
    His outrage was growing and Bosch believed it was not