9 Dragons

Yeah, it led us to Henry and he was very cooperative. He told us the last time he fired and then reloaded his gun was at a range about eight months ago. His fingerprint was sitting on that shell all that time.”
    Harry reached down to the box and removed Henry Lau’s gun, still in its black felt bag. He took it out of the bag and put the weapon down on the table.
    “We went to Henry and he gave us the weapon. We had it checked out by ballistics yesterday, and sure enough, it’s our murder weapon, all right. This is the gun that killed John Li at Fortune Liquors on September eighth. The problem was that Henry Lau has a solid alibi for the time of the shooting. He was in a room with thirteen other people. He’s even got Matthew McConaughey as an alibi witness. And then on top of that, he told us he hadn’t given his gun out to anybody to borrow.”
    Bosch leaned back and scratched his chin with his hand, as if he were still trying to figure out how the gun ended up being used to kill John Li.
    “Damn, this was a big problem, Eugene. But then, of course, we got lucky. The good guys often get lucky. You made us lucky, Eugene.”
    He paused for effect and then brought down the hammer.
    “You see, whoever used Henry’s gun to kill John Li cleaned it up after and then reloaded it so Henry wouldn’t ever know his gun had been borrowed and used to kill a man. It was a pretty good plan, but he made one mistake.”
    Bosch leaned forward across the table and looked at Lam eye to eye. He turned the gun on the table so that its barrel was pointing at the suspect’s chest.
    “One of the bullets that were replaced in the magazine had a nice readable thumbprint on it. Your thumbprint, Eugene. We matched it to the print they took when you traded in your New York driver’s license for a California DL.”
    Lam’s eyes slowly dropped away from Bosch’s and down to the table.
    “All of this, it means nothing,” he said.
    There was little conviction in his voice.
    “Yeah?” Bosch responded. “Really? I don’t know about that. I happen to think it means a lot, Eugene. And the prosecutor on the other side of that camera is thinking the same thing. He says it sounds like a prison door slamming, with you standing there on the wrong side of it.”
    Bosch picked up the gun and the bag with the casing in it and put them back in the box. He grabbed the box with both hands and stood up.
    “So that’s where we’re at, Eugene. You think about all of that while you’re waiting for your lawyer.”
    Bosch slowly moved toward the door. He hoped Lam would tell him to stop and come back, that he wanted to make the deal. But the suspect said nothing. Harry put the box under one arm, opened the door and walked out.
    Bosch carried the evidence box back to his cubicle and dropped it heavily on his desk. He looked over at his partner’s cubicle to make sure it was still empty. Ferras had been left behind in the Valley to keep an eyeball on Robert Li. If he figured out that Lam was in police custody and possibly talking, he might make a move. Ferras hadn’t liked the babysitting assignment but Bosch didn’t really care. Ferras had moved himself to the periphery of the investigation and that was where he was going to stay.
    Soon Chu and Gandle, who had been watching Bosch’s play with Lam from the other side of the camera in the AV room, came to the cubicle.
    “I told you it was a weak play,” Gandle said. “We know he’s a smart kid. He had to have been wearing gloves when he reloaded the gun. Once he knew you were playing him, you lost.”
    “Yeah, well,” Bosch said. “I thought it was the best we had.”
    “I agree,” Chu said, showing his support for Bosch.
    “We’re still going to have to kick him loose,” Gandle said. “We know he had the opportunity to take the gun but we have no proof that he actually did. Opportunity is not enough. You can’t go to court with just that.”
    “Is that what Cook said?”
    “That’s what he was thinking.”
    Abner Cook was the deputy DA who had come over from the CCB to observe in the AV room.
    “Where is he, anyway?”
    As if to answer for himself, Cook called Bosch’s name from across the squad room.
    “Get back here!”
    Bosch straightened up and looked over the cubicle partition. Cook was frantically waving from the door of the AV room. Harry got up and started walking toward him.
    “He’s calling for you,” Cook said. “Get back in there!”
    Bosch picked up speed