9 Dragons

daughter. She was missing for more than twelve hours now and breaking and entering, putting his livelihood and career on the line, seemed like minimal risks compared with what he would face within himself if he didn’t get her back safe.
    Once the final pin moved into place, he opened the door and moved quickly into the apartment, closing and relocking the door behind him. The search of the suitcase had told Bosch that Chang had packed for good, that he wasn’t coming back. But he doubted Chang had fit everything into that one suitcase. He had to have left things behind. Things of less personal meaning to him, but possibly of value to Bosch. Chang had printed his boarding pass out at some point before heading to the airport. Since Chang had been under surveillance, Bosch knew he had made no other stops. He was sure there had to be a computer and printer in the apartment.
    Harry waited thirty seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before moving from the door. Once he could see reasonably well, he moved into the living room, banging into a chair and almost knocking over a lamp before managing to find the switch and turn it on. He then stepped quickly to a pair of open drapes and pulled them closed across the front window.
    He turned from the window and surveyed the room. It was a small living room and dining room combination with a pass-through window to a kitchen in the back. A stairwell on the right went up to a bedroom loft. On initial view, Bosch saw nothing of a personal nature left behind. No computer, no printer. It was just furniture. He quickly searched the room and then moved into the kitchen. Again, the place was barren of personal effects. The cabinets were bare, not even a cereal box left behind. Under the sink was a trash can but it was empty and freshly lined with a plastic garbage bag.
    Bosch moved back into the living room and headed for the stairs. There was a light switch at the bottom of the staircase that had a dimmer and controlled a ceiling light in the loft. He turned it on low and then went back to the living room lamp and turned it off.
    The loft was sparely furnished with just a queen-size bed and a bureau. There was no desk and no computer. Bosch quickly moved to the bureau and opened and closed every drawer, finding each had been cleared out. In the bathroom, the wastebasket was empty and medicine cabinet bare. He lifted the lid off the toilet tank but found nothing hidden there either.
    The place had been cleaned out. It must have been after Chang had left, drawing the surveillance away. Bosch thought about the call from Tsing Motors that had been logged on the suspect’s phone. Maybe he had given Vincent Tsing the all-clear sign and the apartment had been cleared out and cleaned.
    Disappointed and feeling that he had been expertly played, Bosch decided to locate the apartment complex’s refuse bin and attempt to find the trash bags that had been taken from the apartment. Maybe they had slipped up and left Chang’s trash behind. A thrown-away note or a scribbled phone number would be helpful.
    He was three steps down the stairs when he heard a key hit the front door lock. He quickly turned around and moved back up into the loft and hid behind a support column.
    Lights below were turned on and the apartment immediately filled with Chinese voices. His back to the column, Bosch counted the voices of two men and one woman. One of the men was dominating the conversation and whenever the other two spoke, they seemed to be asking questions.
    Bosch moved to the edge of the column and risked a look down. He saw the dominant male gesturing to the furnishings. He then opened a closet door beneath the staircase and made a sweeping hand movement. Bosch realized he was showing the place to the couple. It was already for rent.
    This told him that sooner or later the three people below would be coming up to the loft. He looked at the bed. It was a bare mattress on top of a thick box spring sitting on a frame a foot off the ground. He decided it was the only place he could possibly hide and not be discovered. He quickly got down to the floor and shimmied under the bed, his chest scraping on the underside of the box spring. He moved to the center and waited, tracking the apartment tour by the voices.
    Finally, the entourage headed up the steps to the loft. Bosch held his breath as the couple moved around the room and both sides of the bed. He waited for someone to sit on the bed but that never