Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 134 : First Cremation of the Day

The documents went onto the long table one by one, covering half of yesterday's newspaper: ID card, household register, death certificate, and finally the little red booklet, its corners worn fuzzy.

"Marriage certificate." Peng Weidong pushed it forward an inch. "My brother brought it down this morning."

Shen Zhixia opened it, glanced, closed it, and pushed it back. "Where is he?"

"Waiting downstairs."

"Tell him to come up."

Peng Weidong's brother was in his early fifties, his padded jacket sleeves shiny with wear. He knocked twice on the doorframe before stepping inside. He didn't sit. He stood at the other end of the table, his eyes moving over each document in turn.

"Sister-in-law."

"My name is Shen."

"Lawyer Shen." He nodded. "Peng Weiguo, Weidong's brother. I'll just say two things. Last night a man called my mother's phone. Called all the way to the old village."

"What time."

"Past nine, before my mother went to bed." The brother tucked his hands into his sleeves. "He asked who made decisions in the family, who'd be receiving the funeral expenses, whether your family was planning to make trouble. This morning he called again."

"What terms did he offer."

"Full funeral expenses, plus twenty thousand on top. The baby in the incubator, they'll cover that too." The brother paused. "He said that paper was signed by you yourselves. Whatever's signed gets done according to what was signed. First cremation of the day on the morning of the fifth. They'll help with the paperwork. You don't spend a cent."

"And if we don't do that?"

"Then not a cent, and you've made enemies." The brother looked at her. "Sister-in-law, my mother's over seventy. And my brother's got a child lying in a hospital bed."

Shen Zhixia didn't respond to any of that. She picked up the stack of papers from the table, pulled one out, and laid it in front of Peng Weidong.

"This is the consent form," she said. "I'm going to read it from the top. You sign after I'm done."

The brother spoke up from behind: "Sister-in-law, what are you—"

"No interruptions while I'm reading," she said, and looked down to read.

The first few lines covered identity, where the body was, which appraisal institution was being entrusted. She slowed for half a beat at a middle passage, then kept going: "After the autopsy, the body cannot be restored to its original condition." Farther down: "The appraisal opinion may be unfavorable to either party."

"Done," she said, setting the pen down.

Peng Weidong stared at that line on the page. Sweat from his palm had soaked a small dark patch into the corner of the paper.

"...She married into this family seven years," he said. "I never signed anything for her. Now she's dead, and I have to sign twice."

"If you don't sign, no one can," Shen Zhixia said. "On this paper, the name you write is your own."

He pressed his fingers against his pant leg twice.

"Sign it," she said.

He signed slowly, each stroke pressing down, and when he lifted the pen it had left a small dent in the paper. When he was done he wiped his hand on his pants, then, as Forensic Examiner Zhong had instructed, pressed a fingerprint below his name—the first print came out too faint, just a light smudge, so she made him do it again.

[Thud. A living person's signature is the only kind that counts.]

A bicycle bell rang downstairs. He Xiufen came up from the stove, apron still on. She counted out two thousand yuan from a drawer and set it in front of Peng Weidong, then tore a strip from a notebook and told him to write his name.

"This isn't a gift," she said. "It's a loan against the case. It comes out of whatever we recover from the hospital. If we recover nothing, it's on me."

Peng Weidong gripped the pen. "I acknowledge this money."

"Then write it down." He Xiufen stamped the firm's authorization letter, laid it flat to dry for two minutes before putting it away. "Old Peng, there are four stops today: deliver documents to the appraisal office, file the suspension at the funeral home, chase down the temperature logs, book the autopsy room. You just follow along. You sign your own name."

"Tomorrow morning, seven o'clock—"

"Seven." She glanced at Shen Zhixia. "The order's written on the list. Check things off one by one."

Before they left, Shen Zhixia asked the brother one more thing.

"He made exactly two phone calls, right?"

"Right."

"Besides those three questions, did he ask anything else?"

The brother thought. "...One thing. He asked whether my brother had been home these past few days."

She wrote that down too. The brother tucked his hands away and headed downstairs, pausing for a moment at the turn of the stairwell, not looking back.

At a quarter to ten, the third-floor corridor of the Judicial Appraisal Center was colder than outside. Forensic Examiner Zhong wasn't wearing his white coat, just an old jacket over a sweater. A form lay on his desk, a plastic cup beside it, the steam long gone.

He checked the documents first. ID card, household register, death certificate—each spread out and examined. At the two lines of names on the marriage certificate, he looked a moment longer.

"The original consent form."

"Here." Peng Weidong held out the signed paper.

Zhong didn't take it from his hand. He pointed at the desk. "Sign it here. Don't sign while holding it in the air."

Peng Weidong froze, unclenched his hand, pressed the paper flat on the desk, and traced his name over again, then pressed his fingerprint.

"Don't shake," Zhong said. "Even if you shake, I still have to read it aloud—once it's done, there's no putting the person back together. Listen carefully before you press."

"I've heard clearly."

Zhong gathered up the materials and tapped the death certificate with his pen. "This certificate lists the cause of death as sudden cardiac and respiratory arrest. That's not a cause of death. That's just what happens when someone stops breathing."

"Then what is it?"

"That's for us to find out." He said, "Family's signature, received. Did you bring the temperature logs?"

"Not yet."

"You need to get them this afternoon." He wrote a few characters and pushed the paper over. "The autopsy—borrow their autopsy room. You'll need a written approval from them, half a day is enough. If they won't lend it, I've got a vehicle. We transfer to our facility's autopsy room, plus one more layer of transfer paperwork and costs."

"How are the fees calculated?"

"By item. Autopsy, sample collection, sectioning, pathology—each one separate. Toxicology is extra." He quoted a figure. "Results in as little as ten-plus days, as long as a month. During that month, no one touches that freezer door."

"Tomorrow at seven."

"I'll be there at seven." He paused. "You get all the signatures you need. If anything's missing, I'll have to turn the car around."

[Thud. The days spent in that freezer are evidence too.]

At 1:20 PM, Jiangzhou Municipal Funeral Home, service hall, Window No. 3. A man in a blue vest sat inside, his work badge pinned straight, keyboard and a stack of forms at hand. She gave him the name and the date the body was brought in. He typed a few keys and looked up.

"Chen Xiaoman. First cremation on the morning of January 5th. The family chose it."

"Don't burn this one yet." She pushed the family's suspension application, the firm's authorization letter, and the appraisal center's acceptance receipt through the window. "The body has been entrusted for a cause-of-death appraisal. The forensic examiner will be on site tomorrow morning."

The man flipped through the pages. "Never done it this way." He read the word "suspension" twice, then turned and went into the back room. Through the glass, she could see him hunched over another desk making a phone call, gesturing the whole time.

When he came back, he pushed a registration form out. "Family signs here. Write it clearly: the cremation is on hold until the appraisal is complete, or until court or police paperwork arrives. You'll pick a new date yourselves."

Shen Zhixia filled out the form and read it aloud to Peng Weidong. Halfway through, he asked: "So she has to stay here."

"The extra days are a hundred eighty per day," the man at the window said. "Your original five days run out on the second. Have you extended?"

"We'll extend." She counted out the money, one thousand eight hundred, ten days.

After counting, she didn't put her wallet away. "Yesterday afternoon, did someone come by asking about the cremation on the fifth?"

The man thought for a moment. "Yes. Around three. A man, glasses. Asked if the fifth's cremation could be moved to tomorrow afternoon. Said he'd cover the fee."

"He said the family sent him."

"He did." The man nodded. "I said changing the date requires the family member in person. So he left. He left a number."

"Read it."

The man pulled over a logbook and read each digit aloud. By the fourth digit, she'd already pressed her hand onto the page—by the eighth, she didn't need to hear the last three.

[Thud. That cremation slot—someone already asked on your behalf.]

"Two more things." She slid over the request forms she'd filled out. "Freezer temperature logs, from intake at 3 PM on the 28th through today, stamped. And the autopsy room for half a day, doors open at 6:30 tomorrow morning."

"I can print the temperature logs for you," the man said. "The autopsy room needs the director's approval. We mostly lend it to the police. Lending it to an individual—for a lawsuit—no precedent."

"No precedent, then give me a written answer," she said. "Lend it or don't, write one line, sign it, and I'll take a receipt."

The man looked at her, pulled a stamp from a drawer, and pressed it onto the temperature logs. The printer hummed, then spit out a sheet covered in dense numbers, one row per hour, the freezer's internal temperature column barely wavering by half a degree from top to bottom.

She held the paper up to the light and read one line—the 28th, 3 PM: minus eighteen.

"The autopsy room, I'll give you an answer this afternoon," the man said.

At 4:30, the call came. The director approved it: half a day, two hundred yuan facility fee, family present, a copy of the appraisal institution's paperwork left on file. She went over that same afternoon, paid, and came back with the receipt in hand.

The two payments together: exactly two thousand. She drew a horizontal line under the figure and wrote: advance fully spent.

At 6:40, the steam over the noodle shop upstairs hadn't cleared. The checklist lay on the long table. Shen Zhixia checked off items one by one: authorization letter, original consent form, death certificate, household register, marriage certificate, ID card, temperature logs, suspension registration, autopsy room approval, facility fee receipt. Ten boxes. The last two she left empty—those were for tomorrow.

Peng Weidong crouched by the stove, peeling garlic, his hands never stopping.

He Xiufen took the checklist and looked it over top to bottom. When she reached the seventh box, she said: "What I told you this morning—remember it."

"Only the family member signs."

"Not you, not me. Peng Weidong." She said, "Tomorrow he's at the door at 6:30. The forensic examiner arrives at seven. Doesn't matter who gets there first. What matters is no one else is there."

Her phone buzzed. The number was the Chengbei Hospital Medical Affairs Office.

Director Xu's voice had the same tone. First he asked how far the paperwork had gotten, then said the hospital didn't object to the family applying for an appraisal, and that they'd send two people tomorrow. The last sentence came slow: "The cremation was arranged between the family and the funeral home. It has nothing to do with the hospital."

"The person who went to the funeral home yesterday afternoon asking to change the date—was that one of yours?"

"I can't say on that," he said. "My end can only confirm the procedures with you."

"Fine." She wrote that sentence down. "I've noted everything you said today."

"Lawyer Shen." He paused. "This time, you've taken things outside."

She'd barely set the phone down when it rang again. This time it was a number she didn't recognize. When she answered, the first thing she heard was a bell ringing somewhere, at intervals—the kind that hangs on the wall at a nurses' station.

"Lawyer Shen." Lin Qi's voice was barely above a whisper, like someone was walking past down the hall. "This afternoon, three people from the department were called into the medical office."

"Called for what?"

"Copying." She said, "The 26th shift, the 27th shift—the handover records, rewritten. Copied over from a new version."

"Whose shifts?"

"Mine and another nurse's." She paused. "They said the original logbook handwriting was too messy, hard to read, so they were tidying it up."

"You copied them."

"Two pages."

"The paper?"

No answer from the other end. The bell rang again.

"The department is altering the handover records," she said. "You need to move fast."

The call cut. Shen Zhixia stood there gripping the phone. The last basket of steamed buns had just come out of the steamer downstairs, white steam climbing the stairwell.

She wrote down the time in her notebook and set the pen back in the holder.