Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 177 : The Door Left Ajar

At 6:50 on the morning of April 8, the roll-up shutter door downstairs was only halfway open, and the water on the stove was already hissing.

When Shen Zhixia came down, He Xiufen was scooping noodles into a bowl, a grease stain across the front of her apron. Seeing Shen Zhixia with her bag on, He Xiufen tapped her chopsticks against the rim of the bowl.

"Two things," she said. "First, that written opinion from the Commission. I asked Clerk Yu about it yesterday. She said it would be issued within the next couple of days. The letter goes to the registered address—the one Lin Qi changed herself on February 1. When it arrives, she needs to be there."

"Second thing."

"The Drug Supervision side has fifteen working days. You just got the receipt yesterday, so that's far off. The stack of papers in your hands today? None of them require you to run anywhere."

"Then I'll go to her place."

"Go." He Xiufen turned the flame down. "The Commission's letter is going to be finalized in the next day or two. If it arrives, the first person to see it should be her."

Shen Zhixia hitched the bag strap higher on her shoulder.

"If she..." She didn't finish.

"Don't say that." He Xiufen turned around. "'Don't do anything rash'—that's a phrase that pushes people away. When you go, talk to her about meals. About what you're doing today. About which document is due tomorrow. When a person has tomorrow's tasks in hand, they won't have hands free for anything else."

"Got it."

"Take two, hot." He Xiufen pulled two baozi from the steamer, wrapped them in oil paper, and tucked them into Shen Zhixia's bag. "If she says she's already eaten, just say you hadn't eaten and bought an extra."

"The bench?"

"Wiped down." He Xiufen draped the rag over the edge of the stove. "One more thing: if today she says she's not going to the Medical Affairs Office, don't push her. Get through today first. Don't try to shove this whole case to the finish line in a single day."

"I won't push. I'll just stay with her."

"Good. You know your limits."

* * *

The 7:20 bus has a stop by the back gate of Chengbei Hospital.

The room Lin Qi rents is in that row of old buildings on Youfang Lane—fourth floor, at the end of the corridor. An old woman sat crouched by the ground-floor entrance, picking through a small pile of shepherd's purse, laying the yellowed leaves on a newspaper.

"Go up slowly," the old woman said without looking up. "The pull cord on the fourth-floor light is broken."

Shen Zhixia said "Mm."

"The light in her room was on all night," the old woman added. "I got up twice to use the bathroom. Both times, it was on."

The door at the end of the fourth-floor corridor was ajar, left open a crack about two fingers wide.

A pair of plastic slippers sat by the door, toes facing out, arranged very neatly. Shen Zhixia stood at the door for two seconds, then raised her hand and knocked twice on the door panel.

No sound from inside.

She pressed her hand to it and pushed the door open.

The bed was against the window. The quilt was folded into a perfect square, the pillow pressed on top, every corner pulled straight. On the desk, a glass cup sat upside down, her toothbrush holder lined up beside it, a roll of tissue standing next to that. Farther over, a plastic bag held a toothbrush, towel, and shampoo, the mouth of the bag wrapped twice with a tie. One drawer was pulled halfway out, empty. The wardrobe door hung open; clothes were folded into two neat stacks—pants on the bottom, and on top, the white coat with sleeves washed pale. The floor had been mopped; the wet marks hadn't fully dried. By the door, a trash bag, tied tight.

The corner of the desk held a sheet of paper with one line written on it, then crossed out twice, hard—impossible to tell what it had originally said.

Lin Qi was sitting on the edge of the bed.

Her coat was on, her hair pulled back, still wearing those soft-soled shoes. Her eyes were red, dark circles under them. She didn't look like she'd just woken up. She looked like she'd been sitting there for a very long time.

"Why are you here?" she said.

"I told you yesterday. I'd wait for you downstairs."

"I told you yesterday. No need."

Shen Zhixia took her bag off her shoulder and set it against the wall by the door. Her hand went into the bag feeling for her notebook, then stopped halfway—the notebook was still at the very bottom, its zipper untouched.

[Thud. The room tidied this completely—this is a person preparing to go somewhere far.]

"Cleaning up," she said.

"What needed cleaning got cleaned." Lin Qi placed both hands on her knees. "It's someone else's place. No reason to leave a room full of stuff for them."

After a handover at the nurses' station, the countertop looks like this. Shen Zhixia looked at the two stacks of clothes, then at the trash bag by the door tied with two loops.

She'd seen this kind of tidying before. One year, she'd packed up a room like this for someone else: folded the clothes, tied the bags, mopped the floor, then sat at the table and waited for daylight. Back then she'd believed that if things were put in order, life would follow. Later, that room was empty.

"What about your medication?" she asked.

Lin Qi pulled a white paper bag from her coat pocket. A pharmacy-printed label was stuck to it, folded once across the middle. Most of a blister pack remained inside.

"One a day. I took it for seven days." She said, "It didn't do much, so I stopped."

"You can't just stop medication on your own."

"Took it and still couldn't sleep." Lin Qi said. "And when I do sleep, I dream—still that number. 6:20."

"How many nights without sleep?"

"I've lost count." Lin Qi said. "The night before last I tidied half the night. Last night I tidied all night. When I finished, I didn't even know what I'd been tidying."

"The paper on the desk."

"I wrote a few words and crossed them out." Lin Qi's eyes didn't turn toward it. "Not worth reading."

"Then I won't read it." Shen Zhixia said.

She studied the paper bag for a moment, watched Lin Qi push it back into her pocket, one corner sticking out.

"Does the Medical Affairs Office still want you today?"

"Yesterday I said I'd go tomorrow." Lin Qi said. "I told him 9:30."

"Not today." Shen Zhixia said. "If you go, I'll go with you. But this morning, don't."

Lin Qi's lips moved, but no words came out.

"Have you called your mother?"

"I don't dare." Lin Qi said. "She'd hear it in my voice the second I spoke."

"Then don't call today." Shen Zhixia picked up her bag. "Come on. Come eat noodles with me."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then sit and watch me eat."

Lin Qi looked at her for a while. A bit of wind slipped through the window crack, lifting the corner of the paper on the desk, then letting it fall.

She stood and took her scarf from the hook behind the door. When she locked up, she gripped the key in her palm, not putting it back in her pocket.

* * *

The little shop at the end of the street only sold noodles and wontons in the morning. Four small tables, and on the one against the wall lay half a newspaper someone had left behind. The shop owner set down two bowls of noodles, steam rushing up at their faces.

Shen Zhixia ate half of hers. Lin Qi lifted her noodles, then set them back down, pushing the greens from the topping to the edge of the bowl one by one.

"You're not taking notes?" Lin Qi suddenly asked.

"Not today." Shen Zhixia said.

"Lawyer Shen." Lin Qi looked into her bowl. "Let me ask you something, and don't dodge it. If I really did sign those eight characters, could you still win this case?"

Shen Zhixia set down her chopsticks.

"If you signed, those eight characters are your own admission," she said. "If you didn't, those eight characters are something someone else prepared on paper for you. Laid out in court, those two things carry completely different weight."

"But that drug really was my medical order."

"The order was yours. I accept that line." She said. "But where the drug came from, who received it, who unsealed it, whether the batch number matches—those are on other pages. And not one stroke of the writing on those pages is yours."

Lin Qi pushed her bowl forward half an inch.

"There are two timelines still in play," Shen Zhixia said. "The Commission's written opinion comes out in the next couple of days. Nobody knows what that letter says yet. On the Drug Supervision side, I filed the report yesterday and got the receipt—fifteen working days, earliest it can move is end of month. Neither hand has reached the end yet."

"Peng Weidong came by yesterday," she said. "Brought a bag of oranges. Sat at the door asking me the same question. The baby won't sleep at night unless he's held. It's been twenty-one days since they brought him home."

Lin Qi's fingers stilled on the edge of the table.

"If he took the money, would he stop asking about the drug?"

"The money and the drug are two separate matters." Shen Zhixia said. "I told him the same thing. His question was more honest than mine, and I answered him faster than I'm answering you today."

"Does it have anything to do with me?"

"Yes." Shen Zhixia said. "Someone in the department told me once: that night, after the drug was brought up, one more person came up to look. You were on the floor that night. I've never once asked you about it."

"If you want to ask, I have to be willing to say it myself."

"When you're willing, I'll be here."

Lin Qi looked up.

"Lawyer Shen." She said. "You're afraid I'll die because I'm the most important person in this case of yours."

She said it evenly, not like a question.

[Thud. The question she asked lands outside the case file.]

Shen Zhixia pushed her bowl aside. She thought for a moment, not answering right away.

"I won't lie to you," she said. "Yesterday, after that call ended, I sat upstairs for a while. I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Afraid that I'd come later than you left."

Lin Qi lined her chopsticks up along the edge of her bowl.

"As for the most important person," Shen Zhixia said, "don't say that for me. Your name has been written into three documents in this case, and not one of them is in your own hand—a four-line Explanation, a Self-Review Statement, and a printed Statement of Events with the signature block already formatted. What I want is one written by you."

"Written about what?"

"Whatever you're willing to tell." She said. "When you write it, you decide."

Lin Qi looked down at the half bowl of noodles. A thin film of oil floated on the surface of the broth, no longer steaming.

"This afternoon I'm going to do something," Shen Zhixia said. "Take that Statement of Events the Medical Affairs Office pushed at you, lay it side by side with the defense statement you submitted on Monday, and compare them column by column: which column is your writing, which is someone else's. I'll put it all on one page."

"Then what?"

"Next time the Commission sends a letter, or someone asks in court, I'll read that page aloud." She said. "If you want to see it, come back to the firm with me. If you don't, sit on the bench downstairs."

"Sit until dark and then what?"

"Wait for the letter."

Lin Qi smiled, very faintly.

"Fine," she said. "I'll finish eating and go with you."

She reached for the bowl, wanting a sip of broth. The broth had long gone cold. She pushed the bowl forward, braced her hands on the table's edge, and stood.

As she stood, her sleeve slid up.

It was an old sweater, the cuffs stretched loose. The sleeve slipped to mid-forearm, and from the back of her hand up past her wrist, there were purple marks layered one on top of another—horizontal, vertical, two spots at the edges gone yellow, the ones in the middle still red.

Shen Zhixia's eyes landed on them and stayed.

Lin Qi pulled the sleeve down. It slipped twice, so she used her other hand to twist the cuff into two folds.

"Who did that?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"Me." Lin Qi said. "I pinch myself to know I'm still here."

Shen Zhixia didn't ask again. She opened her bag and took out the two baozi He Xiufen had wrapped, setting them beside Lin Qi's hand.

The broth had gone cold. The baozi were still hot.