Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 206: Under a Dead Man's Name

The platform's legal department called at 10:07. Local landline, eight digits.

The caller first confirmed her identity. "Am I speaking with Lawyer Shen?" His tone was flat, like he made dozens of these calls a day.

"Trainee lawyer Shen Zhixia," she said. "The lead attorney is He Xiufen."

"I'm Zhong, from Legal Affairs. The platform's litigation liaison." He said, "The Tang Guo case—we saw it on the litigation service website. The company wants to be clear about a few things."

Shen Zhixia pressed speaker. He Xiufen came over from the kitchen with a teacup in hand and stood by the table without a word.

Zhong from Legal Affairs covered three items. The thirty-seven-second video had been taken down last night. The account's registration information, plus the three promotion orders attached to that video—they were willing to submit it to the court, and also provide the agent with a copy. The third item came a half-beat slower. "We also hope your side will consider whether the litigation claims against the platform could be withdrawn."

"We'll accept the takedown for now," Shen Zhixia said. "As for withdrawing, that waits until I've read through those two pages. The materials went in on the twenty-second. Mail a copy of the reply to the firm, and also send one by email."

"Understood."

"One more thing." She pressed her hand flat on the desk. "When that account went through real-name verification—was it done by facial recognition?"

There were two seconds of silence on the line.

"What I have on hand is paper," Zhong from Legal Affairs said. "The technical records for the verification process—that requires a court order."

After hanging up, He Xiufen set her cup down, the base knocking against the table.

"So it's afraid of landing in the defendant column too," she said. "The response notice hasn't even gone out yet, and it's already coming to us."

"It said before that it wouldn't take the video down."

"The platform isn't afraid of you suing it for letting people insult you." He Xiufen snapped the tea lid shut. "It's afraid of you suing it for not taking the video down."

At 12:40, the email arrived. He Xiufen printed it out—two pages, stapled once in the upper left corner.

The first page was the account registration information. The top line held the eleven-digit phone number, with three lines below: the real-name registrant, the ID number, and the registered phone number. The month and day digits of the ID were redacted, the tail masked with four asterisks.

The real-name registrant field: three characters—Zhu Changshui.

Shen Zhixia counted four digits from the seventh position. 1939.

The registered phone number—she dialed it again. "The number you have dialed is no longer in service."

The second page was payment information. A corporate bank account, account name: Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd. The bank and account number showed only the first six and last four digits. Below that were three promotion orders, the times transcribed with precision: June 17 at 11:20 p.m., June 20 at 2:05 a.m., June 21 at 3:40 a.m. All three paid from accounts with the same name, the same number.

She pulled up the quotation sheet image on the computer and set it side by side with the reply's second page.

The fine print in the lower right corner of the quotation sheet—the bank matched. The first six digits of the account matched. The last four matched too.

"This card," she said.

He Xiufen came over, pushed her reading glasses up onto her forehead, and compared the two numbers.

"What did I say last time," she said. "That the hand alone couldn't prove whose card the money came from. Now the card has walked in on its own."

[Thud. 1939. This name—does it still count for anything.]

Shen Zhixia pressed her pen down. An eighty-something-year-old wouldn't be buying fifty thousand views at three in the morning, or sitting in a room cutting frame by frame. The name was real; the man wasn't. The number was alive. The money came from a living person's account.

She wrote a line on a sticky note: Verify the current status of this ID. She paused after writing, leaving off the word "deceased." That kind of thing didn't belong on paper yet—household registration and death records had to be pulled by the police or the court.

She picked up her phone and texted the unsaved number: The real name belongs to an old man.

The reply came a few minutes later, two lines:

"The dead don't sign."

"A corporate bank account requires someone to open it in person with their ID. Ask that office how many accounts it has opened for other people."

She flipped open the hard-shell folder, pulled out a fresh sheet, and laid it sideways across the desk. With a pencil she drew a horizontal line across the middle and marked four points on it.

Beside the first point she wrote: Eleven-digit number. Source: first-post notarization, complaint receipt.

Second point: Zhu Changshui, born 1939. Source: platform reply, page one.

Third point: Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd., corporate account. Source: reply page two, quotation sheet, agreement template—same number on all three sheets.

At the fourth point she set her pen down. After a long pause, she wrote two characters: Xingyao. Then she stepped back, looked at it, drew a dotted-line box around the name with her pencil, and added beside it: Pending verification.

He Xiufen came over from the stove with a bowl of noodles, her chopstick tips tracing the line.

"The solid evidence stops at the third point," she said. "One phone number, one real name, one corporate payer account—matching on three documents. That's what can go on the table."

"What about the fourth point?"

"The fourth point is a dotted line," He Xiufen said. "One industrial park, one hand's signature. That hand proves someone was doing work for two companies. It doesn't prove the two are one. If you want to write that down, you first need paper proving they're one family. Without that paper, the line ends here."

"About that account behind the third point," Shen Zhixia said, "one person on the payroll, and the registered address is one room with three company signs."

"A shell is a shell." He Xiufen said, "A shell isn't afraid of being sued. The person behind it is. Nail down the shell and it'll start leaking air on its own."

"The second point is the most troublesome."

"Right." He Xiufen set the bowl down. "The real name belongs to someone who's no longer here. The civil track can't reach him, so it has to follow the card. Using someone else's identity to register, to open accounts, to collect money—that falls into criminal territory."

"Then I'll put the identity misuse in the complaint."

"Not yet." He Xiufen tapped her chopsticks against the rim of the bowl. "If you write it in, the court and the platform both have to verify it first. If it comes back unverified, the other side bites you in return—says you fabricated facts. Put it in the evidence binder, marked pending verification, and let the police or the court verify it."

Shen Zhixia wrote two characters in the lower right corner of the page: Pending verification.

[Thud. The name behind the money has surfaced. The hand that signed—still hasn't.]

"Don't forget the appointment on the twenty-fifth," He Xiufen said. "Two days left."

At 6:40 that evening, Tang Guo came over. She was carrying two cartons of yogurt. She'd barely taken two bites when her phone buzzed on the table.

Then a second buzz, a third.

She picked it up and glanced at the screen, and all the color drained from her face.

"They're all unknown numbers."

The buzzing became a continuous string. One number after another flashed in—caller locations: Guangzhou, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, and one listed as overseas. She answered the first. No one spoke on the other end, just breathing. She hung up; the next one came in. She put it on speaker—a recording, looping, calling her a sellout who took dirty money.

"Stop answering," Shen Zhixia said, pressing her hand down.

"If I don't answer, it keeps ringing."

"Let it ring." Shen Zhixia turned the screen toward her. "Every number that comes through, screenshot it one by one. Do it yourself."

Tang Guo's hand was shaking; it took three tries to get the screenshot right. Shen Zhixia read the times aloud beside her: 6:47, 6:48, 6:53. The little red dots in the corner of the screen kept climbing. In a little over forty minutes, more than forty numbers.

"I should just change my number," Tang Guo said, her voice thin. "I'll kill this one. I'll post a video explaining everything—would that work?"

"Not today." Shen Zhixia said, "If you speak now, the people cursing you and the people watching you will both double."

"Then what do I do?"

"Come with me to the police station." She handed the phone back. "Before you kill the number, export everything on it. Don't throw away the SIM card, and don't deactivate the account yet."

He Xiufen walked them downstairs and draped a jacket over Tang Guo's shoulders. "Just go. Let Zhixia do the talking. You only sign your own name."

The duty room at Minsheng Road Police Station had harsh white light. The officer on duty was in his early thirties. He had them sit, then flipped through the screenshots and call log page by page.

"Internet phone numbers, virtual," he said when he finished. "Checking them one by one is slow. Keep all these numbers and times. I'll file an incident report for you."

"Had any recent conflicts with anyone, or filed any reports?" he asked.

Tang Guo shook her head.

"Someone leaked her moving date," Shen Zhixia said. "May twenty-third. That date was only written on a few documents."

The officer jotted a line. "Keep those messages too. Don't delete them."

He printed out a form, pointed to several places for Tang Guo to sign. A serial number was printed in the corner of the page.

"If anyone follows you, comes to your door, or bangs on your apartment, call 110 immediately," he said. "The carrier can enable high-frequency harassment blocking, and 12321 accepts complaints too. Easiest is switching numbers—though the way things look, a new number won't necessarily stay clean."

"These texts and numbers," Shen Zhixia asked, "can they be linked with the platform's real-name records and those payment transfers into one line?"

The officer glanced at her. "I can put it in the record. But when it actually reaches the filing stage, the case has to clear the criminal threshold. If it doesn't, pulling the platform's real-name records or the payment accounts still requires the court."

"I have a piece of paper," Shen Zhixia said. "It shows the real name of a man in his eighties."

The officer's pen stopped.

"Then pass that paper up the chain." He said, "Pass it until it reaches a place high enough to do something."

It was past nine when they left, the air damp. The two of them walked along Minsheng Road in silence.

At the base of her building, Shen Zhixia looked up at the dark window on the third floor.

"Tomorrow morning, I'll go with you to change your number," she said. "Before you do, export everything on the phone to a hard drive, then deactivate it. Keep the SIM card."

"Mm."

Tang Guo also looked up at her own window, then turned back. "They're coming for me, aren't they."

"Yes."

"So if I change my number, it's over?"

Shen Zhixia didn't answer.

"Go on up. Close the curtains. Deadbolt the door."

Tang Guo went upstairs. The third-floor light came on, the curtains drew shut, and her silhouette moved twice behind them.

Shen Zhixia stood in the alley, not leaving. Her phone buzzed once in her pocket.

The newest message sat beneath the string of unknown numbers, the prefix identical to the flood that had hammered Tang Guo earlier that evening.

"After you switch to your new number tomorrow, be sure to let me know."

Below it was an attached photo.

The photo showed the alley below the Zhengping Firm office. Snow still on the ground, a pair of repair gloves resting on the little folding stool by the entrance. Tang Guo stood with her back to the camera, looking up at the window above, wearing that gray-green padded jacket she'd had on all winter. The photographer stood diagonally across the street. On the roll-up shutter in the photo, two strips of tape crossed in an X—Shen Zhixia had put them there herself back in November, and they hadn't been replaced since.

She stared at it for a long time, zoomed in all the way, then back out.

This photo had been taken last winter, and held until today.

She'd been in and out of that alley below the Zhengping Firm for nearly two years. Across the street was a lottery shop with three steps at the entrance. From the top step, you could see the whole alley end to end—she recognized the angle.

She took out her small notebook, flipped to the very last page, and wrote a line: Last winter, someone was already standing here.