Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 210: This Package

The register at Minsheng Road Police Station, flipped forward two pages. The officer first asked how many documents she had brought.

"Three." Shen Zhixia set the plastic bag on the counter without opening it. "One photocopy of the broadband relocation request form, two printouts of the for-sale sheet, and the case number from the last report."

"Who has the originals?"

"The form is with the person involved, in a plastic sleeve. The sheet is a printout of a re-photographed copy. The original photo is on my phone, with a backup saved."

"Right." The officer pressed the desk lamp down. "That form has a name, phone number, and apartment number on it. Your photocopy only travels inside this case file. If one extra word gets out, you lose. Don't change the file name either. Change it and it gets messy."

"I know."

He flipped back to the end of the previous page and tapped the corner with his pen. "Same number. Just add on after it. You say one, I write one."

She took out her small notebook and laid it flat on the counter.

"June 24, 12:47 a.m. First call. Male voice. He quoted the exact time I sat at this station last time, and added which school my younger brother attends."

"Noted."

"1:20 and 2:05, two more numbers. One silent for twenty-seven seconds, one cursing for a minute forty-one."

"Got it."

"June 25, 10 p.m. A man in his early thirties walked into that print shop on Minsheng Road, asking about the girl who comes in to print materials and play videos. Tried to get her number from the owner."

"Adding that too."

"10:50. Someone posted her full apartment number in a group chat, with the line 'I'm downstairs right now.'"

The officer's pen paused. "Write that exact line here yourself."

She wrote the sentence in the margin, quotation marks on both ends.

"June 26, 9:22 a.m. The doormat outside 302 was moved. Half a fresh cigarette butt ground into the dust."

"Did you photograph it?"

"Yes, with a timestamp."

"Then that's enough." He flipped past the page, then back. "Anything else?"

"Those three numbers, and the man at the print shop—can they be merged into one line?" she asked.

"Cases can't be merged." The officer said. "But they can go on the same page. One line is intimidation, one is probing. Who did it isn't clear yet. Keep them separate, numbers sequential."

She pushed the two printouts across. The table had been enlarged for printing, column after column, and in the blank space at the edge was a line she had written in pencil: Printout of a re-photographed copy. Original not in my possession.

[Thud. The list is now opened. Add one item: who sold this package.]

The officer glanced at the handwritten line. "You marked that yourself?"

"I was afraid of it leaving my hands and being taken as something else."

"Good habit." He lowered his head and copied the fields from the sheet: labels, names, ID number lengths, phone numbers, addresses. When he reached "full set, 1,500, pay first, open first," his pen hesitated, then copied it. When he reached the address box, where someone had drawn a red circle, he copied that too—circling it into a ring.

"That red circle isn't ours," Shen Zhixia said.

"I know." The officer said. "Whoever drew it has the paper. I won't guess for you."

She handed over the photocopy of the broadband form. He copied the stamp in the bottom right corner into the register: installation agent, Chengdong Minsheng Road, 07.

"A business hall form. Why does it have this stamp?"

"She got it at that little shop downstairs. The one that sells SIM cards, phone credit, and takes in packages. Thirty yuan cheaper than the business hall."

"Marking this one as pending." The officer set his pen down and looked at her. "Don't go asking around yourself. The moment you ask, they'll sweep the drawer clean first."

"The station said the same thing."

"Then two people are saying it right."

She asked: "Those numbers. What did you find?"

"They're rented." The officer said. "Trace it layer by layer and it breaks at every layer. You asked last time. Same answer."

"Paper moves fast. People move slow."

"You came up with that yourself?" The officer smiled. "You can think what you want."

At the end of the register page he wrote the date and signed. He slipped the two printouts into the page gap, sealed the photocopy into a file envelope, tore off a receipt from the drawer, and looked up. "The number from last time."

She recited it. He flipped back to the previous page, checked it, and copied it down exactly.

"File the Cyberspace Administration one yourself." He pushed the receipt over. "Two doors, two receipts. Every line these papers travel on needs to leave a mark."

She got back to the office after 4 p.m. The noodle shop downstairs had just started its second batch of scallion oil, the smell creeping up through the stairwell gaps. He Xiufen sat by the window, taking apart a hard-shell folder. The metal cabinet was half open, stacks of paper inside.

"Submitted?"

"Added a page. Same number."

"Mm."

Shen Zhixia filled out the report on that old computer. Informant: Tang Guo. Contact number: the office landline—not one character touching that new number. She kept the content flat: a certain account sells citizens' personal information by category in groups and private messages. Two screenshots attached.

On the screenshots she had covered two fields: name and ID number. The label "legal-education blogger," the rows of data fields, "full set, 1,500, pay first, open first," "two hundred, I'll wipe your record"—not one character covered.

"Did I cover the right things?" she asked.

"Yes." He Xiufen came over to look. "What you covered is the person. What you left visible is the trade. One glance and anyone can see what kind of stall this is, without seeing whose goods are laid out."

Submitted. A filing number popped up in the corner of the screen. She copied it into her small notebook and photographed the whole page with her phone, timestamped.

"Keep it," He Xiufen said.

"Keeping it."

He Xiufen picked up the printout and held it up, reading through her reading glasses, first scanning the rows of fields. At the end she gave a short laugh that wasn't really a laugh.

"'Wipe your record.'" She said. "He told you that—two hundred, I'll wipe your record."

"Yes."

"That's not a salesman's tone." He Xiufen set the paper down. "You only call it wiping a record if the thing's already sold. He still has his copy in hand. That's why he dares name a price. You not responding—that was right."

"I didn't respond, and I didn't block him."

"Why not block him?"

"Block him and I can't see who he's still selling to."

He Xiufen nodded. "Keep him. Screenshot once a day, timestamped. The day he writes one wrong character, he's handing you something himself."

"Start a fresh page in the notebook." She added, "Two columns at the top. Left: who sold. Right: who bought. Don't mix them into one."

"Why?"

"The seller wants money. The buyer wants the person." He Xiufen said. "The money-seeker isn't in a hurry. Wherever the money comes from, sooner or later it lands in a corporate account. You can wait that one out. The person-seeker is different—he has a circle in his hand and shoes on his feet, still in this city."

Shen Zhixia copied both sentences into the hard-shell folder.

Tang Guo was in the back room transcribing pages, stroke by stroke, copying source and operator into the margins, matching the earlier notebooks. When she reached the last page, she stopped and asked: "That account. Can I reply just once? One line, saying the list is fake."

"Not one word." He Xiufen said it fast.

"If you reply, he won't need to guess anymore." Shen Zhixia said. "If he stops guessing, we won't know what he's guessing about."

Tang Guo set her pen down. The nib tapped against the paper.

She sent Zhou Yu a message: That package is open. The person involved has not responded.

About ten minutes later, two words came back: Understood. Then another: Don't look at that group a second time.

At 5:30, a voice message popped up in the rider group. She clicked it—Ma Jianjun's voice, wind whooshing in the background.

"I run that whole Minsheng Road 118 block every day. On the 25th, in the morning, there was an unfamiliar guy standing downstairs for about twenty minutes, holding up his phone filming the entrance. Not a delivery guy. No insulated box."

Seven or eight replies followed: "Should we go check," "Brother Ma, do you know him," "Which building."

She replied one line in the group: Nobody go asking. If you see something, just note the time.

In the hard-shell folder she added a line: 25th, morning, No. 118 downstairs, unfamiliar man photographing for about twenty minutes—Ma Jianjun voice message, pending confirmation.

"Who pressed the shutter" she did not write.

She got home after 9 p.m. Tang Guo was washing dishes in the kitchen. Zhi'an was in the inner room doing practice tests, door ajar, desk lamp leaking a sliver of light. On the coffee table lay three sheets: the printout of the for-sale sheet, the photocopy of the broadband form, the receipt from that morning.

She picked up Tang Guo's phone and zoomed into the re-photographed image, moving box by box. At the bottom right corner, she stopped.

There was a line of small print, smaller than any field on the sheet: 0620—07.

"What is that?" Tang Guo came out, drying her hands.

"This package's number." She copied the line onto paper. "First four digits are the release date. Last two are the package number. They number by day, sell by package."

"So there are other packages."

"Yes."

Tang Guo's phone buzzed again. The old follower forwarded another image through that private-message channel: the same sheet, posted by a different account. Timestamp on the corner was 9:40 a.m. on the 25th. The address box was perfectly clean.

She laid the two side by side. One had nothing at the bottom. The other was the one in Tang Guo's hand—arrived past 2 p.m. on the 25th, the circle pressing down on the far-right grid line, cutting a small crooked segment.

"Same sheet, five hours apart." She said. "In the morning it was clean in the group. By afternoon, in someone's hands, a circle appeared. The seller didn't draw it."

"Then who did?" Tang Guo asked.

"This box is the address." She pointed at the characters inside the circle. "The one setting the price is selling packages. The one drawing the circle is buying. He's circling the door he means to go to. Someone looking at a screen can't draw like this—this was done with paper in hand, pen tip sliding down the grid line."

Tang Guo stared at that line for a moment. "On the morning of the 26th, on that dusty car downstairs—the handprint was gone."

"Yeah."

[Thud. The seller sets the price. The buyer draws the circle. One red ring, two people writing on the same sheet of paper.]

[Thud. One package, one label. One package, one number. Numbers change. The serial doesn't.]

She pulled the hard-shell folder over and flipped to the list page. The fourth line was in her own handwriting: Name. Address. ID number. Today she added a fifth line below it. First three characters: Who sold it. Then seven characters: 0620—07.

"Fifteen hundred." Tang Guo said. "That's what I'm worth to them."

"He's the one setting the price." Shen Zhixia squared the two printouts. "The one naming a price is someone else. What you're worth isn't for the seller to write down."

Tang Guo didn't answer. She went back to the kitchen. The water started running again.

She sent the unsaved number a line: Package opened. Serial 0620—07.

A line came back: Don't go asking the seller. The seller changes numbers. The buyer changes shoes. What you need right now is the shoes.

Zhi'an came out of the inner room for water, pajama collar crooked. He stood at the door for a second. "Sis, door locked?"

"Locked."

"I'm not going to the cram school this weekend. I'll study at home." He said it and went back in, door closing softly.

At 10:40, Tang Guo's new number rang. An unsaved local number on the screen, lighting up for the second time today. Tang Guo answered, listened for a moment, and handed the phone over. "It's for you."

"Lawyer Shen." The print shop owner's voice was kept low, the roll-up shutter still rattling on her end. "I just pulled the shutter down. He came again this afternoon. Stood outside for a while. Didn't buy anything."

"What did he ask?"

"Last time he asked if that girl comes in often to print materials." The owner paused. "Today he asked—that girl at your shop. Does she live alone?"

Shen Zhixia pressed the phone tighter against her ear. "What time was he there?"

"Around four in the afternoon. I fobbed him off. You tell her not to go back there alone at night."

"Thank you. Don't tell anyone about this call."

She hung up, took out the small notebook, flipped to a fresh page, wrote the time first, then that sentence.

"I don't live alone now," Tang Guo said from the doorway.

"Then tonight you sleep in the inner room."

The pen cap clicked shut, louder than usual.