Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 211: The Handler

She slid the Acceptance Notice and her ID under the window.

"Webpage capture," she said. "The one added on the 25th."

Tang Guo hadn't come. She'd made this trip alone—Tang Guo was back at the firm transcribing pages, copying source and operator into the margins line by line.

Hu Yongnian came out from the back room with a kraft-paper case file in his hand, its corners pressed perfectly flat.

"Last four digits of the reference number. Read them back."

She did. He set the file on the counter, opened to the first page, and pinned the corner down with a fingertip.

"Nine printed pages." He counted through them one by one, showing her each. "One page of body text. Eight pages of attachments after it: six account homepages, one institutional verification page, one job-post page. Missing one page, this file's incomplete."

"The verification page's there."

"It's there." He flipped to it. It was the homepage of the first of the six accounts, and in the upper-right corner, beneath the blue badge, two lines of small text printed clearly—Operating entity: Jiangzhou Xingyao Culture Media Co., Ltd.; Qualifications: Business license and corporate bank account on file.

She stared at those two lines for a few seconds.

"Capture time was yesterday morning," Hu Yongnian said. "The mouse was mine. The operator field says me. The work log records start and end times, the URL, the filename, and the checksum. Go back and verify it yourself. If the values don't match, someone's been in here."

"Has the verification been pulled yet?"

"It was still up when I recorded." He said, "I clicked through again this morning. Still up."

"If they pull it tomorrow, what does this page count for?"

"It counts for yesterday." Hu Yongnian nudged the file toward her. "A webpage capture doesn't fix true or false—it fixes the hour and the minute. It lends you today's face for one day. If it changes tomorrow, this page of yours is still what today looked like."

She nodded and paged through the nine sheets one by one. Each had a page number in the lower-right corner, followed by "page X of 9." The invoice was clipped to the back of the last page, made out in Tang Guo's name.

"If they change it tomorrow," she asked, "and I record it again, does that count as a new item?"

"File a new application. It's a new item." He said, "Same URL, two time points, two pages, each standing alone. If you fold the later day into this item, it all blurs together—you have to be able to show on paper what each day looked like."

"Same price?"

"Same. Eight hundred."

"What about the disk item?"

"Still held up." He pushed the drawer shut. "When the certificate's ready, I'll call your firm's landline. Don't call back on some other number—I keep a record here."

She restacked the nine pages as they'd been, cradled the file to her chest, and walked out. There was a draft at the stairwell. She paused and copied the notarial certificate number into her little notebook, the last four digits twice.

The steamer baskets downstairs from the noodle shop had just been uncovered, white steam billowing up the stairwell. She climbed the stairs and set the file on the table by the window.

He Xiufen didn't look at her first. She opened the file and counted the pages one by one.

"Nine pages."

"Nine pages."

"One short and it's not a complete set." He Xiufen pushed her reading glasses up to her forehead. "The printed pages are back. The rest is work for the eyes."

She spread the hard-shell folder open and pulled out two pages: one was a printed settlement sheet the editing girl from two years ago had left at the firm, with a handwritten signature in the "Handler" field at the bottom; the other was a photo of a contract template sent from that business account's WeChat, printed out, also bearing a handwritten signature at the signature line.

The two pages lay side by side, a finger's width between them.

"Don't say anything yet," He Xiufen said.

So Shen Zhixia just looked. The strokes pressed down at the start, flicked out from the upper right at the finish, the tail hooking upward. Both signatures wrote the same name, and both sat beneath the same field: "Handler."

"Two years ago she signed for Xingyao. This year she signed for Dingchang." He Xiufen's finger walked between the two pages. "I said this two years ago, and when we dug it back out a little while back, you saw it too. But seeing is just seeing—it can't stop at your eyes. It has to go somewhere."

"Where do I write it?"

"Write it in the ledger." He Xiufen pulled a pen from the holder and touched the tip to the margin of the first page. "If you write 'same person,' that's your eyes talking. What your eyes see has to be translated into words someone else can take and verify."

She dictated, and Shen Zhixia transcribed:

"Both pages bear handwritten signatures at the signature line, both in the field labeled 'Handler.' The two signatures are consistent in stroke direction at the start, in connected strokes, and in finishing form. Whether they were written by the same person is subject to the expert opinion."

"That last sentence is not optional," He Xiufen said. "You overstate it, someone says 'what makes you so sure,' and the page is worthless."

"What about this settlement sheet?"

"Two years ago, what day she came, what she said, the fact that this is a printout not an original—record it all as it was. Don't add a single word, and don't go looking for a second copy." He Xiufen pushed the paper back to her hand.

"Why not go looking?"

"If you go looking today, by tomorrow the other side will know whose hands this page is in." He Xiufen said, "The copy in someone else's possession you can't reach. The page in your hand is an orphan. Orphans are useful—an orphan has only one line of provenance, and standing at the end of that line is a person with a name."

Shen Zhixia didn't ask anything more. She opened the notarial certificate to the last page and laid the job-post page beside the settlement sheet.

The job post carried several lines of black text: matrix account operations, footage editing, daily payment, pay per clip, multi-platform distribution. The settlement sheet listed a string of clip counts, unit prices, and dates, with a total in the final column. It came to less than three thousand.

"One page is someone recruiting this year, paying by the clip." He Xiufen said, "One page is someone getting paid by the clip two years ago. The two pages tell the same story: someone got paid by the clip to splice footage for a company."

"Fold it into line two."

"Fold it into line two: who spread it." He Xiufen said, "Line one is who edited it—six accounts plus this job post, pinned to the company's door. Line two is who spread it—six accounts under one verification reposting. Pin that to the door too."

Shen Zhixia pulled out a fresh sheet and laid it sideways on the table. She drew a pencil line down the middle. On the left she wrote two characters: On Paper. On the right, two more: On the Books.

On the left she wrote two lines: 1. Handler's signature, two pages, same name. 2. Splicing footage and running the accounts: Xingyao Media. On the right she wrote: Corporate bank account—account name, Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd.

"Two hands on the left, both on paper." He Xiufen came over holding her cup. "One hand that signs, one hand that does the work. The one on the right is on paper too, but it only has an account name—and the person who opened that account is someone who isn't there."

"The third hand is on the books."

"On the books." He Xiufen nodded once. "The books are the hardest to get at. To reach them, you need a piece of paper—a court order, or a public security letter. These two pages of yours can only lead you to that page."

[Thud. One hand signed for two companies. The two hands on paper are there. The one paying is not.]

The inner door opened a crack. Tang Guo poked half her body out, pen still in hand.

"Director He," she said. "That girl from two years ago—can I go find her? I won't mention the case. I'll just say I work in the same field."

"No." He Xiufen's voice was flat.

"Then how long does she have to wait?"

"Until she's worth something." He Xiufen said, "She's only worth something when someone shows up at her door to ask questions. If you go now, she says one line of 'I don't remember' and the door shuts dead—and behind a shut door, you've let the other side's air out for them."

Tang Guo pulled the door shut but didn't close it fully. A sliver of lamplight leaked through the gap.

Shen Zhixia turned over her phone. The number that had sent "Two hundred, I'll help you make the file disappear" had sent another message on the evening of the 27th. Four words: Have you thought it over?

"Did you screenshot it?"

"Yes. One a day, with the timestamp."

"Did you reply?"

"Not one word."

"Good."

A little after three in the afternoon, she opened the six accounts one by one.

Of the six homepages she'd screen-recorded two days earlier, two carried the same business contact in the tail of their bios—the same one in the corner of the price-sheet image. When she got to the fourth page, her hand stopped.

The account was still there. The blue badge still hung on it. But the bio now had only a name and a string of emojis at the front. The line at the end—the business inquiry number—was gone.

She carried the phone over to the stove.

He Xiufen glanced at it, said nothing, turned the flame down a notch first, then came back and took it.

"Wipe the table," she said.

"What does wiping the table tell us?"

"It tells us there was something on the table." He Xiufen handed the phone back. "That item you recorded yesterday morning—was the business number on the fourth page?"

"Yes. It's on the printed page."

"Then it's fine." He Xiufen said, "What it wiped is today. Your page is yesterday."

She called Hu Yongnian, gave him the URL, and said she wanted to record today's afternoon page. Could she bring the application over tomorrow morning?

"Pick up the form at the window on the second floor. Eight hundred. Walk in and it's done." The rustle of paper on the other end was faint. "Are you saying it's going to take the whole thing down?"

"Possibly."

"Then come early tomorrow." Hu Yongnian said, "Remember one thing: taking it down doesn't hurt you. You recorded the day it was still up—and you'll record the day it came down. Both ends are yours."

After hanging up, she screen-recorded that fourth homepage again from top to bottom, with the timestamp.

Then she made two copies of the nine pages. One set went into the ledger, the page header reading: Received June 28, provenance—Chengnan Notary Office webpage capture (supplementary filing). In the operator field, she wrote as the rules required: "The notary himself." The electronic file was copied onto an external hard drive and cloud storage, the filename suffixed with the retrieval date, not a word altered.

"Don't write your own name in that field," He Xiufen added from behind her reading glasses. "The mouse was someone else's. If you write yourself down, this whole item is wasted."

[Thud. When someone wipes the table, there was originally something on it.]

[Thud. Leaving it up is an admission. Taking it down doesn't change yesterday.]

She got home close to seven. Tang Guo was reheating noodles in the kitchen, white steam curling around the pot lid. Zhi'an sat at the desk doing homework, the end of a pen cap clenched between his teeth.

"Sis, tomorrow's Friday. I'll come to the firm after class."

"Mm. Don't take the long way."

"I know."

She spread the hard-shell folder on the coffee table and flipped to the checklist page.

Line one: Who edited—Xingyao Media.

Line two: Who spread it—six accounts under one verification, matrix distribution.

Line three: Who paid—Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd., corporate bank account. The provenance was written in detail: platform reply page two, the price-sheet image, the contract template—the same number on all three sheets.

Line four: Name. Address. ID number.

Line five: Who sold it · 0620-07.

Under line three she added a small note: June 28, corporate bank account holder—someone who isn't there.

Her pen paused there. The public registry listings were clear: as of November 14 last year, the legal representative had been changed to Hao Qiuchi. Yet the hand that signed and the hand that opened accounts never stood in the same field on paper.

[Thud. The one who handles it signs. The one who pays doesn't.]

She sent a message to the unsaved number: The verification's still up. One hand in the "Handler" field, signing for two companies.

A reply came back:

"The signing hand is hired by someone. The money shows its name in only one place—the corporate account. Go check the books. Don't go check the people."