Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 250: Address Change Slip

At 8:20, Tang Guo sent only a photo. Not a single word with it.

Shen Zhixia pulled the toothbrush out of her mouth and called back.

"Six fifty, I opened the door to take out the trash, and it was on the door sign," Tang Guo said. "I didn't go out. One phone running a stopwatch, one filming, shot from the door crack."

"Don't open the door."

"I haven't."

At 8:50, Shen Zhixia stood outside the building's access gate and buzzed the unit. The security guard slid a visitor log through the booth window: name, purpose, time. She took the pen and wrote. When she reached the "purpose" box, the pen tip paused for half a second.

This building had the same temperament as all the paperwork she'd been fighting: whoever came in, whatever they came for—it all had to leave a line.

On the seventeenth floor, the A4 sheet pressed flat against the door sign. Folded once, four corners tacked down with double-sided tape, a small piece missing from the upper right corner, bold Song typeface: The video's deleted. Are you leaving or not.

"Last one had nine characters," Tang Guo said. "This one has eight."

"One fewer."

"And one extra 'leave.'"

Shen Zhixia crouched to examine the corners. Under the tape was a layer of old adhesive, gray—the residue left when the August 26 sheet had been torn away. The two papers had been stuck in the same spot, tilted at the same angle.

"I've been living here twenty-seven days," Tang Guo said. "This is the second one."

"It doesn't even believe itself." Shen Zhixia raised her phone. "The eight accounts are still spinning, and it writes 'video deleted.' What it's written isn't fact—it's a price. I deleted, so now you should move."

After shooting her own set, she had Tang Guo film again from a different angle. Both of them needed timestamps visible.

Downstairs, Tang Guo carried her trash bag and stopped in front of the parcel lockers. Next to them sat two blue plastic baskets where the courier hub dumped empty boxes stripped from deliveries. Anyone could dig through them.

"The delivery the day before yesterday—the bracket for the three-thousand-yuan fill light—I unwrapped it here." She switched the bag to her other hand and bent down.

Shen Zhixia leaned over too. The bottom of the basket was packed with cardboard, the top piece carrying half a label. The tear followed a fold line, clean as if it hadn't been ripped by hand.

"Is this yours?"

"Mine." Tang Guo's hand stopped midair. "Had it forwarded at the hub in early August. Old address Minsheng Road, forwarded here."

The remaining half showed the old address, the last six digits of a tracking number, and a handwritten character for "forward." The torn-away half—that was where the new address would have been.

"Does the tracking number match."

Tang Guo pulled up her phone and found the pickup text from the hub. Last six digits. Exact match.

"It checks out."

[Thud. The address wasn't guessed. It was copied.]

[Thud. Copied half, tore half away. The tearing was more meticulous than the copying.]

Shen Zhixia went upstairs for a paper envelope. She had Tang Guo lift the entire sheet of cardboard with the label out of the basket, set it back in place for a photo, then remove it. No plastic bag, nothing written on the front—only a pencil note on the back of the envelope: date, building, who retrieved it.

Ten o'clock. Property management. The front desk said the official seal wasn't on-site and sent for the head of security. The man dug out an access control register; August's hadn't been archived yet.

"Two things," Shen Zhixia said. "A copy of this page, and a clip from the gate camera that day."

"Copy, sure." The captain walked toward the copy machine with the register. "Camera footage has to go through the police. We don't release it to individuals."

"Then give me a written retention statement."

The copy came out—thirty-some lines on A4, all handwritten, each in a different script. She read line by line until she found August 26: entered 15:12, white sedan, plate ending 27, purpose listed as "delivery," one temporary card issued; exited 15:23.

She remembered the two characters she'd written in the visitor log that morning.

"How do the temporary cards charge."

"QR code," the captain said. "Scan once at the entry gate, charged by time on exit."

"How long are records kept."

"The company keeps them six months."

"And the footage."

"Thirty days." The captain said. "It's only been four days since the twenty-sixth. It's safe."

"After the twenty-fifth, there's nothing."

The captain didn't respond. He lowered his head and wrote "verified against original" in longhand beneath the copy, signed it, left his duty phone number. His handwriting was straight, each stroke pressing against the grid lines.

10:30. The courier hub outside the east gate of the complex. A tin-roofed shed, two racks of shelves, a scale, and on the counter an open bound register, its cover marked in marker: "Forwarding · Address Change — August." A camera hung from the shed corner, aimed at the counter. Its feed screen sat dark against the wall.

The young man on duty wore blue sleeve guards, his phone dangling from a plastic clip on his chest. His name was Cao Lei.

"These registers don't go out on loan," he said, preemptively.

Shen Zhixia set the paper envelope at the counter's edge, careful not to cover the register, and drew out the half label.

"Is this your handwriting."

Cao Lei's hand stopped on his phone case. He looked for two seconds.

"That's mine."

"Early August, a package forwarded from Minsheng Road in Chengdong." She said. "The other half's been torn off. The half that's gone had the new address on it."

He pushed his sleeve guard up a little, then pulled it back down.

"You're too late," he said. "This shouldn't be my problem. That page was flipped through a few days ago."

"What day."

"The afternoon of the twenty-eighth." He thought for a moment. "Past four. I was restocking rack two."

The August register had twenty lines per page. He turned to Tang Guo's page and pointed: the edge was worn soft from repeated handling; beneath the new-address line was a short scratch, made by a pen tip, no ink.

"I showed it to him," Cao Lei said. "He said the boss sent him to check on a forwarded package."

"Is your boss here."

"No. Went to the sorting center to pick up a truckload of goods."

"What did the man look like."

"Dark jacket, came on an electric scooter, parked outside the shed." Cao Lei said. "I made him look from outside the counter. He flipped through page by page and asked how many packages had been forwarded to Chengdong in early August. I said five."

"How did he photograph them."

"With his own phone. When he shot, he used his hand to block the line of sight toward the counter divider."

"Blocking what."

"I don't know what he was blocking."

"What did he say when he left."

Cao Lei paused.

"He asked me, how long do you keep these registers."

"What did you answer."

"A year."

Shen Zhixia laid her hand on the edge of the register without turning a page. She looked up at the camera in the shed corner.

"Is it recording."

"It's mounted." Cao Lei tilted his chin toward the black screen on the wall. "The boss never plugged in a hard drive. Said it's just for show. Last month the light was still on. Then it stopped."

[Thud. The man checking the papers didn't ask the price. He only asked how long they'd be kept.]

"On the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, how many packages went to that building," Shen Zhixia asked.

Cao Lei pulled out another register from under the counter, corners all curled. He flipped twice. "One."

"Who delivered it."

"Me." He tugged at his sleeve guard. "Past three. The courtyard doesn't let tricycles in, so I pushed the cart through the east gate and took it up to the seventeenth floor."

Shen Zhixia wrote on the paper: August 26, 15:12, the car's registered purpose was "delivery"; that day's actual courier came by tricycle, entered through the east gate.

Lu Jibai arrived at eleven. The car stopped outside the east gate, and he came in with two pages in his hand.

"Picked up the filing receipt from the court. On the way." He laid the papers on the counter—two printed blank witness statements, the first page's header already typed. "Have him write here."

Shen Zhixia handed over the half label. He turned it over in his fingers, studying the crease on the back.

"Cleaner than most contracts I've reviewed."

"A hand tear wouldn't be this straight."

"So it wasn't impulsive." He rotated the paper and tapped the margin three times with the pencil. "The date, the time, every action he took, the exact words he said when leaving. No 'I think,' no 'probably'—only 'I saw' and 'I heard.'"

The pencil had been sharpened short, a ring of dark wear around the barrel. He'd brought few things out of Hengzheng—she'd seen this pencil more than once.

Cao Lei took the paper, dug a pen from under the counter, and tested it twice before ink came.

"Can I write 'he probably came to steal information'?"

"No," Lu Jibai said. "'Steal' is a conclusion. You didn't see that word."

Cao Lei wrote slowly. At "he flipped through page by page," he stopped, changed "flipped" to "paged," then changed it back. He signed his name, left his duty phone number, and pushed the paper across.

"Read it aloud once," Lu Jibai said. "If there's a single word you wouldn't dare speak in court, cross it out and rewrite it."

He lowered his head and read. At the line about "asked how long you keep these registers," his voice dropped, and he read it twice.

The photocopies—Cao Lei carried the register himself to the print shop across the street. Back at the counter, he wrote "verified against original" at the end, signed, dated it. He put the register back in its spot, aligning it to its original angle.

Tang Guo propped both phones on the scale, one running the stopwatch, one recording. The cover, a segment; the page, a segment; the pen-tip scratch beside the nail mark, a segment.

"Last time, someone else filmed me," she said. "This time, I film it myself."

Her hands were steady, her voice even as she counted. Shen Zhixia stood beside her without speaking and folded the envelope shut.

Past seven in the evening. The noodle shop downstairs was starting to smell of cooking oil. Zhou Yu had come upstairs at 6:40, in plain clothes. He looked first at the A4 on the wall with the four horizontal lines drawn on it, then at the five items spread across the table.

He arranged the plate-731 photos by date, tapping a spot in each background: the alley entrance, the court's back gate, the no-parking line.

"Three locations, one car," he said. "All three places where she'd show up. This isn't passing by anymore."

He Xiufen brought out the noodles—four bowls, each with an extra egg.

"Start with this half." Zhou Yu pinched the torn label fragment and held it up. "This tear is worth more than anything else. The new address is what got torn away—what's left is the tracking number. He was afraid someone would recognize which entry he'd copied, but he left the key to finding her sitting in the basket."

"The gate register entry was a borrowed name," Shen Zhixia said. "That building only had one package that day, and the actual courier pushed his own cart up through the east gate. The white car listed 'delivery'—using someone else's work as his cover story."

"That locks in." Zhou Yu nodded. "Who drove the white car, we don't know yet. But it went through that gate, got a card, scanned, exited—the fee was paid on the spot. Tomorrow, have the station contact property management to pull the records. That temporary-card charge has a payment trail."

He laid out the items one by one.

"The address change slip: someone knows where she lives, and they learned it from paper. The hub register: someone flipped through it and photographed it. The gate register: someone entered that building under the cover of 'delivery.' Three photographs: someone's been waiting downstairs. Two door-sign papers: while he waited, he talked to her."

He aligned the paper edges.

"Take any one of these alone, it can be written off as coincidence. Lay all five together and it's a line, and the line tells one story—she's being watched, and the watcher has changed hands."

"Can we submit it now?" Tang Guo asked. "Is it enough."

"Enough." Zhou Yu said without hesitation. "Secret filming and distribution of another person's private information, threatening personal safety, interfering with normal daily life—there are provisions under the Public Security Administration Punishment Law. The three tracking photos, the gate register, the photographed register copy: enough to file, enough for a summons."

Tang Guo leaned forward. "Then submit it."

Zhou Yu didn't answer right away. He set the photocopy down, pressed it under the table corner.

"I'll tell you what happens next," he said. "You submit it, the station goes to the hub to verify the register, goes to property management to pull the footage, brings in whoever drove the white car and questions him all night. He confesses: someone paid him to tape up a piece of paper with a WeChat ID on it, and delete everything when done."

"And then."

"Then he takes a penalty." Zhou Yu said. "A few days later, a new paper appears on the door sign, or a new number calls her phone. The next one will be a different person."

He Xiufen rapped the page with the barrel of her pen.

"That one strike uses up one of your chances," she said. "The station isn't stupid either. Report the same thing a third time, a fourth time, and they'll just hand you a receipt and nothing else."

Tang Guo's fingers scraped at the table edge twice. She said nothing.

"So how long do we wait," she finally asked.

"I don't know," Shen Zhixia said.

"You don't know, and you still want to wait."

"Waiting isn't sitting idle." Shen Zhixia nudged the five items toward the center of the table. "These next few days, we make sure that when we do submit, it goes in as a complete file. That gate footage—tomorrow Prosecutor Zhou goes with the officers to pull it. Property management only recognizes the police; the moment we ask, it's 'not for individuals.' The temporary-card payment record—have the station pull it in the same request. Cao Lei's two pages are already in hand. Wait for him to move again, and what we submit is a whole file, not a few loose sheets."

"What if he doesn't move again," Tang Guo said.

"Then this account waits a few days. September tenth, we start the enforcement action first. This file gets added later." Lu Jibai pushed the last bowl of noodles toward Shen Zhixia.

Zhou Yu began filing the materials into the report notebook, clipping them in one by one. He looked up.

"Submitted now, it's enough for a summons," he said. "But I want to wait for him to move again—so the question of who's directing him gets packed in too."

Tang Guo stared at him for two seconds, then grabbed her phone.

"If he moves again, I'll be the one filming it."