Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 254: Plate Ending 731

Tang Guo's voice message was only four seconds: "It's here again. Downstairs. Engine still running."

Shen Zhixia slid the page she'd just finished—the "Supplementary Statement on the Nature of Funds in the Taiying Account," prepared per Judge Gu's request—into the file envelope and glanced at the bottom-right corner of her monitor: 10:28 p.m. She held down the voice button: "Turn off the lights. Stand by the hallway window, not at the door, and don't go down. I'll be there in ten minutes."

The taxi crossed two traffic lights. In the back seat, she dialed 110: Building 3, Chengdong Anju Lane. A black sedan had been parked outside the compound's gate for over half an hour, someone inside, not getting out, engine not shut off. "We've photographed this plate four times: July 30th, outside Zhengping Law Firm; August 11th, outside a witness's building; August 12th, behind the courthouse; August 26th, outside my client's building. Tonight makes five." The dispatcher logged the time: 10:31 p.m. The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror and sped up a little.

Building 3 in Anju Lane was a high-rise, a dozen-plus floors, with an access gate at the compound entrance and a guard booth lit from within. Outside the gate, the lane was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. She paid and stepped out, stopping at the mouth of the lane without going farther in. The black car sat on the white no-parking line outside the gate, nose pointed at the entrance, low beams washing over the barrier and turning the guard booth's glass pale. The passenger had a phone raised, lens angled upward, aimed at the one lit window on the seventeenth floor.

She lifted her own phone and started recording from the plate: "September 17th, 10:41 p.m., Building 3, Chengdong Anju Lane. Plate: Jiang A·D731. Two people in the car. Passenger is filming the seventeenth-floor window."

The passenger heard her voice, lowered his phone, and turned his head. He didn't get out. First he rolled the window down halfway. A kraft paper envelope appeared in his hand, and from the opening he pulled three sheets of paper—printed, edges clean and square.

"Mister." He called toward the guard booth, voice not loud but echoing in the lane. "Pass a message to Ms. Tang on seventeen: the boss sent me to deliver this form. She signs it, and no one comes back tonight."

Shen Zhixia pushed her lens toward the paper. The header, six characters: Withdrawal of Enforcement Application. The signature line was blank. The date line was blank. Even the line after "Applicant" was blank.

"She's not signing. Put it away."

"Lawyer Shen." The man recognized her and smiled. "I mean no harm. Just delivering a piece of paper."

He tucked the three sheets back into the envelope and set it down on the passenger-side floor mat. The headlights suddenly retreated a little—he was turning the wheel, backing out.

On the second rev of the engine, a car pulled in across the mouth of the lane at an angle, blocking the exit, hazard lights flashing. Lu Jibai killed the ignition, got out, and walked around the front into the light, a black card sleeve in his hand. He didn't look at the black car. He walked over to Shen Zhixia first, glanced at her phone screen to confirm it was still recording, then turned to the car and said, "Sit tight. They'll be here soon."

"You blocking me in?" The man stuck his head out the window.

"I'm parking." Lu Jibai slipped the card sleeve into his coat pocket. "The no-parking line's at the gate. I'm stopped in the lane. Waiting for the police."

The black car reversed half a meter, bumped against his front bumper, and stopped.

At 10:53 p.m., the 110 unit arrived. Two officers—one checked the cars first, one checked the people first. Their flashlights swept through the windows, then across the ground. Shen Zhixia played the recording from the start and reported three things: plate, time, and "those three sheets of paper in his hand are now on the passenger floor mat."

"That envelope on the mat," she said, "there's a corner of white paper sticking out next to it. Check that too."

The officer pulled the door open and shined the light into the footwell. Beneath the envelope was a stack of A4 paper. He pulled it out and counted: three sheets. The same printed line: "Delete the video, or are you moving out?"—same size type, identical line spacing. The top-right corner of the first sheet was torn off, the edge rough and ragged.

Shen Zhixia scrolled her photo album back to August 30th. The sheet taped to Tang Guo's door that day had been missing the exact same top-right corner. She held it against the officer's flashlight. The two tear marks lined up.

"These came from the same batch," she said. "They printed a run of them."

The passenger's phone rang. The lock screen flashed—it was Tang Guo's front door on the seventeenth floor. The camera had been aimed at the door number. The officer told him to unlock it. He refused. The officer said, "You don't open it here, we process this as seizure." In the end, he pressed his thumb.

The photo album went back: three items in sequence. Page after page of photographed images from the courier hub's forwarding-slip master ledger. A piece of door-number paper that had been taped up and later peeled off. And the door plate of Tang Guo's new apartment.

"Where are the original photos of these two?"

"Deleted."

"If they're deleted, why do you still have copies?"

He said nothing.

Tang Guo came out through the gate in slippers, phone still raised, still recording. She walked up beside Shen Zhixia, didn't look at the man in the car, looked instead at the three sheets in the officer's hand, and studied them for a long moment: "How much did it cost to print this batch?"

"...What?"

"I asked how much it cost to print this batch." She said it again. "How many did you print?"

The man turned his head away.

The two officers put them in the car and wrote it up. Shen Zhixia received a Case Acceptance Receipt and copied the number onto the back page of her enforcement notebook. The black car stayed where it was, its lights finally dead. The lane went dark. Only the hazards on Lu Jibai's car kept flashing against the wall, on and off.

Tang Guo stood still, then suddenly asked, "What are you doing here?"

"You said you were working late until ten." Lu Jibai switched off the hazards, leaving only the parking lights. His voice was even. "I got here at ten. Waited until ten-forty."

"Waiting for me for what?"

"Late-night snack." He said, "The congee's gone cold. It's in the passenger seat."

* * *

September 18th, morning. First floor of the police station.

The duty officer pushed three items across the counter: a supplementary page for the Case Acceptance Receipt, a copy of an Administrative Penalty Decision, and a printout of vehicle registration information.

"Two men in the car. One, seven days' detention. The other, a five-hundred-yuan fine." The officer said, "Threatening another person's safety and illegally obtaining citizens' personal information—both charges, handled together. We've extracted the photos from his phone."

"What about the form in the envelope?"

"Collected. Physical evidence."

"Whose car is it?"

The officer turned the printout around and tapped the owner field: "Jiangzhou Xingyao Culture Media Co., Ltd. Registered last November." He paused. "Both men said the company sent them. The driver said 'the boss sent me to deliver something'; the passenger said 'the boss sent me to deliver paper.' Who's the boss? One said he didn't know the name. The other said someone called President Chen."

Shen Zhixia wrote everything down verbatim. Her pen stopped at the words "President Chen."

"Can this go up any further?"

"On the public-security side, this is as far as I take it." The officer was blunt. "Who sent them, who printed the form, who printed the paper—that needs a separate thread. You've got materials; feed them into that thread."

She walked out of the station and stood on the steps to call Zhou Yu.

After listening, his first question was: "Dates written clearly? Don't put 'repeatedly.' Write which day, what time, which occurrence."

"The dates are written."

"Good." He said, "Three things can now be joined: the address-change slip—that courier hub handler has already signed the explanatory statement, and the master ledger was photographed; the door-number paper—printed, same batch, tear marks match; plate ending 731—this time it's not three photos, it's a man in a car holding a form. The public-security thread lands today."

"And the criminal thread?"

"Still short. Illegal acquisition of citizens' personal information needs to meet a threshold. One address, a stack of paper—not enough for a case." He paused. "One more thing—right now you've got two hands, not a brain in reserve. The legal representative is Chen Maolin. The actual controller doesn't appear in the registration at all."

"I know."

"Good that you know. Don't go asking on your own. If you have to ask, make him answer in front of a third party."

She hung up and headed back inside, up to the second floor to add a signature to an explanatory statement. At the far end of the corridor, the door to an interview room opened and someone came out.

Qin Lang wore an unbuttoned light jacket, a sheet of paper in his hand that he folded as he walked. He stopped half a step when he saw her.

"Lawyer Shen. You're here too."

"I'm here to add materials."

"I'm here to answer a few questions." He tucked the paper into his pocket. "Forty minutes. All about the car, all about the paper. The car belongs to the company. The people belong to the company."

"Was the form printed by the company?"

Qin Lang smiled, very lightly. "I've never seen the form." He took two steps forward, then looked back. "That word—I never signed any version of it. When you write it up, don't get it wrong."

"I write what people say."

"Good. Verbatim is safest."

He went downstairs. She stood at the second-floor window and looked down. A gray car was parked in the courtyard, plate not ending in 731—he'd switched. He opened the door himself. No driver.

She went back to the interview room and wrote the final line of the explanatory statement: On the morning of September 18th, at 10:20 a.m., I encountered Qin Lang in the second-floor corridor of the police station. He said to me: "I've never seen the form" and "I never signed any version of that word."

* * *

On the enforcement bureau side, the matter had been raised on the afternoon of September 16th.

Lawyer Zhao wore a dark gray suit and laid the three-page Enforcement Objection on the table, arguing two points: first, Dingchang was not the judgment debtor in this case, so freezing its account had no basis; second, the 9,600 yuan in Dingchang's account was a third party's payment for goods, and freezing it wrongly meant liability.

Gu Weimin blew aside the tea leaves standing upright in his glass and pressed his pencil to the paper, asking only three things.

"These goods payments. Who received the goods?"

"Xingyao."

"Why was the money paid to Dingchang?"

"Industry practice. Collection and payment on another's behalf."

"Where are the invoices?"

Lawyer Zhao flipped through his materials. "The invoices haven't been issued yet."

Gu Weimin tapped the paper twice with his pencil: "Money to Dingchang, goods to Xingyao, not a single invoice. I'll record these three sentences as you've stated them. When I'm done, read them over and sign." He turned the paper around. "Objection dismissed. My reason: 'The judgment debtor's funds were received and paid through these two accounts.' What you call proxy collection is still receipt and payment through those accounts. Money collected on Xingyao's behalf is Xingyao's money. Not Dingchang's."

At 2:40 p.m. on September 18th, the Enforcement Ruling was delivered. At 3:10, the court transferred 45,400 yuan in damages and 1,700 yuan in filing fees from the Dingchang account—47,100 yuan total—into the enforcement special account. The receipt bore the business seal.

At the same time, He Xiufen turned the three-line sheet of paper to its final page.

The "Delete" line: September 12th, five locations verified, fully deleted.

The "Clarify" line: September 12th, day one, through September 18th, day seven—seven consecutive days, seven screenshots, dated daily. The apology statement remained pinned as the seventh item on the account's homepage. Comments were off. Three lines of body text. Not one word more.

The "Compensate" line: September 18th, 47,100 yuan into the special account. Below that, a new line: fine of 100,000 yuan, received September 17th, no administrative reconsideration filed.

He Xiufen made a check mark with her pencil beside each of the three dates and looked up. "You will not write the words 'basically complete.'"

"I won't."

"And no 'we won' in the group chat." She pushed the paper toward the metal cabinet. "Into the special account doesn't mean into her hands. There's still the refund process. Tomorrow, she goes herself, signs herself, counts it herself."

Seven p.m. The noodle shop.

Tang Guo laid out the seven screenshots on the table in date order, left to right—every one the same position, same statement, same three lines of text. She studied them one by one, then said suddenly, "They apologized for seven days, and not once did they say the video was fake."

Shen Zhixia was looking down at her phone.

[Thud. Delete, clarify, compensate—all three delivered.]

[Thud. One cell still empty on this entry.]

She set the phone down and opened the enforcement notebook, counting from the beginning. Deletion—done. Apology—done. Compensation—done. All three lines checked. One cell still empty. She counted twice, and realized what was missing—Tang Guo's name.

The video still sat in the histories of several reposting accounts. The apology said "the relevant video," never "fabricated." Search her name online, and the top results still said "took money."

"One cell missing," she said.

"What's missing?"

"Nothing." She closed the notebook. "What draft is that piece on now?"

Tang Guo pulled a stack of printed pages from her bag and spread them on the corner of the table. Seventh draft. The opening line unchanged: "The court has determined that the video was spliced together."

"I'm posting it tomorrow," she said.

Lu Jibai came up from downstairs carrying a bowl of reheated congee, set it in front of her, then reached into his coat pocket and placed the black card sleeve on the table. A small strip of white paper was taped to it, in his handwriting: 0917—2241, Building 3, Chengdong Anju Lane, Jiang A·D731.

"I'm keeping the card. Tomorrow morning it goes to the station. You're coming with me."

"Why are you keeping it?"

"Because it's from my car." He nudged the congee toward her. "The dashcam has more than your phone does. From the lane entrance to where the car stopped—twelve minutes total."

Shen Zhixia held the card sleeve in her hand, the paper edge slightly rough. "That bowl of congee—how many times has it been reheated since it went cold?"

"Twice."

"Then stop waiting." She said, "Next time I say I'm working late, don't come."

Lu Jibai didn't answer that. He pulled out a chair and sat down, looking at the seven screenshots on the table. "Before you post, add the dates. Delete—it deleted. Clarify—it clarified. Everything needs a date."

Tang Guo slid the draft toward him. "Does this version work?"

He flipped through two pages and pointed at the third paragraph. "This line, 'I have never taken a single cent from them'—add two characters. 'In this case.' Make clear it's this case and only this case."

Tang Guo picked up her pen and added the words. The nib moved across the paper. Shen Zhixia looked at the three checked lines, the one empty cell. The money was in the special account. The paper was in the metal cabinet. Seven dates were laid out on the table. Her name was still out there, drifting.

She reached to put the card sleeve in her bag, and her fingertip brushed the strip of white paper with the time and place written on it. The ink was still fresh.