Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 267: Twelve Seconds

At 9:40 a.m. on October 6, three items lay spread out on the long table on the second floor of Zhengping Firm: an old laptop, a small plastic bag containing a memory card, and a sheet of paper folded twice.

The exhaust fan hummed downstairs, waves of scallion oil drifting up through the floorboards.

"He copied it on the third." Lu Jibai smoothed the paper flat. "It sat in the bag for three days."

"Why wait?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"Words first, pictures second." He tapped the paper. "If he'd watched the footage before writing his statement, he wouldn't be writing what he saw—he'd be writing what the lens saw. Both go into the file. One is a human account; the other is twelve seconds of pixels."

The paper was in Wei Changlin's own hand, pressed hard enough that the pen had pushed ragged edges through the fibers. Under "Equipment" he'd written, "Own setup at the stall, lens angled toward the lane entrance across the way." Under "Date": "Dusk, September 19." Under "Date copied": "October 3." Under "Copied by": "Two lawyers from Zhengping Firm, surname Lu, surname He." A signature at the bottom, with a red thumbprint beside it, slightly askew.

He Xiufen set the aluminum kettle down at the corner of the table and leaned in for a long look.

"Equipment, date, who copied it." She tapped through each item one by one. "One line missing."

"I asked." Lu Jibai said. "He said he doesn't edit—doesn't know how."

"'Doesn't know how' and 'didn't' are two different statements." She straightened up. "His phone has footage from other days. If someone claims this clip was cut out of something larger, what's your answer?"

"No answer. That's why on the ninth, when I submit the evidence list, I'm filling in the grid with 'who holds the original, what device, which file.'"

"Write it." He Xiufen said. "Put it on paper. Just don't write anything absolute."

Shen Zhixia opened her notebook on her knee. "Shouldn't we have notified the procuratorate about this?"

"No need." Lu Jibai folded the paper back the way it had been. "He's a stall vendor passing by—not a witness tied to the Qin family. Witnesses for the victim's side need permission from the procuratorate or the court before you can question them. This man isn't one. He agreed himself, two lawyers were present, he wrote it himself, signed it himself, pressed the print himself. This document is clean."

"Clean and useful are two different things." He Xiufen added. "What's useful is the thing in his hand, not the words out of his mouth."

Shen Zhixia wrote down the date, then paused, pen hovering. On this page she wouldn't write "I saw." She would only write who did what on which day.

"Zhi'an." He Xiufen walked to the stairwell and called down. "Come up."

Slippers thumped twice on the wooden stairs. Zhi'an came up still clutching half a clove of garlic. Seeing the computer on the table, he set the garlic on the windowsill.

"Sit." Lu Jibai said.

He sat, wiping both hands on his pants.

"This is from a camera at someone else's stall." He Xiufen said. "Three days ago your Lawyer Lu and I went over; he gave it willingly. When you watch, just watch. Speak after."

Zhi'an nodded.

Lu Jibai slid the card into the reader. A column of numeric file names popped up on screen. He double-clicked, and the window went black for a moment.

"Starting."

The first two seconds were black. When the picture came up, it was a lane: pavement that had been wet and dried again, a utility pole on the left cutting a stripe out of the frame; the streetlamp at the lane entrance in the upper right, too dim to resolve faces; a locked electric scooter parked at the frame's bottom edge.

At 00:02, someone entered from the right. Thin, school uniform, left sleeve swinging loose.

At 00:03, a second figure followed. Gray, work clothes, half a head taller than the first.

At 00:04, an arm came around from behind—around the chest—two hands clasping together.

At 00:05, a lift. The school uniform's toes left the ground, swaying at the bottom edge of the frame.

"Stop." He Xiufen said.

The picture froze. She set the kettle down more firmly, not sitting. "Feet off the ground?"

"They were." Zhi'an said.

"Keep playing."

At 00:06, a third person entered, running hard. A leg came up—one kick into the stomach of the one being lifted. The body buckled forward.

At 00:07, struggling. Shoulders, elbows, head all moving, the two figures tangled together. The left sleeve of the school uniform tore from the shoulder, hanging loose.

At 00:08, a hand rose—fingers pressed together, reaching shoulder height.

At 00:09, the two figures moved right, out past the roll-up shutter's frame. The raised hand went with them.

At 00:10, the right side of the frame stood empty.

At 00:11, a leg stepped back into view—two steps—a hand coming up to its owner's face.

At 00:12, nothing.

Lu Jibai hit pause.

Shen Zhixia sat at the other end of the table, pen grip gone slick with sweat. She'd watched only once, but what stayed with her was that pair of toes at the bottom edge of the frame, half an inch off the ground. September 20, 6:50 a.m., she'd waited for him outside the police station. He'd come out, called her jie, and the first thing he'd said was, "I want noodles."

"Play it again." Zhi'an said.

They played it again. On the third run, Lu Jibai froze it at 00:08.

"Right there." He said. "Hand's here. The strike—that happened outside the frame."

Zhi'an said nothing. He lifted his right hand from his knee and turned it over, looking at the back. Three scabs there—white, dry.

"When did the sleeve tear?" He Xiufen asked.

"When they grabbed me." He stared at the split on screen. "When I fought back, it tore on its own."

"The tear in the photo runs shoulder to elbow." She said. "Matches this frame."

"After he kicked, where was he standing?" Lu Jibai asked.

"Right there." Zhi'an said. "He started coming at me again."

"Doesn't show on screen."

"I was in it."

The room went quiet for a few seconds. Downstairs someone called out "Two-liang bowl," followed by the sound of a bowl dropping into hot water.

He Xiufen drew two sheets of paper from the case file envelope on the table and pushed them toward him.

"Read this. Out loud."

Zhi'an read slowly: "Abdominal contusion... three scratch marks on the back of the right hand..."

"Matches." Lu Jibai tapped the paper with his knuckle. "The kick landed on the stomach. When someone's lifted from behind, the first instinct is to claw at the arm—three scratches came from that. Wounds are static; movement is alive. Lay both on the same table, and nobody gets to argue about who moved first."

"Don't overstate it." He Xiufen said. "These twelve seconds prove actions: someone grabbed him from behind, lifted him, his feet left the ground; someone came in and kicked; he broke free and raised a hand. It does not prove where that punch landed."

"The landing point isn't ours to prove." Lu Jibai said. "It's in their own imaging report."

Shen Zhixia looked up. "So what's missing?"

"What's missing—" Lu Jibai dragged the video forward half a second, then back again, "is whether the one who kicked was still in front of him when he raised his hand. On the screen, they've already moved outside the door frame."

[Thud. The footage proves sequence. It can't prove that one second.]

Shen Zhixia's fingers rested at the paper's edge. She remembered the time she'd used [Evidence Echo]—every detail it showed her, none of it admissible. This time she didn't even need to look: the only half-second she needed was precisely the half-second outside the frame.

[Thud. The half-second you want isn't in this frame. It needs a human mouth to speak it.]

"The camera." She asked. "Is anything still on it?"

"No." Lu Jibai said. "These units keep seven days. The nineteenth to the twenty-sixth—long overwritten. Police copied it once on September 20. Right now, only two copies of this clip exist in the world: the one still on his phone, and the one the police took. What we have is a copy from his phone—not the original. That's why the source has to be written out clearly."

"A copy of a copy." He Xiufen said.

"Right. So put it in the list, and let them go find the man, the machine, the original."

"When you submit on the ninth, where does this clip sit?"

"Medical records, this clip, his three-page statement. Three items, side by side." Lu Jibai said. "Pull one out, and the one before it turns blank."

He Xiufen turned to face Zhi'an.

"On the eighth, when you go in—don't mention these twelve seconds. Not a word."

"Why?"

"The moment you say 'there's footage,' their next question is 'which second in the footage.' If you answer, then the paper is speaking for you instead of you speaking for yourself. If you can't answer, they'll know you've seen it, and they'll know you've adjusted your story to match what you watched."

Zhi'an's jaw worked. "I didn't adjust anything."

"I know you didn't." He Xiufen said. "But the people reading that paper don't. Answer only what you remember: who moved first, who grabbed you, where he stood after you broke free. If you can't remember clearly, say you can't remember. Don't add a single word trying to match the picture."

"...What I remember is that he was still right in front of me."

"On the eighth, you say that yourself." She slid the two pages back into the envelope. "We won't put a single word in your mouth."

Zhi'an stood and walked to the stairs, then looked back, eyes resting on that frozen frame.

"Those two viewings—do they count?"

"They count in your heart." Lu Jibai said. "On paper, your eyes aren't the ones that matter. His are. He signed, he printed—that's someone else's eyes."

Zhi'an went downstairs, slipper-steps descending one level at a time until they faded. The half garlic on the windowsill got scooped up by He Xiufen on her way past.

Shen Zhixia closed her notebook, then realized her page held only the date and "10:00, second floor, played twelve seconds." The rest was blank.

"If it hurts, tear the page out." Lu Jibai said.

"I won't." She said. "I don't write 'I saw.' I write dates. Dates don't speak for people."

He dragged the video back to 00:08, fumbling the mouse three times before the pause landed; the first two clicks didn't hold the frame.

She noticed. She didn't mention it.

"The first time you watched, on the third—what were you looking for?"

"The sequence." He said. "I only understood after watching: the most important thing in this clip isn't what anyone said. It's that kid's two feet leaving the ground."

"And on the eighth—what if he can't say it clearly?"

"He can." Lu Jibai capped his pen. "Twice now, he's told it the same way every time. A third time, same as the first—half this case stands on its feet. I'm not asking him to tell that night again. I'm asking for a third telling identical to the first."

Outside, someone downstairs was cleaving meat filling, the sound dull and rhythmic, blow after blow.

He lowered his head and added a line to the blue notebook: Around 18:45, September 19. Twelve seconds. A stretch of lane entrance. Two hands, one leg, one raised fist. Landing point not in frame.

When he finished, he set down the pen and looked up at that frozen frame: a hand raised to shoulder height, fingers together, back of the hand facing outward.

[Thud. Twelve seconds go to the file. That one second belongs to a person.]