Read Novel Full Chapter 275: Nine Photographs
Chapter 275: Nine Photographs
October 17, 8:45 a.m., third floor of the outpatient building at Chengdong District People's Hospital. The number dispenser called out numbers every half minute, the announcements bouncing off the tile walls. The plastic chairs were cold, like they'd just been carried in from outside.
He Lan tugged her hoodie collar up a little higher, then let her hair down to cover her ears.
"Number twenty-one, Surgery Consulting Room Three."
A male doctor sat inside, two pens clipped to his white coat pocket. He looked up at the two of them, studying Shen Zhixia first.
"She'll speak for herself." Shen Zhixia stepped back half a pace.
"What's wrong?"
"My husband beat me." He Lan's voice was quiet, but every word landed solid.
The doctor's pen paused.
"What day?"
"The night of the twelfth."
"Today's the seventeenth. Five days." He looked down and typed. "Where does it hurt?"
"Neck, arms, wrists, legs. My back hurts too."
"Who came with you?"
"My lawyer."
The doctor glanced at Shen Zhixia again but asked nothing.
"Behind the curtain. Lift your shirt to your chest." He motioned to a female nurse near the door. "Stand inside with her."
The curtain closed. Shen Zhixia stood about a step away with her back turned. She heard fabric sliding and the crinkle of plastic wrap.
The doctor's voice came from behind the curtain, speaking while typing: "Left side of neck, one two-centimeter pale yellow compression mark, no obvious swelling. Inner left forearm, one bruise four by three centimeters, edges yellowing. Inner right wrist, one three-centimeter scratch, crusted over. Lower left thigh, one bruise five by four centimeters. Upper back, two tender spots, no visible discoloration."
He Lan came out buttoning her shirt, fumbling twice before getting it done. Her hair slipped down over her ears, and she tucked it back again.
Shen Zhixia leaned over to look at the screen. Chief complaint read "generalized pain for five days," and the present illness history was typed halfway.
"Can you add a line in the history: 'account provided by the patient herself'?"
The doctor's hands stopped. "That's standard for our outpatient records."
"Good." She straightened up. "Then please keep the locations and sizes from the physical exam as separate entries, not collapsed into one line saying 'multiple soft tissue contusions.'"
"Writing it out in detail comes to the same thing."
"If it's all the same, then the difference shouldn't matter to you."
He left the separate entries in, typed "account provided by the patient herself" at the end, entered the diagnosis "multiple soft tissue contusions," and wrote "recommend three days' rest, follow up if symptoms persist" under treatment plan.
"Will he... be able to see this?" He Lan asked quietly.
"No. This copy stays with us."
At the ground-floor records printing window, three sheets slid out of the machine, warm, edges still curling. The last page had the doctor's signature, and below it, the date was handwritten: October 17.
She read through each page, lined the three sheets up, and slipped them into a clear plastic sleeve.
The photos were taken in the treatment room next door. The fifteen-centimeter stainless steel ruler had been slipped into her bag the night before by Lu Jibai. He'd said only two things: keep the ruler flush against the skin, never hovering; a ruler that hovers measures nothing.
"There's a light here. Stand under it." Shen Zhixia turned on her phone camera's watermark, timestamp in the bottom right corner. "Don't cover the injury with your hand. Put your fingers about an inch away from it. Don't touch."
The first photo was of the neck. The pale yellow mark was nearly invisible under the light.
"What's this one?"
"My neck."
"From which day?"
"The night of the twelfth. He choked me."
The second was also the neck, full view left to right, the ruler resting above her collarbone. The third and fourth were of the left forearm—one with the ruler, one full view of the arm. Two of the right wrist, zoomed in on the crusted scratch. Two of the left thigh. The last one was a standing full-body shot: hoodie, hair, face all in frame.
Partway through, she spotted a faint bruise on He Lan's side.
"When did this one happen?"
"Last winter. I bumped into the coal stove."
She deleted that one.
Another was blurry; deleted. For the bruise on her upper back, He Lan said, "The week before last? I can't remember." Shen Zhixia deleted that one too.
"That was him too."
"I know." Shen Zhixia turned the phone around so He Lan could see what remained. "Once these go into the file, if the other side asks 'which day was this?' everything falls apart if you can't answer."
He Lan's lips moved, but she said nothing.
"Nine." Shen Zhixia counted them off. "Two of the neck, two of the arm, two of the wrist, two of the leg, one standing."
"What about the mark on Xiaotian's face? We're not photographing that?"
"Even if we did, you couldn't say what day it was from. A month-old bruise is just a bruise by the time it reaches a judge." She locked the phone. "The two pages of records have her name on them. A nine-year-old girl calling the police weighs more than a photo."
He Lan lowered her head and tucked her hands into her sleeves.
[Thud. A photograph carries two dates: the day it was taken, and the day the injury happened. The second date has to come from her.]
October 17, 2:00 p.m., second floor of the Zhengping Firm.
Tang Guo came up with her bag on her shoulder, the corner poking out around a tripod leg. She set her phone on the desk before shrugging the bag off.
"Which account is his? I'm not filming him."
"We're not filming him today." Shen Zhixia pushed He Lan's phone across the desk.
"Screen recording, then." Tang Guo dragged a chair over next to He Lan and propped her phone up on a cardboard box. "I'll walk you through it once. You do it yourself."
She turned the brightness all the way up and dismissed the notifications one by one.
"Start recording from the WeChat home screen. Tap your own avatar first, so they can see which account it is, whose phone it is. Then open the conversation and swipe up slowly, all the way back to the screen on the twelfth. Don't just skip to the top. If you jump straight there, they'll call it doctored."
"Play each voice message one by one, on speaker, and don't move your hand until each one finishes. If a call comes in, start over from the beginning."
"Don't edit it after you save it. Anything that's been cut falls apart under questioning."
"Make two backups." Shen Zhixia said. "Send one to me, copy one onto the office computer. I'll name the folder."
He Lan's finger searched the screen, missing twice before settling on the chat with the profile picture that looked like the lower half of his face. The recording indicator lit up red. The timer started running.
First message, October 12, 23:40: "Where did you go"
Second, October 13, 6:50: "If you don't come back today, I'll wait outside the school gate."
Third, October 13, 21:40, five characters: "Think you can run?"
Fourth, October 14, 7:20: "I'm taking the kid home. You stay outside if you want."
Fifth, October 15, 21:05: "I won't hit you again. Come back."
Sixth, October 16, 12:07, yesterday's: "You go to the police station and I'll pick up the kid tonight myself."
Seventh, October 16, 18:30: "I'm picking up the kid tomorrow after school. Don't have anyone stop me."
Seven messages. Tang Guo called out a number for each one while Shen Zhixia wrote a line in the index: number, date, time, type, word count.
Four voice messages played through the recording one at a time. The first was five seconds: besides two curses, nothing but bottles clinking on a table. The second was twenty-eight seconds; three phrases were clear—"Where did you hide the kid"—followed by footsteps and doors. The third was eleven seconds, a drunken voice: "Come back," "Do you hear me." The fourth was sixteen seconds; a car passed outside, and only half a sentence came through: "Don't you think—"
In the "summary" column, Shen Zhixia wrote down only the three clearly audible phrases. For the rest she wrote: remainder inaudible.
"Not even going to guess at the unclear parts?" Tang Guo asked.
"Whatever I guess, the original audio gets played in court and my whole file gets rewritten."
Tang Guo pulled a tissue from her bag and handed it over. He Lan took it and wiped her hands, rubbing the tissue thin and white but leaving her face untouched.
"I used to think the hardest part of photographing people was the equipment." Tang Guo said quietly. "Turns out the hardest part is making someone tap on it themselves."
After a moment, she asked, "Can we post one of these?"
Shen Zhixia shook her head.
"I know." Tang Guo answered her own question. "The kid's nine, the school's in Liuhe. The moment I post anything, he gets to claim we built our case on internet noise."
"You didn't say a word last time."
"Last time was last time." Tang Guo set her phone back upright. "Now I ask before I record anything. Last time, I tore that outline into four pieces and couldn't pull a single one back out from under the scanner."
She bent to pack up the tripod and asked casually, "What about Zhi'an?"
"Waiting on the file."
Tang Guo wrote out three file-naming rules and slid the paper to He Lan: if he sends more, record it yourself, using this format.
[Thud. One message at a time—it's his own indictment written in his own hand.]
October 18, 10:30 a.m. The Chengdong District Women's Federation was in a three-story building west of the district government office, at the end of the second-floor hallway. Outside the door sat an old plastic bin with a few children's padded jackets inside. A piece of paper taped to the side read: Free to take.
The door was opened by a woman in her forties with a badge that read "Rights Protection." She poured water for the three of them and set a one-page form on the desk.
Domestic Violence Help Registration Form. He Xiufen handed the pen to He Lan.
"Fill it out yourself. It's your handwriting. Don't make me do it."
He Lan's characters were large, each stroke pressed hard, the pen point denting the paper.
"What do I put for the type of violence?"
"However you'd say it."
"He choked me, kicked my legs, shoved me into the bed frame."
"Write 'assault and choking.'" the staff member said.
"When did the abuse begin?"
"Years now."
"Write 'several years.'"
"Have you ever called the police?"
He Lan paused, then looked at Shen Zhixia.
"Tell the truth." Shen Zhixia said.
She wrote: yes. Most recently October 12; the police issued a warning notice.
"Do you need temporary shelter?"
"Yes." That stroke was pressed hardest of all.
The staff member reviewed the form, then explained three rules: the address is not disclosed, not even to relatives; sign in and out; doors lock at 10 p.m.; if anyone comes asking, they will say nothing, and they will not notify him either.
"How long can she stay?"
"Until she has somewhere else."
He Xiufen asked, "How will the kid get to school?"
"We only handle housing. The getting there is your problem."
"Then we'll work it out." He Xiufen nodded.
The staff member pointed at the form. "If you go to court to apply for one of those orders, you can attach this."
On the way out, He Lan lingered by the plastic bin and spotted a blue padded jacket. She said Xiaotian had one just like it, left behind at home.
Feng Guoming showed up at the supermarket where she worked at a little after 3:00 p.m., but she didn't learn about it until evening.
At 6:20, her phone rang. It was a coworker from the checkout team.
"A man came by this afternoon asking when your night shift ends and whether you're still on register three. Security talked him into leaving. Want to call the police?"
Shen Zhixia took the phone, letting He Lan ask only three things.
"What time was he here? What was he wearing? Who talked to him?"
"A little after three, gray jacket. No idea who talked to him." There was a pause on the other end. "He Lan, do you want to tell the team lead?"
"As long as nothing's missing." He Lan said.
After hanging up, Shen Zhixia wrote in her notebook: October 18, 6:20 p.m., call from coworker; he came to the supermarket after 3:00 p.m., asking about the night shift.
She paused after writing, then added two lines:
He doesn't know where she lives.
He knows where she works.
[Thud. The school has one gate. The supermarket has one gate. He can stand at both.]
8:00 p.m., second floor of the Zhengping Firm. The exhaust fan downstairs had just shut off, and the smell of scallion oil and cooking smoke drifted up through the window cracks.
At 4:30 p.m. on the seventeenth, she'd gone with He Lan to Liuhe Primary School. Feng Guoming never showed. The day before, he'd written, "I'm picking up the kid tomorrow after school." He never came. She added that to the notebook as well: he said it; he didn't show.
Shen Zhixia unfolded the A4 sheet laid out horizontally. Six rows: Police—four reports, June 9, August 3, September 17, October 12. Warning—one page, October 14. Injuries—three pages of medical records, October 17. Photos—nine images, taken October 17. Messages—seven texts, four voice recordings, recorded October 17. Federation—one registration form, October 18.
Row by row, every box was filled in.
He Xiufen came upstairs, wiped her hands on her apron twice, and bent over to read through it.
"All six in place."
"In place."
Lu Jibai stood by the window and asked, "Where is she staying tonight?"
"The Federation's shelter."
"Don't write the address down. Don't write it on any of these papers."
Shen Zhixia picked up her pen, then set it back down. That cell, she left blank.
"The six items are for the judge's eyes, not his." He Xiufen said. "If he stands downstairs demanding to see them, you don't show him a single page."
"I'll file the application the morning after next." She turned to a blank page in her notebook and wrote: October 20, morning, Chengdong District People's Court, Personal Safety Protection Order.
Below that, another line: prohibit him from approaching her residence, Xiaotian's school, and the supermarket where she works.
She cross-checked the six paper items against the nine photos on her phone. The first was still the neck—the pale yellow mark barely visible under the light.
She sealed the file envelope, wrote He Lan's name on the cover, and on a fresh line added: a piece of paper that can stop a man.
[Thud. The papers are ready. The one that stops him is at the courthouse.]