Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 318: Two Trips to Qingshi Village

December 28, 3:10 p.m. The noodle shop's roll-up shutter was halfway down.

Ma Jianjun came in bent at the waist. At the door he stomped his heels twice on the concrete step, scraping mud off his soles before walking inside. His helmet was tucked under one arm; one winter glove was off, the other still hanging loose from his wrist.

"Director He, a bowl of noodle water."

"And the noodles?"

"Noodles too. Water first."

He Xiufen dropped noodles into the pot without looking up. "Sit."

He picked the table by the window, set the helmet on the chair beside him, and put his cap inside it. By the time Shen Zhixia came downstairs, he had both hands cupped in front of his mouth, blowing warmth into them.

"Lawyer Shen." He started to rise.

"Sit." She set her notebook on the corner of the table without opening it. "Morning run done?"

"Two trips. Done for the day." He sat back down, both hands flat on the tabletop. "Lots of orders in the city at year-end. Everyone's grabbing. I don't fight for those. I take the runs nobody wants."

"Where to."

He tilted his chin west. "Up in the hills. Qingshi Village."

Shen Zhixia pulled the notebook a little closer to herself, still closed.

Ma Jianjun said a delivery order had been sitting on the app half the day with no takers. A warehouse behind the town, one box, to be delivered to the little convenience store across from the Qingshi Village elementary school. Eighty-four yuan. "Thirty-plus kilometers deadhead back. Doesn't even cover gas. It sat there two hours. I took it." He wiped his hand against his padded jacket. "One run the afternoon of the 25th. This morning another order popped up, same place. Took that one too."

"Same store?"

"Same woman receiving. She counts slow, item by item. I just stood at the door and waited."

He Xiufen brought the noodle water over and set the bowl on the edge of the table, not directly into his hands. He cupped the bowl with both hands and took a big swallow before going on.

"The school's cater-corner from the store. A low wall, the paint mostly flaked off the iron gate." He glanced up at her, then quickly back down. "There were adults standing outside."

"How many."

"First trip, two. Figured they were waiting for their kids. This morning, seven or eight."

Shen Zhixia opened the notebook.

"One woman, holding up her phone. A list on the screen. Swiped to show the person beside her, swiped again. An old man holding paper, folded in quarters, wrapped in one of those thin plastic bags they use at vegetable stalls." He paused. "I wasn't standing far, but I couldn't read anything. Just saw a line at the top with a red stamp and a string of numbers below."

"Did you get closer."

"Two steps." He set the bowl down. "Soon as I moved up, somebody raised a hand and pressed their paper down."

"Pressed it down so who wouldn't see."

"Don't know. I saw that, and backed off."

The only sound in the shop was the bubbling from the stove. He Xiufen was at the cutting board chopping scallions, the knife landing on wood with a steady beat.

"Sounded like six families to me," Ma Jianjun said. "Couldn't catch all the names. One kid, something-rain. His grandma called him, called twice."

"Six." Shen Zhixia wrote a "6" on the paper, and beneath it three words: names not given.

"The count?" she asked.

"I heard one number. One eighty-nine." He thought about it. "I don't get that number. They said it was over. Said the town did one blood draw and told them to go into the city for another, said the city's was accurate. Some went. Some didn't."

Her pen stopped.

One of the three slips copied into her notebook on the night of the 27th also read one eighty-nine. She finished the line and added two words at the end: two locations.

"What else."

"Last week, a car picked up one of the kids and took him to a big hospital in the city for another check." He glanced out the window. "His grandma stands at the gate every day. Didn't see her there today."

"Which family."

"Don't know. I asked. People just looked at each other. Nobody picked up my question."

She didn't press. She noted it lower on the page, writing only "one household, surname unasked."

Ma Jianjun suddenly remembered something. "There's a ditch along the road at the village entrance. Comes down from the mountain, follows the road. Water's gray, moves slow." He traced a line on the tabletop with his chopstick. "I asked offhand, where's this water come from. The woman receiving the delivery looked at me and changed the subject. Asked what I made per run."

Shen Zhixia looked up.

"Did she say anything else?"

"No. She hauled the box onto the counter and said next time she'd order from our shop again."

"Eat first." She closed the notebook and stood. "I'm going upstairs."

On the second floor, tomorrow's court materials were spread across the table by the door. Lu Jibai was checking a witness list, his pencil moving down the page point by point. Li Huilan came out of the inner room with a thermos and, seeing Shen Zhixia come up, spoke first: "That coworker, the one surnamed Yang, is bringing the work-hours logbook here tomorrow at eight. I told him to bring his ID. If he doesn't show, I don't get the original."

"Eight," Shen Zhixia said.

"Eight." Li Huilan nodded and went back into the inner room with the thermos.

Lu Jibai set his pencil down. "Ma Jianjun's here."

"Downstairs." She leaned against the table, keeping her voice low. "Qingshi Village. He went in twice to deliver things. Outside the school gate, seven or eight adults, all holding slips of paper. He counted. Six families."

"Who has the slips."

"Photos on people's phones. Paper in people's plastic bags. I don't have a single one here."

Lu Jibai closed the list. "Then what's missing is someone willing to talk."

"I was thinking of having him write a statement and sign it."

"Not now." He said it fast. "If he writes it down, what he writes is that he saw people at the school gate holding slips. Every sentence can be turned around. The moment someone asks, 'Who told you to go asking around?' that piece of paper becomes us sending him to ask."

Shen Zhixia stood at the top of the stairs for two seconds.

"Go down and listen." He picked the pencil back up. "Don't question for him. Push too hard and he'll follow your lead. Then you won't hear what he actually saw."

She went down.

Ma Jianjun had finished half his soup. The noodles had just arrived, steam fogging his face. She put the notebook back in place, flipped to that page, and added a line at the top: December 28, noodle shop, Ma Jianjun.

"I'll ask one thing at a time. You answer one at a time," she said. "If you can't remember, say you can't remember."

"Okay."

"First trip, what day."

"The afternoon of the 25th."

"What time did you get there."

He thought, tapping his fingers on the table. "Don't remember. Still light out. On the way back in, I turned my headlights on coming back into the city."

She wrote "time undetermined."

From there she went through it, item by item: where the warehouse was in town; how old the woman receiving the delivery was; how long the low wall at the school gate was; whether the slips on the phone were plain paper or colored; whether the red stamp was at the top or bottom; what the kid's name with "rain" in it was; what stretch of road the ditch started from.

On the ditch he said, "About twenty steps east from the store you'll see it. Runs right along the road. Concrete on one side, dirt on the other."

"Is the water loud."

"No. And there's water even in winter."

She finished that line and pressed the pen tip into the paper, not writing anything further.

Ma Jianjun kept glancing at the paper. Halfway down he asked, "Everything I said—you've got it written down?"

"Written down."

"Want me to press a thumbprint on it?"

"No."

He stopped his hand in midair. "Why not. Everything I said is true."

"Because this is something you walked in and saw yourself." She set the pen down. "The moment you press your thumbprint, this page becomes something you produced. When someone asks, the first question won't be about the six families in the village. It'll be about you—who told you to ask, how much you were paid per trip. Your wife and kids are in this city."

He said nothing. He drew his hand back and rested it on his knee.

"Besides, on those two trips you saw people standing at the gate. Who counted the families? They did. The ditch, you saw it, but where the water comes from—you didn't get an answer. The two have to be kept separate." She slid the notebook toward him a little so he could see. "Keep them separate now. Later you'll know where to ask next."

"That money from before," he said suddenly. "I dealt with them alone for a year."

"I know."

"So this trip was for nothing." He lifted two strands of noodles with his chopsticks but didn't bring them to his mouth.

"It wasn't for nothing," she said. "What you've told me, I'm keeping. Before, I only knew the numbers on three slips, and those only from photos. Now I know six families. I know who's standing at the gate. I know there's a ditch. You can't buy any of that."

The stove hissed again. He Xiufen brought the other bowl of noodles to the table by the stairs, sat down herself, and only then spoke: "You run that road. People know your scooter."

Ma Jianjun looked up at her.

"Your name doesn't go on anyone's paper." He Xiufen separated her chopsticks. "And no one else's name comes out of your mouth onto the street. Hold both of those, and next time you'll still be able to get into that village."

The System chimed at that moment.

[Thud. This order is not accepted for now. No one brought their own name forward.]

Shen Zhixia pressed her hand against the edge of the notebook. She didn't look up, and she didn't speak.

Ma Jianjun was halfway through his noodles when he suddenly set his chopsticks down. "So should I tell them to come here to you? If I put in a word, they might come. We're from the same village. They trust me."

"No," she said. "The moment you say it, they'll know I put you up to it. You deliver something in that village today, and tomorrow the next village over will know."

"So I keep quiet?"

"You deliver. If someone asks, you say what you saw, plain and simple. Not one extra word." She thought for a moment and added, "Only if someone themselves asks whether there's a place in the city where they can get answers—then you give them my number."

"Got it." He repeated the three rules under his breath. "Don't bring it up. Don't add anything. Only if they ask, then give the number."

He bent over his noodles. A strip of light slipped under the roll-up shutter from outside, white, falling across the concrete floor.

When he finished, he pushed the bowl aside, wiped his mouth, and stood to get his helmet. Two steps toward the door he turned back, as if remembering something. "There's one thing I've been meaning to tell you."

"Say it."

"Those parents," he said, tucking the helmet back under his arm, one hand still on the strap, "they'd start talking and then stop."

"Stop how."

"I'd ask one question, they'd answer half. Ask again, they'd look at me and go quiet. One woman was about to say something, and the person next to her tugged her sleeve." He fastened the strap. "Like that. Slips of paper in their hands, and their mouths acting like nothing ever happened."

His shoulder pushed the shutter up a notch. Cold air poured in from underneath. He slipped out sideways. The door dropped back down, the metal rattling once.

He Xiufen stacked the two bowls and carried them over to the stove. The sound of running water started.

Shen Zhixia opened the notebook and read that page over from the top. Below "one household, surname unasked," she added a smaller line: where does the asking cut off. When she finished, she left half a page blank beneath that line, closed the notebook, and pressed her palm down on top of it.