Read Novel Full Chapter 320: Same Water
Chapter 320: Same Water
Before dialing, she flipped the notebook to that page.
The Qingshi Village page lay open on the desk: the top several lines, one household per row, the bottom half still blank, and at the very end a line in small script reading "Ask where the account broke off." The computer screen glowed, a folder labeled with the date, "December 27," containing three screenshots arranged in the order they'd arrived. She enlarged each one and shrank it back down. Still the same three things: a number, a reference range, a serial code. She'd copied down the last four digits of the code into her notebook, and when she did, she hadn't dared guess which institution's format it was.
On the paper she'd ruled out three blank lines, the pen resting sideways across it. At 10:20, the phone on the fourth floor of the District Procuratorate connected.
"Zhou Yu."
"Prosecutor Zhou, I have something." She paused. "Not exactly a case."
"Go on."
"Qingshi Village, west side of the city. Six children, blood lead at 189. Reference range tops out at 100. Three photos of lab reports, parents took them and sent them around themselves. No originals, no signed paperwork."
There was a soft sound of paper turning on the other end. "Which institution issued the reports?"
"One from the township health clinic, one from a city re-check. The third one I can't make out the letterhead, only the date and that number."
"The children's ages—did you write them down?"
"Six total. The youngest I don't know how old. One is ten."
"Any medical records?"
"No."
"Who has the reports?"
She paused. Someone had already asked her that question once in the past two days. "The photos are on the parents' phones. The originals are supposedly in their homes in the township. Nobody's produced them."
Two seconds of silence. "I'll tell you a few general things. I can't give you advice, and I can't say which agency should be handling this. If that's what you're asking, I can only go as far as this."
"I know."
"First, get the children treated. That number doesn't wait."
"Second: who, on what day, at which clinic or hospital, and what result—one line per item. The date, the institution's name, the serial code on the report—copy it if you can."
"Third, don't go into the village yourself to ask." His voice dropped lower. "You show up, and the whole street knows the same day that someone's come asking about this. The reason people don't talk isn't always that they don't know."
She wrote as she listened, and at the third line she stopped her pen. "If I don't go in, how do I ask?"
"You don't ask. You let them come to you." Zhou Yu said, "The day someone shows up in their own name to retain you, you follow the proper procedure. Before that day, everything you say is just talk."
"What about the photos, then?"
"For now, just collect them. Don't treat them as evidence." He said, "Photos don't make it into the file. To get in, you need the original, the institution's seal, the medical records. I think I've been clear enough."
"Clear enough."
"The reports belong to the parents." He added, "Only when they're willing to hand them over do you actually have anything. Right now what you have are photos, not reports."
"The same number, two institutions each producing it once?" He asked again.
"Yes. Once at the township, then drawn again in the city. Still the same number."
"Then copy both, not just the higher one." He said, "Copy both. When someone asks, you can explain it was a re-check, not one lab reading it wrong. Copy only the higher one and a single line about 'faulty equipment' shuts you down."
She made a sound of agreement and added this line beneath the second point: Copy both.
"One more thing." She let out a small laugh herself first. "Baixi Village is right next to Qingshi Village. Does that count as me connecting things again?"
No immediate answer. After a while he said, "Keep it in your head however you like, just don't write it down. The moment it's on paper, it needs a source."
"I haven't written it."
"Good that you haven't." He sounded like he'd just glanced at the pile of unfinished files on his desk. "I still have a stack of paper here."
"Prosecutor Zhou, there's nowhere else I can ask."
"I know." He said, "Which is why I answered as much as I did. Happy New Year."
"Same to you."
After hanging up, she looked at the three lines. The space beneath them was still empty. She folded the paper, slipped it into the notebook, pressed it flat, and didn't add a single word to the Qingshi Village page.
At 6:40 in the evening, the four tables downstairs at the noodle shop were all full except the one by the door. White steam from the bamboo steamers poured out of the kitchen door in waves, the scent of scallion oil drifting up the stairwell all the way to the closed door on the second floor.
Tang Guo arrived before everyone else, phone lying at the corner of the table, snapping apart her chopsticks as she talked.
"I asked three families, two replied." She said, "One told me the age and the day of the blood draw. For the hospital column she wrote 'that place in the township,' and when I pressed, she said it was the township health clinic—she couldn't spell the name. The other family said the report is with her husband, who's away. They'll get back when he returns."
"The third family?"
"Replied with an 'mm.'"
Shen Zhixia had her notebook spread on her knee, writing: "The family that replied 'mm'—ask again what medicine the child has been taking these past couple of days."
"Can I ask that?"
"Yes. Don't ask about the illness, ask about the medicine." She wrote as she spoke. "Medicine has names."
"Got it." Tang Guo tapped at her screen, then looked up. "Zhi'an, want extra noodles?"
Zhi'an looked up from the table by the door, his exam paper pinned beneath an empty bowl. "No." He paused. "Sis, that ten-year-old—what grade?"
"Didn't ask."
"Ask next time." He lowered his head, wrote two lines, then looked up again. "A ten-year-old girl, fourth or fifth grade—that's an easy thing to ask."
"Easy to ask." She said, "You remind me."
He Xiufen came out from the kitchen carrying a bowl of noodles, her apron dusted with flour, her voice carrying over the steamer first: "No looking at those papers while you're eating."
"Not looking." Tang Guo flipped her phone face-down.
"Face-down still means you looked." He Xiufen set the bowl in front of Shen Zhixia, turned back, and placed another bowl to her right—that one without the sprinkle of green on top. "Eat. When you're halfway through I'm taking the bowl away, save you reaching for that pen."
Tang Guo stared at the two bowls. "Auntie He, how do you know he doesn't eat cilantro?"
"He hasn't touched that green garnish any of the three times he's been here."
The door opened. Lu Jibai came in, cold air on his shoulders, briefcase in hand. He sat down without setting it aside and nudged the vinegar bottle by his foot half an inch farther away.
"What did Zhou Yu say?"
She repeated the three points: get the children treated first; one item per line; don't go into the village; and finally, "For now just collect, don't treat as evidence."
"He's right." Lu Jibai picked up his chopsticks, then paused. "A photo can prove that at a certain moment someone was holding a report. It can't prove whose name was on that report."
"Can you tell me something I don't know?"
He didn't answer that. He unzipped his bag, drew out a kraft paper envelope—empty—and set it on the table. "The day a piece of paper that belongs in here shows up, it goes in this. Write on the front: who gave it, what day, how it came into your hands."
The envelope sat there empty, the paper stiff, not folding as it lay beside the vinegar bottle. She turned it over. The back was empty too.
"What goes in it now?"
"Nothing fits in it now." He said, "So let it sit."
He Xiufen brought the last bowl to Zhi'an and, in passing, added half a ladle of broth to the edge of Lu Jibai's bowl. "These papers you talk about—I won't ask a thing about them." She brushed the flour off her apron. "I'll just say this. With a matter like this, in the first month, people won't even give you the 'mm.'"
"So what do we do?" Tang Guo asked.
"Nothing to do. Keep cooking noodles, keep watching the children." He Xiufen said, "The first one willing to open the door is always the family in the hardest spot. The one with the most courage moved away long ago."
"After New Year's, the first thing is I go with Kang Wenying to court." She turned the flame down as if suddenly remembering. "The moment the court calls, I'll go. Once that's done, I won't have anyone else's case on my hands."
Shen Zhixia's chopsticks paused: "What do you mean, no one else's?"
"I mean I'm not taking new ones." He Xiufen said, "That chair upstairs is still mine. I won't sit in on your meetings. But I'll eat the noodles."
Outside, children were cracking open a box of firecrackers, red paper shells strewn across the ground. One went off at the foot of the steps, the sound flat and dull, and everyone looked toward the glass.
Tang Guo slipped her phone back into her bag. "I have to go. Tonight I'm editing a piece that isn't about this—something else entirely. Otherwise this winter of mine is only going to have one thing in it."
"Something else." Shen Zhixia said.
Tang Guo reached the door, then turned back: "That paper envelope—buy a few more."
"What for?"
"There'll come a day when you can't fill them fast enough." She pulled the door open, a gust of cold air rushing in. "Happy New Year, all of you."
He Xiufen called after her: "Next year, four tables, same as always."
At 23:00, the radiator in the apartment was ticking with water. The light was still on in Zhi'an's room. She knocked once and said stop writing, it can wait till tomorrow. He set his pen down and asked if there'd be noodles in the morning. She said yes.
When they'd closed the firm that afternoon, she'd brought the other eight volumes home as well. Three days off, no one at the office, and she didn't want them left in the cabinet. Nine volumes stacked at the corner of the desk. The first was still wrapped in those two sheets of newspaper, the corners folded over the back. She pulled out the seventh and examined the spine: her father's file number, start and end dates. She ran her thumb along the ridge once, then set it down without opening it.
She flipped the notebook to the Qingshi Village page, the half page of blank space at the bottom. She wrote: December 31. Qingshi Village, six children, blood lead at 189 and above, reference range up to 100; three photos, all on parents' phones, originals not seen; six households, one family name not yet asked; township once, city once, dates not fully confirmed; timing undetermined.
She lifted the pen, then added one more line: Nobody is willing to point the way here.
She picked up her phone and dialed. It connected on the first ring.
"Still not asleep?" Lu Jibai asked.
"The Qingshi Village page—today's entry is done."
It went quiet. She heard him set something down on the desk. "Read it."
She read only the last line: "Nobody is willing to point the way here."
No further sound came from the phone, and she didn't go on. Downstairs, children had lit a whole bundle of firecrackers at once, crackling and popping; red light swept past the gap in the curtains, falling across the stack of volumes at the corner of the desk.
"Go to sleep." It was a long while before he spoke. "I'll come over tomorrow morning."
"What for?"
"To bring that paper envelope." He said, "A new year. It's all right if it stays empty for now."
"Mm."
"Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year."
After hanging up, she slid the seventh volume back to the bottom of the stack. Downstairs, the bundle of firecrackers had finished, red and green scraps of paper spread across the ground.
23:20.
The radiator's water ticked once, and there was no other sound in the room. Then the gavel sounded.
[Thud. On the last page of the Unsettled Ledger, one more line: Qingshi Village, same water.]
She leaned back against the chair, palm pressed over that line in the notebook, and sat there for a while. She didn't look at the map. She didn't turn the computer on either.