Chapter 348: The Second Batch

At two in the afternoon on March 9, the table on the second floor of Zhengping Law Firm was completely clear.

The things that had been pressed under the glass desk pad were now on the windowsill: three sets of documents, an ink pad box, a stack of unopened flyers. The desktop held only a hardcover notebook, two sheets of paper of identical size, and a pen.

Those two sheets had been printed that morning at the copy shop at the end of the alley. The page Qiu Shifu had given her had several horizontal columns at the top, none of them filled in. She'd made three copies, keeping one blank in the drawer. Each sheet was for one pass only—if you made a mistake, you swapped in a fresh one. No crossing out.

She filled in the column headers first. Column one: which entry. Column two: where it was copied from. Column three: who gave it to him. Column four: what day it was given. Column five was the one Lu Jibai had added yesterday—who knows about this lead. That line was written smaller than the others, with a lighter touch.

When she finished, she opened the hardcover notebook to the middle.

She glanced at the inscription on the title page, closed it, and flipped further back. The corners of the hardcover were worn pale, the original printing on the cover long since illegible. The pages in the middle were yellower than the ones at the front, the pencil-drawn table lines erased down to faint gray streaks.

The characters for "First Batch" were boxed in by her father's own hand-drawn lines, the lower right corner of the box sagging. She began copying from the first line beneath that box.

The serial numbers were densely packed: one per line, the first several digits nearly identical, the tail ends all different, separated by a short dash—left side cramped, right side loose. She copied the spacing just as he wrote it, number by number, lifting the pen after each line to check the notebook, then moving to the next.

She didn't cut corners on column two. Which batch, which page in the notebook, which line it started on, which line it ended on—each detail written out. Column four was easiest: one day per line, all March 9. These serial numbers had only been copied out of his notebook today, so today was also the day they changed hands. The dates from nine years ago didn't belong in this column.

Column three, she wrote her own name line by line. By the lower half of the page her wrist ached and the characters came out slightly larger than before, but she didn't go back to fix them.

When the First Batch was done, the writing in column two left only a two-finger width of blank space at the bottom. She pushed the paper back for a full view, then pulled it close and counted from beginning to end. Only then did she set down the first stroke of the Second Batch.

At the bottom of the first page, the footer.

Her father had added up a column of numbers, gotten it wrong, crossed it out, and rewritten it beneath in tiny characters—so small you had to hold the paper to the edge of the desk to read them. The cross-out was two passes, back and forth, killing the wrong number completely.

When she reached that line, her pen hung in the air.

She paused, then wrote it into column two: this line in the notebook has a number at the footer that was miscalculated, crossed out, and rewritten; the rewritten number is copied as-is, the crossed-out one recorded here. She looked up—that half-line was crammed tighter than the rest.

[Ding. A wrongly copied character is still a character. Wipe it clean and it's no longer his notebook.]

Turned the page. The Baixi Village visit form.

A few lines of text, one name, struck through with a single hard stroke—so hard the pen tip had scored a white groove into the paper. A line of small characters had been added beside it. She recognized the handwriting; it appeared elsewhere in the notebook too.

Her pen hovered over that line, then moved to the next page.

The checklist only records serial numbers. Names weren't copied.

Downstairs, the wok clanged twice. He Xiufen's voice carried up from the stove: "Noodles are ready. You eating?"

"Yes."

At 2:40, He Xiufen brought up two bowls of noodles. One went on the chair by the door, the other by her hand. She didn't claim an inch of the table half with the notebook spread open, just nudged the vinegar bottle toward the corner.

"That notebook of yours takes up the whole table," He Xiufen said. "Don't set the soup too close."

"I know."

"Come down for something hot when you're done. The noodles'll clump if they sit." She headed downstairs, pausing on the third step to glance back at the notebook, but asked nothing.

Halfway through the noodles, she picked the pen up again. The Second Batch ran to a second page, the Third Batch following below it.

The writing in the Second Batch was smaller than the first, the pen changed out—thinner strokes, the finish flicking upward. A few lines were empty at the end, where there should have been a source noted. He hadn't added one.

At 3:20, the last digit of the last line hit the page. She set the pen down, pressed the backs of both hands against the desk for a moment, then flipped the second page over to let it dry.

Lu Jibai came over from his desk. He didn't sit—just stood and picked up the second page.

His other hand rested on the edge of the desk, half a foot from the hardcover notebook. He never once touched it, never shifted it.

He was looking at the Second Batch section. She capped her pen, drank half a glass of water. He was still looking. His finger moved down the edge of the page line by line, stopped at the end of the Second Batch, then flipped back to the first line of that batch and went through it again.

"What's in that section?" she asked.

He held the page up to the window light, turned it, then back. "The footer—which number did you copy?"

"The one he corrected to."

"The crossed-out one?"

"That's in there too. How many characters were crossed out, where—all in column two."

"Who crossed it out?"

"The notebook doesn't say."

"No, it doesn't." He set the page down, pressing the edge with a fingertip. "It doesn't say, so you don't write it. Put down 'looks like he crossed it out himself,' and someday someone asks where that line came from, you can't answer."

"There's more in that section," she said. "Toward the end of the Second Batch, a few lines—in column two I wrote 'notebook contains only serial numbers, nothing else.'"

"How many lines."

"Three."

"Did you add anything?"

"No."

"Don't." He handed the page back to her. "When you finish copying, go over it once."

"Once horizontally, once vertically." She took it. "That's how he checked it himself. Line by line down, then all the numbers in one batch read top to bottom."

"Both passes done before you go out."

"You stared at that section for a long time," she said. "What's different between the Second Batch and the First?"

He didn't answer. He pulled his hand back and asked, "Where are you on column five?"

"A few lines left."

"Finish before you leave."

She sat back down. For the First Batch lines, she'd first written "him," then added "me" after. The three lines of the Second Batch only had "him." At the end of the Third Batch, she tapped the pen twice on the paper, then wrote only "him" again.

[Ding. This column fills up, and most of the lines hold only one person. And that person is gone.]

"This column is hard to fill in," she said.

"Hard is hard," he said. "Everything written down needs to be answerable. If you can't answer it, leave it blank. Don't fill it in for him."

3:35, downstairs. The hardcover notebook went back into the canvas bag, the two checklist pages into the transparent folder, one in front of the other, the second page's footer facing inward. She hailed a cab at the mouth of the alley and arrived at the old office building in Chengnan two minutes before four.

Sixth floor, the room at the end of the hall.

Ning Ping was already there, blue cloth sleeve covers on, record book open, camera at hand. Qiu Shifu still had his sleeves rolled to the elbows, the old burn scar on the back of his hand facing the desk. Cen Hong had beat both of them there, blue work apron still tied, barcode scanner in her pocket. The packages at the counter weren't all dispatched yet, she said—she'd run over.

"Which pages have the serial numbers?" Ning Ping asked.

"From the middle of this page to the end of the next." She spread the notebook on the counter, flipping the pages herself.

"You flip. I won't touch it." Ning Ping turned to Cen Hong. "Take a look."

Cen Hong leaned in for two seconds. "The cover, I recognize. The handwriting inside, I don't."

"The cover's enough. I can't read the writing either." Ning Ping raised the camera. "What I'm recording is: whose hand this notebook came out of, when it got here, and which pages I photographed."

She shot entire pages, one at a time, then a close-up of the footer. The second pass she changed the angle, waiting for the glare to slide off the page before pressing the shutter. When she finished, she wrote in the record: whose notebook, who brought it, how many pages photographed, who was present, date and time. Halfway through, she looked up and asked, "When did he start keeping this notebook?"

"I don't know."

"Then it says 'don't know.'" She kept writing, small, line after line. "Whose handwriting it is, whether the numbers are right—that I don't write down."

"What happens to the notebook after the photos?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"It goes back to you today." Ning Ping closed the notebook and pushed it back across the counter with both hands. "I'll only note: photographed today, returned same day."

Cen Hong pulled a folded sheet of paper from her bag, unfolded it, and slid it over.

Three lines in her own handwriting: employee ID, one line. Birthday, one line. Family compound unit number, one line.

"My mom reported it last night," she said. "She said it, I wrote it, then read it back to her. If it was wrong, I wrote it again. The unit number came out different twice. The third time she said that one was right."

Qiu Shifu took the page, looked it over, flipped it to check the back was blank, then flipped it back.

"All three are his own."

"The employee ID came from the factory," Cen Hong said. "The birthday from my mom. The unit number's where he lived."

"Fine. Three lines." He set the paper down. "These can be tested too, and if they don't pan out, I'll still note that. Whatever's written here gets worked as a lead."

"What if none of them check out—how do we answer for it later?" Cen Hong asked.

"I answer from the paper," Qiu Shifu said. "Every line on the page gives me one sentence to say."

He tapped the bottom of the checklist. "Transcriber—sign here."

She signed her name, dated it March 9. Qiu Shifu glanced at the signature. "From now on, don't sign small. If someone has to compare handwriting someday, too small is hard to read."

He pulled out the power of attorney and smoothed it flat. The two checklist pages went on top in order, Cen Hong's page last, all four sheets squared to a single edge. The stapler gave one snap in the upper left corner.

"Stapled." He lifted the sheaf and gave it a shake. "Once it's stapled, nothing comes out, nothing gets changed. To change anything, you resubmit and start over."

"How many copies of this checklist?" Ning Ping asked.

"One goes into the file," Qiu Shifu said. "They keep a photocopy. The original stays with the power of attorney. Anyone who wants to tamper is tampering with four sheets, not one."

Lu Jibai asked, "If we're halfway through testing and the client wants to pull one entry?"

"Can't," Qiu Shifu said. "It's stapled to the power of attorney. Remove one entry and the whole opinion is void."

He ran a fingernail down the page line by line, stopping at one spot on the second page.

"This line, column two is 'notebook contains only serial numbers, nothing else.'"

"Yes."

"The crossed-out number at the footer—are you treating it as a lead?"

"No. It's recorded in column two."

"Right. What we're testing is the numbers. That miscalculation of his—not our business." He laid the paper flat. "Follow the order you copied them. First Batch first, then Second, line by line, record each line as it's tested."

"How long will it take?" she asked.

"If they check out, a few days. If they don't, I'll still write it down." Qiu Shifu tucked the stapled sheaf under his elbow and went into the inner room.