Chapter 359: Volume Six

Before four o'clock on March 26, no one upstairs said a word. She was calculating how many copies of these papers she'd need for the hearing: one for the court, one for Qinghe, one for herself, and which account the money would come out of. She'd already worked through two rows of figures on the sheet. Lu Jibai sat by the window writing a page, crossed out half of it, and copied it over clean. No customers downstairs, just the range hood running.

He took the call first. He picked up the phone, glanced at the screen, walked to the window, listened, then said, "Speaking." The voice on the other end went on for a while, with the sound of pages turning in between. She pressed down the curled corners of the stack beside her. The smell of scallion oil climbed up the stairwell, mixed with the leftover broth from lunch.

"Submitted." He hung up and came back. "Delivered to the procuratorate this morning."

She pulled the cap off her pen and turned to a fresh page in her notebook.

"How many?"

"He didn't say."

"You asked."

"I asked." He flipped the third paper bag over to the side with writing on it. "He said that one he can't tell me. Ask twice, and it's putting words in his mouth."

"And after the submission?"

"Answer within seven days. Approved or not, the police will let us know either way."

She wrote: March 26, 16:00, request submitted for approval of arrest. On a new line, she noted the source—call from the police officer, taken by Lu Jibai. When she finished, she looked back up the page. The line above was the two Letters of Forgiveness from March 24, and above that, the Qin one from March 23. Three entries, three days apart.

"Anything else he said?"

"He said if we have anything to put forward, we can submit it in writing, or we can leave it as is."

"Which did you say?"

"Leave it as is."

She nodded. The pen hovered over the paper for a moment; she added nothing.

The System came down with a line then.

[Thud. This layer, you can't write anything on it.]

She held the line in her mind and did not touch the notebook.

"The Ningchuan report," he said, "the signature on it is the Ningchuan center and the appraiser who signed it. Not us."

"I know." She squared the stack by page number. "When it's laid out, none of it will be in my hand. That's how it should be."

At five, her own phone rang. The number from the Intermediate Court.

"Lawyer Shen, just letting you know." The clerk turned a page on the other end. "The Ningchuan appraisal opinion comes out on the twenty-ninth. Electronic copy goes to your inbox that morning; the paper version gets signed for on our end. You can pick it up at the Litigation Service Center in the afternoon."

"We'll have it by morning?"

"Sent as soon as work starts."

"Will the report say how the fifteen Group B items were handled?"

"That's not something I look into." A pause. "I only handle the delivering. Once the hearing date is set, I'll call you."

"Okay."

She wrote another line: March 26, 17:00, opinion letter due on the 29th; electronic copy in the morning, paper in the afternoon; how Group B is written up—the clerk doesn't get into the content.

At seven, the phone rang again. She looked at the name on the screen for two full seconds before pressing to answer.

"The file reached our office today," Zhou Yu said.

"That fast."

"Police submitted for arrest approval; the file goes along with it." A chair scraped on his end. "A few things to tell you. First, I've written a formal report to the chief procurator explaining my relationship to the two of you."

She remembered last winter, he'd written something of the same nature. That time, the name in the report was Zhi'an. This time it was her and Lu Jibai.

"Second, another prosecutor has been assigned to the case. I won't be handling it or reviewing the file. Third, from now on, don't pass me a single word about this case."

She turned each of those over in her mind.

"What if someone does?"

"Sent back as is, with my reason for returning it in writing."

"Understood."

The line went quiet for a moment; his voice eased slightly. "Writing the report wasn't the hard part. The hard part is after it's done—doing nothing."

"Doing nothing is doing something for us."

"Don't put it that way." He said, "This isn't help. It's stepping aside. Step aside cleanly, and the case gets handled fairly."

She held the phone and didn't answer.

"How's Zhi'an?" he asked.

"In school."

"Good."

They hung up. She added this line to her notebook too: March 26, 19:00, file arrived at the District Procuratorate; Zhou Yu submitted a written report, another prosecutor assigned, he won't handle it.

"He closed the door," Lu Jibai said.

"He closed it right. If he hadn't, the first thing from the other side would be exactly that."

"The second would be: 'You're an interested party.'"

She closed the notebook and glanced out the window. The water tank on the roof across the way had darkened into a shadow.

He picked up the third paper bag, turned it to the written side, and added a line on the bag itself: March 26, 16:00, arrest request submitted. When he finished, he set the pen down.

"From the police report to today," she said, "we haven't received a single sheet of their paper."

"We have two."

"Which two?"

"The Notice of Case Filing, and the minor-injury notification." He slid the two sheets halfway out of the bag and pushed them back. "Those are ours anyway. They bear their seal."

By the time they went downstairs, the curtain was already half-drawn and the stove cold. Since that night on March 18, He Xiufen had been closing early every day, earlier than anyone. He went out first from under the curtain, holding the cloth edge for her, and they took the Zhongshan Road way. The new bulb the dried-goods shop had put in bleached the white patch on the wall, the strip of doorway lit until ten.

March 27, 21:00, she was home, turning to the last of Volume Six.

The desk lamp sat low. The paper was badly yellowed, a water stain at the bottom corner of a page. The final case in this volume was the man from Chengnan Cold Storage: his foot crushed by a forklift, his boss claiming he'd tripped on his own. She started from the trial page—the top of the page marked with the date and hour, a small note in the margin pointing to a case file. The night before the hearing, her father had written at the top half of the page: "Three questions to ask."

First: who was driving the forklift that day.

Second: who made the shift schedule, and who was holding it.

Third: did they have a sheet of paper with names on it.

The first two had checkmarks after them. The third had nothing, beside it a small line: "Didn't ask. Ask next time."

That case ran half a year. The paper didn't carry the boss's name; it said "the Contractor." Five workers, one shift schedule. Who was holding it—he asked three times, and three times the answer was no one had it. Later, the sheet was pulled from the labor inspection office. The copy sat in the file, page corners marked with pencil numerals. At the hearing, the Contractor said he couldn't remember. The judge told him to look at the sheet; he looked for a while and said, "I didn't make it." Her father had written beneath: "You didn't make it. You used it."

On the page before that last case closed, there was another line: "The day the money arrived, four of the five came." Below, in small script: the one who didn't come—afraid of losing work.

She turned onward. The final page was November. At the bottom, a line that wasn't about the case: "The thirtieth, one thousand two hundred."

She recognized that number. That winter, she'd paid a sum to the school; after it was paid, her father never mentioned it again.

She closed Volume Six and pushed it inward, its spine aligned with the five before it. She drew out the index sheet tucked after the first page of Volume One and spread it under the lamp. In the sixth row, she filled two cells: page count, and what the case was—"The man from the cold storage; a shift schedule no one ever signed."

At the seventh row, her pen stopped. The volume number and the start-and-end range on that line had been copied from the spine back on December 25; they were already on the paper. The last two cells were blank: page count, and what was inside. To fill even one cell, that volume would have to be opened.

Six volumes, twelve years. From the date on the first page of Volume One to the page she'd just closed, twelve years had passed. No break in between; one volume after another, page feet covered in pencil arithmetic, margins pointing to one case file after another of other people's matters.

She looked down at her own notebook. Her father wrote date and hour at the top of the page; she wrote the source. Her father wrote "three questions to ask"; she wrote "what I still don't know." Two notebooks set twelve years apart, writing the same thing.

She remembered the night of March 15, at the stairwell, asking him how he knew "he'll test this one." He'd only answered, "The day the original takes the stand, I'll read it all." The original hadn't taken the stand yet, but her father's Volume Six had already been fully read.

The System dropped two lines.

[Thud. Six volumes.]

[Thud. The three behind them—not yet opened.]

She laid her hand on Volume Six and did not move.

The two Letters of Forgiveness were still in the bag at the office, both signature fields blank, the paper edges starting to curl. Chen Maolin's three days had come due today. The phone on the desk hadn't rung once. She moved that entry aside and sat back at the desk.

She turned the notebook to the "what I still don't know" column. The first entry still read: "Where is page six." Below it, she added one more: The cold storage third question—did he ever ask it.

When she finished, she read it over. The first entry needed someone willing to answer. This one only needed the volume opened. And opening it wasn't for her to decide when—December. In Volume Seven.

The lock at the door clicked twice. Zhi'an was back, schoolbag dropped onto the chair, straight to the kitchen for water.

"Sis, how many volumes?"

"Six."

"Three still to go."

"Yeah."

He finished his water and stood at the desk looking at the stack, his fingers hovering over the top volume, not touching down.

"Those three"—he said—"they're the last case Dad worked?"

"They are."

"Was it a hard one?"

She thought for a while. "I don't know. I haven't looked."

Zhi'an made a sound of acknowledgment, carried his cup back to the kitchen, and tossed out a "Don't stay up too late" before heading to his room.

At ten, the phone rang. His name on the screen.

"Finished Volume Six," she said.

"What time did you close it?"

"Just now."

The sound of pages turning on his end, two flips and it stopped. "The last case in it—finished?"

"Finished. November." She paused. "Of the three questions before trial, he asked two. Next to the third, he wrote 'ask next time.'"

"Where's next time?"

"December." She said, "December is in Volume Seven."

Silence on the line for a while, even the paper sounds gone.

"When do you open Volume Seven?" he asked.

"When the Qingshi Village case is done."

"Open it when it's done."

"Yeah."

"Once it's done, you'll have a date."

"Once it's done, I'll dare to open it."

"Good." He said again, "The day you open it, tell me."

"In order—that's what we agreed."

"Mm."

"Still at the office?"

"Two pages left."

"That gauze on your arm—can you change it yourself?"

"I can."

"Don't use your left hand."

"Mm."

After the call, she went back to the desk and dimmed the lamp one notch. At the corner of the desk, the stack: Volume Seven pressed down at the very bottom. To open it, she'd first have to move the eight volumes above it.

She didn't move them.