Chapter 361: Forty-Two Pages

The counter at the Litigation Service Center sat an inch lower than a person, the plastic mat worn pale, a pen taped to the corner with clear adhesive.

At two o'clock on the afternoon of March 29, Shen Zhixia slid the Power of Attorney and the Notice of Case Acceptance through the slot below the glass. The person inside looked at the cause of action first, then her own credentials, then the "Litigation Agent" column on the authorization form. Finally, a bound document was pushed out from the inner side.

White cover, black lettering: Judicial Appraisal Opinion. Beneath it, in smaller print, the commissioning unit: Jiangzhou Intermediate People's Court. Below that, the name of the appraisal institution — Ningchuan Municipal Academy of Environmental Sciences Judicial Appraisal Center. The bottom right corner of the cover bore the page count.

She opened it and counted on the spot. Page by page through the body text, then to the back, where the diagrams and schedules had their own separate pagination. When she finished counting, she closed the volume, signed the Proof of Service, and wrote down the time and date.

"This copy is for the plaintiff's side," the person at the window said. "The defendant's copy was signed for this morning."

Lu Jibai stood half a step behind her shoulder. He reached out and took the volume, weighed it in his hand first, then opened the cover to examine the signature block.

"Two appraisers signed," he said.

"Mm."

"The first one's surname is Rui. Each signature has a practice seal next to it."

She took the volume back and read the page count on the cover once more before putting it into her bag. Halfway through zipping it shut, she turned the bag so the cover faced upward.

Just outside the main entrance, her phone rang. The screen showed the same Intermediate Court number. The court clerk's pace was as measured as always.

"Picked it up?"

"Picked it up. Forty-two pages of body text, diagrams and schedules separately numbered."

"I don't count pages. I only count copies here. If you ask me about page numbers, I'd have to flip through it myself." A pause came from the other end. "I'm calling to say one thing: the B group line isn't in the back. It's on page three. If you go looking through the appendix pages, you won't find it. Don't think it's missing."

"Page three."

"Page three. I shouldn't be saying this at all, but I saw it when I flipped through, and I didn't want you calling back and forth." She turned a page audibly. "That's all."

After hanging up, Lu Jibai asked what she'd said.

"She said Group B is on page three."

He hitched the bag higher on his shoulder and said nothing. He walked toward the bus stop, staying on the outside edge of the lane as always.

The long table on the second floor of Zhengping Law Firm had been wiped down, the water stains on the surface dried. He Xiufen dragged out the old wooden chair from under the window. A piece of cardboard folded four times was wedged under one leg so it wouldn't creak. In front of her sat an enamel basin.

"Got it back?"

"Got it back."

"Read it to me." Her thumbnail dug into a garlic skin. "Start anywhere. If I don't understand something, I'll ask. And when I ask, don't get annoyed."

At five minutes to three, footsteps sounded on the stairs, not the way anyone in the firm walked. Cai Qingru stopped at the doorway, carrying a washed-out cloth bag. She looked first at the volume on the table, then at the people.

"I'm not sitting over there," she said, and moved a chair to the window herself. "It's brighter here."

She took out a hardcover notebook and a pen from her bag. Before sitting down, she pressed both palms against her trousers.

"I'll read page by page," she said. "Where you want me to stop, say stop. Most of what I read I won't understand. I'll only mark the lines I can recognize."

"Read," Shen Zhixia said.

Page one: commissioning unit, matters entrusted, list of appraisal materials. Cai Qingru read slowly, checking off the materials one by one: sampling records, seal tag photos, handover registers, on-site inspection records, notarized evidence preservation certificates, printouts from the temperature logger's data, the burned-disc explanation for the law enforcement recorder footage.

Page two described the sampling: nine points, parallel samples taken at each, soil, sediment, and water samples packed separately.

She stopped at page three. A paragraph near the bottom was set in a font one size smaller than the body text.

"Group B samples, fifteen items. Due to inconsistencies between the seal tags and the sampling records, upon confirmation by the commissioning party, testing was not conducted."

She finished reading, looked up at Shen Zhixia, then lowered her head and read the sentence again.

Li Huilan came in through the doorway and stood listening to that sentence. "That line," she said, "is better written than anything we could have put down."

"The appraisal institution can only write it that way," Shen Zhixia said. "It says 'inconsistent.' It doesn't say 'switched.'"

[Thud. That line was not written by you.]

The sound landed. She tapped a finger on the tabletop and kept listening.

From page four onward, the report covered testing methods and results. Tables ran vertical by sampling point, horizontal by lead, cadmium, screening values, measured values. Cai Qingru read line by line: Huishui Ditch sediment, farmland along the ditch, the village primary school playground. When she reached the playground row, her pen pressed into the paper and held there, motionless. A long moment passed before she continued. In the ditch water column, lead exceeded the surface water standard.

"In all of this," she said suddenly, "is there a child's name anywhere?"

"No," Shen Zhixia said. "Only point numbers, and 'Village Primary School.'"

Cai Qingru nodded and moved her pen. Wherever she needed to turn back for a second look, she folded the corner of the page. By the sixth folded corner, Shen Zhixia noticed her nails were cut very short, and the pads of her fingers had a thin layer of callused skin.

Two pages further on: isotope analysis. The textual conclusion was only two sentences: the lead stable isotope ratios of the Huishui Ditch sediment samples and of the sediment samples outside the plant's stormwater outlet fell within the same range; they differed from the control-point samples on the far side of the hill. Below that were the charts, points scattered on the paper by coordinates. Two clusters sat far apart. Another cluster fell in between.

Lu Jibai looked at that page once, following the words. He looked at it a second time, reading only the chart. The third time, he pulled out the appendix diagrams and spread them beside it, one hand holding down the report, the other pressing the appendix, his eyes moving back and forth between the two sheets.

"This page," he said, "he's going to pull out and attack."

"Why this one?" Li Huilan asked.

"Everywhere else it only says 'exceeded.'" His finger rested on a point in the chart. "Only this page puts the ditch sediment and the outlet outside the plant on the same piece of paper."

Cai Qingru asked, "With one mouth, can he explain away these points on the chart as coming from somewhere else?"

"He can." Lu Jibai put the appendix back. "He'll say the other side of the hill has rocks too. He'll say overlapping ratios don't prove anything."

The schedules came last. The remediation plan was laid out page by page: excavation, disposal, monitoring, acceptance inspection, each item followed by a blank box. Total: 3.12 million yuan. The next page: interim loss of ecosystem service function, 460,000 yuan, with the calculation and the cutoff date spelled out clearly.

Cai Qingru read to that spot, opened her hardcover notebook, wrote a line, and drew a vertical mark beside it.

"3.58 million," she said.

"That adds up," Shen Zhixia answered, pushing the schedule toward her. "But this isn't like a fine. If the judgment comes down this way, he fixes it himself, with a one-hundred-and-eighty-day deadline. Only if he fails to fix it by then does the 3.12 million come due, and the court hires someone to do it. The 460,000 goes into a court account, dedicated funds, for Qingshi Village only."

"What if he actually fixes it?"

"Then the 3.12 million never changes hands." Shen Zhixia flipped the schedule back to the remediation plan page. "What changes hands is the ditch."

Cai Qingru pressed her pen against that line and didn't speak at once.

"I don't want the money," she said. "I want that ditch and that playground back. Money is where it hurts them. It's not where we live."

The chair under the window had stayed silent the whole time. He Xiufen peeled the last layer of garlic skin and dropped it into the basin before speaking.

"In all this paper, which page has your names written on it?"

Shen Zhixia flipped through the volume. "Nowhere. The sampling was done by them, the sealing by them, the signatures by them, the seals by them."

"Good," He Xiufen said, nudging the basin aside. "In my whole life I've heard too much of 'I testify' and 'I guarantee.' On this paper, none of your names appear. That's the only way it stands."

A moment later she added, "That ratio business, I don't understand it. Explain it to me in one sentence. If you can't, it means you don't understand it either."

Cai Qingru looked up too.

Lu Jibai turned the appendix chart around and pointed at one cluster of points. "No two ores are alike. The lead that comes out of the ground under Baixi and the lead from somewhere else weigh just a little differently. Like fingerprints."

"The other side of the hill is also a hill, also has rocks."

"The control point from the other side is here." His finger moved to the opposite side of the chart. "It doesn't match that fingerprint."

He Xiufen studied it for a while, then picked up the basin. "Understood. The mud in that ditch came out of the plant's outlet."

She asked, "That whole volume, all those pages — how much did it cost?"

"Not cheap," Shen Zhixia said. "When the bill comes, I'll read it to you. There's a provision in the judgment: he bears it."

At 5:40, He Xiufen went downstairs and came back up twenty minutes later with four bowls of noodles. Cai Qingru pushed the volume to the middle of the table, moved her bowl to the corner, pinned the cover down with her hardcover notebook, and ate while reading. Halfway through, she looked up. "Can I take this volume home tonight and copy from it?"

"It can't leave," Lu Jibai said. "The papers stay with the file. If you want to copy them, come tomorrow morning. I'll sit right here and keep an eye on it."

"That's the kind of thing you'd say." Cai Qingru set down her chopsticks. "Fine. I'll come tomorrow morning."

At six o'clock, she went over the seven entries in her hardcover notebook once more, flipped the report back to page three, pressed a faint mark into the edge of the page with her fingernail, then smoothed out every one of the folded corners.

"That sentence on page three," she said. "I'll read it to the board members tomorrow."

At four o'clock on March 30, text messages from the electronic service platform arrived back-to-back on two phones. She opened the links. Two documents, still bearing the letterhead of Hengzheng Law Firm.

The first was titled "Objection to the Appraisal Opinion and Application for the Appraiser to Appear in Court." The second was a single page: a request to have a person with specialized knowledge appear in court.

She printed both. The paper was still warm.

The objection was cleanly written, point by point, without a trace of anger in a single character. The first point attacked the institution's and appraiser's qualifications, demanding the appraiser appear in court to explain whether the appraisal matters fell within the registered scope. The second addressed Group B: same batch of samples, same sealing procedure, same night. "Since Group B could be switched, Group A is not credible." The third argued that lead stable isotope ratios lacked exclusivity in establishing causation; samples from different sources "can produce overlapping ratios." The fourth claimed the remediation plan wasn't calculated against an actually executable construction volume, making the cost grossly excessive. The fifth said the calculation of interim service function loss had no basis.

Li Huilan read through the five points, running her pen along the second. "This one's the most vicious. He isn't asking whether Group A was switched. He's asking 'since it could happen once.'"

"That point can't be answered in court," Shen Zhixia said. "The only response is to lay out every single handover."

Lu Jibai was already writing. He wrote quickly, speaking as he went. "Qualification certificates and the appraiser's practice license — they're in the last few pages of the report. Sampling records from nine points, seal tag photos. Loading and dispatch records, the Evidence Room handover register, the Ningchuan handover slip. The notarial certificates. The temperature logger data. The law enforcement recorder footage."

"Match them line by line," he said, setting down the pen. "If he asks which handover no one signed, we pull that record out, find whose name is on it, and read it aloud."

Li Huilan picked up the second application and read it through. "Once the court approves the appearance, the appraiser must attend. If notified and absent, the appraisal opinion cannot be used as a basis for finding facts. So we need to get an outline to Appraiser Rui in advance."

"Structure the outline by page, one question per page." Lu Jibai said. "If he tries to reach beyond the paper, I'll stop him."

Cai Qingru took the one-page application and read it top to bottom. The reasoning was polite: to assess the applicability of the ratio method, the applicant requested a person with specialized knowledge to appear and offer an opinion. The line below gave the person's identity — an associate professor from a provincial university, research focus: sources of heavy metals in environmental media.

She stopped at "associate professor."

"He's hired a professor."

Lu Jibai squared the two sheets and stacked them beside the forty-two-page volume.

"We have Appraiser Rui," he said, "and the footage from that night."

Under the window, He Xiufen ran her needle across her hair and kept sewing the strap of the apron.