Chapter 394: The Three Questions to Ask

At seven forty, the water in the kitchen was running at full force. Zhi'an was washing dishes. Through the door, the sound of bowl knocking against bowl came muffled.

She moved the stack of ledgers off half the desk. Volume One sat on top, still wrapped in those two sheets of old newspaper. The paper tore at the slightest pull, fragments landing on the back of her hand, leaving gray smears wherever she wiped.

She flipped to slightly past the middle and stopped.

At the top of the page: a date, a time, and after the time, the name of a court. Below, a blank line, then: "The three questions to ask."

Three items, one per line. The characters were cramped and thin. When her father wrote in haste, the last stroke always dragged downward.

The next day, he started a new line and switched to a different color of pen. Under the first question, a line. Under the second, another line. Under the third, he wrote: "He did not answer."

In the margin, a line of small script: "See Volume Three." After it, he'd drawn a stroke—lightly, so the number was still visible.

She pressed her palm over "He did not answer" and held it there. The paper bore grooves pressed in by the pen tip, following the strokes of the characters. Her fingertips could trace them.

This page was not about Baixi Village. Her father had handled cases for years. Page after page, ledger after ledger: a date, a time, three questions the night before the hearing. How many times "He did not answer" appeared across those nine volumes, she had never counted.

At seven fifty, she turned the ledger to a fresh page.

Page header first. The pen tip hesitated on the paper, then wrote: May 13, 15:00, First Floor, Hengzheng.

A line down, following her father's method, she wrote: "The three questions to ask."

One: Why didn't my dad defend himself?

She sat staring at the sentence. The words were wrong. That time, he hadn't refused to defend himself—he couldn't. She scratched out the entire line, the strokes flat and stacked, and wrote again: One: Why did my dad confess?

Two: Who was it that night?

Three: What do you want?

Three lines written; most of the page still blank.

There was one more question. She knew it in her chest but didn't write it down. If she put it on paper, she'd have to speak it tomorrow. Whether he answered or not, she didn't want to know tonight.

She considered adding a line: "How long will we talk?" She didn't write that either. Putting it down would make it seem like she was setting the terms, and the terms of this visit weren't hers to set.

From the drawer, she took out a different pen and laid it in the margin, cap off. Tomorrow's answers, like her father's practice, would be recorded with another pen.

She reread the three lines silently from the top. When she reached the third line, she stopped and added nothing more.

At eight o'clock, she set her phone on the table, an arm's length away, and pressed record.

"May 12, eight p.m."

She released it and played it back. Her voice was quieter than she expected, flat. The refrigerator hummed behind her, running beneath her words, so the two sentences sounded like she was reading off a page.

She deleted it.

The recording she'd make tomorrow shouldn't begin with her own voice.

She'd spoken to that man face to face only a few times. In court, she'd heard him question others. On the courthouse steps, she'd heard him say a few lines. Twice on the phone, both brief. Tomorrow might be longer—across a table from him—and she needed to get her own voice out of the recording first.

Sound off; vibration off; battery at half. She pushed the charging cable all the way in—the connector was loose—pressing twice before the little lightning bolt lit. Phone flat on the table, screen up.

The inner room's door opened. Zhi'an came out to fill his cup, knocking it against the sink's edge. He saw the open ledger on the table and didn't lean closer.

"Sis."

"Yeah."

"Going out tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"For that matter?"

"Something like that."

He stood holding his cup for a while, drained it, and set it upside down by the sink. "Come back early then."

"Before six."

He went back to his room, leaving the door not quite closed—a sliver of light showing through until late.

May 13, 8:20 a.m. The alley entrance was blocked by a delivery trike unloading vegetables. The man carried crate after crate down, the crate bottoms dragging two black smears across the wet ground.

He Xiufen sat on the stoop trimming scallions, flour dust on her apron front.

"You're early today," she said, glancing up.

"Woke up early."

"Noodles in the pot. Come down for lunch."

"May not come down at noon."

He Xiufen straightened the scallions without asking anything. Water from the steps ran down to the third stair before dispersing.

The second-floor windows were open; the exhaust fan hadn't started yet. Li Huilan came up at 8:50, thermos hanging from her wrist, and pressed down the table by the window first.

"That leg of yours is behaving today."

"Your sawed board was measured right."

"Learned from you: prop up your own leg." Li Huilan sat down and spread a page in front of her. "The meeting—I'm going tomorrow morning. Check if my four questions are the right ones."

Four lines on the page, one item each: Whose money was it withdrawn for? Who was it handed to after withdrawal? What exactly was she told? Who at home knew about it?

"Four questions are four questions." Shen Zhixia pressed the page flat. "How old is she?"

"Past seventy. Her memory's failing. Last time she told a story herself, asked her again three days later and she said it differently."

"Then ask three. The fourth—wait until she brings it up herself."

Li Huilan drew a line through the last one and wrote at the bottom: "Go slow."

"How many questions to ask depends on how many the person across can remember," Shen Zhixia said. "Ask one too many and you'll just confuse her."

After nine, she spread out the Ge Xiaoyu file and counted through the fifteen blank days in the response, making a light pencil mark beside the box for the twenty-fifth. Qinghe's forms went by her hand, checked column by column.

At 10:40, her phone rang. Cai Qingru.

"Attorney Shen. The two third-party assessors want to come by this afternoon—to discuss face to face how to fill in the 'Replanting Quantity Confirmer' column on the supervision form. Three o'clock, at the Center. Can you make it?"

"Afternoon's taken. How about tomorrow at ten?"

Paper flipping on the other end. "Works. They'll both be here in the morning."

A pause.

"Do you have court this afternoon?"

"No."

"Then tomorrow at ten." She hung up, not a word extra.

At 11:20, Shen Zhixia wrote this down in her notebook and walked over to Li Huilan's desk.

"Attorney Li, I'm going out this afternoon."

"What time back?"

"Around five."

"The trip tomorrow morning is mine. When I'm back, you review." Li Huilan pulled a stack of files out. "Those four accounts of Lao Kan's—called the Enforcement Bureau this morning. Still no movement."

"Once a month."

"Noted."

Li Huilan went back to writing. After one line, her pen tip hovered over the paper. "If anyone comes this afternoon, I'll say you stepped out."

"Good."

"Whatever time you get back, the drawer stays unlocked." She said it without looking up.

At 11:40, she went downstairs for noodles. The water was at a rolling boil. He Xiufen dashed in a ladle of cold water, the noodles surfaced, and as she pushed the bowl across, she looked up at her.

"You're dressed sharp today."

"Going out on some business."

"For proper business, dressing sharp never hurts." He Xiufen nudged the vinegar bottle closer. "Easy on the vinegar—that stomach of yours."

Halfway through the noodles, she remembered the desk calendar upstairs. In the box for the thirteenth, she'd penciled "15:00." Fine strokes, the edges now slightly worn from the heel of her hand.

At five past twelve, she headed upstairs while Lu Jibai was coming down with a folder. The stairwell was narrow; they passed with half a step to spare.

"What time are you heading out this afternoon?" he asked.

"One fifty."

"Traffic's bad after two-thirty."

"I'll take the bus."

"Mm." He went on down. At the landing, He Xiufen's voice carried up from below: "Noodles are ready for you."

At 13:35, she packed her bag. She opened the ledger to the page with the three questions: a line at the top, three lines below, the spare pen in the margin. She read from the first line to the third, closed the book, and slipped it into the bag. Phone fully charged; wallet, tissues—one by one, in.

Before stepping out, she hefted the bag on her shoulder. The ledger sat in the innermost compartment, separated from the phone by a zipper. She pulled that zipper all the way shut.

Downstairs, He Xiufen stood behind the stove.

"Coming back for dinner?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll save the noodles for you."

A small wind was up at the alley entrance, lifting the hem of her jacket. At 13:50, the bus came. It was crowded; she stood near the middle door, bag hugged to her chest, one hand gripping the rail. The bus crossed the bridge; sunlight slanted through the window and fell across her toes. The whole ride, she didn't take the ledger out.

The order of the three lines turned over in her mind. First ask why he confessed, then ask about that night, last ask what he wanted. The order couldn't be reversed. Reversed, he'd ask her first: What do you want?

At 14:35 she got off. One block ahead, Hengzheng stood at the corner—a whole building of it, glass doors, a bank of elevators inside, the floor dark polished stone gleaming enough to reflect her. She paused at the entrance, straightened her jacket hem, and walked in.

"Hello."

"I'm here to see Attorney Han Chongli."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Yes. Three o'clock."

"Your name?"

"Shen Zhixia."

The receptionist tapped twice at the keyboard and looked up at her. "Zhengping Firm."

"Yes."

"Please sign in."

She wrote her name, her employer, and in the purpose column: "To see Attorney Han." When done, she laid the pen flat, tip pointing outward.

"Attorney Han said to wait in the reception room when you arrive. He'll be here at three. First floor, to the left."

The entire wall to the left of the lobby was one frame of wood, and in it, row after row of bronze plaques, each bearing a name. She walked toward it.

The names were dense—eight per row—with small lines below carrying years. She scanned across. First she spotted one she recognized: Song Qiming. Two rows above it, two more she'd seen in court. She searched from the top down to the bottom row. Nothing. She stepped back a half-step and searched again from the bottom up.

Third row from the bottom, right side, second one.

Shen Qian.

There was a spot on that plaque that had been wiped—brighter than the surroundings, the smudge marks uneven, like someone had rubbed it with a finger. She didn't lean in to read the small script beneath the name.

Lu Jibai had mentioned once that this wall carried her father's name—for nine years—and that he passed beneath it every day.

A man in a dark gray suit came out of the elevator, phone at his ear, heels clacking loud against the stone. She stepped back half a step, eyes still on the wall.

Her hand rose. Half a foot from the plaque, it stopped. She withdrew it.

"Ms. Shen?"

"Yes."

"The reception room is this way. Please have a seat. Attorney Han will be with you shortly."

She took one last look at the name before turning away.