Chapter 432: The Part Crossed Out

July 16, 4 p.m. Li Huilan pushed the door open. She didn't hang her cloth bag on the back of the chair—she set it straight on the desk and pulled two sheets of paper out of it.

"Xing Shuqin's case. No prosecution." She slid the papers over. "Ten this morning, the procuratorate called her in and read it to her face to face. Her son was with her. Afterward I saw the two of them onto the bus. I bought the tickets. Two yuan."

Shen Zhixia picked up the paper and read it. The procuratorate seal sat in the upper left corner. The text said the criminal circumstances were minor, that under the criminal law no punishment was required, and that under the Criminal Procedure Law a decision of non-prosecution was made. Below it was the district procuratorate's stamp, dated July 16.

"How long was she in there?"

"Over three months. Got released on guarantee June 16." Li Huilan sat down and nudged the cloth bag farther onto the desk. "I took the case at the end of March. She was already inside by then. First meeting, she sat behind the glass and asked me one thing: Lawyer, am I going to be in here a long time?"

"How many times did she withdraw money for them?"

"Seven. All at the counter, same branch." Li Huilan said, "A hometown acquaintance told her it was his own kid's card, the kid was working out of town, asked her to help make the withdrawals. She'd take the money out and hand it over on the spot, got a hundred yuan each time. At the end they stuffed a bag of rice and a jug of cooking oil on her, and she thought she'd come out ahead. The card was someone else's, the money went out through it, the victim was in another province, the report came over, and when they traced it back it was her."

"What did the prosecutor say?"

"Said she didn't know much, didn't have anything to return, the family's only got that one room. Minor circumstances, no sentence needed." Li Huilan paused. "She said sorry to the victim. When she said it, she didn't raise her head."

Shen Zhixia read the decision from top to bottom, down to the seal at the bottom, then set it on the corner of the desk.

"There's one more thing. I want to repeat it to you exactly." Li Huilan picked up the glass of cold water on the desk and took a sip. "When she came out she told me: I can't even withdraw my own money, and I went and withdrew theirs."

No one in the room answered that. Someone was unloading goods in the alley outside, metal sheeting scraping twice against the wall, and He Xiufen called something from downstairs—the wind carried it away.

"She asked me one more thing. She said, if someone ever comes to her again asking her to run that kind of errand, who should she ask. I said, ask me. She copied my number down on the back of a medicine box, in pencil. She can't read many characters. She can read numbers."

"Her bag of rice is still there."

"Beside the stove. She said she's keeping it." Li Huilan said, "I said what's the point of keeping a bag of rice? She said this bag of rice, she brought it home herself."

From the inner room, Lu Jibai set down the file in his hands and asked, "Done?"

"Done." Li Huilan said, "I bought her a pair of slippers. The soles on the pair she was wearing were worn clean through. She wouldn't put the new ones on. Said she's saving them."

He made a sound of acknowledgment, uncapped his pen, and wrote a line in his notebook. When he finished he didn't close it right away.

"Submit the subsidy paperwork this month," he said. "And this case—make a copy of the file to keep at the firm."

"I'll submit it." Li Huilan said, "When it comes through, I'll treat you all to noodles."

"The noodle shop is downstairs."

"Then I'll buy two bowls." She said, "Cold noodles with two eggs on each. If Director He charges me, I'll pay it separately."

He Xiufen poked half her body up at the stairway: "Cold noodles, got it. Count your own eggs, don't go counting any from my pot."

The two of them laughed, and the matter was set aside.

[Thud. That one doesn't go on your page.]

Li Huilan didn't head downstairs right away. She tucked the non-prosecution decision into the case file and held it in her hands, then glanced at Shen Zhixia.

"The twentieth—you're bringing the materials yourself?"

"Myself."

"Want anyone there?"

"No." Shen Zhixia said. "You've got a room full of work."

"The work in this room belongs to other people." Li Huilan slung the cloth bag over her shoulder and went downstairs.

Shen Zhixia lowered her head and read the decision again. Three months, one room, one bag of rice. Not a single line on the paper mentioned the rice.

On the seventeenth, nothing new came into the firm all day. Windy, hot. The window at the top of the stairs stood open, but not much air got through. The fan pivoted toward her and lifted a corner of Qinghe's stack of forms, let it settle again. She copied the date of Lao Kan's second payment onto the calendar, and when she finished she made a small check mark after it in pencil.

July 18, 8 p.m. The door rattled.

Zhian came in carrying a plastic bag with two takeout boxes inside—one empty, one still holding half a bowl of cold noodles. He smelled of broth, mixed with the heat he'd brought in from outside.

"Auntie He filled it for me. She said it's dressed with vinegar and won't keep, told me to bring it home." He set the box on the table. "You ate?"

"Eaten."

"There's still half a pot of congee." he said. "I'll heat it up for you."

"No need."

He went to the fridge for water, drank half a glass, rinsed it in the sink, and set it upside down on the drying rack. The house was hot. He turned the living room fan so the wind blew toward her desk. The half bowl of noodles stayed on the table; he covered it with an upturned bowl.

"Sis."

"Yeah."

"Auntie He said Lawyer Lu went to the procuratorate."

She wrung out the rag in her hands and laid it by the sink.

"Yeah."

"He went by himself?"

"By himself."

Zhian stood by the fridge, his hand still on the door handle. The fridge door hung half open, a wisp of cold air rising and dissolving.

"Then he's made up his mind." he said.

She smoothed the rag flat and hung it on the hook.

Zhian closed the fridge and took two steps toward his room, then turned back.

"The twentieth, when you go to court—what time will you be back?"

"Hard to say. I go in at ten thirty. If it's quick, around noon."

"I'll leave the rice in the pot." he said. "Heat it up when you get home."

"Where are you going that day?"

"Noodle shop. Auntie He said someone ordered thirty boxed meals and wants me to help load them." He went into his room as he spoke. The door didn't catch when he pulled it shut, leaving a crack with light spilling out onto the living room floor in a long bright strip.

She stood at the sink, not moving. On the night of May 27 she'd told him one thing: Don't pay Dad's debt for him. He'd answered with a single "okay." On the morning of July 7, he'd still gone to the Chengnan District Procuratorate. When he walked through that door, he probably already knew what he was going to lose. She'd asked him if he knew. He'd said he did.

He Xiufen must have told him at noon, next to the stove, while she was still lowering noodles into the pot. That was He Xiufen—she put words exactly where they belonged, not one extra.

Zhian's door was still lit. The fan turned and nudged it gently. The crack widened, then narrowed back.

She carried the half bowl of cold noodles into the kitchen and set it on the top shelf of the fridge, then came back and turned off the living room's main light, leaving only the desk lamp burning.

Nine o'clock. She cleared everything off the desk, laid out a blank sheet of paper, and lifted her family's paper bag onto it.

The top three lines on the bag's face were written one stroke at a time in early May: Shen Qian, petition, Shen Zhixia. Two more lines had been added below: Filed at Jiangzhou Intermediate Court. June 18, retrieval application, submitted. Character pressed on character. The ink had long dried.

She took the contents out of the bag and set them in a row on the desk.

The petition, five pages, her own signature at the bottom of the last page, dated May 19. The household register, one volume—a square seal stamped slanted over her father's name on the first page; on her page, "relationship to head of household" still printed with the character for daughter. The release certificate, one sheet, folded twice, the creases white with wear. A death certificate. The seven pages from the Chengbei District Court archives, stamped in the lower right of the last page: "Verified against original," June 17. Pang Chunlai's statement, three pages, a fingerprint pressed crookedly where he signed, covering half the "chun" of his name. A recording burned onto a disc in a thin plastic case.

She bit the cap off her pen and wrote, line by line.

Who gave it. What day. How it came into her hands.

First line: Petition, written by herself, signed May 19. Second line: Household register, taken from the chest under the bed, May 5. Third line: Release certificate, same chest, same day. Fourth line: Death certificate, same chest. Fifth line: The seven pages from Chengbei District Court, photocopied in the archive room the morning of June 17, stamped by Comrade Chu. Sixth line: Pang Chunlai's statement, taken July 1 at his home in Baixi Village, signed by him, fingerprint, three pages.

Here she lifted her pen and read it over. If Judge Zhuo asked "Which of these is an original?" she could answer all six lines one by one: the petition is my own; the household register and the two certificates are the family's own; the seven pages are verified copies, with the originals bound into the Chengbei District Court file; the statement I took myself, with the witness's fingerprint on it.

Seventh line. The disc on the desk held only one segment. Forty-two minutes, the morning of July 1, in his house. Pang Chunlai spoke in bursts, stopping between sections. She'd asked little, afraid that too many questions would make him clam up.

On the paper she wrote "recording." Her pen point pressed down, and she added above: Two segments—one Pang Chunlai, one Han Chongli.

The second segment was on her phone, also copied onto the home computer. May 13, three p.m., the reception room on Hengzheng's first floor, the glass door facing the wall where her father's name hung. She'd set her phone on the table and said, "I'm recording." He'd said, "Go ahead." Fifty minutes. The "Han Chongli said" transcript she'd copied line by line was in the back of her notebook, two full pages long.

After writing it, she sat looking at it for a while.

In those fifty minutes, he never wrote down a single name, never admitted a single thing. He'd said: "He confessed. The signature was his. Beyond that he wouldn't say. Three years." That was about her father. She'd asked who was there that night; his answer: "That question, your father never asked me either, not even at the end." She'd asked what he wanted; he said nothing at all. All the recording could show was a room, two people, one of them asking many questions, the other never once answering to the bottom.

She'd considered letting Judge Zhuo hear that segment. But once the court accepted it, there'd be no one to question about it, and it would add one more line on paper—"recorded by petitioner without consent"—and make the judge sit through fifty minutes of her asking again and again.

She set her pen tip on that line and drew it left to right, crossing out "one Han Chongli." The stroke ran straight, pressing through those characters, and hooked back slightly at the end.

When she finished, she added below it: That isn't evidence.

[Thud. That segment—keep it with you for now.]

She capped the pen, folded the paper, and pressed it beneath the bag. The row of items still sat on the desk; she put them back one by one: petition at the bottom, household register on top of it, then the two certificates, then the seven pages, then Pang Chunlai's statement on top. She stood the disc upright beside them, leaning against the bag.

When she finished, she looked at the folded paper once.

The living room was quiet. The light behind Zhian's door was still on. She lifted the bag, placed it in the innermost part of the cabinet, closed the door, stood there a moment, then reached over and turned off the desk lamp.