Chapter 436: The Car Sent by the Court

July 21, exactly 7:00 a.m. The side gate of the Jiangzhou Intermediate People's Court.

The car was sent by the court—dark gray, with an access pass pressed against the lower right corner of the windshield. The driver straightened the rearview mirror and asked which route to take. Judge Zhuo said, Chengxi, up to Qingshi Ridge.

The court clerk climbed in carrying two plastic file boxes. One held record paper and an ink pad; the other held today's materials. She lifted the lid of the ink pad box a crack and checked it, then announced it was red and still wet. Judge Zhuo didn't respond. He rolled his window down two fingers' width.

Out of the city, heading west. The roads were empty in the early morning. Buses trundled into town on empty stomachs. Past Shuangqiao, the buildings on both sides dropped away, and a layer of dust settled over the asphalt. The clerk spread the three-page photocopy on her knees, read two lines, and asked if she should follow it when questioning. Judge Zhuo said follow it, then let him speak for himself.

At 9:30 they passed Qingshi Village. The roadside ditch had been half-repaired. New stone blocks lined the bottom, and a white chalk line still ran along the edge. The clerk rolled her window up. The car began climbing the ridge, one curve after another, two of them sharp enough to require half-turning the wheel. Judge Zhuo kept his eyes on the scenery. Halfway up the mountain, he said, "This water comes down from above." The clerk asked what water. He said, "You'll see when we get to the village."

At 9:50, the car stopped at the village entrance. A concrete pad in front of the Village Committee building. The flagpole stood empty. An old sign reading "Baixi Village" hung on the wall, a corner of its paint chipped away. Below the sign stood a man in his early fifties. His short-sleeved shirt was tucked into his trousers, his rubber shoes caked with dust. He held a small plastic stool in one hand, and another sat by his feet. Beside the road, a ditch carried a few leaves drifting slowly downhill.

The man stepped forward two paces. "Intermediate Court?"

Judge Zhuo said, "Jiangzhou Intermediate People's Court, Trial Supervision Division. I'm Judge Zhuo, this is the clerk. Are you Pang Chunlai's son?"

"Yes." He moved the two stools toward the car. "My dad is inside. The room is small—three people won't fit. I'll sit by the door."

"No work today?"

"Took half a day off." He paused, then added, "You're not going to ask me in, are you? I'll just sit here."

Judge Zhuo looked at him. "You can come in with us."

"I won't." He said. "I'm fine out here."

The clerk moved the empty stool into the shade by the wall. He shifted half a step over, sat down, and rested both hands on his knees.

The courtyard was the third house in the row behind the Village Committee's back wall. Old tiles pressed down on the low wall. The gate stood open. Behind it, a water vat with a ladle resting on its rim. Pang Chunlai stood at the door in a washed-out shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms. His hair was half white, his frame thin but his shoulders still straight. He pressed his hands against his trousers, then stepped aside.

The room felt cooler than the yard, but they were still sweating once inside. A square table with worn, rounded corners. An enamel mug on top, a ring of tea stains at its base. An old wall calendar on the wall, flipped to July. The clerk spread record paper across one end of the table, pen cap between her teeth, the ink pad box at the other end. Half the window was open, and cicadas filled the yard with their racket.

Judge Zhuo sat down and opened the plastic folder he carried. The first sheet he pulled out was the three-page photocopy. He laid it flat on the table.

"The fingerprint on the last page of this—is it yours?"

Pang Chunlai leaned in, fished out his glasses and put them on, studied the page. "It's mine."

"And the name is yours too?"

"I wrote it."

Judge Zhuo drew the paper back and smoothed it flat. "Old Pang, I'm here to ask you a few questions today. Answer what I ask. If you can't answer, say you're not sure. Don't guess. I'll write down what you say, read it back to you, and once you sign and press your fingerprint, it counts. You must tell the truth when giving testimony. Lying means taking responsibility. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Pang Chunlai paused. "I'm not good with words."

"Just tell what you saw."

"Nine years ago, on the night of March 20, where were you?"

"At home. I got up after one in the morning to throw the switch at the pump house."

"Were you the only one watching the pump house?"

"Just me."

"When did you see the car?"

"A little after one. I was walking to the pump house to throw the switch. I turned the corner and saw a car parked behind the Village Committee's back door."

"Headlights?"

"Off. If they'd been on, I'd have seen it from the pump house side."

"How many people got out?"

"Two."

"What were they carrying?"

"Small buckets. Plastic ones. Bucket after bucket."

"Carrying them in, or out?"

"First in, then out."

"How many trips?"

"Didn't count. Trip after trip—about twenty minutes."

"What did you hear?"

"Tape ripping. A tearing sound."

"Faces?"

"Couldn't make them out."

"License plate?"

"Couldn't see that either. Pitch dark."

"Which way did the car go?"

"The road toward the town."

Judge Zhuo asked each question while tracing the corresponding line on the photocopy. The clerk's pen moved slowly across the page, recording: "car with lights off," "two people," "carrying small buckets," "about twenty minutes," "one tearing sound of tape," "car headed toward town." The room held only the scratch of pen on paper. Cicadas kept singing in the yard.

"Why didn't you say anything about that night back then?" Judge Zhuo set his pen down.

Pang Chunlai's hands tightened on his knees.

"I was scared." He paused a few seconds. "I still am."

"In these nine years, did you tell anyone?"

"No."

"How many times did Lawyer Shen come?"

"Three times."

"Did you meet with her every time?"

"The first two times, I barely talked to her."

"The third time, what did she ask you?"

"She asked if I had a piece of paper with a name written on it."

"What did you say?"

"I said no."

"Was there really such a paper?"

Pang Chunlai's eyes drifted toward the corner of the table. "She wrote in her notebook. She asked if I'd be willing to acknowledge it. I said I didn't dare. So she crossed it out with her pen."

"Did anyone else see what happened that night?"

"No one."

"On the day she took your statement, was this what you told her?"

"Exactly this."

"What you've said today—is it the same as what you told her that day?"

He thought for a moment. "The same."

Judge Zhuo closed the three-page photocopy, pressed it back into the plastic folder. "Anything else to add?"

"What am I, then?" Pang Chunlai asked.

"A witness." Judge Zhuo said. "Your words are testimony."

"Will my words still count later?"

"They're written down. Once you sign, they're on the record. This matter is under review by the court. I'll take your words back and verify them." Judge Zhuo said. "If the court needs you to testify in person later, someone will notify you."

At the stool by the door, the son's back stayed turned to the room. From the moment "about twenty minutes" was said, he'd turned his face toward the wall, holding an unlit cigarette that never got lit.

The clerk began reading back the statement. She read slowly, sentence by sentence. When she reached "he carried the small buckets into the house," Pang Chunlai raised his hand: "Hugged, not carried."

"What's the difference?" Judge Zhuo asked.

"Hugging means cradling them against your chest, afraid they'll bump." He lifted both hands in a loose pantomime, then let them settle back on his knees. "Carrying is for boxes."

The clerk crossed out that line and rewrote it to the side. When she finished, she looked up and asked if he had anything more to say.

"I'm done," Pang Chunlai said.

The clerk pushed the record paper over and pointed below the name. "Sign here, one page after another. Fingerprint after the name."

Pang Chunlai pushed his reading glasses up. One temple was wrapped with thread. He wrote his name stroke by stroke, slowly. After each page, he looked up at the clerk and waited for her to signal the next. When he reached the end, the clerk opened the ink pad box. He extended his right index finger, pressed it in, lifted it, and pressed it down after his name. A red fingerprint on the paper, bleeding slightly at the edges. He wiped his finger on his trousers, then seemed to think better of it and placed his hand back on his knee, palm flat.

Judge Zhuo gathered the record pages and reviewed them one by one. "This is what was recorded today. I'll take both this and July's statement back for verification."

Pang Chunlai stood and walked them to the door, then stopped. He did not step outside.

"I won't go anywhere," he said.

At 11:50, the car turned around at the village entrance. The son gathered up the two stools—one tucked under his arm, one dangling from his hand—and stood watching the car. He didn't ask a single question about how it went. The car took the downhill road, and in the rearview mirror, the light-colored short-sleeved shirt still stood beneath the old sign.

The descent was quicker than the climb. The clerk packed the record paper into the file box and snapped the lid shut, remarking that the house didn't even have an electric fan. Judge Zhuo stared out the window and said nothing. They reached the city at 2:10 p.m. He took the file box and said, "Archived when we get back."

That morning, Shen Zhixia had no way of knowing whether anyone was up at Baixi Village.

She was at the firm, spreading the three-page photocopy from July 1 on her desk, reading it from beginning to end. At the last page, where it said "The above statement has been read to me and matches what I said," she turned the paper over and pressed it down. He Xiufen brought a bowl of noodles up from downstairs and set it at the corner of her desk. "The noodles will go sticky if they sit," she said, then went back down. A little after eleven, Lu Jibai came out of the inner office to refill his water. He saw the three pages on her desk, set the kettle at the corner, and went back inside.

That afternoon, she recalculated the dates on Qinghe's supervision form: one hundred eighty days landed on October 21. Someone would have to go up and measure the ditch that day. She wrote it in the corner of the paper, then spun the pen half a turn between her fingers. The noodle shop's fryer rumbled below, and a smell of scallion oil drifted up the stairwell. She'd saved the Trial Supervision Division's number in her phone. That afternoon she pulled it up once, but didn't dial.

At 3:10, the phone rang.

"Lawyer Shen? Jiangzhou Intermediate People's Court, Trial Supervision Division." The voice on the other end flipped a page. "The witness interview is complete. I'm calling to let you know: from now on, if there's anything, the court will contact him directly."

"Is he all right?"

A pause on the other end.

"He said he's done talking." The clerk said. "He signed the record and pressed his fingerprint."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

The call ended. She sat for a moment, then set her phone on the desk and opened her notebook to the page marked April 24. At the bottom was written "Pang Chunlai, saw it." After that line, she added a stroke: July 21, the court asked.

[Thud. The witness's words have entered the court's papers.]

She pressed the pen cap on and slid the notebook under a paper envelope. Downstairs, He Xiufen called out that the noodles were ready. She answered, stood up, and pressed her hand against the notebook's cover before leaving.