Chapter 342: This Isn't My Signature

The seal strip on the archive room door was still there.

At 7:22, Judge Luo's car arrived. The bailiff got out first and pulled the cordon line at the courtyard gate inward by half a foot. Director Fu was already there, a padded jacket draped over his shoulders, the courtyard key clutched in his hand. When he handed it over, his hand moved fast.

"I opened the courtyard gate. I gave it two tugs," he said. "The archive room key isn't with me."

"It's with me," the court clerk said.

The gate slid open to both sides. The iron-shaded lamp in the courtyard was still on, water droplets sliding down the shade one by one. Judge Luo stopped at the threshold and turned to the four of them: "Stand inside the doorway. Don't go into the inner room. Eyes may look. Hands may not touch."

"Hands won't touch," Cai Qingru said.

"Lawyer Song, you stand inside the doorway too."

"I'm here," Song Qiming said.

The clerk entered the courtyard, and the first thing she did wasn't open the door—it was stand in front of the archive room, hands clasped behind her back, studying that strip of tape. Only when she'd looked long enough did she pull a phone from her bag, turn it sideways, and take three photos. Hu Yongnian stood behind and to her side, the lens aimed first at the whole door, then at the two ends of the tape, and finally close up on the row of signatures across the seam.

"Both ends are still pressed down," the clerk said.

"The seam isn't broken," Hu Yongnian said, lowering the camera. "Even if it had been, it could be stuck back on. Depends on how steady the hand was."

The archive room was colder than outside. The clerk sliced through the seal and turned the lock. The metal door swung open and the smell of tin and damp cardboard boxes flooded out. The steel cabinet stood against the wall, the old desk under the window, and against the wall sat a white cold storage box, two seal strips crossing its lid in an X—one wide, one narrow.

Appraiser Rui didn't rush to lift the lid. He crouched down, both hands braced on his knees, and studied the two seal strips from one end to the other.

"This top one—it's been moved," he said.

"How can you tell?" Judge Luo asked.

"There's an adhesive mark where it originally pressed down." He gestured with two fingers, the width of them. "Now it's pressed outside the original line."

"What about the bottom one?"

"The bottom one hasn't moved. Moving one was enough—the box can be opened."

Hu Yongnian photographed from the corner of the box all the way to where the seal strip began. When he finished, he said: "I'll put these in a separate file from the daytime ones." The clerk answered: "Note clearly which were taken this morning."

"Remove it," Judge Luo said.

Appraiser Rui took a narrow-bladed knife from his toolbox, slid it under the seal strip's starting point, and worked his way down bit by bit. The sound of tape peeling was slow and long. At the end, he pressed the peeled strip upside-down onto the side of the lid so it wouldn't re-stick, then lifted the lid.

Fifteen items inside. Nine glass bottles standing in their slots, each one with half a seal label pressed over the cap and the lower half stuck to the bottle body; six mud bags standing at the edge.

"Read the numbers," Judge Luo said.

Appraiser Rui took the items out one by one while the clerk read from yesterday's sampling record. Fifteen numbers, every one accounted for.

"Numbers match," Appraiser Rui said.

He turned the first item over to look at the signature column, and his hand stopped on the second column: "Clerk, come look at this column."

The clerk walked over, peered closely, studied it, then looked at her own column and raised her head: "This isn't my signature."

"Are you certain?"

"When I sign, my pen presses down. This stroke moves flat across." She turned the bottle back. "It's my name. I can tell."

Appraiser Rui picked up the second item, the third, each one a single glance before handing it back. By the ninth, he set the bottle on the table and braced both hands on the edge.

"None of the four columns are mine," Appraiser Rui said.

Judge Luo looked at him for two seconds: "How many items—say it again."

"Fifteen items. Four columns. Sixty names." Appraiser Rui turned the bottle on the table. "Not one column is in my handwriting. My own column—the vertical stroke leans left. This one doesn't."

Song Qiming stepped forward, standing just inside the threshold, feet not moving farther in: "Can I see my column?"

"Hold the bottle up to him," Judge Luo said. "Don't let him take it."

The clerk held the first item in her palm and raised it slightly toward the door. Song Qiming looked down. He always read things from first line to last, and this time was no different—top block first, then his own. When he'd looked, he clasped both hands behind his back and stood there a long time.

"This isn't my signature," he said.

"Are you certain?"

"I sign this name thirty times a day. My first stroke is heavy, and I lift the pen fast at the end. In this column, all three strokes have the same weight, like they were laid down to match a sample."

"Lawyer Shen," Judge Luo said. "Your own column. Identify it."

The clerk turned the bottle half a rotation toward her. She studied her own column. Her name was horizontal and vertical, even strokes, and even the little hook at the start curled more crisply than she ever did it herself.

She thought of yesterday. She'd been wearing the cotton gloves Chai Guizhi left behind, the right index finger cut open at the tip. The first two items went on neat, but by the fifth her fingertip had gone numb, and the characters started to slant, the last stroke always dragging to the right.

"This isn't mine either," she said.

"Reason."

"Yesterday, as I wrote, my hand was cold. The writing on this label doesn't look like it came from a cold hand."

Song Qiming stepped back to the door. Hu Yongnian set the camera on the table and paged backward through the photographs. Yesterday, each seal label was photographed twice—one straight, one angled.

He found the first one and held the screen at an angle toward Judge Luo: "Yesterday, the four columns looked like this." He flipped back one more. "This is today's."

"What's the difference?"

"Pen pressure. Yesterday the nib pressed down. With the light at an angle, there's a shadow line along the edges of the strokes. Today's—the light is flat." He scrolled to the last photo and zoomed in. "And here. Whoever traced it marked the strokes in pencil first. Didn't erase it all."

Judge Luo looked at that screen, then at the row of bottles on the table.

"Will you put that in the notarial certificate?"

"In the notarial certificate, I'll write: at approximately 7:40 this morning I was present, and I photographed these sections of tape, these seal labels, at these times, with these people standing nearby." Hu Yongnian closed the camera. "Whether it was traced or not—I won't write that. The photos are attached. Whoever wants to see can see for themselves."

"Record that. Verbatim," Judge Luo told the clerk, then turned. "The recorder on the lid. Export it now."

The technician opened the lid as far as it would go and pried a black device, the size of a palm, from a slot on the inside. He cabled it to a laptop. The screen turned toward Judge Luo—and toward the four people standing in the doorway.

The numbers scrolled down line by line. Yesterday at 18:31 the box was sealed, 4.1 degrees. Through 2:46 a.m., it held between 4.0 and 4.4.

At 2:47, 4.3.

At 2:51, 7.2.

"The lid was opened," the technician said.

The readings jumped, up to 9 degrees. At 2:56 the lid closed, and the numbers ticked down bit by bit, finally settling back to the lower range.

"Open for nine minutes," Appraiser Rui said.

She stood on the threshold, lining up the two times: the light sweeping into the courtyard was at 2:38, the lid opening at 2:47. In those nine minutes between, someone had pried the iron bars, pushed open the window, gotten into the room, found that box. 2:47—she'd written that on the bottom page of her notebook last night. She said nothing.

At 8:40, Judge Luo spoke in the courtyard, the clerk at his right hand taking it down:

"One. All fifteen Group B items are void from this moment on. No one is to subject them to any testing. Box, seals, bottles, bags—all of it goes to the public security bureau as physical evidence. Not one item stays here."

"Two. The fifteen Group A items are in the Intermediate Court's evidence room. I've seen the photos the administrator sent at 7:50. Seals intact, numbers matching. Group A is unaffected. Tomorrow morning the clerk will escort them to Ningchuan."

"Three. Today, all nine points will be resampled. The originally scheduled soil sampling proceeds as planned, and the afternoon site inspection at the plant proceeds as planned."

"Four. Resampled specimens will be transported back to Ningchuan directly by the appraisal institution today. The clerk rides along and hands them over in person at Ningchuan. The handover form will be signed by both parties."

Judge Luo paused. His voice did not rise: "One more thing, and this is not procedure. The Civil Procedure Law states that anyone who forges or destroys material evidence, or obstructs the court's hearing of a case, may be fined or detained according to the circumstances, and where the conduct constitutes a crime, criminal liability shall be pursued according to law. I've had this entered into today's record. Who did it—the police will find out. In this case, I'm only responsible for the samples. Samples can't lie, and no one should think they can fool the samples."

The clerk held the record notebook out to Song Qiming: "Lawyer Song, say a word and I'll write it down."

Song Qiming thought for a moment, then spoke slowly: "Yesterday I signed thirty seal labels. On the four signature columns in this box, none is mine. I speak only for my own column. Who traced it, how—I don't know."

The clerk read it back to him. He said "Correct," signed, and dated it February 25. He walked to the far end of the courtyard wall to make a call, then came back and stood by the gatepost: "Lawyer Han won't be coming today. He said on the defendant's side, the people who need to be here are here."

Nobody answered him.

Cai Qingru walked over to Appraiser Rui: "If this box actually went for testing, what could it tell us?"

"I don't know. I won't accept this box."

"Then don't test it," Cai Qingru said. "A fake number is worse than no number at all."

Director Fu stood under the lamp on the courtyard wall, cap brim still askew, and suddenly spoke: "I've watched this courtyard for twenty years. Last night I should've dragged a stool out and sat inside the door."

She wrote that down in her notebook, her hand not quite steady. Lu Jibai set the thermos by her hand, the cap already loosened.

At ten, the young police officer came over from the patrol car with a paper in his hand: "Reporting party signs for receipt."

Lu Jibai took it and looked. The report time said 2:44, the accepting unit the town police station, and below that the signature line for receipt. He held the paper up to the light, signed his name and the date, and slid it flat into his inner jacket pocket without folding it.

"The receipt won't list any charge," the officer said.

"I know," he said. "The receipt is enough."

The officer and the clerk counted the cold storage box—bottles and bags—twice. The list had fifteen numbered lines, one per item. As they lifted the box into the patrol car, the officer asked Appraiser Rui whether he wanted the water dumped first so it wouldn't spill on the road.

"Don't dump it," Appraiser Rui said. "It isn't a specimen anymore. It's evidence."

At 10:20, they started down the mountain and the resampling began. This round went faster than yesterday: water only, no digging, seal labels taken from a fresh box, numbers continuing from where yesterday's sequence left off.

At the first point, Song Qiming handed her the pen: "Lawyer Shen, today when you sign—lift the pen before it comes down."

"Why?"

"Whoever traced it doesn't lift the pen."

She did as he said. The first seal label came out uglier than yesterday's—the final stroke left a line of white where she lifted.

At 12:50, the eight lower points were done. At one in the afternoon, the car went up.

The plant gate was opened by the security guard, Wu Zhiqiang walking ahead with a ring of keys in his hand. Iron gates opened one after another, the red light on the law enforcement recorder glowing, Hu Yongnian trailing at the rear with the camera.

The stormwater outlet looked the same as yesterday: a cement pipe half a foot across, a ring of white stain on the ground beyond its mouth, water seeping from under the pipe and blurring the stain further.

"This point was sampled yesterday. Sample it again today, numbers continuing in sequence," Appraiser Rui said.

The ditch ran up into the hill. Along this stretch of the bottom lay a thin layer of white that crunched underfoot. Farther up, a small iron door in the perimeter wall. Wu Zhiqiang unlocked it. Inside: three square sedimentation tanks—Numbers One, Two, Three—cement walls, each ringed with iron railings.

Tank Number Three, on the side against the wall, had a ring of white on its wall, starting at the waterline and rising to chest height. A pipe came out at an angle from the bottom of the tank—iron, thinner than the one at the outlet—curved around the tank wall, passed through a square hole at the base of the wall, and headed toward the ditch.

Judge Luo stood by the edge of the tank: "What's this pipe for?"

"Maintenance," Wu Zhiqiang said.

The clerk wrote it down. Judge Luo waited a moment: "During maintenance, water is drained from here?"

"I don't handle equipment."

"Who does?"

"Someone at the plant does."

Judge Luo didn't press further, only said: "Record it. The defendant's agent—can you provide a diagram showing this pipe's route, diameter, and where it connects?"

"I'll ask," Song Qiming said.

She stood outside the railing, able to see the section of pipe emerging from the tank wall, and the spot on the cement below the pipe mouth where it dripped, a small white patch. She took half a step back, her voice low enough that only the person beside her could hear: "That white ring at the outlet—it's the same as this one."

"Write it in your notebook," Lu Jibai said. "Don't ask today."

At 15:40, the inspection ended. The technician collected several soil samples outside the perimeter wall and along the ditch—bagged, labeled, numbered. By the time they returned to the village committee courtyard, the sky had gone gray, and the wind coming up from the ditch had the iron-shaded lamp on early.

At 16:20, the Ningchuan car left the courtyard. The refrigerated truck had been parked under the locust tree since nine in the morning. When they loaded, each box passed hand to hand, Appraiser Rui reading numbers while the technician ticked the handover form. Eighteen water samples, plus the soil samples. The clerk sat in the passenger seat, tugging both cuffs down before getting in.

As the car pulled away, Director Fu stood at the courtyard gate, one hand on the gatepost, watching the taillights turn past the end of the village road.

At 19:30, the group chat pinged. The clerk had sent a photo of the handover form: the Ningchuan side had counted twice and signed. Below it, one line: "Arrived."

She sat in the back row of Qinghe's minibus. Cai Qingru drove, Lu Jibai in the passenger seat. When they passed Qingshi Ridge, the sky was fully dark, and theirs was the only vehicle on the road ahead.

[Thud. This time, someone remembered in the night.]

She pulled her phone from her coat pocket and scrolled to the last photo in the album—the seal label photo she'd taken from Hu Yongnian's screen that morning. Her own name, horizontal strokes, vertical strokes.

Zoomed in to maximum, the gray trace along the edges of the strokes was still there, line after line following the black ink, never wiped away.

The tracer had reproduced even the thickness of every stroke—but never got rid of that gray.