Chapter 354: No Brakes This Time

He Xiufen set two bowls of noodles on the table by the door and said something no one took seriously.

"I'm closing early starting tomorrow."

The bowls hit the table and the soup rippled. The glass by the door fogged over with condensation. There was no rain yet on the night of March 18th. The wind from the alley slipped in under the roll-up shutter, carrying the star anise smell from the braised-meat pot next door. The light above the noodle shop's entrance was on, spilling onto the three stone steps and washing them white.

Shen Zhixia pulled a pair of chopsticks from the holder and wiped them down. "What time?"

"No more cooking after 8:30. Shutter down by 9."

Li Huilan turned from the stove, still holding a photocopied sheet she'd brought back from the subdistrict office, its edges soft from handling. "Director He, when have you ever closed this door by nine?"

"I will. Starting tomorrow."

Lu Jibai's bowl came without cilantro. He Xiufen set it down, wiped a ring of broth from the rim, and said nothing.

Shen Zhixia lowered her head and took two bites. "There are still delivery riders coming through after 8:30."

"Then they get cold noodles." He Xiufen slung the rag over her shoulder. "Cold noodles still cost money."

"People are still squatting by the door eating at eleven at night," Li Huilan said. "You're just setting yourself up."

He Xiufen didn't answer. She reached over and straightened the stack of papers on the table by the door, stopped halfway, and pulled one of the stools by the entrance further inside.

Shen Zhixia wrote a line in her notebook: Starting tomorrow, Director He will close up by nine. When she finished, she added a question mark after it.

She knew why He Xiufen suddenly wanted to close early. On the afternoon of March 17th, Chen Maolin had turned back at the top of the stairs and left behind that line: "Boss Qin says stay off the streets after dark." He Xiufen had heard it from the stove downstairs—her ladle had paused for a second. Tonight she hadn't mentioned it once. She'd only said she'd be closing the stall early.

"This page gets its own folder." Lu Jibai pulled a sheet of paper from his bag and slid it across the table.

It was the conversation record from March 17th, a photocopy. The handwriting was his, pressed line by line into the page, the final sentence in quotation marks.

"The Qingshi Village stack," Shen Zhixia said, "gets one folder too."

"This is the third folder." He pulled the paper back and folded it. "What do I write on the front?"

"March 17th, 2 p.m., second floor of the Zhengping Firm, three people present." She answered, "Record that he came by, who he said sent him, quote him verbatim."

"Add one more line: none of these words have entered any case file." He paused. "Leave the rest blank. Let it grow its own contents."

Li Huilan took the paper and read it end to end, then handed it back. "Don't stack that folder with the other two items."

"Put it in a separate compartment." He Xiufen's voice came from the stove, her back still turned. "Stack them together and sooner or later they'll get mixed into one thing."

At exactly seven, Li Huilan shouldered her bag. She still had to go back to the subdistrict office tomorrow to request that document one more time, and if they wouldn't give it to her, she'd find another way. At the door she turned back. "You two walking that alley at night—keep your phones charged."

"What could happen in that alley," Shen Zhixia said.

"I said keep them charged." Li Huilan stepped out.

After that He Xiufen shut down the stove. The light on the second floor was off; the water in the pot downstairs was still murmuring. At 9:20, He Xiufen stacked the last bowls on the rack and lifted a portion of spare ribs from the steamer, packing it into a takeout container.

"For Zhi'an," she said, tucking a plastic bag into the larger one. "If he's already asleep, leave it in the pot and heat it up tomorrow morning."

At 9:25, the two of them stood outside the noodle shop.

Shen Zhixia stood on the stone steps talking to He Xiufen inside the doorway, the bag of spare ribs looped around her wrist. Lu Jibai stood on the step below, facing the alley. Both ends of the alley were quiet. Only the dried-fruit shop's lightbox was still on, red characters blinking on and off.

"I won't be here on the morning of the twentieth—cemetery business," He Xiufen said, steadying the latch on the roll-up shutter. "You two can let yourselves into the upstairs room."

"Got it." She said, "The key's on my ring."

"Keep that ring on you."

She answered and stepped down off the stoop. At the bottom his phone buzzed—Li Huilan, asking how to request that subdistrict document a second time tomorrow. He stood there talking for nearly ten minutes while she waited. He Xiufen stood in the doorway watching them walk toward the far end of the alley, stood for maybe half a minute, then turned back to reach for the shutter.

The alley wasn't long—forty-some paces. A layer of damp clung to the gray brick walls. Charging cables dangled from the second floor, swaying in the air. Halfway down, she said, "Director He didn't mention that line once tonight."

"She heard it."

"What if she asks?"

"Then none of us have an answer." Lu Jibai said, "Words off the page—whoever records them carries them."

9:36 p.m.

Sound came first. An engine from the street beyond the alley, very close, throttle pinned. By the time she looked up, a slice of car hood was already pushing into the yellow light at the alley's mouth.

"Over here."

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the wall. Her back hit the gray brick and her shoulder went numb. He turned sideways, putting himself between her and the street, left arm raised across.

The gray sedan passed in front of them, its body hugging the drainage gutter down the middle of the alley, its left side mirror sweeping along the wall. The mirror clipped his forearm—a wet, ripping sound.

The car braked hard about ten meters past them. Tires shrieked against the concrete and the rear end fishtailed. The driver's window rolled down halfway, and a man leaned his head out, a mask pulled up over the bridge of his nose.

"Keep filing lawsuits, and next time I won't hit the brakes."

The window went up, the engine revved again, and the car swung out of the alley toward Zhongshan Road.

Two things remained in her ears: that sentence, and her own heartbeat.

White plaster from the wall had scraped down her back. She braced her hand against the wall and found her palm coated in gray dust, no skin broken. Lu Jibai's right hand was clamped over his left forearm, red seeping between his fingers and running down to drip at the edge of the stone step.

"Your arm."

"Just a graze." He pushed his sleeve up two inches. A gash ran along the outside of his forearm, from three fingers above the wrist down to the inner elbow—a strip of skin peeled back, not bleeding heavily but steadily.

She reached to press on it, but he shifted his body away.

"Don't press. It'll contaminate it."

"Contaminate—"

"If you press, I can't tell how long the wound is." He took out his phone and dialed 110 with his right hand, wedging the phone between his shoulder and ear. His voice was level, like he was stating a deadline. "Zhongshan Road, the Zhengping Noodle House. A car just tried to run someone down. One injured, car fled. Gray sedan, plates covered front and back."

9:38 p.m.

He Xiufen came running out of the noodle shop still in her apron, a slotted ladle in her fist. She didn't drop the ladle until she'd reached them.

She looked over Lu Jibai's arm, then turned and strode toward the mouth of the alley, came back after a few steps. "Where's the car?"

"Left Zhongshan Road already."

"Which way did it turn?"

"Right," Shen Zhixia said. "East."

He Xiufen stood in the middle of the alley wiping her hands on her apron, looking both ways. The dried-fruit shop's lightbox was still flashing, red light spilling onto the ground at her feet, where two black skid marks cut through it.

"Those marks," she pointed at them. "I'm not sweeping them. Nobody sweeps them."

At 9:52, two officers from the police station arrived. One in his thirties, one younger, the red light on the body camera glowing.

They checked the wall first. A patch of white plaster had been scraped off the gray brick, at shoulder height. Then the ground: two skid marks stretching inward more than ten meters from where they stood, deep at the start, fading toward the end.

"You two were standing here?" the older officer asked.

"I was against the wall. He was on this side." Shen Zhixia said.

"From the alley entrance to where you were—how long?"

"Less than a second. I looked up as soon as I heard it."

The younger officer wrote that down, then looked up. "Are there cameras at the mouth of the alley?"

"The dried-fruit shop's points at its own counter." He Xiufen said, "I know the owner. I'll take you over."

The shop owner had already pulled his shutter halfway down. He ducked out from under it, buttoning his shirt as he spoke. "Mine's pointed at the counter, can't see the alley. I ran out when I heard the brakes."

"Did it record anything? Let's look." the younger officer said.

The owner turned the small screen around and rewound. The footage was a wash of dim yellow. You could make out the ground at the alley's mouth and half a car—just the rear end, the plate area smeared with something, unreadable. Two red lights blinked in the lower right corner of the frame. A figure moved in from the edge and was gone in an instant.

"We'll need to keep that footage." the older officer said, "We'll record it off the screen now and send someone with equipment to pull the original tomorrow. Don't turn this machine off. Don't delete anything."

"I won't, I won't." The owner nodded repeatedly.

At 10:05, her phone buzzed in her pocket.

An MMS from an unknown number. She opened it.

No words. Just a photo.

When she raised the phone, the first thing she saw was the light. Then the two people—her and Lu Jibai standing outside the noodle shop on the three stone steps, the plastic bag in her hand, him one step down, facing toward the alley. A slice of red apron in the doorway—He Xiufen. The wall clock inside the shop was clearly visible.

The light was coming from behind the photographer: both their faces were lit head-on, small bright patches on their foreheads.

The younger officer noticed her freeze first. "What is it?"

She handed the phone over.

The older officer asked, "What time did you receive it?"

"Just now."

"You don't know this number?"

"No."

He took the phone and tilted it toward the light, read out the first half of the number, and said of the rest, "I'll note this down." Then: "Don't delete it. Don't forward it. We'll need this image tomorrow."

"The car hadn't arrived yet." the younger officer said from the side, "This was taken before the car came."

The alley mouth went quiet for a moment. He Xiufen walked over from the dried-fruit shop, glanced at the photo, took the rag off her shoulder, and said nothing.

10:40 p.m., Jiangzhou No. 1 People's Hospital emergency room.

Registration, debridement, X-ray. She waited outside for the X-ray, sitting on the row of plastic chairs in the corridor, watching the clock on the wall move.

The films came back—the bone was fine. During debridement, Lu Jibai made no sound. Only once, his fingers twitched. The attending physician flushed the wound twice with saline, applied medication, and wrapped it in gauze.

"Keep it dry for three days. Come back the day after tomorrow for a dressing change." The doctor wrote as he spoke. "A tetanus shot would be prudent."

"He'll take it." She answered for him.

The doctor glanced up at him, wrote everything into the outpatient record—one page noting which arm, which location, how long the wound was, how it happened. He pushed it across. "The record's yours."

"Thank you."

"How did it happen?"

"A car clipped him." She said.

The doctor wrote: Injured by passing vehicle.

Outside the debridement room, she went to pay. When she came back, he'd sat down on the windowsill at the end of the corridor, his bandaged left arm resting on his knee, scrolling through his phone with his right.

"Who are you calling?"

"Director He." He said, "She says the shutter's halfway down and she's over at the dried-fruit shop waiting for the officers to finish up."

"She knows we're at the hospital?"

"I told her."

She sat down, pulled out her phone, and opened the MMS again.

The photo was shot vertically. Their shadows stretched across the stone steps behind them, falling back into the doorway. She zoomed in on her own section: the plastic bag's handles wrapped twice around her wrist. That was at 9:25, right after He Xiufen had said, "Keep that ring on you."

She moved up, looked at the wall clock inside the doorway.

The hands read 9:25.

From 9:25 to 9:36. Eleven minutes.

She dragged the image down, studying the light on their faces. The light wasn't behind them—it was in front, low and hard from the direction of the lens, picking out a small white patch on each of their foreheads. The streetlamp at the alley's mouth hung on the outermost wall, with a small patch of open ground beneath it and the dried-fruit shop's lightbox to its right.

To frame them like that from that position, the photographer had to be standing directly under the lamp.

The car reached the alley at 9:36. The photographer had already arrived by 9:25, and had been waiting there the whole time.

Lu Jibai settled his phone on his knee and looked at her. "What do you see?"

"This was taken at 9:25."

"The car wasn't there yet."

"He was already under the lamp by then." She turned the screen toward him, pointing at the wall clock in the doorway, then at the small white patches on their foreheads. "He was standing under the lamp at the alley's mouth, waiting for us to walk past. He waited eleven minutes."

Someone pushed a cart past the end of the corridor, wheels rattling against the floor. He said nothing. He took the outpatient record out of his pocket, examined it under the light, then folded it back along its original crease and smoothed it flat.

"Which folder does this page go in?" she asked.

"The third one."

"What do we write on the front?"

"Write the provenance." He said, "March 18th, 10:40 p.m., Jiangzhou No. 1 People's Hospital emergency room. One page, one patient. As for how it happened—what's written on the paper is 'injured by passing vehicle.'"

She put her phone back in her pocket. She didn't delete the message, didn't forward it. The screen was still open to the MMS: two people standing outside the noodle shop, faces toward the camera, the light pressing in from behind the photographer.

[Thud. Someone has turned words into a car.]