The second day of trial began under a sky the color of old pewter, the kind of sky that promised rain but never delivered it. Ji Heng arrived at the courthouse early, as was his habit, and sat in the empty cafeteria with a cup of tea that had gone cold in his hand. He was thinking about Ah Kang's testimony, the way the old man's voice had wavered when Ji Heng had asked him about the pause. A witness who doubted himself was either a liability or an opportunity, depending on which side had called him. The prosecution had called Ah Kang, and Ah Kang had delivered a testimony that was now riddled with cracks. But cracks were not the same as collapse. The old man had not recanted; he had merely hedged. He had conceded that his memory was imperfect while clinging to the essential narrative. That might be enough for the judges, who were trained to weigh evidence in the aggregate, to see the broad picture rather than the fine grain.
But Ji Heng was not interested in the broad picture. He was interested in the fine grain. He had built his career on the fine grain—the small contradictions, the procedural missteps, the witness who hesitated a beat too long. These things did not often change verdicts, but they changed sentences. A judge who was absolutely certain of guilt might still hesitate to impose death if there was a shadow of doubt about the defendant's state of mind. And in a capital case, a life sentence was a victory.
The cafeteria door opened, and Xiao Zhang entered, her arms full of case files and a laptop bag slung over her shoulder. She was twenty-four years old, with a round face that made her look younger than she was and a fierce, uncynical dedication to the law that Ji Heng found both admirable and exhausting. She dropped the files on the table and sat down across from him, her cheeks flushed from the morning chill.
"I reviewed the forensic report again last night," she said, pulling a document from the stack. "The angle of the wound—it is upward, penetrating at approximately fifteen degrees. The victim was one hundred and seventy-five centimeters tall. The defendant is one hundred and sixty-eight centimeters. For the blade to enter at that angle, the victim would have had to be leaning forward, or the defendant would have had to be lunging from a lower position."
"Meaning?"
"If the victim was stepping back with his hands raised, as Ah Kang testified, his torso would have been upright. The angle would have been downward or horizontal, not upward. An upward angle suggests the victim was leaning forward—perhaps reaching for something, perhaps moving toward the defendant. It is consistent with Shen Mo's account that he thought Song Ming was about to strike him."
Ji Heng took the report and studied it. The detail was small, almost invisibly small, but it was precisely the kind of fine grain he had been looking for. He made a note on his legal pad. "We will recall Dr. Chen if necessary. But first we need to get through the prosecution's remaining witnesses."
The morning session began at nine o'clock with the testimony of the arresting officers from the Shimen hostel. They described the capture in flat, procedural language: the tip from Detective Liang, the drive through the night, the unlocked door, the suspect who had surrendered without resistance. Ji Heng's cross-examination was brief; there was nothing to gain from challenging the arrest. The facts of the flight were damaging enough—a jury of judges would see the two days of evasion as consciousness of guilt—and dwelling on them would only reinforce the prosecution's narrative.
The next witness was more unexpected. Gao Zhenming called a woman named Liu Cuiping, a textile worker at Dongfang Textiles who had worked alongside Shen Mo for three years. She was a stout, nervous woman in her forties who kept twisting the strap of her handbag as she walked to the stand. She had not been on the prosecution's original witness list, and Ji Heng felt a cold prickle of unease as she settled into the chair.
"Ms. Liu," Gao began, "you worked with the defendant at the Dongfang Textiles warehouse for approximately three years. Is that correct?"
"Yes. Same shift. The evening shift."
"During that time, did you ever observe the defendant display a temper? Did you ever see him become aggressive with coworkers?"
Liu Cuiping hesitated. She glanced at the defense table, then at the judges, then back at Gao. "Once," she said. "About six months ago. There was an argument over a broken machine. Shen Mo said another worker had sabotaged it. He became very angry. He shouted and threw a wrench against the wall. The supervisor had to intervene."
"Did he threaten anyone?"
"He said he would get even. He didn't say how. But his face was very red, and his eyes were wild. I was frightened."
Gao nodded, his expression grave. "Thank you. No further questions."
Ji Heng rose slowly, his mind racing. The testimony was a classic character assassination—a single incident, stripped of context, presented as a pattern. He had seen it a hundred times, and he knew how effective it could be. Judges were human; they responded to narratives, and the narrative of a hotheaded young man with a hidden temper fit too neatly with the narrative of a lethal confrontation.
"Ms. Liu," he said, his voice calm, "you mentioned an argument six months ago. Can you tell the court what happened after that incident? Was the defendant disciplined?"
"Yes. He was suspended for three days without pay."
"And after he returned, did you ever see him become violent again? Did he ever threaten anyone else?"
"No. He was quiet after that. He kept to himself."
"In the three years you worked with him, was that the only incident of its kind?"
Liu Cuiping hesitated. "Yes. That was the only one."
"So in three years of employment, you observed a single instance of the defendant losing his temper—an instance in which he threw a wrench at a wall, not at a person, and which resulted in a suspension. You never saw him in a physical fight. You never saw him threaten anyone with a weapon. Is that accurate?"
"Yes."
"Thank you. No further questions."
Ji Heng returned to his seat, but he could feel the damage settling into the room like sediment. The wrench, the red face, the wild eyes—these images would linger in the judges' minds. The prosecution had given them a story, and stories, he knew, were more powerful than facts.
The final prosecution witness was Song Ming's supervisor at the printing plant, a man named Wei Guodong who had known the victim for eight years. He was called not to testify about the crime but to establish the character of the dead man, a procedure that Ji Heng considered legally irrelevant but emotionally devastating. Wei spoke of Song Ming in the present tense, correcting himself each time with a small flinch. He described a skilled worker, a devoted father, a man who had never raised his voice in anger in all the years they had worked together. He mentioned the bonus envelope, the celebration that had never happened, the math tutor whose number was still on the refrigerator. Lin Wan, in the front row, sat motionless, her face a mask of controlled agony.
Ji Heng declined to cross-examine. There was nothing to ask. The man was dead, and he had been good, and no amount of legal maneuvering could change either of those facts.
When the prosecution rested, Judge Wei called for the midday recess. Ji Heng walked to the courthouse steps and stood in the gray light, smoking a cigarette he had bummed from a bailiff. Xiao Zhang found him there, her face tight with worry.
"The angle of the wound," she said. "We should recall the pathologist."
"We will. But not today. Today we put Shen Mo on the stand."
Xiao Zhang's eyes widened. "Is that wise? He is not a good speaker. The prosecution will tear him apart."
"Possibly. But the judges need to see him. They need to hear his voice. Right now he is an abstraction—a name on a confession, a face in a booking photograph. If they are going to sentence him to death, I want them to look him in the eyes when they do it."
The afternoon session began at two o'clock. Ji Heng called his first and only witness: Shen Mo. The courtroom rustled as the defendant walked to the stand, his shackles clinking faintly. He had been coached by Ji Heng in the detention center, but coaching could only do so much. His voice would be his own, for better or worse.
Ji Heng began with simple questions: Shen Mo's name, his age, his occupation, his family. He asked about his mother, about the apartment on Huayuan Road, about the two months' wages he had saved to buy the mobile phone. He asked about the phone call from the stranger, the voice asking for Lao Zhao, the shipment delayed at the river dock. He built a portrait of an ordinary young man, unremarkable in every way, a man whose life had been defined by small ambitions and smaller disappointments.
"On the evening of March 18th," Ji Heng said, "you were walking through the Wutong Lane night market with your new phone pressed to your ear. Can you describe how you were feeling at that moment?"
Shen Mo swallowed. "I was happy. I had wanted a phone for a long time. It made me feel like I was someone. Like I had a future."
"And then what happened?"
"I bumped into the noodle tray. I didn't see it. The soup spilled on the man's sleeve." Shen Mo's voice was low but steady. "He got angry. He shouted at me. I tried to apologize, but he kept shouting. He stepped toward me. He was bigger than me. I thought he was going to hit me."
"What did you do?"
"I took out my knife. I didn't open it. I just held it. I wanted him to back away."
"Why did you carry a knife?"
"Because the streets are dangerous. I worked late shifts. I had heard stories about robberies. I never thought I would use it. I had never used it before, except to open boxes."
"And then what happened?"
Shen Mo paused. His hands, resting on the railing, were trembling. "He kept coming. He reached toward me—I thought he was reaching for something in his pocket. I was afraid. I opened the knife. It was stiff. I had to use both hands. And then—" His voice broke. "I don't know. It happened so fast. The knife was in him. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't even know I had done it until I saw the blood."
Ji Heng let the silence hang for a moment. "Why did you run?"
"Because I was terrified. I had never been in trouble before. I didn't know what to do. I thought no one would believe me. I thought my life was over." Shen Mo's voice dropped to a whisper. "I was right."
Gao Zhenming's cross-examination was swift and surgical. He did not shout or bully; he did not need to. He simply walked Shen Mo through the inconsistencies: the claim of self-defense against a man who had raised his hands in surrender, the claim of fear from a man who had brought a knife to an argument, the claim of accident from a man who had stabbed upward into a vital organ.
"You testified that you thought the victim was reaching for something," Gao said. "What did you think he was reaching for?"
"I don't know. A weapon. Something."
"But you had no evidence that he was armed. You had never met him before. He was a middle-aged printing worker on his way home from a shift. Why would you assume he was armed?"
Shen Mo had no answer. The silence stretched, and in that silence, Ji Heng could feel the case slipping away.
The trial concluded at four-thirty. Judge Wei announced that the court would recess for deliberation and that the verdict would be delivered within the week. The guards led Shen Mo away, and the gallery emptied slowly, the spectators filing out into the gray afternoon. Ji Heng gathered his papers and walked toward the door, but he was stopped by a hand on his arm.
It was Lin Wan. She stood very close to him, her face pale and unreadable. "You are trying to save him," she said. Her voice was flat, without inflection.
"I am trying to ensure the law is applied fairly," Ji Heng said.
"Is that the same thing?"
"It should be."
Lin Wan looked at him for a long moment. Then she released his arm and walked away, down the courthouse steps and into the crowd of ordinary citizens going about their ordinary lives. Ji Heng watched her go, and he felt the weight of her grief like a stone in his chest. She was right to be angry. The law had taken her husband and was now offering, in return, a trial that seemed designed to protect the man who had killed him. But the law was not a machine for producing satisfaction. It was a machine for producing outcomes, and the outcomes rarely satisfied anyone.
He returned to his office and sat in the dark, the fluorescent lights off, the dying plant casting its shadow on the wall. He thought about the angle of the wound, the fifteen-degree upward tilt. He thought about Ah Kang's wavering voice. He thought about the stranger's phone call, still unexplained, still floating in the record like a ghost. He thought about Shen Mo's trembling hands and the stiff knife blade and the ninety seconds that had destroyed so many lives.
The trial was over. The waiting had begun. And somewhere in the city, in a detention center cell, a young man was lying on a thin mattress, staring at the ceiling, counting the hours until he learned whether he would live or die.
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