Dagou sits at the defense table, dwarfing not only the assistant defense attorney, Sara Stojkovic, but Jerry Stern himself. From the stand, James glimpses a view of his big neck, recently shaved, bulging slightly over the edge of his collar. A yellow legal pad and a pen are on the table but he doesn’t touch them.
The prosecution begins by showing, for a second time, the security video of Zhang Fujian. James has a direct view of the screen. He was informed that they would show the video. But as he watches now, he’s seized by the soundless black-and-white image of Union Station, his imagination supplying the light snowfall from the level above, the nearby roar and cry of trains. The people in the video, strangers in their winter coats, hurry in many directions. Then an old man, quite small, clutching a carpetbag, shuffles onto the screen. He moves at a visibly slower pace than the others, who rush past him, back and forth, as he makes his way across.
Strycker speaks. James struggles to focus on the questions, all requiring yes-or-no answers. He might be strong enough to stand up to Strycker. He understands why Fang said he was incapable of hiding his innocence. But he knows that Fang trusts him too much; Fang is wrong. He lies and says he hasn’t read anything about the trial. He won’t lie about the key only because Dagou has asked him not to.
“While following you, the man collapsed. You performed CPR. Did you notice he carried a bag?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you take the bag with you when you left the train station?”
“Yes, I did.”
There’s a gasp from one of Winnie’s friends in the gallery who might have been hoping the carpetbag was a red herring cooked up by the prosecution. Strycker goes calmly on with the questioning. The story is confirmed: distraught, having failed to save the old man’s life, not wanting his luggage to be left behind, James loaded the bag along with his own luggage into his brother’s rental. When Ming dropped him off at the restaurant, he switched the bag, along with his own luggage, to the trunk of Leo’s Ford Taurus. What were his intentions? He wanted to check inside for the man’s address, return it to his family. Did he do this? No, he didn’t. Why not? He forgot about it. His failure to resuscitate the stranger, leading to a sense of shame; Winnie’s stroke; the sudden death of Leo and of his mother: these events had driven the bag from his mind.
Strycker brings up Cecilia Chang’s phone call to the Fine Chao Restaurant on the afternoon of December twenty-third. Was James present for the call? Yes, he was in the room when Ming answered the phone. Did he realize Cecilia had called about the bag in the Ford? Not exactly. What did he mean? It had been Ming who guessed the subject of the call and told him to search the trunk of the Ford. Following Ming’s instructions, did James then search the trunk? He did not; he’d been distracted, and, later, interrupted by a call telling him their mother was ill. He’d gone to Memorial Hospital. Nor did the police find the bag a week later, when they impounded the Ford, investigating a possible intersection between two seemingly unrelated crimes—Cecilia Chang’s theft report and Leo Chao’s murder.
The prosecution authenticates the police report James filed stating he believed the bag was moved to his mother’s room at the hospital that evening, the night of December 23. Why did he wait months to file this report?
“I might’ve figured out earlier that the bags were accidentally swapped,” James says, “but after the police failed to find the bag in the Ford, I stopped thinking about it.” He pauses, struggling to sort through everything that happened. He describes how he discovered the burgundy bag. “That’s when I put two and two together, and filed the police report.”
Strycker takes a long drink from his bottle. Everyone listens to its squealing sound. When he sets the bottle down, the room is unnaturally silent.
“Did you actually see a bag in the hospital room, or talk to anyone who did?”
“It’s the only logical thing that could have happened.”
“Answer the question yes or no,” says Judge Lopate.
“No.”
“You never saw anyone put her burgundy bag in your mother’s hospital room, true?”
“It must have sat in the trunk until someone brought it back to the Spiritual House.”
“I’m not asking for your speculation, I’m asking for what you personally witnessed.”
“No.”
“If your theory is not true, is it possible the bag was never put into your mother’s hospital room?”
“I suppose so—”
“Objection,” Jerry calls out. “Speculation.”
Everyone wonders why the old man’s bag of money is so important. With the entire restaurant at stake, its past savings and future income—with the crime of a man’s death at stake, and, with it, the hullabaloo and hue and cry over Dagou, over Alf, and the entire Chinese American community of Haven—what is the significance of Zhang Fujian’s bag?
James stares out into the sea of pale blue and red-and-navy buttons. It’s like a public exam. He’s finished with the question-and-answer section, and now it’s time to ID the exhibits. James identifies People’s Exhibit Number 5, a drawing of the first floor of the Fine Chao Restaurant, with the door to the basement marked in red; Exhibit Number 7, a photo of the door to the freezer room; and Exhibit Number 9, a photo of the shelf where the key was kept.
“Now I’m going to ask you some questions about the night of December 24. Did you go downstairs to fetch a second bag of ice?”
“Yes.”
“Did you observe the key on a shelf inside the freezer room?”
“Yes.”
“What time was that?”
“It was around eleven-thirty p.m.”
Strycker gestures to the assistant prosecuting attorney, who makes a note of this. Then he continues. Who was in the restaurant at that time? Fang Wa and Katherine Corcoran. Also O-Lan, Leo, Dagou, and James. Did he see them leave? In what order did they leave? James recites that as far as he can tell, Fang left. Then Katherine left. Then he himself left. “But it’s possible,” James adds, “that I assumed someone had gone and they were still inside the restaurant. And it’s possible that someone came into the restaurant after I left. I wouldn’t know about that.” Strycker asks to have this comment stricken from the record, and asks for the jury to be admonished not to consider James’s speculation about possible scenarios.
“Do you know how it came to be that the key was removed from the shelf between eleven-thirty p.m. and the morning of December twenty-fifth?”
“No.”
“When you left the restaurant, where did you go?”
“I went to Alice Wa’s house.”
“What happened after that?”
“I left the Was’ house.”
“Then where did you go?”
“To my brother’s—to William’s—apartment over the restaurant.”
“Why did you go to William’s apartment?”
“I went because he offered it to me, he offered me the key.”
“When did you leave the apartment?”
“Around nine-thirty a.m.”
“For what purpose did you leave?”
“To go downstairs and set up for the lunch shift.”