Chapter 22 — Shrimp Street Without Name

Returning to the motel room, Hai Yen spread Ms. Ut Phuong's notebook out on the table, carefully taking pictures of each page with her phone before allowing herself to read the contents carefully, in accordance with the principle of preserving evidence she always followed. The handwriting in the notebook is neat and tidy, in the style of a professional accountant, completely different from her father's somewhat hasty handwriting in the last pages of the notebook he left behind.

Most of the content is pages recording the cooperative's normal income and expenses: money to buy shrimp feed, money to hire harvesting workers, money to repair water pumps. But between those pages, she found a separate section marked by Mrs. Ut Phuong with a red border in the corner of the page, the title was only two words: "Strange Item".

Under that heading is a list of expenses without a specific recipient name, only code numbers, dates and amounts, continuously lasting for about eight months before the cooperative collapsed. The amount of money each time is not large, ranging from two to five million dong, but the frequency is suspiciously regular: almost exactly every two weeks, without exception.

Hai Yen took out her father's notebook, placed it next to Mrs. Ut Phuong's notebook, and began comparing each date. She quickly noticed a remarkable coincidence: every time in Mrs. Ut Phuong's book a "strange amount" was recorded, in her father's book, the next day or the same day, one of the mysterious lines of symbols that she had partially deciphered before appeared - lines bearing the two-letter code of the raising household, with the weight and the letter B or D at the end.

She sat silently before this discovery, her mind racing to put the pieces together. If her inference is correct, then every time a strange amount of money is spent from the cooperative fund, her father immediately records a transaction related to the shrimp output of a specific farming household. This is not a coincidence — it shows an organized process: money is spent, and in return, something related to shrimp yield or quality is handled in an unusual way.

She flipped through the last note in Ms. Ut Phuong's "Strange Item" section, right before the cooperative collapsed. Next to the familiar number, Ms. Ut Phuong wrote a small note in pencil, her handwriting was much shakier than the other lines: "Uncle Tien asked who this money was for, no one could answer. He said he would find out for himself."

That caption matched perfectly with the last words in her father's notebook: "This cannot be allowed to continue. It must be said, even if everything is lost." Two notebooks, two different writers, now placed side by side, tell the same story from two different perspectives: an accountant discovers illegal expenses, a homeroom manager begins to have doubts and is determined to find out, both are getting closer to a truth that someone doesn't want them to touch.

That night, Hai Yen hardly slept, spending hours making a detailed comparison between the two books, trying to calculate the total amount spent in eight months: nearly one hundred and twenty million VND, not a small amount for the financial scale of a small cooperative at that time. That money, if true as she suspected, was used to pay for "processing" the shrimp sample test results in a positive way. beneficial for some specific farming households - perhaps households that are using banned chemicals but still want to export products smoothly.

The next morning, she brought the entire reconciliation sheet to Mr. Duc, her independent auditor colleague, and presented her findings from a purely professional perspective, without mentioning the origin of the two notebooks to avoid complicating the legal issue.

“If this is a model of periodic payments in exchange for ignoring errors in testing, this is a sign of systematic fraud, not a single error,” Mr. Duc commented after looking at the reconciliation table, his tone becoming more serious. "The problem is, this document source is not an official record, so it is difficult to use directly as evidence in an audit report. We need to find a way to verify it with official, independently verifiable data."

“I understand,” Hai Yen replied. "I think we can use this information to guide where we need to dig deeper in the official data, rather than putting it directly into the report. For example, if we know the exact dates of the unusual payments, we can request a reference to the official testing records of the relevant shipments within that exact time frame."

Mr. Duc nodded, agreeing with that cautious approach. They spent the morning creating a new audit expansion plan, focusing on comparing Dai Duong's official testing records in the corresponding period with the strange expenses, a job that required meticulousness and patience no less than what Hai Yen had done over the past weeks.

In the afternoon, while Hai Yen was sitting alone rearranging all the documents, her phone received a call from Ms. Tuyet, the lab technician she had met privately a few weeks ago. Ms. Tuyet's voice on the phone was somewhat unusual, more urgent than before.

“Miss Yen, I need to see you urgently,” she said, her voice shaking. "I just heard the news about your identity being exposed at headquarters. I think... I think it's time for me to tell everything, I can't wait any longer."

“Are you okay?” Hai Yen asked, feeling the insecurity in Mrs. Tuyet's voice.

"I'm fine, I'm just scared. If I wait any longer, I might lose my courage again like many times before." Ms. Tuyet took a deep breath through the phone. “Tonight, same place, okay?”

“Okay,” Hai Yen replied immediately, feeling a strong premonition that tonight's meeting would bring another important turning point in the journey she was pursuing.

That night, at Mrs. Tuyet's familiar small house, the atmosphere was completely different from the first meeting. Ms. Tuyet no longer looked reserved and avoidant like before, but sat up straight, her hands placed neatly on the table, her eyes steady as if she had made a decision and no longer wanted to turn back.

“I brought you this,” she said, pushing a small USB stick towards Hai Yen. “I backed up all the internal email exchanges between me and the person who threatened me ten years ago, along with a few recent messages when he contacted me again, reminding me to keep quiet after learning that you started an investigation.”

Hai Yen held the USB, her heart beat fast. “Who is that person, Miss Tuyet?”

Mrs. Tuyet looked straight into her eyes, her voice was no longer trembling like before. "Nguyen Hoang Son. At that time, he was just a technician like me, but he had close relationships with a group of people outside the industry. I don't know exactly who he is, I only know that he often talks secretly on the phone and closes his office door. He was the one who directly gave me the envelope of money, told me to sign the altered results sheet, and told me to stay silent forever if I didn't want trouble for my family."

“Do you have any evidence other than what you said?”

“Yes,” Ms. Tuyet replied, pointing to the USB. “In there is a short recording I secretly recorded eight years ago, when he called to remind me never to reveal the past if anyone asked. Voice and content are all very clear. I kept it all these years as a talisman, in case the day came when I needed to use it to protect myself.”

Hai Yen carefully put the USB in her briefcase and thanked Mrs. Tuyet with the most sincere respect she could express. “Miss Tuyet, from today, you will no longer have to bear this alone. I promise to do everything I can to protect you and your family throughout the process.”

“I believe you,” Mrs. Tuyet said, her voice relieved, her eyes shining with a light that Hai Yen had never seen in previous meetings. “My daughter is about to graduate. I want him to enter life with a mother who dares to stand up straight, not a mother who lives in fear and silence all her life.”

Leaving Mrs. Tuyet's house, Hai Yen drove home at night, the USB fit neatly in her breast pocket, you could almost feel its weight even though it was only as small as a fingertip. She understands that, with this evidence, the line between suspicion and a prosecutable case has become more fragile than ever, and that means that the other side will have no choice but to react more aggressively to protect what they have worked hard to hide for a decade.

Returning to the motel room, the first thing she did was back up the contents of the USB into three different copies, storing them in three separate places: one copy on a separate hard drive that she always carried with her, one copy sent via encrypted email to herself under an address not linked to her work, and one last copy she decided to send to Kien to keep for her, to ensure that no matter what happened to her, this important evidence would not disappear with her.