The AU continues!
Ta-da! I finally wrote more of the case 3-1 AU. I had way, way too much trouble writing the courtscenes. As a bonus, they eat up a lot of wordcount, so I think this damn thing just increased by another chapter more than I planned.
Title: Turnabout Timeline
Part: 3 (of 6?) (parts 1&2: http://community.livejournal.com/gyakuten_saiban/516558.html#cutid1) ((I'm so bad at HTML!))
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,844
Characters: Holy Edgeworth/Phoenix/Dahlia Love Triangle, Batman! Also, Young!Mia cameos through out, if you squint.
Summary/Prompt: I'd really like to see an AU of Case 3-1, where DL 6 never happened and Phoenix asks Edgeworth to defend him (IIRC as long as there's an actual lawyer supervising the student... it still works right? How about his dad?). Bonus points for working in a Dahlia/Phoenix/Edgeworth love triangle (and Edgeworth "comforting" Phoenix afterwards ;) ).
The fact that Miles hadn’t bolted, fallen into a fetal position behind a desk, or tried to find Dahlia to discuss things with his fists were very good signs. True, he may not have had the energy or clarity of vision to be properly witty, a key ingredient in the defensive pie, but at least his brain was functioning. If he started thinking of the particular events, or what could have happened the night before, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the case at all.
From the looks Payne and the Judge gave Dahlia as she took the stand, Miles guessed that they wouldn’t be able to, either. The butterflies, while a nice touch, seemed a bit overdone, and he swore the lights made it look like she had a halo around her. If he cared about that sort of thing at all, a bit of experimentation, the internet, and intuition proving otherwise, he’d be staring at her with the same look in his eyes as half the court room. Instead, he glared, grey eyes completely narrowed. If he had the presence of mind to look up at the gallery, he would have noted that the harsh glare was shared by at least one member of it.
Okay, time to think, Miles. All he had to do was stall until his father got back, proving a few key facts about Dahlia in the process, and figure out a way to get Wright to see that his girlfriend for the past eight months was a lying murderer. Oh, and without him hating Miles for the rest of his natural life as an additional point. Not a problem at all. He really should have taken that elective on magic last semester, so that he could make like Houdini and disappear. Miles was a lawyer, not a magician, so he shook his head and listened to the commotion around him, and before she even started her testimony, too.
“My name is Dahlia Hawthorne. I’m a junior in Literature at Ivy University. I just want to say,” here she paused, and smiled shyly, “It’s an honor for me to be here in your noble presence.” She had to be a literature major, judging from her aptitude at spinning lies. And her voice, it sounded like honey, proving the proverb correct. Miles refused to look at the defendant’s chair, knowing exactly what Wright’d look like at the moment due to spending the past ten years a friend of the hopeless lump.
Looks like that, at a moment like this, and Miles would end up remembering just how personal all of this business was. The incredible pain in the pit of his stomach, the ever-growing headache, and the twitches running up and down his spine, making his hands tremble, were things he only felt once before, when he was ten years old. He cried then, but somehow, that didn’t seem dignified for a defense attorney, so he didn’t now. To be fair, Wright still lived, and the attorney died, which made an entire world of difference. So, Miles had to solve the case for him, too, even though he barely knew that victim, because he knew somebody else had to. He pushed the personal out of his mind, at least for the moment, and tried to focus on the important.
As it turned out, he didn’t miss much while he took an express train to angstville. “You just go on and say whatever is on your mind,” the Judge said, fluffing his beard and preparing for a wistful head-on-palm-lean-in.
“I’m sure that there must be some kind of mistake. Feenie wouldn’t kill anyone.” Well now, he couldn’t have done it if you did, Miles didn’t say. All he had to do now was convince the rest of the court without looking like either a bitter ex-boyfriend or a totally heartless bastard. “I just know it!”
Miles swore he heard another scoffing noise from the audience, and what sounded like, “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” He agreed with the voice, as Dahlia’s sweet smile sent shockwaves of sap straight to the Judge’s and prosecutor’s sensitive sides.
“Now then, please proceed with your testimony. Let’s hear about what you witness on the day of the incident, if you please?” the Judge said.
Dahlia looked over at the defendant’s chair and smiled. Miles thought that smile looked devious, just for a moment, before the dark look disappeared, and she cleared her throat, delicately of course. “I had been planning to go to Feenie’s place after class was over. Feenie and Dougie…they were talking behind the building.” She paused here, looking down as she attempted to remember the story she probably wrote on the palms of her hands. “Then suddenly…Dougie got all wobbly and just collapsed. That’s when Feenie noticed that I was there. I went to go and find some other students and they called the authorities.”
Did Dahlia nickname everybody the same way? That seemed completely uncreative, especially for someone dating an art major. Well, dating in the non-traditional, setting him up for heartbreak and death, sense of the word. That probably wasn’t called dating at that point, though.
“I-I don’t know what to say! According to you, Ms. Hawthorne, the defendant didn’t do anything wrong!” the Judge said, doing a few practice taps with the gavel. Ah, that was a problem. Everything she said just now would prove Wright innocent, it really would, and then this whole trial would be over and everyone could go home, with everything happy and back to normal. But, even though Wright didn’t do it, and even though everything Dahlia just said seemed to prove it, Miles knew that winning with lies was worse than losing with the truth. More importantly than that, if the trial ended now, Miles would never, ever be able to prove Dahlia’s plans, and that meant that Wright would still date her, and still carry around that bottle necklace. Only a fool could miss where that train of thought led.
Before he could raise one of his own, Payne shouted, “Objection!” from his side of the courtroom. He fixed his disturbingly large pompadour before continuing. “Young Lady, as old as I am, even I recall how hot the flames of young passion can burn.” Miles fought hard to suppress a visible shudder, and thought of new Steel Samurai episodes to defeat the image. He missed whatever Payne managed to say next due to this exercise in mental stability, but caught the tail end of it, the last part being, “discover the truth.”
Dahlia stammered assurances of her complete and total innocence at the very idea of lying. Miles decided to let her off the hook, in a manner of speaking. “Hold it!” he said, pounding on the desk in front of him hard enough that his hand shook. “I shall cross-examine this witness, Your Honor. I have to find the lies. It’s my job, after all.”
“Oh, now this is getting good,” was muttered in the gallery, but Miles couldn’t quite make it out, and three seconds later, Dahlia spoke again.
“You’re a lot like your father, Miles Edgeworth.” Dahlia said. Her eyes closed as she shifted her parasol from side to side.
Miles felt sick when he heard his name said with enough poured sugar on it to give him a cavity. Normally, he’d be quick to point out comparisons to his father with as much pride as possible, but the treacle poured onto this one rang false. He suspected that he needed to turn every comment on its head to get to the true opinion underneath. So, his father must have met her somewhere, and he must have left an unfavorable impression on her. This, for all he knew, could simply be looking at her the wrong way. Miles said, “Is there a problem…?”
Dahlia shrugged, putting as much kindness in a simple rising of the shoulders as possible. “Not at all, Mr. Edgeworth.”
“I’m not going to ask,” the Judge said, shaking his head. “Mr. Edgeworth, the floor is yours.”
Miles took a deep breath, and prepared to cross-examine his first witness without his father present. He shuffled a file or two around in his hands as he thought, as carefully as possible, about everything Dahlia said on the stand. There must have been a contradiction somewhere, anywhere. Now, where could it be, where could it be?
Millions of thoughts and connections began spilling around in his mind, tiny little things that might turn into the big thing that broke the case. He couldn’t chase all of them, like the butterflies fluttering around Dahlia’s head, but had to pinpoint the important ones. Wait. Hold on. The train slowed down, approaching a stop on the Objection Line. “Collapsed on his own?” Didn’t Wright push the victim, hard enough to leave a print? Wasn’t that a contradiction?
He grinned, as brightly as he dared, and shouted, “Hold it! Are you saying the victim just collapsed on his own?” When Dahlia nodded shyly, he continued, “In other words, the defendant never touched the victim. Right?”
“I was watching the entire time. Feenie never did a thing to Dougie!”
Miles shook his head. “Lying isn’t going to help Mr. Wright here, so drop them, please.” This seemed all too easy. Wright would be declared not guilty, Dahlia would go to jail, and then his father would treat him to celebratory dinner. A few more objections, a couple more photographs, and he’d be in the homestretch.
“Objection!” Payne shouted.
Then again, maybe not.
One tangent on the cause of death later, and another bit of withheld evidence was added to the pile. In summary, ‘Twas not lightning that killed the beast, or knocked out the power to the Pharmacology building, at least. Now, why the prosecution had an affidavit to prove it but didn’t actually file it, well, Miles knew the answer to that one, very well in fact. The affidavit, a stuffy word for file if there ever was one, entered into the evidence without much struggle on his part. The affidavit, at first glance, appeared rather damning, proving that Wright must have at least broken the pole, causing a minor black out. That didn’t really prove that he actually electrocuted Dougie. Damn, the nicknames were spreading.
With the cunning use of photographs, and the magic power of reading the actual files, Miles proved that the unconscious body must have been moved by someone. Unless unconscious people could teleport from the background to the foreground, in which case, Miles needed to talk to a mad scientist after the trial. That point did the trick, and when Payne raised no objections, Miles smiled brightly. The Judge was even on his side, for a brief moment, and Miles could feel a not guilty verdict coming within seconds. Until Dahlia spoke up, again, insisting on testifying once more. This time, instead lying to get Wright off the hook, she lied to get him on it. A quick glance to the defendant’s chair demonstrated that Wright was as shocked as the rest of the court, and he had been at the scene of the crime. That or the cold relapsed, causing his eyes to widen in preparation for a sneeze.
Miles looked at the evidence, laid out on the desk in front of him, as his mind worked to connect the dots. “It all happened in less than a minute.” The building lost power at 2:55, or the probably legitimate affidavit claimed, but the victim’s watch, it stopped at what…that looked like 3:05 from the desk. Aha! There was the lie.
“Objection!” No matter how many times he said it, whether for practice or in court, Miles thought shouting that word would never, ever get old. He even managed his best dramatic finger pointing, and he appreciated the acoustics of the courtroom, which made his baritone voice echo. “That’s all, witness.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand…” Dahlia said, hurt apparent on her face. Even her butterflies looked distressed.
“Then allow me to explain. Could you look at this picture, please?” Miles said, passing the photograph to the bailiff, who passed it to Dahlia.
Her eyes widened. “Oh. That medicine…that’s the one Feenie likes to take for his cold.” That proved it. It did. Why else would she notice the medicine first? This girl had Wright’s medicine on the brain for some reason, and unless she switched majors to Pre-Med, Miles had a fairly good idea why. At least that’s what Miles came up with, as he glared at her. He took a deep breath, pushing images of skulls-and-crossbones and Wright, face down on the floor, out of his mind.
“No. Not the medicine,” Miles managed to say, before smoothing a flyaway lock of hair and continuing. “It’s the wristwatch. It stopped at the moment the victim was electrocuted. Namely, 3:05 PM.”
Dahlia gasped, meaning she followed along on Miles’ logic trail. The Judge, not prone to following along any trails unless there were wild geese along them, said, “Yes, and your point is, Mr. Edgeworth?”
Miles cleared his throat. “The point is this: what time was it when the lab suffered the power outage, caused by the cable snapping?”
Winston Payne answered the question, and it soon became abundantly clear that his pompadour sucked the brains out of him, since he obviously didn’t read the evidence. “Well, according to the student’s testimony, the answer is clear. It was 2:55 PM….” His brain finally caught up with his mouth, and he let out a scream that would not be out of place on Wrestlemania. Miles never watched the show, but thanked last year’s roommate, Alvin Tort, for adding to his metaphorical repertoire.
“Would you care to explain to the court, Ms. Dahlia Hawthorne, what happened during these missing ten minutes?” When Dahlia stammered, Miles continued. “The defense proposes that it was during this interval the real murderer killed Mr. Doug Swallow!”
The audience reacted in various ways. Miles heard quite a few gasps, and people who followed along expressed disbelief. People who weren’t paying close attention seemed to be betting on the correct murderer. Some of them still sounded convinced that Wright did it, and this was all a stall tactic. He heard, though, above it all, “Oh, it’s about time!”
The Judge banged the gavel. “Order! Order in the court! What is this all--”
Payne interrupted with a red hot “Objection!”, followed by stammering about “nonsense” and “real murderers.” Well, Payne got points for following along, but it was time to wrap this up.
“Objection! You can’t deny that those ten minutes, between the cable breaking and the electrocution, are completely unaccounted for!” His fist hurt from pounding on the desk, but he was too happy at the moment to notice.
“Objection! Then who was it?! Who else could’ve done it!?” Payne said, half way between a stammer and a scream.
“There’s only one person who could have murdered Mr. Swallow. There is only one person who could have used the window of opportunity. And there is only one person who could be the real killer!”
“Is the defense ready to indict someone as this “real killer”?” the Judge asked. He even put his gavel down for a moment, ready to listen. True, he might forget it ten minutes, but he seemed to be doing his best.
Miles nodded. “Yes, Your Honor. We are ready.”
“Very well. But remember, if you accuse the wrong person, you will be penalized. Think very carefully before you accuse someone,” he paused to pick up his gavel. “Now then, Mr. Edgeworth, tell the court. Who is the “real killer”!?”
Miles smirked. Finally everything fell into place! The entire court, right in the palm of his hand, as he led them down the right tracks to the correct verdict. His friend would be declared not guilty, and then confetti would fall from the rafters, and his father would never stop congratulating him, and everything, absolutely everything, would end up perfectly. And he’d be wonderful, forever, at this job, and then he’d tell Wright how he felt, and then they’d forget all about Dahlia. That thought stopped his internal victory dance, as he looked at Wright, sitting at the defendant’s stand with a worried look in his eyes, one got worse by the second.
Dahlia made him happy, unbelievably so. The two of them lived in a perpetual bubble of happiness, even in the middle of a murder trial. And Miles was about to burst that bubble into millions of tiny, jagged pieces, in front of people he didn’t even know, who didn’t even care. No matter what evils Dahlia did, the fact remained that Wright loved her and that meant he’d never believe him, not until he could prove it. Hell, Miles almost couldn’t believe it himself.
That’s why his fingers trembled, and his voice lost much of its bravado, as he picked up the profile in front of him, and said, “It was you…Dahlia Hawthorne.”
Title: Turnabout Timeline
Part: 3 (of 6?) (parts 1&2: http://community.livejournal.com/gyakuten_saiban/516558.html#cutid1) ((I'm so bad at HTML!))
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,844
Characters: Holy Edgeworth/Phoenix/Dahlia Love Triangle, Batman! Also, Young!Mia cameos through out, if you squint.
Summary/Prompt: I'd really like to see an AU of Case 3-1, where DL 6 never happened and Phoenix asks Edgeworth to defend him (IIRC as long as there's an actual lawyer supervising the student... it still works right? How about his dad?). Bonus points for working in a Dahlia/Phoenix/Edgeworth love triangle (and Edgeworth "comforting" Phoenix afterwards ;) ).
The fact that Miles hadn’t bolted, fallen into a fetal position behind a desk, or tried to find Dahlia to discuss things with his fists were very good signs. True, he may not have had the energy or clarity of vision to be properly witty, a key ingredient in the defensive pie, but at least his brain was functioning. If he started thinking of the particular events, or what could have happened the night before, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the case at all.
From the looks Payne and the Judge gave Dahlia as she took the stand, Miles guessed that they wouldn’t be able to, either. The butterflies, while a nice touch, seemed a bit overdone, and he swore the lights made it look like she had a halo around her. If he cared about that sort of thing at all, a bit of experimentation, the internet, and intuition proving otherwise, he’d be staring at her with the same look in his eyes as half the court room. Instead, he glared, grey eyes completely narrowed. If he had the presence of mind to look up at the gallery, he would have noted that the harsh glare was shared by at least one member of it.
Okay, time to think, Miles. All he had to do was stall until his father got back, proving a few key facts about Dahlia in the process, and figure out a way to get Wright to see that his girlfriend for the past eight months was a lying murderer. Oh, and without him hating Miles for the rest of his natural life as an additional point. Not a problem at all. He really should have taken that elective on magic last semester, so that he could make like Houdini and disappear. Miles was a lawyer, not a magician, so he shook his head and listened to the commotion around him, and before she even started her testimony, too.
“My name is Dahlia Hawthorne. I’m a junior in Literature at Ivy University. I just want to say,” here she paused, and smiled shyly, “It’s an honor for me to be here in your noble presence.” She had to be a literature major, judging from her aptitude at spinning lies. And her voice, it sounded like honey, proving the proverb correct. Miles refused to look at the defendant’s chair, knowing exactly what Wright’d look like at the moment due to spending the past ten years a friend of the hopeless lump.
Looks like that, at a moment like this, and Miles would end up remembering just how personal all of this business was. The incredible pain in the pit of his stomach, the ever-growing headache, and the twitches running up and down his spine, making his hands tremble, were things he only felt once before, when he was ten years old. He cried then, but somehow, that didn’t seem dignified for a defense attorney, so he didn’t now. To be fair, Wright still lived, and the attorney died, which made an entire world of difference. So, Miles had to solve the case for him, too, even though he barely knew that victim, because he knew somebody else had to. He pushed the personal out of his mind, at least for the moment, and tried to focus on the important.
As it turned out, he didn’t miss much while he took an express train to angstville. “You just go on and say whatever is on your mind,” the Judge said, fluffing his beard and preparing for a wistful head-on-palm-lean-in.
“I’m sure that there must be some kind of mistake. Feenie wouldn’t kill anyone.” Well now, he couldn’t have done it if you did, Miles didn’t say. All he had to do now was convince the rest of the court without looking like either a bitter ex-boyfriend or a totally heartless bastard. “I just know it!”
Miles swore he heard another scoffing noise from the audience, and what sounded like, “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” He agreed with the voice, as Dahlia’s sweet smile sent shockwaves of sap straight to the Judge’s and prosecutor’s sensitive sides.
“Now then, please proceed with your testimony. Let’s hear about what you witness on the day of the incident, if you please?” the Judge said.
Dahlia looked over at the defendant’s chair and smiled. Miles thought that smile looked devious, just for a moment, before the dark look disappeared, and she cleared her throat, delicately of course. “I had been planning to go to Feenie’s place after class was over. Feenie and Dougie…they were talking behind the building.” She paused here, looking down as she attempted to remember the story she probably wrote on the palms of her hands. “Then suddenly…Dougie got all wobbly and just collapsed. That’s when Feenie noticed that I was there. I went to go and find some other students and they called the authorities.”
Did Dahlia nickname everybody the same way? That seemed completely uncreative, especially for someone dating an art major. Well, dating in the non-traditional, setting him up for heartbreak and death, sense of the word. That probably wasn’t called dating at that point, though.
“I-I don’t know what to say! According to you, Ms. Hawthorne, the defendant didn’t do anything wrong!” the Judge said, doing a few practice taps with the gavel. Ah, that was a problem. Everything she said just now would prove Wright innocent, it really would, and then this whole trial would be over and everyone could go home, with everything happy and back to normal. But, even though Wright didn’t do it, and even though everything Dahlia just said seemed to prove it, Miles knew that winning with lies was worse than losing with the truth. More importantly than that, if the trial ended now, Miles would never, ever be able to prove Dahlia’s plans, and that meant that Wright would still date her, and still carry around that bottle necklace. Only a fool could miss where that train of thought led.
Before he could raise one of his own, Payne shouted, “Objection!” from his side of the courtroom. He fixed his disturbingly large pompadour before continuing. “Young Lady, as old as I am, even I recall how hot the flames of young passion can burn.” Miles fought hard to suppress a visible shudder, and thought of new Steel Samurai episodes to defeat the image. He missed whatever Payne managed to say next due to this exercise in mental stability, but caught the tail end of it, the last part being, “discover the truth.”
Dahlia stammered assurances of her complete and total innocence at the very idea of lying. Miles decided to let her off the hook, in a manner of speaking. “Hold it!” he said, pounding on the desk in front of him hard enough that his hand shook. “I shall cross-examine this witness, Your Honor. I have to find the lies. It’s my job, after all.”
“Oh, now this is getting good,” was muttered in the gallery, but Miles couldn’t quite make it out, and three seconds later, Dahlia spoke again.
“You’re a lot like your father, Miles Edgeworth.” Dahlia said. Her eyes closed as she shifted her parasol from side to side.
Miles felt sick when he heard his name said with enough poured sugar on it to give him a cavity. Normally, he’d be quick to point out comparisons to his father with as much pride as possible, but the treacle poured onto this one rang false. He suspected that he needed to turn every comment on its head to get to the true opinion underneath. So, his father must have met her somewhere, and he must have left an unfavorable impression on her. This, for all he knew, could simply be looking at her the wrong way. Miles said, “Is there a problem…?”
Dahlia shrugged, putting as much kindness in a simple rising of the shoulders as possible. “Not at all, Mr. Edgeworth.”
“I’m not going to ask,” the Judge said, shaking his head. “Mr. Edgeworth, the floor is yours.”
Miles took a deep breath, and prepared to cross-examine his first witness without his father present. He shuffled a file or two around in his hands as he thought, as carefully as possible, about everything Dahlia said on the stand. There must have been a contradiction somewhere, anywhere. Now, where could it be, where could it be?
Millions of thoughts and connections began spilling around in his mind, tiny little things that might turn into the big thing that broke the case. He couldn’t chase all of them, like the butterflies fluttering around Dahlia’s head, but had to pinpoint the important ones. Wait. Hold on. The train slowed down, approaching a stop on the Objection Line. “Collapsed on his own?” Didn’t Wright push the victim, hard enough to leave a print? Wasn’t that a contradiction?
He grinned, as brightly as he dared, and shouted, “Hold it! Are you saying the victim just collapsed on his own?” When Dahlia nodded shyly, he continued, “In other words, the defendant never touched the victim. Right?”
“I was watching the entire time. Feenie never did a thing to Dougie!”
Miles shook his head. “Lying isn’t going to help Mr. Wright here, so drop them, please.” This seemed all too easy. Wright would be declared not guilty, Dahlia would go to jail, and then his father would treat him to celebratory dinner. A few more objections, a couple more photographs, and he’d be in the homestretch.
“Objection!” Payne shouted.
Then again, maybe not.
One tangent on the cause of death later, and another bit of withheld evidence was added to the pile. In summary, ‘Twas not lightning that killed the beast, or knocked out the power to the Pharmacology building, at least. Now, why the prosecution had an affidavit to prove it but didn’t actually file it, well, Miles knew the answer to that one, very well in fact. The affidavit, a stuffy word for file if there ever was one, entered into the evidence without much struggle on his part. The affidavit, at first glance, appeared rather damning, proving that Wright must have at least broken the pole, causing a minor black out. That didn’t really prove that he actually electrocuted Dougie. Damn, the nicknames were spreading.
With the cunning use of photographs, and the magic power of reading the actual files, Miles proved that the unconscious body must have been moved by someone. Unless unconscious people could teleport from the background to the foreground, in which case, Miles needed to talk to a mad scientist after the trial. That point did the trick, and when Payne raised no objections, Miles smiled brightly. The Judge was even on his side, for a brief moment, and Miles could feel a not guilty verdict coming within seconds. Until Dahlia spoke up, again, insisting on testifying once more. This time, instead lying to get Wright off the hook, she lied to get him on it. A quick glance to the defendant’s chair demonstrated that Wright was as shocked as the rest of the court, and he had been at the scene of the crime. That or the cold relapsed, causing his eyes to widen in preparation for a sneeze.
Miles looked at the evidence, laid out on the desk in front of him, as his mind worked to connect the dots. “It all happened in less than a minute.” The building lost power at 2:55, or the probably legitimate affidavit claimed, but the victim’s watch, it stopped at what…that looked like 3:05 from the desk. Aha! There was the lie.
“Objection!” No matter how many times he said it, whether for practice or in court, Miles thought shouting that word would never, ever get old. He even managed his best dramatic finger pointing, and he appreciated the acoustics of the courtroom, which made his baritone voice echo. “That’s all, witness.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand…” Dahlia said, hurt apparent on her face. Even her butterflies looked distressed.
“Then allow me to explain. Could you look at this picture, please?” Miles said, passing the photograph to the bailiff, who passed it to Dahlia.
Her eyes widened. “Oh. That medicine…that’s the one Feenie likes to take for his cold.” That proved it. It did. Why else would she notice the medicine first? This girl had Wright’s medicine on the brain for some reason, and unless she switched majors to Pre-Med, Miles had a fairly good idea why. At least that’s what Miles came up with, as he glared at her. He took a deep breath, pushing images of skulls-and-crossbones and Wright, face down on the floor, out of his mind.
“No. Not the medicine,” Miles managed to say, before smoothing a flyaway lock of hair and continuing. “It’s the wristwatch. It stopped at the moment the victim was electrocuted. Namely, 3:05 PM.”
Dahlia gasped, meaning she followed along on Miles’ logic trail. The Judge, not prone to following along any trails unless there were wild geese along them, said, “Yes, and your point is, Mr. Edgeworth?”
Miles cleared his throat. “The point is this: what time was it when the lab suffered the power outage, caused by the cable snapping?”
Winston Payne answered the question, and it soon became abundantly clear that his pompadour sucked the brains out of him, since he obviously didn’t read the evidence. “Well, according to the student’s testimony, the answer is clear. It was 2:55 PM….” His brain finally caught up with his mouth, and he let out a scream that would not be out of place on Wrestlemania. Miles never watched the show, but thanked last year’s roommate, Alvin Tort, for adding to his metaphorical repertoire.
“Would you care to explain to the court, Ms. Dahlia Hawthorne, what happened during these missing ten minutes?” When Dahlia stammered, Miles continued. “The defense proposes that it was during this interval the real murderer killed Mr. Doug Swallow!”
The audience reacted in various ways. Miles heard quite a few gasps, and people who followed along expressed disbelief. People who weren’t paying close attention seemed to be betting on the correct murderer. Some of them still sounded convinced that Wright did it, and this was all a stall tactic. He heard, though, above it all, “Oh, it’s about time!”
The Judge banged the gavel. “Order! Order in the court! What is this all--”
Payne interrupted with a red hot “Objection!”, followed by stammering about “nonsense” and “real murderers.” Well, Payne got points for following along, but it was time to wrap this up.
“Objection! You can’t deny that those ten minutes, between the cable breaking and the electrocution, are completely unaccounted for!” His fist hurt from pounding on the desk, but he was too happy at the moment to notice.
“Objection! Then who was it?! Who else could’ve done it!?” Payne said, half way between a stammer and a scream.
“There’s only one person who could have murdered Mr. Swallow. There is only one person who could have used the window of opportunity. And there is only one person who could be the real killer!”
“Is the defense ready to indict someone as this “real killer”?” the Judge asked. He even put his gavel down for a moment, ready to listen. True, he might forget it ten minutes, but he seemed to be doing his best.
Miles nodded. “Yes, Your Honor. We are ready.”
“Very well. But remember, if you accuse the wrong person, you will be penalized. Think very carefully before you accuse someone,” he paused to pick up his gavel. “Now then, Mr. Edgeworth, tell the court. Who is the “real killer”!?”
Miles smirked. Finally everything fell into place! The entire court, right in the palm of his hand, as he led them down the right tracks to the correct verdict. His friend would be declared not guilty, and then confetti would fall from the rafters, and his father would never stop congratulating him, and everything, absolutely everything, would end up perfectly. And he’d be wonderful, forever, at this job, and then he’d tell Wright how he felt, and then they’d forget all about Dahlia. That thought stopped his internal victory dance, as he looked at Wright, sitting at the defendant’s stand with a worried look in his eyes, one got worse by the second.
Dahlia made him happy, unbelievably so. The two of them lived in a perpetual bubble of happiness, even in the middle of a murder trial. And Miles was about to burst that bubble into millions of tiny, jagged pieces, in front of people he didn’t even know, who didn’t even care. No matter what evils Dahlia did, the fact remained that Wright loved her and that meant he’d never believe him, not until he could prove it. Hell, Miles almost couldn’t believe it himself.
That’s why his fingers trembled, and his voice lost much of its bravado, as he picked up the profile in front of him, and said, “It was you…Dahlia Hawthorne.”