Vignette 20: A Challenge to the Reader
A witness collapses across the evidence bench, clutching at his bloodied chest. As he falls, he knocks a globe to the floor. It lands on China.
There's no outcry, no pandemonium in the gallery. After all, the gallery is empty, and everyone taking part in the trial is too stunned to speak. The moment seems to spin in aimless circles as the globe rolls to a stop. Then Franziska von Karma barks an order:
"An ambulance! Bailiff, get an ambulance!"
The courtroom springs to frantic life. Let them go for a few seconds...
...Then pause. Catch it all in freeze frame. Don't rush to search for clues all at once. First, admire the renovated architecture. Scrutinize the neat moldings on the benches, which Phoenix Wright never got to stand behind owing to his recent disbarment. And reflect on the silver lining of this catastrophe: thanks to what's about to happen, Klavier Gavin will grow suspicious of his wicked brother, and will prevent him from committing a murder or two. That's nice, isn't it?
Finish your reflections. What's everyone up to right now?
Franziska von Karma is checking for a pulse...
...and palpating the wrist of the fallen witness, the young man twitching on the evidence bench...
...while the Judge's gavel is upraised, ready to slam down, mostly out of habit...
...and Ema Skye, the defendant, is creeping forward from the defense bench, afraid to see the worst..
...with her defense attorney walking a little ahead of her...
...as Vincent Omnia hangs frozen in mid-leap, lunging forward from the witness stand...
...while, at the same time, the bailiff is making for the door...
...while an injured Klavier Gavin ducks into an adjacent room to hide.
There are six people in this entire wing of the courthouse: a defense attorney, a prosecutor, a witness, a defendant, a bailiff, and a judge.
A contradiction? Surely I got something wrong? Of course not.
The victim in this case loved puzzles to the point of obsession, so it's fitting that his death happens to be a puzzle itself. Somehow, Klavier has always held my quick solution of the whole matter against me, but this is unfair, almost objectively so. After all, I'm sure you'll be able to solve it as well. Won't you?
If there are no objections, I'll take the position of an omniscient narrator. Not out of arrogance, but simply because a story flows more smoothly when one grasps the motivations of the characters. Where inner thoughts are unclear, I'll adduce plausible ones to fill in the gaps. A few inventions either way don't matter now. I could tell you exactly what happened with perfect objectivity, and my brother would still object to the story being told at all.
"People died to keep these secrets," he'd say. "Please, think of the poor doctor!"
But as well-furnished as my cell is, I've little else to do now (and whose fault is that?), so let's begin with all due haste. I've numbered these vignettes chronologically, as far as such a thing is possible.
Vignette 13: My Brother Takes on Ema Skye's Defense
"What?" said Klavier, voice still clouded with sleep.
"This is a rare opportunity," I patiently repeated, "a chance to see the courtroom from the other side. Ordinarily, you'd never have a chance to be a defense attorney. To understand how and why we do what we do, and use that to your advantage."
"Mph. And this isn't just because you want me to follow in your footsteps."
"Never," I replied, quite sincerely. "Your life is your own. I wouldn't interfere for all the world."
A long pause. Klavier was doubtless mulling over the interference I made in his educational, legal, and musical careers. But he was younger then, and hadn't even passed the bar. As a sibling, urging him to not waste his gifts on three chords and the State had been the least I could do. "I'm serious," I added. "I only offer because a key figure in this trial, the brother of an old client, demanded a Gavin, and I'm too busy working out our inheritance problems to take the case." My loyalty to Henry and Vincent was more than mere professional pride.
"...Thank you for that, by the way," said Klavier. We had argued in tedious depth over which lawyer sibling should dispose of the minutiae of executing our mother's inheritance, but in the end, I had yielded and agreed to do so myself. Klavier was already engaged for a concert, you see. "But they'll really let me do this, you think?" He laughed. "I'm better at disbarring defense attorneys than being one!"
"Well, they don't expect you to be Phoenix Wright..."
"No," said Klavier. "I'd be honest. And at least halfway competent."
Sigh. I'd told him again and again not to say such things. "Wright was a good man who yielded to temptation once - only once, as far as we know. He was something of a hero to me! It pains me that you disparage him so."
Another grumbling pause. "He doesn't deserve you, bro. But fine, I'll do it. For Skye, at least. You're sure they can keep this trial secret?"
"By military order from the Department of Homeland Intelligence and Security. The technology involved is so sensitive that any leak, no matter how small, could be disastrous to national security."
"Cool, cool. These lips are zipped tighter than the rivets on Iron Golym's sweet bass." I loved my little brother, but he was an embarrassment sometimes.
"Then get dressed and go speak to the defendant in custody. If you may, get their permission to have your phone on and set to speaker."
Klavier raised an eyebrow. This wasn't a video call, but I'm certain he was doing just that. "You going to babysit me the whole time?"
"Not babysit. Advise. As the merest fledgling of a student aide might."
And that was a promise.
The detention center guards waved Klavier through the security gates, fussing over him to make sure he wasn't carrying a gun - though, frankly, he'd have been more likely to shoot himself with one than to hit a moose reliably. He chatted with the guards breezily, in spite of not knowing either of their names (Cameron and Stills), and was soon seated on the safer side of a Plexiglas window.
"I'm a little nervous, to be honest," Klavier confided.
"You'll be fine. How hard could it be? I manage it," I told him, "and I'm not even smart enough to write those wild chord progressions."
"Ahh, that's not so -"
A door creaked open, and defendant Ema Skye entered, followed by Franziska von Karma. Klavier recognized Ema immediately from our many visits to the Skye residence. Even after disbarment, Lana Skye had been something of a mentor to my brother, endlessly patient with his pecadilloes.
"Ah, Ms. von Karma. I trust you haven't been too harsh on the Fräulein."
As this story will make clear, my brother is a smart man, but not always a wise one.
"Don't call her that," barked Franziska von Karma. She'd replaced her whip with a stun baton, and was doing far better at not using it in anger, but I shivered for my brother's safety nonetheless. von Karma was not to be trifled with.
Skye listened with downcast eyes. "Um. Is that really Gavin?"
"You expected someone less sexy?" asked my brother - hopefully rhetorically.
"No, just... a real defense attorney. Is this really okay?"
von Karma shrugged. "It will have to be. Mr. Omnia has considerable clout with the government, and he has... insisted on appointing a Gavin to this job. For your sake, he said. And since one Gavin is away..." (Oh! I could hear the contempt in her voice, "one Gavin, the lesser Gavin, is away." But I refused to be baited.)
"...the remaining Gavin must step in. The show must go on," said Klavier.
"'s not a show," muttered Ema, but Klavier paid little attention.
"My guitar," he said, "would never forgive me if I let down a damsel in distress!"
"I hope you're taking this seriously," said Ema.
Seeing that this exchange was headed nowhere relevant, Franziska continued explaining. "The nature of this tribunal is unusual. No spectators in the gallery, not even the defendant's sister. But to provide 'some modicum of transparency,' to quote His Honor, the defense will be permitted to accompany me on my investigation and supervise any questioning. That seems equitable. Don't you agree?"
Ema Skye looked up at Klavier for confirmation. Good. She was already beginning to think of him as her attorney.
"We'll see," said Klavier. "But it's far, far more than most defendants get. And my brother, the 'coolest defense in the West,' can assist?"
"The Prosecution will even provide a live camera," said von Karma, twirling her stun baton, "So he may do so more effectively. I intend to ensure that this trial is perfectly evenhanded - there will be no appeal on any grounds. None."
A defense attorney trained in the old ways would have known to question this benevolence. But Klavier accepted the camera blandly, almost as if it were his due. He should have realized - and perhaps, in his heart, he did realize - that however von Karma's behavior had softened, she gave nothing freely and bowed only to necessity.
"Then if the Fr - if Ms. Skye will have me, I'll gladly take the case."
"...Okay," said Ema.
The paperwork was filled out, Lana Skye was notified, and Ema began to tell her story.
Vignette 8: Saturn Technologies, Night-Time
Saturn Technologies, east wing, fourth floor, the night Dr. Johann Palmstroem died.
Ema Skye shone a flashlight down a gloomy hallway, sweeping the beam over walls and doors painted a morose, institutional blue.
As befit a cadet hoping to rise in the ranks, she tried to observe everything methodically and scientifically, if only for practice. There was little to see. Although Vincent had demanded a special security detail, and somehow had enough clout with the higher-ups to get one, the night wore on entirely uneventfully.
"TEN O'CLOCK AND ALL'S WELL!" shouted Ema, trying to break the numbing silence, wishing she'd brought a snack or something. She was bored out of her skull.
When she'd first heard of this field position at Uncle Johann's lab, visions of big, mysterious machines with blinking lights buzzed into her brain right away. Uncle was the kind of researcher who gave the fantastic title of "mad scientist" real credibility. But now it looked like the closest thing she was going to get to science on this job was timing the hollow echoes of her footsteps. She'd already spot-checked her route for burglars and transients, and neither were in sight.
No, no, keep observing, keep looking, she told herself. How much of this place was still unchanged, after all these years? There were still emergency cabinets on the walls, and decades-old fluorescent lights, all dark, protruded from the ceiling at regular intervals. Ema had shut them off herself earlier this night, using with the light key that dangled from her belt next to her walkie-talkie and empty holster. Now the only illumination came from her flashlight and a few traces of moonlight through the dusty blinds at the end of the hallway. Her beam moved from the blinds to the far door on the right, which bore a sign labeled "ANIMAL TESTING."
She paced over to the animal testing room, which had been a doctor's office and exam room years before, rattled the handle, and found it unlocked. How careless. With a little sigh, she fished around on her keyring and tried the keys one at a time. No matches. Unsurprising, as she'd been given minimal access to the higher-security labs. Uncle Johann said they were doing fly and mouse work in there, so it wasn't safe to let just anybody in. She'd just have to scold someone in the morning, and leave it be...
Alhough... if she were to take a little peek inside at the top-secret science stuff there, would anyone ever know? It'd get her mind off things, anyway, and what if there were mutants inside? Big fly mutants?
She had to check. It was her duty as a concerned citizen.
A few moments of fumbling near the door found the light switch, and she blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden fluorescent brightness.
"Howdy, mice," she muttered. "Hi, flies."
The Animal Testing room was a largish lab, lined with cabinets and shelves stacked tall with fruit fly vials, starchy food flakes, and electronics.
A translucent plastic mouse cage with a whirring ventilation fan sat on the big table in the center of the room, next to a steel box studded with knobs and audiovisual feeds. But Ema could see that, animal testing aside, this wasn't a room where mice were normally kept in large numbers or for very long. There was hardly any reek of urine or musk, for one thing.
In the back of the room was a desk with an obsolete-looking computer with a battered optical mouse, a can of pencils and paintbrushes, and a carbon dioxide pad. Thinking back to her undergraduate days in Europe, Ema concluded that this is where the researchers sorted their fruit flies, knocking them out with CO2 then brushing them neatly into vials. She'd been a dab hand with a fly brush herself for a while, quickly parceling out the dark-banded, hook-kneed males and bulbous females into anaesthetized piles. But as she absently twirled a paintbrush in reminiscence, a squeak from behind her back caught her attention.
A gray-and-white lab mouse ("agouti" is the term), the sole occupant of the cage in the middle of the room, peered out at her inquisitively. And while this might ordinarily have been filed under "adorable but rather normal," there was something odd about this mouse.
It was wearing a brass harness, a collar that hung over its neck and looped around its front legs. Around the level of its shoulders, or whatever the rodent equivalent of shoulders were, three bright green glowing LEDs were embedded in the metal. Apparently, the animal had acclimated to the device, because there were no signs of scratching or rashes around the edges. It was probably just as well the mouse was caged alone; another mouse would've surely gnawed at it.
Why would you put a metal harness on a mouse? To attach a leash? To walk it? Or, Ema mused, was it some kind of cyborg implant, an attempt to create a murine Darth Vader piece-by-piece? And nearby, protruding up through the wood chips on the floor of the cage, stood a tiny tripod with a flashing green LED at its summit. A mouse-surveying stand? A microphone for mouse karaoke?
And there was something unaccountably familiar about the mouse as well...
At this point, it would have been thematically appropriate for Ema to have said "Curiouser and curiouser," or possibly "Oh, my paws and whiskers." But she didn't. She merely pursed her lips, shrugged, made a mental note to ask someone about the mouse, turned on her heels, switched off the light, and stepped back out.
She stood once more to the far end of the hall, by a row of wooden chairs with double-helix scrollwork. And as she lifted the blinds to look down through the window at a hillside three stories below and a starry sky above, and the moonlight glinted off the carved DNA strands, and she thought about the strange problem of the mouse, she remembered.
Fourteen years before, she and her sister sat in those chairs, waiting for the bad news. Gradually, the memory filtered back.