May 3

Courtroom No. 3

10:45 AM

Cotoli Morix

"Not that long ago, the victim of this case was involved with another court-related incident," I declared once all eyes were on me. I still wasn't entirely sure that this was the best way of going about things, but it wasn't as if I had any other ideas on what to do, so this was going to have to do for the time being. "She was the witness to a back alley deal that was caught on her phone's camera. She recorded the incident and brought the phone to court as evidence of the crime that took place. The culprits were never caught, and it's easy enough to assume that they are still out there somewhere, hiding and no doubt aware of the evidence that was left behind to damn them."

"Let's presume for a moment that the people involved with the crime wanted to get rid of the evidence," Venus continued, picking up right where I had left off. "It would make sense if they tried to eliminate the phone from their list of woes, would it not? After all, it would be the most upsetting piece of evidence if it was ever taken to court. Beyond that, the victim would also be aware of what she saw even if the phone was destroyed and the video was erased."

"Precisely," I agreed with a firm nod. "The phone was what held the most critical piece of evidence when it came to revealing the truth behind what happened that day. It's only natural that the culprits would seek to get rid of it as soon as possible so that they would no longer have to worry about such a thing. Beyond the phone though, they would still have to push the victim out of the picture since she bore witness to the incident with her own two eyes as well. She would have been able to figure out who was behind all of this if she absolutely had to, and that would hardly bode well for the culprits."

"So you believe that the witness currently on the stand was searching for the phone so that she could destroy the piece of evidence that would potentially reveal the truth behind this case," Judge Diaphan concluded, her expression tilted downwards into a frown. "However, she did not find the phone because it had already been taken into police custody at the time of the trial, so her search was ultimately in vain since the item in question was long gone by the time that she started to look around."

"That's exactly what I'm saying," I told her. "Unless there's another explanation that can explain the reason for the witness looking through the defendant's things? Surely you can't wish to keep your rationale secret when such serious allegations are being leveled against you. This could point to you being the one responsible for the murder around which this trial is centered. I suggest that you tell the truth as soon as possible to keep from digging yourself an even deeper hole than you already have."

Ms. Rowland was glaring at me from her place behind the witness stand, and she crossed her arms over her chest as she shook her head. "You don't know what you're talking about," she said with a foul mutter under her breath. "I was told to look after the phone if anything happened to her. I was close friends with the victim as one of the workers behind the competition, and I was there to collect the phone to make sure that it didn't fall into the wrong hands. You said it yourself; there are some unsavory figures out there who would kill to get their hands on that thing."

"It's funny that you say that, witness," I remarked with false surprise. "You say that you were told to look after the phone by the victim if something ever happened to merit such unfortunate circumstances... And yet, there is someone else who claims to have been told the same thing, and I believe that his claims hold much more water than yours ever could. After all, he was the one who was ultimately given the phone at the time of the crime."

The gallery began to chatter, but Judge Diaphan was quick to silence it all with a slam of her gavel against the podium. "Do explain what you're referring to for the court, defense," she instructed firmly. "Who is it that was given the phone and told to look after it by the victim?"

"That would be none other than Elton Middleton," I replied with a small smirk. "He was the one who was holding onto the phone at the time of the murder, and he was also the one who just so happened to record the performance on his phone. He was close with the victim as well, having acted as the lawyer in charge of the case when the back alley deal went to court. The victim already knew that she could count on him, and that's why she was able to safely put her confidence in him to look after the phone. I somehow doubt that she would have told two people to look after the phone at the same time. This is a clear contradiction, and it leaves one to wonder... Just who is it that was supposed to be looking after the phone during the murder?"

"There's only one explanation that I can think of," Yuri remarked. "One of them has to be lying. I can pretty easily figure out which one of them is full of crap though. I mean, if you think about it, there's only one person who could have possibly been putting on a show about all of this."

"I agree with you completely," I told her with a small smile. "The witness currently on the stand must have been lying about what she was supposed to be doing at the time of the murder. She wasn't the one looking after the phone when the murder took place, and beyond that, she was searching mindlessly through the victim's things when we were in the locker room."

"You know, there's something else about this situation that strikes me as odd," came a comment from none other than Cassidy, speaking up for the first time in a long while from her place beside Prosecutor Bespoke. She was just as anxious as ever, but she seemed to be pushing past that to make her stand on the current subject. "The locks on the lockers have been described as being rather simple to close, and if that's the case... It makes me wonder just how it is that the locker wound up opened in the first place."

"There's a master key that I used to get inside," Ms. Rowland explained, not bothering to skip a beat in her explanation. "There's a special key that can get into all of the lockers in the locker room in the case of an emergency. This certainly seemed applicable given that I was trying to make sure that her phone was intact after her murder, so I snagged the master key and decided to use it to get into the locker to look after the phone."

Prosecutor Bespoke shook his head. "I don't know if I would say that," he remarked of her. "You know, you said that exact thing when we were talking during our discussion yesterday, and I have to confess that it inspired me. I decided to do some digging into this master key to see what I could learn about it, and I only discovered one thing of note... The master key was in a single office room the entire time that the crime was taking place, and nobody seemed to have touched it in quite some time."

"I put it back after I was finished with it," Ms. Rowland replied, raising an eyebrow in his direction. "How is that suspicious in the slightest?"

"When I say that there were signs that made it seem as if nobody had messed with the key in a while, I mean that a thin layer of dust had gathered upon its surface," Prosecutor Bespoke replied. "I don't think that the dust on the key would have been perfectly intact if the key had been used recently. There would have been fingerprints or glove marks left behind if you had used it at the time of the investigation."

"In other words, the locker must have been opened some other way. I think it's safe to say that the lock was somehow tampered with on a small level to make sure that it wouldn't be able to close," I declared. "Perhaps there was something put in the locker's door to make sure that it didn't completely shut. That would allow for someone to get in there and then look around to see what was inside of the locker."

"You know, that makes me think..." Yuri remarked, allowing her cheek fall into her palm as she grew lost in thought. "If somebody did that, they would have had to know that there was a chance for them to get into the locker later down the line. Clearly the witness wasn't in the locker room at the time of the crime. If she was, then she and KJ would have been able to corroborate alibis for one another, but instead, neither one of them mentioned seeing the other. That means that she must have been somewhere else."

"So that means that she knew that she would have another chance to dig around in the locker without being distracted or interrupted," Venus finished for her. "In other words... There's only one way that all of this could have taken place."

"The person who obstructed the locker must have known that the crime was going to take place in advance," I realized, my eyes going wide. "The one who was digging through the contents of the locker on purpose knew that the victim was going to wind up dead so that they would have the chance to search through the victim's belongings. They were already aware that the victim wasn't going to be able to stop them at a later point in the day."

"In other words, this crime was premeditated, and beyond that, the one who looked through the locker's contents must have been the one who killed the victim!" Venus hissed to me. "That's what it seems like to me. Unless she had an accomplice around somewhere at the scene of the crime, then she must have been elsewhere."

"No, she couldn't have had an accomplice," I said with a firm shake of my head. "If one of them was committing the crime, then the other would have used the competition as the perfect chance to look through the locker for the phone. There was only one person working on the operation of the murder, and that means that the person who went into the locker must have been the one behind the crime."

"In other words, it seems as if we've been led to the one and only conclusion that there is to come to about this crime," Venus smiled. She turned her attention back to the witness stand where Ms. Rowland was standing. "It seems like we were right to think that she was suspicious. Her looking through the victim's locker ultimately wound up being the final nail that would seal her coffin shut."

"We still have to make her confess though," I reminded her. "I somehow doubt that she's going to do something like that quite so easily... She's a stubborn person, and she isn't going to be surrendering unless she believes that she has no option. We're going to have to keep pushing and figure out if there's a way that we can make her accept that she isn't going to be getting out of this no matter how hard she tries."

"What are you whispering about over there?" Ms. Rowland questioned, glaring in my direction. "This is a professional trial... Or, at the very least, it's supposed to be. Your ridiculous accusations truly could have fooled me, if I'm being honest. How could a court case facilitate such ridiculous accusations that clearly have no basis?"

"I wouldn't say that our thoughts are baseless," I told her with a shake of my head. "In fact, I very much so believe that our theories are resting in the basis of reality. We believe that the one who was looking through the victim's locker at the time of the investigation must have been the one behind the murder of the victim during the competition."

"What?" Ms. Rowland asked, her eyes growing wide. "You can't mean..."

"You don't have an alibi, do you, Ms. Rowland?" I continued. "You claim to have been elsewhere in the building entirely, but I don't think that it could be quite so easy as that. After all, your behavior has been nothing but suspicious up to this point, and it directly contradicts everything that we've come to learn about this case. There must be a way for all of this to come together, and as far as I can tell, there's only one explanation that could make everything make sense."

"You're being ridiculous. The fact that I don't have an alibi doesn't mean that I'm the damn killer," Ms. Rowland snarled at me. "You already know that the defendant's fingerprints were on the gun at the time of the crime scene's discovery. What the hell isn't clicking about that? He must have been the one responsible for all of this. You can't change my mind quite so easily, if that's what you're thinking. He was seen with the gun in his hands when the lights came up in the gymnasium. You can claim all that you want that he isn't the culprit, but those are scientific facts that you can't dispute."

"She's right about that much," Yuri agreed with a light frown. "We can't just say that she's the culprit just because we don't know where she was at the time of the murder... I would really love to make it clear to everybody here that she was the one behind all of this, but I know that it isn't going to be that easy."

"There has to be something that we can use to show that she did it though," Venus told me. She let out a small gasp and snapped her fingers together. "Actually... Mr. Morix, do you remember what we learned when it came to our time in the courtroom yesterday? There was something that I did, and it ultimately helped us to prove that KJ wasn't the one who shot the victim. You know what I mean, right?"

I nodded, a light smirk starting to appear on my face. "She wasn't at the trial yesterday, so she doesn't know what it is that we would be doing by asking her to start writing something..." I murmured. "It would be difficult to pull that off without having anybody else in the courtroom catch on and point it out though. The judge on this case admittedly concerns me on that subject."

"Well, people never lost or gained anything by trying," Venus pointed out, her smile starting to grow wider. "If we think that this is going to be our best shot at finding out what happened at the time of the murder, then we're just going to have to go for it. I know that we don't have anything guaranteed, but we might as well see if we can push her to reveal something that she wouldn't have shown or told us about otherwise, right? It can't hurt."

Before I could do anything to try and prove my theory, I was cut off by Prosecutor Bespoke receiving something from Cassidy. It was only after a few seconds of staring that I realized it was a small stress ball that Cassidy had been carrying with her. "Hey, witness, catch," Prosecutor Bespoke said, throwing the ball at Ms. Rowland a moment later.

My eyes just about popped out of my skull from surprise at that, but Ms. Rowland simply raised her hand to catch the ball out of the air. To be more specific, she used her left hand to grab the ball before leveling an intense glare in the direction of Prosecutor Bespoke. "What was that about?" she questioned, throwing it back to him a moment later. "I don't think that's at all appropriate behavior for a courtroom."

"I was just curious about something," Prosecutor Bespoke replied with a light shrug. "I was wondering if you would be able to tell us about your dominant hand, and seeing it in action was the perfect way to go about finding the truth."

"I don't see at all how that's relevant to the case at hand," Ms. Rowland commented as she rolled her eyes. "Why are you wasting my time like this? It's not productive in the slightest, and all it's going to do is cause problems for you in the future when you find that you don't have anything to build your case off." She had turned to level her glare at both myself and the assistants standing alongside me behind the defense bench, and I got the feeling that she was trying to make a jab at our whispering as well as Prosecutor Bespoke for throwing the ball in the first place.

"Just answer the question, would you?" Prosecutor Bespoke asked. "You're dominant in your left hand, aren't you? After all, you caught the ball that was coming at you in your left hand."

"Yes, I am," Ms. Rowland replied. "But what's the issue with me using my left or right hand more often? That can't be relevant to the case at hand. I don't see how me being dominant in one hand or another could at all help with showing that the defendant is the guilty party behind this murder."

"That's where we would have to disagree with you," I told her with a shake of my head. "Yesterday, we were offered with a piece of evidence that told us quite a bit about what happened at the time of the murder. You were searching for the victim's cell phone, but it was in police custody because it caught a video at the precise moment of the murder. In the shot, it was possible to see the outline of the culprit holding the gun and poising it in the direction of the victim."

"What does that have to do with me? I wasn't even here at the courthouse yesterday," Ms. Rowland reminded me. "It sounds like you're just trying to waste my time again, and you should know by now that I won't take kindly to your shenanigans."

"I'm not trying to waste time in the slightest. In fact, Prosecutor Bespoke saved us quite a bit of trouble by asking about your dominant hand when he did. After all, the video footage was enhanced by the investigators on the case, and that allowed them to see something... To be more specific, it gave us all the information that the culprit was holding the gun in their left hand when the victim was shot and killed."

"Defense, do you mean to accuse the witness on the stand of the crime?" Judge Diaphan questioned, her expression shifting to something akin to shock. Of course, she wasn't all that surprised when push came to shove given the circumstances that had already presented themselves. Quite a bit had happened up to this point to make it clear that the witness was the one responsible for the murder. This was simply the final nail in the coffin to change everything for in our favor.

I nodded. "As a matter of fact, I do," I replied. "This is the explanation that seems to make most sense when you consider everything that happened at the time of the murder. The witness doesn't have an alibi, and she claimed that she was tasked with looking after the victim's phone. That's a clear contradiction with what we have already heard, and it's clear that the witness on the stand is the one who was lying about the facts at hand. She must have been trying to get her hands on the device for some other reason, and that's the same motive that she had when it came to killing the victim."

"She must have killed the victim for being the witness to the crime that we already heard about earlier in the trial," Venus agreed with a small nod. "It's a shame that we don't have a way to look at the video in question... Perhaps we would be able to find a hint to reveal the truth behind the person who was in the video, but I suppose that's already out of the question given the circumstances of this case."

"What are you talking about?" Ms. Rowland questioned, her eyes going wide. She seemed to be having more of a problem with what Venus had just said than the fact that she had been accused of murder just a short while prior, and I would have been lying if I said that this didn't bother me. In fact, it very much so did seem odd to me, and I resisted the urge to frown in her direction.

"The video footage that the victim recorded when she was the witness to the case of a back alley deal was deleted off her phone at some point," Prosecutor Bespoke explained. "We aren't entirely sure of how the footage was erased. It's possible that the victim did it herself at some point or another, but the fact remains that it's gone and has been since before the murder took place."

"The police must have a copy of the video though, right?" Yuri asked as she glanced up in my direction. "I mean, they had to investigate the video in order for the trial to go ahead, so it would make sense if they had at least something from the video in their data files somewhere, wouldn't it?"

"I'm afraid not," Prosecutor Bespoke replied with a small shake of his head. "I looked into that as well since I was sure that there had to be a copy of the footage somewhere out there as well. However, I ultimately discovered that the video's footage was deleted from the police's data files as well. I'm unsure of when this could have happened, but it's clear that somebody must have interfered with the files there as well. This is a much more complicated issue to explain though given that the victim couldn't have just deleted this. Somebody within the police force must have done it, but I'm still unsure as to when or why this happened."

"The point of all of this is that the video footage is gone, in other words," Judge Diaphan concluded. She glanced over in my direction as soon as she finished speaking. "You believe that the witness on the stand was the one responsible for the murder, yes? What other details do you have in mind that could contribute to making her seem suspicious?"

"For one, the fact that she was looking through the victim's belongings in the wake of her death is incredibly suspicious," I pointed out. "I feel as if that should be proof enough that something unsavory was going on behind the scenes. The locker must have been tampered with, and that could have only happened if somebody with prior knowledge of the murder made sure that the locker's door was not properly closed before the crime took place. This was the best chance for the culprit to get into the locker to look around at what could be found inside."

"And the witness seems like the most likely person to have done this," Prosecutor Bespoke agreed with a small nod. "After all, she was the one who was looking through the victim's items at the time of the investigation. She went rather far to try and find the phone, and when you combine that with the fact that she doesn't have an alibi for the time of the murder... It doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture."

"You don't have any other evidence for this," Ms. Rowland pointed out, everything about her posture defensive and agitated. "You can say all that you want that you think I'm the culprit, but unless you have actual proof, nobody is going to believe you. This is all just random theorizing when push comes to shove."

"As much as I hate to say it, we don't have anything in terms of extra evidence that could show that Ms. Rowland was the one behind the crime," Venus commented, her expression growing tight. "We need something conclusive that could show that she was the one who did it. She didn't leave behind any fingerprints on the gun, and that means that we can't really test that. She was wearing gloves at the time of the crime, and all of what we've said up to this point... It's lacking in the final piece of clinching evidence that will prove that she was the culprit. As it stands, she's the most suspicious, but there has to be something that will show that she was the one behind this case without a shadow of a doubt."

"What could that evidence be though? I don't even know if something like that exists," Yuri sighed with a shake of her head. "It's not like we've seen anything up to this point that would show that she was the one who did it, right? If we release the trial for another investigation, then I guess that we could try to search for it, but..."

"No, that's out of the question," I told her firmly. "If we do that, we're going to wind up hurting our case in the long run. She's going to wind up going back to the community center to try and destroy what evidence she knows that she could have accidentally left behind. She's been focusing on her search up to this point, but if she drops that to concentrate on destroying proof that might have been abandoned in the shuffle after the crime, then we're not going to be able to show that she did it."

"In other words, you're saying that we have to do this here and now even though we don't know where the hell we're supposed to be starting from," Venus murmured. She shot a brief glance off in Yuri's direction, a wince coming over her expression. "Don't copy my language."

"There has to be something that we're missing when it comes to all of this," I said softly before Yuri could say anything snarky in response to Venus' accidental slip of the tongue. "Everything that we've seen up to this point makes it seem as if the one behind the murder was Ms. Rowland. What is it that we could be missing?"

"Why don't we just go over everything that we know up to this point?" Yuri suggested. "I mean, that might take a little bit for us to do, but... Oh, whatever. I'll just get started. We know that the victim left her locker open in the locker room when she was on her way out, and that was probably because it was tampered with by the culprit so that they could look through her belongings. Of course, this didn't happen at the time of the crime, so it was the culprit setting up for later while they committed the crime."

"As for the actual time of the crime, the culprit was out in the gymnasium watching the performance take place, and then, they reached for a gun and shot it at the victim. Everything scattered, and there were countless people trying to get out of the gym in the shuffle. The gun was dropped on the floor, and all of this was captured on video by Mr. Middleton," Venus said, picking up where her sister had left off seamlessly. "Then the lights came up to show KJ was the one holding the gun, but the recording had already ended by that point."

"The victim requested for Mr. Middleton to record her performance..." I murmured. I stared down at the bench before me, my mind racing as I tried to figure out how the pieces came together for this case. It didn't take long for me to start repeating the idea of the recording over and over in my mind, shifting around the words in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, that would offer more of a clue of what I was supposed to be searching for in order to find the truth.

Wait... That was it! The recording was the solution, but it wasn't in the way that we thought it was. There was a piece of evidence that was going to help us to find the culprit in an unorthodox way, and it was related to the idea of the crime being recorded. This was exactly what we were searching for, albeit in a rather unconventional manner.

"I know what we're looking for," I smiled as I glanced up to Venus and Yuri. Neither one of them had caught on in full to what I was trying to say, so I simply gave them a light nod to show that I was going to be able to handle this. Afterward, I shifted my focus back in the direction of the courtroom at large. "I believe that I have the information that we're looking for to solve this case once and for all. The one piece of evidence that will show us who the culprit is and what happened at the time of the crime is none other than the recording of the gymnastics competition. That single recording will reveal everything that we need to know right here and now. I promise."

This is my last update before I go off to college what the hell

-Digital