June 22
Courtroom No. 5
10:35 AM
Cotoli Morix
"The crime scene was certainly in an interesting state when you found it, I hear," Ghastly commented as he looked to D with narrowed eyes. "There was nothing out of the ordinary aside from the body on the ground."
"We did a thorough search of the area before the police arrived and found nothing aside from the body in the building. The murder weapon wasn't present, and we don't know where it could have gone either," D replied, nodding to herself. "I'm afraid that the scene of the crime was exactly as you see it here. Nothing out of the ordinary could be found there aside from the victim's dead body."
"Defense, I believe it's time for your cross-examination," Judge Diaphan declared as she glanced over in my direction.
I nodded my understanding. "Of course, Your Honor," I said in response, though if I was being honest, I still didn't know where to go from here. The fact that the culprit must have gotten rid of the gun prior to the defendant's arrival at the scene of the crime counted for something, but there was still a lot about the case that we didn't understand. There was one thing that I still didn't get, and hopefully, there would be a simple explanation for it, but something deep inside of me doubted that it was going to be quite so easy.
~ Cross-Examination ~
~ Finding the Crime Scene ~
-"Q and I were wandering through the streets of the downtown area of the city when we overheard something sinister."
-"We heard a gunshot, and we glanced to one another in curiosity. A few moments later, there was silence."
-"The single gunshot was followed by countless others, and from there, we made our way to the abandoned building."
-"It was difficult for us to reach the area in time since we were somewhat far away and had to search for the source of the sound before arriving..."
-"But when we did get there, we could see the defendant plain as day standing in the doorway and looking down at the body."
-"There was nothing out of the ordinary about the crime scene when we arrived. The building was empty save for the body on the floor."
"Hold it!"
"There truly was nothing else at the scene of the crime when you arrived?" I questioned as my eyes narrowed in D's direction. "You saw the body on the floor and nothing else?"
D nodded. "There wasn't anything else of note, no," she replied. "The crime scene was exactly as you would expect given the circumstances. There was no gun, and there weren't any other traces that the killer had been there either. All that could be seen was the body on the ground."
"I think that we have our first problem then," I remarked, a frown on my face. "There was writing in blood found on the ground of the crime scene. I mentioned this during the investigation yesterday, but... The writing in blood seems to repeat your name alongside Q's again and again. It's difficult to make out, but it clearly states that you were there."
D's eyes went wide, but she composed herself a moment later. "I don't believe that such a thing could have been possible," she told me with a shake of her head. "I already said that we weren't responsible for the crime. Why would we have wanted to kill the victim when we should have been working with her to find the truth behind the evidence forgeries? It simply wouldn't make sense. We didn't kill her. I don't know where the writing in blood came from either, but it certainly wasn't there at the time of the body's discovery."
"That's where the conundrum appears," I said, a frown on my face. "We've been trying to figure out just what could have caused the writing in blood to appear on the floor of the crime scene, and yet, we keep coming up short. I wish I could say what caused the writing in blood to suddenly show up when it wasn't there at the time of the crime scene's discovery, but... I'm afraid that I'm just as clueless on the matter as anyone else involved with this case."
"Do you have any ideas as to who could have done it?" Judge Diaphan questioned. "If the writing in blood wasn't there at the time of the crime scene's discovery, then somebody else must have put it there after the scene was initially found. If we can determine who was responsible for that, then we'll be able to get closer to figuring out just what happened that day."
I hesitated before shaking my head. "If you want a specific name... No, I'm afraid I don't know," I told her carefully, though I couldn't help but feel almost sick with my worry regarding the situation. "None of this truly seems to add up. The person who wrote the message in blood... I suspect that it was someone involved with the investigation, if you can believe it. The culprit didn't know that D and Q were going to find the scene of the crime, so it isn't as if they could have left behind the message to begin with. As for the victim, she had never met either one of the Interpol agents before she was killed. It would have been impossible for her to write down their letters if she didn't know who they were."
"So the only explanation that makes sense would be for the writing in blood to have shown up at some point during the investigation," Ghastly concluded with a light hum and shake of his head. "I wish that I could say something to disprove that, but I think that we all know that must have been the case. D, do you have any ideas as to who could have wanted to do that?"
D shook her head. "But I can say conclusively that it wasn't the victim. She died almost immediately after she was shot, so it wouldn't have been possible for her to have crawled to another part of the room and write down the message in blood," she pointed out. "All you have to do is check the autopsy report. The killer hit her with a few good shots, and that was all it took for her to go down and not get back up."
"It seems as if we truly do have a mystery on our hands that we have yet to solve then," Judge Diaphan hummed with a shake of her head. "It makes one wonder what has been taking place within this case, though I suppose that the first step would be to figure out what happened with the writing in blood at the time of the crime scene's discovery." She shifted her attention over to D a moment later with a frown on her face. "Do you believe that Q would be able to tell us anything of note about the crime scene?"
D shook her head. "We were together the entire time. That whole night, we were searching for signs of the evidence forgery ring. We weren't able to find anything, but we did hear the gunshots ring out in the night air. That was when we came to the scene of the crime. As I already stated, that was when we found the defendant standing in the entrance of the building. There weren't any other signs of the area," she said.
"There's a lot about this case that we don't seem to understand yet," Chrysalis murmured from beside me. "It doesn't seem like anything truly comes together... I don't know what in the world is causing this case to be so obnoxious, but I would very much so like it if it would knock it off as soon as possible."
"I know what you're talking about, but... I guess all we can do for now is just keep pressing forward and hope that we're able to figure out what's going on," Venus said with a loose shrug. "There has to be something that comes up. Surely there's an explanation for what happened when it came to the writing in blood... If the victim didn't do it... If the killer didn't do it... Then somebody on the investigation team must have been responsible."
I felt my shoulders grow tense, and I frowned to myself before I glanced up to the rest of the courtroom. "If the one who wrote the message in blood at the scene of the crime truly was an investigator rather than somebody who was at the scene of the murder at the time of the murder, then..." I swallowed my nerves down dryly, though I knew that I was still going to feel bad about this for a while to come. "That calls the integrity of the rest of the investigation into question. We don't know who could have written the message, but if it was somebody who was involved with the case's investigation, then that means that there's a lot that we have yet to understand. Whoever was responsible for this... They're going to put the entire search for evidence into jeopardy."
"You mean to say that the investigation could be argued as shaky at best because of what we know now about the writing in blood," Ghastly commented, and I nodded my response. Ghastly grew tense once again, and he shook his head a moment later. "That... That could be considered true, I suppose... We're going to have to do everything we can to try and figure out who was responsible for the writing in blood. I can say that it was already on the ground by the time I arrived at the building. I don't know who wrote it, but they had already put it on the ground by the time that I was there."
"I think that there's still a lot that we don't know about this case," Chrysalis said with a shake of her head. I knew exactly what she was thinking about without her even needing to say a word. She was thinking about just how wrong this case felt to all of us even if we weren't phrasing it that way yet. Everything about this case truly did seem off whether we wanted to admit it or not, and I found myself staring down at the bench in front of us, almost like I thought the wood would be able to offer us an answer behind everything that was confusing us about this case.
Judge Diaphan brought her gavel down, and that was all it took to bring most of the trial falling back to reality. She was able to cut off people from talking about the topic before they were even able to phrase their words, and the gallery went deadly silent before beginning the conversation at hand. "I believe that it is true that there are many questions yet to be answered about the case and its investigation. But for the time being, the fact remains that we know one thing... The defendant was found in the entryway to the building at the time of the crime scene's discovery," she declared.
"Objection!"
"He couldn't have been the one who did it," I reminded her. "We already stated that the gun was gone by the time he arrived at the crime scene. The gun had been disposed of some place or another, and if it had already been discarded, then that means that he couldn't have done it. Where could he have hidden it? The true culprit must have taken it with them when they left the scene of the crime."
Ghastly nodded his agreement. "I think it's safe to say that there's something odd about this case as well," he declared. "Think about it... What motive would the victim have had for committing the crime? It truly doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure as to who could have committed the crime, but I can say that it wouldn't have made any sense for the victim to have done it."
"You seem rather confident that there isn't a connection between them of any kind," Judge Diaphan remarked with a light frown. "Did you look into this matter before the trial could begin?"
Ghastly nodded. "As a matter of fact, I did. I figured that it would be best if I did what I could to learn as much as possible about the victim and defendant to compensate for the lack of information we have in most other fields regarding the murder," he told her. He attempted to smile, but it was clear that he was pushing himself, so he ultimately forced himself to stop before the grin could become too notable. "In my search for a connection between the victim and defendant, I found no signs that they had associated at all. I mean, the victim was a police officer, but as far as I can tell, she had never even worked with the victim on a case before she was killed."
"I see..." came the murmur of Judge Diaphan with a light nod. "Do you think that somebody else must have killed the victim then? If there was no reason for the defendant to have done it, then there must have been someone else with a reason to want the victim dead."
"I'm sure that there is a person out there who did want her dead," Ghastly confirmed with a small nod. "She was looking into a group that was forging evidence when cases went to court. I think it's safe to say that there are many people who would want to silence her so that they would be able to continue with their previous line of work. If she found out too much, then they were at risk of being exposed in the courtroom."
"We already know what happened to the last person who just so happened to stumble across the information by accident," I pointed out. "The victim of a murder case at a gymnastics competition was ultimately murdered because she had seen something. She didn't even know who the culprits behind the evidence ring, but she had still seen more than the ring wanted her to be aware of. As a result, she was murdered in plain daylight. The culprit of this case wanted to silence the investigation."
Ghastly nodded, but he grew tense a moment later, his eyes shooting wide open. Judge Diaphan frowned as she turned in his direction. "Is something the matter, prosecution?" she questioned, her voice twinged with something that sounded a lot like worry.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Ghastly replied, everything about his expression growing tense all of a sudden. "I think there's one fact that we've been overlooking gravely throughout this case... If you will think back to the murder at the gymnastics competition, then you will recall that there was a video taken by the victim of that case. She just so happened to witness a deal supposedly involved with this ring of evidence forgers, and she took a video of it. The video footage of the case just so happened to be deleted before it could be widely shared. There aren't any known files of it left at this point. When you combine that with the fact that the writing in the blood was forged by someone involved with the investigation... It seems as if there are people involved with the ring and covering it up who work within the legal fields necessary to get their hands on this information and manipulate it as soon as it steps out of line in any way."
"In other words, the idea that we can't trust the investigation runs much deeper than we could have ever imagined," Venus frowned to herself. "That means that we really don't know what's going on because of all this uncertainty. There's already so much about the case that we don't understand, and if we can't have confidence in the people who are giving us our information, then... What are we supposed to do now?"
Chrysalis' hand clenched into a fist, and she shook her head. "It means that we're going to have to try and weather the storm," she managed to snarl out, but I could tell that there was a lot more to it than she was willing to admit. She had more on her mind than I could have ever expected, not that it was particularly surprising; this situation was awful for all of us, and Chrysalis seemed to hate this more than anyone else who was involved with the case.
"At the very least, there are a few things that we can easily have faith in," D announced, easily earning herself the attention of everyone in the courtroom all over again. "The victim was shot with many bullets from the same gun. The ballistic markings prove as much. The gun was taken away from the scene of the crime. Nothing else was left behind. The writing in blood on the ground was not originally there, and someone who was involved with the investigation must have put it there at some point after the scene was discovered."
"It isn't possible for the writing in blood to have wound up on the ground before D and Q arrived... The culprit was already gone by that point, and it isn't as if they would have had the foresight to know that Interpol agents would find the crime scene," I murmured to myself. There was an impossible picture being painted here, and at the center of it all, there was the truth behind what happened with the writing on blood. The letters scrawled on the ground of the crime scene were our only true hint as to what was going on behind the scenes of this case, and yet, we still couldn't figure out how to pull the curtains back.
"Precisely. Something must have happened during the investigation. Regardless of who wrote in blood at the crime scene, I can say conclusively that Q and I had nothing to do with it. I like to think that the two of us know more than enough about what cases like this should look like to dispose of a murder weapon even if we did kill the victim," D said dryly, though I couldn't really tell if she was joking or not. It was hard to tell much of anything when it came to her. "She had no reason to die if we were the culprits on top of that. Somebody else must have been there before us."
"It truly seems as if an impossible image had been constructed for us," Ghastly commented with a shake of his head. "I believe that at the heart of all this, we're still missing out on a crucial handful of information. We don't know about the other people who were in the building before it was discovered by the defendant and the two Interpol agents who found him at the scene. I think that we should do what we can to learn more about who could have potentially been there at the time."
"In other words, you're requesting that the trial adjourn for an investigation," Judge Diaphan said, her lips tipping downward in a frown. "I must admit, it's rather ironic that you wish to go back to investigating after it seems so clear that there is something else going on behind the scenes of this crime. If the results of the investigation are not to be trusted, then perhaps there is much more that we have to look into than we thought... Do you believe that adjourning truly is for the best, Prosecutor Bespoke?"
Ghastly shrugged his shoulders loosely. "It isn't as if investigating would hurt us at this point. We don't have enough information to figure out much of anything right now, and even if it seems like everything is shaky and liable to fall apart, we aren't going to find out more unless we take a few risks," he pointed out. "We're just going to have to do what we can to learn more about the crime and hope that we aren't thrown off course by the people who have been distorting everything up to this point. Maybe we'll be able to figure out who's been responsible for such problems along the way... Isn't that right, Mr. Morix?"
I was admittedly caught by surprise by his sudden address in my direction, and I nodded as soon as I got a bearing on myself. "Of course," I agreed. I knew that he was right, but I would have been lying if I said that I was much of a fan of any of this. I had known for quite some time that the system was corrupt, and yet, there wasn't much that we could do about it. We would simply have to hope that we would be able to find something out to save us sooner rather than later.
"In that case, I see no reason to draw out this trial any longer than we already have," Judge Diaphan frowned, reaching for her gavel. "I'm trusting both the defense and prosecution to handle this high-profile case with as much maturity as possible. Tomorrow, court will reconvene to discuss all that we have learned over the course of the investigation. Until then, I'm counting on you all to do what you can. Court is adjourned." She slammed her gavel down a moment later, and I couldn't help but wonder if the world was somehow ending around me.
June 22
Defendant Lobby No. 5
11:15 AM
Cotoli Morix
Arriving out in the defendant's lobby once again was, in more ways than one, demoralizing as could be. I sat down on the couch as I began to look through the files that we had been given regarding this case. I knew that they weren't going to yield any new information about what took place at the time of the murder, but at this point, I was willing to try out just about everything.
Venus, on the other hand, took to pacing as Chrysalis sat down beside me. "I can't believe all of this... The person who erased the video footage from the evidence forgery trial is one thing, but... It really is starting to seem like this has deeper roots than we're realizing," she announced. "There's something more going on behind the scenes of this case, and I don't know how we're supposed to deal with it. How are we even supposed to start to find the truth behind a murder when it seems like everything you look at has such the strong possibility of being a lie from the outset?"
"It wouldn't be the first time that the legal system was a complete failure," Chrysalis muttered under her breath, crossing her arms as she stared angrily at the ground. Venus halted in her pacing for a moment to silently question Chrysalis as to what she was talking about. "Do you remember the case we told you about from three years ago? Back when we met Sora?"
Venus nodded, something uncertain starting to creep its way into her voice. "Yeah, of course I do. What are you referring to specifically about that case?" she asked.
"Well, the legal system was a complete failure then too," Chrysalis told her with a shake of her head. "There were too accomplices to the murder, Quenton Wills and Valerie Hoope... There supposedly wasn't enough evidence to convict them of the crime, so they got away with it scot free. On top of that, they completely disappeared soon after the case drew to a close. They knew that they were in hot water because we already found them out once, and they took that as their cue to get the hell out of there. I don't know where they are now. They've been a mystery for the past three years, and I somehow doubt that we're going to get lucky enough to just find them out of the blue like that."
"You have got to be kidding me... Right?" Venus questioned shakily. When Chrysalis shook her head, Venus let out a sigh and collapsed dramatically onto the couch beside my sister. "I can't believe that all of this is happening. Who would have thought that the system was so... I don't know... Messed up? It doesn't seem right. I mean, we've seen that it can be wrong quite a few times up to this point, but... Something about that seems different than what we're going through right now."
"It's always been this way," Chrysalis told Venus softly. "No matter what you do, there will always be opposition trying to push you back. You take two steps forward only to be shoved back where you started by people who have nothing better to do than stomp others into submission. They want power and dominance, and they're willing to do much of anything to get it. The legal system has been twisted for as long as anyone can remember, and I somehow doubt that it's going to bend itself back into shape out of the blue any time soon."
"Might I have a word with you three?"
A familiar voice prompted me to look up, and I was left starting at Chief Prosecutor Cristopher as he examined all of us carefully. "Oh, um... Chief Prosecutor Cristopher," I greeted, admittedly caught by surprise at his sudden appearance after having been so engrossed in my reading the case files as well as listening to Chrysalis and Venus' discussion. "Is there something you need from us?"
"I would like an answer, as a matter of fact," Chief Prosecutor Cristopher replied, something in his expression having grown tense since the last time we saw him. "It seems as if you had a perfect chance to use the writing on the ground to make it seem as if I was not the culprit during the trial, and yet, you refused to do so. The opportunity was right there, and you could have used it to make sure that you won the trial and never had to deal with something of this nature again. Might I ask why you have continued to refrain from taking advantage of that piece of evidence to win the case?"
I hesitated before I shook my head. "I think it would be best for us to figure out the truth behind what happened with the writing in blood before we go into anything along those lines," I told him. "We still have a lot that we don't understand about this case, and if we want to learn what truly took place on the night of the murder, we're going to have to dig for the details that have been hiding from us up to this point. We can think about the writing in blood and how helpful it would be as evidence after we know how it got there and what purpose it's meant to serve."
Chief Prosecutor Cristopher shook his head, and I could have sworn that I saw disappointment twinging in his eyes. "In that case, I hope that you enjoy making things harder for yourselves," he said simply. "I do hope that this doesn't make you lose the case though... That wouldn't end well for any of us, would it?" I frowned at him, trying to determine if his words were meant to be interpreted as a threat or not, but before I could find the answer, he corrected his expression once again. "I'll be trusting you to get a not guilty verdict behind this case... Until we meet again."
Chief Prosecutor Cristopher was gone a moment later, and I was left to stare in silence at the place where he had been a few moments prior. Chrysalis and Venus were doing much the same, and we all shared a hesitant glance, unsure as to what we were supposed to think of what he had just told us. Nothing about that conversation felt right to me, truth be told, and I did my best to shove a shudder down before it could consume me.
"What's his deal?" Venus muttered under her breath with a shake of her head. "I know that he wants to get out of the detention center and all that since the place is miserable, but... I don't know. Being borderline rude to your defense team feels like the number one way to get dropped in the courtroom."
"He was more than borderline rude," Chrysalis frowned. "I think that he was trying to get something more across than he was willing to say out loud, especially when it comes to a public setting."
I hesitated before I closed the case file that I had been reading and rising to my feet. It was just a recap of everything we needed, but it was something that I knew I was going to have to keep close to my chest as we got closer to the time of the trial starting up again. "We have to go and investigate whatever else is out there right now," I told them. "We can find answers behind what Chief Prosecutor Cristopher has been so upset about the next time we talk to him. Until then, I think our time would be best spent elsewhere. Let's go."
Neither one of them objected to that, and from there, we started to make our way to the exit of the building. I would have been lying if I said that my mind wasn't circling in much the same ways that theirs were, and unfortunately, that was only making this entire case more confusing. I didn't know what was going on with Chief Prosecutor Cristopher, but I had a bad feeling about all of it.
Suddenly, this case seemed even worse than it had the day before, and I had no idea what any of us were supposed to do about it.
This is the last Saturday update of Morix yall,,, I'm gonna miss this
-Digital