So, we're finally getting into the trial of Ed Curity. I know roughly what's going to happen, but just be warned that this is my first real attempt at a mystery. It's gonna be kind of rough. I apologize in advance.

Chapter Eleven – Danger, Danger, Danger in Your Eyes

Klavier

Apollo ended up staying the night at my place. I still had trouble describing the sheer joy I had when I woke up with him in my arms. The moment I woke I couldn't help but wrap myself tighter around him, feeling him wriggle deeper into my embrace. His breathing was peaceful and he looked more relaxed than I had seen him in days.

In the few days that we had been dating, I could tell that Apollo wasn't the most intimate person. I could tell that he was trying, but he didn't express affection quite like I did. But that was ok for me. I loved every bit of him, even when he was pretending to be annoyed by me. Still, I was glad to see him start to open up to me.

Even so, I was delighted and surprised when I was about to drift back to sleep and he decided at that moment to roll over and start nibbling playfully at my neck. I couldn't help but giggle and gasp as I felt his lips move across my skin. Mein Schatz ignored my half-hearted struggles to escape his affection, especially once he found the most sensitive part of my neck.

He somehow ended up on top of me, his nibbles turning into kisses as he continued to press his mouth into my throat. I wrapped my arms tightly around him and let out a sigh of pleasure as he did so. I could easily get used to this.

"So, mein Schatz," I said when I could speak. "Did you sleep well?"

"Well enough," he muttered reluctantly, almost like he was ashamed of something. "Your bed is way more comfortable than mine."

"You know, you can stay here whenever you want," I told him, my heart thumping at the thought. "We don't have to have sex in order for you to sleep here. I want mein home to be your home as well."

I could hear a sharp intake of breath and feel his sigh on my neck.

"Thanks," he replied in a quiet tone. "I'll think about it." There was a long, peaceful moment of silence before he suddenly spoke again. "If I am going to spend nights here, I'm definitely going to need to keep hair gel handy. I definitely don't want a repeat of what happened the other day."

I squirmed a little to look at him. "What happened the other day?" I wondered.

"Mr. Wright and Trucy had a huge freak out because my hair wasn't styled the way they were used to," he said, rolling his eyes at the memory. "Sometimes I wonder how Mr. Wright ever became an attorney in the first place."

I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of it.

"Well, for what it's worth, I think you look just as cute with your hair all natural like that," I told him. His face immediately turned red and he buried it in my neck again without replying. "So, what are you planning for the rest of the day?"

He let out a groan. "I still have that security footage to look over," he muttered. "And with the trial tomorrow, I'm probably going to have to spend all day staring at them and hoping to find something interesting."

"I wish you the best of luck," I said in the most sympathetic voice I could muster. "I will say there is no footage of Herr Stick being murdered. We'll have to figure out whether or not any of the footage is evidence enough to prove one way or another who the murderer is."

He let out another groan. "This case just keeps getting better and better," he sighed.


I gave Apollo a ride to the Wright Anything Agency right after breakfast. He told me that Trucy and Herr Wright were going to help him look over the tapes, so I didn't have to worry about him at all. It was just as well. I still had to organize my own arguments for the trial tomorrow and sort through all the relevant evidence.

I felt rather conflicted with myself. When Apollo had asked me about the case during our date, I had almost told him my entire strategy for the upcoming trial. I had managed to catch myself in time, but looking into those beautiful brown eyes of his just made me want to blurt out every single one of my thoughts and secrets. Part of me desperately wanted to tell Apollo exactly what my arguments would be in court. But the other part of me remembered Apollo voicing his fears about that exact thing.

I just hoped he would forgive me for what I was planning in court.

Fraulein Skye came by my office to rehearse her testimony and go over evidence. She had decided since the incident with Daryan and Machi Tobaye that she would always make sure to run everything by me first so I couldn't "surprise and humiliate" her at the trial. She still hadn't forgiven me for not telling her that Herr Tobaye could see.

We were vastly underprepared for the trial tomorrow with a lack of definitive evidence. I think that's why Herr Edgeworth submitted a request that the trial be a jury trial. Thankfully, the judge had agreed, so all Apollo and I had to do was convince six people whether or not Herr Curity was guilty. And I had to hope that my love for Apollo would not get in the way of my job.

The next day, I stood nervously in the prosecutor's lobby, going over my arguments in my head once more. Fraulein Skye never waited in the lobby with me since she claimed she couldn't stand me and since I didn't have any other witnesses prepared, I was alone.

I was deep in concentration when I heard the sound of the door opening. I spun around, startled, to see Apollo walking nervously into the room.

"Apollo, mein Schatz!" I greeted him happily, going over to wrap my arms around him. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in the defendant's lobby?"

"I left Trucy to watch over Mr. Curity and I'll be going back in a moment," he told me. "I just needed to talk to you really quickly."

I couldn't help but feel nervous at his words. The last time he had seriously wanted to talk, he had broken my heart. Was this his plan all along? String me along then dump me so I couldn't concentrate on the trial? Had I just been a huge fool?

"A-About what, Schatz?" I asked, unable to keep the nervousness out of my voice. To my surprise, he let out a laugh.

"You need to relax, Gavin," he said, an evil grin on his face. "You won't last half the trial at this rate!" I narrowed my eyes at him. Before I could reply however, he reached up and kissed me gently. "I just wanted us to make a promise to each other."

I blinked in surprise. "What kind of promise?" I wondered.

"That no matter what happens in court today or any other day, no matter how heated it gets in there, we don't take any of it personally," he replied after a moment. "No matter what we do during the trial, we're just trying to do our jobs, right?"

Every inch of me began to relax at his words and I couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

"Of course," I agreed. "You're absolutely right. We can't let anything that happens in court come between us. That'd be just as bad as letting our relationship be the reason we try to let the other win."

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Apollo said. "So, we have a promise then?"

"I promise not to let anything in court affect our relationship or take anything you do or say in any trial personally," I promised.

"I promise too," he replied. His eyes were sparkling with affection as he reached up to kiss me gently once more. It made me melt just knowing that all of his affection was directed towards myself. He was all mine and I was all his.

"I should be getting back," he said when he finally pulled away. "I still need to have one more talk with my client before the trial starts."

"Are you sure you don't just want to have a quickie on the couch over there?" I asked, smiling at him suggestively. He frowned and whacked me in the back of the head. "Ok then. You're loss." He rolled his eyes.

"Good luck in there, prosecutor," he said as he made his way to the door.

"Good luck to you too, mein Schatz," I replied, feeling my heart melt all over again.


"Court is now in session for the trial of Ed Curity."

"The defense is ready, Your Honor."

"The prosecution is ready to rock, Your Honor."

"Prosecutor Gavin, your opening statement, please."

I took a deep breath before starting. "As we know from the last trial, the victim was one security guard, Herr Night Stick," I informed the court. "He normally works at the prison, but was filling in at the arena as a favor to the defendant when he was murdered. And though not much physical evidence was found, because the defendant tried to frame someone else for the crime, we have enough reason to believe that he is the true murderer."

"Were there no other suspects or clues?" Herr Judge asked, looking shocked.

"No one else at the Arena knew the victim and the crime scene was wiped clean," I told him, snapping my fingers in rhythm. "The victim was found in the security room with a knife in his back. He was quite literally stabbed in the back by his friend."

"Objection!" Apollo suddenly shouted, nearly making my heart stop. "This is all pure conjecture. You don't know that my client was trying to frame someone else for the crime. All he did was present the wrong security tapes during Sparky Highnote's trial. For all we know, he could have just made a simple mistake."

I gave mein Liebe a gentle smile.

"That is true," I conceded. "Unfortunately, I have more than just a botched trial to prove the defendant's guilt. The defendant himself has confessed that the switched security tapes were done on purpose. He purposefully tried to frame Herr Highnote in order throw suspicion off of himself."

"Just because he framed someone doesn't mean that he killed him!" Fraulein Trucy interjected. "The only crime the defendant has committed is perjury!"

"Yes, but we must consider why he did these things," I replied. "One does not simply go around framing others for a crime they did not commit for no reason."

Apollo paled. Clearly, he didn't want to tell the court that his client was being blackmailed. Unfortunately, it was going to get worse. As a prosecutor, it was my job to explore every possibility, and that included the blackmailing angle.

"Why would the defendant want to frame Mr. Highnote?" the judge wondered.

"For one reason only," I replied. "Because he is the true murderer!"

"OBJECTION!" Apollo shouted, making mein heart leap. "There are plenty of reasons why he would frame someone! Besides, the defendant and the victim were extremely close! He had no reason to want the victim dead!"

This was it. This would be where I was so glad we had that talk before the trial. I just really hoped that Apollo would stick to his word about not taking the trial personally.

"Objection!" I retorted, pointing across the room at him. "That is where you are wrong, Herr Forehead! Perhaps he didn't want to kill Herr Stick, but he certainly was given no choice in the matter."

Apollo stared wide-eyed at me in horror, clearly knowing where I was going with my argument. The judge, on the other hand, was giving me a confused look.

"No choice?" he repeated. "What do you mean, Prosecutor Gavin?"

"I'm saying that the defendant, Ed C. Curity was blackmailed into murdering the victim!" I said in a voice loud enough for all to hear. Immediately, court broke out into confused and shocked rambling, but Herr Judge still managed to make his gavel heard above the noise.

"Order! Order in the court, I say!" he declared. "Prosecutor Gavin, are you really saying that the defendant was blackmailed into committing this horrible crime?"

"I am, Your Honor," I replied. "The defendant himself admitted to it when we were interrogating him the other day."

"Objection!" Apollo cried, right on cue. "Yes, it's true that my client was being blackmailed, but only to fabricate evidence! He admitted to that during the interrogation as well, you know."

"True, but how do we know he wasn't lying about that?" I asked. "He could have said he was blackmailed into providing false evidence when in actuality, he was being blackmailed into murdering the victim instead."

"This is all very troubling," the judge said with a wide-eyed look. "But if what you're saying is true, then who is blackmailing this poor man in the first place? And why go through the trouble? Why would they want the victim dead anyway?"

"We unfortunately do not know that yet," I told him. "The defendant is pleading the fifth on what he's being blackmailed about and at the moment we don't have any leads to who this mysterious blackmailer might be."

"Wait a minute," Apollo interrupted suddenly. I glanced over at him and nearly fainted with delight. He had a finger between his beautiful brown eyes, which were closed in concentration, and his free arm resting on his raised arm in his classic "thinking" pose. I loved that look. He was so adorable whenever he made that face and he started talking again, so I really should have been concentrating on what he was saying. "…is being blackmailed, then the blackmailer should have been sending him messages, right?"

I gave my head a shake, trying to focus back on the trial.

"I see where you are going with this, Herr Forehead," I replied with a smile. "If we find these blackmail letters, we might find a clue to which action Herr Curity was forced to take. Was he blackmailed into murdering the victim? Or into framing someone else?"

Apollo turned to the man sitting in the defendant's chair, who had been squirming uncomfortably for the past several minutes.

"How did your blackmailer send you the threats?" he asked him. Herr Curity looked down at the ground, shame flooding his features.

"They…sent me letters," he explained, hesitantly. "With photos of my misdeeds to show what I have done…But I couldn't risk anyone finding them, so I destroyed them."

"You what?" Apollo gasped.

"You destroyed them?" the judge repeated. The room flared up again with chatter and the judge was forced to silence everyone once more.

"I'm sorry," Herr Curity sighed. "I thought the blackmailer would only want money from me. It was something that I could live with, at least. No one would have to know about it. But then Night was killed and they forced me to present the wrong security footage."

"Do you remember anything about these supposed messages?" I asked him, leaning forward to catch him in my stare. He gulped.

"N-Not exactly," he replied after a moment. "They were typed, so there was no way I could tell who it was by the handwriting. And they were always delivered in an unmarked, faded yellow envelope."

The smug smile fell from my face and I stared at him for a moment before quickly shifting through my pile of evidence until I could find what I was looking for.

"Does this look familiar to you, Herr Curity?" I asked, holding up the plastic bag with a single faded envelope inside. His face paled and he grew excited.

"Yes!" he cried. "That's it! That's the cursed envelope those blasted letters came in!"

"Where did you find that?" the judge asked.

"The police, during their search of the defendant's house, found a single envelope addressed to the defendant, though no letter was inside," I explained.

"But wait, what does that mean for the case?" Fraulein Trucy wondered, tilting her head.

"It means that there is strong evidence that someone is blackmailing the defendant, but we still don't know if he's telling the truth about only switching the security tapes," Apollo explained to her gently.

I decided to do some air guitar motions before responding.

"I think it's time to call in my witness to help me explain the rest of my case," I said.

The judge nodded in agreement.

"I think that's best," he said. "Prosecutor Gavin, please call in your first witness."

"Achtung!" I replied, making a grand gesture. "Let Detective Ema Skye take the stand! We're just getting this show started!"

It occurred to me half way through this chapter that before now I had never stated how the victim actually died. Also, it was really hard figuring out the structure of this trial because I didn't know where I wanted the motive to be brought up.

Anyway, next chapter we'll get Ema's testimony and get some more flirting between Klavier and Apollo. I also need to decide when the main conflict is going to officially begin. Along with some other stuff. Hopefully soon.