November 22

Courtroom No. 6

11:00 AM

Deirdre Brigit

As soon as I made the accusation, everything about Ms. Lesa's demeanor changed. Her posture straightened out, and she began to carry herself with a completely different aura. I frowned in her direction and waited for her to be ready to speak once again.

When she finally did talk, she shook her head. "You sure do seem confident in your deductions," Ms. Lesa remarked simply. I waited for a moment, expecting her to say something more, but she was completely silent.

"I suppose I am," I told her with a light shrug. "I know that there's something going on here, and I intend to get to the truth of the matter no matter what happens. I hope that you understand my intentions as well as I do."

Ms. Lesa hummed to herself. "I suppose I do," she repeated. "If you really think that I'm involved with something like that, then prove it. You say that I wasn't in the area of the bush across from the street, but you have to be able to back that up, you know. You can't simply say something of that nature without providing any evidence to prove that I did so much to hide my identity."

"Allow me to go over my explanation of what I believe happened at the time of the crime," I began, and the entire gallery of the courtroom looked to me in curiosity. They hadn't broken into confused chatter at my accusation towards Ms. Lesa, so I could tell that their attention was too centered on what I was trying to accomplish. I decided to take that as an advantage and use it to push my progress forward once again. If they were going to pay attention, I was going to give them something to focus on.

"Go ahead," Judge Diaphan said. Her expression was unreadable, but I could see a bit of hidden tension despite her silence after the two simple words. She wasn't sure about how to feel about all of this in the slightest, and I couldn't exactly blame her for that.

I glanced across the courtroom after I was done watching her, and I noticed that there was some new anger beneath the surface of Prosecutor Burke's expression. There was something wrong, but I didn't know quite what it could have been. Chief Prosecutor Bespoke looked to be just as upset, but he seemed more concerned than outwardly angry. Anton, on the other hand, was just confused about everything that was happening. He looked back and forth between the two in confusion and panic, clearly trying to put the pieces together but lacking a critical part of the puzzle.

"The witness here claimed that she was across the street at the time of the crime. She declared rather confidently that she witnessed the crime from near the bushes that were across the road from the building where the attack took place, but this could not have been true. She didn't show up on the security footage for the nearby apartment building, and she also didn't have any signs of having been in the bushes at all. The bush was spotless, clearly not having been tampered with at all. This doesn't fit in with her claims of an injured ankle, and she likely received such an injury while she was there... At the very least, that was what she led us to believe, but if you ask me, it was a cover story for something that she couldn't tell us about related to the crime," I began to explain.

"If she didn't hurt her ankle there, then... It would make sense if she hurt it elsewhere, and I'm starting to think that I figured out what you're trying to say," Victoria murmured. She still seemed to be reeling from the revelation of the witness being involved with the crime far more than we expected, and I admittedly felt bad for freaking her out to such a degree.

I nodded. "She hid what happened to her ankle as a way of keeping us from asking questions. If you want my opinion, we know where the blood came from at the crime scene now. She was attacked there because Ms. Lesa is, in all honesty, Eileen Liyle, the victim of this case. She knew about the woman with red hair because that's who she is. She knew about the man with white hair because that's who attacked her, but she doesn't know specifically who that could have been," I went on.

"Her ankle was probably cut by something at the scene of the crime... We proposed the possibility of a small knife being used to commit the crime. She was probably honest in saying that the culprit wanted to hide it," Yuri told me. "That would make sense. I think that she wants us to figure out what happened with the culprit cornering her. She simply didn't want us to put the pieces together that she was the one who was attacked in the first place..."

"All of this is operating off hypotheticals," Ms. Lesa commented with a loose shrug. Her eyes were as hard as shards of glass, and she was glaring at me with a detached intensity that I have to admit rather bothered me. "You haven't actually proposed a single piece of evidence since this conversation first began, and that's something that you must do in order to claim that I set up such a ruse. Why would I do this in the first place? If I knew who I was, why would I lie about it?"

"You didn't want us asking questions," I said simply. "If you said that you had amnesia, then we wouldn't be able to ask questions about what happened to you in the past. That wouldn't be something we would think to explore, so we'd leave it alone until you stepped back and decided that you had managed to get what you wanted. You couldn't say that you were Eileen Liyle without placing yourself in danger. That's why you did all of this... You didn't know who the culprit was, so you tried to get us all to find out who was responsible."

"If the victim was sent to a hospital or something similar, then there would have been the possibility that somebody would sneak in through the cracks to finish the job. It would be a headline, advertising the fact that she managed to survive. It would be asking for the culprit to come and find her to finish what they started..." Yuri realized. "She didn't want to draw attention to herself, so she hid under a false name and pretended to have amnesia while the case's investigation unfolded around her. She could feed us hints under the guise of a witness, and we would get closer to figuring out who was responsible so that they could be arrested."

"This was all an elaborate ruse to keep yourself from falling to danger because of the culprit tracking down," I announced. "That was why you planned all of this. You know exactly who you are, and you know where your injuries came from as well. Come to think of it, you haven't shown us the wound on your leg at all yet. If you simply displayed the marking, we would be able to see if it fits in with my hypothesis of a cut being opened on your leg that hinders your maneuverability. That would have applied to the victim, and I believe that it applies to you as well."

"Once again, you're only speaking in hypotheticals. Where's your evidence that I had the ability to get into the agency in the first place? You've been operating completely off assumptions up to this point, and that's not going to win you this case. If you can't find the truth behind what happened with hard proof of it, then you won't be able to draw honesty out of me," Ms. Lesa said. She shrugged and shook her head, and the glassy surface near her eyes began to glimmer with a sadistic shine. "Besides, wouldn't this just be going against the plan that I supposedly concocted? If you say that I was trying to escape the culprit, then why are you doing all of this? There are reporters in the gallery who could make this go public and end everything according to your current theory."

I frowned at her words. I knew exactly what she was trying to do with this. Ms. Lesa was trying to get us to pull away from the subject, and it was likely because my assumption had hit a bit too close to home. Why else would she suddenly begin behaving in this way? Her demeanor had shifted so completely in a matter of just a few seconds, and she wasn't even bothering to keep up the mask anymore. There was something going on here, and I was positive that I had struck gold with my idea that she was trying to hide her identity as the victim of this case.

"She would have needed a key in order to get into the agency," Yuri remarked. "We knew that, and it was one of the things that we were most caught up on until we spoke with Mr. Morix yesterday. He said that the victim did, as a matter of fact, have a key to the building. If she's the victim, then that means that she had a key. He told us as much, but... His wording from that whole conversation was so weird. He said that she had a key of her own, but the way that he phrased it just didn't seem to make sense, almost like he was trying to tell us something."

"Prosecutor Burke and Chief Prosecutor Bespoke have gotten weirdly quiet since the truth came out too," Victoria commented from my other side. "I wonder what's going on in their heads. As far as I can tell, it isn't anything good. What could make them so nervous? I don't like it..."

"Plus, if you think about it, Ms. Liyle doesn't look anything like Ms. Lesa," Yuri said. "I mean, look at the identification card. It took so long for the truth about the ID to come around, but... It seems to me like the red hair of the victim is pretty different from the hair color that Ms. Lesa has. Ms. Lesa's hair is light brown and pretty long... It doesn't seem realistic in the slightest that something like that could happen so suddenly."

"I bet that she's wearing a wig now to keep us from noticing the similarities in their appearances," Victoria pointed out. "That would make sense, right? If she was trying to keep this fact under wraps as much as possible, then she would probably be pretty damn desperate to ensure that we didn't notice things like hair color or style. After all, red hair is pretty distinctive."

My eyes slipped shut, and I found myself lost in my own thoughts. I felt as if all of this had to point to one specific fact. The identification card certainly had taken a long time to come to light even though Mr. Morix had been in possession of it all along. In fact, why had he kept it hidden for as long as he did? It didn't seem to make any sense to me at all. What was going on there? Why was he acting so strangely on the matter of the key as well?

The way that he had talked about it made it seem like he was trying to give us a hint that would nudge us in the right direction to figuring out the truth behind who the victim truly was. That would mean that he had to be aware of this, but how would he know something like that based only on an identification card? Could it have had anything to do with the uncomfortable behavior that we had seen from both Prosecutor Burke and Chief Prosecutor Bespoke throughout this case?

Wait a minute. Light brown hair?

I glanced over to Ms. Lesa, and I noticed that, sure enough, her hair was a light brown color and flowed in gentle waves down to her hips. Her eyes were hidden behind a glistening surface that, upon closer examination, looked a lot like glasses. My eyes narrowed, and I tried to think about what this could possibly mean.

You have got to be kidding me.

As soon as the idea came to me, all I could do was cringe to myself. There was one person in the agency who hadn't been seen throughout this case, and Mr. Morix had been behaving so strangely that it hardly felt like he was the one going about his business behind the scene. Mr. Morix had been the one to hold onto the identification card, and if I had to guess, I would have said that he was the one who sent in the anonymous tip behind the victim's identity. That would have made quite a bit of sense, because as far as I could tell, he was covering for somebody who just so happened to fit the same description as Ms. Lesa.

After all, what else was the perfect job for the right hand of the Oracle?

"Deirdre?" Yuri questioned from her place beside me. She nudged at me carefully to pull me out of my trance, and I could hear the concern in her voice before I even glanced over in her direction. I already knew that she was wondering about what had happened to me, but I couldn't tell her. There were too many people watching us, and I had just managed to figure out the dark secret behind this case.

'Eileen Liyle' had never been a new lawyer who was just breaking into the business, and there was a reason that we had never seen her at the agency despite her apparently being present quite a bit. She hadn't been showing herself specifically as Eileen at all, and that was part of the grand show of this case. She had a key to the agency because she worked there, and she used it to enter the building the day of the crime before she was attacked and left for dead. Prosecutor Burke and Chief Prosecutor Bespoke were aware of who she truly was, and that was why their behavior had been so peculiar throughout this case. Prosecutor Lin had changed so much since hearing the victim's name, and it was because she was also aware that we were all being played for fools by the illusion of Eileen Liyle.

Because 'Eileen Liyle' never truly existed. In truth, she was merely another mask that the Oracle of the Law donned when she was attempting to rally for change through molded faces and altered words. Mr. Morix was aiding Chrysalis to cover for the hole that had appeared because of the culprit because they were the true masterminds of every issue that had risen in this case thus far.

Ms. Lesa seemed to notice that I had caught onto the truth, and her gaze kept me pinned squarely in place. I couldn't reveal the fact that she was Oracle. That was only going to cause issues later down the line, so I was going to have to do this without exposing such a fact. The names of Eileen Liyle and Razi Lesa, falsified as they were, would have to suffice as a powerful enough facade to keep anyone from breaking through to find the truth.

"I'm confident that the witness is the victim," I declared at long last. I could tell that Yuri was still watching me in confusion and concern, but I chose not to acknowledge it openly. "The witness has a key to the building where the crime took place. We heard as much from the agency's owner yesterday, and I'm sure that anyone who speaks with him will be able confirm such a fact. She has a key, and she used that to get into the building. From there, she was unfortunately attacked by the culprit who snuck up on her and decided to use the confusion of the moment to his advantage. He attacked her, including a cut on her leg that caused her to lose a full range of motion temporarily due to the pain. That caused the blood splatter at the scene of the crime as well."

"Do you believe that she was the one who submitted the tip anonymously that the victim was Eileen Liyle?" Judge Diaphan asked. I couldn't help but frown at her words, knowing that this wasn't bound to work out well in my favor. After all, I had stated earlier in the case that I didn't think the witness was the one behind it. I hadn't realized that such a thing would work against me down the line, but I was going to have to cover for it without exposing that she had an assistance in falsifying her own death and subsequent disappearance.

I shook my head. "I don't think so... At the very least, she didn't do it completely on her own. If I had to wager a guess, I would say that she had someone else call the tip in for her. I doubt that the other person was fully aware of who she was or what she was doing, so she used the confusion to her advantage. I understand that this is a somewhat flaky explanation, but I'm confident that she had someone else do it as a way of covering her own tracks and keeping us from figuring out that she was involved with the case so heavily."

"It all makes sense," Victoria murmured after a moment of thought. "All of this makes sense, I mean. The fact that the witness is actually the victim... We've been saying throughout this entire case that all we would need to crack the truth of this case is to hear from the victim and make sure that we're on the right track, and now, we're getting the chance to talk to her. She hasn't confessed her identity yet, but I don't think that there are any doubts on it at the moment. Everyone seems to agree that there's something going on with the witness, after all."

"I believe firmly that the witness pretended to be someone else as a way of coaxing us in the right direction to find the culprit while keeping us from realizing who she was. The plan was likely to disappear and wait until after the culprit had been apprehended, and after that was resolved, she could resurface once again as Eileen Liyle without any fear of being attacked or otherwise tracked down," I realized. "I think that she's been trying all along to try and get us to figure out who the culprit is. We didn't notice it at first since she had to hide her identity, but she covered for a lack of witnesses by making sure that we all understood that there was something else going on."

"Ms. Lesa was the only witness who we heard about from the crime," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke murmured with a frown on his face. "We never spoke to anybody else since no other witnesses came forward with testimony. I think that she knew that better than anyone, and she decided to cover for the lack of witness testimony by saying what happened from an outsider's perspective."

"She would know better than anyone else what happened when the victim was attacked, after all," Prosecutor Burke said with a shake of her head. Her gaze shifted up to Ms. Lesa a moment later, and I found myself swallowing nervously. I already had a bad feeling about this, as much as I hated to admit it. Chief Prosecutor Bespoke and Prosecutor Burke were both incredibly familiar with matters involving Oracle since they had been involved with the project since the very beginning, but it still bothered me to think about. I doubted they would slip up, but the paranoia remained heavy and frustrating in the back of my mind.

"Why don't you go on and tell the truth for us, witness?" Judge Diaphan questioned. "We all believe at this point that you're involved with something greater than what you've led us to think. All the evidence that we need can be found on your leg as far as I'm concerned."

"You told us yourself that the culprit used a small knife. That was your theory, or that was how you stated it, but I believe that you were actually trying to push us into believing it because of how honest it is. The knife was likely used to cut your leg during the scuffle of the crime, and I believe that he tried to strangle you from there, hence how we got to an issue like this," I continued. "If you had been hurt from anything else, I doubt you would have been able to wander around and try to act normal. We haven't seen anything aside from your face since this case has begun, so that seems like another point that we're going in the right direction to assume that something is going on here."

"I don't think that you should be so confident about this," Ms. Lesa told us slowly and deliberately. "The culprit... You still need to find them. You need to figure out who that is above all else. You can worry about me a bit later, wouldn't you say?"

I could tell that was her way of both changing the subject and trying to push us to figure out who the one who attacked her was. In hindsight, the decision to try and push us towards the truth in other ways made much more sense. The culprit was still a mystery to us all, and it appeared as if the pale man with white hair hadn't resurfaced since he first tried to attack Ms. Lesa the day of the assault. Chrysalis was the only person I knew who fit the description of Ms. Lesa physically who had so little faith in the legal system that she would have done something like this. Most others would have gone out of their way to tell those who would have been able to help, but Chrysalis was unfortunately more than familiar with the dark side of the legal system, and it was probably pushing her the wrong way in this situation as well. I couldn't blame her for being so concerned about it, but I did find myself frowning at the idea that not even the victim, the one we had been trying to find all this time, was going to be able to help us to uncover the culprit's true name and face. After all, she didn't know either.

"The culprit didn't return to the scene of their crime. I believe that's why this is happening in the first place. You had a feeling that the man with white hair wasn't going to be coming back, and since there were no other witnesses for you to fall back on, you had to take matters into your own hands. That was what led us to this situation, and it's pushed you towards something rather unfortunate since you thought that you didn't have any other choice," I told her.

"If you ask me, I think that we need to make it our priority to try and find out who fits the description of the culprit. If not even the victim knows about who the culprit was, then that means that we have quite a bit of reasoning to take care of from here on out," Judge Diaphan concluded. "Witness, please state so at this time... Are you really the victim? Remember what happens when people lie in courts of law. You wouldn't want to cross any lines more than you already have."

For a long time, Ms. Lesa was perfectly silent, and when she did answer, she simply shook her head. "You are correct in your assumptions," she told us slowly. "I am the victim of this case. Eileen Liyle is the name that you all know me by. After the crime took place, I left behind a clue about my identity, and that was how my true name was uncovered."

"Mr. Morix," Yuri realized. "The identification card that was found at the scene of the crime told him who the victim was, so he definitely was the one to call in as soon as he figured it out... But why would he...?" She fell silent soon afterwards, and I saw her cringe as soon as the realization hit her. I made a mental note to talk with her about it as soon as we were out of the courtroom. I wanted to make sure that everything was taken care of as safely as possible. I was going to have to discuss this with Victoria as well, but for the time being, the events taking place in the courtroom had to be my number one priority.

Ms. Lesa tossed her hair over her shoulder, and I saw the glimmer of glasses shine over her eyes once again. Everything made so much damn sense when I looked at it this way, and it was almost painful to me that I hadn't looked through this lens sooner. Chrysalis hadn't been seen since before the case started, and the reasoning for that was blatantly obvious all of a sudden.

"Do you know anything about the culprit beyond the fact that he has white hair and pale skin?" came the voice of Prosecutor Burke next. Her words were stilted and forced, and I bit down on my lip nervously.

"I'm afraid not," Ms. Lesa answered with a shake of her head. "If I knew anything like a name, I would have mentioned this before. I don't know who the man was. We crossed paths for the first time that day in the agency. I was going in early to pick something up before going about my daily routine, and he ambushed me along the way. I don't know who he was or what he could have had against me. Everything about him is a mystery, but... If the chance came, I believe that I would have been able to identify his face in a crowd. If you showed me a lineup, I would be able to figure out who he was."

"I see," Judge Diaphan murmured. She picked up her gavel and hit it down to get rid of the chattering in the gallery before it could properly sink in. "Defense, prosecution, I'm calling for the end of the day's courtroom session. Both sides need to investigate what is happening with the culprit and come in tomorrow so that we can discuss the matter. If a list of suspects can be compiled based on physical appearance, that would be even better. We have to identify the culprit as soon as possible."

"Understood," I told her. Admittedly, I was beyond relieved to hear that the trial was finally about to end. Everything had felt so much longer since I came to the conclusion that Ms. Lesa and Ms. Liyle were something far more than people realized. It felt as if every second lasted a century as I counted down the minutes to the time when I would be able to discuss the matter freely with the people who understood the gravity of the unfortunate situation at hand.

Judge Diaphan's gaze shifted down to Ms. Lesa next, and the two locked eyes in an intense moment that made me frown heavily. "You are to be placed under protection from the culprit in case anything happens. I'll make sure of that much. While you're at it, go and have that cut on your leg examined by a professional. You're only going to cause yourself further grief if you walk around for any longer without having it checked out," she said sternly.

Not even Ms. Lesa was able to fight back against her, and she nodded simply. "Of course," Ms. Lesa answered. I could see so many similarities to Ms. Lesa and Chrysalis when I was looking closely, and I frowned to myself all over again when I remembered how much I had missed out on simply because I wasn't looking at the details closely enough. I had been so sure that Chrysalis was simply working with Mr. Morix on something else relating to the case. I just didn't expect that she would be so close without any of us ever picking up on it. Then again, that was the point, and it was part of Chrysalis' special skillset on top of that.

"When court next convenes, we will put our full attention to finding the truth behind the culprit and everything that he did the day of the crime. Without further ado, court is adjourned," Judge Diaphan announced, her tone slightly clipped due a quiet sense of irritation that was becoming impossible to hide. I could barely blame her, I had to say. This was all moving so quickly, and everything had changed for this case in the blink of an eye.

For the time being, I looked over to Yuri and Victoria. We were going to have quite a bit of work ahead of us, or in all honesty, a lot of talking. Mr. Morix couldn't keep the secret from us any longer after everything that we had already uncovered, and he was bound to be aware of such a truth. All it was going to take was one more day, and then the truth would be dragged to light. So much had happened, but we weren't going to give up yet.

For the sake of both Lily, Chrysalis, and everyone else involved with this case, we were going to who the culprit was no matter what it took.

Plot twist!

-Digital