March 15

Courtroom No. 2

10:35 AM

Deirdre Brigit

~ Witness Testimony ~

~ I'm Not the Killer ~

- "All of your claims that I'm the killer are absolutely ridiculous."

- "What sort of motive would I have to kill the victim in this case? It makes no sense!"

- "Everything that you've said could easily be dismissed as mere coincidence and you know it. It's not conclusive."

- "Until you can give me something that shows for sure that I killed that guy, you can't throw me in jail."

- "What are you going to do, link me to the crime scene with some circumstantial evidence?"

- "You're all pathetic for thinking that I could really be the killer."

- "I've got nothing to do with the killer and you can't prove otherwise."

"He sure is insistent that he isn't the culprit," I heard Chrysalis mutter with a shake of her head. "Everything that you've said up until this point makes it clear that he's the one who killed the victim. I don't see any other solution, and yet, he's denying it like there's no tomorrow. All we need is a bit of proof..."

"I'm sure that we have it something in our evidence collection that shows he killed the victim," I told her. "It's just a matter of figuring out what it is... After we determine the piece of evidence that proves he was really there the night of the murder, we can show that he's the one and only killer in this case."

"Go on and start your damn cross-examination already," Mr. Kyllar huffed. "I have better things to do than listen to you two talk constantly about how I must be the one who killed the victim without any evidence. This is why I hate you lawyer types... You never know when the time comes to roll over and quit."

"While I don't agree with the witness' harsh words, I do agree that it's time to start the cross-examination," Judge Frost declared. "Go right ahead, Ms. Brigit."

I nodded. "I'll be right on it, Your Honor," I responded. I had an idea of how I wanted to take things, but I wasn't positive it would lead to anything conclusive. However, it didn't hurt to try, so I decided to take something of a logical gambit to see where it would take me at the end of the cross-examination...

~ Witness Testimony ~

~ I'm Not the Killer ~

- "All of your claims that I'm the killer are absolutely ridiculous."

- "What sort of motive would I have to kill the victim in this case? It makes no sense!"

- "Everything that you've said could easily be dismissed as mere coincidence and you know it. It's not conclusive."

- "Until you can give me something that shows for sure that I killed that guy, you can't throw me in jail."

- "What are you going to do, link me to the crime scene with some circumstantial evidence?"

- "You're all pathetic for thinking that I could really be the killer."

- "I've got nothing to do with the killer and you can't prove otherwise."

"Hold it!"

"I do have one question for you regarding the pieces of evidence that we found yesterday out in the courtyard," I mused. I actually had questions about all three, but I wanted to take it one step at a time to keep him from getting too outrageously angry with me. "Do you think you'd be able to answer it for me?"

"If it'll get me out of here sooner, anything," Mr. Kyllar grunted. "What is it that you want to know, Dollie?"

I cringed internally at his butchering of my name (which I was positive was intentional by this point) and sighed. "I want to know about the gun that was found at the scene of the murder," I told him. "More specifically, I want to know more about the identification numbers that you mentioned previously."

"Fine," Mr. Kyllar said. "The identification numbers are found in small stickers on each gun's handle. The one at the crime scene didn't have a sticker since it had been peeled away. Right now, the people at the prison are trying to figure out whose gun it was based on whichever gun is missing based on identification number. Since there are so many, we haven't been able to figure it out yet. Every single guard has a gun, you know. It takes time to go through them all."

"What of your gun?" I asked next. "Do you still have your gun on you or not? I noticed while we were looking through the prison yesterday that most guards we passed by did in fact have some sort of gun on their person, but you didn't seem to have one. Is there any particular reason for that, Mr. Kyllar?"

I could see his shoulders grow tense. "Why do you care? It doesn't have anything to do with the guy who died," he told me gruffly. I could tell that he was lying due to the discord that had appeared prominently in his voice. There was no way that he could worm his way out of things now.

"I beg to differ. Somehow, I get the feeling that this gun bears much more importance on this case than you're giving it credit for. If we can find the owner of the gun, we'll be that much closer to finding the killer. You don't seem to want to answer my question about the gun, which definitely makes you look suspicious," I told him, my eyes narrowing. "Tell me. Is your gun the one that was used to kill the victim or not, Mr. Kyllar?"

"And before you even try it, you can't say that Yuri took the gun. From yesterday, we already learned that your testimony is flaky and unreliable at best," Chrysalis told him. "I'm sure you remember telling us that you keep the same key that was supposedly stolen by the defendant locked away in your office where nobody besides you can reach it. You can't brush this under the rug by running away like you did before since, at the moment, you're under oath, aren't you?"

"What is this about, defense?" Judge Frost, taken aback by Chrysalis' statement. I took it that he hadn't heard anything about this, but I couldn't fault him for it. Nobody had heard about it outside of Chrysalis and me since we were the only ones present when he was interrogated by the former. "A flaky an unreliable testimony? I never heard anything of the sort regarding the witness until you brought it up just now. Is this perhaps from your investigation?"

"Please explain," Prosecutor Burke instructed through gritted teeth. "I didn't hear about it either." I saw her shoot a look at Chrysalis, who just shrugged it off.

"Yesterday, we spoke with Mr. Kyllar about the murder case. We asked him about how the key was supposedly taken by the defendant the day before the murder, but when pressed, his statements had holes in them. I figured that it was because he was lying. Not long after, I learned that he keeps his key to the courtyard in his office, locked in there, mind you. The defendant could not possibly have gotten in there to get the key if it was really locked. Even if he says it isn't locked, I doubt a young girl with no experience of the prison layout would be able to sneak inside and pick up the key. The defendant could not possibly have taken the key, which means that she could not have gotten out to the courtyard. If we take it one step further, we come to the conclusion that the defendant could not have committed the crime," Chrysalis smirked. "Now, let's look at the gun that we were discussing a moment ago. Mr. Kyllar's testimony has already been shown to be unreliable, so who's to say that he's not lying about this too? Maybe the murder weapon is his gun. That would make him either the killer or someone with close ties to our culprit here. Somehow, I doubt that it's the latter, if you know what I'm saying here."

"You think he's lying because he's the killer," Judge Frost concluded. "Admittedly, I can see where you're coming from. He said that he had nothing to do with the crime, but his link to the key proves that to be a lie. And if the gun used to kill the victim belonged to him, then that means that he's a certain suspect."

"Objection!"

"We can't go saying is the killer quite yet. After all, we don't know if it was his gun used to kill the victim. Even if it was, that doesn't say conclusively that he's the one who did it. Someone could have easily stolen his gun and used it in this murder. I doubt that a prison guard would leave his gun in his office, which means that someone could have easily taken it off his person when he wasn't paying attention," Prosecutor Burke cut in. "What do you have to say to that?"

"Objection!"

"I highly doubt that someone could take a gun out of its holder, especially when the gun is on the body of a highly trained prison guard. The gun would be nearly impossible to take. If the gun belongs to him, he must have committed this murder. If he's as professional a guard as he seems, having made his way up this far in the ranks of the prison, he's definitely worth his salt and wouldn't allow a gun to be taken from him that way. He surely would have noticed," I responded. "If we assume that the murder weapon belongs to him, we also have to assume that he's the one who killed the victim that fateful morning."

"Even so, you can't exactly prove that my gun is the one that was used in the murder, now can you?" smirked Mr. Kyllar. "The results won't be done for quite some time, likely not until the trial is over and done with. Unless the judge decides to postpone the trial another day, which I highly doubt he will, the defendant's fate is as good as written in stone. Her life might as well be over. She'll spend the rest of her days toiling away in prison as a convicted murderer."

"We won't be able to use the gun to our advantage quite yet, so we need to find another way to strike at him," Chrysalis said. "If we pick a piece of evidence, one of the three that we found at the scene of the murder, we should be able to figure something out. The gun is out, which leaves just the key and piece of hair... One of those has to lead us to him. But how to use it...? You can pick which one we take a look at. I'm sure you'll make the right choice."

"No pressure," I couldn't help but mutter. My heart raced in my chest as I looked down at a piece of paper detailing the key and piece of hair. The key had already been discussed at great length, which left just the key to be examined. I picked up the sheet of paper and began reading it over. After going through all the information the sheet contained, I came up with nothing. A frown appeared on my face. There had to be something, but what was it? What was I missing?

"I think that it's something to do with the hair, but what could it be?" I asked Chrysalis in a hurried whisper. "Do you have any ideas as to what it could be?"

Chrysalis placed her hand on her chin for a moment and stared at Mr. Kyllar before her eyes widened slightly. "I think I might have an idea, but I can't say for sure... Take a look at Mr. Kyllar. What's one thing that you notice about him? I'm talking about physical appearance here," she said to me.

I did as she told me and looked at Mr. Kyllar. He was wearing the regular prison uniform. There was a damaged part of his uniform, the sleeve, which I was sure was there because of the murder, potentially him struggling with the victim when the crime was committed. He had his hat low over his eyes to the point that one of them wasn't even visible. I couldn't see any of his hair though, so I wasn't even sure if he had hair. His visible eyebrow was brown though.

I looked down for a moment and began to think a bit more intensely. The piece of evidence that I had chosen to look into with a more critical eye was the small section of hair. We knew that it was a wig since it didn't have any DNA on it. There unfortunately weren't any strands that had come off from the user's head in the clump that we had found. Because of that, I figured that it had to be from the bottom of the wig, away from the user's head. That was the only option.

The hair was a bit uneven as well, as if it had been cut off roughly. I took another look at the crime scene photo and saw that Mr. Guiy had been holding a shard of glass in his hand when he died. It was sharp enough to cut his hand, which meant that it would easily be sharp enough to cut hair. Perhaps that was where our little clump had come from. It was cut off during the struggle between the victim and his killer. The victim used the glass shard to cut the segment of hair off, maybe while trying to injure the killer trying to kill him. Plus, it would leave behind proof of who the killer really was if he did it.

So the hair was cut off during the struggle between the victim and the killer during the struggle. The killer was definitely wearing the wig when the crime took place, but one had to wonder why that was. Why not just go with their regular hair? It's not like the victim was going to survive long enough to tell anyone about the hair color of the killer in that sort of situation. The victim was already doomed by that point in time. Perhaps, however, there was another explanation for it... Maybe it had something to do with Mr. Kyllar's hair, which hadn't been seen at all by Chrysalis nor me this entire case. If that was it...

The wig had to belong to Mr. Kyllar. His eyebrows were brown. That didn't match up with white, which meant it was the perfect disguise. Everybody around the prison would know him as having brown hair, so nobody would look his way twice if white hair was found at the scene of the murder. Plus, he ended up being able to use it to his advantage to frame Yuri later on. We hadn't seen his hair at all, which could only mean one thing, and now I knew what it was...

"The wig is on Mr. Kyllar right now!" I cried out once I had snapped from my daze. "Mr. Kyllar is wearing the white wig that this hair came from!"

"Who would be stupid enough to hide a wig on their person if part of the hair was found at the scene of a murder?" snorted Mr. Kyllar. "That has got to be the most ridiculous thing that I've heard in my entire life, and during this trial, I've heard a lot of pretty damn stupid things, I'll have you know."

"Your hair has been hiding beneath your hat this entire case, Mr. Kyllar. Your eyebrows appear to be brown, which would make it the perfect cover. The people working at the prison would know your hair color as brown and not suspect you owning the white hair, which was later shown to be a wig. Any new investigators would see your brown eyebrows and understand that you don't have white hair and couldn't have possibly committed this murder. You were using that wig to frame my client, who happened to have white tips to her black hair," I declared. "I'm afraid that the jig is up now though. You have no choice but to confess."

"If you really don't have anything to hide, why don't you go right ahead and take that wig off, Mr. Kyllar?" Chrysalis asked. "It's simple enough. If you remove your hat and there's no wig, we won't have any reason to suspect you on this line of logic. However, if you keep on resisting, it will become even more painfully clear that you're the one who killed our victim in this case. If you need us to, we can go on and explain how we believe the crime took place. Will that help you come out of your shell and admit that you're a murderer? Even if it doesn't we'll all know the truth fully well, so you won't need to confess, will you?"

"I won't accept this unless you explain why I must be the killer," Mr. Kyllar said, anger flashing in his eyes. "You had better explain it, you stupid lawyers. I didn't do it, which you'll see soon enough when you slip up in your explanation."

"I'll get right to things then. The morning of the murder, you snuck out to the courtyard and got into the power box using your key, which was in your possession and not in the hands of the defendant. You unlocked it using the password and fingerprints. You turned the power off before heading off to the room where the report was printed. You cut your name out of the sheet, leaving only a hole behind. After that, you did one of two things. You either returned to help the victim out of his cell or he got out on his own when he realized the power was out. I assume that it was the former due to the fact that he wouldn't have come out to the courtyard otherwise. Plus, I highly doubt he could have gone by undetected without the help of a guard," I began to explain.

"This is stupid," Mr. Kyllar scoffed. "I had no reason to kill him. You're just pulling a bunch of crap out of nowhere at this point. Why don't you just shut up and let the adults handle this murder case, Daisy? Don't you have to go play dolls or something? Let your mommy fix you a snack, kiddo?"

I glared at him, angered at this words about a 'mommy'. I swallowed it back and continued my summary. "In the time that followed, Ms. Rell went out to the courtyard to turn the power back on after you turned it off. You shot at the victim using your gun. It went through the window near the courtyard and struck him in the leg. That shattered the window and put the victim in an injured state. Glass got all over the courtyard because you shot at him from inside," I continued to say. "Next, you went out to the courtyard to finish the victim off, but you struggled quite a bit. A piece of your sleeve was torn off, specifically a fabric patch from a previous incident involving your uniform being damaged. The patch was left at the scene of the murder. A piece of the white wig you were wearing was also found there, likely cut off by the piece of glass from the window found in the victim's hand when the body was discovered by the police.

"You shot him in the heart and killed him. Afterwards, you got to work in setting up the crime scene. You took the victim's body up to the prison tower and suspended it from the handrail that surrounded the upper area of the watchtower that was used by guards to look over the courtyard. You cleared the gun of your prints and tossed it into a nearby bush after tearing off the identification sticker. The key, covered in your prints, was also found there inside the bush. The piece of white hair was left to frame the defendant, who had white on the tips of her hair," I went on. "You also opened the power box, but only the password section, to make it look like someone had gotten into it recently. Finally, you wrote in blood a message to the one and only Oracle of the Law."

"Why would I want to do all that?" I heard Mr. Kyllar ask. "You're stupid for really thinking I'd go this far without a concrete motive in mind."

"Maybe you did have a motive, but we just don't get it yet," I suggested. "The message in blood at the scene of the murder obviously had a reason for being there. You wouldn't have left it there if there wasn't a purpose behind it. Plus, if your only defense is that you don't have a motive that we know of, that means that it's your only source of defense at this point. There is nothing else you can say to keep us from accusing you of this murder, so you're bringing it up."

"Unless you can give me a motive, I'm not accepting any of this crap!" came a yell from Mr. Kyllar. "Without a motive, nothing you say matters in putting me behind bars! You don't even know if I did it or not! It's all just damn speculation! Without a motive or some real proof, you can't convict me of anything, lady!"

Chrysalis looked up with a frown. "Your motive has to do with the message at the scene of the murder, doesn't it?" she asked. "The note to Oracle. It was a threat that Oracle wasn't going to be around for much longer. Let's think of it like this... The trial last year had Oracle appearing publicly. Nobody knew it was Oracle until the killer exposed them and slit their wrists in front of everyone. You knew that it had to be somebody close to Venus Rinko, as was shown during her murder last month since she was an accomplice. After thinking it over, you thought that it was her youngest sister, Yuri. If she wasn't the one, she at least had something to do with it. You wanted to get her behind bars for this murder, which you thought was foolproof so that you could execute her for being Oracle. Does that sound about right, Mr. Kyllar? Or perhaps did you have something else in mind when you were killing the victim?"

Mr. Kyllar was growing increasingly angry at this point. He glared at Chrysalis and looked ready to storm over to her and slap her. "You're just a stupid little kid! You don't understand anything to do with Oracle! You can shut up and go on about your normal life like all stupid kids should!" he yelled out.

"I'm afraid I can't do that at the moment. Not until you confess. I know a lot more about Oracle than you realize, so perhaps you should give it up and confess to your crimes already, Mr. Kyllar," Chrysalis said. "How about it? You might as well get it all over with."

Seeming to have his motive exposed, Mr. Kyllar began to growl. It increased in volume slowly before he was screaming out as loud as what seemed to be humanly possible. He ripped his hat off and began to try to tear at it. Eventually, he came across a loose thread and pulled on it harshly. Slowly, the hat came unwound, leaving only the shell of it behind. What remained fell to the ground with a light thud. His white hair, or more accurately, his white wig was seen clearly by all. There was no way that he could escape his lies now. This breakdown made it perfectly obvious that he was our killer in this case.

"You don't have any damn proof! You don't! You don't! You don't! Nothing you can say will ever change that! It won't! It won't! It won't! You should just be quiet! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You're just spouting crap! It's crap! It's crap! It's crap! Oracle would never be the motive for murder! She wouldn't! She wouldn't! She wouldn't! You're all just stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I'm done with all of you and everything that you're saying! I'm done! I'm done! I'm done! I hate you all! I hate! I hate! I hate!" Mr. Kyllar yelled out. He began to try to rip at the thread from his hat with his teeth, pulling it in all sorts of odd ways. In a few places it snapped, sending one piece falling down to the podium in front of him. Once it seemed that the thread couldn't possibly be torn more, Mr. Kyllar gathered up all the pieces of thread in his hands. He threw them up into the air. As they fell, it appeared that they were showing the murder. It showed one person shooting the other and then suspending the body. The last piece showed a person being cut on the hands by another. "Damn you, Oracle! Damn you to heeeeeeeeeeell!"

Mr. Kyllar stared down at the ground. The threads from his hat had fallen to spell something. I read it and realized it was 'I'M THE KILLER'. This was a confession from him, as if his breakdown wasn't proof enough of this already. He wasn't even trying to squirm his way out of it now. It was obvious at this point.

Mr. Kyllar removed his wig and stared at it with a small smile. Underneath was his brown hair. He began to rip the wig into many tiny pieces before dropping them to the ground. "You probably think that this is all over, don't you?" he asked. He looked up and stared at me. "You'd be dead wrong. It isn't over yet."

"What are you saying?" Judge Frost asked, his eyes wide in fear. "You've been caught. What could you possibly have up your sleeve now? We all know."

"My name is not 'Ulysses Kyllar' as you think it is," the man said, his voice deadly serious. "It never was. I appeared two years ago with a purpose. I'm here to find out who Oracle is so that I can end her life once and for all. She's been nothing but a thorn in our side for years now. We've tried as hard as possible, but to no avail... But I suppose that it isn't all bad. I've learned a few things from this trial that I can't exactly deny.

"For one, the lawyers of Morix Law Offices are quite the interesting figures. You might actually be a match for us after all. You're a lot better than you appear to be," Mr. Kyllar went on. "Second, Oracle knows how to keep their mask on. I mean, I'm sure that you all thought this trial would end with a grand appearance from the one and only Oracle of the Law. I'm afraid that you'd be wrong. A grand appearance from Oracle can't happen when they're already in here."

The gallery burst into chatter above us. I frowned to myself. I had been hesitant to believe it at first, but he was probably right. If Oracle's name was written at the scene of the murder, it was inevitable that they'd come to see what it was all about. I just wondered how he could possibly know if Oracle was present...

"It was obvious that she'd be here. She's in the gallery somewhere now. I'm sure of it... To Oracle, I have just one thing to say, but I don't think I should be the one to tell it to you. The ones I'm working with should tell you about everything that we've been plotting," Mr. Kyllar declared. The gallery was attentive once more on him now that he had spoken again. "It'll be any second now that they show themselves... Just give it a second and you'll understand what I mean..."

The gallery continued to prattle on from up above. I wasn't listening. I was far too focused on what Mr. Kyllar was saying. Oracle was in the courtroom. Somewhere in the gallery was the legal spy that had been the talk of the city for two years. A person with that much influence on our admittedly twisted legal system was here, watching to see what was happening and why their name was at the scene of the murder. Oracle was here. From the sound of it, Mr. Kyllar had a message for them, and it definitely wasn't a positive one.

I tried to think of what it could be, but I never got the chance, for a voice cut through my thoughts.

"Greetings, Oracle."

Would you look at that? A cliffhanger.

I'm not going to say much about that since I don't want to spoil anything. What I will talk about is the Fire Emblem Heroes direct. Sumia is coming. Good. Very good.

Sumia is a good girl in my eyes. That's probably going to be obvious one day in one of these stories since one of my Ace Attorney kids is named after her. Sumia Paige. Well, that's all I have to say about that to avoid spoiling anything.

I'll be off! I hope you enjoyed! Next week is QATH and DOD for updates, so we'll wrap up this case!

-Digital