A/N: Don't forget to check the Janaverse tag on my tumblr.
July 11 (2050), 10:00 AM, District Court, Courtroom No. 1
"Court is now in session for the trial of Ked Napp," said a judge with braided hair, who was around the chief prosecutor's age.
"The defense is ready, your Honor," said Diego Armando.
"The prosecution is ready, your Honor," said Miguel Fey-Armando, age nineteen. It was his debut, and no matter how cool he was playing it right now, everyone knew he was internally freaking out.
Mostly because he was debuting against his own father.
"Before we begin," said the Judge calmly, "I'd like to ask the prosecution what I should call him…"
"'Fey' is fine, your Honor."
"Very well. Prosecutor Fey, it has come to my attention that it is… uncertain if the defendant is competent to stand trial?"
"Yes, your Honor," Miguel said, "while he does, uh, exhibit delusional tendencies, the prosecution believes that he is more than fit to answer for his crimes."
"Mr. Armando?" the Judge said. "How do you argue?"
"The defense asserts that Mr. Napp is completely innocent in this matter," Armando said, taking a swig of coffee, "delusional or not."
"I see," said the Judge. "I'd like to see this for myself. Defendant," she extended a hand, "please take the stand."
"Witness, name and occupation," Miguel said once Mr. Napp was ready.
"My name is Herman Webster Mudgett, also known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes," Ked Napp said, "I run a hotel."
"What year were you born, witness?" the Judge said.
"1861."
There was some murmuring in the gallery, which the Judge quickly dispelled with a tap of her golden gavel. "What year is it now, witness?" she asked.
"2050, of course."
"So you are 189 years old?"
Napp shook his head. "I'm only 30, your Honor."
"Do you know what crime you've been charged with?" Miguel said.
"Yes, naturally," Napp said calmly, "I kidnapped 25 people over the course of the last ten years, and when the police caught up to me on Friday, the eighth, I butchered them all."
April 27 (2054), 11:45 PM, Los Angeles Central Hospital, Parking lot
"This Macario Armando guy is from the alpha lambda timeline?" Ares said, "the same one you're from, E?"
Misty E nodded vigorously. "Well, actually, sir, I've never met him before in my life. So I guess I don't really know him, sir, but I do know of him."
"Well, who is he?" Watson said impatiently.
"In my timeline," Misty E said, still addressing Ares, "the people you know as Maria and Miguel Fey-Armando are actually twins, Maritza and Macario Armando. They were born around the time my daddy - Phoenix Wright - first met Mia Fey."
"So, when she was still alive?" Ares said.
"Yes, sir. In my timeline, sir, Mia Fey and Diego Armando were already married by the time of the Dahlia Hawthorne case. Anyway, I always knew Maritza growing up, and she actually had kids around my age, but… Macario, sir, he went missing a couple years before I was born."
"Huh," said Ares.
"But I've seen pictures of him before, sir, and I have to say he didn't look the way he does now. He looked a lot more like Miguel Fey-Armando, only older, sir."
"No eyepatch?" Watson said.
"Nope."
"Huh," said Watson this time.
"…so," Ares said after a very long pause, "what are we going to do about Punished 'Venom' Miguel?"
Watson gave him a dirty look. "We don't have time for jokes about forty-year-old video games, Ares. Set up another set of coordinates, I'm getting my blackmail tonight and no Macario Armando is going to stop me."
"Tch. Alright, alright," Ares said, taking the time-travel device that Misty E handed him, "chill."
April 29, 9:50 AM, Grape Water Apartment Complex, Room no. 280
Detective Noir tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for a call back from Prosecutor Fey. She'd asked him yesterday to get forensics to run that blood sample from Jantje's clothes against the blood sample from the case four years ago. She supposed it was taking him so long because she had asked him as he was leaving work - or more likely, because he was trying to run some evidence from an old case of his against some evidence from a current case of another prosecutor, without telling said prosecutor he was doing this.
Maybe all this was just Detective Noir's deep, deep need to get to get to the bottom of the L. A. Holmes case. After all, it could still turn out that this case really was unrelated.
That wasn't what her gut was telling her, of course. Her gut was telling her that the blood on Jantje's clothes had belonged to her killer the same way the blood on the floor back then had belonged to the true culprit, not that poor, goofy sap Ked Napp.
But maybe, too, the fact that Jantje had 6YJL401 on her was just a coincidence. Maybe Jantje was just another person whose life had been affected by the hostage massacre, and she had just kept that on her as a reminder. Detective Noir did something similar, after all.
She snorted. It was probably going to be another couple hours before Miguel or forensics called, assuming that even happened today. And even if the blood matched - so what? Sure, if it also matched the guy she'd already pinched, they could make a case that he was, in fact, the man behind the murders four years ago. (And they could transfer this case over to Miguel once and for all, leaving Alois out of this entirely.) But if it didn't?
Then the blood really would just be a coincidence. After all, all the evidence pointed towards the suspect as being the perp.
Maybe a little too much evidence, Detective Noir realized, looking around his apartment.
Lars Ennie was a divorcé pushing fifty, with two teenaged children and a high-ranking job at some bank. He lived by himself in this middlingly modest apartment and had a tendency to drink. His neighbors reported him coming home drunk the night of the twenty-sixth, the night of the crime, around 9:00, the estimated time of death. That next morning he'd left for Tracy on business, and was only just coming back to the apartment building about 45 minutes ago when the police caught up with him in the entrance lobby. He'd quickly consented to having his fingerprints taken - "Always ready to help the police, got nothing to hide," he had said nervously - and when his thumbprint had been a perfect match to the one on the quarter, he had been quickly arrested.
The apartment was a mess. Blood everywhere - Detective Noir was surprised the person living below hadn't complained about anything seeping through their ceiling these past few days. Forensics was all over the transfer patterns in the blood - they could see exactly where Jantje had fallen, where she had struggled and fought back, and where she had been picked up, blood dripping, to be carried to the dumpster.
There hadn't been any blood in the hallway for that, since her body had been wrapped in one of Ennie's jackets. Said jacket had been brought back to the apartment, probably to avoid leaving identifying evidence in the dumpster with the body, and left on the couch. In addition to the bloody jacket, there was also a slightly discolored coat with patches on the elbows that looked to be about Jantje's size, and the knife that she had been killed with - a big, ominous kitchen knife meant for cutting chicken, not humans, that had Ennie's fingerprints all over the handle, in addition to partials from Jantje.
She really tried to fight back.
Detective Noir frowned. This was certainly enough evidence to lock him up, and nothing seemed out of place, except… shouldn't Ennie have tried to clean up before he left for Tracy? Sure, he had evidently been drunk when the crime took place, and sure, he would have been hungover the next morning when he made tracks. Maybe him not cleaning up anything would have been believable, if he hadn't returned to Los Angeles. Why would he do that?
Plus, the Jack the Ripper-style surgical precision was odd coming from a drunk businessman with no medical background… that they knew of.
She stepped back into the hallway. Alois had just been talking to one of the neighbors, Dr. Kamosinko's assistant. He caught her eye, than walked over to her.
"What's your story, morning glory?" Detective Noir asked.
"Fräulein Proserpine also heard screaming the night of the twenty-sixth," Alois said, "but she also didn't think it was anything serious."
Detective Noir rolled her eyes. "That's two people who heard that broad take the big one, and neither of them dropped a dime. What a curve."
"Neither of our witnesses said they heard her scream 'Help' or 'Stop' or anything like that," Alois said, raising his eyebrows, "so they thought the screams were… sonstwas."
"I suppose that explains how Jantje got into Ennie's apartment - if she was a pro skirt…"
Alois got an odd look on his face. "Ich glaube nicht. Has anyone who knew her said anything to that effect?"
Detective Noir shook her head. "Nah, but I still need to go see if anyone makes the coat. If they were her rags, then we might get a better idea of what went down in here." Since, after all, the lack of knife-tears on the coat would indicate that she had removed it willingly once she was in the apartment.
"Übrigens, Frau Detektivin Noir, did you run the plate number forensics found?"
Tread carefully, Blanche, Detective Noir told herself before answering, "Yo, it was registered to one Julia Smythe. A fake name," she added, suddenly unable to met Alois' eyes, "and the address given was the joint where that hostage massacre took place four years ago."
Alois gave her a quizzical look. "Hostage massacre?" he said. "Oh, I… think I remember hearing about that once or twice. Something to do with a serial kidnapper, ja?"
"Something like that."
Alois shrugged. "Naja, there's no reason to think that note had anything to do with this case. Perhaps Fräulein Jantje kept the plate number on her as a reminder of what happened four years ago."
"…yeah," Detective Noir said, "that's what I was thinking."
But… how did Jantje get that plate number? Was she investigating the case on her own? And had that lead to her death…?
April 29, 10:30 AM, Wright Anything Agency
"You gotta help me," cried the thirteen-year-old girl with black lipstick and a band t-shirt, "my father's been accused of murdering a homeless woman! But he didn't do it!"
"I tried to get her to calm down before bringing her back here," Maya Valerie said, quickly washing her hands of the girl her age's hysteria.
"It's fine, Valerie," said Justice, "alright, kid, let's start with your name-"
"My name's Ash Ennie," she blurted out, "my father's name is Lars Ennie. He's a banker. He was in Tracy the past two days, and mom just got a call from the detention center - he's been arrested! The police say he murdered a homeless woman, but he'd never do that!"
"Where is your mom?" Justice said, glancing behind her at the door to the Agency.
"Uh- she, um, doesn't care if he was arrested or not. They're divorced."
One of Justice's eyebrows twitched. He was a divorcé himself, and separated from his current wife. Most likely the thought had crossed his mind of how Judge Juniper Justice or Detective Skye would act would act if he happened to be arrested. "Alright, Ash," he said, "you and your dad will be just fine. We'll handle things." He turned around. "Hey, Wat! You want to take this one?"
Watson's head jerked up from her desk (Diego Armando's old desk), where she had been sleeping - which was, in Jana's opinion, the only time she was tolerable. "What?" she said, blinking rapidly.
"I said, do you want to take this case? It's been a while since you-"
"I'm good," she yawned, "you can defend this one, Dad," and then she went back to her nap.
Justice rolled his eyes, irritated, and turned back to Ash. "Sorry about that. Let's go see your dad at the detention center, alright?"
"Alright!" Ash yelled, grabbing Apollo by the hand and dragging him out the door, giving him barely enough time to snag his notebook off his desk before the door slammed behind them.
"I'm surprised you didn't volunteer, Jana," Maria Fey-Armando interrupted the silence that ensued with a raised eyebrow. "It has been a whole month since your last case."
"Mm," Jana said. She writing in her notebook, carefully rewriting future Alois' dying message - in reverse. After all, if Alois himself had specifically identified hirigana as the alphabet people learn first, and had said that newbies sometimes got yokogaki backwards…
ご んりしいるくざ
ざくるいしりんご
"What's this?" Maria said, walking over and looking over Jana's shoulder. "Japanese?" she said, standing back up and taking a sip of her xocolatl.
Jana blinked. "Maria, you speak Japanese, do you not?"
"Not a lot, but yes."
"What does this mean?" Jana said. Maya Valerie came over to look at Jana's notebook, too.
"Let me see," she said, taking the notebook from Jana and reading it carefully. "Go-n-ri-shi-i-ru-ku-za… za-ku-ru-i-shi-ri-n-go. Maria, what does that mean?"
"'Gonrishiirukuza' doesn't mean anything," Maria said, "but 'zakuruishi ringo' means 'garnet apple'." She frowned. "Strange… no one really uses the word 'zakuruishi' anymore… and you'd think it'd be 'zakuruishi no ringo', otherwise it's just words mashed together…"
"I see," said Jana. She didn't, actually. Garnet apple? What did that mean? And what did that have to do with 'MF-A'?
July 11 (2050), 10:30 AM, District Court, Courtroom No. 1
"A witness - whose name will be withheld due to her age - managed to get the license plate number of the car the culprit was driving," Miguel said, leaning smugly over the bench, "the number was immediately traced. Registered to a Julia Smythe."
"My client sure doesn't look like a Julia Smythe to me," Armando said calmly.
"Of course it wasn't registered under his real name - Julia Smythe was the historic H. H. Holmes' lover, and one of his victims."
"And a woman," Armando said.
Miguel cleared his throat. "Actually, when we first arrested the defendant, he was wearing women's clothing."
"Oh," said the Judge flatly.
"Anyway… the address on the plate led us to a large house just outside of Hollywood. A former hotel, by the looks of it, and since the incident we've checked the deeds and the owner of the house is also this fictional Julia Smythe. The defendant claims that he owns that house."
"Hm," Armando said. It sounded like he'd seen a contradiction, but he was staying silent for now, so Miguel kept talking.
"Unfortunately, when the police arrived, they were met at the door by one of the now-deceased, Abraham Duction. He told the police that the kidnapper was not willing to surrender, and was then stabbed in the back. The door was barricaded immediately after that." The already-quiet courtroom seemed to grow even more soundless as he continued: "For the next eleven hours, the police attempted to negotiate. Around midnight, they stormed the building, only to find twenty-five dead bodies and the defendant. Mr. Napp confessed at the scene to killing all the hostages during the negotiation process."
"What were his demands during the negotiation?" the Judge asked.
"None, your Honor," Miguel said, "he claimed, through a hostage, that he only kidnapped people because he was so angry at the world. He had no other way of quelling the deep rage inside of him… he was unwilling to give up his 'prizes', and that's why he murdered them all."
July 11, 12:15 PM, District Court, Courtroom no. 2
Armando slammed the bottom of his coffee mug on the defense bench. "Are you proposing my client began the serial kidnappings as a child?"
"The defendant claims to be thirty. He would have started the kidnappings at age twenty," Miguel said, "which is more than possible."
Armando shook his head. "The records are clear - he was reported missing ten years ago, at age twelve. My client's true age is 22."
"Objection!" Miguel said, "I…"
"You didn't check, Prosecutor Fey?" said the Judge, her severe tone undercutting her pleasant expression.
"I… was not informed that the defendant was ever reported a missing person," Miguel said, clenching his hands to keep them from trembling. "Da- Mr. Armando. Was he reported missing from the state of California?"
"Wyoming," Armando said.
"That explains why I didn't know. Still," he said, recovering, "the house where the crime took place has been owned by 'Julia Smythe' for twelve years now. The defendant can't have moved to Los Angeles twelve years ago and gone missing in Wyoming ten years ago! Which means," Miguel exclaimed, throwing his hand out, "the defendant isn't really Ked Napp!"
The gallery burst into discussion. The Judge tapped her gavel.
"Or," Armando said, "the defendant isn't really Julia Smythe."
"Then who is?" Miguel said.
"That spot of blood on the floor that didn't match any of the victims," Armando said, "who does it belong to?"
"…"
Armando continued. "It was fresh, from the day of the crime. Yet it matched no one there - not even my client, or one of the police officers who stormed the place. So," he leaned forward over the defense bench, "whose is it? Who does that blood belong to?"
"…someone who managed to escape," Miguel said.
"Yes, a victim who managed to escape," Armando said, "or perhaps… the real culprit."
Miguel slammed his fist on the bench. "You- you can't build an entire case off of an unidentified spot of blood!"
"I can and I will," Armando retorted. "Your Honor! The defense proposes that the real culprit escaped and left one of their longest-imprisoned victims to take the fall! And that blood's the proof!"
The Judge in this chapter was actually Justine Courtney from GK2. And I'll have you know I don't speak a dang word of Japanese.
"Maritza" is a Latin American variant of "Maria".
"Lars Ennie" is a pun on "larceny". He's the person Rachel DeLite was trying to steal from in Sleeping Turnabout, if anyone remembers that.
"Ash Ennie" is a pun on "astheny", also known as asthenia, an abnormal loss of strength.
Abraham Duction… Abe Duction… "abduction"… hahaha…
Also you have no idea how tempting it was to just straight-up write Detective Noir's entire POV section in full-blown Dashiell Hammett-style hardboiled 30s detective slang.
Translations:
sonstwas. (DE) something else.
Übrigens, (DE) by the way,
Naja, (DE) Well,
