Clearly, the proof that Gant is at least involved in the crime is the ID card record. As the Objection! music goes crazy since Phoenix finally thrust a piece of evidence into Gant’s face, Phoenix reminds the judge that they previously could not identify the person labeled “7777777.” Gant goes, “Sorry, but there’s no way you can prove that’s my card number,” and Phoenix doesn’t even blink before replying, “It’s your number.” That just upped Edgeworth’s erection from “alert” to “painfully rigid.” Phoenix explains that Gant is enough of a Fox News-watching, saggy pants-fearing, shitty Facebook meme-posting grandpa to be a total doofus about his security measures. The judge is also that exact same kind of grandpa, so he immediately understands that the matching numbers are not a coincidence. Phoenix slams his hands on the table and shouts, “Chief Gant! You entered the evidence room on the day of the crime!” Phoenix and Edgeworth’s relentless, sexy interrogation has finally gotten to Gant enough to make him sweat a little and shake his fist, as if he’s about to yell at them to get off his lawn. But otherwise he keeps it together and sticks with his insistence that Phoenix opening his safe was illegal. “And I will demand Mr. Wright be punished to the maximum extent of the law,” Edgeworth answers. I will pay 50 dollars right now for any doujinshi of this. “But right now,” Edgeworth goes on while I google feverishly, “this court demands an explanation from you…about the use of this ID card!”
I don’t believe either of these claims.
Gant admits he went to the evidence room. “I’m Chief of Police,” he declares with that sinister, I’m-undressing-you-with-my-mind-Miles smile. “Whether it’s the evidence room or the bathroom, what’s the difference? I can go anywhere I want.” But he says he did not enter the evidence room with Niceguy, whom he plainly lies that he hadn’t seen “in days.” Phoenix does not require my help to deduce that this is bullshit. “I’m afraid you’ve just undone yourself,” he tells Gant. Is his fly open? Is he masturbating right now? He is, isn’t he? “On that day, you had to have met with Detective [Niceguy]!” The judge interrupts, oddly given how long we’ve been at this, “What do you mean!? This trial’s purpose is to determine Lana Skye’s guilt!” But Edgeworth reminds the judge of their true noble, sexy quest: “This trial’s purpose is to determine the truth.” Phoenix loves when he gets philosophical. But the long and short of this is that the judge requires proof that Gant and Niceguy met that day, which he could have just asked for in the first place instead of bitching. Phoenix rolls his eyes and presents Niceguy’s lost item report.
Phoenix refreshes the court on the loss–or, as Edgeworth points out, theft–of Niceguy’s ID card the day he was killed. “So Detective [Niceguy] filled out a lost item report,” Phoenix explains. “He would have had to give that report…to the Chief of Police!” Would he really? There’s not some internal division, or even a lone secretary, whose job it is to handle lost ID cards or other department-issued items? Everybody has to go straight–so to speak–to Gant? That’s silly. Gant points out, though, that Phoenix having the half-filled out report in his hands is probably proof enough that Niceguy never filed it. “He filed it,” Phoenix says, all confident and assertive again. This is getting physically uncomfortable for poor Edgeworth. “How do I know, you ask? Because he needed to enter the evidence room that day.” Because of the stupid evidence transferal. “Detective [Niceguy] took the form to you, Chief Gant,” Phoenix explains. “Then…you accompanied the detective to the evidence room!” Gant’s twitchy expression is all the confirmation Phoenix needs, but he still refuses to accept defeat. Phoenix clarifies that this is the only way Niceguy and his murderer could have been in the evidence room together. “Hold on,” Gant says. “Let me guess what you’re going to say next. I, the Chief of Police, murdered poor [Niceguy]!” Phoenix is all, “Yup.” Edgeworth and I like that he didn’t shy away from the moment, though unlike Edgeworth, I do not have a boner.
“But wait!” the judge asks. “The Chief didn’t necessarily need to accompany him to the evidence room. He could have just lent him his ID card.” Jesus, your honor, when did you appoint yourself as Gant’s defense attorney? This is getting embarrassing. Gant seizes on this possibility like Larry after Phoenix asked if Kiyance moved to Canada. “Yes… Now that you mention it, I believe I might have done something of the sort.” And now it’s Edgeworth’s turn to object and make Phoenix thank God for the bench obscuring his bulging crotch. “Sorry, but that’s not possible,” Edgeworth says. “According to the record, your card was only used once. But you showed us your ID card earlier. If you had really ‘lent’ it to Detective [Niceguy], it would have been found on his body!” Good point, Miles! In retrospect, I’m surprised we didn’t have a subplot with Edgeworth’s ID being stolen and discovered in Niceguy’s pocket.
‘Chief Gant, gay marriage has been legalized in California! Your reaction?’
The power of Edgeworth’s logic finally backs Gant into a corner and he explodes, um, just about literally. He briefly looks like Thor, or a Super Saiyan, trapped inside a magical orange suit. Phoenix doesn’t react at all to this startling display and simply continues narrating. “The murder was most likely committed on the spur of the moment,” he says. “No one in their right mind would choose the Police Department as a place to commit murder.” Yeah, the man who just raged so hard he turned into lightning seems to be in his right mind. Sure. “After the murder,” Phoenix goes on, “you contacted Lana at the Prosecutor’s Office. Why else? To dispose of Detective [Niceguy]’s body.” Edgeworth objects again, but this one deflates any burgeoning Edgeworth logic boners: “However, the victim’s body was discovered in the Prosecutor’s Office parking lot. How did he manage to move it there?” OH MY GOD, EDGEWORTH. REALLY?
Look, I am not suggesting that Edgeworth’s mind is a flawless steel trap from which no detail can escape. I’m not Ema. But if I were Edgeworth, and a dead body were discovered in the trunk of my car, with my fuchsia knife sticking out of it, and I had just, with my boyfriend, formulated the theory that the dead body, just like me, somehow moved from the police department to the prosecutors’ office that day, I would hope it would not take me more than a moment to figure out how that happened. I mean, how is it that Edgeworth has not devoted every waking second of the past few days to wondering HOW THAT BODY ENDED UP IN HIS TRUNK? Did he think Lana specially jimmied it open just to have a fun, festive location for her stabbing party? What in the fuchsia fuck, Miles?
Gant wastes a lot of words strawmanning at Phoenix, about how he was at the police department all day and how there’s no way he got some random uniformed officer to haul a body to the prosecutors’ office for him. Edgeworth also pitches in, “And everyone’s aware that Lana stayed at the Prosecutor’s Office after the ceremony,” only so Phoenix can mutter, “Everyone except me, it seems…” Phoenix. She stayed at the prosecutors’ office because she got arrested. Good grief. Everybody is getting punchy and stupid. This trial needs to end for the good of all of us. Anyway, Phoenix manages to stay on track and tells Gant, “Chief Gant. You left all the evidence we need…to prove how you moved the body to the Prosecutor’s Office.” He adds to himself, “And all this time I thought it was a useless clue just taking up space…” And yet he didn’t throw it away back in his office. For reasons.
Either the blue screwdriver or the parking stub will work here, which just underscores further that Phoenix’s evidence tidying was totally arbitrary, since he could have at least thrown one of them away. I go with the screwdriver–yes, it requires more mental steps to the truth than the parking stub, but it’s phallic. Phoenix asks Edgeworth to think back to the day of Niceguy’s murder, which is thankfully all it takes for Edgeworth to get with the fucking program. “…A-AAAHHHH!” he shrieks again, and we flash back to his conversation with Phoenix about ferrying the screwdriver to the prosecutors’ office at Gant’s request. “After the ceremony ended that day,” Edgeworth says, back in the present, “I didn’t plan to return to the Prosecutor’s Office.” But he did, Phoenix notes, because Gant came up with a ridiculous reason for him to do so. And the body came with him–I can’t even believe Phoenix has to make this explicit–in the trunk of Edgeworth’s Penismobile.
The peanut gallery and the judge go wild at this latest “twist,” and Gant is silent when Phoenix asks for an alternative explanation for his odd request to Edgeworth. Phoenix bulls onward, “There’s only one plausible explanation: to transport the body to your accomplice…Ms. Lana Skye!” At this, the judge freaks out again. “Order! Order! Order! What’s going on here?” he gasps, eyes wide. “Is there no room for rebuttal to the defense’s outrageous accusations?” Hee. “Butt.” Phoenix brings everybody back to the photo of Lana, post-stabbing, with her hand on the trunk door. “This was not a photo of the body being stuffed in the trunk to be taken away,” he says. “It was exactly the opposite…” Edgeworth finishes, “It is a photo of a body being taken from the trunk!” It’s funny that Phoenix brings up the possibility now of Lana stuffing Niceguy in the Penismobile trunk to move the body elsewhere, when I don’t think that ever came up on the first day of trial. Everyone just acted like that was a totally natural place for a dead body to land. Whatever.
The judge begs Gant to say something in his defense, and I am starting to get a real vibe about these two, but Gant instead says, “I believe…your time’s up.” As his sinister organ music deafens the courtroom again, I guess to signify him regaining the upper hand, he reminds everyone that he has a lunch date, “with the District Attorney General,” and I wish I was kidding, but he adds, “We have to get going if we’re going to make it in time for the early bird special.” Oh, Grandpa. He’s probably a shitty tipper, too. Also, I thought “Chief Prosecutor” was this game’s equivalent to a district attorney, but I guess not? Whatever again. Phoenix’s obtuseness forces Gant to remind him again that he can stop testifying whenever he feels like it. “That is not a right to be casually invoked,” protests the judge. “There are certain risks to be considered!” Edgeworth joins in and basically calls Gant a giant pussy, but Gant doesn’t care. He dares Phoenix to present conclusive evidence that he murdered Niceguy, evidence he knows Phoenix doesn’t have, though I think the ID card record is pretty convincing. And I’m an expert on this absurd legal system by now! The game does not agree with me, however, and for once the right play is for Phoenix to admit he has no proof yet.
Those are some pretty sassy scare quotes, Miles.
Confirming that this was the only choice, the judge says, “This court is forced to penalize you for your allegations against the Chief,” but Phoenix doesn’t actually receive a strike, so this is one of those pretend penalties that probably ends in light spanking, a regular feature of Phoenix and Edgeworth’s nighttime roleplay. Gant takes this as some kind of personal victory, crowing, “I don’t gamble unless the stakes are high!” Yeah, because this was a calculated risk he willingly took. He certainly wasn’t dragged in here by court order! “It seems that Lady Luck was on my side again today,” he goes on. “Okay Udgey, I’ll leave the rest to you!” And without another word, Gant bolts for his lunch date with the undoubtedly gay and terrified DA.
The judge is about to administer his spanking of Phoenix in front of the peanut gallery when Gant’s last words give Edgeworth a bolt of inspiration. “‘Lady Luck,’ hm?” he wonders. “Maybe we should have a word with her.” He kind of sounds like he’s cracked up, but goes on more sensibly, “There’s one ‘Lady’ who knows the real truth behind this trial… We haven’t yet had the honor of hearing her testimony.” Obviously he means Lana, except that she has been on the witness stand like three different times now. The fact that this is plain as day does not, of course, stop Phoenix from derping to himself, “A lady who knows the truth… Another witness!” He probably thinks Edgeworth means Angel’s “boyfriend” in the parking garage security office, and is scared to death. After a lot of pointless discussion of this mystery woman, Edgeworth reminds Phoenix that he’s the one with the witness-calling power today. So hot. When the judge asks if such a witness exists–SIGH–Phoenix gets it together so he’s not the dumbest person in the room. “She may not be willing to tell the truth…” he blue-fonts. “But we can’t just stop now!”
“The defendant…Ms. Lana Skye!?” the judge cries when Phoenix calls her. His life must just be a wonder. Endless surprises every day! Phoenix very unnecessarily lays out her witness résumé: “She was in the underground parking lot at 5:15 PM on February 21. Her task: to dispose of the victim’s body…in accordance with a certain someone’s orders!” Holy shit, Lana was in the parking garage?! My mind is blown. Once Edgeworth agrees to the witness it was his idea to call, the judge prepares to order one final recess. But yet another mystery person shouts, “Hold on!” Chief Gant and his organ theme reappear, and this makes me involuntarily rub my eyes and blink several times, as if to bring the world back into focus. I am slowly losing my grip on sanity.