Gant sneers, “Listen good, Lana!” and Phoenix, not fucking joking, thinks, “He’s talking to Lana!” WELL SPOTTED, HOLMES, GOOD SHOW. Gant ignores Phoenix’s stupid blue font like I wish I could and goes on, “I don’t think you need me to tell you this, but if you accept Mr. Wright’s claim…there will be terrible consequences. That’s right… Your sister will be found guilty…for Neil Marshall’s murder!” Edgeworth and Phoenix, in the face of this incredibly blatant and super illegal witness coercion, stand there impotently. Did their brains check out when the judge mentioned recess, and now they’re mentally undressing each other? Phoenix, at least, seems dimly aware that this is not good for his case. “Of course,” Gant adds, like this makes what he’s doing okay, “you’d never support such outrageous claims anyway…right?” Jesus. This guy is a piece of work. With that, his music cuts out and he rushes away for his lunch date again. He’s probably got the DA naked in his pool and sprinted back when his spidey senses told him Lana needed some extra threatening.
I’m glad we made time for that! So critical. Out in the lobby, Edgeworth tells Phoenix, “Looks like we managed to stay in the game.” I so love when Edgeworth treats Phoenix like an ally. They are going to fuck their way to the bottom of this mystery! But since Edgeworth’s pheromones are probably raging right now with all this sexy legal camaraderie, Gumshoe is drawn over to them like a moth to a bug zapper. “That Chief…” Gumshoe says casually, like he didn’t come over here just to cockblock Phoenix. “He’s something else, eh pals?” He still sounds half-admiring, which is so sad. When Phoenix goes, “Detective Gumshoe!” in a “get out of here, bro” way, the poor guy replies, “Ha ha ha. I’m not a ‘detective’ anymore.” But he has decided, since Phoenix totally got him fired, that he’s hiring himself as Phoenix’s new teenage girl assistant. “I’ll take the place of that top-knotted girl you used to work with!” Gumshoe says enthusiastically. I only point this out because 1) Gumshoe wearing Maya’s outfit sounds amazing, and 2) Phoenix blue-fonts, “Could he mean…Maya?” NO, PHOENIX, THE OTHER GIRL WITH A TOP KNOT. I am genuinely concerned that this trial is giving everyone brain damage.
Gumshoe and Phoenix grouse together about how unfair and contrived it is that Gant gets to refuse to testify, but Edgeworth says, “Hmph. Settle down, Wright. Remember what the judge said?” A flashback “helpfully” reminds us of the judge’s warning about the consequences of pleading the fifth, a statement Phoenix did not give a second thought at the time, but is curious about now that Edgeworth is baiting him into it. “It’s simple,” Edgeworth replies. “If the Chief refuses to testify…the opposite also holds true.” Right when my drunk ass is trying to figure out what the opposite of that even is, someone off to the side says, “You mean, he forfeits his right to say anything too!” No, that doesn’t sound right. And I’m even less likely to trust this conclusion because it’s coming from Ema, fresh from her nap on the courtroom floor. According to her, someone must have swept her into the “medical office” with a big push broom, because that’s where she came to, and she watched the rest of Gant’s testimony from the peanut gallery. Phoenix awkwardly apologizes for exposing her as an accidental murderer, but Ema, previously so traumatized and shocked that she passed out, is now totally over it. “You know, it’s funny,” she says. “I almost feel somehow…relieved.” She explains how this terrible burden has been lifted now that she is aware that her sister’s former partner was blackmailing her over a secret she wasn’t aware existed. I can see how being totally ignorant of this would have weighed on her. “And she did it all…just to protect me,” Ema says. Was it really protecting her? When a 14-year-old girl pushes someone, in a moment of panic and self-defense, and that results in a freak accident death, they usually don’t give her the chair. Or even jail time. But no matter! Just like in the case of baby Edgeworth’s accidental patricide, 1) MURDER IS MURDER, and 2) Ema didn’t even fucking do it anyway. Surprise!
But everyone is less concerned with protecting Ema from imaginary prison time and more concerned with psychoanalyzing Lana the Ice Queen. Edgeworth theorizes, “Ever since her appointment as Chief Prosecutor, everyone who knew her…said she changed. Perhaps…it was easier that way for her.” Gumshoe makes me drain my wine glass by asking, “What do you mean?” People cannot stop asking that. “What do you think I mean?” Edgeworth snaps. Fist bump, Miles! “To follow Chief Gant’s orders. She must have shut herself up deep inside…to force herself to do anything and everything the Chief told her to do.” Edgeworth makes it sound like Gant was using his leverage for two years of scot-free sexual assault, but I think we know that’s not what happened. Though she did have to spend a lot of time in his quarantined ladies-only cold tub and give away all her Indigo Girls CDs and Sapphic poetry anthologies.
‘I’ve been told that’s something ladies can do down there.’
Ema, keen to make everything about herself in that teenage way, realizes that Lana would have never transformed into a frigid bitch and callously cheated on her big-boobed detective girlfriend if not for Ema’s “murder” of Neil Marshall, to which Gumshoe responds, “Hey. Don’t go blaming yourself, now. If you want to blame anyone, blame society, pal!” This made me burst out laughing, which I sorely needed. Thanks, Dick! And that laugh came at just the right time, because it’s almost time to go back into the courtroom and recommence my waking nightmare. Phoenix is about to ask Ema to wait in the lobby, but she cuts him off. “No. I’m going with you,” she says. “I want to be there…when Lana tells the truth.” Yeah, we’ll need as many witnesses to that momentous occasion as we can cram in the gallery. Edgeworth, in my imagination, anyway, grabs Phoenix’s hand and says, “Let’s go, Wright. It’s time to end this.” I’m beginning to wonder if Jeanne and I ship Phoenix and Edgeworth as a coping mechanism.
Back in court, Lana takes the stand and Edgeworth, for once, dispenses with playing stupid about her name and occupation. And a good thing, too, because if the lying Lana is about to do is any indication, she would have declared herself Reinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour. Before testifying, she protests to Edgeworth, “You know all that I’ve done these past two years.” Edgeworth throws shade at her via ellipses, the judge adorably reminds her that people under oath are expected to be honest, and poor Ema shouts from the defense bench, “Lana! No matter what happens, I’ll always be your sister!” Lana stares back and says nothing in response. God, these two are so fucked up. Phoenix ignores how terribly sad Ema must be and blue-fonts at Lana with his Intense Face, “Everything hinges on your testimony. You’re the only chance we have to get Gant!” But what about THE TRUTH, Phoenix? Edgeworth isn’t going to put out later if he finds out you have dedicated yourself to the base purpose of convicting a particular person! “That is so bourgeois,” he’ll say, slamming the bedroom door and consigning Phoenix to the couch.
It figures, since we left off with the matter of Niceguy’s murder in the parking garage, that Lana’s testimony exclusively concerns the Neil Marshall murder. I’m developing whiplash. Lana’s first–sigh–testimony is entitled, “Gant & The Fabrication,” which I’m guessing is a meta reference to the testimony itself, since, well, take a look. “There’s no truth to this ‘blackmail’ theory,” she testifies, sneering at the very notion of Damon Gant being anything other than a saint who died became chief of police for her sins. “I fabricated the evidence two years ago all by myself. When I found Prosecutor Marshall’s body, I rearranged the crime scene. My only motivation was to get Darke convicted. It had nothing to do with Ema.” Not one fucking thing in that statement is true. Even the judge is like, “Really? Nothing you want to amend in there?” And Lana shows how committed she is to lying her ass off: “Your Honor. I’m confessing to a capital offense. Of course I’m sure.” I’m pretty sure evidence fraud is not a capital offense, and she didn’t testify about Niceguy at all. Whatever.
“If this is true,” the judge declares, “then that means Chief Gant has nothing to do with this.” Try to contain your excitement, your honor. Lana’s like, “Yup, please execute me, thanks,” and Ema reminds Phoenix, “She’s sacrificing herself because of me…” Seriously, Lana is willing to die to keep Ema from possibly going to juvie and having her record expunged when she turns 18. That is cray. But what’s worse is Phoenix’s mental reply: “But what if she’s telling the truth?” Phoenix, look at that testimony again. Really look at it. Ema reads Phoenix’s fucking mind again and replies, “She’s not. I know my sister. Whenever she speaks stiffly like that, she’s hiding something inside.” So…all the time? We have yet to see Lana not speak stiffly. “Deep down,” Ema drama queens, “she’s screaming in agony!” Seriously, Ema could have saved everyone a lot of time and trouble, and saved Bruce Niceguy from getting stabbed, if she’d applied this keen sense of her sister’s state of mind at any point in the last two years.
If stiffness indicates lying, then Phoenix is Richard Nixon.
Phoenix plays his cross-examination all wrong: first, he insists to Lana that she told him privately yesterday that she didn’t really murder Niceguy, which even he has to know is not viable proof of anything and won’t stand up in court; second, he tells her two years too late that protecting Ema was unnecessary because her actions were “justifiable self-defense.” Problem is, she’s not admitting Ema did anything, and never mind that Ema herself at least testified that she pushed Marshall. “I didn’t want that incident to ruin her life,” Lana says. The incident of…witnessing a murder, and not interacting with it in any way. Which, if it was going to ruin her life, it would have been ruined no matter what Lana did. Phoenix says none of this, but protests that Ema would not have been charged. Is he even listening? “That’s not the point,” Lana replies. “She was traumatized that day, all because of that creep! That’s why I couldn’t forgive him.” Yeah, who cares about the five people he murdered? He made Ema sad!
So you might be wondering, if Lana is alleging Ema did nothing, what did she see when she arrived? When pressed about her rearrangement of the crime scene, she says, “It seems I was the first to discover the crime scene. The broken prosecutor award knife was stuck in the victim’s body.” Phoenix flips out at this, because he somehow hasn’t picked up on the fact that Lana is being less than honest. “But Prosecutor Marshall died from an unfortunate ‘accident’!” he cries. Lana sighs and turns away from him again. “That’s only a situation you dreamed was ‘possible,'” she says. “The reality is, it wasn’t my sister who took the prosecutor’s life! Fantasize all you want, Mr. Wright, but I’ll never change this statement!” I enjoy that Lana thinks her attorney, one of her only allies, has a death vendetta for a high school kid. But wow, is this statement problematic. Let’s say Lana is telling the truth (haha, nope): that Ema’s shove never happened and that Darke stabbed Marshall with his own weapon. Why, then, was there any reason at all to change the crime scene? If she had changed nothing, would Darke really have been acquitted because the knife in Marshall’s back wasn’t one he purchased? Come the fuck on.
Edgeworth asks about the switchblade, which Lana says was a short distance away from the crime scene, “knocked away in the struggle.” This would all be very plausible if not for the idea that Lana came upon this scene and thought it needed a makeover before anyone else got there. “That’s not how it went down!” Phoenix blue-fonts in panic. “She’s trying to cover up her lies with more lies!” Thank God he finally noticed. “All just to protect me…” Ema sighs in reply. That will never, ever stop freaking me out.
I hate you, Phoenix.
The judge asks Lana to amend her testimony to include what she specifically did to change the crime scene, so she adds, “I broke off the tip of Darke’s knife, planted it inside the wound, then moved the body.” The music stops as Phoenix, Edgeworth, and the judge’s eyes all pop out of their sockets at Lana doing such a gory and terrible thing. “But why!? Why would you do that…?” Edgeworth asks. Sure, if we take Lana at face value, the “why” is a good question, but I’m also wondering about the “how.” She just…broke off the tip of a switchblade? Like, with her hands? I can’t even open a salsa jar without help. And she’s such a klutz that she couldn’t fake-stab Niceguy without lacerating her hand, but she was able to break a knife without harming herself at all? Sure. Fine.
Edgeworth agrees!
Since Lana is being cagey about why she did these things, Phoenix is left with the choice to ask about her planting the knife tip or her moving the body. Her reason for swapping the murder weapon is obvious, if unnecessary in her current fabricated narrative, so Phoenix asks about moving the body. “When you showed up on the scene, where exactly was the victim’s body?” he wants to know. Lana replies, “It was where you deduced it was–by Chief Gant’s desk.” Edgeworth asks why she would move it over by her desk, but the judge insists she add this to her main testimony first. And her answer comes damn close to giving me a psychotic break: “The pieces of the jar that shattered during the events threatened my plan.” No. NOOOOOOOOOO!
THE FUCKING JAR. When I soon succumb to the sweet embrace of death, I would like my next of kin to commission a ceramic tombstone, bat it into the air, wait for it to fall and not break, write “THE JAR” on it in my blood, and then smash it. When Phoenix goes, “You mean…?” like there’s some other fucking jar in his court record, Lana replies, “Yes. That wretched jar Mr. Wright showed us earlier.” I’m glad someone is with me on this. “In order to show that Darke committed the crime…I felt it would be more expedient to move the body.” This is because, as Edgeworth leads her to testifying, when she got there THE JAR was already in pieces on the floor. “If you looked at the crime scene,” she goes on, “it would be clear right away what happened. Neil Marshall was dead, and Darke was lying unconscious… In other words, the jar must have been broken during their struggle.”