Ema thanks Officer Marshall for letting them in, but then adds, since it’s been bothering her, “That is odd! Isn’t a crime scene supposed to be handled by a detective or higher?” Marshall’s basically like, “Hey, look over there! Miles Edgeworth is pouring chocolate sauce on his wiener!” But he doesn’t make a roadrunner beep and run away like I assumed he would, so he’s also still available to dispense homespun prairie wisdom and autopsy reports. And also lies. When Ema asks if Bruce Niceguy had any relationship with her sister, he tells her, “Chief Prospector Skye [ugh] and Detective [Niceguy]…had nothing in common at all.” When Ema is like, “Really?” he immediately backpedals, only he acts like this is consistent with his last statement: “They apparently worked together on a case a few years back.” Even Phoenix thinks this means Lana has no motive–I guess “worked on a case two years ago” was solid enough to forge a connection between Lana and Edgeworth, but not between Lana and her alleged murder victim. Whatever. Also: could it be the same case and they all worked on it together? Noooooo, that would be crazy. Marshall also decides to speak ill of the dead and claim Niceguy was too shitty of a detective to get much work the “Chief Prospector” would be involved in. And this doesn’t remotely jive with Lana saying she helped all prosecutors with all cases. This is dumb all the way down.
Hey, what Edgeworth does in his bedroom is his business.
Speaking of things that make no sense, Phoenix comes back to why Marshall is the one in charge of this crime scene. Marshall tells him, “I was one of them fancy-shoed ‘Detectives’ till two years ago, to tell ya the truth.” Two years ago! I’m sure his demotion had nothing to do with what everyone else was up to two years ago. Busy year! Ema points out that still doesn’t mean he should be overseeing a crime scene, but Marshall explains that away as the department being short-handed. They point out that Gumshoe was so bored he was pretending the Blue Badger was Edgeworth on prom night, and he finally gets to the real reason he’s there: “He’s nothing but a sad ol’ cowdog, that can’t find his tail. Maybe it’s because he runs with that Edgeworth, eh?” Phoenix Shions “Edgeworth…?” and probably has a Pavlovian drool reaction too. “That cowdog’s been kicked out of this cattle run…by order of the Chief of Police,” Marshall finishes. “Just, he don’t realize it yet.”
Just lie back and think of Texas.
Phoenix can now, at last, examine the actual crime scene. The big “A” on the wall indicates the block of the garage reserved for prosecutors and police, I guess, since Ema says she looks forward to parking here when she becomes an investigator. “I’ll go over to B Block to buy my hamburgers from you, Mr. Wright,” she adds. Phoenix sighs at her, “I’m not planning on giving up my job that soon…” I just realized this, too, is kind of foreshadowing, albeit for much later, and now I’m sad.
Jeanne and I should really follow this advice.
Examining the Penismobile in any area but the trunk just makes Phoenix jealous of his prosecutor sugar daddy’s piles of cash, so he moves right on to the trunk with the outline hanging out like a tampon string. Immediately he finds a piece of paper. It’s a piece of Detective Niceguy’s stationery that reads, per Phoenix, “6-7S 12/2.” It could not be more obvious that it’s upside down, but the right side-up version is equally meaningless to us right now anyway. The note goes in the court record so Phoenix can later asspull it as soon as, or possibly before, he figures out its meaning.
Finally, Phoenix picks up the conspicuous orange-brown cell phone on the floor. “Scientific analysis would suggest this belonged to the victim!” Ema says, based on absolutely nothing. But this leads Phoenix to actually flip it open (how quaint, a flip phone!) and check for any outgoing calls. “Hmm. The display is still on the redial button,” Ema says. That is the most awkward description of redial ever, and so I can allllllmost give Phoenix a pass for Shioning, “Redial…?” Ema rolls her eyes and walks him through the concept, only for him to reply, “Sorry to disappoint you, but even I know about things like ‘redial.'” Right, Phoenix, sure you do. All this is tortured setup for Phoenix to hit redial, only to hear the Steel Samurai theme start playing tinnily somewhere in the garage. Marshall comes over to see what the commotion is and why they’re getting their fingerprints all over the evidence. Ema asks whose drab phone this is, and Marshall responds, “That belongs to Chief Prospector Skye.” Somehow Ema didn’t know this, even though all phones in this universe are color-coded to match their characters. I’d bet my life that Niceguy’s phone is white, and possibly embellished with Ed Hardy decals.
Marshall exposits about the time and length of the call (5:18, a few seconds) and then wants to know whose phone was ringing just now, so Phoenix lies that it was his. Marshall is a weird phony hick but he’s no idiot, and knows it rang when Phoenix hit redial on Lana’s phone. So our intrepid attorney takes a leaf from Larry’s book and plunges deeper into the lie: “Yeah, uh, it’s kind of strange, but… Someone called me right as we picked up the other phone, a wrong number…” In a game full of bad liars, Phoenix might just be the worst, and though Marshall could expose him in seconds (like that), he grudgingly lets it pass.
For all the trouble they went through to examine this area, that’s all there is to find for now, but Marshall is now up for more chatter. Asking him about Lana mostly repeats stuff we already know but with more “bambinas,” until Ema finally takes him to task for seeming borderline gleeful about Lana’s impending downfall. “H-how can you say that!” she yells at him. “You and my sister, you were…” Phoenix wonders if Lana and Marshall were an item, though I’m guessing Angel and Lana just made out with him one night to make each other jealous. Whatever their past, though, Marshall apologizes for his glib attitude. “Something must have gotten to me,” he says. “Maybe it’s that dry wind that’s a-blowin’ through the Prospector’s Office.” The only thing blowin’ its way through that office is probably Phoenix.
This leads Marshall to another topic, because we haven’t covered it enough yet: the Dastardly Deeds of Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. Sigh. “Suspicions about Mr. Edgeworth have been flying around for nearly two years now,” Marshall says. Two years! Unrelated, probably! “He was unbeatable because he did whatever it took to win. Unbeatable, that is, until he met you.” Yeah, Edgeworth was totally faking evidence and shaking down witnesses for all this time, amassing a perfect win record, but his dirty tactics just weren’t enough to defeat the unparalleled legal knowledge and investigative prowess of Phoenix fucking Wright. Totally sound theory we all have going here. But for what it’s worth, it doesn’t seem like Marshall thinks this is all Edgeworth’s doing. “If you follow the rumors to their source,” he tells them, “you find one person… But…they’re off limits. Untouchable, you might say.” Phoenix is like, “DURRRRR, WHO?” but obviously Marshall means Lana. “Edgeworth couldn’t rustle all those cattle by himself. Some people load their guns with bullets, some people load them with ‘deals.'” There had to be a better wild west metaphor than a gun loaded with deals. That’s just shoddy. Marshall maintains that there is some shady shit going down behind this case, like that hasn’t been obvious from the moment we found out a prosecutor supposedly murdered a detective.
Phoenix is pretty great at beating (off) Edgeworth.
Once Marshall is no longer paying them any attention, Ema asks for a recap of their day. Phoenix answers, “We have an autopsy report, a note from the victim, and a cell phone…” Wow, not only is that a sad pile of nothing, but that makes their entire investigation short of these past five minutes sound completely worthless. Except for poring over Edgeworth’s office. That was a tremendous use of everyone’s time and I regret none of it.
Ema wonders if that pathetic list of evidence will be enough, but Phoenix says, “Well, the only thing still bothering me is that Lana is confessing to the crime.” Yeah, that is a tiny wrench in the proceedings, isn’t it? Jesus. But Ema really does think it’s no big deal. “I can guarantee that she’s not the criminal,” she says. With science, or fairy dust wishes, I’m sure.
“Oh by the way, Ema?” Phoenix asks. “I know that song your phone plays when it rings…” And over her shocked face, he dials from Lana’s phone again and the Steel Samurai theme chips away at my sanity once more. The best part is, if I forget to bump it to the next screen where Phoenix hangs up, it can play indefinitely. I’m so delighted I discovered that just now! Phoenix makes sure to tell her how in the know he is about the Steel Samurai, defender of children’s dreams and glory hole photo albums, before dropping what the game wants me to think is a bombshell: “That phone that rang wasn’t mine…it was yours. At 5:18, just after the murder took place… Your sister called you, didn’t she, Ema?” I’m surprised Phoenix isn’t hallucinating Maya again with all this “sisters be talkin’ on the phone” business. Ema apologizes for not telling him, but she doesn’t know anything because Lana hung up right away.
As Phoenix stares at a distraught Ema, he sums up the case in his head like he didn’t spend all day getting a more detailed account than, “A detective is murdered, and the suspect is the top prosecutor in the district.” It’s like he banged his head on something and doesn’t remember any of the endless talking they spent all day on. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” he goes on. “Like…maybe I still don’t know everything that went on here…” This is perhaps the biggest understatement of Phoenix’s, and my, life.
And with that depressing sentiment, the first day of investigation is over and we fast-forward to the next morning at the courthouse. In the lobby, Lana asks Phoenix how his day of investigation went, and Phoenix replies that he found out jack shit. Fortunately for her, Lana doesn’t really care how bad Phoenix is at his job, since she says, “I’m ready to accept my fate.” Not minding if you go to the chair is a pretty good reason to hire Phoenix. But when Ema, bless her lonely little heart, insists that she believes in her sister, Lana ignores her some more and addresses Phoenix. “Mr. Wright, let me offer you a word of advice,” she says. “A defense attorney should never ‘believe’ their client. The defendant is called to trial because they are suspected of wrongdoing! Never forget that.” It is so incredibly sad how badly Phoenix needs this advice. He didn’t even think Edgeworth could have killed his dad accidentally because he was too pure-hearted to commit murder. But Lana’s plea for him to use his fucking brain for once falls on deaf ears. “Ms. Skye, you… You remind me a lot of Mia,” he tells her. “But there is one decisive difference between you and her.” Lana doesn’t care, but asks what because the script requires it of her. “You’re not a defense attorney,” Phoenix answers. God, I bet he did his smug hands-on-hips stance when he said that. Her morals are too compromised for his noble profession! Phoenix needs such a square nut punch right now.
Phoenix reflects before opening those doors that this is his first trial without a Fey in his corner, but of course he only visualizes Mia, because Maya was only useful as a Mia meat puppet, remember? God. But he does have Ema, who undermines his whining about being all alone in there by saying, “I’ll be with you the whole way!” But Ema can’t talk to dead people, so fuck her, apparently.
Phoenix has some ‘judgment’ for Edgeworth’s hands.
In the courtroom, the judge welcomes all parties as usual, Phoenix says he’s ready, and Edgeworth deadpans, possibly pointing to his crotch behind the bench, “The prosecution has been ready for a while, Your Honor.” Phoenix gives him his best “NOT NOW” frown since he’s anxious enough over here, and then pointlessly flashes back for like the twentieth time in this recap to Edgeworth stupidly holding the pistol in the dickboat. He thinks, “I haven’t been in court since Edgeworth’s trial… It’s been a while now.” Possibly reading Phoenix’s suddenly vulnerable mind, Edgeworth frowns right back. “I hope that personal feelings will not be a part of the proceedings today, Mr. Wright,” he says. They’ll need to get those worked out beforehand, or hold them in until recess.
Once Edgeworth is done rambling about the path he must choose and generally making the case all about himself, he gets around to the actual defendant and crime. “Chief Prosecutor Lana Skye has committed an unpardonable crime,” he says. Not…sandals with socks! Oh, he means murder. “Not only this, but she was rash enough to commit it in the Prosecutor’s Office lot!” He doesn’t add, “In my car! That I just made Gumshoe wax! And I just broke in with Mr. Wright!” But it’s implied. “However, she will now pay for her rashness with her life.” Harsh, Miles. It’s just a car!