Phoenix is very aware of this, Ema.
Edgeworth goes on to set up the prosecution’s witness, adding that she is a “professional” at this. At witnessing! God, you guys. Edgeworth calls Angel Starr to the stand, and Phoenix blue-fonts while chin-masturbating, “The ‘Cough-up Queen’…?” No, the other Angel Starr. Jesus. Now, if you thought her absurd obento antics would cease now that she’s away from her supposed sales grounds, well, I don’t know why you’d think that, honestly. I’m strawmanning. She’s still handing out her horrible boxes, starting with a “Caviar Lunch” for the judge, who is predictably thrilled about it. Phoenix sweats in terror as he watches the judge “wolf down” on the fish eggs inside the pink box.
Edgeworth tries several times to get Angel to state her name and profession, but we know Angel is both too WACKY and too contemptuous of prosecutors in general and Edgeworth in particular to heed him. But eventually she gives her name and identifies herself as the owner of the creatively named “Lunchland.” And then everyone waits for the judge to finish defiling his caviar toast points. I’m surprised all the men in the peanut gallery, who are all dressed like Suikoden characters in my head, aren’t throwing up and wailing in horror right now.
Eventually, the judge gets back to business and asks why Angel is Edgeworth’s first witness, when that is usually a spot reserved for the lead detective on the case. Angel reiterates with a jolly bounce of her rack that she is a “professional,” and Edgeworth explains further: “Until two years ago, Ms. Starr was a special investigator with the police. She was a first-rate homicide detective.” Wow, two years again! This is truly an incredible coincidence. Ema is all shocked by this, but the judge demonstrates a functioning memory for once. “I-I know who you are!!!” he croaks, possibly choking on his remaining caviar. “Cough-up…!?” Angel replies, “Cough-up Queen Angel Starr, Your Honor. Long time no see.” We should all finally be on the same page here, but Phoenix blue-fonts as he stares at her, “Just who is this lady!?” COUGH-UP QUEEN ANGEL STARR, DETECTIVE, LUNCH LADY, AND MEMBER OF THE TWO YEARS AGO CLUB. God, why does Edgeworth even bother asking for their names?
The judge is obviously fine with Angel as a witness now, so she gets down to it with a map of the garage, explaining the layout, providing a brief summary of the crime, and subtly bragging that she both saw the “exact moment of the crime” and took down Lana Skye herself. She gets through this without offering anyone a shitty meal, for which I am very grateful. Her map is added to the court record, so we know for sure Angel is bullshitting about the location of someone in that garage. When the judge is like, “Well, that’s pretty easy, shall we wrap this up?” Phoenix is forced to disagree “on principle,” though he’s obviously anxious about dealing with Angel Starr, Super Genius Witness. Angel just smirks at him. “It seems that some poor losers are unwilling to accept the truth, Your Honor,” she says. “Shall I proceed to crush what little hope they have remaining?” The judge is like, “GIRL, YOU ARE LIVING FOR ALL OF IT.”
Angel proceeds to give her account, noting again that she always knew this day of destiny would arrive, like she just found Voldemort’s last horcrux in Edgeworth’s Penismobile. Anyway, she was on her way to deliver a lunch to her flesh-and-blood boyfriend, whose security office is in Saskatoon and you’ve never been there, when she, “through a wire fence,” noticed Lana Skye “standing next to a garish car.” Ha. It really is. “The chief prosecutor was holding a knife in her right hand….” Angel says. For once, Phoenix will not have to object that she had it in her left hand or some shit. “Then, she thrust the pointy tip of the knife into Detective [Niceguy]’s chest!” Edgeworth stands there looking smug and fuckable while the judge raves about the perfection of Angel’s testimony. She takes in his praise and asks Phoenix, “So…how does it feel to be so utterly crushed?” He’s used to taking it that hard, thanks. Ema does not help my juvenile reading by adding, “I-it’s merely a flesh wound, Mr. Wright!” Hee.
Phoenix cannot concentrate when Edgeworth is all catty like this.
Via pressing, Phoenix establishes a few extra facts that, while not germane to this testimony, are worth noting. First, that Angel was fired, or laid off, depending on who is talking, and she blames prosecutors, or “worms,” for the fact that she’s a two-bit lunch lady now. Second, she, like Marshall, is happy to speak ill of the dead and refer to Bruce Niceguy as a “young cheese. A pale white cheese, not yet tangy with experience on the streets. A greenhorn.” For what it’s worth, he was five years older than Angel and also had the benefit of two extra years of experience in which he did not get fired. So whatever. I mean, if he was shitty at his job, fine, but Gumshoe is shitty at his job and it would still be silly to refer to him as inexperienced. Third, Phoenix feels the need when talking about the security office to tell himself, “That would be the room with the ‘SECURITY‘ sign.” I mean, I guess that’s just establishing that Phoenix’s brain is a colander, which is not news.
Each one more real than the last!
When Angel is pressed to elaborate on the garish car, she points out that it belongs to Edgeworth, as does the knife stuck in Niceguy’s chest. The judge and the peanut gallery let loose some excited, distressed murmuring at this, while Edgeworth stands there trying to look like he doesn’t care. I would feel bad, but I still think it’s dumb as hell he’s even here, bringing this shit avalanche down on himself. Now, granted, the alternative is that Phoenix would be throwing his heavy-lidded seduction stare at some fug like Winston Payne instead, and we can’t have that. But come on, Edgeworth, you could have sat out this public flaying.
Back to Angel, who is in the middle of saying she was only 30 feet away from Lana at the time and had no trouble identifying her. Ema encourages Phoenix to just say whatever, because, “Even if we don’t have any proof, we can always complain!” She has learned his way of doing things so quickly. Phoenix decides the only way to damage her testimony is to prove that she is a biased witness due to her hatred of prosecutors. I’m sure that will work–this court has seen the testimony of a deranged security guard with a crush on the prosecutor, three different actual murderers, a man who pretended to be senile, his fucking parrot, and that’s leaving out the comedic stylings of Lotta Hart. But no, the lofty standards of witness testimony are too sacred to bear bias! Phoenix, wake the fuck up. “You might want to keep those silly opinions to YOURSELF in the future, rookie,” Angel tells him. “Unless you’re willing to risk the consequences of doubting me?” Her eyes flash and she suddenly throws him a look that I’m guessing is supposed to be steely, but comes off as petulant. “I’ll fry you like a fritter! Crispy on the outside…chewy on the inside!” Edgeworth is willing to try out this texture and see how he likes it.
But Angel is not just grandstanding, even though she’s already satisfied the judge. Showing off her still-honed detective’s instincts, she presents a photo to the court. It shows Lana, draped in a bloody trenchcoat, resting her hand on the spoiler of the Penismobile. The photo was even taken with the chain-link fence out of focus in the foreground. She still insists that this was “the moment of the crime,” which is a way overused phrase in this game by now. “In fact,” she says, “one of my lunchboxes is rigged with a camera.” Why anyone would bother to do this, and not just keep a normal camera around, is beyond both Phoenix and me. Edgeworth admits he had yet to see this evidence, but Angel explains that he’s a dirty evil man prosecutor and she knows better than to let him touch evidence, lest he jizz corruption all over it. She also adds that yet another boyfriend of hers works in criminal affairs, which seems like a non sequitur at the moment. The photo, which the judge confirms is totally of Lana, flies into the court record.
Phoenix can give expert testimony about its length.
The obvious detail that sticks out in Angel’s testimony is her description of Edgeworth’s impressively long knife, which she and Edgeworth establish is 10 centimeters long. But the autopsy report states the wound was caused by a knife at least 12 centimeters in length. Unfortunately, not only would pointing this out make Edgeworth feel small, but it’s apparently not the right thing to object to yet, even though it automatically casts the entire case in doubt. Patience, Phoenix! For now, consider this an Easter egg for those of us obsessed with blade lengths (Jeanne, me, and every male member of the cast). Instead, Phoenix skips ahead to the final piece of her statement, the bit about the pointy tip of the knife. Hee again. But Phoenix throws Angel’s own photo back in her face. “And you witnessed this?” Phoenix asks. “You saw Ms. Skye stab the victim with a knife?” Blah blah, yes, of course, she’d bet a nasty Salmon Swirl lunch on it, hurf durf lunchboxes. But Phoenix is undeterred. “Look at this photograph!” He slaps it with his Edgeworth ass-slapping hand and asks, “Then why is Ms. Skye not holding a knife!?” He and the musical score obviously think this is a winning point, but Edgeworth just mutters, “Objection.” Without the graphic and everything! What a boner-killer that must be.
Yeah they are.
Now, I thought Phoenix’s entire point was that this was not the exact moment of the crime if Lana was not brandishing a knife, because I’ve come to expect that kind of ticky-tack bullshit from him when I’m not allowed to point out real testimony issues like the knife length. But I guess Phoenix thought this might mean Lana was just innocently breaking into Edgeworth’s car for other reasons? Because he acts all surprised when Edgeworth points out that this was taken right after the crime, given the “dark crimson stain” on her coat, a spatter of blood from the stabbing. Phoenix just blue-fonts, “It’s a black-and-white photograph!” like a tool. Come on, buddy, don’t waste our time.
Baby homophobe spotted!
Phoenix can choose to object to this interpretation, and obviously he does so. You can count the number of times it’s better not to object in this series on one hand. So Phoenix points out that the photo was supposedly of the moment of the murder, but is obviously from like two seconds afterward. Shit, we better just shut this thing down now. You’re free to go, Ms. Skye! Angel pulls the plug on Phoenix’s feeble attempt to discredit her by saying, “Well, it seems I was slightly unclear. My apologies.” Phoenix whines about this, but the moment has passed and Angel is back to ranting about what a stone-cold, unfeeling bitch her ex-girlfriend is. “She killed without pain or remorse! It was a premeditated murder!” She bases this, per Edgeworth, on the gloves Lana was wearing: “Surgical gloves made of thin rubber, most likely.” She needed them to be thin for maximum pleasure in stabbing!
I’m sure he’ll be eating something else shortly.
Angel’s testimony is amended to discuss the premeditation and the gloves, like whether she planned it even matters at this point. I mean, in real life it would, but this game has, shall we say, a casual relationship with any actual legal system. Phoenix is convinced he has to prove Lana didn’t plan her murder, not realizing the huge problem with that line of thinking. So he presents Edgeworth’s fuchsia-handled knife and gets Angel to describe it as both the murder weapon and the knife found in Edgeworth’s trunk. At this, the peanut gallery’s rumblings are loud enough to be heard. While Edgeworth stands there stone-faced some more, they wonder aloud about the state of the prosecutors’ office and some dipshit kid asks, “Mommy, are prosecutors bad people?” Who the fuck brings a little kid to a murder trial? Other than Gregory Edgeworth?
I don’t know, killer, are you?
Once the crowd has settled down again, Phoenix bitchily requests “that the witness provide an ACCURATE testimony.” This makes it sound like he’s disputing the facts she just stated, but he means her wild premeditation speculation. Clearly, Lana didn’t plan to kill anybody if she had to rummage around inside Edgeworth’s trunk, ahem, to find a stabbing implement. But right when Phoenix and Ema are celebrating his turning of the tide, and I’m rolling my eyes, Edgeworth points out that all he’s done is waste his time proving something that doesn’t matter. “The prosecution could care less if it was premeditated or not,” Edgeworth says, while I breathe out a pedantic sigh. “The only one who seems to care is that lunchlady over there.” Angel gets all shitty about this, since Lana still had her Gloves of Asspulling on, and that’s overlooking the fact that she also set up this strange frame job of Edgeworth on top of it. But the judge and Edgeworth chastise Angel for having her own opinion and ask her, “Witness, please tell us only what you ‘saw,’ not what you ‘thought.'” Angel is all, “YOU PIG,” and her new testimony is basically her waving a middle finger in Edgeworth’s face with even more speculation, this time that Lana had a grudge against Niceguy, possibly for his repeated attempts to ply her with Patròn shots. Moreover, “Nothing else could drive that human machine to plunge the knife in again and again…” Phoenix, picturing that fuchsia handle plunging in and out of another man, suddenly feels the need to slap Edgeworth in the face.