Except for Larry!
The short version of Angel’s testimony: Bruce Niceguy had a white enameled loafer covered in blood, Angel stole it from the crime scene, NO BIG DEAL, and the blood on it belongs to both Lana and the victim. “It’s flawless, decisive evidence!” she crows. She adds that she doesn’t trust Edgeworth not to gum up this perfect piece of Lana-fucking evidence with his dirty dirty corrupt hands, and that her “three boyfriends in forensics” did the blood work. Since these three boyfriends are obviously fake as fuck, Edgeworth says, “In any case, Your Honor, I can’t accept this as evidence!” Angel is pissed, but Edgeworth tells her, “You should know the two rules of evidence law, Ms. Starr! Rule 1: no evidence shall be shown without the approval of the Police Department! In other words, this is illegal evidence!” We’ll have plenty of words for how intensely fucking dumb this is later, but for now let’s just say it’s plain as day how inconsistently this law must be applied, since Phoenix gets to dump out his pockets on his bench and has never once run into this issue.
Ema asks if this is true, and obviously Phoenix doesn’t know–what does he look like, a lawyer?–but he does point out, “It seems so. Edgeworth sure is celebrating.” Edgeworth should be bending over backward to get this incriminating shoe admitted as evidence, but whatever. Apparently making Angel look bad is currently more urgent than getting a guilty verdict. Those rumors about Edgeworth must not be that true. And anyway, Angel, for no reason I can come up with, waited this long to counter that the evidence was approved by the PD, since she had it tested by their all-male, totally straight forensics team, in between their hetero group sessions in the police department sauna. Ema asks if this is true, and Phoenix replies in echo, “It seems so. Edgeworth is looking pretty sullen.” For the record, “pretty sullen” is Phoenix’s description for Edgeworth’s bent-over, grimacing zombie face. He’s a wordsmith!
Over Edgeworth’s increasingly strange objections, the shoe is entered into the court record, and Phoenix is free to cross-examine Angel once again. To the question of why the fuck did she lie about the five-minute gap in her account, Angel basically goes, “Blah blah fuck Edgeworth and fuck Lana and fuck all scumbag prosecutors,” which makes no sense and yet is the last we hear of it. I give up. As for the shoe, Angel stole it in case the other evidence against Lana was covered up. Phoenix admits he doesn’t know anything about blood tests, but is for some horrible reason compelled to add, “However! You can’t tell from a blood test whether a murder was performed…in cold blood!” At this rate, Edgeworth is never going to have a boner again.
Eventually, Phoenix gets around to pointing out a problem with the shoe, thanks to Ema’s “scientific” technique of being able to look at objects in three dimensions. There are splatters of blood on top of the shoe, but also a large splotch of it on the sole. And yet, as is clear in Angel’s photo, there was no blood on the floor of the garage. Phoenix and Edgeworth snipe at each other about the composition of the shot and how Angel wasn’t careful enough to capture enough of the floor with her lunchbox camera, but Ema points out that there really should have been a footprint and it’s weird that there wasn’t. “Hey, I don’t know why it’s not there,” Phoenix whines. “I’m just good at finding contradictions.” Lana’s confidence in her defense team has never been higher!
Unfortunately, the prosecution has its shit together way more than the defense, as usual, and Edgeworth has figured it out. “Think back to when she told us about apprehending the suspect…” he says, and we flash back to Angel’s testimony about Lana kicking over an oil drum. “I thought that was a strange thing for the normally cool-headed chief to do,” Edgeworth goes on. “Now, witness. Allow me to ask a very simple question. This ‘oil drum’…was it empty?” Angel says she doesn’t like Edgeworth’s attitude, and I’m not sure why, because she should realize her answer is just going to get Lana in more trouble: “The oil drum kicked over by the chief prosecutor…was brimming with water.” Phoenix blue-fonts, clearly trolling me at this point, “What does that mean?” Edgeworth basically responds, “DURRRRRRRRRRR.”
Just in case we have any Phoenixes in the crowd: the water washed away the blood. Now, Edgeworth alleges that Lana did this on purpose, “To erase the blood stains that would become evidence against her!” Yeah, she was practically in the clear after that, as long as we ignore the blood on her coat, the fact that she’d been spotted in the act, and, oh right, the dead body in the car trunk. Clearly a puddle of blood on the floor was the linchpin. Worse, we’ll see later, thanks to a revelatory new investigation technique, that even this does not really help her. Also, this still doesn’t explain why there wasn’t blood on the floor in the photo, since Lana kicked over the drum after Angel took the photo, so I guess we’re right back to Edgeworth’s composition quibbles.
But the consensus in the courtroom is that this is damning evidence of Lana’s guilt, and so, after enduring food pun torture at the hands of Angel Starr, Phoenix is ready to call it a day and let his client fry. It’s not like it’s his boyfriend’s ass on the line! Ema, though, is obviously upset. She ignores Phoenix’s claim that her sister tried to conceal evidence, and Edgeworth’s assertion that there’s nothing left to say. “But Angel Starr is on the prosecution’s side! She could have been lying about the water!” Ema cries. The judge gets ready to pronounce Lana guilty over Ema’s yelling, but it’s time for one more screeched “HOLD IT!” and one more whip-’round the room. But it’s not Ema–once again, it’s Angel holding up the fucking show. “Little girl… What did you just say?” she sneers. “Did you say that I, Angel Starr…was on the prosecution’s side?” It’s like Ema accused her of poisoning her lunches, or of being bad at cunnilingus. Ema has the audacity to point out that she’s, like, a witness for the prosecution and agreeing with the prosecution. Angel replies, “I thought you’d had your fill, but here you are, demanding a second helping! Another lunchbox… A lunchbox called ‘evidence’!” What? No, come on! I was so close!
Loading ...And sure enough, Angel has more evidence to pull out of her ass and more endless talking to do. THANKS, OBAMA EMA. Edgeworth is also more than ready for Angel to fuck off forever, and threatens her with contempt of court if she keeps it up, but she doesn’t give a shit anymore. She brandishes a second photo, which I guess she took after she was done “wrestling” Lana into submission. This photo is of the Penismobile’s trunk, and shows Niceguy’s body still inside with the fuchsia knife stuck in his chest, as well as the water still pooled on the floor.
Now, I’d say this is where things start getting really stupid, but let’s be real, at no point has this case not been stupid. There is absolutely no reason Angel needed to show this photograph at all. She tells the court, “I had this just in case anyone had the gall to suggest…that the white shoe didn’t belong to the victim!” Except no one had actually suggested this. All anyone had said was that Angel was working for the prosecution, and this does nothing to suggest otherwise. At least, no more than the hidden asspull shoe did. In fact, the only reason it exists is to drop Phoenix a lifeline out of the heavens, so let’s just skip ahead to him seizing it.
Phoenix is in the middle of moping to himself that he knew this case wasn’t winnable, and internally he apologizes to Mia for failing to save her ice queen ex-girlfriend. And as happened before, he sees a flash of Mia’s face and tits before his eyes. “Wright…wet or not… Don’t be so quick to throw in the towel…” Hey, I thought this was going to be his first case without the help of a Fey! That lasted an entire hour. Mia implores him to take another look at that photo. So Phoenix, knowing he’s missing The Price Is Right but deciding to keep up the fight anyway, throws out an “Objection!” before the judge can try one more time to declare his verdict. That brings us back to the photo and the other point of note in it: a piece of cloth hanging indecently out of the Penismobile’s muffler.
Of course, Phoenix has yet to notice this, but he knows he has to find something wrong in this photo or he’s done, so he’s just winging it. The judge agrees that they have to give this new piece of evidence proper consideration, and prompts Phoenix to play Spot the Contradiction. Well, Phoenix knows how assiduous Edgeworth is in keeping his pipes clean, so he instinctively points out how unnatural the muffler looks. “What’s this…?” Edgeworth wonders at the photo of his own car. “There’s something poking out of the car’s muffler!” How dare someone stuff his tailpipe without asking!
And now for the grand poobah pun, the one piece of wordplay to rule them all. “Wait just a moment, Mr. Edgeworth!” cries the judge. “You just said ‘muffler‘… However, I see no trace of a muffler or scarf of any kind in this photograph!” I…I don’t want to live on this planet anymore. Edgeworth somehow patiently explains that a muffler is also a part of a car. Angel, though, insists that it’s irrelevant to the case. Phoenix is ready to tell her why she’s wrong, but–and maybe this is because he doesn’t drive–he doesn’t use the obvious explanation that Edgeworth was clearly not driving around with something clogging up his car’s exhaust, so it must have ended up there during the crime. Instead, Phoenix presents Lana’s cell phone again, and points out that she heard Lana utter the word “muffler” into the phone. “Could it be that the ‘muffler’ you heard mentioned… Was actually this exhaust pipe!?” Phoenix asks. “If so! That means this piece of cloth is vital evidence!” That’s right, folks–the police investigators are going to have to pull something out of the ass of Edgeworth’s car. For justice.
Finally, fucking finally, this is enough to break Angel Starr for good. She doesn’t flip out physically any more than she did before, nor does she gorge on her spare lunches and barf all over Edgeworth’s cravat. But I don’t care, because regardless, I don’t have to deal with her anymore. The judge declares a thirty-minute recess so they can gently extract that cloth from Edgeworth’s tailpipe.
Don’t let Edgeworth hear that!
And yet, we are so very far from being done here. Miles to go before I drink myself to oblivion. Out in the lobby, Ema looks upset, and asks Phoenix if his trials are always such an undisciplined, unprofessional shitshow. “Pretty much,” Phoenix replies. As for Lana, she’s been called into the judge’s chambers, perhaps to help Edgeworth explain the dual meaning of muffler one more time. They are instead joined–sigh–by Jake Marshall and his horrible cowboy theme music. “They say you show a red cloth to a bull, it’ll fire up its temper!” he says by way of greeting. He came over to see how the trial was proceeding. Phoenix tries to ask him, nebulously, about what the hell is going on with the police department, but Marshall tells him, “Don’t you got enough on your plate without worrying about other people, compadre? You could be worrying about the chief prosecutor’s taste in mufflers, for example.” Yeah, because Phoenix has a ton of head space reserved for ladies’ accessory choices.
I hate this game sometimes.
Ema frowns at him, too–she is frowning an awful lot this morning–and informs him that the whole “muffler” thing was in regard to Edgeworth’s tailpipe and not a scarf. In case it isn’t clear, I am never going to get tired of typing “Edgeworth’s tailpipe.” But Marshall just smirks back at her. “You don’t say? Now don’t that just beat all,” he wonders while shaving with his knife. Does he have an infinite supply of chin whiskers? “I’ve seen the red breeze blow at her slender neck many a time… I saw it that day, too. She was wearing a red muffler.” According to Marshall, she had it on during the awards ceremony at the police department. She obviously could have taken it off in between seeing Edgeworth get a tacky trophy and murdering Bruce Niceguy, but whatever–obviously Marshall wouldn’t be bringing it up if she hadn’t been wearing it at the scene. And with that piece of knowledge–and some more yokel-spun advice about grabbing the bull by the horns or letting the bull drag you around, I don’t even know–it’s time to head back into the courtroom.
The judge resumes the trial, but it’s clear from the outset that something is wrong with both him and Edgeworth. The judge is hesitating, and Edgeworth is wearing his “sullen” look, per Phoenix. The judge looks at him and wonders aloud, “Your face is blue, your lips are purple, you’re sweating bullets… That furrowed brow, those grinding teeth, those watery eyes… What’s more your eyes are unfocused, you’re doubled over, your back is bent…” Wow, your honor, tell us how you really feel! Phoenix was only talking with Ema and Marshall briefly, so clearly he had plenty of time to really put Edgeworth into a sweaty, out-of-sorts place. Go easy on him, Phoenix, it’s a work day!