More on this in a bit, since it’s only going to get dumber as we continue. For now, Phoenix is temporarily stymied as the judge says he sees no issues with Wellington’s testimony. He clearly must have been looking for a phone booth, and those are so mythical in the year 2017 that it took 17 15 minutes to find one. Nothing weird here! Except there is something weird here. Phoenix shouts, “Your Honor! The witness’ testimony does not make sense!” You’re telling me, man. “I don’t believe that there was ever a need for the witness to search for a phone!” And as proof, he presents the first photo of the crime scene, which shows Dustin Prince’s body lying maybe five feet from a fucking phone booth. I mean, it doesn’t say PHONE in big glowing letters, but what else could be in there? Other than a few dozen banana dildo gloves Maggey was storing there since she ran out of room at her place?
Oh, a lesson in logic from Mr. Why Should I Disclose My Amnesia.
“All the defendant had to do was walk three steps!” Phoenix says. “Mr. Wellington! Why did you not use the phone that was right in front of you!?” Maybe he’s the Doctor, and that’s his TARDIS, so he knows the phone doesn’t actually work! Prove me wrong, Phoenix! Anyway, Phoenix eventually gets Payne to understand that this fucks Wellington’s explanation for the time gap in his testimony. (And I know I just joked that he’s the Doctor but if one single Whovian goofball comments using the words “timey wimey” I will hunt them down with extreme prejudice.)
Maya also assumes this means the phone Phoenix is holding is in fact Wellington’s, and that he killed Prince to get it back. Which doesn’t track for a few reasons, notably that all he had to do to get it back was ask (plus Maggey was the one who had the phone, not Prince), and that Maggey still had the phone when she was arrested. Maya wonders aloud if he was looking for something else, then, which is enough for Phoenix to pull some more conjecture out of his ass for the judge, who would like to know what the hell is going on here. Phoenix says there’s only one possible explanation, but the judge tells him that if he isn’t convincing, “you will be penalized. Think carefully before you present, Mr. Wright.” Think? Carefully? Phoenix does not know these words, particularly strung together, and not just because he was hit on the head. So as the new penalty meter glows menacingly (instead of individual strikes, it’s now a bar, or a physical representation of the judge’s patience for Phoenix’s bullshit), Phoenix has to find one piece of evidence that explains what Wellington spent that time gap doing. Since there is nothing in there that definitively indicates “arranging the crime scene, obviously” or even “fucking Prince’s corpse,” Phoenix goes for the next best idea he has, and presents the broken pair of glasses. “Mr. Wellington!” Phoenix shouts, sending the witness into another panic attack. His neck is really going to hurt later. “These are your glasses, aren’t they?” Wellington doesn’t even try to deny it, blurting out, “Ah! Where… Where did you find–!? Ghaaaa!” Phoenix tells him the glasses were underneath the victim’s body, a place it’s easy to argue they could only be if Wellington were involved in the murder. “As he fell, Dustin Prince grabbed the culprit’s glasses,” Phoenix says. “The culprit knew that he had to find his glasses, and searched frantically for them. What he didn’t realize was that they were under the victim’s body! And that is why it took him 15 minutes to make that call!” This definitely paints a picture of Wellington as Velma Dinkley, nasally whining, “Where are my glasses! I can’t find my glasses!” as she pats the ground around a scary ghost dead cop.
The judge asks, somehow shocked, “M-Mr. Wright! Are you…? Are you indicting the witness as the real murderer!?” Phoenix, who unlike the judge has no memory of going through these motions a million times, is like, “Duh.” What, like it’s going to be some random other person at the park who is smart enough not to show up in court and insert himself into the narrative of the crime? That would be fucking stupid.
This is really ruining some of Phoenix’s fantasies about white lace cravats.
Wellington is really choking himself hard now, and Phoenix knows he has the right culprit. He tells Maya that the cell phone is the key to the case and confidently says, “Anyway, now is our chance to deep-six this guy. I’ll sink him in one shot!” He wants Wellington to go deep into…something. Maya smiles and says, “This is so exciting, watching you work again!” She says this because clearly this is her first time back on the job as Phoenix’s assistant, but Phoenix also thinks, “Somehow, my old self is coming back to me.” This probably means he just got a boner behind the defense bench. What a familiar feeling!
Meanwhile, Payne and Wellington aren’t about to give up, though Wellington has nothing to say other than to call Phoenix “this third-rate, fraud of a lawyer.” Which is accurate, but doesn’t help him much. The prosecution’s point, though, is that Phoenix has no proof. Which is not even close to true, but whatever, let’s accumulate some more! “In that case, why don’t we look at it from a different perspective,” Phoenix says, as Mia turns in her grave approvingly. “Let’s hear your explanation as to why you are NOT the murderer!” Phoenix, that is not how this works. Nonetheless, Wellington seizes this opportunity like an idiot. “Why, that’s… That’s easy… Um… Um… For example…” he stammers as he thinks. “There’s um… The name the victim wrote! What about that…?” Yeah, we haven’t beat that stupid shit into the dirt enough yet!
Let’s skip over Phoenix repeating for Wellington’s benefit why that was a garbage piece of evidence, as names of defendants “written” by “victims” will always be garbage, now and forever. I mean, Prince was left-handed! SO RIDICULOUS. The judge catches on that Phoenix is saying the real killer used Prince’s finger to write “Maggie.” “B-But… But, but!!” Wellington shouts. Butts! He’s finally getting on-message for this series. “Wouldn’t that mean that the real criminal was someone the defendant knew? Otherwise, how else would that person know her name was ‘Maggie’, er ‘Maggey’!?” Au contraire, mon frère!
Phoenix quickly realizes there was a way for Wellington to have learned Maggey’s name, and presents the cell phone, taking us back to Maggey’s narration of her conversation with the owner of the lost phone, in which she told him her name, providing Wellington with her name but not its weird spelling. Of course, Maggey told Phoenix all of this out in the lobby, so it’s not like it was official testimony or even admissible in court. But I’m sure Payne will point out that Phoenix only has the defendant’s word that this conversation ever happened, and furthermore, that this is assuming the phone in the court record belongs to Wellington, when he has “his” phone with him right now.
But of course, Winston Payne is the Dick Gumshoe of the prosecutors’ office, so he says none of this. As Wellington visibly squirms, Payne objects, “B-But, Your Honor! The witness has no motive!” The witness nodding along, Payne says, “A person usually would not kill someone without a reason. Mr. Wellington had no reason to kill anyone!” Yeah, I’m sure it’s totally impossible that it was a freak accident. Why, if you are dead set on killing someone, I can’t think of a surer way to get it done than to shove them into a nine-foot fall. So fatal! But this is Anal Attorney and around here the only people allowed to kill anyone by accident are the protagonists, and even then it turns out they didn’t. So Phoenix knows what Wellington’s motive was. And it’s fucking ridiculous.
Maya asks Phoenix if he’s sure about this, and he tells her, “If I said I can’t offer an explanation, then the trial’s over, right?” Of course it is! After all, there is otherwise no evidence that points to Wellington as the killer, and overwhelming evidence that points to Maggey! We totally haven’t spent the whole goddamn day establishing that, if nothing else, Maggey is clearly not guilty. She’s on the brink of prison! Sigh. So Phoenix presents the cell phone again.
“In the memory of the phone the defendant found was a list of certain phone numbers!” Phoenix says. Wellington, I guess not realizing that Phoenix hasn’t even proven it’s his fucking phone, mutters, “You… You looked up all those numbers…?” He is bad at this. Even worse than Phoenix! Our boy taps the list Maya gave him. “The names and numbers belong to people who are members of a certain con artists’ group. Can you explain why these numbers were on your phone, Mr. Wellington!?” He’s a reporter looking into their illegal activities! Creepy Nana Oldbag borrowed his phone and was the one who made those calls! Phoenix hasn’t proven it’s his fucking phone yet! Pick one, Dick. Seriously. You have so many outs right now. Wellington replies, “Th-This… This is an outrage! An invasion of privacy! Looking up the phone numbers on a person’s phone is a worse crime than murder!” Sigh again. It’s like these people can’t hear me!
Wellington shrieks for a few screens about Phoenix being “just like the cops who raided that brilliant artist, Maurice Utrillo’s atelier! They disrupted a genius at work and interrupted his dialogue with the Goddess of–” I know who Maurice Utrillo is and I still have no fucking idea what this is about. I guess he’s saying writing “Maggie” in the sand is the equivalent of impressionistic paintings of Montmartre. “I don’t care, Mr. Wellington!” Phoenix says, cutting him off. YOU WOULDN’T care about the finer things in life, I wish Wellington would reply, echoing an argument Phoenix and Edgeworth have had at least two dozen times. The judge, thankfully, doesn’t take any of Wellington or Payne’s whining about witness badgering seriously, but does demand Phoenix explain the connection between the con artists’ contact list and the witness. Phoenix’s choices are that Wellington is “looking into the group,” “a victim of that group,” or “a member of that group.” I knew it! He’s a reporter! Or at least he could have tried pretending! Phoenix chooses the last option, obviously.
“All of your ‘friends” phone numbers are stored right here in this phone,” Phoenix says. “If anyone were to look into these phone numbers, it would be all over for you. That is why you had to kill.” Why would a con artist even have the names and numbers of a bunch of fellow con artists in his phone? Are these fuckers all unionized? And I have a hard time believing a group of people who make their living grifting have never heard of aliases or burners. And if the data in the phone was so easy to trace to these other criminals, why wasn’t it also easy to trace the phone itself to Wellington, who you’d think would be in the police database as well? Is he the only one of them who was using a burner?
Wellington, under this barrage of questions from Phoenix and the judge, is clearly about to crack, and keeps twitching and fingering his scarf while his mind races from still image to still image of the crime. Payne objects one more time about this “badgering,” and the judge isn’t having it, but he keeps at it until something sticks. “P-P-P-P-Please! Please, let’s think about the content of that phone call!” he gasps. The phone call between Wellington and Maggey plays out again–so what, is Maggey testifying now?–and Payne seizes on the part where Maggey agrees to give him back his phone. “The defendant had already promised that she would return the phone,” Payne says. “After that, all Mr. Wellington had to do was meet Ms. Byrde to get his phone back. Why, then, would he need to kill anyone!?” The judge and I agree this is a valid point, which leads Maya to channel her sister (not literally, thank god, because how on earth would Phoenix deal with that in his current state) and say they should think outside the box. So, if we very logically take it as a given that Wellington did commit murder–as we should!–what would have made him do so? Wait. I got it. Prince was cheating on Gumshoe Maggey with Wellington. Star-crossed lovers from opposite sides of the law!
Phoenix thinks on this. “I don’t think Mr. Wellington went to pick up his phone in a very friendly manner,” he says. Is that seriously the best he can do? “I think he must have seen something that didn’t agree with him when he got there.” Yup. He’s lactose intolerant and saw Maggey and Prince holding ice cream cones. How dare they! The judge ignores my obviously correct answer and asks Phoenix to present this disagreeable “thing,” leading Phoenix to show, perhaps insensitively, Dustin Prince’s profile. I know he’s dead, but he’s still a person!
I’m actually pretty proud of Phoenix, because his thinking is creative but ultimately logical, plus it involves talking about outfits: “Dustin Prince had gone on his date right after his shift was over,” he explains. “With no time to change, he went to the park still wearing his police uniform!” And therefore, the judge says, picking up what Phoenix is laying down, Wellington saw Maggey standing with a cop, figured they might have already looked at his phone, and panicked. “Officer Prince was murdered simply because he was in uniform!” Phoenix finishes triumphantly. Even Payne seems to be reluctantly on board with this explanation, or is at least having trouble coming up with an objection. Time to wrap this up!
Or we could just keep dragging this out forever! That sounds good! Wellington goes fully bonkers, throwing out a string of crazy laughs with no spaces that I can’t quote here or it’ll break the page layout, all while somehow making a pufferfish blowjob face. I don’t know. “Ha ha ha ha… Impressive…” he wheezes after exerting himself on the stand. “Not bad for a person with a third-rate education…” I am pretty sure Wellington’s obsession with Phoenix sleeping his way through law school is not foreshadowing for the next game and its early focus on Phoenix’s third-rate education, but I’m going to take it as that anyway.
I seriously don’t know how you can laugh while making this face.
Finally, Wellington gets around to playing the one card he has left to him. “All you’ve been waving around and talking about is that ‘suspicious’ cell phone,” he says, alternately hanging his head and clawing at his hair and face, wild-eyed. “Suspicious phone number this, suspicious con group that! They’re all on that phone! But who’s to say that phone is really mine!? Where’s your proof!? Your evidence!?” He shows the phone in his possession again and insists he already found his phone. I mean, he found it on Phoenix’s unconscious body, but he found it!
Phoenix tries to think of some way he can prove the phone is Wellington’s, and is given two options: the numbers in the phone, or fingerprints on the phone. Obviously the numbers themselves have already been covered, and if Phoenix opts for this choice Wellington just insists the numbers could have been planted anyway. But fingerprints! That’s a good idea! Or it would be, except Maya’s here to helpfully remind us that Phoenix is a fucking idiot. “Nick! Don’t you remember!?” Maya yells at him, shoulders up around her ears. It must hurt her to say this. “When you got that from Maggey, you wiped it off! You said there was sand all over it, so…” OH, PHOENIX. I mean, I get it. How can he store this crucial evidence where it belongs–in his pockets–if it’s got sand all over it? He’d have sandy pockets for days! Phoenix just mutters, making me think of Mojo Jojo, “W-Wiped it? I wiped it…?” Maya adds, sighing, “Pretty thoroughly, too…” Not that this case hasn’t already been quite long enough, but I am so sad we did not get to see the look on Maya’s face when he did this.
Wellington has a laugh at Phoenix’s expense, and is even able to regain his composure. He’s not the least competent person in the room! He even gets to crow about the phone in his hand, “It must have glitched because all the numbers just magically disappeared!” Which makes sense from Wellington’s point of view, since he believes the phone he possesses is his, but Phoenix thinks, “You’ve got to be joking! He erased all the numbers I was going to use as evidence!” Phoenix. PHOENIX. You are making my head hurt, man.
This is all just so fucking weird because Phoenix simultaneously understands there are two phones in play but keeps acting like only one phone exists. Is this double vision, from his head injury? Is Edgeworth going to have to ask him later how many penises he’s holding up? But we’re almost to the insanely stupid twist at the heart of this case, so I’m going to plow through. Phoenix finally thinks to ask Wellington where he found his cell phone, and Wellington just cackles some more. “Oh, you are too much!” he giggles. “And of course you have no idea what I’m talking about!” WHY. WHY WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS. Just fucking lie that it was under a bench! Don’t wink and go, “Hee hee, wouldn’t YOU like to know!” How is this guy possibly a con artist? Who is dumb enough to actually fall for anything he says?
Loading ...Sure enough, the fact that Wellington is basically holding up a sign that says, “I STOLE IT FROM YOU, DINGUS,” is enough to trigger something in Phoenix. His pupils disappear and he screams, “I… I… Oh my g–NOW I REMEMBER!!” Amnesia: cured by idiot criminals who talk too much! I mean, he does encounter a lot of those, so it makes sense that meeting another one would bring him back to himself.
To my extreme irritation, we now flash back to Phoenix staring at the phone in his hands as it plays its tinny Bach ringtone, and Wellington standing around a corner with a fire extinguisher. Of course, Wellington isn’t going to overtly admit what he did, but instead just sit there looking like the cat who ate the canary, and then stole its cell phone. I still can’t believe there were no witnesses, and no security cameras in the lobby. Unless, like in the police evidence room, they’re all on a swivel, and were turned away looking at the Blue Badger while Phoenix got brained.
Maya and Phoenix fret about how to prove the cell phone they are holding is Wellington’s, but the judge decides that Phoenix is a “penny short” and ends the cross-examination. Wellington gloats some more. “Don’t blame yourself, you’re merely a third-rate lawyer,” he says, still accurately. “You only made one big mistake. Who are you? What are you? That’s something you haven’t figured out for yourself yet.” What the fuck? Who is Wellington all of a sudden, the Oracle of Delphi? Did Phoenix stick a quarter into his pants to get a fortune?