Ace Attorney: Fading Bloodlines

Turnabout Flashback Part 8 (Robin)

//October 18, 2016. Starr Household, 3:35 PM//

The crime scene was much less... Occupied when we arrived. I was thankful that I no longer had to push through hordes of people (investigators or reporters) while saying 'my name is Robin Wood' just to get something productive done.

"I'm kind of nervous..." Pandora admitted.

"Why is that?" Ms. Yin asked.

"If the culprit is willing to attack a child to cover up their crime, then they must be desperate. Who knows what they might do if any of us come face to face with them?" Pandora question. Everybody was too nervous to provide her with much of an answer.

Prosecutor Yang changed the subject after a few moments of silence. "Anyways, what should we look into first? There has to be some sort of clue hiding around here," he said. "There's never been a case where no clues were left behind."

"Something around here must point to who the culprit is..." Ms. Yin murmured. She walked around the room with a frown, searching for any sort of potential clue hiding in the dark corners of the bedroom.

"Do you guys want to see the knife?!"

I recognized the voice as belonging to Toby. He ran in recklessly, holding the plastic bag that contained the knife. Toby was tripping over his own feet, leaving me sighing; he had always been the clumsy type.

"No need to yell," Prosecutor Yang told him. Judging by the tense expression that had washed over him, he hadn't suspected Toby to appear so suddenly.

"Sorry," Toby apologized. He bolted across the room to my side, though he tripped in the process. Toby went sprawling. The knife in his grip slid across the floor. It ended up under the bed, though it thankfully didn't fall from the bag. I honestly expected it to.

"You dropped it," Prosecutor Yang muttered under his breath. "You're the clumsiest detective I've ever met."

Pandora crawled under the bed to retrieve the knife. "It's really dusty down here," she commented. She sneezed, so I came to the conclusion that Pandora was allergic to dust.

"Can you find the knife?" Ms. Yin asked her. "It looked like it went pretty far under the bed from my point of view."

Pandora crawled out from under the bed. The knife was in one hand. "There wasn't anything else under there. It was just dust." A sneeze escaped her lips.

"Wait... Can I see that bag?" I asked, pointing to the knife.

Pandora nodded and walked to my side. "Here you are," she said, handing the bag over into my waiting hand.

I frowned. "I knew that something was wrong with this knife the moment I saw it..." I murmured.

"You thought something was wrong with it?" Ms. Yin questioned curiously. "I didn't see anything too off..."

I held up the knife. Floating around inside the bag was the brown knife handle. "Doesn't it seem strange that the handle suddenly fell off? Something is amiss here."

"I think I have a theory," Prosecutor Yang piped up.

"Please explain," I promoted him.

"When I first saw the knife, I knew something was strange. There was blood all over the blade but none on the handle. This could explain why there wasn't any blood on the handle," Prosecutor Yang began.

"It could?" Ms. Yin asked.

"Yes. The handle on this knife comes off, meaning that it can be switched. What if the knife handles were switched? The one with the defendant's prints on it wasn't on at the time of the crime. If we can find the real one, we'll have proof against the culprit," Prosecutor Yang explained.

"I'll go find the handle alternates and spray them with Luminol!" Toby cried. He ran from the room, miraculously not tripping on his way out.

"I wonder about if the real knife handle is here," Ms. Yin frowned.

"What do you mean?" Pandora questioned.

"I believe she means the rabbit toy. We were sure that evidence was hidden inside, which is why the culprit took it. What if that evidence was the missing knife handle?" I deduced.

"That is a definite possibility," Prosecutor Yang agreed.

"If that's the case, who knows if we'll ever find it again? The culprit escaped so easily, so hiding something as small as the rabbit toy shouldn't be a problem for them," Pandora frowned.

"You sure are being pessimistic today," Ms. Yin muttered.

Toby reappeared in the doorway not long after. "Guys... I couldn't find the knife handle anywhere. I looked everywhere, but I couldn't even find a trace of it," he said glumly.

I sighed. "That must mean that the real culprit really did hide the knife handle in the rabbit. They committed the crime with that handle on it, though they switched it out afterwards. They hid the real knife handle in the rabbit and sewed it up. Then, they placed the current handle onto the knife in an attempt to frame Lilac for committing the crime," I said.

"You guys did a lot of deducing while I was gone," Toby commented. "Does this mean that..." He gulped nervously.

"Mean what?" Pandora questioned. "Are you thinking of something bad? It sounds like you are."

"The culprit is clearly experienced in covering up crimes, almost as if they've done it multiple times in the past. This means that since they've done it multiple times, they could be angry and quite violent if caught," Toby declared.

I looked down. I had my suspicions on who had done it, though I didn't have any evidence. I knew this person rather well, and they had always seemed shady to me. I hoped quietly that this wasn't true.

"Is it bad that I don't want to catch the culprit now?" Pandora asked quietly.

Ms. Yin shook her head. "We should end our investigation here..."

We all silently parted our separate ways. I hoped as hard as I could that my suspicions about the culprit were false. I knew that Lilac wouldn't like it if it were true...

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I HAD TO TYPE THIS TWICE BECAUSE IT DELETED THE FIRST TIME I CRI

RIP DIJ

-Digital