Ace Attorney: Criminal's Masquerade

The Classified Turnabout, Part 2 (Joe)

//October 15, 2033. Interpol's Break Room, 10:53 AM//

I glanced over the crime scene with a small frown. I always hated this sort of thing. Even if I was one to investigate crime scenes, I still hated looking them over. It always made me feel bad. It reminded me of when I looked into a crime scene a few years ago. Back when the victim was somebody I knew...

I shook off that thought and examined the crime scene further. There was a rod of metal sitting on the floor. The edge was filed to a point. The metal rod was practically covered in blood. The entire room was rather bloody, as a matter of fact. There was a small pattern in the blood that looked sort of like the outline of a person. I figured that had to be relevant in some way, but I wasn't entirely sure how it mattered.

The victim himself looked just plain awful. He had been an agent from Q's branch back whenever he was still alive. He had been a technology genius, almost as much so as Q. It was rather unfortunate that he had died in such a way, I had to admit. Even when crime scenes were involved, this was rather gruesome.

"Um... Who might you be?"

I turned to see a young man standing in the doorway. He had blonde hair and an air of nervousness about him. "I could ask you the same thing," I said, raising an eyebrow.

The young man stared at me for a second or two before a small smile appeared on his lips. "Wait... I remember you. You testified in a case I worked on last year. Your name is... M, right?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yes," I replied. I was rather surprised that he hadn't said something about how I was the head of Interpol. That was often the first thing people said when they came across me.

"My name is James Devine. I'm the defense attorney defending the defendant," he told me. I couldn't believe that he had managed to overuse that word (said word being 'defend') so much within the span of a few seconds.

"It's nice to meet you," I said in a somewhat stern fashion. I turned back to the crime scene and looked at it once again. It was just as gruesome as it had been before I turned to examine Mr. Devine.

"It's going to be hard to find anything in this place," he muttered under his breath. He looked at the blood that littered the floor. "It seems like there's no clean area in the entire room."

"There's one," I said. I pointed him to a corner. There was the outline of a person there. Somebody had been sitting there for some reason for quite a bit of time as far as I could tell. "Supposedly, that's where the defendant was before she was discovered by the police. I don't know the full extent of the police's knowledge. They're refusing to say too much to me."

Despite what I was saying, I was rather salty about the fact that the police were holding information from me. I'm just, you know, the head of Interpol. No big deal. A murder just took place in the building that I'm in charge of. But, because it's common knowledge, no information was being given to me. Because that makes so much sense.

Mr. Devine jumped over to the spot that was empty of blood. He stared down at where he stood. "There's something here," he whispered to himself. He crouched down and picked something up off of the ground.

"What is it?" I asked. I couldn't see anything from where I stood a few feet away. Part of me said that he was going crazy and that there was nothing actually there, but the other part hoped that there actually was evidence there. I wanted everybody to get out of Interpol so that I would have space. I was never really a people person, which meant that I preferred it when everybody was gone.

Mr. Devine held up a small hair. "It looks like it's brown," he whispered. "A brown hair. Who would have guessed?"

I was about to suggest that it likely belonged to the killer, but I figured that he already knew that if he was a lawyer. Morix Law Offices didn't let in any sort of amateurs, I knew. If he worked there, it meant that he had some sort of skill when it came to this sort of thing.

"There's actually a little bit of blood over here," came a whisper from Mr. Devine. He leaned over and looked at it. "It's sort of out of place, if you think about it... There's quite the large amount of distance between this blood and the rest of it. I bet that there's some sort of reasoning behind that."

Mr. Devine pulled out a small camera from his pocket and took a picture of the blood pool. He tucked it back away and pulled out a bag. He sealed the brown hair into the plastic bag and jumped back to where I stood outside of the blood pool.

"I guess that's all I'll be able to do for now. I can't get any closer to the body without stepping in blood," Mr. Devine. "That being said, I'll be getting going. I'll see you in court tomorrow, correct?"

I nodded. "I'll see you there," I said. I walked from the room and exited the room, leaving Mr. Devine alone at the crime scene. I returned to my office and let out a sigh. I hoped desperately that this mess would end the following day. The police needed to get out once this was over with... The very least they could do is let us look into the mess if it took place in our crime scene, but since they weren't doing that, I was ready to kick them out and never let them come back into Interpol.

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HAPPY BIRTH ACE ONCE AGAIN TAKE SECOND BDAY UPDATE

-Digital