Ace Attorney: Secrets beneath Secrets

Turnabout Betrayal, Part 10

April 23

Courtroom No. 4

10:45 AM

Cotoli Morix

Prosecutor Cruz answered his phone and began to speak into it. "Hello?" he asked. I couldn't tell what he was hearing, and it was hard to estimate since his sunglasses were covering his eyes so well.

I shot a brief glance to Chrysalis. She swallowed nervously but didn't say a word. I could tell she was just as nervous as I was about what was going on. I took her hand and squeezed it as we waited for Prosecutor Cruz to tell us about what he had heard on this phone call.

"What?!" Prosecutor Cruz yelled suddenly. It was so out of the blue that I nearly jumped out of my own skin. My heart pounded in my chest, and one hand instinctively went up to feel my heart beating. God, that had scared me. What in the world could have surprised him enough to make him start yelling like that?

"I'm kind of scared all of a sudden," Chrysalis whispered to me, worry in her eyes. "I want to know what he could have heard that would freak him out so much."

"Let's just... Hold off on making any other assumptions for now. I'm sure he'll tell us when he's ready to say something," I told her. It was my way of calming both her and me down from any further panic. Sudden yelling was one way to easily freak us both out, and this was no exception to the regular rule.

We didn't say anything for a few minutes while Prosecutor Cruz was busy on the phone. I glanced all around the courtroom, though I looked to Ms. Giuseppe first. She was clearly confused but was doing her best to hide it. I could see fear in her eyes as well, and I longed to comfort her despite not being able to due to what was going on.

Judge Frost was the next one to earn my focus. He was looking at Prosecutor Cruz with concern and worry. I got the feeling he would have spoken up to say something if he wasn't expected to be quiet to allow Prosecutor Cruz to finish his phone call.

Prosecutor Yin wasn't doing much aside from staring off into space. She was looking at the witness stand before her, but her gaze was glassy and distant. Given her relationship to Sora, and from there, her relationship to Prosecutor Wood, she was most certainly worried at the knowledge that the search party had found something.

Polly was looking at Prosecutor Cruz with a heavy frown. She was doing her best to listen in on the conversation he was having with whoever was on the other end of the call, but judging by her deep frown, she wasn't having any luck.

Finally, I shot a brief glance to Ms. Cruz. She was looking at her brother solemnly, though she kept looking back and forth between him and Ms. Giuseppe every few seconds. She was struggling to stay still from her place at the witness preparation bench near the prosecution.

Prosecutor Cruz hung up slowly, and he swallowed dryly. He set his phone down on the prosecution bench before speaking slowly. "They didn't find the witness, but they did find something else," he said quietly. There was an unspoken, tense anger behind his words that sent a shiver up my spine. "They found... A body. A murder has taken place at the Prosecutor's Office."

I knew my face was going pale without even needing to check. I looked slowly to Chrysalis, my heart beating faster from panic. Who had died? Who could have hurt them? Was this incident related to the murder that we were investigating as it was?

"The victim... The victim is a defense attorney by the name of Cormous Arme," Prosecutor Cruz murmured. "He was found stabbed in the back in a room on the bottom floor of the Prosecutor's Office..."

"Cormous?!" I yelped in surprise. He couldn't be serious, right? Our Cormous Arme? The one who had been working at our agency up until the Emsthorpe incident? He was dead?