The Defense

The courtroom was silent. The judge sat at his bench, staring at the thick, double doors as if willing them to open. Miles Edgeworth was poised at the prosecutor's stand, already sporting a condescending smirk. The bailiffs glanced at each other, checking their watches, impatiently tapping their feet.

And Phoenix Wright's shirt was already soaked through with sweat beneath his jacket. He stared at the mess of evidence spread out on his stand: Crime scene photos; autopsy reports; scribbled notes to himself. But something was missing. There always seemed to be something missing, but he couldn't even attempt a coherent explanation.

There was no weapon, no motive, and no witnesses. And his client wasn't there yet.

"Where is she?" Phoenix muttered, and Maya looked up, having been studying the evidence herself.

"She'll be here, Nick!" she chirped. "Gumshoe said they'd bring her right over after questioning."

More questioning. All they could determine from their investigating was she hadn't murdered the victim, but there was absolutely no way anyone else could have done it, either.

But for ten former mobsters to die of heart attacks on the same day? Coincidences like that didn't happen.

The double doors slammed open and Gumshoe ran in, red-faced. Alone. Phoenix prayed that his client would appear soon after, or was hiding behind his massive bulk, but no matter how many times he crossed and re-crossed his fingers, she wasn't there. A murmur rose in the courtroom and the judged banged his gavel, calling for order.

"Detective Gumshoe! What is the meaning of this?" the judge asked.

"Sir! Your Honor!" He jogged up to the judge's bench, breathing hard. All eyes were focused on the unfolding drama. Even before Gumshoe made the announcement, Phoenix knew what had happened. He was still in denial until the declaration was made: "It's the defendant! She's dead! Heart attack!"

Maya sighed heavily. "Not again."

Phoenix avoided the lobby until after the courtroom had cleared. The media hovered outside, waiting for his statement, but he slumped to the floor behind the defense stand and pretended they weren't there. Maya had snuck out to the lobby for Swiss rolls from the vending machine, and a cacophony of camera flashes and reporter's shouts echoed from the lobby before she slammed the doors closed again. She tossed a Swiss roll to Phoenix before sitting on the floor beside him.

"This is impossible," he whined, forcefully unwrapping his snack.

"But we got further than last time!" Maya said. "At least we got to court before your client died."

"Thanks a lot, Maya." Phoenix shoved the Swiss roll into his mouth.

He knew that his clients were innocent. There had been no evidence against them, but the situations were too unlikely to go unnoticed by the court. People were dying of heart attacks all over the world, and at a rapid rate. It was impossible to pin down a suspect, but they kept on dragging them in. Phoenix defended each one of them before they, too, died of a heart attack.

"I'm going to have a heart attack," Phoenix said, hugging his knees to his chest.

Maya tapped her chin in thought. "What we need is a way to hide the case from the media," she said. "If someone is targeting your clients, maybe they won't die if no one knows you're representing them!"

Phoenix clutched at his spiked hair with both hands, pulling at the roots. "But it's impossible! She was in the detention center for a week and wasn't in contact with anyone besides us and the police. How could someone target her?"

He left out the bigger question, which was already getting old, and for which they had no answer: How could a heart attack be a weapon of murder?

"Maybe it's someone in the jail," Maya said, "poisoning food, or—"

A shadow loomed over them both. "Wright."

Phoenix didn't even look up. "Edgeworth."

"I recommend you give this game up," he said, leaning over the defense's stand. "Get up and stop sniveling."

Maya sat up straight, balling her fists. "He is not sniveling!"

"This isn't looking good for you," Edgeworth said, ignoring her. "If your clients continue to die, you won't make it as an attorney. No one will hire you. You're jinxed."

"Thanks for rubbing it in," Phoenix muttered.

"The media is gone," Edgeworth said, standing upright and squaring his shoulders. "There are guards outside waiting to escort you to an armored vehicle." Phoenix peeked out from his folded arms. "I recommend you go home."

"Edgeworth . . ." But he had already walked away, disappearing into the prosecution's lobby. "He's—"

"Let's go, Nick." Maya stood, holding out a hand to help him up. Reluctantly, he balled up the empty Swiss roll wrapper and took her hand.

"Home" didn't necessarily mean "sleep," though come one o'clock in the morning Phoenix wished that he could. He had spread his meager evidence over his bed, staring at it blankly, wondering what could have gone wrong. Edgeworth was right—he wasn't going to get any new clients if they kept on dying, and it wasn't like he had another career to fall back on. Artist? Pianist? He groaned. He wasn't good at anything, and at this rate he wasn't very good at law, either.

He spread photos of his last three clients across his pillow. Despite how many times he stared at their faces, there was no link between them. The victims they were accused of killing had nothing in common—mobsters, kidnappers, and murderers from different parts of the country. He sighed heavily. He had attempted to find a connection before, to no avail. He wasn't going to find one now, either.

He wanted to ignore the buzzing of his phone, but the illuminated screen was hard to miss in the dim light. He sighed as he picked it up. You better be sleeping. Maya.

He considered not answering, as if proof that he was, in fact, sleeping, but she knew him better. Why are YOU up?

Can't sleep. Wanna meet for burgers at the diner?

Burgers at two a.m. wasn't one of his better decisions, but he hadn't eaten since breakfast, before the case. And, besides, staring at this evidence again was going to reveal nothing. So he grabbed his bike helmet and head for the door.

Maya wolfed down her burger as Phoenix studied the diner's middle-of-the-night clientele. College students, security guards, and construction workers filled the booths, eating an early breakfast or chowing down on desserts. Phoenix's own cherry pie sat abandoned on the table. He opted against Maya's selection of a meal; a greasy burger at this hour would only cause trouble later. But the pie wasn't that appetizing, either.

"Figure anything out?" Maya asked, her mouth full.

He hadn't mentioned re-examining the evidence—it was all he had been doing since his first client died unexpectedly, before they even had a chance to go to court. "Nothing." He sighed miserably. "Maybe I should just stop taking these cases."

"You can't do that!" A nearby table of college students glanced over at her exclamation. She lowered her voice. "These people are counting on you, Nick. We'll figure something out! We always do."

Edgeworth's words continued to echo through his head: No one will hire you. You're jinxed. What if the only people who hired him now where suspected murderers, and they all died before he could get paid? He was struggling with rent as it was, with his track record of dead clients.

"Nick." He jerked his head up; Maya was picking through the last french fries on her plate as she watched him. "You haven't eaten anything."

"Not hungry," he said, pushing the pie to the center of the table. "I'll just get it to go."

Maya remained silent. He took that as a bad sign, too—if she wasn't pressuring him to solve his problems with food, then he was a goner for sure.

Despite his protests, Maya returned with him to the office. She would have preferred for him to go straight home, but Phoenix insisted on picking up more case files before retiring for the night. To their surprised, there was a blinking red light on the Wright & Co. Law Offices voicemail.

"At this hour?" Phoenix said, as he pressed the button to listen.

The voice was garbled and difficult to decipher, but they leaned in over the machine to listen. "Phoenix Wright," it said. He couldn't figure out if it was a man or a woman. "I require your assistance. I've seen your name in the papers, and you're the only one who can help. I'm being framed. I have sent you two emails, one with my personal information and the other with instructions on how to decrypt the first. Please come to my home tomorrow. This is of the upmost urgency."

They played the message over again, but it was just as cryptic as the first time.

"That's really weird," Maya said. "Check your email!"

Phoenix couldn't deny his curiosity. He opened his email and, sure enough, there were two new messages from unknown names that arrived just an hour before. The decryption was easy enough, though it required some basic math skills that needed major calculator work. When they finally decoded the second message, it contained only a name and an address, plus instructions not to use names within the house. You will refer to me as the client, it read, and I will call you Lawyer.

"I don't like this guy," Maya said, though she was already pulling her coat back on. "Are we going or not?"

"Now?" It wasn't one of their better ideas, but scoping out this mysterious client's house was better than tossing and turning the rest of the night. So, against his better judgment, they memorized the address—it was within walking distance of the office—and locked up.

It took only fifteen minutes to arrive. Phoenix and Maya stood on the sidewalk across the street, watching. Despite the hour, there was still a chance of activity—someone had left him a voicemail not long ago—but the house was dark and silent.

Maya shivered, huddling closer to Phoenix. "This place creeps me out."

"What, like it's haunted or something?"

"No . . . I know what a spirit feels like." She shivered. "Would you mind if I didn't come tomorrow? It feels . . . weird."

"Well, I guess that's okay." When he squinted at the house, he could swear there was a sign of movement in a second-floor window. But it was so quick that he didn't have a chance to register if anything had happened. Phoenix frowned. Why couldn't he get one normal client for a change?

Kira

"Look at this, Ryuk." Light Yagami leaned back in his desk chair, flicking the newspaper toward the shinigami. "That lawyer made the news again. Looks like his client died." He chuckled.

"Bad break," Ryuk replied, hovering over the newspaper. "Phoenix Wright . . . that's a dumb name. He doesn't have any luck, does he?"

"How unfortunate," Light said, turning back to his desk. "This could ruin his career."

Ryuk lingered, peering over Light's shoulder as he opened the worn, black notebook. He paused only momentarily before scribbling down a list of murderers, thieves, and spouse abusers—anyone who had appeared on the nightly news. "His picture is right here," Ryuk said, waving the paper in front of Light's face. "You could kill him."

Light glanced up at the photograph. Yes, he could kill the pathetic lawyer. His little sidekick, too, and maybe that stuck-up prosecutor he was always up against. That would stop this whole charade. But he leaned back, crossing his arms as he shook his head. "Too easy. He'll end up doing it himself. I want to see how far he'll go to defend his precious clients." He snatched the paper to skim the article again. "Nothing on a new case for this guy?"

"Nope." Ryuk was already bored, stretching back onto the bed to reach for the basket of apples.

"We'll keep an eye on him," Light said, turning back to the notebook. "Let's see how far we can push him before he breaks."