Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth/The Kidnapped Turnabout/Part 3-5 - End 2

Looks like all hope is lost. Mr Amano has denied us permission to investigate the Haunted House. Ms Paups will be arrested while Lance will get away with murder. The truth will be lost to us all. It's the end... or is it? Kay reminds us that she still has the Little Thief! That way, we can recreate the scene at the Haunted House based on its blueprints.

The first thing we should recreate is the moment Edgeworth was ambushed. When he was dropping off the ransom, he saw a badger mannequin lying at the other end of the corridor. Once Edgeworth turned his back, he was struck from behind. Looking at a map, as the hallway is a dead end, that can only mean that the assailant was waiting to attack him at point B! The costumed attacker lay in wait disguised as an unsuspicious prop at the end of the corridor, then ambushed Edgeworth as he turned to leave. Lance claims that he never went into the Haunted House, just waited outside, so that means that the victim, who was wearing the Bad Badger costume, is Edgeworth's attacker. As the Bad Badger had a model gun attached to its right hand, the weapon must have been held in the left hand.

Investigation: Haunted House Re-creation
First, examine the mirrors. There's a lot of mirrors in here, and some of them are already broken, so it isn't surprising that there were some shards found in the victim's costume. You get the Mirror shards logic. Kay notes that the mirror shards here, however, are thicker and have some sort of design at the back. The Mirror Fragments are updated in your Organizer.

Now examine the Bad Badger behind Edgeworth. Edgeworth doesn't know what weapon was used to hit him, though he remembers getting hit at the right side of his head. There could be a weapon in the hallway that the assailant could have used to knock out Edgeworth. Present the Broken Prop Sword. The attacker could have used it to attack Edgeworth, then took it to the hideout to hide the evidence, which is why it was found there. We can run one test to determine whether it was used to attack Edgeworth. The attacker couldn't have left any prints as he was a costumed kidnapper, so you should Test with Luminol. Edgeworth's wound bled slightly after he was struck, so there could be some blood on the sword. After testing, there is a small patch of blood on the left side. The Broken Prop Sword is updated in your Organizer. The re-creation is also updated to include the sword.

There's something wrong about this scene, though. Going into a close-up, deduce the sword and present the Broken Prop Sword. If the sword was held in the left hand, it would hit at the right side, so the bloodied left side could only have resulted from a right-handed swing. Kay changes the re-creation to reflect this new fact, but we know there will be another contradiction. Present the Missing Model Gun or the Blue Badger Bible. There is already a model gun attached to the Bad Badger's right hand, so the Bad Badger couldn't have been the attacker. This leaves Lance as the culprit, and he confesses to it. Even though he's left-handed, he used his right hand on purpose to pin it on the Mr Devorae.

Now the re-creation is updated once again, with the Proto Badger as the attacker, which matches the opening cinematic of this case quite well. However, Agent Lang interrupts us before we can investigate. He reveals that the Haunted House had a trick called the "disappearing badger". A Blue Badger doll was placed at that very end of the corridor as the disappearing badger, so the attacker couldn't have been hiding there! The Gatewater Land Pamphlet is updated in your Organizer. The re-creation is also updated once again. There is something blatantly wrong about the scene, as the Blue Badger simply turns into a Proto Badger.

Examine the Blue Badger doll at the end of the hallway. There's something peculiar about it. Deduce the belt and present the Blue Badger Bible or Badger Photo Rally. The belt seems to be mirrored from the actual Blue Badger costume, but Kay says that it was an exact re-creation of the picture in the pamphlet. Why is the Blue Badger dressed up like that? You get the Blue Badger in reverse logic.

Go into Logic Mode and connect the Mirror shards with Blue Badger in reverse. The Blue Badger doll Edgeworth saw was actually a mirrored image. The corridor is not actually straight - it forms an L-shape at the end of the hallway, where the real doll lies. It is reflected by the mirror at the bend of the hallway. As the house is dark, the trick is concealed perfectly. There could be one reason why the park built the house in this way. Present the Gatewater Land Pamphlet. The disappearing badger is one of the seven wonders of the attraction, but Edgeworth had no trouble seeing the badger. There is a trick that the someone could have used to make the doll disappear, and that is to Move the mirror-wall. When the badger doll is visible, the mirror is at its normal location. When the doll disappears, the mirror wall simply moves to close the end with the badger doll, revealing an empty corridor behind it. That is why the mirror fragments had a pattern behind them, to blend in with the wall!

It also presents a new hiding place for the attacker. Present the corridor behind the mirror. The assailant only had to wait behind the mirror where Edgeworth couldn't see him, then strike by moving the mirror away. However, since we have some of the mirror fragments, the mirror wall must be broken in the real Haunted House. As they were found in the victim's costume, it means the victim was there when the mirror broke. Edgeworth also recalls the sound of glass breaking as soon as the phone call with one of the kidnappers ended.

Kay recreates the scene with the mirror wall. Before Edgeworth entered the dining room, the kidnappers were hiding behind the mirror wall. After he entered the dining room, the wall broke and the kidnapper's hideout was revealed. The kidnapper then had to hide at the end of the hallway with the doll. There is another contradiction here. Present the empty straight corridor. When Edgeworth went out of the dining room, he still saw a badger at the end of the corridor, when there shouldn't be anything there. Present the Victim's Costume or Mr. Deacon's Murder Notes. That badger could be the dead body of the victim! Edgeworth didn't hear the gunshot itself because there were a bunch of other sound effects playing in the house at the time.

With the evidence stacking up against him, Lance finally breaks down and confesses to the murder. He says that Mr Devorae suddenly turned on him and straddled him to the ground. Lance stole the gun from him and shot him, breaking the mirror wall. Agent Lang now calls for the arrest of Lance... and his father! He reveals that he came to the country to investigate Ernest Amano, whose company scandal, an internal smuggling ring discovered ten years ago, triggered the "KG-8 incident". The mastermind that was arrested was Colin Devorae, the victim! Lang suspects that Mr Amano was the real ringleader but placed the blame on Devorae, so after Devorae escaped from prison, he chose to hide him from the police in exchange for his silence about the true ringleader. However, he is interrupted by none other than Jacques Portsman, the prosecutor for the case, with his top detective, Buddy Faith.

The two suspects are still arrested, and Lang reveals that he suspected that Edgeworth was the corrupt prosecutor that worked for Mr Amano. After leaving, his assistant Shih-na reveals that Agent Lang belonged to the House of Lang in Zheng Fa. They were revered and held high positions among the police force there. However, a prosecutor once tampered with the evidence a Lang detective found, ruining their credibility and honor, which is why Agent Lang hates prosecutors and the court system. Portsman also leaves with his partner as Edgeworth plans to head back to his office, leading to the first case of the game.

What REALLY Happened
Seven years ago, the Amano Group was revealed to have an internal smuggling ring which caused the KG-8 incident. The group's secretary, Colin Devorae, was arrested as the ringleader, but some agents suspected that it was company head Ernest Amano pinning the crime on him. Devorae soon broke out of jail, bringing with him a guard's gun. He took on the alias of "Oliver Deacon" and went back to his former employer to seek hiding. Ernest Amano promised to hide him as long as he remained silent about the true ringleader.

Ernest's son, Lance Amano, knew about "Deacon" being the missing father of his girlfriend Lauren Paups, so he used Paups as a hostage to force Deacon to cooperate in his staged kidnapping so he could pay back his $1 million of debt. As Deacon was still a felon, he couldn't reveal his identity to his daughter. All three of them staged the kidnapping together, pretending to hold Lance hostage in Gatewater Land. Edgeworth, as the protégé of Amano's close friend Manfred von Karma, was asked by Amano to drop the ransom that would save his son. After arriving, Edgeworth was requested by one of the kidnappers to drop the ransom money at the Haunted House. The kidnappers had already made their way there after stealing the park's badger costumes, with Lance as the Proto Badger and Deacon as the Bad Badger. They hid behind the mirror wall that was used to create an illusion as part of the attraction. As Edgeworth was dropping off the ransom in the dining room, Deacon turned on Lance to make him leave his daughter out of the crime. Lance was straddled to the ground but managed to take Deacon's gun and fire a lethal shot that went straight through his body and broke the mirror wall behind them.

Having accidentally committed murder, Lance needed to pin the crime on someone else. First, he used Devorae's dead body to create the illusion that the badger Edgeworth saw was still there while he hid in a separate corridor hidden from view. As Edgeworth turned to leave, Lance slowly sneaked up behind him, grabbing a prop sword and striking Edgeworth, knocking him out. Lance then had Edgeworth tied to a pole and put Devorae's Bad Badger costume on him.

Lance moved the dead body with the Proto Badgermobile and hid it in the garage in the Wild Wild West area while moving an unconscious Edgeworth to the Isolation Room. He had Paups look at Edgeworth and made her believe that he was Devorae to fake the time of the murder. He also tore off a model gun from another Bad Badger costume to give to Paups to defend herself.

Lance made Paups escape early in a Blue Badger costume before taking the badger head off of Edgeworth for himself. He lied to her that Devorae had escaped and put on the Bad Badger head on. He jammed the door with the prop sword he attacked Edgeworth with and escaped through the underground tunnels. He then pretended to be Devorae walking on the stage, having its shadow obscure the details of his costume. Once he saw Paups, he aimed at her with his gun. Paups, thinking that Devorae was going to shoot her, fired a blank at Lance. Lance pretended to collapse and Paups ran away in fright.

Epilogue
After all that has happened, Kay is still annoyed that neither Edgeworth nor Gumshoe remembers her. What does that mean? She presents a white cloth which jogs both of their memories. Just when you think we're done with flashbacks, we get one more, this time taking us back seven years to the time Edgeworth first met Gumshoe and Kay.