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The call comes in after midnight. Some concerned old man, who’d heard shots fired at Gourd Lake. It’s a quiet night, cold- or, cold for LA, anyway, and foggy, but the caller had seen someone shot off a boat by another person with a gun and gray hair, and that’s pretty damn important.
So Detective Gumshoe rouses himself from where he’d been half-asleep on his desk, and radios in- “10-4, ETA 3 minutes!” He slings his heavy canvas trenchcoat on and heads out to the scene. Hopefully, it’ll be in and out. It's Christmas, after all. He's tired.
He clambers out of his squad car by the beach entrance- “On scene” into his radio as he leaves the lights flashing and strides through the trees, hand on his gun. With luck it won’t come down to shots; he’s one of three cops on duty since it's a holiday, and he’s a lousy shot anyway, but it’s good to have anyway-
He freezes when he sees a single figure step out of the treeline, then, remembering himself, levels his gun at them. They don’t even react; their hands in the pockets of a duster, hair blowing in the wind. “LAPD,” he says, loudly. “Hands where I can see them.”
The person removes their hands from their pockets, without raising them, and Gumshoe shivers. There’s an almost ethereal quality to the encounter; the other person is so still they could be a statue, were it not for their hair and duster still blowing.
“Come out here where I can see you,” he calls.
The person steps forward into the red-and-blue flashing light from his car, and he almost drops his gun. He does lower it, in shock, mostly, numb fingers fumbling for the grip, but also out of a sudden certainty that the man before him would never hurt him.
“Mr. Edgeworth?” Gumshoe says, uncertainly.
The prosecutor’s shivering violently, now that he can see him. Red and blue light throw his features into sharp relief; he looks exhausted, purple-blue bruising ringing his eyes. He’s seen Edgeworth like this before, but never… quite with this energy, a sort of terror in the skewed-sharp lines of his body.
“Sir, there’s- did you hear the shots? Something-”
His voice falls flat.
Mr. Edgeworth is staring at him, as if he doesn’t see him there, as if he’s just… a ghost. It’s unsettling, scares Gumshoe so bad he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand shock-straight, and he thinks back over the call details.
An old man saw a man with gray hair shoot another man on a boat.
He takes in the soaked fabric at Mr. Edgeworth’s sleeves, the hem of his coat, the bottom of his pants, dripping off his shoes and even his mercury-sheen bangs. Not the kind of water damage you get if you fall off a boat, but the kind you get if you’ve been rowing without skill, if you’re not paying attention to your oars, flinging water in the air.
There’s nobody else here. There’s nobody at the crime scene but-
“Sir,” he breathes, “no.”
Mr. Edgeworth won’t meet his eyes. He glances away, instead, fingers curling bone-white at the knuckles in the soaked sleeve of his coat, the way he does when he sees Prosecutor von Karma, and Gumshoe realizes he’s scared. Horror and fear and, and bone-deep exhaustion , in the deep lines that twist his face. It’s a look he’s seen his boss- his friend- wear very, very few times. Only twice, actually, ever.
Gumshoe knows himself pretty well. He knows he’s naive, at times, and can be stupid. He knows the way people look at him when he calls himself Mr. Edgeworth’s friend; he knows Mr. Edgeworth didn’t have friends before he had him, that he didn’t (and still doesn’t) like people, or talk to anyone. That Mr. Edgeworth is arrogant, and mean, and cold, sometimes. That he’s the reason he’s working tonight; he can’t afford to take Christmas off, not when every other detective is making money hand-over-fist compared to him. But he’s Mr. Edgeworth’s detective, his partner in crime-solving, the Watson (or was it Wilson?) to his Sherlock.
It is for this reason he says, in a voice that is possibly too soft and cracking, “You didn’t do it, did you?”
There is a long, horrible moment of silence, in which he can hear other cop cars pulling up behind him.
Mr. Edgeworth stands there, in front of him. The red and blue lights, still flashing, illuminate his eyes- the anger, the exhaustion, the terror, the regret in them. The way he is still not looking quite at Gumshoe, but rather at some point beyond him, possibly ten feet behind him or possibly a decade and a half ago.
After agonizing seconds of this stalemate, this mutual fear and guilt, Mr. Edgeworth makes the first move.
He turns, slowly, and Gumshoe watches as he links his wrists at the small of his back.
For a long moment, he knows he has no other choice. He has radioed in; they will expect a report back. This is not a fork in the road; it is a long straight street that he is terrified to take another step down. There are other cops watching, now, from their cars- he has taken too long to be afforded the mercy of privacy. Mr. Edgeworth is still shivering-cold, hands trembling.
Gumshoe reaches out to fasten the metal around his wrists, and though his touch is gentle he can feel the way the prosecutor’s skin is colder than the steel of the handcuffs. He tightens them; normally he would be careful to make them fit just right, without biting into the skin, but now he goes out of his way to make them just a little too loose. If he drew blood, here, now-
“My rights,” Mr. Edgeworth says, and his voice is rough with disuse. “If you don’t read me them, then…”
Mr. Edgeworth trails off. Mr. Edgeworth does not leave sentences unfinished, ever. He thinks of the courtroom, Mr. Edgeworth smugly refuting contradiction after contradiction. Now, he's creating them.
Still, he mumbles, “You… you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can or will be held against you.”
The lake falls silent but for the idling of engines behind them.
Edgeworth lets himself be escorted back to the car, head bowed low, bangs shading either side of his face, and lets Gumshoe help him in so he doesn’t hit his head.
“S-suspect apprehended,” Gumshoe says into his radio as he slides into the front seat, and his voice is trembly-shaky in a way it never goes.
The prosecutor in his backseat, behind the grill that separates cop from criminal, remains stone-silent.