“It was a forty-caliber rimless cartridge made by Smith and Wesson,” Clarke said.
“Did you draw any conclusion from that information?”
“Not really, other than that the forty caliber indicated that the gun was smaller than a nine-millimeter or a forty-five. It was the kind of gun used for home defense, not law enforcement.”
“So you were looking for a small, chrome-colored gun. What did you do next, Detective?”
“I learned from the witnesses and school administrators that Aaron Colton was Becca’s former boyfriend and that he was a student at Grant but had already missed half the school days so far. Classes had just started at the end of August that year. I got his home address from the school and called my partner so we could go to the Colton home and attempt to talk to Aaron. If he was there.”
“And was he?”
“Yes, we arrived at the house on Kester Avenue, and Aaron’s mother answered the door. When she informed us that her son was home and alone in his room, we asked her to step outside. Detective Rodriguez and I then called for backup.”
“And did you wait for backup?”
“We did not. Fearing that the suspect might be suicidal, we went inside and approached the closed door of Aaron’s bedroom. I heard voices coming from the room. His mother—”
“Hold on a second, Detective. What do you mean by ‘voices’?”
“I heard two voices in conversation. Male and female. Coming from the room. And since Aaron’s mother had told us he was alone in the room, I believed he was on a Zoom or a FaceTime call or something like that. I tried the door but it was locked. I leaned in to see if I could hear what was being said, and that is when I heard the female say something that I thought could lead to self-harm. Detective Rodriguez and I stepped down the hallway and conferred, and we decided that circumstances dictated that we enter the room to secure Aaron’s safety.”
“What was it that the female said, Detective? That you heard.”
“She said, ‘Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity.’”
“And what did that mean to you?”
“Well, I’m an old guy. I remembered it from an old rock and roll song.”
“What song was that?”
“‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ by a band called Blue Öyster Cult. I actually had it on a playlist on my phone. I put together Romeo and Juliet and ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ and I thought this kid might be about to hurt himself. The mother had confirmed to us that her husband kept a gun in a safe. She didn’t know the make or caliber, but all of these things were in play at that time.”
“What did you do?”
“It was a hollow interior door. I threw my shoulder into it and it popped open pretty easily. We entered the room.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, it all moved very quickly. Aaron Colton was sitting at a desk in the room. He had a laptop open on the desk and I saw a woman’s face on the screen. He was startled when the door came open, by the loud noise of it. He recovered, then slammed the laptop shut with one hand and with the other reached for a weapon that was on the desk.”
“What kind of weapon, Detective?”
“It was a chrome-plated handgun.”
“It matched the description of the gun used by the shooter at the school?”
“It did.”
“Okay, what happened when he reached for that gun?”
“My partner and I rushed him as he grabbed it and took him to the floor. I held him down while Dailyn — uh, Detective Rodriguez — got control of the weapon and took it out of his grasp.”
“Did he say anything during this struggle?”
“Yes, he said, ‘Let me die, let me die.’ Twice like that.”
“So was it your belief that he intended to use the gun on himself and not you or—”
For the first time, Marcus Mason stood and objected.
“Your Honor,” he said, “it is beyond the scope of this witness’s skills as a detective to know what a sixteen-year-old boy was thinking at that moment.”
“Your Honor,” I responded, “based on what he heard from the conversation before entering the room and what the boy said as he was wrestled to the ground, I think Detective Clarke was in a position to know what the boy wanted to do.”
“I am going to sustain the objection,” Ruhlin said. “Mr. Haller, can you rephrase the question?”
“Of course, Your Honor,” I said.
I turned my attention back to Clarke.
“Detective Clarke, when you entered that room and saw Aaron Colton reaching for the gun, were you in fear for your life?” I asked.
Clarke took a moment to compose an answer.
“Not really,” he finally said. “I was afraid, based on what I’d heard through the door, that he was going to grab that gun and shoot himself.”
“And that was before he said, ‘Let me die, let me die’?”
“Before that, yes.”
“By the way, you said you saw a woman’s face on the laptop screen before Aaron closed it. Did you ever come to identify that woman?”
“I later determined that it was an avatar called Wren. It was Aaron’s AI companion from the Clair app.”
I asked the judge for permission to put the image of Wren on the courtroom screen. After the request was granted, the judge’s clerk rolled a large screen on a wheeled easel to a position where the judge, jury, and witness could view it, as could the side of the gallery where members of the media sat. Lorna came through the gate with a laptop in hand and took my seat at the plaintiffs’ table. She quickly connected the laptop to the screen, and soon the image of Wren appeared. I let the jurors have a good look at it before proceeding.
“Now, Detective Clarke, is this the image you saw on Aaron’s screen?” I asked.
“Yes, it is,” Clarke said.
“Did it look like a real person to you when you saw it in Aaron’s room?”
“Yes. He closed the laptop as we were coming through the door, so it was pretty quick. I thought he was doing a Zoom or something with a real person.”
“What do you think now?”
“It’s close, but you can tell it’s a fake.”
“But there is a real human being who goes by the name Wren the Wrestler, is there not?”
“Yes, she’s a popular wrestling star.”
“Did you ever compare the avatar of Wren you saw to photos of the real Wren the Wrestler?”
“I did. Like I said, it’s close.”
“What exactly is an avatar, Detective Clarke?”
Marcus Mason objected, arguing that the question was beyond the scope of the detective’s expertise. The judge agreed. I turned to check the clock on the rear wall of the courtroom. I then turned back to the judge.
“Your Honor, my questioning of Detective Clarke will move into another phase at this point,” I said. “It might be a good time to take a break.”
“Very well,” Ruhlin said. “We will take the afternoon break now. The jury is admonished not to discuss the testimony or case with each other or anyone else. Please be back in the assembly room in fifteen minutes.”
29
I spent the break conferring with Lorna and Jack. Cisco had left court to take up the watch on Naomi Kitchens and her daughter at the two-bedroom hotel suite we had booked for them at the Huntington in Pasadena. To throw off Tidalwaiv or the defense team if they were trying to find them, they were booked under pseudonyms, and the hotel was located ten miles from the courthouse in which the case was being tried. Most witnesses appearing in trials in downtown cases were stashed in nearby hotels so they could be brought to the courtroom on short notice.
Standing at the railing of the gallery, we talked about shuffling the lineup. My pretrial plan for day one had been to start with Detective Clarke’s testimony and then go to the Coltons, Trisha first, followed by Bruce. I would end the day with Brenda Randolph touching every juror’s heart with her testimony about her daughter and what her loss had meant. But a trial is a fluid thing. I’ve never had one that went exactly according to plan. I could already see that the jury had warmed to Clarke and seemed to be hanging on every word of testimony about his investigation. This was real life, not TV, and they were eating it up. I didn’t want to cut him short, but keeping him on would push my trial schedule back.