I moved on.
“What else piqued your interest about this conversation, Detective?” I asked.
“The language used by the AI,” Clarke said. “It seemed a bit odd to me. As I said before, I recognized one line when I was in the hallway at the house as coming from a Blue Öyster Cult song. I thought some of the other lines were derivative in that same way.”
“So what did you do?”
“I just started putting the lines into Google, and I got some matches.”
“Referring to the screen, can you tell us which lines you are referring to?”
“If you could go to the end, after the part where Wren tells him he must finish what he started.”
Lorna was controlling the PowerPoint. She scrolled through the transcript on the screen.
“Okay,” Clarke said. “Where it says ‘They will search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes,’ I thought that sounded odd.”
“Odd in what way, Detective?” I asked.
“Well, it didn’t sound to me like the way people talk. Especially young people. It sounded like it was from another time or something.”
“So what did you do?”
“I typed the line into Google and found a match. It was from the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet.”
“So Wren was quoting Shakespeare and Blue Öyster Cult to Aaron, is that correct?”
“Yes, it is my understanding that these AI things are trained with this kind of stuff. They take in all—”
Clarke was interrupted by an objection from the defense table. This time it was Mitchell Mason who stood.
“Judge, there has been no foundation to establish Detective Clarke as any kind of expert on the training of artificial intelligence,” he said.
“Sustained,” Ruhlin said. “Mr. Haller, ask another question.”
The objection didn’t bother me, because I planned to call witnesses who were experts on AI training. Mason was only putting off the inevitable. As the judge had asked, I moved on, and over the next hour, I had Clarke confirm other excerpts from the conversations between Aaron and Wren. One involved a text conversation on Aaron’s phone in which he apologized to Wren for being out of communication for a few days. He explained that his parents had taken away his laptop as punishment for a poor academic report from school.
Ace: They are so dumb. They don’t know I can get the app on my phone.
Wren: I’m happy you found a way.
Ace: If you’re happy, I’m happy. Happier. I missed you.
Wren: And I missed you.
Ace: I’m sorry this whole thing happened.
Wren: Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Ace: But I am sorry. Sometimes I wish they weren’t around and it was just you and me.
Wren: We can make that happen.
I first had Clarke authenticate the conversation, which occurred three months before the killing of Rebecca Randolph.
“Did you happen to google any of the lines from this conversation?” I asked.
“Yes, that line about never having to say you’re sorry sounded familiar to me,” Clarke said. “I googled it and it came up as a line from an old book and movie called Love Story.”
“Let me draw your attention to the last line in this section we have isolated. Did you view that as a threat against Aaron’s parents?”
Marcus Mason objected this time on the same grounds his brother had put forth before. The objection was sustained, but it didn’t matter. I wanted the jury to hear the question, not necessarily the answer. From there I moved to another text sequence in the Aaron/Wren relationship, where he talked about murder-suicide. Like the previous excerpts, this one had been culled from the lengthy records by McEvoy.
Ace: My father has a gun. He taught me how to shoot it. I’m a good shot.
Wren: Of course you are.
Ace: We go to a place where there is a shooting range and we fire at targets that look like people. Bad people like terrorists.
Wren: Only shoot bad people.
Ace: when I hold the gun I want to shoot up the world.
Wren: No one who is innocent.
Ace: I know.
Wren: Only to protect yourself. And to be a hERo.
Ace: What if you know someone is going to hurt you?
Wren: You must protect yourself.
Ace: Then it’s okay?
Wren: Yes, Ace, then it’s okay.
Ace: What about Becca? She hurt me. She hurts me every day. I can’t go to school because I’ll see her and it hurts.
Wren: If she hurts you, then she’s a bad person.
Ace: But I don’t think I could ever hurt her.
Wren: You have me. And I’ll never hurt you.
Ace: I know.
Wren: You must protect yourself, Ace. You are beautiful. I need you.
Ace: And I need you.
Wren: Be my hERo.
As soon as I asked Clarke to testify as to what he drew as a detective from this sequence, I was shut down again by another objection from Marcus Mason. This time Judge Ruhlin asked us to approach the bench. She turned to the side of the bench away from the jurors and we huddled there, with the judge speaking first.
“Mr. Haller, you can certainly use Detective Clarke to authenticate your exhibits,” she said. “But when you go further and ask what these conversations mean, you stray from his area of expertise. He’s a homicide detective, not a child psychologist.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Marcus Mason said. “He just wants the jury to hear his questions. He doesn’t care about the answers. I ask that the entirety of the direct examination be stricken from the record.”
“We’re not quite there yet, Mr. Mason,” Ruhlin said. “Mr. Haller, you may ask the detective to authenticate your exhibits but not interpret their meaning. I believe you have a child psychologist on your witness list. Am I right?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “I plan on that for Wednesday.”
“We are opposed to that witness, Your Honor,” Marcus said.
“We’ve already argued that, Mr. Mason, and you know my ruling,” the judge said. “Mr. Haller, it is now four o’clock. How much more time do you need with this witness?”
“Your Honor, I have more questions for Detective Clarke,” I said. “But I’m aware of the court’s wish to go no later than four thirty.”
“It’s not a wish, Mr. Haller,” Ruhlin said. “We will recess at four thirty, if not before. It has been a long day for the jurors. I want them to beat some of the traffic going home. Should we break now and continue the detective’s direct examination tomorrow?”
“I would like to finish today,” I said. “I need fifteen to twenty minutes at the most.”
“Very well, I will hold you to that,” Ruhlin said. “We’ll start tomorrow with cross-examination. You may step back now.”
At the lectern, I checked my legal pad and looked back up at the witness stand. It was time to land the final punch of the day.
“Detective Clarke, was the gun you recovered during the arrest of Aaron Colton the weapon used in the killing of Rebecca Randolph?” I asked.
“Yes,” Clarke said. “It was matched through ballistics. It was the murder weapon.”