Page 79 of The Proving Ground

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.”

“And did you learn who owned the weapon?”

“Yes, it was registered to the suspect’s father, Bruce Colton. It had been kept in a safe with a combination lock in a home office.”

“What kind of combination lock are we talking about?”

“Electronic. It has a numbered keypad and you punch in a six-digit combination to open it.”

“I see. Did you learn through your investigation whether Aaron Colton’s father had shared the combination with his son?”

“His father told me he never shared the combination with his son.”

“Did his mother share it?”

“She said she never knew the combination, because she didn’t like having a gun in the house.”

“Did Aaron tell you how he got possession of the gun?”

“He did not. On the advice of his parents and attorney, he never agreed to speak to me about the shooting.”

“Then did there come a time in your investigation when you learned how he got the weapon from the home safe?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us how?”

“In reviewing the conversations the suspect had engaged in with Wren, I came across an exchange in which Wren revealed that she had accessed online records relating to the Colton family and from these had come up with a list of possible combinations to the gun safe.”