Page 31 of The Proving Ground
“Tidalwaiv should pay,” Bruce said. “They have just as much responsibility as Aaron does. Even more, if you ask me.”
This was unexpected but quickly fell into place in my case strategy. After conferring with Brenda Randolph and getting her approval to take on the new case, I filed a new negligence suit against Tidalwaiv on behalf of the Coltons, citing the company’s liability for the actions their son took in killing Rebecca Randolph. I then moved to have the Colton and Randolph cases consolidated as one. The Mason twins objected, but it was clear that the two cases were identical in terms of the evidence and the cause of action. The judge joined the two cases, but as a consolation prize for the Masons, she delayed startof trial until April to give them additional time to prepare and take the Coltons’ depositions.
As the trial date neared, other witnesses remained a work in progress. I had assigned Jack McEvoy to maintain the relationship with Naomi Kitchens. She had committed neither to turning over documents nor to testifying at trial, but she had continued to talk with McEvoy. He made two additional trips to Palo Alto to keep those conversations going in person. Each time he went, Kitchens came right to the edge of deciding to cooperate but then retreated, citing fear of reprisals against herself and her daughter. McEvoy even made a trip to San Francisco to visit Lily Kitchens at the University of San Francisco to see if he could enlist her help in persuading her mother, but that effort failed as well.
Witnesses aside, the most important thing we had going for us was the contents of the killer’s own laptop—downloaded to the hard drive I had left weeks earlier on Maggie McPherson’s desk. I found the drive one morning on the passenger seat of the Bolt after I had left the car unlocked while picking up my suits from the Flair dry cleaner’s shop on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The black box was there when I got back to the car. I looked around and didn’t see who had put it on the seat. I never once spoke to Maggie about it, as I knew I had to preserve my ability down the line and in front of a judge to say truthfully that I didn’t know who had left it for me.
In the cage, we downloaded the contents of the drive to a clean laptop Lorna had bought with cash. Without going online—for that would no doubt have alerted Tidalwaiv that Aaron Colton’s account had gone active—we reviewed it all and found what appeared to be the saved history of the relationship between Aaron and the Project Clair AI companion. He had renamed her Wren, after a professional female wrestler he was infatuated with. This meant we were able to review his monthslong conversation with Wren—hundreds of hoursof interaction. It became McEvoy’s job to wade through it all and find what could be usable at trial.
The AI image of Wren did not cross the uncanny valley. While the appearance and body movements were convincing enough, the AI Wren’s eyes were soulless, devoid of humanity. They stared vacantly from the screen, raising the question of just how a sixteen-year-old boy could immerse himself in this false companionship and heed its words to the point of violence. What was the emptiness in Aaron Colton that this charade filled?
By late March I felt we were locked and loaded for trial. But the confidence I exuded during the last settlement conference with the Mason twins led them to ask for another trial extension—denied by Ruhlin—and then for a settlement meeting that, for the first time, would be refereed by the judge. It was clear that Tidalwaiv desperately wanted to buy its way out of a trial that could expose its secrets and practices and sink the company’s stock just as there was talk in Silicon Valley of it being acquired by one of the bigs—Meta, Microsoft, Apple—for several billion dollars.
The Masons and I returned to the round table in Ruhlin’s chambers and sat in the same places as the last time the judge had called us in. There was no stenographer this time, just the four of us. The judge knew by now that Marcus Mason was the alpha of the twins and fixed him with a piercing stare.
“Mr. Mason,” she said, “let’s start with you offering an explanation as to why you have been unable to bring this case to a settlement agreeable to all parties.”
“Thank you, Judge,” Mason said. “We are at a standstill because plaintiffs’ attorney is inflexible and refuses to negotiate an equitable settlement and solution to the case. We have tried diligently, Your Honor, but it’s like talking to a brick wall at this point.”
“Is that true, Mr. Haller?” Ruhlin asked. “Are you a brick wall?”
“Your Honor,” I said, “my clients have seen their families destroyed. One child is dead. The other will likely never come home. There is no amount of money that can heal those wounds. Mr. Mason seems to think this is all about money, but money really has nothing to do with it. My clients want Tidalwaiv to make Clair safe for teenagers and to apologize for the harm its unsafe product caused. Failing that, they are entitled to their day in court, and they intend to have it. As is my duty, I have taken every offer made on behalf of Tidalwaiv to them, and each has been rejected out of hand because none has included what my clients want more than money: a public statement from Tidalwaiv admitting its intentional decisions to release a product they knew had critical flaws and could hurt people. Without that, and an apology and commitment from the company to retool and safeguard their product, we intend to go to court and have these actions compelled by a jury’s verdict.”
“Your Honor,” Mason said, his voice now at a higher pitch, “the company is not going to lie to achieve a settlement. Mr. Haller wants it to admit to what it did not do. Tidalwaiv has always operated with the highest levels of consumer protection and safety. Mr. Haller wants its officers to compromise their own integrity by essentially admitting they have none. They are unwilling to do that. They feel very sympathetic to the parents and are willing to make them more than whole financially, but they will not admit to something they did not do.”
“Especially with half of Silicon Valley sniffing around and Tidalwaiv hoping for a billion-dollar merger,” I said.
“That has nothing to do with this,” Mason shot back.
I scoffed at that statement. The judge was silent until she finished writing a note on a legal pad. She finally spoke without looking up from the pad.
“What kind of money are we talking about here?” she asked.
“We’ve offered Brenda Randolph sixteen million dollars,” Mason said. “We’ve offered the Coltons four million.”
That brought the judge’s head up in surprise.
“With nondisclosure agreements attached,” I said. “They’re waving all kinds of money in front of my clients in exchange for their silence. My clients won’t even be able to say they won the case. It all just goes away, swept under the rug. And nobody gets warned about the danger of Tidalwaiv’s machines.”
“You don’t need to respond, Mr. Mason,” Ruhlin said. “I know the company’s position. I have to say, as much as I would like this case off my docket, I understand the position of the plaintiffs as well. It looks like we are going to go to trial. Mark your calendars, gentlemen. We will have two days for jury selection beginning April third, and then I fully intend to start this trial on Monday morning, April seventh. We will have final pretrial motions one week before that. I expect final witness lists the day before we start to pick a jury. Is there anything else you wish to bring to the court’s attention?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said.
“Go ahead, Mr. Haller,” Ruhlin said.
“Well, two weekends ago, there was a break-in at Grant High up in the Valley—specifically, the guidance counseling offices. It appeared that nothing was taken. But several files were found to be in the wrong order in the storage cabinets. Students’ files. And the job history on the copy machine showed that it had been used to make copies in the middle of the night.”
“And what does that have to do with this case?”
“I’m just concerned, Your Honor. Among the files that were out of order were those of the victim in this case, Rebecca Randolph, and her killer, Aaron Colton. My concern is that, if those files have been copied and end up in the hands of the defense—”
“Objection!” Mason cried.
He sounded like a wounded animal.
“He’s now accusing us of committing break-ins at high schools,” he said. “It’s outrageous, Judge. Where does it end? There should be sanctions.”
Ruhlin held one hand up toward me to stop me from responding and one hand toward Mason to stop him from talking.
