Page 70 of The Proving Ground
Her tone implied the threat behind it.
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Absolutely.”
The judge swiveled in her chair to look directly at the jury.
“Ladies and gentlemen, have a good lunch and be back in the assembly room by five minutes to one. Do not discuss the case among yourselves or with others. Do not look at any media that might be reporting on this case. Thank you.”
Ruhlin left the bench and was through the door to her chambers before juror number one even made it out of the box. When I got to the table to gather my papers and files, Brenda whispered to me.
“Mickey, Detective Clarke is here,” she said.
“Yes, I saw him in the hallway when we arrived,” Trisha added.
I nodded.
“I know that,” I said. “But the judge doesn’t.”
28
I HAD SPENTnearly half my life and my whole career defending the accused. In that time, I had squared off in court against countless numbers of detectives who had arrested my clients, tricked my clients into confessing, sometimes even framed my clients. I had a half brother who was a detective whom I would trust with my daughter’s life, but I carried only suspicions and distrust for the detectives I questioned in front of juries. The detective was the natural enemy of the defense lawyer, so the idea that a detective could actually further my case in civil court and go from nemesis to ally took some getting used to.
But that was what I was counting on when I called Detective Douglas Clarke to the stand as my first witness after lunch. He brought with him the power and might of the state, and for once it was on my side of the ledger.
Clarke came to the stand in a blue suit with an open jacket that clearly showed the badge clipped to his belt. His red hair was cropped short and he had a professional, all-business air about him as he stood in front of the judge and jury and took the oath to tell the truth andnothing but the truth. He carried with him a blue binder that I knew was a murder book. I had never encountered him on a case when I was working criminal and I had spoken to him only the one day McEvoy and Lorna and I went to the Van Nuys Division, ostensibly for an informal interview, though it never took place. But I had checked him out through Cisco and my half brother, Harry Bosch. From them, I learned that he was a consummate detective who was all about the work and didn’t play LAPD politics. That was why he was happy to be relegated to working cases in the San Fernando Valley, an hour’s drive from headquarters downtown. He had grown up in the Valley and still lived there in Sherman Oaks. As a patrol officer and then as a detective, he had bounced around the divisions that served the sprawling north end of the city until he made it to the homicide squad in Van Nuys. He’d now been working murder cases there for almost twenty years.
I drew many of these details out in my first questions, wanting the jurors to get to know him and understand that he was a capable and thorough investigator. Then I got down to the business at hand.
“Detective Clarke, were you called to the scene of a homicide on September nineteenth, 2023?”
“I was, yes.”
“Can you tell the jury about that case and what you did that day?”
“I was already in my office at Van Nuys Division when I was notified by my captain that there had been a shooting at Grant High School. There was one victim, a female, and she had already been transported to a hospital and expired in the ER. My partner, Dailyn Rodriguez, and I initially responded to the scene and it was determined that I would stay at the scene to conduct the investigation and gather witnesses and evidence while Detective Rodriguez went to the hospital to view the victim and collect whatever evidence was there. We had been told that the victim’s mother was heading to the hospital, and Detective Rodriguez would be on hand for that as well.”
“Who was the victim?”
“Rebecca Randolph. She was sixteen years of age and had just begun her junior year of high school. She had been shot after getting out of a car with three other girls in the school parking lot.”
“Was the school on lockdown?”
“It was, yes. It was unknown initially where the shooter went after the incident in the parking lot. The school administrators locked down the school and proceeded with active-shooter protocol.”
“But the shooter had left the school, correct?”
“That was in fact the case. But it was not known at the time, so all precautions were taken.”
“Of course.”
I had been keeping an eye on the jury as Clarke answered the questions. I knew from the voir dire interrogatories that many of them had children of school age. The possibility of a school shooting had become a concern and nightmare for every parent in the country. I had to tread carefully here, but I also wanted to build outrage that I would then direct over the course of the trial toward my villain—the AI chatbot called Wren.
“Now, was the school still on lockdown when you arrived?” I asked.
“It was just opening up,” Clarke said. “It had been searched by the SWAT team and it was determined that the shooter had fled.”
“What did you do at that point?”
“Like I said, my partner and I split up. She went to the hospital, and my first responsibility was to secure the crime scene and let the crims begin their work.”
