Page 71 of The Proving Ground
“What are ‘crims’?”
“Excuse me. Criminalists. They gather the evidence at the scene, photograph it and video it and so forth.”
“Okay, while they were doing that, what did you do?”
“I had been told by the first officers who responded to reports of gunfire that the victim had arrived at school in a carpool that included three other female students. I located them in the school and began preliminary interviews, talking to each one separately.”
“What did they tell you?”
“Each one said the same thing. They identified the victim as Rebecca Randolph—her friends called her Becca—and said that she had been shot by a boy named Aaron Colton, or AC, as they called him. They said AC walked up to them after they got out of the car and shot Becca without saying a word. He used a chrome-colored handgun. He then calmly walked away.”
I looked up at the judge and asked to introduce my first three exhibits, the three witness reports that Clarke had written and that were signed by the girls as being true and accurate. They were accepted without objection from the Masons. This way the jurors could read their statements and I would not have to call the girls as witnesses and make them relive the trauma they were all still dealing with.
“Now, Detective Clarke, did you consider this an open-and-shut case at this point?” I asked. “You had three witnesses who said Aaron Colton was the killer.”
“No, not at all,” Clarke said. “I had three witnesses but no evidence yet.”
“So what did you do then?”
“I returned to the crime scene and learned that the criminalists had found a bullet casing in the parking lot.”
“Where was that located?”
“It was under a car parked next to the car Becca had arrived at school in.”
In the hallway before I brought Clarke into court to testify, I had asked him to drop the police-speak as much as possible. I said, “Don’t call the victim ‘the victim.’ Refer to her as Becca.” He had taken heedof that and I believed his use of the victim’s first name would help humanize her with the jury. So much of this case was about what was real and what wasn’t. I wanted them to fully grasp that Rebecca Randolph was a real person and that her death was a loss to the community as well as to her loved ones and friends.
“And what did you and the criminalists determine from that bullet casing, Detective?” I asked.
“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.”
