Pieces

When the defense attorney asked the forensic analyst to turn to page 57,378 in her report, I knew we were talking about a lot of data.

The analyst was there to testify about information extracted from numerous devices related to this week’s murder trial at the Alpena County courthouse. I wanted to see what a printed 57,000-plus-page report looked like, but she used a digital copy of the report, to my disappointment and the sparing of several trees.

The volume of data stored on the devices in our pockets is astonishing verging on terrifying. While data on some phones defied extraction, other devices yielded up all sorts of information about their users ― information attorneys will use to try to prove one man’s innocence or guilt.

They’ll use location data to try to show key players weren’t where they said they were. Cell tower pings, social media data, even an insurance company app promising Drive Safe and Save discounts track our every move on those pocket-sized spies.

Text messages referenced by the analyst will probably return later in the week, tools attorneys will use to catch witnesses in lies or show relationships were not what they seemed.

Presented quickly and out of order, the messages flashbulbed out-of-context snippets of life. Accusations, encouragements, calls for help. Threats of violence against one of the victims from someone other than the defendant. Relentless pressure put on the other to do something she didn’t want to do. An apparent drug deal going down. 

Affectionate words. Angry words. 

Bits and pieces. 

A trial is like that. Bits and pieces of information, told in a confusing jumble. The attorneys make clear that this point is significant and that fact is a zinger, but they don’t say why. Not yet.

They left by the back door the day Abby was killed, not the front. The child’s car seat was in the rear passenger seat. A receipt shows somebody transferred $2,000 the day of the first murder. The phone was in airplane mode.

Pieces. Eight hours a day of pieces.

The jurors sit and soak it in as best they can. They’re attentive, taking notes and asking good questions, probably working hard to fit all those pieces together without knowing what the final picture is supposed to be.

By tomorrow, maybe, we’ll start to hear from witnesses called by the defense. A new set of bits and pieces. In a few days, both sides will pour all those pieces into their respective boxes and use them to puzzle together their cases in closing arguments.

Both sides will have holes in their puzzles when they’re done. Big, important holes. It’s up to the jury to look at what’s there and see if it’s enough to convince them of what isn’t there.

It’s wearying, looking at all those pieces one by one. It’s so much for the jurors to take in. So much compounded trauma for the families of the victims, aching for some form of justice for the loved ones they can’t have back. How much easier it would be if we could just declare a verdict and be done with it, done with all those pieces and the thinking and the waiting and the hurting, because it all hurts.

We must look at those pieces. We have to wait. The people working with subdued fervor at the front of the courtroom have to fight like hell to fill in the picture as best they can, to get the right verdict, to prevent grounds for an appeal, to put the puzzle together.

As I type this, another witness is on the stand, giving the jury more pieces ― some of them true, maybe, and some of them maybe not true. I want to go home. This is not my fight. I’m full up of the bits and pieces and 57,000 pages and anger and hurt. I want to go back to worrying about what’s for dinner and the price of gas and not think about lies and texts and horrible, horrible photos. I want to let this all go and let it sink into the past, let people heal and other people hide and let life go marching forward like it’s going to do anyway, heedless of this middle-aged woman typing in the back of a courtroom.

But closing our eyes to bad things doesn’t make them go away. If I go home and do nothing, if we all stay home and do nothing, nothing changes. And something damn well has to change. Because the people involved in these murders are not the only people living these lives. Everywhere, teens are getting addicted to terrible substances that will alter the course of their lives. Drug dealers are exchanging text messages with buyers. People are fighting to escape a life they don’t want and failing. People are dying.

Maybe sitting here and bearing witness to what happened in this one case, in this one place, won’t make a difference.

But maybe it will.

Another witness just took the stand, one who endured crushing loss because of the murders. More pieces. More pain.

I need to listen.