Chapter Thirty Eight
Murder charges were filed against Edward three days later. James Rothstein told me that they must have a strong case to have acted so quickly. Once the charges were filed, the D.A. legally had to share all their information with the defense. How much information could they have gathered in so short a time? Plenty. Rothstein had no reason to share with me the so-called facts of the case, but I hounded him for them just the same. He said if I wanted to learn the details that I could acquire them, as it is public information. He didn’t want to waste his valuable time on me, that’s all it was, and I guess I could understand that.
What I learned from researching online was Edward Berg had either hitch-hiked up to Boise or had a friend give him a ride, or perhaps even stole or borrowed a car and ditched it in Boise. That was just a theory. What wasn’t theory was Edward renting a Ford Taurus from Hertz at Boise Airport. There was a record of his rental, complete with a signature and credit-card transaction of fifty-two dollars for the vehicle. His driver’s license number was jotted down on the paper-work, proof that a clerk had seen the license. There was no mention of the clerk having been interviewed to see if he remembered Edward renting the car. That would probably mean that the D.A. had no luck getting a positive I.D. That would make sense when you consider how many people rent cars from there, and a stretch of several days and hundreds of customers would eat away at that memory, if it was ever there to begin with. Maybe the clerk would say Edward’s mug-shot looked familiar, but he couldn’t say for sure. That there wasn’t a positive I.D. could be critical to the case.
An anonymous caller had witnessed a man (the caller had described the man perfectly, and it fit Edward to a tee) pull a blanket-wrapped body from the trunk and sling it over his shoulder, hike down the embankment only to return a moment later to repeat the dubious activity with another body. Here the story had been changed slightly from what we had originally heard. The driver pulled over and watched this happen before pulling away and calling nine-one-one.
Having exhausted himself from digging a communal grave, transporting the two bodies and earthing them—not to mention being exhausted from the long sleepless drive and murder of two precious college darlings—he fell asleep behind the wheel before driving away. He was awoken by the police ten minutes after the nine-one-one phone call.
The case against Edward was strong due to the anonymous eye-witness and car rental, but made stronger by the condition the suspect was found to be in upon his apprehension: rough dirty hands with dirt under his fingernails, Edward’s hair follicles on the buried bodies, and a dirty shovel in the back of the Taurus. Strands of the victims’ hair were found in the trunk of the car. Much of the evidence against Edward was circumstantial, but the hair in the trunk and the suspect’s hair on the victims was anything but circumstantial. It was looking like a slam-dunk case for the prosecution.
It was looking bleak for the defense. Their only hope would be in casting reasonable doubt via the possibility of being framed. The tire-iron bruise would help greatly, especially when a tire-iron was found inside the trunk, not in the compartment with the spare-tire but lying openly on the lid.
The defense was prepared to have Edward submit to a lie detector test, which could have a huge impact on the jurors. Guilty people rarely submit to such tests. He also stated well in advance that he had no qualms with taking the stand and answering every question of the prosecution. It would only take one juror to keep him out of jail, and testimony from a suspect who passed a number of polygraph tests could easily win the opinion of at least one juror.
As the weeks bled by, Norrah, Aaron and myself stayed glued to the news, read every bit of information regarding the case. It was a month after the murders that Rothstein agreed to let me join him on that second promised interview with Edward. Edward had over four weeks to write down information on Paul and I was eager to see what he had.
We flew out of L.A.X. on a Monday morning (I called in sick yet again) and landed in Boise at nine A.M. By ten I was sitting in a different room from a month ago, but it was a cookie-cutter imitation. As was before, it was James Rothstein, myself, and Edward in the room, alone. Before the attorney got down to business, I had asked for a few minutes alone with Eddie, and said that upon those few minutes I’d leave the room, leave James in privacy with his client. James reminded me on the flight over that this was to be my last meeting with Edward, so I had better learn all I needed to learn on this trip. He was needling me for insight as to my motive for these visits. Writing a novel wasn’t answer enough for him. He wanted to know the questions I had lined up for him, and when I wouldn’t tell him he demanded I tell him why. I said he could read the manuscript, and if there was anything in the novel that he felt was in violation of some law, or unethical, that I would remove it from my story. The fact is, I had no intention of using my learned information for the novel. My lie served the purpose of getting me in on these meetings.
The second the door closed behind Rothstein, I asked Eddie if he had the notepad.
He removed the creased and bent pad from between his foot and shoe, handed it over the table. I flipped through it. Nearly every page was filled both front and back. Satisfied, I put it in my pocket.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think,” Eddie said. “I hope some of that you’ll find useful.”
“I hope so. How are you holding up?”
“Not well,” he said grimly. “I can’t live like this. I’d rather die than live through a life sentence. Honestly, if I’m found guilty I’ll kill myself.”
“I don’t blame you. I’d probably do the same thing. You have a great attorney. If there’s anyone who can sway the opinion of those jurors it’s your guy. He’s won a lot of cases that people considered unwinnable. That’s great that you’re submitting to a polygraph. Who can deny that you aren’t hiding anything?”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“I know. Like I said last time, I know you’re innocent. I’d bet my life on it. Eddie, I think Paul did this. I really do. He doesn’t look a lot like you, but he looks a little like you. Roughly the same height and body weight, you both have hazel eyes and dark hair, even though his is black and yours is brown. I think he could have used your driver’s license at Hertz to rent a car under your name.”
Eddie looked down at the table between us. A more despondent expression I had never seen. “I heard they have my signature on that contract, for the rental. And supposedly it matches my own signature.”
“Yeah, that is pretty shitty,” I said. “But people can forge signatures.”
“What if the prosecution uses a handwriting specialist to confirm that the signature matches my own? How could I win the case with that?”
“Yeah, that’s tough, man. But the signatures won’t match—how could they? James will talk to you about that today. He said they found no fingerprints on the Hertz contract. Not that there would be, but that there aren’t helps your case. It really sucks that they don’t have security cameras inside Hertz. If they did, it would probably be enough to get the case thrown out, being that you were never inside. And I think if there were cameras, we would find Paul inside that Hertz. But no sense in stewing over that, it is what it is.”
“What about cameras outside of Hertz? At the airport or anywhere at all? There are cameras fucking everywhere nowadays. Can’t those tapes be searched? That I wouldn’t be found on any security camera… shouldn’t that prove I wasn’t near Hertz?”
“That’s a question better asked to Rothstein. I’ll do what I can for you, okay? We’ll do what we can for you. Eddie, I think it would be wise if you’d pray for help. We’re praying for you, but you should pray as well.”
“Trust me, I have. A lot.”
“Good.”
“And Jay, thanks for the necklace. Would you believe that nobody has found it?” He showed me the necklace tucked under his orange jumpsuit.
“Doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“I mean,
nobody has even glanced at it. In the showers it’s around my neck. Correctional officers have looked at me with it in plain sight. Every time I meet with Rothstein they search me before conducting me back to my cell. They either ignore it or… or I don’t know. I’ve come to think that—”
“That it’s invisible to them? I wouldn’t doubt it. We don’t have much time. Is there anything you can tell me about Paul that’s not in these pages? Anything at all?”
“Nah. I wrote everything down. Oh I heard that the autopsy reports found that the girls weren’t raped. That’s good, huh?”
“Good for the girls, I suppose. But not so good for you, in my opinion. There’s no way you could have raped them, so if there was semen in them it wouldn’t have been your own. It would have been Paul’s. That would be proof of your innocence. One last question before I go: do you have any guess as to where Paul might have gone? Has he ever mentioned a town or city or state he might like to go?”
“Not that I recall.” He considered it. “I’m pretty sure he hasn’t.”
I sighed, nodded. “All right. Thanks for your time. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, friend.”
“Thanks, Jay. Tell the others thanks for me.”
“I will.”