Stephens calls Nyle, who lives in the Valley, and sets up an interview with him at the North Hollywood station. Despite the many witnesses who have remarked on his strange behavior since Berman’s death, the detectives have only one piece of evidence that might help tie Nyle to the murder: the letter sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department alerting them to the presence of the corpse. Because it was mailed before police found the body, the detectives believe the killer wrote the letter. And they surmise that anyone who would write this letter, with its bizarre touch of concern, must have known Berman well.
During their strategy session for the interview with Nyle, Coulter and Stephens devise a way to obtain a sample of his handwriting so they can compare it to the letter. They picked up a generic LAPD visitor’s log, which includes slots for name, signature, address, time in, and time out. Stephens moves from desk to desk, asking detectives to fill out the blanks on the top half of the sheet, so the log appears authentic.
Coulter cruises toward the North Hollywood station on a cloudless winter afternoon. The recent rains have soaked the parched foothills and a golden winter light illuminates the velvety wisps of grass sprouting in the ravines. The detectives, both a bit on edge, ride in silence. Their clues leading to a suspect are minimal and their evidence paltry. Of all the interviews they have conducted during the past month, this is the most important.
Coulter and Stephens place the phony log by the station entrance and explain their plan to the desk officer. When Nyle arrives, Stephens ensures that he signs in.
Nyle is forty-five, with short brown hair, tinged with gray. He is slightly pudgy and wears jeans and a tight green polo shirt. Leaning back in his chair, he crosses his arms and stares at the detectives. Both are surprised to see that he does not appear even slightly nervous. He has a supercilious manner that momentarily unnerves Stephens.
“We work at Robbery-Homicide Division, downtown,” Stephens says, “so we took over the investigation—”
“Are you starting over?” Nyle interrupts, sounding impatient.
Stephens nods.
“Right, right,” Nyle says, as if he has more important ways to spend the afternoon and wants to hurry the interview along.
Although Stephens is clearly irritated by Nyle’s manner, he remains cordial. “How long have you known Susan?” he asks.
“About five years. She lived across the street. We were both living in apartments then. I’d seen her walking her dogs as I walked my dogs. We waved and nodded. We finally talked one day and became instant friends.”
“Are you an agent?” Stephens asks.
“I’m a manager. I guide and direct careers. But I only work with a few people, so I develop close personal relationships.”
“How long after you met her did you become her manager?”
“One year. I was working with her and being a friend—helping her. There was always some crisis in her life. She had all kinds of phobias. She needed to have someone at her side. I kind of took over the role of manager and oversaw everything for her.”
“When was the last time you were at her house?” Stephens asks.
“The Wednesday before Christmas,” Nyle says. “She had a follow-up appointment with the eye doctor. She just had eye surgery. I came back that evening. We went to a screening at the Writer’s Guild Theater for Castaway. I talked to her again on Thursday. One of her projects was not getting picked up by Showtime. She took it well.”
“When you came by, were you expected, or did you just show up?”
“Expected … She was very needy to have someone around. Sometimes she’d call because she saw a spider and was afraid. Or she needed a lightbulb changed. I’d begrudgingly come and she’d want to talk or get a bite to eat.”
“Did you have a key to her house?”
“She didn’t give me a key.”
“Did she have any problems with anyone?”
Nyle considers the question. He smiles faintly and says, “Well, Susan had problems with everyone.”
“Serious problems?” Coulter asks.
“She was a very unusual woman. But problems to the extent that someone would do this kind of thing? Certainly not. But she’d push people to the edge. She was very demanding. I’m a softy.”
“I’m sure you’re aware she had financial problems.”
“A few times she couldn’t pay the rent. She’d cry, get hysterical, and I’d pay. But she was incredibly talented, and I really believed she’d get an answer on something and I’d get paid back. Ultimately she paid almost all of it back.”
“When did you learn she was dead?” Stephens asks.
“Christmas Day.”
“That’s four days,” Stephens says softly, attempting to muffle any insinuations. “Did you usually go that long without speaking?”
“I needed a breather occasionally. I knew if I called her, she’d want to get together.…”
“On Thursday evening, what did you speak about?”
“I already told you,” Nyle snaps, losing his composure for the first time. “That the project at Showtime was not being picked up.”
“What were you doing Friday night?” Stephens asks. Berman was killed late Friday night, December 22.
“Offhand, uh,” Nyle stutters, “I don’t know. I’d have to look it up.”
Coulter asks about Saturday.
“I think I was home. I might have gone out.”
“How did you find out she was dead?” Stephens asks.
“Her friend who expected us on Christmas Day told me. She said she’d gone over there, so I did the same thing. I saw packages at the front door and mail in the mailbox. There was no sound of dogs barking. I crawled in the window.”
Nyle says matter-of-factly that he walked around the house, played the answering machine, and opened Berman’s November bank statement. She had told him that Durst sent her $15,000. “I found it curious,” Nyle says, “when I saw her deposit for twenty-five thousand. She did tell me that Durst would be sending her additional money for her eye surgery.”
Finally, Nyle says, he talked to a neighbor, who told him that Berman had fallen, hit her head, and died. “Horrible,” he says, shuddering. “Oh, my God. But she just had eye surgery. She was klutzy. So it made perfect sense. But … umm …” He loses his train of thought for a moment. “Anyway,” he continues, “it made perfect sense. I thought, ‘How awful. Being by yourself, needing help.’” He clears his throat. “It’s a bad visual.”
Stephens interrupts him, asking, “Did you normally open her mail?”
“She was always behind paying her bills. I helped her if they were going to turn off the lights or electricity or if she was behind on the telephone.”
Stephens asks Nyle about his relationship with Berman.
“It was romantic on her part,” he says sharply.
“I’ll be blunt,” Stephens says. “What’s in it for you? She’s not paying you. She’s very demanding—”
“Ultimately,” Nyle says, “I’m a caretaker.… And she was brilliant. She had the potential to make lots of money. She’d been successful in the past. I felt she could be successful again.”
“When you found out from Berman’s neighbor that she was dead, how’d you feel?” Stephens asks Nyle.
“Stunned. How do you process that kind of information? Fuuuck,” he says, dragging out the word. “In spite of who Susan was and how she behaved, most people stuck by her. She had a real draw to her. She was a very unique person. On one hand, she could be very strong, and on the other hand, she could withdraw and be so weak and childlike. She was a woman of contradictions. She was careful, but careless. She was brilliant, but crazy.”
“Any idea who could have done this?”
“I don’t know. My first thought was that it was connected to Bobby Durst. But that doesn’t make sense. He never indicated anything … like this … in the past.… She was certain she’d be getting money from him.…”
He clears his throat and says he always had the feeling she wanted to tell him something. “She once wrote two sentences on a card to me: ‘He believed in me. He helped me out.’”
“We’re asking several people, just to eliminate those close to her, to take polygraph exams,” Stephens says. “Don’t read anything into this, but would you be willing to take a poly—”
“Sure, sure,” he interrupts.
Stephens chats with Nyle for a few minutes, then, as the detectives shepherd him out the door, asks, “Would you look in your day planner for Friday?”
“Okay,” Nyle says. “Sure.”
Driving back downtown, Stephens says to Coulter, “Shit, Roy, we’re running out of suspects. I don’t know if it’s him, but if he’s our guy, I’d think he would have acted more nervous.”
Coulter, looking hopeful, says, “It’s interesting that he can’t say where he was on Friday night.”
“He remembered every detail about Christmas Day,” Stephens agrees. “If he has such a fucking good memory, why can’t he remember Friday night?”
“I feel something about this guy,” Stephens says. “But I’m just not sure.”
“Let’s check out his handwriting,” Coulter says. “That’ll give us a better idea.”
Back at their desks, Stephens spreads out a copy of the letter sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department. Beside it, he places the visitor log. Nyle signed his name and address using large block letters, which resemble the printing in the letter. In fact, of eleven writing samples, the detectives agree, Nyle’s most resembles the letter.
“Looks like the same ‘V’ to me, Roy,” Stephens says.
“The ‘N’s look pretty close, too,” Coulter says.
Stephens asks Lieutenant Farrell’s opinion. “The ‘N’s are similar,” Farrell says. “They have the same cant. But the ‘R’s are different.”
“Maybe he was disguising his handwriting,” Stephens sayss.
“How does he benefit from blasting her?” Farrell asks.
“At the very least, he’d be rid of her,” says Stephens. “He was tired of her bullshit.”
“Sometimes in the heat of passion you’re not going to get a motive,” Coulter says.
“He spent years representing her, trying to sell her projects, waiting for a big payday that never came,” Stephens says. “Maybe he just got fed up.”
“She was a pain in the ass,” Coulter says. “He was her gofer.”
Another detective asks, “Was he nervous in the interview?”
“Not really,” Stephens says. “He just didn’t seem that concerned.”
Two days later, an LAPD examiner of questioned documents—a handwriting analyst—calls Coulter and Stephens. They bound up the stairs to the fourth floor and gather around her desk.
“You’ve got block printing that lacks general characteristics,” she says of the letter. “The person was doing it slowly. He’s making an attempt to disguise his writing—that’s what makes it more difficult.”
The detectives stand anxiously awaiting her decision.
“There’s evidence to indicate he may have written the note,” the analyst continues. “You’re over the fifty-percent scale. Is it enough to close the jail gates? No. But it’s a foot in the door.”
The detectives appear relieved. Finally, they sit down.
“Even though the person is trying to mess up the note there are certain things he can’t get away from. Height is one. Also, the ‘N’ has a double recurve at the end. That narrows it down somewhat.”
Stephens says he knows the visitor log was not an ideal sample, so he will ask Nyle for an exemplar, a full handwriting sample. He places his palms on her desk and says, “Just between you and us, what’s your gut feeling?”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she retorts, waving a hand, indicating she is not ready to state for certain that the writing matches. But there is one way to definitively tie Nyle to the crime, she says: find the pad of paper he used to write the letter. Some of the pages might reveal an impression from the writing.
“If we can get that notebook,” she says, “and do an impression … we’ll be in business.”
For weeks, the case has appeared stalled and the pace of the investigation has been discouraging. Now the detectives have a clear trail to follow. They are roused by the thrill of the hunt.
There is a scale of accuracy for handwriting analysis, from “elimination” to “identification.” If the analyst had eliminated Nyle as a suspect, the detectives would have focused their efforts elsewhere. But because she said he might have written it, the detectives believe they now have probable cause to obtain a search warrant for Nyle’s house.
“This means I’ll be working all weekend,” says Coulter, who knows he will end up writing the warrant.
“If he doesn’t have the gun at his house,” Stephens says, “maybe he’ll have the pad.”
Nyle knows several of Berman’s close friends have been fingerprinted, so the detectives decide to try a bait-and-switch with him. Stephens will ask him to stop by for the routine fingerprinting and then casually suggest that since he is already downtown, he might as well take the polygraph. Afterward, they will serve the warrant and search his house.
Stephens leaves several messages for Nyle, but does not get a call back. Finally, the next week, Stephens reaches him at home and they set up a time to meet.
“I would have liked him to sound more nervous, but he wasn’t, really,” Stephens tells Coulter. “That bothers me a little bit.”
On a dreary Wednesday morning in February, a winter storm blows in off the Pacific and drenches the city. Stephens and Coulter trudge to their desks, slip off their wet trench coats, and fire up the battered space heaters. Rain sluices down the windows and a pearl gray light suffuses the room. Frigid air seeps out of the ceiling vents. The gloomy mood is shattered when Stephens flicks on his boom box and blasts a few bars of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” When the detectives stop laughing, he announces, “At the end of the day, I hope to have that question answered. Our suspect is coming by this afternoon for a poly.”
By midmorning, the rain has tapered off to a light drizzle. Coulter and Stephens drive to the department’s Scientific Investigation Division headquarters at a technical center east of downtown. Berman has been dead almost two months, and the detectives are still waiting for criminalists to analyze her clothing for hair and fibers. Coulter decides to study the clothing himself to determine whether he should include any specific fiber or hair requests in the search warrant.
On most television crime shows, evidence is analyzed quickly and detectives often get the results the next day. But at a typical overburdened, underfunded metropolitan police department, the timetable is much different. And the LAPD is particularly dilatory. Detectives often wait months for results—sometimes longer. SID has improved since it was humiliated during the O. J. Simpson debacle, but the crime lab is still understaffed and its processing schedule is still scandalously slow.
Today, in the evidence room, a criminalist unwraps several packages and gently sets Berman’s clothing on a long wooden table covered with butcher paper. A few blond hairs glisten on the seat of her purple sweat pants, but Coulter believes they are from one of her dogs. Her T-shirt—with a Hula Girl Cigars emblem—is white with specks of blood and dirt dappling the front. The blood-soaked back and arms are brick-colored, with only a few faint white streaks. Lying in the center of the butcher paper, the shirt, which is stiff as a board and curled up at the edges, looks like a modern art sculpture displayed on a flat white pedestal. Several short brown hairs cling to the back. They are human hairs, Coulter believes, and since her hair was darker and long, they are probably not hers. If any of them contain follicles, criminalists may be able to obtain DNA samples.
Next, the detectives stop at Olvera Street—where the original Spanish pueblo of Los Angeles was founded in 1781—and order lunch. Several adobe structures still stand near the site of the Zanja Madre (“Mother Ditch”) that brought water from the Los Angeles River to the first residents. Now the area, at the edge of downtown, is a faux Mexican village, a tourist attraction, but the detectives have a favorite taco stand here. As they drive back to the squad room with hefty plates of taquitos, the car is enveloped in the piquant aromas of onions, cilantro, and deep-fried tortillas.
They eat at their desks, finishing every speck. The interview with Nyle, which is scheduled for later today, may be a long one, and the detectives know they may not have time for dinner.
At about three P.M. Nyle appears, wearing black cowboy boots, jeans, and a black button-down shirt, and looking unfazed. Stephens escorts him to the second floor, where he is fingerprinted.
“Did you remember your day planner?”
“Sorry,” Nyle says blithely. “I forgot it. But I checked and I didn’t have anything written down for Friday.”
Stephens casually suggests that since Nyle is already downtown, the examiner might as well polygraph him.
“My friends say I shouldn’t because they’re not reliable.”
“If you’re innocent,” Stephens says, “you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
The detectives fear that Nyle will ask for a lawyer. They stare intently at him, waiting for his answer, until he shrugs and nods weakly.
Moments later, Nyle is sitting on the edge of his chair in the small polygraph cubicle. As usual, the detectives monitor the exam in another room. For the first time, Nyle appears anxious. Crossing and uncrossing his legs, he nervously tugs at an earlobe.
“Look at him,” Stephens says gleefully. He scratches his hands and grins. “My palms are itching. That means I’m going to solve a case.”
The examiner, who had previously consulted with the detectives, asks Nyle a few key questions. “Did you shoot Susan Berman? Were you inside her room at the exact time she was shot? Were you inside her house at the exact time she was shot?”
“Let’s see if that machine starts to smoke,” Stephens says.
Coulter’s aunt has died and he is late for the viewing, but he is reluctant to leave. Instead, he paces.
Nyle squirms and taps the tips of his boots on the floor as he answers no to all the questions. “He’s fucking lying,” Stephens says to Coulter. “You better get your grieving done and get back. We’ll be working all night.”
“I can’t leave,” Coulter says. “I’ve got to know, Roy. This is killing me.”
“If my own mother died, I’d put her on ice right now until I found out if he’s our guy.” Looking chagrined, Stephens quickly knocks on the wooden table three times and adds, “I shouldn’t say that.”
After the polygraph, the examiner meets with the detectives and says, “He’s not telling us the full truth. He was deceptive. I certainly can’t clear this guy.… My gut feeling is he did this, but something’s missing.” Another examiner, who helped grade the results, adds, “Did he blow the test out of the water? No. Did he pluck the chicken clean? No. But something’s going on,”
“He doesn’t seem to have much of a conscience,” Stephens says.
“Maybe that’s it,” says the examiner who conducted the test. “The only way to find out what’s going on is to hit him between the eyes. But if I do go for the throat and fail, he’ll probably ask for an attorney.”
“That’s the risk we’ll have to take,” Stephens says.
The examiner returns and tells Nyle he failed the polygraph. Nyle blanches.
“The worst thing I could do is smile and say, ‘Everything is okay,’” the examiner tells him. “How you handle this is very important. You have to cooperate.”
“Is this a joke?” Nyle asks.
“When I’m joking with someone I laugh. This is the worst trouble you can face in your life.”
Nyle sighs and drops his hands to his side. “This is absurd.”
“This is real. This is your life. It’s not going to go away. I’m still giving you the opportunity to cooperate. You have no criminal history—”
Nyle interrupts: “I’m at a loss. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about shooting a lady to death, is what I’m talking about.… What caused you to shoot this lady?”
“How can you even say such a thing?” Nyle purses his lips primly.
Usually, when people are accused of murder, they will vociferously deny they committed the crime, even if they are guilty. Some jump out of the chair, shout, wave their hands wildly. Others scream at their accuser. Coulter and Stephens are amazed because Nyle shows almost no reaction. He simply stares at the examiner.
“You’re like a person sinking in quicksand and I’m reaching a hand out to you. If you keep pushing the hand away, there’s nothing I can do. I’m trying to get you to do the right thing.”
Nyle fiddles with the heel of his boot. “I’ve been doing the right thing all along.”
“What are you most afraid of?”
“This is absurd. I’m just flabbergasted.” Nyle’s voice is wavering. His lips tremble. “How can I be blamed?” But he quickly regains his composure and says angrily, “I don’t believe any of this for a second.”
The examiner leaves the room and tells the detectives that he sensed that Nyle was about to ask for an attorney. “I pulled back because he was on the verge of invoking. Did you ever see anyone accused of murder sit there so long without a reaction? I’d be out of that chair in a minute.”
“This is one of the weirdest guys I’ve ever dealt with,” Stephens says. He then enters the polygraph cubicle.
“Is this for real?” Nyle asks.
“It’s for real,” Stephens says sympathetically. “I want to be fair to you. You can talk to me if you want. I’m not going to yell at you. Will you give me a handwriting sample?”
“I should probably speak to an attorney,” Nyle says.
The interview with Nyle, Stephens knows, is now over.
Coulter speeds off to the mortuary, and Stephens drives to Nyle’s house, a small San Fernando Valley bungalow on a tidy, tree-lined suburban street. A jet stream from Alaska buffets the city with frigid winds ushering in a cold front. The temperature in the Valley is expected to drop to the mid-thirties tonight. Gusts have swept the skies of smog and mist and a cluster of stars shine brightly. Stephens, who stands beside his car, waiting for the other detectives, buttons his trench coat as the wind rattles the eucalyptus leaves.
Rick Jackson, John Garcia, and a few others soon join him. Stephens, who had served Nyle with the warrant after the interview, begins searching the house along with the other detectives. The house is tastefully decorated, with gleaming hardwood floors, antique mirrors, framed lithographs, and bookshelves lined with classics. Each detective scours a different room. Stephens and Coulter, who has returned from the viewing at the mortuary, focus on Nyle’s office, looking for his date book and for a pad with paper similar to the note the Beverly Hills Police received. Coulter leads two LAPD criminalists to Nyle’s closet, where they examine a dozen pairs of shoes for bloodstains.
“This looks kind of reddish,” says one criminalist, studying a sneaker sole with a magnifying glass and flashlight. She examines another sneaker sole and says, “This might be too red.… But let’s pheno ’em both.”
On the front porch, one of the criminalists pulls a Q-Tip out of her kit and moistens it with a speck of water from a dropper bottle. After swabbing the sneaker sole, she applies drops of phenolphthalein and hydrogen peroxide to the Q-Tip and holds it up. If the Q-Tip has absorbed even a trace of blood, it will turn pink.
“I hope they find something,” Coulter says. “I’m not ready for another disappointment.”
The criminalists study the Q-Tip. It remains white. The test on the other sneaker sole is also negative.
After a few more hours at the house, Coulter and Stephens reluctantly admit defeat: no notepad, no gun, no date book, or anything else incriminating. Shortly before midnight, they drive back downtown.
“I’d hoped it would end tonight,” Stephens says plaintively. “I’m not setting my alarm tomorrow. I’ll be in whenever I’m in.”
“I’m taking tomorrow off so I can go to my aunt’s funeral.” Coulter flicks on the heater. “This is a big letdown. Yesterday, I was writing the arrest report in my mind.”
“He’s a weird duck,” Stephens says.
“If it’s not him, we’ve really got a long way to go.”
“We’ll get his phone records,” Stephens says. “That’ll give us an idea of what he was doing on Friday night. Also, I’ll give Durst another try and see if I can interview him.”
“It ain’t over yet,” Coulter says.
Stephens smiles faintly. “Something will turn up.”