This is not what I normally do for a homicide investigation, but this was not a normal homicide. The facts were the same as any other, and the motives were just as primal and meaningless as any of the hundreds of cases I've worked on. Still, this one was different.
A call was made to 911 on Tuesday morning at 9:04. A woman stated that her boss, an old man, wasn't responding. She was a maid for the gentleman and had found him shortly after arriving at his residence to begin her day. Paramedics and uniformed officers were immediately dispatched. Johannes Gutenberg Book was pronounced dead at the scene at 9:38. The scene was cordoned off, the medical examiner was paged, forensics was summoned, and I received a call to begin the investigation. My name is Detective Scheherazade, and this is my story of the murder of Mr. Book.
Mr. Book's residence was a three-story row house in an old section of the city. The area had seen an influx of money and investment in repairs to the beautiful architecture of the early twentieth century. Mr. Book's house, however, had missed out on the revival. He must have lived here for a very long time. The interior of the home was heavily decorated with antique furniture, a dozen or so old wingback chairs sat next to small end-tables with stacks of books on every one. Ancient floor lamps hovered over every chair. Three of the four bedrooms in the home had been converted to libraries, shelves and floors littered with books of every shape, size, and age. Scrolls meticulously stored in cylindrical cases filled every closet in the house.
Mr. Book's bedroom was empty by comparison. A queen bed with simple white sheets and a nightstand faced a giant armoire that housed two dozen suits with white shirts and black or blue jackets and pants. On his nightstand was a single book: The Micro Millennium by Christopher Evans. An old leather bookmark caused the book to flip open when I picked it up. Page 112 was the beginning of chapter eight, "The Death of the Printed Word." The copyright page showed that the book was written in 1979.
The door to Mr. Book's study was across the hall from his bedroom. This is where his body was found. Unlike every other room in the home, his study had no books in it. Four dark, wooden bookcases built in to the walls were covered with music boxes. A computer, a calendar, a Kindle book reader, an ashtray, a pair of tumblers, and four piles of paper sat on a large mahogany desk. Two more ancient wingback chairs straddled the desk.
Mr. Book's body lay face down on the desk. He held a pair of reading glasses in his left hand. His hair was wispy and white, his face, hands and arms were wrinkled and old. He wore a white shirt and blue slacks; his feet were bare. The medical examiner stated that the time of death was about twelve to fourteen hours prior, or between eight and ten Monday night. There was no apparent cause of death, no signs of trauma, and nothing to indicate a homicide. Natural causes seemed most likely, but the medical examiner refused to even hazard a guess until the autopsy could be performed.
Fingerprints had been lifted from the Kindle, the drinking glasses, and the keyboard. The glasses, the ashtray and its contents, and the computer were taken back to the lab. After the body had been taken away and the forensics team had left, I gave the desk a closer inspection. Two cigar buts in the ashtray, two drinking glasses. Mr. Book clearly had a guest the night before. The Kindle sat on the edge of the desk nearer where the guest would have been sitting. The computer and the Kindle were both powered down. Three of the four piles of paper were neatly stacked and seemed untouched for quite some time.
The last pile was the one closest to Mr. Book's body and was splayed out a bit as if someone had been looking for something. The papers were all printouts of what appeared to be blog entries. Every entry was signed "J.G.Book", and they were dated within the last six months. The other piles were all the same with entries related to earlier times. The most recent entry was from Sunday night.
"I'm afraid that I have failed. Allison continues to beg me for reconciliation, but I rebuff her at every advance. She doesn't understand that any relationship with her jeopardizes what little is left of my life's work. The damage, as I have said, is done. Peter is shutting me out. There seems to be little that I can do. I should have seen this coming long ago, but I was overconfident and blind to my vulnerability. I suppose I loved her then as well and that made me act foolishly. I wish I could take it all back! For now, J.G.Book"
I suppose what first struck me about the case was that book on the nightstand. It was clear that Mr. Book was an avid reader or at least a zealous book collector. Of every book in the house, though, the one on the nightstand was the only one for which it was apparent that he was currently reading. An old book written at the beginning of the computer revolution? Strange material for someone seemingly engrossed with the older cultural artifact of the book. And the bookmarked chapter, "The Death of the Printed Word", was too prescient for my taste. After that first day, I had leafed through the book and found something in that chapter that stuck with me throughout the case.
"The invention of writing was the most revolutionary of all human inventions, for in one great blow it severed the chains which tied an individual and his limited culture to a finite region of space, and to a restricted slice of time."
Standing in the midst of all the printed words in Mr. Book's collections, I felt freed of those chains binding me to my little corner of history. I could sense the knowledge and experience of the ages flowing from those words through me and around me. It was a sensation I would feel again as I delved into the life of Mr. Book and crept closer to finding his killer. I knew then, despite the medical examiner's protestations, that Mr. Book's death was not by natural causes.
Of course, the most important aspect of the case in the beginning was determining who Mr. Book's visitor was. Given the time of death, it seemed probable that the person would be of real interest to the investigation. I interviewed his maid, but she had no idea. Mr. Book did not reveal his personal life to her at all, and her work consisted of cleaning the kitchen and bathroom twice a week and keeping the pantry stocked. She had heard the name Allison but never met her. Peter was unknown to her. According to her, Mr. Book had very few friends and no family at all. In the past several months, he seemed to have become more reclusive and spent most of his time in his study.
Judging by the scene, I guessed that Mr. Book and his visitor enjoyed cigars and drinks and may have discussed the Kindle that lay between them. Perhaps he had shuffled through his blog printouts to show something to the visitor. Or maybe the visitor had looked through them after Mr. Book's death to find incriminating evidence. Whichever was true, nothing seemed to be missing from the pile.
The last observation I made came as I walked back down to the first floor when it was time to head back to the precinct. There was nothing personal or familiar in the house. No pictures of loved ones, no mementos of past accomplishments. The feeling of floating free, detached from the timeline I found myself in, came over me again. But this time, instead of feeling liberated, I felt sad and lonely. Mr. Book had died alone, an old man. In the face of infinite time and space, perhaps having ties was not so bad.
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