Three things stand out from the report by the M.E. One, Mr. Book's death was not a result of natural causes. Two, he was poisoned. And three, his age could not be easily discerned.
Mr. Book was killed with one of many poisons that mimic the effects of cardiac arrest. The medical examiner had ordered the drinking glasses retested once he determined the cause of death, and traces of the poison were found in what would have been Mr. Book's tumbler. The real question became whether or not the poisoning was a voluntary act. The deciding factor, in the M.E.'s expert opinion, was the dosage. Most suicide attempts are marked by an overestimation of the necessary dosage to achieve death. Murder becomes obvious if the dosage is simply "just enough" to get the job done. Given the concentrations of the poison in Mr. Book's body, the examiner ruled the cause of death as homicide by poison.
The matter of his age was something that truly puzzled the M.E. Mr. Book was clearly a very old man. His eyesight was failing, muscles were weakening, and joints were arthritic. Wrinkly, blotchy skin covered his frail body. All the standard markers of an estimable age were, however, indeterminate. He could have been 90 or 190. There was no way to tell. Once a person reaches a certain age, the effects of aging seem to cease. The oldest documented people could have been mistaken for others thirty or forty years younger.
That leads to the problem of documenting his age. No birth records could be found for Mr. Book. His house was held in a trust for him by an entity that had no record of its formation. The Division of Corporations was going to search the physical archives for the origins of the trust. Mr. Book had no identification, no social security number, and no record of having paid taxes. Here is the M.E.'s formal conclusion.
"Subject presents with obvious age markers that place his birth at least 85 years ago. No documentation has been found to date that can put a decade much less a year next to his time of birth. Whatever his age, the subject was healthy enough to live still longer. Had he not been poisoned, I would not have been surprised to learn that he lived another 30 years."
Off the record, the medical examiner said that he could have reasonably put much larger numbers on the report, but he feared that such superlative numbers would have drawn undue attention to the autopsy at trial. Perhaps I was disingenuous from the start when I said that the facts in this case were the same as all the other cases. What I should have said was that the facts were similar to other sets of facts. Some were just different enough to be remarkable. Not remarkable - memorable, maybe. Or notable. None of these are right. Perhaps extraordinary, but in the literal sense. Just enough beyond the ordinary to hold a different meaning.
With the official ruling of homicide, the case took on a new urgency, one that I had already felt but that the brass were now keenly aware of. The murder of an old man usually had one overriding motive. Money. Impatient or desperate heirs were prime suspects. There was no beneficiary listed for the trust that owned Mr. Book's home or for his only bank account. With no records of any next of kin, there were few leads to pursue. That left his personal papers as the only thing to catch a break on.
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