Cited to Death (2 page)

Dr. Loomis was in her office, alone, with the door open. This was my lucky day. I stuck my head in her office. "Good morning, Dr. Loomis."

She looked up and smiled. "Jamie! Welcome back. Come in, sit down. How are you feeling?"

I went in and sat. "Not bad. Almost back to normal."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "But not entirely back to normal."

"Well, no. I still don't have a lot of energy. But that will come back now that I'm back to work."

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "Jamie. You still have more sick leave accumulated than anyone in this building. I want you to promise me that if you don't feel up to working, you won't come in. I'm already impressed with your work ethic. You don't have to keep impressing me with it. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She nodded sharply. "All right. Now that we have that clear. What can I do for you?"

I steeled myself. "One of my library school classmates passed away over the weekend. His memorial service is Thursday afternoon in Glendale. I don't have anything scheduled for that time. I'd like to use a couple of hours of personal time. If that's okay."

Dr. Loomis looked surprised. "My goodness. Was this anyone I would know?"

"I don't know. His name was Dan Christensen. He was the medical librarian at Cedars."

"Hmm. No, I don't believe that name is familiar. I'm so sorry. Had he been ill?"

"No, ma'am. They think it was a seizure. He had a seizure disorder."

"Goodness." Dr. Loomis's mouth compressed in a thin line for a moment. She looked as if she was remembering something unpleasant. Then she snapped back to the present. "Of course you may take the time. Just get me your leave form by the end of the day."

I stood up. "Yes ma'am, I will. Thank you."

She stood as well. "You're welcome. And welcome back. Please take care of yourself. If you find you can't finish out the day and need to leave early, please don't hesitate to do that."

I smiled. "I don't think that will be a problem. But thank you."

I went back downstairs. Diane was behind my desk, doing – what? Sorting mail? She straightened up as I came in. "What did she say?"

"She said yes. What are you doing?"

"Helping. I got bored. So, good! We can go to the funeral. Do you want me to come pick you up?"

"Sure. If you don't mind. Then I don't have to move the Bug."

"I don't mind. I'll call you when I get close to campus and meet you outside somewhere."

"Sounds good." I saw Diane off and turned back to my sorting.

Just before 1:00, I got a mochaccino at the coffee shop on the first floor, then went to do my reference shift. I sat down at the desk and smiled inwardly. I had missed this. I rubbed my hands together and grinned at Liz. “Let the questions and answers begin!”

She laughed. “You, sir, are a nut.”

We were fairly busy. There were two weeks left in the quarter before finals, and the procrastinators were starting to do their research for their final papers and projects. And, right on the dot of 1:30, Clinton appeared.

Every library has its group of regular patrons that can be lumped together under the heading “eccentric.” Academic libraries have two main types of eccentrics: needy students who latch on to an individual librarian, and conspiracy theorists from the community that come in to look for research to support their theories. We had a few others: the dominatrix who came in each evening wearing her work clothes to read the Wall Street Journal, the student who was a Civil War re-enactor and came in every Friday in full Confederate uniform, the graduate student who claimed to be in the Witness Protection program.

And we had Clinton.

We didn’t know anything about Clinton. We didn’t even know if Clinton was his first or last name. Every afternoon at 1:30, Clinton would approach the reference desk and stand, waiting patiently, until one of us was free. Liz or I would say, “Hi, Clinton,” and he’d say, very gravely, “The word of the day is _________” and give us a word. Then he’d bow from the waist and walk away.

He’d been doing this for as long as anyone could remember.

So, when I saw him, I said, “Hi, Clinton.”

He looked at me somberly. “The word for the day is
nomothetic
.” Then he bowed and walked off.

Liz looked it up. “It means ‘Giving or establishing laws; legislative.’”

“Okay.” I recorded the word in our Clinton log.

At 3:00, I went back to my office and started in on the sorting task again. By the time 5:00 rolled around, I was exhausted. I was determined to get through today's mail, though; if I could keep up with the new stuff, I'd be able to chip away at the old stuff without anything else piling up.

I was just moving today's stack of mail to my desk when there was a knock on my door frame. I looked up into the deep brown eyes of Pete Ferguson.

When I first moved to LA, Pete was my brother Kevin's partner on the police force. After Dan broke up with me, I’d had a string of similarly short-term relationships, and Pete was one of them. He’d left the force by then, and was pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology at UCLA. We’d gotten along great. But Pete had a bad breakup in his past too, and we’d both been afraid of getting hurt again. Then Pete’s ex had come back and wanted a second chance, and Pete had reluctantly given it to him. By the time Luke and Pete had broken up for good, I’d moved on. Pete’s friendship with Kevin had kept us in contact, and we’d re-established a cautious friendship of our own.

Now here he was, standing in my doorway. I tried to smile; it must have looked more like a grimace. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

Pete smiled back. He had a nice smile. "I wanted to see if I could buy you dinner on your way home. Figured you'd be done for the day by now."

I was suddenly suspicious. "Did Kevin send you here?"

"No, I’ve been here doing research all afternoon. But it did occur to me that you might need some encouragement to leave work on time, and maybe I could entice you away."

“Doing research? I thought the point of taking a teaching job at a community college was so you didn’t have to do research.”

Pete laughed. He had a nice laugh too. “I don’t have to, but it does help with tenure. And the professor who was my dissertation advisor here has asked me to write a chapter for a textbook that she’s editing. So I need to do some research for that.”

“A textbook on what?”

“Abnormal psychology. My chapter’s on criminal psychology. And right now I’m criminally hungry. So whaddya say? How does Thai sound?”

I sighed. "Actually, it sounds great. I just want to go through this last stack of mail before I leave. Come on in, sit down."

Pete moved a stack off the chair and sat. "This place is a mess."

"No kidding. They've just been throwing my mail in here as it came."

"Nice. I hope there wasn't anything important in it."

"Probably not." I was tossing catalogs into my chair and important-looking mail in the direction of my inbox on my desk. None of it looked interesting, until I came to an envelope with a name I recognized. It stopped me in my tracks.

Holy shit
. I must have had an odd look on my face. Pete noticed. "What's wrong?"

"This morning I found out that this guy I used to know died. And now here’s a letter from him. It’s postmarked the day before he died.”

"Who is it?"

"Dan Christensen. We started library school together. He's a medical librarian at Cedars now. Was a medical librarian. He died on Friday."

"Christensen. Why does that name sound familiar?"

"I was kind of - um - involved with him for a while. You might have heard me mention him." I looked narrowly at Pete. "That was almost six years ago, though. If you remember that, you've got an awfully good memory."

“Hey, I’ve always paid attention to your love life." He nodded at the letter. "What does he want?"

I looked at the letter again. It was postmarked Malibu.
Malibu?
Dan lived in Glendale and worked in LA. Why would he mail something from Malibu? I opened it and pulled out a sheet of paper.

It was just a page torn off a yellow legal pad, not hospital stationery. I read out loud. "Jamie - if anything happens to me, check this out." I stopped at what was below that sentence. "What the..."

"What is it?"

I handed the letter to Pete. "'If anything happens to me..' What's he talking about?"

Pete examined the note. "What's this at the bottom? It looks like journal citations."

It was. Below Dan's note, he had written two citations.

The first seemed to be in a foreign language:

Hughes, D., & Llewellyn, M. (2003).
Nid yw symbylu'r celloedd bonyn embryonig dynol diwylliedig â hormonau ffoligl ysgogol yn arwain at ffurfio ofwm tebyg i gelloedd.
Meddygol Cymru Journal, 17
(9), 23-28.

The second was in English, but was nearly as incomprehensible as the first:

Oliver, T., Wray, A., & Goldstein, B. (2007). Stimulation of cultured human embryonic stem cells with follicle stimulating hormone leads to formation of ovum-like cells.
Journal of Stem Cell Biology, 2
(4), 15-22.

“This looks like medical stuff. How am I supposed to read this?”

“What language is that?”

“The names could be Welsh. And Cymru means Wales. I think it’s Welsh language.”

“Can you read it?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“You could run it through Google Translate to get an idea of what it says. Why would he send this to you? You’re not a medical librarian.”

“I don’t know. I might be the only librarian he knows in the UC system. Or maybe he thought…oh hell, I don’t
know
.”

“And those are just citations. Why wouldn’t he have sent you the articles themselves?”

“I have no idea. Maybe he couldn’t find the full text.” I grimaced. “This is creepy. Dan’s
dead
. Do you think someone might have done something to him?”

“Like what? Was there anything to indicate foul play?”

“No. The obituary just said he died suddenly. And what could be dangerous about a couple of medical articles?” I frowned at the paper in my hand.

“You could ask Kevin about it. He can get the police report and the autopsy results. See if there was anything off about it.”

I frowned again. “I guess. But that’ll take a while, won’t it?”

“Yeah, it won’t be a priority.” Pete picked up my computer bag from the floor. “Come on, I’m hungry. You can fill me in on this guy and those listings while we eat.”

We walked to a Thai place near campus. The hostess showed us to a booth, and Pete slid in across from me. We ordered beer and pad thai; our beers arrived almost immediately. Pete took a drink and leaned back. “Tell me about this Dan guy. I don't remember ever meeting him."