Jamie Brodie 01 - Cited to Death

my office had been broken into. Duh . The dispatcher said he’d have someone right there.
    A few minutes later, an officer arrived. He surveyed the mess, took my statement, and called forensics. They arrived and started lifting fingerprints. Most of them would probably be mine, which were already on file from my initial employment background check. I told the officer about my computer issues, and he said I’d done the right thing by calling the computer crimes detective. The officer didn’t have an opinion about whether the detective would investigate my computer or not.
    The police finished up and left. I needed to clean up, but it was going to have to wait. My budget meeting was happening in less than 20 minutes.
    I hoped the detective would call me back before IT got here. If I turned my computer over to the police, IT would have to give me a new one.
    And if the police could tell me what had been done to my computer, I could then decide whether I should speak to Diane about it.
    With those decisions made, I went to my budget meeting.
    The budget meeting was relatively painless, and my presentation was well received. It was a relief to have that over with. When I got back to my office, the computer crimes detective was waiting for me.
    I introduced myself. “I’m surprised to see you in person. Thanks for coming over.”
    “No problem.” Roger Blake was tall, thin, and weathered. He reminded me of a hawk – an intense, beady-eyed predator. He had a pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket and was chewing gum vigorously. “I hadn’t been in this building in a long time. Figured I’d take a field trip.” The mess in my office took him aback. “Whoa. What happened here?”
    I shoved a pile of papers off the chair, invited him to sit, and told him about the break-in. He listened, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Interesting. Okay, tell me about your computer problems.”
    I described everything that had happened - the daily issues with crashes and email and internet access and finding Diane behind my desk twice. Blake listened, then got out pen and paper and asked me to repeat everything, in detail, with dates and times. When I finished, he sat back and steepled his fingers. "And you're the only one in the library that has had any problems."
    "Yes, sir. Which makes me think it must be directed at me, but I have no idea who or why it's happening."
    “What makes you think it’s not this DeLong woman?”
    “Because she has no reason to do anything like this, and I’m not sure she has the skills. And she couldn’t have been the one to come in and trash my office last night.”
    “She’s not UCLA personnel?”
    “No, sir. She’s on staff at Pasadena High School.”
    “She live in Pasadena?”
    “No, sir. West Hollywood.”
    "Hmph.” West Hollywood didn’t meet with Blake’s approval. “Okay. Think back. Last Wednesday. Before your computer crashed for the first time. What happened that day?"
    I thought. "It was my second day back at work. I'd been out for two weeks after a bad asthma attack. Everything was fine on Tuesday. Everything was fine when I came in on Wednesday. I worked in my office in the morning, then I went to the biomedical library to request a couple of articles from their databases. Then I had a meeting in the library science building. When I got back from my meeting, my computer had crashed. That was the first time."
    Blake looked puzzled. "Well, none of that sounds particularly ominous. Is all of that pretty routine for you?"
    "Yeah, for the most part."
    His eyes narrowed a bit. "What do you mean, the most part?"
    "Well, it's not every day that I go to the biomedical library. I hardly ever go there at all. I'm a history librarian."
    "Okay. Why did you go there that day?"
    He was narrowing in on my own suspicions. I pulled out Dan's letter and handed it to him. "Last Tuesday morning, I found out that my friend, Dan Christensen, had died over the weekend. It was a surprise because he was young, only 37. Then, last Tuesday afternoon, I found this letter from him in the mail. It was these two articles that I requested from the biomed library."
    "Can I make a copy of this?"
    "Sure."
    Blake left the office for a second, came back with his copy of Dan's letter and handed the original back to me. "What did you think when you got this?"
    "Well, I was kind of freaked out. He says right there, 'If anything happens to me,' and something had happened to him."
    "Did they give