Jamie Brodie 01 - Cited to Death

make a clean start somewhere else."
    "I guess you're right...where are you going?"
    "Baltimore. I'm actually going to practice OB-GYN. Deliver babies and all that." He smiled, a little self-consciously.
    "That's great." I smiled back. "LA's loss will be Baltimore's gain. I hear it's nice there."
    "Yeah. It's on the water, near DC, not far from New York where I have family. Lots of advantages."
    "Well, that's great." I wasn't sure what else to say.
    He looked down and rubbed the carpet with his toe. "I also wanted to thank you for carrying out Dan's request. I don't think I said that before. I know he didn't involve me from the start because he was trying to protect me. And if there wasn't anything to his suspicions, then he wouldn't have had to ever say anything to me about it."
    I considered that. "So he didn't know about the plagiarism already?"
    "No. He suspected it, but he hadn't been able to get the Welsh article in its entirety, so he didn't know for sure. He did know that the calculations in our article didn't add up; he'd gotten that far.” He grimaced. “I went to see Alana before her sentencing. She knew Dan was sniffing around, because she knew that he'd tried to access the Welsh article, and she didn't want to let him get far enough to alert me. And she wasn't sure that he hadn't."
    "So he left you the information that he'd gathered to that point."
    "Yes. And he wrote you the letter, because he was paranoid, but also because he was determined to get to the bottom of it. And he trusted you to do that."
    I was taken aback. "Really?"
    "Yes." Ben smiled, sadly. "He did. I know you and he didn't end well, but he was impressed with your professionalism. Your librarianship, he called it. He said that you were working on his 'problem,' as he called it, and I should talk to you. That I should trust you."
    "Wow." Once again, Dan had surprised me. "I had no idea that he thought of me in any positive terms whatsoever."
    Ben laughed a little. "Yeah, I'm sure you didn't. Dan kept his feelings close to the vest. But that’s what he told me. And there's one thing that Dan was not , and that was a liar."
    "That's very true."
    Ben stood up. “Well, I don’t want to keep you. I’m leaving town tomorrow, and I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, and thank you.”
    I stood up too. “Thank you . And good luck. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, let me know.”
    Ben nodded. “I will. And tell Pete goodbye for me as well.”
    I said I would, and Ben left. I glanced at the clock. 12:45 – almost time for my reference shift. I hit the coffee shop for a mochaccino, then met Liz at the desk.
    It wasn’t too busy, now that summer had started. I was working on some research for a faculty member when Clinton appeared.
    “Hi, Clinton.”
    “The word for the day is exultation .” He bowed, and straightened back up.
    Then he winked at me.

Acknowledgements
    I couldn’t have done this without my fellow members of the Faculty Fiction Writing Group: Becca, Michelle, the two Michael F.’s, and Trey, who all read the first three chapters and gave me great feedback. Thanks, guys! Enormous thanks, as well, to Dustin and Cheryl, who read the entire book and also gave me invaluable feedback. This is a much better book, thanks to them. And extra, special, awesome thanks to Chris, who must have read this four times, and found something to fix every time.
    And thank you to Stephanie Reppas at October Design Co. for the fabulous cover.
    ----