Jamie Brodie 01 - Cited to Death

no big deal, but he still lived in Glendale where he had grown up."
    "Lots of contradictions there."
    "Yeah. He was a complicated guy."
    "So - why do you think he sent you this letter? Why would it matter that you're a UC librarian?"
    "Because I have access to resources that other librarians don't? That's the only thing I can think of."
    Our food came then, and we dug in and talked about other things. Pete had parked on the street at our apartments, and we said goodbye at his car.
    Neither Kevin nor Abby were home yet. No surprise there. I got undressed and got a beer out of the fridge, sat on the sofa, booted up my laptop, and opened Google Translate. I spread Dan’s letter in front of me and typed the first citation, minus the names and date, into the “From: Detect Language” box. Immediately the box changed to “From: Welsh-detected,” and the translation read:
    Does not stimulate human embryonic stem cells cultured with follicle stimulating hormone leads to the formation of ovum-like cells. Medical Journal

    I compared it to the second citation from the letter. The words were similar, but the sentence was so scrambled it was impossible to make any sense from it. I copied and pasted the two article titles and compared them side by side.
    Does not stimulate human embryonic stem cells cultured with follicle stimulating hormone leads to the formation of ovum-like cells.
    Stimulation of cultured human embryonic stem cells with follicle stimulating hormone leads to formation of ovum-like cells.
    I leaned back and regarded the citations for a minute. The first one was like a jigsaw puzzle, or one of those jumble word games they put in the newspaper. I just needed to unscramble it. I started lining up phrases that matched, and finally had an order that made a little sense:
    Stimulate cultured human embryonic stem cells with follicle stimulating hormone does not leads to the formation of ovum-like cells.
    A couple of grammatical fixes later, I had:
    Stimulation of cultured human embryonic stem cells with follicle stimulating hormone does not lead to formation of ovum-like cells.
    I looked at the title from the second article again. The titles were identical, except for one word. Not. The first researchers found that their procedure didn’t work, and the second group found that it did. That didn’t sound unusual. Medical research was changing all the time. One week coffee was bad for you, the next week good for you. Why would this be any different?
    I failed to see the mystery in this. What was Dan thinking?
    At any rate, there wasn't anything else I could do about it tonight. And I was really tired. I saved the citations to Dropbox, shut down my laptop, and got ready for bed.
    Once I was in bed, though, I couldn't go to sleep. My brain wouldn't shut down. Thoughts of Pete, Dan, and the letter kept swirling through.
    For the first time since we’d dated, Pete and I were both single at the same time. Did he want to get back together? Did I? I didn’t think so. My latest boyfriend, Scott, had broken up with me while I was in the hospital two weeks ago. I was beginning to consider becoming a monk. They have libraries in monasteries, don’t they? I purposely hadn’t gotten very attached to any guy since Ethan so that when they left me, as I knew they would, it wouldn’t hurt. But the routine was getting old. I didn’t think I could maintain the detachment with Pete, and when he left me it would hurt a lot. So I just couldn’t go there.
    I rolled from my side to my back, stared at the ceiling and thought about Dan. Was he just paranoid, and his death a weird coincidence? Or did he have reason to be paranoid? And why would he send the letter to me? Why make a dying request of someone you hadn’t contacted for years? Why not ask another medical librarian? I knew every history librarian in California; Dan had to know at least a few other medical librarians. Surely one of them would be better equipped to solve this puzzle than I would.
    Maybe he had sent the letter to other people as well. But how would I know?
    History has two functions: serving as a record of what happened and analyzing why it happened. I didn’t know why Dan sent me the letter, but I did have what he sent me. Two titles, separated by one word. On the surface, there was nothing suspicious about that. So if the answer to why wasn’t in the titles, maybe it was in the text of the articles.
    That gave me a plan of action. Tomorrow, I’d look for