way to Bugles' desk and dropped heavily into the chair.
He reread the letter, then rested his chin in his hand as he massaged his decision scar.
Foster, a doctor? Booted out of surgical training? He shook his head as if ridding his brain from infectious data.
David sat at the desk for a time, visualizing the murder scene, imagining Foster behind the mask. Opportunity was there. Motives were several. Means? Surgically trained.
But he had trouble reconciling the Foster he knew with the brutality of the crime. And what about the hospital-Foster's own hospital, his bottom line hospital? Or the funeral reception?
David reached two uneasy conclusions: he would not yet confront Foster with what he had just learned for fear of raising his guard. And, for the time being, he would not inform Kathy because she might not agree with the first conclusion.
Burdened, he thought about slipping the letter into Friday but instead replaced it in the filing cabinet. From a cluster of photos on the desk he did, however, pirate one of Robert and Bernie. It won't be missed.
Now, the desk. While here, the desk. David had always believed if he had a choice of desk drawers to inspect, it would be the lower right double one. That's where he kept anything of moderate importance in his own desk. Extreme importance? His safe deposit box at the bank. Time to check for moderate importance.
Inside the drawer, he found a metal box; it was unlocked. It contained an out-of-date passport and a ledger book. The passport was issued in 1984. The name listed was, 'C. H. Bugalash.' The place of birth was, 'Istanbul, Turkey.' The photograph was that of a younger Charlie Bugles.
Bugalash? Istanbul? David pored over the ledger which contained entries dating from 1978. Hand printed on the first page only was the heading, 'DATE SHIPMENT RECEIVED.' He estimated there were ten to twelve dates a year, filling pages of columns, from the seventies to the present.
David knew the Middle East was the world's primary heroin source, particularly Turkey. He imagined the shipments referred to drugs. But, then again, they could be carpets, for Christ's sake. Drug dealer or rug dealer?
If knowledge of Foster's past had jolted him, this blew his mind. Moderate importance? Christ! What's in his safe deposit box, the drugs themselves?
David decided he didn't want to search any furtheror couldn't-because processing beyond the forming mosaic, he felt, would have yielded little. Until more tiles were in place, he would keep the past activities of one C.H. Bugalash as close to the vest as those of Dr. Alton Foster.
On the way home, David broke a long silence. 'You seen your brother lately?'
'Nope. He's in Tokyo,' Robert answered, pushing himself back in the seat.
'For how long?'
'Who knows? He never tells me nothin'.'
David's last thought before dropping Robert off was about the following day's vigil for an administrator whose credibility he now questioned. Phony vigil? Phony administrator? Must protect the flanks. He reasoned that if Foster's surgical training cast him into a murderer, then all bets were off, and guarding him could be a camouflage for surveillance. And if he were innocent, the original bet still stood.
Her Chevy Cavalier a safe distance behind, Kathy had tailed David and Robert to the Highland Estates and, after the men had entered Bugles' unit, she decided to circle around the complex. She had done her share of shadowing in a twelve-year police career, but for the first time-secretly following David-she felt ill at ease, and she concluded that such a feeling had produced her deep chills. She turned up the heater.
On her return, she spotted a familiar car ahead, three units shy of Bugles' unit. She eased in behind the car and recognized it as Nick's. Kathy stormed out her door and, approaching the driver's side of his car, saw Nick resting a revolver on his lap. He lowered the window and appeared vexed.
'What are you doing here?' Kathy asked, her eyes narrowing.
'I could ask you the same question.' He shoved the revolver into his waistband.
Kathy knew her voice would become shriller. 'What did you do, follow me out?'
'What's that supposed to mean? For your information, I was following him out.' Nick pointed toward David's Mercedes. 'Could I help it if your car happened to be between us?'
Kathy realized she could have sunk his argument but decided to jump to a more pressing thought and shot back, 'Well, I'm perfectly capable of checking on this alone.'
'Hold on now!' Nick's voice was not shriller, but louder. 'I give the orders, right? Did I say for you to follow the guy?' He turned on the ignition, gunning the accelerator.
Kathy peered down her nose and said slowly, 'Boy, it didn't take you long, did it?'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning to get brutal. Last week you said you'd wait till you got the lay of the land.'
Nick stuck his head partially out the window and said, 'I've gotten it.' He squared his body forward and stared blankly through the windshield. Kathy pinned him in place with her own stare.
Finally, he turned toward her as if in pain and declared, 'So we both know he came here. Now what's that tell us?'
'That the guy, as you call him, is doing his job.'
Nick appeared to begin a different sentence, settling with, 'I suppose he is. Let me know later what he found here. He'll tell you, but not me-that's for sure.'
'If he tells me at all.'
'Why the doubt?'
'Because I'm not about to ask him,' Kathy replied, firmly. 'It has to come from him, or we'll scare him off.'
'Nonsense.'
'Look, you want him helping, or not?' Kathy motioned with her hands.
After a long pause, Nick said, 'I'm not sure … see you tomorrow.' He pulled away.
She wasn't certain of what to make of Nick's comments except that he had abruptly moved from colleague to supervisor. She also wasn't entirely certain why she had followed David but, as the pro, wanted to begin the process of spot monitoring someone who was not only the love of her life but also her protege.
As she motored home, Kathy puzzled over two questions: What was the real reason Nick had chosen to tag along? And could she continue monitoring David? She had no answer for the first and a reasonably definite one for the second: most likely, she would abandon spot checks on David. She hated the feeling.
The following morning, Tuesday, Foster exclaimed to David, 'It's utterly absurd!' They sat in Foster's office shortly after nine. 'There's no reason for anyone to kill me and what if people here-and in the community and down at the newspaper office-hear I'm being guarded? The CEO of the hospital needs a guard outside his office. Really! Do you realize what that would do to our census? As it is, it's practically in a free fall.'
'You have no choice in the matter, Alton. And if you make another fuss, the press will have a field day. I'm sure they did a number on you this morning and, by the way, I won't even comment on your actions. You'll have to settle that problem yourself.'
'I'm not worried. That creep made inflammatory statements and should be driven out of the business.'
David slipped out of a caramel tweed jacket, unknotted his bow tie and rolled up his sleeves. 'You handle it,' he said, 'but can I ask you something?'
'What's that?'
'Haven't you ever thrown a straight haymaker? Why a roundhouse?'
Foster made a fist and fired it in a half circle. 'I was off balance when I let it go,' he said.
David instructed him to keep his back door ajar because that would be the most direct route 'for me to intervene.'
'In what? You mean an attempt on my life? Bah!' Foster fanned the air in a show of disgust. 'So, what am I supposed to do if a goblin appears?'
'Yell. I'll be in the Bugles Room,' David said, referring to the boardroom off the back corridor, directly opposite Foster's office. It was named in honor of the late chairman who, twelve years before, had underwritten
