Murders at Hollings General ddb-1

by Jerry Labriola

  "Mine, too," David said. "Son-of-a-bitch!"

  "Wait, now, we're not pros at this. I've seen mistakes made."

  "So? Let's get a handwriting expert. Do we have one around here?"

  "Certainly. Darn good one, too. She's on call. But I want to warn you, David. They're good at excluding a sample, but swearing to a definite match can be ticklish. If they can't be sure, they do like pathologists do with slides: they send samples around to colleagues they respect to get a consensus. That could take a week or more."

  "We don't have that much time. Hold off for now."

  Back at the Hole, David was perusing his notes when his cellular buzzed. "David, I got more for you," Kathy said.

  "From Archie?"

  "No, from our Assault Unit. Foster's been arrested."

  "Arrested? For what?"

  "Trying to punch a news reporter."

  "I can't believe it! Where?"

  "In his office. Guess he thought the reporter could soften the impact of the killings on the hospital's reputation. The report states Foster was told by the kid-he's been with the paper about a month-'All crimes occur in society and a hospital is part of society.' Foster was apparently impressed with that, so he invites him up. Only when he gets there, the reporter starts talking about how brutal the crimes were, and about the hospital's lack of security; and doesn't he, as administrator, worry that people will be too frightened to choose Hollings for their care now?"

  "Jesus!"

  "That's when he tries to slug him."

  "Where's Foster now?"

  "Not in jail. They released him on his own recognizance. He went home."

  "Well, I'm not calling him. Stupid jerk. They should have jailed him. Then I wouldn't have to be a frigging nursemaid."

  But he thought he should at least check with the reporter. "Do you have the kid's name? And which paper?"

  "Adam Slaughton at the Herald." She gave him the phone number and extension.

  "Talk to-you later," David said. He punched numbers into the phone; a spiritless voice answered. "This is Adam Slaughton."

  "Adam, Dr. David Brooks here. I'm associated with Hollings General Hospital and I've been asked to help in the investigation of the untoward deaths here."

  "Yes, I know. I've tried to reach you several times for a comment or two but I kept getting your machine." The tone of the reporter's voice never varied. "Is that why you're calling?"

  "No, I'm calling to ask about what happened with Alton Foster today-if you feel you can talk about it."

  "I've already written the story on it, so why not? I started what I thought was a straightforward interview and when I got to a certain question, he went ballistic."

  "What was the question?"

  "Something like, `I hear you and Mr. Bugles didn't get along.' He screams, `That's not true!' and then throws this roundhouse punch that even my grandmother could dodge. I could have clobbered him but I thought better of it."

  "So you pressed charges."

  "Correct." It was the first word released from a monotone. "If I hadn't, no telling what the guy might have said to the police. I told my editor about it and he said I should file an official complaint which I did. We had to preempt anything Foster might have concocted."

  "I see," David said. He squared himself in his chair. "By the way, how big are you?"

  "Excuse me."

  "Are you short-tall-heavy-thin?"

  "Frankly, I don't know why I'm answering this, but I'm about six-one; maybe 210. Why? What difference does that make?"

  "Curious, that's all. Thank you for the details. You've been a great help."

  "You're welcome. Can you tell me now-you have any solid leads?"

  David had wrapped his scarf around his neck with one hand. He cradled the phone on his shoulder and said, "No, not at all. But, tell you what, Adam. When a lead becomes so solid that the perpetrator is obvious, I'll give you my only interview."

  He replaced the phone and felt good about laying the word "perpetrator" on a news reporter.

  Chapter 11

  It was dark and cold when David and Robert Bugles arrived at Highland Estates, an upscale condominium complex ten minutes from Hollings General. Set into a knoll not far from the gated entrance, Charlie Bugles' unlighted unit appeared swallowed by slabs of ledge as David followed Robert up gradually circling steps of compressed bark. Only an iron handrail gave David any sense of direction.

  Inside, Robert turned on the lights from a central switch and said, "Here we are. I'll go watch T.V. You do what you have to do, Dr. Brooks." He unwrapped a candy bar.

  "I won't take long. If nothing catches my eye, we'll be out of here in five or ten minutes."

  Robert disappeared into the next room and David stood in the foyer for a moment. He could see segments of four rooms from there and was surprised at how compact the unit was. Not much bigger than his. Kathy wouldn't like it.

  As he wandered from room to room-kitchen, living room, dining room-he smelled the dampness of a cave he once played in as a boy and, at the television's initial blare, he recoiled the same as he had from the piercing cry of bats he had never gotten used to.

  He didn't spend much time in those rooms-he didn't want to-but headed straight for a small rear one that he thought might be a study. Its walls were coated with plaques and citations, and David was tempted to remove his shoes before stepping onto its Oriental carpeting. The room was dominated by shades of red-lamps, leather chairs, cherry desk and tables-and its tidiness would have done justice to a home furnishings ad.

  He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Then, after pivoting to leave, he did a double take, his gaze returning to a photograph perched on a coral filing cabinet. It looked like a blown-up original. David picked it up and read a notation on the back: "Blue mosque-Istanbul."

  Idly, he opened the top drawer of the cabinet. The first folder was labeled "Hospital-Foster." He thumbed through it, stopping at a letterhead from Philadelphia General Hospital. He eased it out of the folder. It was dated, "June 15, 1978," and signed, "Marcus Oblink, M.D., Chief, Department of Surgery." It was addressed to "Mr. Charles Bugles, Chairman, Hollings Hospital Corporation." The letter's essence was contained in the last paragraph. It stated that Dr. Alton Foster, having not performed satisfactorily, was dismissed from its surgical training program after two years of residency.

  The information struck David like a battering ram. His fingers crimped the sides of the letter as he made his 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. That's why he hangs around operating rooms! A fit for Bugles' murderer? You bet. And he's about to be guarded?

  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 new carpeting and furniture, including a six-figure teak table. "There's nothing to read in there, I suppose."

  "Grab a few magazines in the reception room. Really, David, is all this necessary?"

  "Just go with it, okay?" David left through the front door and addressing the secretary, said, "May I? I'll bring them back later," as he scooped up two magazines and continued out beyond the elevator and around to the rear corridor. In view of the findings at Bugles' condo, David sensed Foster would "go with it" with about as much gusto as he had in guarding him. But he wasn't sure either about Foster's cooperation or about the significance of the findings.

  In the boardroom, he sat at the sprawling table before a wall of gold drapes, Friday on his lap, feet fastened to the floor. He knees scraped the table.

  He had propped open the door with a serving table and, yet, no sounds were added to the silence around him. After thirty minutes of such quiet that it nullified any sense of immediacy, he decided he was not cut out for sentry duty. And, besides, Foster knows he's being guarded now, so why not have Kathy send a cop at noon. On second thought, that's stupid, too. This guy's a prime suspect, not a potential victim. Hunches, move over. He untied and retied his size twelve shoe.

  Then he turned rigid upon hearing the rapid-fire voice of Ted Tanarkle coming from the direction of the office. "I've made my decision," the pathologist said coldly. "But why?" Foster asked.

  "There's no need to talk about it."

  "You can't tell me why?" Foster continued. Straining, David made out a final exchange. T
anarkle: "Good day."

  Foster: "Ted, listen to me."

  David sat motionless, trying quickly to decide whether to walk in on Foster or run around to the front and "casually" bump into Tanarkle. He rose quietly and concealed himself against the doorjamb to listen, but he detected no further conversation.

  Suddenly from the left, he heard a reverberating, decrescendo scream. David knifed past the serving table toward Foster's door. It was closed and locked. He struggled with the knob for only a moment and then bolted left, around two corners. He stopped short when he came upon Foster, his hands clutching the sides of his head. The administrator stood slouched, facing the elevator. David whipped him aside with one arm. He saw a gaping door with no car.

  David braced himself against the wall and, arching his head forward into the black shaft, looked down and thought he could make out the outline of a body, spread-eagled and still. He glanced at Foster.

  "I started to follow him out. Then the … the bloody scream! God, it was so …" Foster didn't complete the sentence. "And I saw that door closing just as I got here," he added, pointing to the adjacent exit.

  David checked the metal dial above the elevator. Its hand pointed to "G." He exploded into the stairwell and, more than once resisting the impulse to grab his knee, puffed his way to the basement. There, the elevator door moved to and fro, rattling against a chair on its side, a wedge that kept the door from closing, the car from rising.

  David snatched up the chair and, in the car, pushed the "Hold" button. Standing on the chair to reach the emergency ceiling panel, he twisted the latches and pulled the panel down, exposing Tanarkle's head, neck and shoulders.

  "Ted! Ted! Can you hear me?" he cried. He groped for a carotid pulse, but all he felt was what he knew was a final shudder.

  He heard Foster's rapid breathing behind him. "Is he …?" Foster said in a loud whisper.

  "I'm afraid so. Poor guy. What a way to go." "I knew it would happen sooner or later."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" David said, as if the comment had shattered his moment of grief.