"Fine. My brother came for a couple of nights. Lots of music, good eats." Dan patted his stomach. "Have to work it off. Any luck with the trial balance?"
"Not so far."
"Well, if you can't find it, you can't find it. Month to month, we're doing fine; the numbers aren't getting worse. I've got to find Vi." He raced away at Dan speed.
Oliver took a deep breath and walked down the hall to Suzanne's office. She looked at him, glad and appealing. "Friday . . ." he started. She blushed.
"I've got something to show you at the house," she said.
"Good," he heard himself say. He stood there, grinning, amazed at himself. "Friday," he confirmed. He went back to the computer—happy but frightened. He couldn't make excuses; he had to see her. Don't panic, he told himself. Just stay for a couple of hours and go to Deweys for a Friday night drink with the boys. Go home smelling of Guinness and cigarettes . . . He was skidding, losing control. He plunged into the hunt for the missing money with renewed determination.
Computer programs evolve and become more complicated over time. This accounting package had been in place for eight years. Many new versions had been installed and much had been changed to suit this particular hospital. It would take too long to set up a parallel test system, and it probably wouldn't help, anyway. The best hope for fixing programming problems is to catch them when they happen, when there are clues to help in the search. The monthly trial balance is off—why? What changed last month? A weird data situation? A new program? Modifications to an old program? But in this case, the accounts had drifted out of balance over a six-month period, nearly two years earlier. The imbalance had remained constant since then. Either the problem had been fixed, or it was still there and might or might not happen again.
Naturally, the previous programmer hadn't bothered to keep a log or make comments in the programs. Typical. Oliver was used to cleaning up after other programmers. In fact, their mistakes were the source of half his work. Still, it annoyed him that they didn't take time to do the job right; comments made life easier for everyone.
On Friday, he told Dan that he didn't think he could find the problem.
"Not unless it starts happening again."
"It's not worth spending any more time on it," Dan said.