Amen Corner (19 page)

He reached under the passenger seat for his nylon gym bag, unzipped it, and pulled out the hunting knife and the work gloves.

When he stepped onto the driveway and quietly closed the driver-side door, he noticed the full moon in the clearing sky. The night was warm and muggy for April, but it appeared a high-pressure front was coming in. The weather would be spectacular for tomorrow's opening round, assuming they played it.

The driveway, lined with azalea bushes and mature beech trees, curved to the left and opened to a large parking area in front of a four-car tuck-under garage. The house itself was a cedar-and-stone ranch-style structure with a large lawn and field on the other side of the house—probably where the practice green was. There was a floodlight on the parking area in front of the garage and a porch light next to the front door; Doggett kept to the grass and walked around to the back where it was dark.

He crept slowly up to the double doors that led from the living room out to the deck. The lower level of the house was brightly lit; through the glass doors he could see a man with a bald head relaxing in a plush leather couch, facing a big-screen television mounted in the exposed stone chimney above the fireplace. He was watching a report from the rain-soaked Masters on The Golf Channel.

That wasn't Milligan. Milligan had long gray hair. Doggett felt himself getting angry. Not this again—do I have the wrong fucking house?

He looked closer at the bald man. The face was right. Then he noticed a long gray wig hanging from a hook near the front door. It was Milligan, after all. The long hair was a rug. Fucking phony.

How to do this quickly and efficiently? He could try to lure him out onto the deck, but if Milligan heard a suspicious sound, he might come out with a gun. Then it occurred to him—Why not just ring the doorbell? Milligan would come to the door. That's all he needed.

Doggett walked around to the front of the house, holding the knife behind his back with his right hand, and went up to the front porch. One last run-through: This was the right house, Milligan appeared to be alone inside, and there were no other houses nearby. He rang the bell.

After 30 seconds, the door swung open. Danny Milligan appeared in the entryway—wearing his gray shag hairpiece.

“I don't know how you found this place, but we've got all the Girl Scout cookies we need,” Milligan said. “Unless there's something…”

“There is,” Doggett said, bringing the knife from behind his back and pushing Milligan backward into the house. Milligan stumbled against a foyer table, but didn't take his eye off the knife, which Doggett held up near his nose while clutching the collar of Milligan's shirt with his other hand. He kicked the door closed behind himself.

“Hey, let's talk about this, bucko,” Milligan said. He was breathing heavily, and his eyes danced with fear. Doggett liked that. He enjoyed watching the funny man squirm. Not so funny now, was he?

“Was it something I said?” Milligan asked. “Whatever it was, it was a joke. I don't mean any of it. They pay me to say that stuff. They write it for me. What is it? Tell me—come on!”

Milligan was backing into his living room as Doggett pushed forward. This was good. They were in the middle of a very large house. They'd never be seen or heard.

“Don't worry,” Doggett said. “It's nothing personal.”

He pulled the knife across Milligan's throat, creating an ear-to-ear smile that the clown clutched at with his hands in horror. The blood spurted outward as Milligan collapsed backward, bounced off the plush leather couch he'd been sitting on, hit the large-screen TV, and fell to the floor. As the announcers on The Golf Channel discussed Ernie Els' chances of winning a green jacket, Danny Milligan's blood dripped slowly down the 72-inch screen. The toupee had been dislodged and lay in the spreading pool of red on the hardwood floor of Milligan's great room.

Doggett put the knife under his belt while he looked around the room. He went to the double doors that led to the back deck, pushed them open, and went back into the living room. He lifted Milligan's ankles and dragged his body across the living room floor, leaving a red smear on the floorboards. Milligan's left arm snagged a cotton throw rug as he was pulled toward the door; Doggett kicked it aside and dragged the body out onto the deck. Milligan's head sounded like a bag of apples as it bounced down the steps to the back lawn.

Dew was beginning to form on the grass, making it easy to slide Milligan's body across the lawn to the middle of his own practice green. Doggett dropped Milligan's ankles and pulled out the spray bottle of herbicide. He actually took time to admire the quality of the natural putting surface Milligan had been able to maintain in his back yard. He must have used a professional-grade walk-behind to cut the grass down to 1/8 of an inch. Almost up to Augusta National standards.

Then Doggett defaced the perfect canvas by spraying this is the last masters on the closely cut Bermuda grass.

Doggett walked back into the house and shut the doors behind him. He went into the kitchen, which could be seen through an open archway from the great room. He opened several cupboards until he found ingredients that would do the job: a can of corn niblets and a bottle of vegetable oil. Keeping his work gloves on, he opened and drained the niblets and filled the rest of the can with the oil. He found a potato masher in a drawer by the cooktop and crushed the contents of the can until it was a slimy batter.

He returned to the back yard and poured the oily corn mixture over and around Milligan's body, putting an extra glob on his face. That should do it. If the blood doesn't attract the fire ants, this stuff definitely will.

As he drove back to Augusta, Doggett thought about tossing the knife into the Savannah River. Then he dismissed the idea. He would need the knife at least once more.

Chapter Nineteen

Thursday, April 10

Sam was awake when the first rays of dawn streamed into the Crow's Nest. It was not yet six. Wheeling was already up and getting dressed, even though he had an afternoon tee-time. Sam got up, too.

He'd dozed fitfully all night, dreaming that his group had been called to the tee while he was still in the clubhouse looking for something he couldn't name or describe. He'd wake up, realize it was a dream, that he hadn't been disqualified, then fall back to sleep and begin the same dream again.

He was glad that Bobby Jones had started the tradition of pairing the amateurs with past Masters champions. Compton was playing in the morning with Tiger Woods; Wheeling was going out in the afternoon with Vijay Singh. Sam hadn't met Frank Naples yet, but he was a fan favorite and reputed to be one of the friendliest and most easy-going players on tour. He'd make a good buffer between Sam and Rockingham.

Sam didn't usually watch morning TV—he preferred hearing actual conversations on radio, as opposed to two beautiful people exchanging sugary platitudes—but while Wheeling was in the bathroom, he turned the TV on to CNN, with the volume low so as to not wake Compton. The perky anchor was reading a story about an oil spill off the California coast. The news crawl eventually said police had no leads in “The Masters Murders.”

Caroline was in the clubhouse dining room when Sam arrived, with coffee and several newspapers on her table. He wasn't sure she wanted his company, but when she saw him, she waved him over.

“Sleep well?” she asked, as he pulled up a chair and sat down.

“No. How about you?”

“The air conditioner unit in my room is really loud,” Caroline said. “I finally had to get up and turn it off. After that, I got a good 15 or 20 minutes.”

While eating a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, Sam read Russ Daly's column:

In 96 hours we'll know if Tiger Woods can add yet another jacket to a closet that already contains more green blazers than an Irish tenor's.

Or will this be the year when a lovable old vet like Frank Naples turns back the clock and thrills the customers—sorry, the patrons—with one more major victory, as Jack Nicklaus did in 1986?

We will also know by then whether a young gun like Bobby Cremmins or even Brady Compton can emerge from the Legion of Perfectly Constructed Swings to contend against golf's most elite field—and whether Augusta National remains a bomber's course, with the jacket likely to go once again to a long driver like Tiger Woods or even Shane Rockingham.

And you know what? The suspense isn't killing me.

All I care about, at this point, is making it back to the airport alive on Monday morning.

That's right; I'm worried that I'm going to be the next bloated corpse found bobbing in one of Augusta National's water hazards. And I'm already bloated.

You see, a few years ago (I don't remember exactly what year; the tournaments tend to run together when nobody's getting killed) I wrote that the Masters would be a more interesting event if they invited me to play in it. I couldn't break 120 on this course if you let me start on the back nine and didn't count my putts, but at least that would give the spectators a true indication of how difficult this golf course is for normal people using normal equipment.

Instead, each year we witness ever-stronger, ever-skinnier pros demolishing Bobby Jones' proud creation with golf clubs made out of materials found only in outer space, and new golf balls cooked up in a mad chemist's lab. The combination makes this 7,500-yard course play—for the pros—like an Oxnard pitch-and-putt.

You don't get to witness the genius of this golf course unless you hang around on Monday after the Masters and see it played by a handful of journalists, selected each year by lottery to humiliate themselves with their golf clubs instead of their keyboards.

We know the Lords of Augusta National aren't happy about how easy the pros are making their course look. That's why they've plowed most of the Masters profits—ungodly as those profits are—back into the golf course year after year, trying to make the course longer and tougher. They can't do longer anymore. They're out of room, unless they invade the Augusta Country Club next door and annex three or four of their holes.

Tougher is still achievable, but only at the risk of ruining the course. They've added rough, and the scores are still ridiculously low. Do we need to turn it into the Springtime U.S. Open, and see caddies get lost in the fescue? They've speeded up the greens, but they were already faster than Jose Canseco driving through a residential neighborhood, and the scores are still going down. Do we need to see the Augusta greens mowed down to the worms?

The course is perfectly adequate if the tournament could just find a way to restrict the golf ball's distance. For several years now, David Porter and the boys have been hinting at going to a Masters ball—a ball that flies about 20% shorter than the ballistic balls the equipment companies are producing now. In my view, that's the only way to save this old beauty of a course from extinction.

I, for one, don't enjoy watching the artillery shots from the likes of Shane Rockingham destroying the strategic genius of this once-great golf course. It's not as much fun to watch, and some day the rubes in the gallery are going to catch on.

And this is exactly why I'm worried about my own safety. People who criticize Augusta National policy have been turning up dead around here. I was critical about them letting the golf ball get out of control, and now I'm accusing them of ruining their own tournament.

And, for the record, I think they ought to knuckle under to the WOOFs and let women in as members.

There. I said it. Now, would someone mind starting my car for me tonight?

Daly may have come off like another freebie-scarfing smartass, but he had guts. Sam had to give him that much.

He finished his breakfast and asked Caroline if she was planning to follow their group.

“All 18 holes,” she said. “I even left my sandals back at the hotel.”

She extended her right foot and showed Sam that she had on a pair of Nike running shoes. Sam's gaze drifted up her leg to her tanned thigh.

“You'd better keep your mind on your game,” she said.

“Then you'd better watch from behind a tree,” he said, standing up and putting his napkin on the table.

When Sam got to the bag room. Dwight was standing in the breezeway with Sam's clubs, a mournful expression on his face.

“I can't go, Sam,” he said.

“Your leg?”

“I could barely get out of bed today. As soon as I picked up your bag this morning, I felt the hamstring start to knot up. I wouldn't make it up the first fairway. In a day or two, maybe…”

Sam had no idea what to do. He wasn't even sure if he would be allowed to carry his own clubs. Maybe there were still some Augusta National caddies looking for a loop.

“Not today,” the caddiemaster told him. “I could have found you another caddie earlier this week, but if those guys don't have a bag by the time the tournament starts, they don't show up. If you know somebody here who has caddie experience, we can find a jumpsuit for him.”

Caroline.

She was the only person Sam could think of. But would she be willing to carry his bag in the same group with Rockingham? Only one way to find out.