Amen Corner (31 page)

“For what?” Caroline said.

“For getting us in bed together,” Sam said.

“Look, I didn't want to talk about this before, but maybe I should,” Caroline said, holding her wine in her lap. “I don't know about us.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I see some things in you that I saw in Shane—good and bad. I think you need control, and I don't want to be controlled.”

Sam was silent. He didn't know how to argue with her, or whether he should. She'd just been scared half to death, and she'd invited him into her bed, so she obviously didn't mind the safe feeling of having a cop around. Maybe not all the time, though.

“Did you ever read The Spy Who Loved Me?” Sam finally said. “The James Bond novel by Ian Fleming.”

“No. I saw the movie, I think.”

“Completely different story,” Sam said. “In the book, this woman is being terrorized at a country motel by some really evil creeps, and James Bond happens along. Kills the creeps, sleeps with the woman, then one of the creeps turns out not to be dead, and Bond finishes him off. Then they have sex again.”

“So you're James Bond, and we should have sex?”

“No,” Sam said. “I'm just saying she was glad to have a guy like him around.”

“I'm glad to have you around, too,” Caroline said. “How did the book end?”

“She woke up the next morning and he was gone.”

Sam turned to study her face, and saw that her green-blue eyes were watery. She'd been through a lot this week. Her nearly getting killed was his fault. If he hadn't asked her to caddie for him, Doggett would never have come after her.

She drained her wine and dropped the plastic cup on the floor. Then she put her arm over Sam's chest and buried her face into him. He finished his wine, turned off the light, and put both his arms around her, wishing that were all it would take to keep her safe.

Chapter Thirty-one

Ralph Stanwick hung up the phone after Sam's call and turned to his friend Robert Brisbane.

“Can you believe that?” Stanwick said. “That goddamn Skarda thinks I've had something to do with these killings.”

Brisbane and Lorraine Stanwick were seated in the small living room in the Firestone Cabin. With its simple country-getaway furniture and bridge table, the room looked the way it had when the aging, infirm Bobby Jones used to visit friends there from his own cabin next door, sipping bourbon, smoking cigarettes, and playing bridge, until his final years when he couldn't hold his cards in his hand anymore.

The phone rang again, and as he had all week, Stanwick seemed to tense at the sound of the ringtone. He quickly got up and answered it.

“Yes?”

There was silence for a moment, then Stanwick said, “Repeat that.”

More silence, as Stanwick wrote something down in his pocket organizer. Then he hung up the phone without saying another word.

“Wrong number,” he said, returning to his chair.

Brisbane exchanged glances with Lorraine, then went to the kitchen and poured himself a bourbon and water.

“While you're in there, Robert, pour one for me,” Stanwick called to him. “On the rocks.”

When he returned, Stanwick was tapping his foot in the living room, glancing at his watch. He took the drink from Brisbane and swallowed half of it in one gulp.

“Ralph, is everything all right?” Lorraine finally asked her husband.

“How the hell could everything be all right?” he replied. “That killer is still out there. This tournament is becoming a disaster.”

Stanwick finished his bourbon in two more swallows, then turned to his friend.

“You'd better finish that drink and go, Bob,” Stanwick said. “I'm turning in early tonight.”

Brisbane glanced again at Lorraine. The look in her eyes said, “Don't leave,” but Brisbane knew that Ralph would insist.

“I defended you, Ralph,” Brisbane said, taking a large swallow of his bourbon. “You know that, don't you?”

“Of course,” Stanwick said. “Why wouldn't you?”

“It's just that…well, I'm glad you were here tonight.”

After Brisbane departed, Stanwick turned to his wife and said, “I have to go out for a while. Don't wait up.”

“You said you'd stay in tonight,” Lorraine Stanwick said, a look of tired reproach in her eyes. She didn't expect to win this one, but she still felt compelled to make the effort.

“Things have come up,” Stanwick said. He took off his green jacket, hung it in the closet, and put on a light zip-up jacket. He picked up his car keys from the kitchen counter and turned to look at his wife.

“It's not what you think,” he said.

“Do you care what I think?” she replied.

“No. Not really.”

She stared at him as he walked to the cabin's rear entrance. He paused before leaving, looking around, and then picked up the pitching wedge he kept by the door for chipping practice. She listened as he started the Mercedes and drove up the service road to Magnolia Lane. Then the phone rang again.

*

Lee Doggett knew he'd been made.

He should have covered his face, but he didn't expect to have trouble killing the caddie in her motel room. She'd been too quick for him to finish the job quickly—and then Skarda came back. That had ruined everything. Now the girl had seen him, and would describe him to the police. He assumed Skarda had seen the truck as he pulled out of the lot. Worst of all, he'd dropped the knife—and this time he hadn't worn the work gloves. His prints would be all over the handle. The cops would have him ID'd by morning.

He could still end the tournament—at this point, the cops couldn't do anything about that. But his chance to kill Stanwick was slipping away. There was only one way left: draw him out.

As soon as Doggett got back to his motel room, he picked up the phone and called the Firestone Cabin.

“Stanwick? It's your long-lost son,” he'd said. “I'm giving you a chance to end this. Meet me in an hour at the Curtis Motel in Grovetown. Room 14…Curtis Motel, Grovetown, Room 14. Got that? I swear to God, if you don't come, there's going to be a shit storm at the National like you can't imagine. Come alone.”

Doggett knew he didn't need to add that last part. If Stanwick hadn't found the courage to call the cops yet, he wasn't going to do it now.

*

Forty-five minutes later, Stanwick drove slowly past Doggett's motel—a single-story, 20-unit building wedged between Wrightsboro Road and the railroad tracks. He parked the Mercedes a half-block down the street. It was almost midnight; no one was on the street or the sidewalk, and the only illumination came from a streetlight on the corner and a half-burned out fluorescent sign above the office of the motel.

The police would find Doggett soon—Caroline Rockingham had gotten a look at him during the attack at her motel. If taken alive, Doggett would talk. This time, Stanwick knew he couldn't keep Lorraine and his fellow club members from finding out he was Doggett's father, or keep Boyce or Skarda from finding out about the planted cocaine. He'd be disgraced, he'd be forced to resign from the National, and he might go to jail. That couldn't happen.

He'd thought about buying a gun after Ashby was killed, but he didn't know anything about guns, except that he'd have to fill out paperwork, and that bullets could be matched back to the guns that fired them. Not so with a golf club. Stanwick's best weapon was a strong forehand, developed through 50 years of playing highly competitive tennis. Swung with power, the heavy iron head of a pitching wedge would do plenty of damage, if he could just get in the first blow…

Doggett wouldn't expect Stanwick to arrive early, to knock on his motel room door, and beat his skull in with the wedge as soon as he got inside the room. He could slip out again, get into his car and drive off. It might be days before someone found Doggett, and when they did, they'd have no way to link Stanwick to a pitching wedge that would be at the bottom of Ike's Pond. In the meantime, the police wouldn't know whether the Masters Murderer was still on the loose and waiting to strike again, but the tournament would go on.

That was the main thing—the Masters had to survive. Stanwick had done some shameful things in his life, but allowing the heart and soul of Augusta National to be destroyed by his own demented offspring was not going to be one of them. He wouldn't have that on his conscience.

He looked once more in his rearview mirror to make sure no one was around. He didn't see anyone on the street. He didn't see Lee Doggett, who had been hiding behind a dumpster at the far end of the motel, waiting for the Mercedes to arrive. He didn't see Doggett slip behind a boulevard tree, then duck behind a parked car, then quickly come up behind the Mercedes and crouch next to the bumper.

Stanwick got out of the car, holding the wedge in his right hand. He closed the door quietly and walked to the dimly lit sidewalk, glancing quickly to his left and right. That's when Doggett stood up from behind the car and grabbed Stanwick by the shoulder, spinning him around. He punched Stanwick in the face, a blow that knocked the older man to the sidewalk. Doggett swiftly patted him down, then saw the golf club lying on boulevard grass and picked it up.

“What…what are you doing?” Stanwick gasped as he staggered to his feet.

“What I was going to do as soon as I got out of prison,” Doggett said.

Doggett took a quick step forward and swung the club, slamming the face of the wedge into the side of Stanwick's head. The older man's knees sagged, and he held himself up by grabbing onto the back of his car.

“You must have thought I was stupid,” Doggett said, with a look of hatred Stanwick was able to read even in the near-dark. “But who's the stupid one? You thought you were going to come here and kill me—with this?”

“No,” Stanwick gasped. “I want…to help you…They fucked you over…”

“You did!” Doggett barked through clenched teeth, trying to keep his voice low enough to avoid being heard. “You sent me to prison! You killed my mama. It was you!”

“No…”

“Shut up! I'm not stupid! I knew you'd try to kill me. I thought you'd have a gun.”

Doggett swung the club again and hit Stanwick in the side of the knee. Stanwick started to howl in pain, and Doggett clamped his hand over his father's mouth.

“You know, I might not have been the smartest guy in prison,” Doggett said, hissing into the writhing man's ear. “But I spent a lot of time in the prison library. I read everything—books, newspapers, magazines. Even golf magazines, if you can believe it.”

Stanwick's head was aching, and he was confused. What the hell was this maniac babbling about?

“I read a story once about a guy who got really pissed off about a bad shot, and smashed his club against his golf cart,” Doggett continued. “Can you guess what happened to him?”

Stanwick was too frightened and aching to say anything. Would Doggett really dare club him to death in the middle of the street? He would scream, and someone would surely look out their window or come out of their house to see what all the noise was about.

“No guesses? Then I'll tell you—the shaft broke, and half of it bounced right back at him. It pierced the guy's jugular vein. He bled to death right there on the golf course before anybody could do a thing to save him.”

Stanwick's eyes grew wide as he began to realize what was on Doggett's mind.

Doggett raised the wedge over his head and slammed it down onto the curb, snapping off the clubhead just above the hosel and sending it clattering out into the street. Stanwick flinched, and his eyes followed the spinning clubhead until it stopped. Doggett held up the shaft, which now came to a jagged steel point.

“This is for Mama.”

He rammed the shaft into Stanwick's neck, knocking the older man backward onto the boulevard grass next to his car. Stanwick's mouth opened in an attempt to scream, but the shaft had pierced his larynx and his throat filled with blood from the severed artery. Stanwick gurgled and clutched at his throat, but no words escaped his mouth. His movements gradually ceased as he bled to death on the ground.

For the second time in a week, Doggett took a moment to savor the triumph of having finally avenged his mother. This time, he knew he'd killed the right man—but to be sure, he took Stanwick's wallet out of his pocket and checked the driver's license and credit cards. He took all of Stanwick's cash, about $400, and his wristwatch. After all, Doggett told himself, a father always wants to pass something of sentimental value on to his son.

Doggett went around to the driver's seat of the Mercedes and popped the trunk release. He lifted Stanwick's body into the trunk and threw the club shaft in with him.

“Thanks for everything, Dad,” Doggett said, almost laughing at the uncomprehending look on Stanwick's face as he closed the trunk lid.

The pool of blood was already seeping into the grass next to the car.