Amen Corner (37 page)

Harwell stood in the background, occasionally glancing at the folded printout of the Doggett booking photo, then back at the monitors. There was another copy of the photo on the console between Caroline and Petrakis, but she never looked at it. Throughout the banter with Petrakis, Caroline remained intently focused on spotting the man who'd tried to kill her. Sam decided not to break her concentration. He stood next to Harwell and watched the exiting fans until Petrakis began talking into his microphone.

“Too dark to see, boys,” he said. “Shut 'em down. I want everyone back in their places for rehearsal tomorrow at 9 a.m…aw, quit griping. We didn't find the guy today, so we start looking first thing tomorrow…Yeah, it's overtime. Bukich already cleared it with your shop steward. Now get some rest. And keep this quiet. Anyone shoots off their mouth about what we're up to, he's fired. And I don't have to clear that with the union.”

Petrakis took off his headset, stood up and stretched. He flipped a couple of switches on the console, then pulled on a sweater vest that hung on the back of his swivel chair.

“Weirdest fuckin' day I've ever spent at Augusta,” he said, to no one in particular. “See ya tomorrow, toots.”

He gave Caroline a quick squeeze on the shoulder and walked out of the trailer into the cooling night air, as a couple of network technicians moved in to shut things down.

Sam watched the God of War swagger out, then turned to Caroline, who was slumped back in her chair.

“What did you do to him?” he asked.

“He's not so bad, once you get to know him,” Caroline said. “Did you know he won his first Emmy in 1967 for directing a kiddie show?”

“I bet those kids are still in therapy.”

As they walked down the metal stairs from the CBS trailer, Harwell asked Sam and Caroline if they wanted a ride back to the clubhouse. Sam preferred to walk off some nervous energy. The gravel road through the trees to the par 3 course was no more than a few hundred feet long, and from there they'd be at the edge of Ike's Pond, within sight of the cabins on the hillside east of the clubhouse. He couldn't shake the thought that Doggett had come out of the same shadows that now surrounded them to drown Deborah Scanlon.

“Thanks, but we'll pass on the ride,” Sam said. “I'm carrying my Glock tonight.”

“I don't think that's such a good idea,” Harwell said.

“Look, I'm still technically a cop, and I'm still licensed to carry,” Sam said.

“Well…don't get trigger-happy,” Harwell finally said. “You see something, call us.”

Harwell got in his car and drove up the dirt road that led to the broadcast media gate on Washington Road.

Sam felt better walking through the woods with the bulge of the gun under his left arm. Even with the moon reflecting off Ike's Pond, and the sounds of music and laughter floating through the balmy night air from the cabins above the par 3 course, Sam saw how completely a man could disappear into the trees that surrounded the National. It was so dark now that he couldn't see five feet into the woods.

Caroline walked next to him with both of her arms wrapped around his bicep. She didn't seem to mind that she could feel the shoulder holster under his jacket.

“Is it going to be a problem bringing me up to the Crow's Nest?” Caroline asked as they walked up the service road that led behind the cabins to the clubhouse.

“No,” Sam said. “Wheeling and Compton both missed the cut and went home. I've got the place to myself.”

“What's David Porter going to think?” Caroline said.

“I didn't ask.”

*

They ate dinner on the porch again, watching the half-moon rise peacefully above the course and talking about anything they could think of besides Lee Doggett. The New York strips were grilled and seasoned just the way Sam liked them; the Silver Oak cabernet was the perfect complement. At odd moments Sam still felt at ease at the National. But he couldn't forget that there was something out there in that ocean, under those waves. The police and security guards who were stationed at the clubhouse tried not to make themselves too conspicuous—no doubt at the request of David Porter, who was still trying to complete this Masters in as normal an atmosphere as possible. But every few minutes another man in a black windbreaker, black pants, white shirt, and a black ballcap would walk across the grass below them, past the tables with their drawn-in umbrellas, his gaze sweeping left and right. Sam didn't find their increased presence comforting; with each pass of a security guard, he thought of a new way Doggett might get around them.

They finished the wine, and Caroline yawned.

“I'm sorry,” she said, covering her mouth. “It's been a long day—and I didn't sleep real well last night. Mind if I go to bed?”

“I'll walk you up,” Sam said.

As they stood up from the table, Caroline took his hand and looked him in the eye.

“I'm starting to feel safe again,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Least I can do for getting you into this,” Sam said.

They walked into the library together and turned down the narrow hallway that led to the champions' locker room. Halfway down the hall, they turned and went up the staircase to the Crow's Nest.

Sam had brought her bags up that morning and set them on one of the beds. He took off his clothes and hung the shoulder holster on the desk chair in his cubicle. He put on a pair of shorts, brushed his teeth, and got into his bed, turning out his light and listening as Caroline unzipped her bags in the adjoining cubicle. She eventually clicked off the light in the common area, and the moonlight streaming through the cupola made a slanted windowpane pattern on the wall at the foot of Sam's bed.

“I think you're going to like my pajamas,” he heard her say.

The shadow of a figure standing in his doorway was now superimposed over the windowpane pattern on the wall. Sam propped himself on his elbow and looked at Caroline, leaning up against the doorframe, backlit by the moon. Her dark hair hung to her shoulders, spreading out across the white of the caddie jumpsuit she was wearing. The zipper on the front of the jumpsuit was pulled halfway down to her waist.

“Now you get to find out what I have on under here,” she said, walking slowly over to his bed.

She sat on the edge of his bed, leaned over, and kissed him. He reached up and put his hands on her shoulders, then caressed her hair as it hung down near his face. He kissed her, and with his left hand he found the zipper and pulled it slowly downward. He put his hand inside the jumpsuit. All he felt was her smooth, soft skin. He kissed her again, then put both hands on the zippered edges of the open jumpsuit. He drew the two sides gently apart, and in the moonlight he saw her breasts spill out of the caddie suit.

“You're going to get an incredible tip this week,” he said as he pulled her down to him.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Sunday, April 13

The songbirds were chirping with purpose and the eastern sky was beginning to show signs of pink between the trunks of the pine trees as Doggett awoke. The air was crisp; Doggett could see his breath as he rolled onto his back to look up at the sky, but the lack of cloud cover promised a quickly warming morning.

He had used leaves and branches to cover himself on his bed of pine needles. The exposed surfaces of his pants and windbreaker were covered with a light film of dew. He had slept with no fear of being discovered; when darkness had fallen, he'd walked deep into the center of the 55-acre nature preserve, far from the service roads that bisected the forest of pines, hardwoods, and bushes at the eastern edge of the club's property. Now that the first light of dawn was beginning to penetrate the canopy above him, he would be able to find the spot where he'd buried his supplies.

Somehow he'd always known it would come to this. Two murders on the golf club grounds—and several more easily tied to the same killer—might have stopped any other tournament, but the stubborn old men of Augusta National simply wouldn't yield to reality. Doggett knew these men too well. He'd taken orders from them. He'd been discarded and imprisoned by them. He'd lost everything to them—and meanwhile they continued with their single-minded obsession to let nothing get in the way of their annual orgy of self-congratulation. That's why he'd prepared for this day even before he'd been released from prison.

It had begun with his conversations with Bernard Pettibone, and solidified with his trial run at the football field in Statesboro.

After he killed Ashby and dumped his body in the pond at Amen Corner, Doggett had gone back to the open-sided maintenance shed east of the 11th hole and hoisted two sacks of high-nitrogen-content fertilizer over his shoulder. He carried them deep into the woods and buried them under a trio of pine trees that stood taller than any of the other trees around them. He expected the entire course, its fences, and all its facilities to be in lockdown after the body was found floating in the pond, but that wouldn't matter. He could find his way back to those trees again, if and when he needed to.

Along with the fertilizer, he'd buried the farmer's revolver. He knew he'd be back, and he'd never be able to get a gun through the metal detectors at the spectator entrances.

Now he had to find that hole.

Doggett stood up, brushed the debris off his pants and windbreaker, and looked up at the tops of the nearby pines. He didn't see the trees he was looking for, which meant he had to go still farther east. The sun would be spreading beams of light through the woods in a matter of minutes, and he could already hear the sound of motorized vehicles moving around the grounds. The golf bag he carried made it slow going through the underbrush, but it was the density of the forest that made his hiding place so effective. The only living things back here were the squirrels, chipmunks, foxes, birds, and insects.

He came to the top of a steep hillside and again peered toward the east. The maintenance shed was probably a quarter-mile to the north; he'd crossed the service road that led from the 11th fairway to the shed the night before as he went deeper into the trees. The three pines ought to be visible if he went a little farther south, toward Amen Corner. After another five minutes of struggling through the underbrush, he looked up and saw the tops of the three pine trees towering ahead of him, just as he remembered them. His buried treasure was no more than 200 feet away.

He found the raised mound he'd left in the earth at the base of the center tree, undisturbed over the past week. He laid the golf bag down and found a flat rock, which he used as a trowel to scrape away the dirt. When he got down to the fertilizer sacks, he lifted each one carefully out of the hole, brushed the dirt off, and set it aside. Then he took the handgun from the hole and tucked it inside his pants.

He would have to wait until spectators lined the gallery ropes along the 10th and 11th holes. That would be at least another three or four hours. But he might as well get ready now.

He leaned the golf bag upright against the center pine tree, cut open the first sack of fertilizer, and began pouring the contents into the golf bag.

*

Sam awoke to the sound of footsteps coming up the creaky stairway to the Crow's Nest. He glanced at the clock next to his bed: 8:45 a.m. He hadn't meant to sleep that late. His knees were stiff from walking the grounds all day Saturday, looking for Doggett. Then he glanced at Caroline, whose naked body was pressed up against his back, her right arm outside the blanket and draped across his waist. Her caddie jumpsuit was on the floor, with the skarda name patch facing the ceiling.

He looked back toward the stairs and saw Mark Boyce enter the common room.

“Well, this might be a first,” Boyce said, looking through the open entryway into Sam's cubicle. “I can see it in the Masters record book: First participant to sleep with his caddie in the Crow's Nest.”

“I'm sure somebody like Dow Finsterwald has already done it,” Sam said sleepily. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you I always wanted to see the Crow's Nest, and you said come up any time.”

“That's right, I did,” Sam said, lying back on his pillow and covering his face with his arm. Caroline opened her eyes, saw Boyce in the outer room, and gave him a wave.

“There's news,” Boyce said, suddenly turning serious. “We've been interviewing the prisoners who knew Doggett in Reidsville. There's a guy named Pettibone who's in for blowing up a judge. He said Doggett made him explain how to make a fertilizer bomb.”

“The same kind as Oklahoma City?”

“Basically. Doggett isn't going to get a van full of explosives in here. But even 25 pounds of that stuff could kill dozens of people in a tightly packed crowd.”

“And he doesn't have to bring it in,” Sam said, now grasping the scope of the problem. “It's already here.”

“They've got tons of it,” Boyce said. “There's something else. A Richmond County deputy reported an abandoned handicap scooter outside the men's bathroom by the 18th tee. He doesn't remember who rode it there, but it was sometime yesterday afternoon. Whoever was on it went into the bathroom and never came back for it.”