Amen Corner (38 page)

“Doggett?”

“Yeah. The scooter came from a rental place out on Berckmans Road. We talked to the woman who runs the place. She remembered the guy who rented it. Said he looked sick, like he had cancer. Totally bald head—but kind of tall. She called the club at about 7 last night when the guy didn't bring the scooter back.”

“Did he leave an I.D.? Some kind of deposit?” Sam asked.

“No. The lady said he didn't have his license with him. She felt sorry for him and let him have the scooter anyway. We showed her Doggett's picture, and she said she thought it could be the same guy.”

“So Doggett might have been here overnight?”

“Yeah. We were going to bring a couple of K-9 units in this morning to start sniffing for him, but Porter said no. He's still worried about a panic.”

“He'd rather let a killer run loose?” Caroline said, raising her head to look over Sam's shoulder.

“I called the Atlanta office,” Boyce said, averting his eyes. “They told me to let Porter call the shots, unless I've got a definite sighting.”

“I guess Porter has a little pull with the state,” Sam said.

“You think? Hell, the governor plays here more than most of the members.”

“Maybe Porter's got a point,” Sam said. “The gates are already open. You get a bunch of cops and dogs running around here with 40,000 people on the grounds, and you're going to have chaos. It could make it that much easier for Doggett.”

Boyce said the cops and security guards were being given a new description of Doggett: a gaunt man with a shaved head, about 6-foot-3, wearing a bucket hat and sunglasses, dark blue windbreaker, black pants. They were also being told that Doggett might be looking to plant a bomb somewhere. Anyone even remotely matching that description carrying something heavier than an umbrella should be stopped and searched.

“Meeting's in Porter's office in a few minutes,” Boyce said as he turned toward the stairway. “Caroline, I think Tony Petrakis has coffee and croissants waiting for you over at the CBS trailer.”

Sam and Caroline got out of bed and dressed quickly. Sam put the shoulder holster on under his jacket. At some point in the afternoon it would be too warm for the jacket; hopefully they'd have caught Doggett by then.

Caroline dressed in shorts and a pullover jersey. Sam watched her brush her thick black hair in the bathroom that he'd shared with Wheeling and Compton. He much preferred the current company.

They went down the Crow's Nest stairs together and saw Clive Cartwright on his way into the Champions' locker room. He glanced at them and raised his eyebrows.

“The club is getting rather broadminded these days,” Cartwright said.

On their way down the main stairway to the lobby, they passed one of the club's oldest members, Henry Lockwood, arduously lifting his legs one step after the other up to the second floor. Sam expected a disdainful glare from the real-estate billionaire, but Lockwood merely glanced downward at Caroline's legs, then back up at Sam, and gave him an approving nod.

In the parking lot outside the main entrance, Sam kissed Caroline. He wasn't sure what kind of reception he'd receive, but she kissed him back with feeling.

“Come by the trailer when you can,” Caroline said.

“I'll have my earpiece in all day,” Sam said. “If you spot him, I'll know right away. Besides, Harwell can protect you from Tony.”

“It's not that,” she said seriously. “I just want to know you're all right.”

They kissed again and then went in separate directions, Sam toward the administration building and Caroline toward thepar 3 course and the television compound beyond.

The gun under Sam's arm reminded him that last night was already a long time ago.

*

“David, if a man were going to hide overnight on your grounds, where would he do it?” Sam asked.

Leonard Garver and Dennis Harwell sat on one side of David Porter's office with a sober-faced man wearing a neatly trimmed moustache who had identified himself as Curtis T. Dunn, head of the regional office of Securitas. On the other side of the room, Sam sat with Boyce and Robert Brisbane. They'd gone over the information about the bomb-making instructions, the scooter and the new description of Doggett.

Porter swiveled in his chair to face Sam.

“There are wooded areas along Berckmans Road south of the maintenance building, and south of the 16th and 13th holes,” he said, as though going over a topographical map in his head. “Then there are the woods around the par 3 course and back by the TV production area. There's 55 acres of forest beside the 10th and 11th holes.”

“What's back there?”

“Lots and lots of trees,” Porter said.

“Anything else?”

Porter told him about the auxiliary maintenance facility in the woods between the TV compound and the 11th fairway, where the club stored some vehicles, tools and supplies.

“Did anyone look around that area after Ashby and Scanlon were murdered?” Sam asked.

Harwell said the cops had done a walk-through in the woods from the 12th green up to the 10th tee after Ashby's body was found and hadn't seen anything. There were cops at the shed and greenhouse now, making sure the fertilizer didn't go anywhere.

“There's a lot of cover around here,” Boyce said. “Doggett could have stayed on the grounds last night, and we'd never know.”

“Our people are trained to keep patrons out of the woods,” Dunn said.

“Unless you've got agents every 10 feet, somebody could slip in there without being seen,” Sam said. “He could detonate a bomb within 50 feet of the gallery and no one would see him.”

“Should we send some people into the woods to look for him?” Dunn said.

“Your guys aren't trained for that,” Boyce said. “We need all the cops and guards we have watching the spectator areas.”

*

The first sack of fertilizer filled three-quarters of the golf bag. Doggett cut open the second sack and poured in more fertilizer until there was about five inches of space left unfilled.

He opened the nylon chair sack he'd stolen from the women by the 18th green. Your container, he said to himself, remembering Pettibone's tutorial. He poured the remaining fertilizer into the sack. Your fuel. Then he took the Masters towel he'd bought at the gift shop and tore it into two pieces, placing the bigger piece on top of the fertilizer in the golf bag, and the smaller piece inside the chair bag. He broke open the plastic shells of the cigarette lighters and poured the fluid onto the pieces of towel in the bags. Your accelerant.

He estimated that he was about a third of a mile from the point where he'd entered the woods the afternoon before. Given the rough, overgrown terrain—and the possibility of cops looking for him—it would take him about an hour to carefully return to the golf course. He started walking in the direction of the 11th fairway.

*

Sam left Porter's office and walked out to the parking lot behind the clubhouse. The players on the range were banging out their warm-up shots on the other side of the grandstand. Heads protruded above the railing along the entire length of the top row of the practice range grandstand. Full house today, as usual.

Porter was right—a man trying to avoid being seen overnight had almost limitless hiding places to choose from inside the fences of Augusta National. But Sam would have chosen the 55 acres east of the 10th and 11th holes. If you were looking for cover, why not choose the biggest forest on the property?

Sam began walking east, toward the woods.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Sam walked past the short-game practice area, where several players with early tee times were lofting wedges over a white-sand bunker to the chipping green. He saw Dwight Wilson talking to his cousin Chipmunk, who was cleaning Al Barber's clubs with a towel as the former champion hit lob shots. Dwight spotted Sam and gave him the thumbs-up sign, which Sam returned.

He decided to go back into the woods through the television compound, which would give him a chance to stop and see Caroline.

He showed his I.D. badge to the two security guards at the entrance to the TV production parking lot. It was still early; CBS wouldn't be on the air for another four hours. A few technicians were walking around with clipboards, spools of TV cable, and Styrofoam cups of coffee. Harwell was already there; his unmarked squad car was parked where it had been on Saturday, near the cart shed. Inside the CBS trailer, he heard Petrakis' piercing voice putting his announcers and camera operators through their rehearsal. He called out each hole number and listened to the responses through the console speakers as he watched his main monitor.

“Collins, 11 and 12—you're up,” Petrakis said.

“Maybe…Yes, sir!” said the voice of CBS hole announcer Ted Collins, a former PGA Tour player. The call was the one made famous by Verne Lundquist two decades earlier, when Jack Nicklaus birdied the 17th hole en route to winning his final Masters at age 46.

“Good,” Petrakis said. “Timmerman, 13—go.”

“Maybe…Yes, sir!” the voice of teaching pro Buddy Timmerman repeated from the tower that overlooked the 13th hole.

Each announcer repeated the same phrase as Petrakis switched to shots from each of the closing holes. Though the grandstands had not yet filled on the back nine, Caroline studied the camera shots as they appeared on the monitors. Harwell was where he had been Saturday, standing behind Caroline with a cup of coffee in his hand, looking restless.

“How's it going?” Sam asked.

Caroline turned and smiled.

“Nothing yet—but I'm starting to get the hang of this,” she said. “If Tony needs a break, I think I could fill in.”

“In your dreams, sweetheart,” Petrakis said.

Sam told Caroline he was going out into the woods to look around.

“What do you mean, look around?” she said. “You're going try to find Doggett, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

Caroline got up from her chair and took Sam to a corner of the trailer.

“You can't control this one,” she said, staring into his eyes. “You understand that, don't you? There's a thousand cops looking for Doggett. You don't have to be the guy that finds him. You don't have to get killed over this.”

“It's my job.”

“Don't be so goddamn stubborn. You've done your job. You found out who the killer was. Let the cops do the rest.”

“I am a cop,” Sam said.

Caroline had a grip on Sam's arm, but the grip loosened. She realized who she was talking to—not Sam Skarda, the golfer, but Detective Skarda of the Minneapolis Police Department. It was like trying to talk to Shane. When his mind was made up, nothing could change it. No alternative points of view could penetrate. Why waste her breath?

“You can't go in there alone.”

“She's right,” Harwell said. “I'll go with you.”

Sam preferred to have backup, but Harwell wouldn't have been his first choice. Harwell had yet to impress him.

“Somebody's got to get the word out if Caroline spots Doggett,” he said to the Richmond County detective.

“I'll get a deputy over here,” Harwell said. “I was bored out of my mind yesterday. I need to get out of this trailer.”

“You don't appreciate genius when you see it,” Petrakis said.

Harwell got on his radio and requested that a deputy be sent over to the CBS trailer to replace him. He told Caroline to alert the officer immediately if she spotted Doggett on camera; the officer would then radio Boyce and Dunn. Petrakis was to keep a camera on Doggett until the on-course security could converge on him.

“Maybe we'll flush him out of the woods,” Harwell said to Sam. “Like a quail hunt.”

Caroline held Sam's gaze for a moment before he left the trailer with Harwell. His thoughts flashed back to the previous night. He wanted more nights like that. Did Caroline?

Sam and Harwell walked across the lot to the security checkpoint and kept going south on a gravel service road that led down a hill through the woods and across a wooden bridge over a stream. The road swung back uphill and turned to pavement as they emerged into a clearing. There they saw the maintenance shed and greenhouse, which were being guarded by several Securitas agents and Richmond County deputies. Harwell nodded to the cops he knew as he and Sam walked past. The paved road now led downhill again, toward the 11th fairway.

“This is where we go into the woods,” Sam said. “Everything east of here to the fence line is nature preserve.”

“You don't have to do this,” Harwell said to Sam.

“Neither do you.”

“It's my job.”

“You could have stayed in the trailer.”

Harwell shook his head.

“No, I couldn't.”

“What do you mean?”

Harwell looked at the tops of the trees, took a deep breath, and let it out with a heavy sigh. Then he looked back at Sam.