Amen Corner (39 page)

“I helped send the poor dumb bastard to prison. I thought if I did Stanwick a favor, it could help my career. Maybe it did. I made detective a year later.”

“You planted the dope?”

Harwell nodded, looking down again.

“Stanwick said the D.A. was sure Doggett would walk if we didn't have a stronger case. Stanwick said he wanted to use Doggett as an example that you can't fuck with the National. I figured in the long run it would make all our jobs easier. Besides, Doggett wasn't an innocent man. He was a crook.”

“I know,” Sam said. “Now he's a murderer.”

“It was wrong,” Harwell said. “I've been sorry ever since I did it. But I didn't think it would turn out this way.”

“You never do,” Sam said, shaking his head.

What else could he say? There was no point in beating up Harwell over a mistake he'd made eight years ago. At least he was trying to make up for it now.

“You gonna tell Garver?” Harwell asked.

“That's your business,” Sam said. “What happened back then doesn't concern me. Let's just find Doggett.”

Harwell nodded and drew his Heckler and Koch USP, holding it down at his side. Sam drew the Glock from inside his jacket.

“I'll take the left,” Harwell said. “You move straight ahead. Let's try to keep visual contact with each other.”

Sam watched as Harwell moved into the trees toward the east. The detective wore a dark brown jacket that was barely visible through the underbrush—difficult for Doggett to spot, but difficult for Sam to keep track of, too.

Sam left the pavement where the service road veered westward toward the course. The first 20 or 30 feet into the pine forest was not tough going, but after that, Sam had to push aside sharp branches and step over rocks as he penetrated deeper into the bushes and trees. He snagged his jacket several times; he had to make sure he didn't let a stray twig get inside the trigger guard of his gun. An accidental gunshot would be a disaster—it would be heard by thousands of spectators and send an army of cops and security guards scrambling into the woods. Worse, it would alert Doggett that they were approaching—if, in fact, he was there at all.

The forest was unnervingly silent, except for the sound of his own footsteps crunching on fallen leaves and pine needles, and the singing of the birds overhead. Far in the distance, Sam heard occasional bursts of applause—probably from the 7th green, the closest front nine hole to where he was now. He kept glancing to his left, trying to see Harwell's red hair bobbing slowly up and down through the underbrush. Sometimes Harwell was not visible, but when Sam adjusted his course to the left, he picked him up again.

It was slow going. After nearly an hour, he figured they must be getting close to the 11th green, although they were deep enough into the woods that they wouldn't be able to see it. The first groups of the day would not be arriving at 11 for almost an hour, but he knew the grandstand that overlooked the 11th green, the 12th hole and the 13th tee—the heart of Amen Corner—would already be filled. There was no better place to have a chance at witnessing Masters history.

Sam heard a rustling ahead of him and dropped to his knees. It wasn't Harwell; he was a good 75 yards to the left. It wasn't a falling pine cone—it was something, or someone, moving in the bushes ahead.

Sam crouched as low as he could and tried to control his breathing. He held the Glock in front of him, bracing it with his left hand and listening for a repeat of the sound he'd heard. In the stillness of the woods, he felt as though even his shallow breathing was deafening. Sweat trickled down the side of his face. The grip on the gun felt slick.

He heard the sound again—now more to his right. But he still couldn't see anything through the dense bushes ahead.

Whatever it was, it was moving cautiously toward the west…toward the golf course. Sam leaned slowly to his right, to get a better look through the bush ahead of him, and he saw a quick movement along the ground, streaking between two loblolly pines. He stood up quickly, extending the gun in front of him with both hands, and started to yell “Freeze!” when he realized it was a fox that had run past him.

Sam sat back against a tree and took his finger off the trigger of the Glock, letting out a sigh. He would have felt more comfortable hunting for a fugitive in an alley or a warehouse than skulking around in this forest. He wasn't trained to distinguish the sounds made by animals from the sounds made by psychopaths.

That's when he heard the gunshot.

It echoed through the pines, coming from at least 100 yards to his left. It sounded like a handgun. Had Harwell shot Doggett? If he had, he would be yelling for Sam as soon as he was sure Doggett was down—or he'd be on his radio. But there was no further sound after the gunshot. Did Doggett shoot Harwell? If he did, how did he get a gun onto the National grounds?

Sam's mind raced as he pushed through the bushes. He couldn't presume who had fired the shot, or what he'd find; there was a chance Harwell was dead and Doggett was waiting with a loaded gun for whoever responded to the sound. He used the thick pine trees for cover, sliding from one trunk to the next with his gun in his right hand. He'd peer around the corner and then quickly move to the next pine, hoping he was keeping the tree between himself and the shooter—if the shooter had not been Harwell.

It took Sam 10 minutes to cover the ground to the spot where he thought the shot had come from. His concern continued to increase the longer the silence lasted. Harwell must have been hit—otherwise, why wasn't he giving out his location?

Sam saw three tall pines standing in a row about 50 feet ahead of him. With no other pines nearby for cover, he knelt behind some bushes and crept forward until he saw a freshly dug hole at the base of the center tree.

“Harwell!” he called out, but heard nothing in response. He inched forward and saw two plastic sacks lying on the ground near the hole, ripped open and empty. Even without looking, he knew what had been in the bags. He called Harwell's name again. Nothing. Sam scrambled over to the hole, looked at the empty fertilizer sacks, and found four cracked cigarette-lighter shells scattered nearby. Shit. This was bad.

Doggett could be hiding behind a tree nearby with a gun aimed at his head. But Harwell was down somewhere nearby. Sam had to find him—and radio for help.

Staying as low to the ground as possible, Sam crawled back in the direction Harwell would have been coming from. He guessed that Doggett wouldn't have been able to make a good hit from farther than 50 feet. With the Glock still in his right hand, Sam swept the bushes to the north of the three pines, first moving to his right, then back to his left. On his second pass back to the left, he saw a pair of brown boots with deep treads extending from behind a pine tree. Sam recognized the boots.

Harwell's.

He scrambled along the ground to the other side of the tree and saw Harwell lying on his back with a bullet hole under his left eye. The only thing moving was the blood seeping down the detective's face and pooling under his head in the dirt. Sam checked Harwell's carotid artery with his index and middle finger, and knew instantly that he was dead. The Heckler and Koch was still in Harwell's right hand. Sam smelled the barrel. It had not been fired.

This is bad, Sam repeated. He's made a bomb, and he's heading for the golf course. And I can't just stand up and go running after Doggett, wherever he might have gone. The guy's armed and knows we're after him.

Sam took the radio handset from his belt, depressed the thumb switch, and said in a low but urgent voice, “Officer down in the woods…east of the 11th fairway. Repeat, officer down. The suspect has bomb materials. I don't know his location, but he's not far from the golf course.”

Sam listened through his earpiece for the response. Boyce came on the frequency within seconds.

“Sam? That you? We're getting reports of something that sounded like a gunshot.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We're in the woods on the east side of the 11th fairway. Harwell's dead. Doggett got him with one shot. I never saw him, but I found two empty fertilizer sacks. He's got to be heading for the course.”

“Goddammit,” Boyce said. “Try to find him before he gets out of the woods. We'll send all the officers in the area over there. You didn't see him?”

“He was gone when I found Harwell.”

“We're coming,” Boyce said. “Find him.”

Sam put the radio back in its belt holder and stood up, in pain from kneeling so long. He looked back at Harwell's body and knew it was mere luck—very bad luck for Harwell—that he was standing and Harwell was on the ground with a bullet in his head.

Let's hope my luck holds out, he thought as he began walking through the pines toward the golf course. A song from one of the April playlists popped into his head—Tom Petty's “Refugee,” from 1980. Seve Ballesteros won that year. Seve was always good at getting out of the woods.

*

At 12 over par, Al Barber was in the first group to tee off Sunday, along with former champion Clive Cartwright, who would be old enough to join the senior tour in July. They had played quickly, as the first group out on Sunday is expected to do. Neither had to worry about being invited back the following year; past Masters champions were always welcomed back until they reached such physical decline that they could no longer play 18 holes of acceptable golf.

Al Barber was trying to prove that he was still several years away from reaching that point. Despite his aching back and legs, he was fashioning another respectable round at four over par, giving Cartwright a spirited battle to stay out of last place.

Barber had the honor on the 12th tee. At least 5,000 people were now clustered in and around the packed grandstand behind him. He took off his snap-brimmed cap and wiped his face with the towel his caddie handed to him. Sweat from the late-morning sun was beading on his scalp between the thinning hairs of his crewcut. Hot, sweaty, tired, aching—God, he still loved tournament golf.

“Seven or an eight?” he asked Chipmunk, surveying the dangerous 155-yard shot over Rae's Creek to the narrow 12th green.

“Smooth seven today, Al,” the caddie said. “Flag on 11 is with us.”

Barber liked the smooth seven. He took the club from Chipmunk, teed up his Callaway, and prepared to take his stance, glancing again at the Sunday pin placement at the far right of the skinny green. He addressed the ball, looked back at the target one more time, and drew the club back.

At that moment, a noise that could only have been an explosion reverberated from somewhere up the 11th fairway. The gallery snapped their heads to the left, trying to see where the awful sound was coming from, as Barber continued with his swing and sent his ball soaring into the sky above the 12th green. Few saw his ball carry the front bunker and come to rest 10 feet left of the flag; in fact, Al Barber himself stopped watching his shot as soon as he realized that something had gone terribly wrong nearby.

Dwight Wilson was sitting in the grandstand behind the 12th tee when Barber hit his tee shot, followed immediately by the explosion. He stood up and looked to his right as security guards from the 13th hole came running across the grass toward the grandstand at 12, joining the guards at that hole in holding up their hands and pleading with the spectators to remain seated. On the top rows of the grandstand, people were standing and looking back up the hill at the 11th fairway. Dwight heard the word “bomb” filter down from the top of the grandstand to the people seated immediately behind the tee. Now he could see a cloud of white smoke rising in the distance above the grandstand. There was fear in the faces of the spectators around him, but the Securitas agents continued to assure the patrons that everything was under control. Most remained in their seats, not sure where else to go, but Dwight got up and headed for the exit.

“Doggett,” Dwight muttered. “Motherfucker got past everybody.”

Chapter Forty

When Sam heard the explosion, he started running. No reason to be cautious now—Doggett had detonated the bomb.

He ran through the woods toward the cloud of smoke ahead of him. This was all going to shit. Harwell was dead and Doggett had bombed Augusta National. How the hell had he managed to get the bomb onto the course and set it off without the security guards and cops stopping him? They were all watching for him—how had he gotten away with it?

He pulled out the radio handset and held down the transmitter.

“Boyce! This is Skarda! What's going on?”

“We don't know,” Boyce said. “Securitas is reporting some kind of explosion near the 11th tee. I'm heading there now on the service road.”

“Can they see anything on the TV monitors?” Sam said.

“Culver!” Boyce said. “Do you read this? Let us know what you're seeing!”

Culver must have been the officer who'd taken Harwell's place in the CBS trailer. An unfamiliar voice came on and said they were seeing a lot of smoke and some downed trees in the woods east of the 10th green and the 11th tee.

“Any bodies?” Boyce demanded.

“Can't tell,” Culver said. “Smoke's too thick. But I gotta say, it looks like maybe we got lucky. Not many people over there, from what I can see.”