Amen Corner (18 page)

“How did Stanwick feel about admitting women to Yale?”

“When Ralph and I were roommates, he was the leader of an anti-coeducation group,” Brisbane said, choosing his words carefully as the rain spattered into the creek.

“What about you?”

“I knew it was inevitable. Why fight it? Two years later, Yale began admitting women.”

“Does Ralph feel the same way about Rachel Drucker?”

“I'm sure he does,” Brisbane said. “But I'm also sure that he didn't kill Harmon Ashby or Deborah Scanlon.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because he's my friend. Ralph and Lorraine are my kids' godparents. I'll admit that to some people he might come off as a little…brusque. But Ralph Stanwick never killed anyone, and never would.”

Sam had been lied to a thousand times by people trying to alibi for their friends. He'd been fooled a few times, but he was sure Brisbane wasn't lying. The man was convinced that his friend was not the killer. But a Brisbane testimonial was not going to be enough.

“Why were the Ashbys and Stanwicks staying together this week, if Ralph and Harmon Ashby disagreed so strongly on the women's membership issue?”

“Lodging is always tight during Masters week,” Brisbane said. “When my wife hurt her knee and decided not to come, I took a single room this week. Lorraine and Annabelle are good friends, so the Stanwicks invited the Ashbys to stay with them at the Firestone Cabin.”

“Did Ralph and Harmon get along?”

“Sure. You don't have to agree with everything another member says or does to be his friend here. Ralph and Harmon were friends.”

“Do you know where Stanwick was when the killings took place?” Sam asked.

“I assume he was where he said he was—with his wife in the Firestone Cabin,” Brisbane said. “That's what Lorraine told the police.”

Brisbane broke eye contact, suggesting that he was less certain of Stanwick's alibi. At that point, Porter and Fowler returned from their inspection of the 12th green.

“Is everything all right?” Porter asked Sam.

“I just had a question about the membership information I was looking at,” Sam said.

“Maybe I can help,” Porter said. But Sam wasn't sure that he should trust Porter with his suspicions. Not just yet.

“I got what I needed,” Sam said. “How's the course?”

“If it stops raining, we'll play tomorrow,” Porter said. “It'll be soft, but the course drains beautifully.”

Sam looked back up the hill toward the 11th fairway. From the clubhouse, everything rolled downhill to this spot. He looked up at the dismal grey overhead, catching a raindrop in the eye, and thought about that old blues song about the sky crying. In this case, the tears weren't running down the street; they were running down the fairway.

Chapter Seventeen

“Danny Milligan played 20 years on the PGA Tour without ever winning a tournament,” the NBC reporter's voice intoned over video of Milligan, wearing a rainsuit and practicing chip shots on his backyard practice green during a steady drizzle. “But he did win the hearts of countless spectators who loved his comic antics at tournaments. He also won the attention of CBS Sports president Rudy Mendenhall, who hired the puckish pro to join his network's golf broadcast team.”

Sam had returned to the Crow's Nest and turned on the TV to see if there were any developments in what the networks were now calling The Masters Murders. Tom Wheeling was out practicing on the soggy course in the near-dark, searching for that one final piece of the puzzle that might help him stay inside the cutline. Brady Compton was convinced his game was in great shape. He sat in a lounge chair next to Sam, watching the NBC Nightly News.

The reporter doing the Milligan story was Jane Vincent, the woman who been at Scanlon's table Tuesday night, and the one who had thrown some tough questions at David Porter during that morning's press conference. She must have known that Deborah Scanlon was scheduled to interview Milligan today—the day after she was murdered. Vincent had taped her piece at Milligan's house across the Savannah River in South Carolina, prodding him for his reaction to the latest events at the club he loved to hate. The network was airing it during the last ten minutes of its Wednesday evening newscast, the spot usually reserved for off-beat takes or in-depth analysis of the day's biggest story. The murders at Augusta remained the day's biggest story.

“But after being part of his network's coverage of the Masters for several years, Milligan ran afoul of the Lords of Augusta National,” Vincent's voiceover continued. “During a rain delay in 1996, Milligan was asked by fellow CBS broadcaster Nigel Frawley where the pros went during a suspension of play at the Masters. Milligan joked that they went into the locker room, took off their rain-soaked clothes, and quote ‘snapped wet towels at each other' unquote.”

The video image switched to a close-up of Milligan, seated under an overhang on his deck, that day's rains dripping off the roofline behind him. Milligan's '70s-style gray shag haircut, mischievous eyes, and impish smile were the features of a born clown. Yet it was obvious that Milligan was not quite as jovial as usual.

“Rudy Mendenhall got a letter from David Porter three days after the tournament, telling him my services would not be needed at the next year's tournament,” Milligan said, looking off to the right of the camera at Vincent. “He said they were taking that action because of my disgraceful, disparaging, and untrue remarks about behavior in the club's locker room.

“I mean, come on. It was a joke. It's a golf tournament, not a funeral. Oh, I'm sorry—that's probably another touchy word now.” Milligan smirked in appreciation of his little jab.

“But that's not the way his superiors at CBS saw it,” Vincent's narration resumed, over some stock video of a previous Masters tournament. “The network agreed to Milligan's ban, and he was subsequently dropped from the network's golf crew. He now works for Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta.”

The footage switched to that week's WOFF protests on Washington Road, during which the crowd's anti-Augusta National chants could be heard at diminished volume.

“Now Milligan is siding with the protesters who gather daily down the road from the notoriously all-male golf club. Their numbers have been growing each day since the murders of rules chairman Harmon Ashby and New York Times columnist Deborah Scanlon, both of whom had been openly critical of the club. Milligan has a message for them: Right on, sisters and brothers.”

The video returned to Milligan, sitting on his deck, with Vincent seated across from him.

“So you support the protests against Augusta National?” she asked him.

“Yes, absolutely,” Milligan replied, his normally merry eyes now narrowed. “It's a national travesty that Augusta National hasn't admitted a woman member. They must think it's still 1934. Wake up, fellas; we're in a new century. Woman can vote, blacks can drink from public fountains, gays can hold hands in public.”

“Do you think someone at the club had anything to do with the murders?”

“They tried to kill my career,” Milligan said.

“Couldn't your opinion just be dismissed as sour grapes?” the reporter asked. “After all, they did ban you from their broadcast.”

“Believe me, I felt this way long before I made the wet towel remark,” Milligan said. “If I'd known that they were going to ban me for that, I would have told the audience what the players really do during a rain delay at Augusta National.”

The video cut back to the scene of Milligan chipping in his backyard, as the reporter described Milligan's current life as a part-time broadcaster, part-time senior tour player, and part-time man of leisure at his comfortable home just across the Savannah River in Beech Island, S.C. He'd built the home recently on the site of a former horse ranch, adjacent to a nature preserve. The camera pulled backward and panned the house, a sprawling ranch-style structure with a stand of mature pine trees visible over the rooftop, and a vast field beyond the backyard.

“Perfect for auditioning new drivers,” Milligan said.

“I asked Milligan if he were worried about repercussions within the golf world for continuing to criticize Augusta National,” Vincent said, as the image on the screen cut back to a close-up of Milligan's face.

“Nah,” Milligan said with a wink. “I'm playing a lot better these days. If TBS dumps me, I'll just enter more senior tournaments. And I'll donate some of my winnings to the WOFF. We'll get a woman into Augusta National if I have to help her shinny up the drainpipe.”

*

“You want to watch any more of this?” Sam asked Brady Compton.

“Nope,” Compton said, taking the remote from Sam. “Do they get the Cartoon Network here?”

Compton flipped through the channels, then got up from his chair and walked into his cubicle to place another call to one of his buddies back home. Sam turned off the TV and glanced at the travel alarm clock by his bed. It was nearly seven. Sam had no plans for dinner, and again found himself thinking about Caroline Rockingham. He looked up the number of for the Southwinds Inn and asked them to ring her room. No answer.

Could she be out with Rockingham? Sam didn't want to think about that.

Tom Wheeling walked up the stairs into the Crow's Nest—soaking wet, with muddy pants cuffs and sweat mingled with bits of grass and dirt in his disheveled hair. He looked as though he'd spent the entire day gouging one soggy divot after another out of the Augusta practice range. Yet there was a big grin on his face.

“I found it,” he announced.

Sam said, “You'd better put it back before David Porter finds out.”

Sam remembered that he needed to call Dwight to check on his health. He found the number for Big D's in the phone book. An older woman answered and called Dwight to the phone.

“I'm gonna show up,” Dwight said when Sam asked him how his leg was feeling.

He didn't sound confident.

Chapter Eighteen

Doggett's high-beam lights cut through the sticky night air as he made a left turn on 13th Street and headed north across the Savannah River into South Carolina. He made sure to hold his speed just below the limit. Now would not be the time to get picked up for a traffic violation. They'd run the plates, and find out the truck was stolen. He had plenty of time to get to where he was going. Plenty of time to think about what he'd done, and what was still left to do.

Killing Ashby had been a fuck-up, but not one he particularly regretted. The cops were no closer to figuring that one out than they were the morning they found the body. Killing the columnist had started out to be nothing more than a necessary task. He bought a practice round ticket from a scalper for $60, and carried a tie, a ballcap, and a windbreaker onto the grounds with him. As the crowds were leaving at the end of the day, he went into a restroom outside the media center and put on his uniform. When he emerged in the dusk, he was indistinguishable from a Securitas guard.

Scanlon had been easy to spot leaving the press building—there weren't many women who looked like her walking around the grounds of the National. She had put up a good fight for someone so light. He had expected to kill her quickly, and his rage had kicked in again as they struggled—especially when she kicked him in the stomach with her sharp heel. When he was squeezing the air out of Scanlon's lungs, it reminded him of the times he'd had the urge to do that to his own wife.

That murder—and the message left next to the body—had received saturation media coverage. Every TV station and newspaper in the country was providing priceless publicity. Now the goal was tantalizingly close at hand: David Porter had cancelled the Par 3 tournament. Maybe after tonight, he'd cancel the Masters. Even if he didn't, it would keep the club on the defensive until the final blow could be administered.

Doggett followed U.S. Highways 1 and 278 through North Augusta, and took 278 east as it became Williston Road. There were very few cars, houses, or buildings along the dark highway. He didn't know the exact location of the house he'd seen on the NBC News story earlier in the day, but he knew he could find it. He'd driven through that part of Beech Island a number of times on his way to go fishing near Aiken. He was certain he'd passed the ranch land with the pine forest across the road.

He turned left off the highway a few miles outside of town and went north. The house he was looking for would be set well back from the road and isolated from other homes among scattered loblolly pines. After several miles, the road dipped into a valley and then rose again to a plateau, where he saw a pine forest on the left side of the road and a long split-rail fence on the right, interrupted by a private driveway. The mailbox at the end of the driveway was shaped like a small golf bag, with a miniature flagstick on the side that could be flipped up to signal outgoing mail.

What a fool. He might as well broadcast where he lives.

Doggett pulled the truck slowly to the shoulder of the road, turned off the lights, and sat in the darkness for 10 minutes. He hadn't seen a car on the road since he'd left the highway. Still, it might draw suspicion if he parked on the road, so he started the engine and backed the truck into the driveway, leaving the lights off. When he was a good 20 feet from the road, he turned off the ignition and waited for another 10 minutes. He couldn't see the house from where he was, and doubted he'd been heard. Nevertheless, there could be a motion-detection system, or even a security camera. He could leave in an instant if someone came out of the house to investigate.