Amen Corner (32 page)

Doggett went back into his motel room and rinsed the blood off his hands and arms. He looked at Stanwick's watch: just after midnight. How long would it take the cops to find this place? Probably not until morning—but he couldn't take that chance. Even the stupid local cops could put this case together now. The girl's description, his fingerprints on the knife, Skarda seeing his truck—that's why he'd parked it several blocks away. By now, the cops might even have his name and photo on TV and radio. They'd find his place by mid-morning at the latest, so he had to clear out now—take what he needed from the room, take the back roads back to Augusta, ditch the truck, and spend the rest of the night on the streets, on foot.

The night wouldn't be a problem. But the cops would be looking for him tomorrow, too. They'd be looking for him at every gate at the National, and there'd be Securitas guards at the fences all night. He'd killed six people, almost a seventh, and still he knew they were going to play the goddamned Masters tomorrow.

But he had two days to work with. He still had his Masters badge. He just needed to get inside the gates one more time.

There were three beers left in the refrigerator. He opened one, took a long gulp and put the other two in the gym bag, along with a pack of Camel straights and four Bic lighters he'd bought the last time he was in the Food Lion. He hadn't eaten much lately, but still had plenty of cash left for the next few days. After that, it wouldn't matter.

He stuffed a few items of clothes and his twin-blade razor into his gym bag. He left the lights and the TV on when he walked out. He could hear the droning of yet another newscaster as he closed the door behind him.

“Still no new leads in the Masters Murders…”

Doggett exhaled in disgust. The Masters Murders are the least of your worries now, pal.

Chapter Thirty-two

Saturday, April 12

Sam had already showered when Caroline awoke at six. He'd slept about as well as he expected to, given that he was in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar town and a psycho had broken in last night with a knife.

Caroline had fallen asleep as soon as he'd turned off the light, but she jerked and twitched most of the night, as though she were trying to catch herself from falling.

“Are you okay?” he asked her, when he saw that her eyes were open.

“Yeah,” she said. “Did that really happen?”

“Yes,” he said. “I called Lieutenant Boyce. We're meeting in Porter's office at 7. You coming?”

“You're not leaving me here,” Caroline said, throwing off the covers.

Sam told her to pack everything she had, because she was checking out today. Caroline asked where she was staying that night.

“In the Crow's Nest,” he said.

*

Things were moving at their usual leisurely pace on Washington Road. A mile from the Magnolia Lane gate, they passed dozens of protesters on their way to the field where Rachel Drucker had scheduled another anti-Augusta National demonstration. They carried signs and banners saying “ANGC: You can't kill all your critics!” “Porter = Hitler,” and “Green Jackets = Brown Shirts.”

The protest could get ugly unless the cops decided to get the word out that they were looking for a psycho unaffiliated with the club—but that would create a climate of fear and panic among the badge-holding spectators. At this point, the public might not even believe the cops. They'd probably think the green jackets had bought off the investigators.

“What do you think they'd say if I went over there and told them what we know?” Caroline asked Sam.

“They'd blow you off,” Sam said. “You'd be spoiling their wonderful tantrum.”

Theirs was the first courtesy car to arrive in the lot that morning. The field had been cut to the low 44 scores and ties, and with the small number of players on the course during the last two rounds, the tee times began late in the morning. Nobody had to be up early on the weekend.

David Porter's office had enough bodies in it to form a pickup basketball game. Boyce and Harwell were there, along with Leonard Garver; so were Porter, Brisbane, and Woodley. Sam brought Caroline in with him.

“Good morning, Sam,” Porter said. “Caroline, I'm David Porter, chairman of Augusta National. I'm very sorry about what happened last night.”

He extended his hand to Caroline over his desk. She shook it, then sat down in one of the two available chairs. Boyce was standing in the corner to the left of the door. Everyone else was seated, so Sam took the last spot open on the couch.

Porter remained behind his desk, looking glum with his chin in his hand, and let Boyce take charge of the meeting. The GBI detective's folksy country lawman persona took on a more urgent tone.

“I talked to Ralph Stanwick's wife last night,” Boyce said to the group. “He left their cabin right after Robert did. He hasn't been home since then. She's afraid something's happened to him.”

“Did you call Peggy Francis?” Sam said.

“Yes,” Brisbane said. “She hasn't seen him for two days.”

“We think he got a call from Lee Doggett last night,” Boyce said. “It came through the clubhouse switchboard. We're working on finding out where it came from.”

In the meantime, Boyce said, he'd been working on linking Doggett and Stanwick, after the physical resemblance between Stanwick and Doggett's booking photo became obvious. They'd located Doggett's ex-wife Renee in Florida. She told them Lee's real father was an Augusta National member, though she didn't think Doggett had ever told her the man's name. Lorraine Stanwick had been shocked by the idea that Ralph could have had a bastard son by one of the Augusta maids, but admitted that Stanwick had seemed terribly agitated all week, even before Ashby was murdered. When she saw Doggett's photo, she'd started to cry.

Boyce then brought up Doggett's conviction.

“Renee confirmed the counterfeit Masters badges,” Boyce said. “She saw him make the things with a home computer and printer. But she said Doggett never used drugs—hated them, in fact, and she's got no reason to lie for him. She doesn't care what happens to him.”

“So what's with the cocaine bust?” Sam said.

“I asked Harwell to get me Doggett's case files, and I think I've pieced together what happened here. I'd say somebody—probably Stanwick—found a willing cop to plant the drugs in Doggett's house. Maybe he got the D.A. to do him a favor, too, in exchange for a few free Masters badges. He was hoping Doggett would go away for a long time. Maybe something would happen to him in prison. Unfortunately for Ralph, Doggett's sentence was reduced and he made it out in one piece.”

Harwell said they ran the fingerprints found on the hunting knife in Caroline's room. They were Doggett's.

“Another thing,” Boyce said. “The blue pickup truck Sam saw leaving Caroline's motel last night matches the description of a truck stolen from a farmer down in Claxton. The farmer and the truck had been missing since the day Doggett was released at Reidsville. The cops down there dug up the farmer yesterday afternoon in his cornfield, along with the ax that killed him.

“Doggett had to have figured out that Stanwick put him behind bars,” Boyce said. “His mother died while he was away. His wife left him and took his son. He lost his house, his family—everything. He must have been one angry boy. My guess is he spent the last eight years planning to come back here and get even.”

“Stanwick must have had a hunch it was his son doing the killings,” Sam said. “Otherwise he would have told me about Doggett when I asked about ex-employees. I'd bet he went into the employee files and removed Doggett's folder, too.”

“And now Ralph's missing,” Brisbane said.

Everyone in the room shared the same thought: the twisted father-son relationship that had existed between Stanwick and Doggett had probably ended last night.

“Now what?” Porter asked.

“We find Doggett,” Boyce said. “He's out there somewhere.”

“He'll come back here,” Sam said.

“Why do you say that?” Porter asked.

“He's trying to stop the Masters,” Sam said. “That's his ultimate revenge. He doesn't just blame Stanwick for what happened to him. He blames Augusta National.”

No one disagreed.

“He's got two more days left to pull it off,” Boyce said. “You could still cancel or postpone, David.”

“Never.”

“We could put his name and photo out to the media.”

“No,” Porter said, as forcefully as though he were turning down Rachel Drucker's application for membership. “That would be worse than canceling. We can't have it known that a madman may be wandering around the golf course. It would create a panic. We're going to run the Masters as always.”

Boyce agreed not to release Doggett's name and photo to the pubic. He couldn't force Porter to stop the tournament, and he agreed that panicking 40,000 people wasn't a good idea. Besides, he said, if Doggett didn't know he'd been I.D.'d, he might get careless. It would be easier to find him if he didn't know that every cop and security guard on the grounds was looking for him.

“Here's what we're going to do,” Boyce said. “Mr. Woodley, alert your staff that we're going to keep the gates closed an extra hour this morning. Get a copy of Doggett's mug shot to all security guards, and make sure they study it. We'll open the gates at nine, and I want every spectator eyeballed, patted down, and wanded after they come through the metal-detector columns. Harwell, we're going to need more cops. Ask Sheriff Garver to free up as many as he can spare to work the grounds today and tomorrow.”

“We still might not spot him,” Woodley said. “He could change his appearance.”

“I realize that,” Boyce said. “This boy's smart. He's not going to jump into our laps. But if he's trying to stop this tournament, that's going to be tough to do with a few hundred cops and security guards watching for him, and 40,000 fans on the course.”

“Patrons,” Porter corrected.

“What about the TV cameras?” Sam said.

“What about them?” Boyce asked.

“Look, there's 50 CBS cameras all over the course. Why not use them? We could put someone in the control booth with the producer, watching all the monitors for Doggett. Caroline knows what he looks like better than anyone. She could do it.”

Porter spoke up: “Caroline, do you think you'd be able to spot this man from a TV monitor?”

“I'll never forget that son of a bitch as long as I live,” she said.

Boyce started to smile.

“I like it,” he said. “An entire television network helping us on a stakeout.”

“CBS will never agree to it,” Brisbane said.

“They'll do what I tell them to do,” Porter said.

Sam had been waiting for Porter to start throwing his weight around in a way that would actually do some good. Now he was seeing it. He and Boyce exchanged grins as Porter reached for his intercom button.

“Ida? Call Peter Bukich at CBS headquarters and tell him I want to see him at his office in fifteen minutes.”

*

David Porter led the delegation out of the administration building like a heavyweight champion leading his entourage to the boxing ring. He got into his personal golf cart, with Robert Brisbane sitting next to him, and headed up the driveway toward the par 3 course. Sam and Caroline tagged along behind them in one cart, with Boyce and Harwell sharing another.

With the day's crowd still waiting at the gates to be allowed inside, the carts made good time past the clubhouse and the cabins to the tree-enclosed TV production compound east of the par 3 course. Peter Bukich's office was in a one-story green cabin flush against the dense stand of trees at the north end of the compound. Porter led his entourage through the screen door and down a hall to a cramped office where the preppie-looking Bukich sat in a padded leather swivel chair behind a desk with a computer, two TV monitors, several telephones, an Emmy, and a cigar humidor.

Porter took the only other comfortable chair in the room. Everyone else stood.

“I'd like you all to meet Peter Bukich, Executive Producer of CBS Sports,” Porter said, gesturing toward the man behind the desk. Bukich nodded. His bright blue salesman's eyes attempted to be gracious and winning, but the oddity of the gathering had clearly made him less comfortable in his loafers.

“I've been explaining to Peter what we'd like his crew to do for us this weekend,” Porter continued. “Peter, this lovely young woman is Caroline Rockingham, who got a good look at our killer. She will be working with Tony during the broadcast.”

Tony Petrakis was the legendary CBS producer/director who'd been in charge of choosing the pictures used during Masters broadcasts for 30 years. His Greek temper was well known to even casual golf fans, earning him the nickname “The God of War.” It was said that the headstrong Petrakis had actually thrown the equally imperious Clifford Roberts out of his truck the first year he directed the Masters, and that there wouldn't have been a second year had Roberts not committed suicide. Yet Petrakis told each succeeding Augusta National chairman that the only one he'd been able to work with was Clifford Roberts.

Bukich listened to Porter with a look on his face that suggested he'd eaten a bad breakfast burrito. His hair was fluffed and combed back in a style that would fit in at the board room or an airport sports bar; his green tie with the subtle Augusta National flag logo pattern came from the club's Golf Shop. He tried to maneuver his way between the boss in New York and the one staring sternly at him from a chair in the cramped office.

“Now, David, we want to cooperate with the police, of course, but we can't compromise our broadcast by having people in there looking over our shoulders,” Bukich said, with a condescending smile. Sam knew it wouldn't work on Porter; David Porter invented that smile.

“Call Rudy Mendenhall and tell him we're going to have a police officer and a witness working in the truck through the end of the tournament,” Porter said, oblivious to Bukich's objections.

“David, I can't do that,” Bukich said. “We're an independent network, not your private production company. We always cooperate with you in every way we can, but letting the police get involved in how we cover the tournament is just impossible, on so many levels.”

“There's only one level here—mine,” Porter said. “Call Rudy.”

Bukich sighed, picked up one of the phones on his desk, and punched a button on his speed-dial pad. Within 30 seconds he was talking to Rudy Mendenhall, President of CBS Sports. He explained what Porter wanted, and listened for a moment. Then he handed the phone to Porter.

“He wants to talk to you,” Bukich said. Sam thought he saw the slightest glint of satisfaction on Bukich's face, as though he'd gotten a yes from Mom after Dad had said no.