Amen Corner (36 page)

“Nothing?” Boyce asked.

“Nothing,” Sam said. “You?”

“Five hundred cops and security guards on the grounds, and nobody has seen a goddamn thing.”

“What about Caroline?”

“She and Petrakis are starting to hit it off, but that's about it,” Boyce said.

“Well, that's something.”

The three men stared at the TV for a few minutes without saying a word. Cameron Myers was recapping the day's action as the screen displayed the leaderboard, superimposed over a background shot of wisteria hanging from the loblolly pines along the 10th hole. Syrupy acoustic-guitar music completed the ambiance of calm and serenity. Sam was wound so tight that he would have flinched at the sound of a staple hitting Porter's carpet, but CBS continued to send out the signal that all was well in Augusta. Finally, David Porter spoke.

“Maybe we're out of the woods, boys. Maybe Doggett couldn't get in. Or maybe he's satisfied with killing Ralph.”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “But I think his real target has always been the Masters.”

“He might be saving the dramatics for Sunday afternoon,” Boyce said.

“A bomb wouldn't get past those metal detectors, right?” Sam said to Boyce.

“Nope,” Boyce said.

“A bomb?” Porter said. “Oh, for God's sake, is that what you're thinking now?”

“I've been thinking about that since Tuesday,” Boyce said. “But there's no way he could get a device through the x-ray machines and metal detectors, and we've had guards watching the fertilizer supplies in both of your maintenance facilities since I got here. This isn't the '96 Olympics. This time we're ready.”

“You worked that case?” Sam asked.

Boyce nodded. Sam remembered the story well. Everyone did. The Atlanta police had received a warning phone call saying that a knapsack bomb was going to explode in Centennial Park during a concert at the summer Olympics of 1996. They had tried to clear the area—but the bomb had still killed one person and injured 100 more. Then suspicion had wrongly fallen on a security guard who had been trying to clear the area.

“We were embarrassed,” Boyce said. “We couldn't get the people out fast enough.”

“Doggett isn't going to give us a phone call,” Sam said.

“No, but that park wasn't secure. There were no metal detectors or x-rays for people going in and out. It was an open-air rock concert in a public space, with no fence or gates, and it happened at 1:20 in the morning. We've got more control here. And we know who we're looking for.”

“I used to think we had control here,” Porter said. “Now, I'm not so sure.”

*

Doggett drove his scooter onto the grass beside the first fairway. The mowers were already at work on the front nine. Maintenance workers and club members walked the first and 9th fairways with buckets of green-dyed sand, filling in the divot holes from that day's play, while others used hoses to wet down the rough under pine trees and around bunkers. He recognized some of them. They paid no attention to him.

He took the crosswalk that traversed the first and 9th fairways and drove up the hill toward the 18th green, where thousands of spectators were clustered, waiting for the leaders to finish their third round. He circled around behind the green and stopped the scooter behind the throngs who had staked out their spots left of the finishing hole hours earlier. Many were seated in folding Masters chairs, the kind Doggett had seen customers buying in the Golf Shop. The chairs compacted into a narrow shape that fit into a nylon stuff sack with a drawstring.

Doggett wanted one of those sacks.

He parked the scooter, left his purchases leaning on the handlebars, and worked his way into the crowd that was watching Ryan Moore and Davis Love III play their approach shots into 18. He stopped behind an elderly couple, both seated in folding Masters chairs, probably holding down the same spot they'd occupied since Arnie won his last Masters. The woman, who wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with old Masters badges tucked into the green hatband, was absorbed in watching Moore execute his swing. The man wore a checkered snap-brimmed Hogan-style cap and sunglasses, and appeared to be dozing.

All eyes watched Moore's shot arch through the air, half of the ball catching the brilliant late-afternoon sunlight, and descend toward the green. As it fell, Doggett pulled the nylon stuff sack out from under the woman's folding chair with his foot. He bent down to untie his shoe and, while kneeling over the sack, picked it up quickly and tucked it up his pants leg. Then he tied his shoe, got up, and walked back to his scooter while the crowd applauded the shot, which nestled 5 feet from the hole.

He now had everything he needed.

He pulled the chair sack out of his pants and put it into the golf bag, slung the bag over his shoulder, and drove the scooter down the hill to the concession area in the grove of trees by the 18th tee. A Richmond County Sheriff's squad car was parked 30 feet from the entrance to the men's bathroom; a deputy wearing a flat-brimmed trooper's hat and sunglasses leaned on the front headlight with his arms crossed, looking around at the spectators milling through the area. The deputy turned his head briefly toward Doggett as he motored slowly past, then resumed gazing up the 18th fairway.

Doggett parked the scooter next to the bathroom entrance and got into line. In less than two hours, the last groups would have gone through, the concession area would be cleared, and the deputy would realize that the scooter was still parked there, unclaimed. By that time, Doggett would be long gone.

The line moved quickly. Once inside the bathroom, Doggett claimed an open stall and closed the door behind him, leaning the golf bag against the stall door. He pulled the green hat he'd bought at the memorabilia show out of the back pocket of the caddie jumpsuit, put it in the clear plastic shopping bag, and set it on the floor. He took off his windbreaker and T-shirt, pulled down the jumpsuit and his underwear, and sat on the toilet. This was a good place to think, to go over the details one more time. Besides, he didn't want to have to take a crap in the woods later on. It might attract animals.

He lit a cigarette. He never was much of a smoker, though he had smoked in prison—like everyone else—for something to do. He would need just two of the 20 cigarettes in the pack; smoking one of them now might help him think a little more clearly. He went over the plan in his head, and concluded that he'd done everything he needed to do. Rain would be a problem, but there were just a few wispy clouds in the increasingly orange western sky. After all these years, he could still tell when it was going to rain the next morning. Nothing mattered more to a greenskeeper than the morning weather, since the important work had to be done before the golfers got on the course. He was sure there would be no rain tonight or tomorrow. Some things, even eight years of prison can't beat out of you.

He dropped the butt in the toilet, and put the cigarettes and the lighter into the pouch of the golf bag. He flushed the toilet and pulled his clothes back on. Time to go.

He walked out the exit at the opposite end of the men's room and circled around the back of the 10th green, carrying his golf bag over his shoulder and his clear plastic Masters bag in his hand like any other souvenir shopper.

The final pair—Garcia and Bellows—was just heading up the hill to the isolated 11th tee, stuck back in the woods. Doggett walked up the hill with a few dozen spectators. He stood about 15 feet away from the roped-off tee as Bellows and Garcia launched their drives down the sloping fairway. The sun was descending toward the tips of the pines to the west, throwing shadows across the 11th tee. Four security guards were positioned around the tee, along with half a dozen marshals wearing yellow hardhats with the number “11” stamped in green numerals on both sides. One of the marshals wore a white jumpsuit with no lettering on the front or back. When the last drive had been struck, he lifted a flagstick with a yellow flag on the end and began waving it to the marshals positioned farther down the fairway, to indicate that Garcia and Bellows were on their way.

The players, their caddies, the standard bearer, and the rules official all began striding down the hill from the tee, and the gallery went with them—except for Doggett, who began walking back between the trees toward the 10th green. The nearest security guard on 10 was almost 50 yards away, and not looking in his direction. Doggett slipped quickly behind a pine tree, then ducked next to a flowering white dogwood bush and crouched as low as he could. No one called to him. The security guard farther up the hill was watching the handful of spectators who had chosen to walk back up to the clubhouse on that side of the 10th fairway. He looked back at the security guards at the 11th tee. They couldn't see him through the trees and bushes. He was safe where he was.

There was another blossoming dogwood bush about 20 feet deeper into the trees. He waited for several minutes as the shadows continued to descend over the course, then quietly crept back to the next bush. Again he peered through the branches to see if he'd been noticed, but the guards were unaware that he was there. The underbrush was even more dense another 15 feet behind him; he carefully crawled into the thicket, then down a ridge that put him in the middle of the woods. From there he couldn't see the golf course—or anyone.

He laid his bags down and sat on the pine-needled forest floor to wait for dark.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Sam and Mark Boyce stood on the clubhouse balcony, overlooking perhaps 20,000 Masters patrons trying to get a look at Garcia and Bellows, now tied for the lead as they finished their third round on 18. No one had seen Doggett. There had been several reports of men who resembled the eight-year-old booking photo, but after their IDs were checked, the patrons were allowed to go on watching the tournament—with an apology for the inconvenience. It had all been done quietly, without anyone becoming alarmed.

“When this group finishes putting out, we'll do a sweep,” Boyce said to Sam. “We'll start from the bottom of the course, at Amen Corner, and move everyone back up the hill to the exits. Standard stuff. They do it every night at the end of play. Only this time, we'll have ten times as many people, and they'll all be looking for one particular man.”

“Did CBS agree to keep their cameras on the crowd until everyone is gone?” Sam asked.

“Yep,” Boyce said. “Not that it's done us any good so far.”

“You never know,” Sam said.

“I called the lab, by the way. They I.D.'d the shoe—it was Scanlon's, like we thought. They'll do a DNA test on the blood on the heel, and compare it to hairs we found in the sink at Doggett's motel room, but everything's backed up, as usual. We won't get the results for a week.”

“It won't matter by then,” Sam said.

“Probably not,” Boyce said. “But once we get him, we'll need the evidence.”

Sam nodded. In another day, Doggett would either have failed to ruin the Masters, or he would have pulled off some terrible mayhem that would make news around the world. Sam had been hired to prevent that, but he wasn't earning his money. If a thousand cops, security guards, and club employees—not to mention dozens of TV cameras—couldn't find the guy, what else could be done? As he gazed across the golf course from the porch, he felt as though he were standing on the bow of a ship, steering it through a calm ocean, all the while knowing that a submarine lurked somewhere out there, preparing to put a torpedo through the hull.

He told Boyce he was going to the CBS trailer to meet Caroline. It was getting dark, and he didn't want her walking back to the clubhouse by herself.

“If anything breaks, I'll call you,” Boyce said. “Otherwise, we'll meet in Porter's office tomorrow morning at nine, and we'll start all over again.”

Sam first went up the stairs to the Crow's Nest and opened his suitcase. He took out the Glock and the shoulder holster and put it on under his jacket. He hadn't been asked to go through a metal detector when he first arrived at the course. If you were privileged enough to enter through the main gate, you could bring in an arsenal.

When he walked into the CBS trailer, Sam was surprised to hear the sound of Caroline's laughter, coming from the director's suite. The broadcast had gone off the air for the day; the monitors now displayed pictures of spectators shuffling off the property. Dennis Harwell stood behind Caroline and Petrakis, who were still watching the monitors.

He had expected to see Petrakis blowing cigar smoke at Caroline as she leaned away from him with folded arms; instead, they were looking at a man in a red-yellow-and-white striped shirt stretched so tight across his beer belly that he looked like a walking beach ball.

“Get a load of that guy,” Petrakis said. “How does a fat fuck like that even fit through the metal detectors?”

“Come on, Tony,” Caroline said. “He probably has a gland disorder.”

“Gland, my ass. He never gets five feet from the concession tent.”

Caroline laughed. “We're supposed to be looking for Lee Doggett,” she said.

“I am, believe me,” Petrakis said. “I'd love to find him right now, so we don't have to go through this bullshit tomorrow.”