Amen Corner

by Rick Shefchik

  “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.”

  Harwell stood in the background, occasionally glancing at the folded printout of the Doggett booking photo, then back at the monitors. There was another copy of the photo on the console between Caroline and Petrakis, but she never looked at it. Throughout the banter with Petrakis, Caroline remained intently focused on spotting the man who’d tried to kill her. Sam decided not to break her concentration. He stood next to Harwell and watched the exiting fans until Petrakis began talking into his microphone.

  “Too dark to see, boys,” he said. “Shut ’em down. I want everyone back in their places for rehearsal tomorrow at 9 a.m…aw, quit griping. We didn’t find the guy today, so we start looking first thing tomorrow…Yeah, it’s overtime. Bukich already cleared it with your shop steward. Now get some rest. And keep this quiet. Anyone shoots off their mouth about what we’re up to, he’s fired. And I don’t have to clear that with the union.”

  Petrakis took off his headset, stood up and stretched. He flipped a couple of switches on the console, then pulled on a sweater vest that hung on the back of his swivel chair.

  “Weirdest fuckin’ day I’ve ever spent at Augusta,” he said, to no one in particular. “See ya tomorrow, toots.”

  He gave Caroline a quick squeeze on the shoulder and walked out of the trailer into the cooling night air, as a couple of network technicians moved in to shut things down.

  Sam watched the God of War swagger out, then turned to Caroline, who was slumped back in her chair.

  “What did you do to him?” he asked.

  “He’s not so bad, once you get to know him,” Caroline said. “Did you know he won his first Emmy in 1967 for directing a kiddie show?”

  “I bet those kids are still in therapy.”

  As they walked down the metal stairs from the CBS trailer, Harwell asked Sam and Caroline if they wanted a ride back to the clubhouse. Sam preferred to walk off some nervous energy. The gravel road through the trees to the par 3 course was no more than a few hundred feet long, and from there they’d be at the edge of Ike’s Pond, within sight of the cabins on the hillside east of the clubhouse. He couldn’t shake the thought that Doggett had come out of the same shadows that now surrounded them to drown Deborah Scanlon.

  “Thanks, but we’ll pass on the ride,” Sam said. “I’m carrying my Glock tonight.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Harwell said.

  “Look, I’m still technically a cop, and I’m still licensed to carry,” Sam said.

  “Well…don’t get trigger-happy,” Harwell finally said. “You see something, call us.”

  Harwell got in his car and drove up the dirt road that led to the broadcast media gate on Washington Road.

  Sam felt better walking through the woods with the bulge of the gun under his left arm. Even with the moon reflecting off Ike’s Pond, and the sounds of music and laughter floating through the balmy night air from the cabins above the par 3 course, Sam saw how completely a man could disappear into the trees that surrounded the National. It was so dark now that he couldn’t see five feet into the woods.

  Caroline walked next to him with both of her arms wrapped around his bicep. She didn’t seem to mind that she could feel the shoulder holster under his jacket.

  “Is it going to be a problem bringing me up to the Crow’s Nest?” Caroline asked as they walked up the service road that led behind the cabins to the clubhouse.

  “No,” Sam said. “Wheeling and Compton both missed the cut and went home. I’ve got the place to myself.”

  “What’s David Porter going to think?” Caroline said.

  “I didn’t ask.”

  *

  They ate dinner on the porch again, watching the half-moon rise peacefully above the course and talking about anything they could think of besides Lee Doggett. The New York strips were grilled and seasoned just the way Sam liked them; the Silver Oak cabernet was the perfect complement. At odd moments Sam still felt at ease at the National. But he couldn’t forget that there was something out there in that ocean, under those waves. The police and security guards who were stationed at the clubhouse tried not to make themselves too conspicuous—no doubt at the request of David Porter, who was still trying to complete this Masters in as normal an atmosphere as possible. But every few minutes another man in a black windbreaker, black pants, white shirt, and a black ballcap would walk across the grass below them, past the tables with their drawn-in umbrellas, his gaze sweeping left and right. Sam didn’t find their increased presence comforting; with each pass of a security guard, he thought of a new way Doggett might get around them.

  They finished the wine, and Caroline yawned.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, covering her mouth. “It’s been a long day—and I didn’t sleep real well last night. Mind if I go to bed?�
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  “I’ll walk you up,” Sam said.

  As they stood up from the table, Caroline took his hand and looked him in the eye.

  “I’m starting to feel safe again,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “Least I can do for getting you into this,” Sam said.

  They walked into the library together and turned down the narrow hallway that led to the champions’ locker room. Halfway down the hall, they turned and went up the staircase to the Crow’s Nest.

  Sam had brought her bags up that morning and set them on one of the beds. He took off his clothes and hung the shoulder holster on the desk chair in his cubicle. He put on a pair of shorts, brushed his teeth, and got into his bed, turning out his light and listening as Caroline unzipped her bags in the adjoining cubicle. She eventually clicked off the light in the common area, and the moonlight streaming through the cupola made a slanted windowpane pattern on the wall at the foot of Sam’s bed.

  “I think you’re going to like my pajamas,” he heard her say.

  The shadow of a figure standing in his doorway was now superimposed over the windowpane pattern on the wall. Sam propped himself on his elbow and looked at Caroline, leaning up against the doorframe, backlit by the moon. Her dark hair hung to her shoulders, spreading out across the white of the caddie jumpsuit she was wearing. The zipper on the front of the jumpsuit was pulled halfway down to her waist.

  “Now you get to find out what I have on under here,” she said, walking slowly over to his bed.

  She sat on the edge of his bed, leaned over, and kissed him. He reached up and put his hands on her shoulders, then caressed her hair as it hung down near his face. He kissed her, and with his left hand he found the zipper and pulled it slowly downward. He put his hand inside the jumpsuit. All he felt was her smooth, soft skin. He kissed her again, then put both hands on the zippered edges of the open jumpsuit. He drew the two sides gently apart, and in the moonlight he saw her breasts spill out of the caddie suit.