When the official with the Barber-Cartwright pairing gave the two ex-champs the news, both decided to go back up to the clubhouse to wait out the delay. A courtesy SUV parked behind the grandstand at 12 would take them up the hill. Most of the spectators chose to stay in the grandstand and on the hillside overlooking Amen Corner, rather than risk losing their seats when play resumed.
Dwight Wilson couldn’t sit still, however. He left the grandstand and walked behind it to the concession area, where confused spectators and employees were creating a scene of near-chaos. He spotted the caddies for Barber and Cartwright loading their clubs into the SUV. He asked Chipmunk if he saw what happened.
“No, we was trying to play golf,” Chipmunk said.
“Sounded like a plane crashed in the woods,” Barber said.
“No, it was a bomb,” the shuttle driver said. “They’re saying nobody was hurt. Whoever did it might have blown himself up—dumb shit. Good riddance. Anyways, we might be playing again in an hour or so.”
“Well, they’d better catch the bugger first,” Cartwright said. “It’s difficult to concentrate with explosions in one’s backswing.”
“We’re heading back up to the clubhouse, Dwight,” Barber said. “Want a lift?”
“Sure thing.”
The driver inched the Cadillac Escalade through the crowd between the bathrooms and the concession tent. Dwight looked out at the people they were passing. Some still looked frightened and confused. Others seemed almost giddy that they’d narrowly avoided a disaster, and now had a story they could tell the folks back in Knoxville or Spartanburg.
Dwight expected all of the pros and their caddies to take the shuttles back to the clubhouse. There was really no place to wait on the course. Then he noticed a caddie, golf bag over his shoulder, walking through the crowd along the ropes behind the 10th green, headed down the hill toward the 11th hole. This was strange. Why would this guy be moving against the flow of security guards, all of whom seemed to be headed up the 11th fairway to the site of the explosion?
Dwight didn’t recognize him. Who was he looping for? Dwight shifted his weight and turned his head as far to the rear as he could, looking out the rear window of the SUV, to get a look at the back of the caddie’s jumpsuit as he walked through the crowd.
“Chipmunk, you recognize that caddie?” Dwight said to his cousin.
Chipmunk turned to look at the receding caddie. They couldn’t read the name on the back of the suit through the crowd. They watched as the caddie kept walking, finally emerging into an open space where they could get a clear look:
rockingham
“What the hell? That’s not Shane Rockingham’s caddie,” Dwight said.
“Weed’s shorter. Got long hair,” Chipmunk agreed.
“He wouldn’t be here anyway,” Dwight said. “Rockingham left town Tuesday morning. That’s Weed’s jumpsuit—but that sure as hell ain’t Weed.”
“No, it sure ain’t,” Chipmunk agreed.
“You mind if we stop a minute, Al?” Dwight said.
“What’s up?” Barber asked.
“I gotta find a security guard.”
The driver came to a stop, and Dwight got out of the SUV. The guy with rockingham on his jumpsuit had vanished into the crowd. The only security guards and cops Dwight could see were running across the 11th fairway to see if they could lend a hand at the explosion site. Dwight went back to the SUV and asked the driver if he could contact the clubhouse.
“I can call tournament headquarters,” the driver said.
“Tell them I need to talk to a guy named Sam Skarda,” Dwight said. “Right now.”
*
Sam had moved out of the smoky woods into the 11th fairway, covered now by a small army of security and emergency people. Photographers who had been following the players were now focusing their lenses on the chaotic scene. A few spectators near the 11th tee had been nicked by flying wood chips and rocks from the explosion, but there’d been no damage to the course, and no serious injuries—just a lot of noise, smoke, and confusion.
Sam had no doubt now. That was just the first bomb—a diversion.
He heard his radio crackle.
“Skarda? It’s Boyce.”
Sam switched on his transmitter: “What is it?”
“A man named Dwight Wilson called in for you. Says he saw a guy in a caddie suit with the name Rockingham on the back, walking through the crowd with a golf bag. What’s the story? Rockingham’s out of the tournament, right?”
“He’s been gone since Thursday,” Sam said, almost shouting into the radio. “Where was this guy?”
“Somewhere in the crowd between the 10th green and the 12th hole,” Boyce said.
“It could be Doggett!” Sam said, starting to run across the fairway. “Call Petrakis! Get the cameras on that crowd. Find the guy in the Rockingham suit!”
His breath was coming in gasps as he ran toward the grandstand behind the 12th tee. If Doggett had gotten his hands on Weed’s jumpsuit, he could walk through the crowd unnoticed—with a golf bag full of explosives.
“Where are you?” Boyce asked.
“11th fairway,” Sam panted. “Where are you?”
“Halfway down 10. I’m headed for the bomb site.”
“There’s no way Doggett used two bags of fertilizer on that bomb in the woods!” Sam said. “He’s still got a golf bag full of the stuff!”
Sam’s left knee was stiffening up on him. He wasn’t moving fast enough. He scanned the throngs of people in the pines to the right of 11 and couldn’t see anyone in a caddie suit.
“Culver,” Sam said into his radio. “This is Skarda. Can you hear me? Put Caroline on.”
“Sam, it’s me.” It was Caroline’s voice. “We’re looking for that caddie, but we’re not seeing anything.”
“Are there any hand-held cameras by the 12th hole?”
Caroline was silent a moment. Sam wondered what they were seeing. He needed to go somewhere, do something—but what? Where?
“No,” she finally said. “The portable crews in that area went up the hill to where the explosion was. We’re looking at a shot from the camera behind the 12th green. Going tight on the crowd. Nothing…I don’t see him…”
Sam began running faster, his knee screaming. He crossed the gallery ropes and ran to the concession area behind the grandstand on 12. He looked at the spectators under the tent and standing in front of the souvenir stand. He ran through the men’s bathroom. Nothing.
He was about to call back to Caroline when he noticed a gate-like doorway in the green mesh material that covered the backside of the grandstand. The gate was covered by the same material, but Sam could see movement behind it. He pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster, held it at his side, and walked carefully up to the back of the grandstand. He could still see a figure through the tight green mesh. Could the figure inside see him? The backdrop of sunlight would make his image visible through the material. Even though he wasn’t wearing a police uniform, Sam couldn’t risk that Doggett wouldn’t shoot him through the mesh anyway.
He dropped to a crouch, reached for the latch on the gate, swung the door open, and thrust the Glock into the opening.
“Put down the gun!” he yelled.
Inside, three terrified teenagers in yellow jumpsuits—members of the club’s litter detail—threw their hands up. The playing cards they were holding fell from their hands and scattered on the makeshift card table between them.
“Don’t shoot, man,” one of them stammered. “We’re just playing poker!”
Sam let out his breath, stood up, and put the Glock back in the holster. He’d been ready to put a bullet into whoever was under that grandstand. Finding Doggett was going to be hard enough; stopping him without hurting anybody else was going to be harder.
He apologized to the wide-eyed litter crew, closed the gate, and suddenly wondered why he was doing this. Why was he risking his life, and the life of anyone who might come between him and Doggett? He could hear Caroline’s voice in his head: David Porter had hired him to find out who the killer was. Now they knew—why not let the cops take over?
The question answered itself, and Sam knew it: It wasn’t about working for Augusta National. It was about saving lives. He’d almost been too late to save Caroline; everyone in this crowd meant as much to someone else as Caroline was beginning to mean to him. He had to keep anyone else from dying, if he could.
And maybe Doug Stensrud was right about him, too—once a cop, you’re a cop. Maybe a part of him needed this.
Sam walked quickly around the grandstand to the sloping hillside between the front of the grandstand and 12th tee, where hundreds of spectators sat and stood in the grass, waiting for play to resume. He turned to scan the seats behind them—nearly full, with those in the top rows standing and looking up the 11th fairway toward the scene of the explosion.
“I’ve swept the grandstand at 12 and the concession area behind the grandstand,” Sam said into the radio. “I don’t see him.”
“We’re still scanning the pines between 11 and 13,” Caroline said into Culver’s radio. “Lots of people still there, but I don’t…wait.”
“What?”
“There’s a caddie! Tony, can we get a close-up with the fairway camera on 11?”
Silence for a few moments.
“Tighter!” Sam heard Petrakis yell in the background. Then Caroline said, “It’s him! That’s the bastard who tried to kill me! I know it! He’s got a golf bag over his shoulder, but no clubs. Yeah, it says rockingham on his jumpsuit. He’s in the trees…between the 11th and 13th fairways…It looks like he’s headed toward the 12th hole.”
Sam ran around the right corner of the grandstand. There were still too many people milling around the concession area. Did every spectator on the course come running over here when they heard the explosion? And where were the cops?
“Keep a camera on him,” Sam said. “If he changes direction, let me know. Boyce, are you listening?”
“Yeah. We’re trying to get the security guards back from the explosion site.”
“Well, make it quick, or there’s going to be another one,” Sam said.
Sam ran into the pine trees that guarded the high side of the dogleg on 13, hoping to intercept Doggett before he got to the densely packed Amen Corner. He pushed past knots of spectators until he’d almost reached the 14th fairway. Nothing. He asked a marshal in a yellow plastic hardhat if he’d seen a caddie go by. The marshal nodded and pointed back into the trees, toward the 12th hole.
Sam dodged spectators as he ran back along the paved path through the trees to the concessions area behind the grandstand on 12. No security guards or cops yet—and no sign of Doggett, either. There couldn’t be a better spot to kill hundreds of people. Where the hell was he?
“Sam!” Caroline yelled in his earpiece. “We’ve got a close-up of him from the camera behind the 12th green. He’s kneeling beside the grandstand! He’s leaning the bag against the grandstand and lighting a cigarette…Now he’s putting the cigarette into the golf bag!”
“Which side?” Sam yelled. “Left or right? You gotta tell me which side!”
“Right side—looking from behind the green!”
He pushed his way through the people clustered around him and ran around the corner of the grandstand.
There was Doggett—the sides and back of his head shaved under the green Masters cap, rockingham written across the back of his jumpsuit—stepping over the rope next to the 12th tee and walking toward the Hogan Bridge, away from the crowd and away from the golf bag he’d left leaning against the grandstand. A wisp of smoke curled up from the smoldering cigarette that he had placed on top of the fluid-soaked towel and the fertilizer.
Sam pulled the Glock from its holster. He couldn’t stop both Doggett and the bomb. He ran to the golf bag.
Doggett looked over his shoulder and yelled, “Hey—get away from there!”
Doggett reached inside his jumpsuit for the gun he’d used to kill Harwell. With Rae’s Creek and the 12th green behind Doggett, Sam had a safe shot.
“Police! Put it down!” Sam screamed as he aimed the Glock. Doggett’s hand emerged from the jumpsuit, holding a gun.
The shot wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. It hit Doggett in the neck, spun him around, and dropped him onto the fairway.
Sam picked the cigarette fuse off the top of the golf bag and threw it onto the grass. The gunshot still echoed across Rae’s Creek as Doggett’s blood oozed onto the immaculate turf. People in the grandstand were screaming, stunned to have witnessed a Masters caddie gunned down before their eyes. Who was the madman who shot him? Who would he shoot next?
“Everybody get back!” Sam yelled to those standing nearby. “I’m a cop!”
He picked up the golf bag, one hand on the handle and the other on the bottom of the bag, ran to the edge of Rae’s Creek, and threw the bag as far as he could. It landed in the still pond with a splash, bobbed briefly, then sank silently to the bottom.
Sam returned to Doggett, lying on his back in the middle of the tightly mown slope that led down to the Hogan Bridge. He was still alive, but blood poured from the wound in his neck. His eyes were wide open, staring at nothing but conveying an unquenched fury.
“Doggett,” Sam said, kneeling next to him. “What the hell were you trying to do?”
“Kill it,” Doggett said, gasping. There was blood in his throat, bubbling into his mouth and running down his chin.
“Kill what?” Sam asked.
The lids of Doggett’s eyes were beginning to droop, and the blood from his wound was turning the front of the jumpsuit from brilliant white to a deep cherry.
“The goddam…Masters…”
His eyelids fluttered and closed.
Sam stood up. Every eye in the grandstand was riveted on the lifeless Doggett. His green hat lay a few feet away, and the blazing sunlight glinted off his shaved, sweaty head.
Sam switched on his radio and called Boyce.
“It’s Skarda. Doggett’s dead. Tell Porter he’ll get his final round in.”
Chapter Forty-one
At the post-tournament press conference, the questions centered on Lee Doggett. Who was he, the reporters wanted to know. Was he responsible for all of the killings that week? How had he gotten onto the course? Why was he trying to bomb the Masters?
Mark Boyce of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation joined David Porter at the front table in the media center, giving the same sort of circumspect answers that Porter usually gave to questions about club matters.
“We don’t know whether or why Mr. Doggett may have committed the series of murders this week,” Boyce said in an authoritative monotone, as he faced the tiers of reporters and cameras. “That will have to wait until we complete our investigations. He’s our prime suspect, obviously, but we can’t say more than that now.”
Sam stood off to the side with Caroline, watching the spectacle. Boyce had told him that he shouldn’t answer any questions. But Sam wanted to be at the press conference, if only to prepare himself for whatever spin the media would put on the story.
The question foremost in every reporter’s mind was asked by Russ Daly of the L.A. Times.
“David, can you tell us why you went ahead and completed play today?” Daly asked. “You had a cop shot and killed, a bomb go off on the grounds, and an alleged murderer gunned down in front of your customers. Didn’t you even think about calling it off?”
Porter cleared his throat, adjusted his microphone and assumed the calm, controlled manner he’d always exhibited in front of the assembled media.
&n
bsp; “Our weather radar indicated a series of thunderstorms moving in this evening, which we were told would last through most of the day tomorrow,” Porter said. “We felt we owed it to our patrons to do everything we could to complete the tournament on schedule. We understand that today’s events were shocking, but after order was restored, we believed everyone preferred to see the golf tournament resume. CBS did a wonderful job of keeping our millions of viewers informed throughout the afternoon, and I would particularly like to compliment Cameron Myers for his professionalism during the…disturbance, and afterward.
“The players put on a wonderful display of shotmaking today. Frank Naples’ chip-in to win on the 18th hole will be remembered as one of the greatest shots in Masters history.”
Sam looked at Caroline in disbelief. Everyone else in the world would remember this Masters as the year a murderer ran amok on the course—but to David Porter, the crisis had been handled, and all was right again on Magnolia Lane.
Even Robert Brisbane, seated to the side near Sam and Caroline, had to cover his chin with the palm of his hand to suppress a smile.
Brisbane had advised Porter to postpone the tournament’s conclusion, but Porter had insisted on trying for a Sunday finish. It had taken the police and EMTs about two hours to complete their crime-scene investigation and remove Doggett’s body from Amen Corner. Play then resumed with Barber and Cartwright—the first group out—finishing their 12th hole.
When the cops had taken Sam’s statement, Boyce brought him up to the Butler Cabin, where Caroline was waiting for him in the basement studio CBS used for the televised presentation of the green jacket. She put her arms around Sam and held him tightly for a moment, then pulled away. She told him she’d watched him shoot Doggett on the CBS monitor. It hadn’t gone out over the air, but it was an image that would never leave her.
“You didn’t hesitate,” she said. “You were trying to kill him.”
Her tone was not accusatory, but matter-of-fact. She was still trying to process the violence she’d witnessed.
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