Amen Corner Page 3

  “Ashby should have kept his mouth shut when that reporter talked to him last week,” Stanwick said. “If he wants women to join this club, that’s nobody’s business but his.”

  Stanwick turned his back on his wife and re-knotted his tie while he watched the newscast.

  “Also last night, an unexplained explosion rocked the Georgia Southern campus in Statesboro,” the anchor continued. The news footage showed the charred remains of a small wooden grandstand; then a new locator map came up behind the anchor, showing Statesboro to be 80 miles south of Augusta. “No one was injured in the blast that occurred at approximately 1:30 a.m., though Georgia Bureau of Investigation authorities estimate the apparently homemade device could easily have injured or killed dozens, had the grandstand been occupied. University officials and Statesboro police have turned up no motive for the blast…”

  “Ralph, are you listening to me?” Lorraine said. “We have to go. Harmon and Annabelle are waiting.”

  Stanwick turned off the TV and put on his green jacket. Yes, he thought, feeling a chill that seemed to begin between his shoulder blades and descend down his spine to the pit of his stomach. We should go.

  The phone rang as they were heading out the back door.

  “Let it ring,” Stanwick said.

  But Lorraine waved him off and went back into the living room to answer the phone. She said hello, then called to her husband.

  “Ralph, it’s for you,” she said.

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Stanwick took the phone and said hello. The line was dead.

  It couldn’t be Doggett. How would he know where to call? Then again, he worked at the National for five years. Maybe he did know…

  “Who was it?” Lorraine asked.

  “No one,” Stanwick said. “They hung up. Come on, we’re late for dinner.”

  Chapter Three

  It was a few minutes before midnight when Lee Doggett parked the blue pickup truck in front of the playground on West Vineland Road and turned off the ignition. The playground—sparsely equipped with a plastic climbing structure, a swing set, and a couple of benches—and the houses on either side of it were separated from the densely wooded eastern boundary of the Augusta National property by a six-foot chain-link fence.

  There were no lights on at any of the neatly kept brick houses up and down the street. Nevertheless, Doggett remained in the cab, making sure there was no one moving in the middle class neighborhood. Doggett knew there were security guards patrolling the grounds, but at night they tended to stay close to the clubhouse. He would avoid them by going in over the playground fence. He’d be finished in a few hours, and he’d be back at the truck long before the newspapers were delivered along West Vineland.

  He put the Smith & Wesson and a small flashlight that he’d stolen from the farmer into the pockets of his windbreaker, got out of the cab, closed the door softly, and walked through the deserted playground to the back fence. Glancing over his shoulder a final time to be sure he wasn’t being watched, Doggett put his toe into one of the metal holes and hoisted himself up and over the fence.

  It’s good to be back at the National. Did anybody miss me?

  Eight years had done little to impair his sense of the club’s geography, and the moon filtering through the tops of the towering loblolly pines provided all the light he needed. He set out westward through the woods and soon came to the large parking area for the television production trailers, surrounded by trees and positioned well away from the golf course. The public never saw this area, even though it was less than 100 yards from the eastern edge of the par 3 course that wrapped around Ike’s Pond.

  There were still lights burning in the one-story wooden cabin that was used as CBS’ production headquarters. A Securitas guard—wearing the company’s standard-issue dark windbreaker, black pants and black baseball cap—walked leisurely across the lot, keeping an eye on the mobile production trailers and satellite trucks with their millions of dollars’ worth of broadcast and editing equipment. Doggett stayed well back in the trees as he skirted the TV compound to the south, eventually finding the dirt service road that led to the golf course. He passed through an area so thick with trees that even the moon could barely penetrate, crossed a bridge over a creek, and came up a steep hill to a clearing in the woods. The open-ended auxiliary storage facility was still there, adjacent to a 30-foot greenhouse, just as he’d last seen it eight years ago, except that the wooden roof and corrugated metal sides of the shed were even more dilapidated than they used to be. It was funny how they operated at the National: Anything that might be seen on TV or by the ticket-buyers was kept in pristine condition; stuff set back in the woods, away from the public eye, looked as though it could have belonged to an under-funded municipal golf course.

  There were no lights at the 40-by-100-foot shed, and as he’d assumed, no guards watching it. Perfect. He slipped inside and, turning on the flashlight, maneuvered past a flatbed maintenance cart to a cabinet above a workbench. He opened one of the doors on the cabinet and found a small squeeze bottle of herbicide. He slid it into his pants pocket and cast the flashlight’s beam around the shed. Yes—everything he would need was right there, free for the taking.

  He left the shed and headed toward the golf course. The night air was cooling; Doggett was glad he’d worn the dark blue windbreaker he’d bought earlier in the day at a strip mall on the south end of town. It kept him warm and made him harder to see.

  Doggett followed the paved service road through the trees and out to the spot where it crossed in front of the deserted 11th tee. Even in the darkness, the course looked ready for the crush of 40,000 practice-round spectators who would flood the grounds the following morning. The gallery ropes, trash containers, ice coolers, and covered television equipment were all in place. The place was spotless as ever.

  An evening breeze blended intoxicating aromas of magnolia and dogwood blossoms, vaguely reminding Doggett of a fragrance his mama had worn long ago. When he thought of her, his hand instinctively went into his jacket pocket and gripped the butt of the Smith & Wesson. She had been so happy that day he’d come home to tell her he got the job on the National’s grounds crew. Doggett had liked the job, too—until the day he found out why he’d been hired.

  His mama had always told him his real daddy was dead and she didn’t want to talk about it. When his own marriage started to go bad, he began to wonder if maybe there was something he’d inherited from his father that caused him to have so much trouble with Renee—in fact, with every woman he’d ever known, except for his mama.

  He’d been working for five years on the National grounds crew when he stopped at has mama’s house one night after another fight with Renee and asked her to tell him who his father was.

  Laverne could see the determination in his eyes—those cold eyes that could only rarely be warmed up by her telling a joke, singing a song, or stroking him as he leaned his head against her on her porch swing. He was not going to leave until she told him. She got them both a beer, sat next to him on the swing, and began to cry.

  She told him about Ralph Stanwick. She told him what happened in his cabin. She told him that while she was on maternity leave she’d married Joe Doggett, an unemployed welder she’d met in a bar shortly after learning she was pregnant. That put a stop to most of the talk. Lee grew up knowing that Joe was his stepfather, but if anyone else thought Joe was Lee’s daddy—especially at the National—she let them go on thinking that.

  When Lee heard the story, he was furious. His mama had been treated like trash, like a whore, by a member of the club he worked for. Until then, he’d simply considered the members to be lucky guys—guys who didn’t have to get down in the dirt and transplant seedlings or drag bags of fertilizer around. Now that all changed; at least one of them was a rapist.

  That’s not
how it was, Laverne said, sobbing. It was part my fault, too.

  Doggett wished he could cry with his mama, but he felt only rage for the members of the National. They were all the same—do what they want, hurt whoever they want, and buy their way out of anything. All they care about is their goddamn golf club. Stanwick—his father—was rich, and Doggett and his mama lived like dirt.

  Laverne continued to cry, but her story had snuffed the last spark of human pity in Doggett’s heart. The beatings from his stepfather, the laughter and humiliation from his schoolmates, the bottom rung of the ladder he and his mama had been living on while his daddy jetted in and out of Augusta whenever he wanted—it wasn’t fair. It was a crime. Someone had to pay.

  Doggett knew who Ralph Stanwick was. He’d seen him from a distance, playing golf and going in and out of the Firestone Cabin during Masters Week. A tall, balding guy, with the confident demeanor of a man who didn’t worry about money. Doggett thought about confronting him, but dismissed it as foolishness. He knew Stanwick would deny everything, and would make sure he and his mama were fired. Doggett needed the job. Renee wasn’t working, but was spending way more than he was taking home. They had bill collectors calling almost every day. He didn’t know where the money was going, or how they were going to get out of debt, but he knew he couldn’t afford to lose his job.

  Then he thought of a way to hurt the club and help himself at the same time: counterfeit Masters badges. The club tried to stop it, but every year hundreds of badges changed hands for thousands of dollars, and some of them weren’t real. You could do it all on a personal computer.

  He bought a computer, and Renee hit the roof. Bad enough that he spent so much on beer, she told him. This computer is a waste of money—you’re a fucking greenskeeper, for Christ’s sake. He told her he could keep up with new developments in golf-course maintenance on the Internet, and the computer would give Lee Jr. a chance to keep up with the other kids in school. She laughed at him, and he hit her. He didn’t want Lee Jr. to see that, but maybe that’s what a man had to do to get a woman’s respect.

  He knew he and Renee were through. This was for him now, and for his mama. He found a picture of the previous year’s Masters badge in a golf magazine, scanned it, and changed the dates on his copy. He printed one on heavy paper stock, laminated it, and inspected the finished product. It wasn’t perfect, but it would fool someone who had never seen a Masters badge before and was desperate to get into the tournament.

  He waited until Wednesday of Masters Week before hitting the streets with his forged badges. He assumed the price would go up each day before the tournament began. He sold two badges for $3,000 apiece on Wednesday.

  On Thursday he sold another badge—to an undercover cop.

  On Friday the cops went to Doggett’s house and turned the place upside down. They found the counterfeiting program on his hard drive. They found his printing supplies, and badges. They also found a pound of cocaine.

  Lee had never used drugs, and couldn’t afford cocaine. It was obviously a plant, and there was no doubt in his mind who was behind it: Ralph Stanwick.

  But he had no proof, and he knew that if he even breathed Stanwick’s name, his mama would be fired. He couldn’t do that to her. That job was all she’d ever had in life.

  A year after he went to prison, his mama got cancer. She wrote that she was going to be fine, but she wasn’t. He didn’t hear from her for several weeks, then he received notification that she had been buried in a county cemetery. Renee sold the house and moved to Florida with Lee Jr. and didn’t leave a forwarding address. His life was ruined, all because of one man.

  *

  Doggett kept to the edge of the tree-line as he cautiously made his way up the hill toward the clubhouse and cabins. The half-moon was already beginning its descent in the sky, partly obscured by the 80-foot pines. He didn’t need its light; he knew every foot of the property. He knew exactly where the Firestone Cabin was—just below the crest of the hill from the 10th tee, and a short walk from the main clubhouse. The Stanwicks had stayed there during the last couple of Masters before he’d been sent to prison, and he knew that no one gave up the Firestone Cabin once they got it. It was in a prime location for entertaining and watching the tournament.

  He stayed in the shadows of the loblolly pines, moving quickly from bush to bush on the pine straw that lined the 10th fairway. The hill was steeper than he’d remembered, probably because he had always used some kind of maintenance vehicle to traverse the course when he worked there. He was panting by the time he neared the Firestone Cabin. He crouched behind the trunk of a pine and rested for a moment. Maybe he should have eaten a little more in prison, but the food was so awful that he’d lost a lot of weight while working out incessantly—and all the weights he’d lifted hadn’t prepared him for climbing the hills of the National.

  The parties were over for the night, and most of the lights were off in the clubhouse and the cabins. There was a light in a front window of the Firestone Cabin, however. So much the better. If he could lure Stanwick outside, he wouldn’t have to kill his wife, too. Not that he would mind killing her. She deserved it, for not giving Stanwick enough sex to keep him in his own bed. But it would be much harder to kill both of them quietly.

  To be sure no one else was around, Doggett circled the cabin, moving from the trees to an azalea bush to the black Mercedes S-500 parked in the driveway off the back door. He slipped on the work gloves he’d found at Robey’s farmhouse and tested the front door on the Mercedes. It was unlocked, of course. They live in such a dream world here. He slid into the car and opened the glove compartment, where he found the rental agreement from an Atlanta agency called LuxuRide. Using the flashlight, he read the signature on the $250-per-day agreement: Ralph Stanwick.

  He put the rental agreement back in the glove compartment and got out of the car, closing the door quietly. This was where Stanwick was staying, all right. He’d called the club’s main switchboard at about six and asked to speak to Ralph Stanwick in the Firestone Cabin, and they’d put him through. He’d hung up as soon as his wife said, “Ralph, it’s for you.” The rental agreement cinched it.

  He continued his circle of the house, looking into each of the darkened windows on the north side of the cabin—cabin, hell, this place is big enough to house half my cell block. Doggett felt his anger rising, as it had so many times in prison whenever he thought about Augusta National. He’d spent the last eight years living in a space that wouldn’t even qualify as a closet in Stanwick’s “cabin.” They have so much here; me and Mama had so little.

  The north side of the cabin was landscaped by a low hedge and a small flowering tree that brushed the white siding next to a window. He crept along the hedge to the base of the tree and carefully eased up to the edge of the windowsill that looked into the lighted front room. A balding man in a green jacket sat in an armchair watching television. The light was coming from a floor lamp behind the man, whose face was in shadow and turned at an angle toward the TV screen.

  It had been eight long years. Doggett was not about to wait any longer.

  He walked to the front door of the cabin and knocked just loud enough to be sure the man inside could hear it. Then he ran around the right corner of the house by the pine trees. He heard the door open and saw Stanwick stick his head outside, looking in both directions.

  “Help…I’m hurt,” Doggett groaned, just loud enough to be heard from the front door. “I need help.”

  The man in the green jacket hesitated, then called, “Who’s there?”

  “Bill,” Doggett said, pulling a name at random. “Ohh…”

  The balding man walked down the steps and toward the dark stand of pines where Doggett crouched. “Bill who? Where are you?” he called.

  “Here,” Doggett groaned.

  When Stanwick was almost on top of him in the darkness, Doggett grabb
ed his legs and pulled him to the ground, jamming a gloved hand over his mouth and putting his free hand around his neck. Then Doggett pinned Stanwick’s arms under his knees and put both hands on the man’s throat, squeezing his windpipe so no sound but a desperate gurgle could escape. This was the moment he’d waited for all those years, the moment for which he’d done 20 extra reps at the end of each grueling weight session, working the muscles in his hands and his forearms so one day—this day—he could choke the life out of the bastard who’d created and then ruined his own life. Doggett exulted in the satisfaction of killing Ralph Stanwick with his bare hands.

  Die, you miserable cocksucker. Die!

  Stanwick’s eyes rolled up in his head; his arms and legs flailed helplessly, then not at all. When he’d been still for at least a minute, Doggett put his ear to Stanwick’s chest, felt his carotid artery and then his wrist. He let Stanwick’s arm fall limp to the ground, and stood up, feeling—for one of the few times in his life—proud of himself. For once, he’d done exactly what he’d planned to do. He’d killed his father, for his mama.

  He gazed in triumph at the crumpled form in the darkness at his feet: Not such a big man now, are you?

  He reached down and lifted Stanwick’s body over his shoulder. He was lighter than Doggett had expected, but it would still be a difficult task carrying him all the way down the hill. It couldn’t be helped, however; he had to get Stanwick’s body away from the cabin, away from the clubhouse area in case his wife had awoken or the guards walked by. He needed time to finish his work.

  Doggett began descending the hill with cautious steps, trying not to slip on the pine straw, but found the going fairly easy. He stopped to rest behind the 10th green, dumping Stanwick’s body to the ground like a bag of laundry. He listened for sounds of alarm from the cabins, but the night air was still. Then he hoisted Stanwick’s body over his shoulder again and half-jogged the rest of the way down the 11th fairway to Amen Corner, the lowest part of the club’s property, where a wide spot in Rae’s Creek formed a pond in front of the 12th green.