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RAVENEL WAS NEITHER surprised nor happy to hear my news about Jocko Moore.
“I told that goddam chief that I ought to have that scumbag picked up right away,” he said. “He gave me this long speech about how much money the city and the county make every year from that goddam golf tournament and how I should do everything in my power not to disrupt their operation. Shit. Now I gotta chase this guy all over hell and back.”
Ravenel also told me that Rudy Hill, that pleasant gentleman who owned the Drowned Rat, and who sold drugs to Jocko, was also missing. “They said he was out fishing,” Ravenel said with a snort. “Probably he and Jocko are hiding out together. No problem. We’ll find ‘em.”
“How does Bert Lewis fit into all this?” I wondered.
“Well, he still ain’t talking, and the Tour has hired a lawyer for him, so I really can’t say,” the police lieutenant told me. “But my theory goes that Jocko told Lewis to take Turnbull out and kill him, or no more drugs. And since Lewis apparently didn’t like Turnbull all that much anyway, that made it easier.”
“But Eddie Roland only saw them together outside the clubhouse for a short time,” I said. “Nobody saw them together after that. You’re going to have a tough time making that brief meeting into a murder charge.”
“Goddam it, Hacker,” Ravenel almost shouted at me. “That’s mighty close to tampering with a material witness.”
“Oh, hell, Ravenel,” I retorted. “I’m just doing my job...filling in the holes. The guy talked to me. I didn’t have to threaten him with death-by-reading-Golf Digest or anything.”
He grumbled at me for a while longer until I told him to shut the hell up and leave me alone. “Listen,” I said, changing the subject. “Are you aware of another little conflict that Turnbull was in that night?”
“You mean his argument with the Reverend Whosis?” Ravenel said. “Yeah, we heard about that. I sent one of the boys out to talk to this Durkee fellow. He said he left the meeting that night and went straight home to bed. Of course, there’s no corroboration of that, but the guy is a man of God, right? Just for the record, I checked up on his whereabouts last night, when someone tried to bump your sorry ass off the Wappoo Road. He was pastoring, I think he said, with another player. Checks out—he was.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Sounds like it was all just a family squabble then.”
“Yeah,” Ravenel said. “I think that when we find Jocko Moore and Rudy Hill, we’ll find one of them was motoring down Wappoo last night.”
We hung up. Ravenel was off to set up his dragnet. I thought I’d try to backtrack Jocko some and see what I could discover.
Even after another pain pill, I was still a mass of aches. It took me a while to walk down to the maintenance sheds. Keeping a golf course all neat and trim takes a bunch of mechanical equipment: a whole fleet of small trucks, utility vehicles, trailers, gang mowers, hand trimmers, fertilizers, seed, rakes, piles of sand, fresh rolls of turf. So it takes a sizeable building to house all that stuff. At Bohicket, there were three or four small buildings arranged around a clearing, hidden well away from the golf course.
I followed a dirt road through some bushes behind the eleventh green, down past some high sand dunes and rounded a corner into the clearing, which was now full of parked eigh- teen-wheelers and other large moving trucks. The sheds, arrayed around the edge of the clearing, were all prefab metal structures, windowless and oven-hot in the midday sun. The long TV trail- ers, connected by thick strands of cables and wires, hummed gently. I saw nobody as I walked up. The grounds crew were posted out around the course to take care of any emergency needs, and the TV boys were occupied in front of their moni- tors and control consoles.
I entered the largest shed through the gaping garage door that stood open. Inside, I saw nothing but stacks of tools along the wall, a couple of five-gallon gasoline cans, a bulldozer attachment against the back wall. More electrical humming came from the overhead electricity wires. Most of the maintenance vehicles were battery-operated, like golf carts, and needed re- charging every night.
I wandered down the line of sheds, seeing no one and hearing nothing. I stuck my head in each one, looked around, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I opened the door of the last shed and stepped inside. There was a long tool bench on the left, piled high with wrenches, saws and various pieces of lumber and lengths of plastic piping. There was a smaller room feeding off the back of the shed. Through the door, I could see piles of empty burlap bags that had once been filled with grass seed.
I poked my head in the small room. It was dark and hot. And silent. I caught a strangely sweet odor, a mingling of grass seed, burlap and ...something else. I knew, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Then I noticed a foot, peeping out from beneath the stacks of burlap bags. I smiled to myself. Jocko, you stupid, lazy, drunk sonofabitch, sleeping away while the cops search for you. Then I realized that the stack of burlap wasn’t rising and falling. And then I remembered where I knew that sweet, sickly smell. And the silence of that hot, little room crowded in on me in a rush, speaking louder than words ever could.
I forced myself to walk over and pull back the burlap. It was Jocko, all right. And he was sleeping. Forever. His eyes were closed and his face was relaxed in repose. His mouth hung open in a silent snore and a tiny trickle of crimson ran crookedly down his cheek.
Sticking out of his neck, in that soft place just at the top of the rib cage, was the grip end of a golf shaft. About eighteen inches long, more or less. It was hard to tell, because the shaft had been plunged down through Jocko Moore’s throat. With, it was obvious, malice aforethought.