motionless, the white truck’s engine still rumbling.
She helped roll Siller’s body over and observed that
he’d been shot through the neck and the back of the
head. Blood pooled beneath him. He gave no pulse,
no signs of life—but still, she and another golfer took
turns administering CPR.
Only when a dozen police cars roared up to the scene
did the futile compressions finally cease. Byrne, in the
commotion, had left her phone in the golf cart, and
there it would remain for hours, buzzing in her purse,
as the caller sped toward Pinetree.
Police activated a manhunt for an attacker wearing
a white shirt and dark work pants. Bryant, back at the
pro shop, wondered despondently whether he should’ve
made the trip to 10 himself. And Nycum helped cobble
together a note, calling off the fireworks.Amid the chaos, the GM stepped outside for a quiet
moment—but he was quickly interrupted by a call. On
the other end he heard a desperate woman’s voice.T
HE NIGHT OF the shooting, Ashley retreated to the
bottom bunk in a bedroom at her mother’s home that
was reserved for visiting grandkids. The bed is adorned
with a navy-blue comforter; the boys’ names are stitched
into the pillows. Like a cave, it insulated Ashley from
the horrors of the new life that loomed outside. But she
knew she would have to break that barrier.
The next day, she brought in the boys, still ignorant
to their father’s fate, and sat ashen-faced on the edge
of the lower mattress—Beau on her lap, Banks in front
of her. She had spoken to a child psychologist about
76 how to break the news without breaking her children.
Banks sat with his iPad, a picture of Gene on
the screen, staring in silence for long stretches.
“I JUST WANT TO LOOK AT HIS FACE,”he would say.
FR
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(^) LIL
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