by Mark Hall
hot fire. It might take a while to get the temperature up but once it is there, it ought to hold it”.
“These trees,” he looked up, “disperse whatever smoke there is. With one of these fire holes, there’s less smoke anyway. Wow.”
“And nobody around for a couple hundred acres” Chris added and turned to me, “A simple design with great results”. He stood back up and ran off in the opposite direction toward the north west corner of the island.
“Where’s he going?” Jimmy asked.
“He does that” I answered. We jogged over to Chris who was standing next to the creek. He was pointing at the bank.
“They aren’t crossing the creek,” he explained, “they are riding down the creek to get here.”
“I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t looking at it!” Jimmy exclaimed. Along the sandy bank were clear marks where a boat or boats had been pulled up.
“Last time here, there were only two of them,” Chris said, “and it looks like only two sets of the same boots at this other place, too. My guess is that they are coming in up the creek, stopping here to do their work, then going down further to unload”.
“Why do all that?” Jimmy asked.
“To keep quiet” Chris answered. “If not, they’d need a boat motor to head back upstream. You can’t see their operation from the creek, I don’t think, so at any point they could drop their load, or float on by if anyone came after them. Jimmy, is there any logging on the north side of the creek?”
“I don’t know, Chris. What are you thinking?”
“Just thinking for now. But if there is logging -- that answers two questions for us.”
FIVE
“I tell you what, I don’t know how y’all figured this out. I know you, Mark, are with the Marshals, but you ain’t smart enough to work this out”, he turned to Chris, “but you did. What is it you do?”
“He’s with my crowd”, I answered and I began to realize I used that an awful lot.
“So what’s next?” Jimmy asked.
“They are getting on and off the creek in two places, one upstream and one downstream”, I said, “and I can’t imagine there is too much of the creek without a tree across it or in it so it ought not be far in either direction.”
At that moment, a noise came from downstream. It sounded like diesel engine equipment being started up and idling. Soon after, we could hear the machinery moving and the sounds of trees being cut and falling over.
“That’s the answer”, Chris pointed in the direction of the noise, “there is a logging crew downstream and that tells us how they get the boat back upstream without being noticed. It also tells us where the gravel road is that Ryan remembered.” We took several pictures of their operation then headed back to the other side of the island and crossed the tree then made our way back to the truck with the four wheelers. We loaded the three up and I dropped my trailer at the motorcycle shop there on Houston Road and Jimmy got in the truck with us.
Jimmy was in the back and leaned up to ask, “How do you figure on where the gravel is and how they take the boat back upstream? Just from a logging crew?”
Chris had pulled up an aerial map of the area on the laptop and pointed to a road off of Nowell Road on the north end of the Echeconnee Creek. We pulled down that road and came to what appeared to be a newly cut road that had gravel on it for the first several yards.
Chris began to explain, “When a logging company begins work on a property, they cut a road. And they are required to place gravel on that road that connects to a main road to lessen the impact on the county road, like mud. This is where Ryan felt the gravel road was. This is also why their thefts had sped up the further along the logging was going”.
Jimmy almost jumped out of his seat. The first several dozen acres had already been clear cut as we drove past the cut timber.
Chris continued as we drove down the new logging road. “I thought about it when we were driving into the Elrod place on what looked like an old logging road.”
“But what has logging got to do with the boat going back upstream?” Jimmy asked.
“Cover. It would be easy to hear a small boat motor heading up the creek during the daytime. Unless there was already equipment running nearby where you could also hear it. You wouldn’t be able to tell any difference unless you were right on top of it and if you did hear small outboard motor you would just think it was a chainsaw”.
Jimmy sat back in the seat and pulled his hat off. “That is just about the dangdest thing I have ever heard of – and smart on their part. Still, how do they come back through here to get the boat without loggers or somebody noticing them?”
“One of them never leaves the boat” Chris replied. “They load whatever copper they’ve got onto that trailer, probably under some real logs or scrap wood or something, then one man drives the trailer out while the other waits for logging to get started then brings the boat back upstream to their truck and heads on out from there.”
“But without something like a cattle trailer, they couldn’t get it out as easy without being noticed” I added.
“Unbelievable” Jimmy said. We had driven up to where the logging was taking place and I got out to talk to the foreman. He stepped down off the loader and I asked if he had seen any trailers coming through. He mentioned that they had allowed these two guys to come in and scrap some of the wood that was left over. They had an old gooseneck cattle trailer.
“They said they sold firewood and so I made a deal to get a couple cords for letting them come out. But I haven’t seen them since then and I don’t believe they have gotten any firewood at all”.
We drove on further to the end of the road and walked another quarter mile or so down to the creek. After just a few minutes of walking the bank we saw where a boat had slid up to the bank.
“There’s the place” Jimmy said and shook his head. “I would have never figured that out in a million years. I dropped a pin on my GPS when we were at the fire pit and according to this it is no more than a hundred yards up the creek from here.”
“This is why the thefts have increased over the past couple weeks. The logging is getting closer to being done and when the loggers leave, their cover leaves” Chris said.
We left the property and later found their entrance to the creek upstream from the island about the same distance as the downstream location, which fit Chris’ theory. The put a boat in the water with the wire at one location, floated down a hundred yards or so to the ox-bow island, melted down the copper and waited for it to cool, loaded the boat with the slags, then floated down another hundred yards to the landing a quarter mile or so from the trailer. We drove back to Jimmy’s truck.
I told Jimmy, “You let your folks know what is going on and I will call the sheriff and fill him in, too. I figure we can put together something for these two and catch them next week”.
Jimmy agreed and left for his office. Chris and I met with the sheriff who put together a plan for waiting out the truck and trailer where the logging road met the main road, and also where they could catch the upstream truck coming out. Chris mentioned the best night would be Sunday night if there had been any thefts reported during the week. If not, he suggested we wait until the following Sunday.
“Why Sunday?” I asked.
“Because that is the late night and morning of the least amount of traffic – Sunday night”, Chris answered. “And the logging crew doesn’t typically work on Sundays”.
“Exactly right”, the sheriff said and held a stare with me for a few seconds. Chris and I had worked with him on a couple occasions already and I began to wonder if he suspected anything about Chris’ involvement.
We wouldn’t have to wait until Sunday. A rain moved in that Tuesday for the next couple days and dumped a couple inches on middle Georgia and there had been no reports of copper theft during the storms.
Chris and I were on the way back from Forsyth on Friday night when I got a call. It
was Mr. Billy Sullivan, the owner of Midstate Fabrication and Ryan’s boss.
We spoke for a minute or so and I said “I understand, Mr. Billy. We’ll get it back to you in one piece I hope. I am pretty sure we can find it.”
I hung up and looked over at Chris. “They’ve stolen one of Mr. Billy’s service trucks from his lot”.
Chris sat up, “They’ve either broken Ryan’s weld or the old trailer has broken in another place. That means they are back there on the island right now. But there hasn’t been a report of any copper stolen?”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen – just means it hasn’t been reported”. I called the sheriff who immediately responded by sending his people out to the logging site. When we got there almost an hour later, the trailer and truck were in the logging road with the service truck backed up to the right side of the truck. It didn’t take long to notice Ryan’s weld on the left side of the trailer and the attempt to repair another section on the right side. There were several cars and DNR trucks alongside the road and forensic teams were already at work on the area. In the back of one of the cars was who must have been one of the two copper thieves. He scowled at us as we walked by. There was water standing in places and mud everywhere.
We got out of the truck and I said to Chris, “You’re going to mess up your cute little Sperry’s” I said looking at his feet. “I keep telling you to get
