they wanted to talk to me about a kind of an offsite welding job. I think they knew I had a welder on the service truck that Mr. Billy let me take home. Mr. Billy had said that if I ever got a call for a job to take it and take the truck so I kept listening. The guy told me that the job was that night and to meet him behind the old Food Lion on Watson.”
“Well, I told them that the rate Mr. Billy charged for service calls was $150 per call plus whatever I charge an hour. This guy looks at me and says he’s going to pay Mr. Billy his $150 and then pay me $1000 for the night, cash”.
“and you went” Chris stated.
“I went”, Ryan replied, “because $1000 is what I might make in two weeks. I met them over behind the Food Lion and then it got weird”.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“What time was it then?” Chris asked.
“We met at 10:30”.
“10:30?” I asked, “why meet that late at night for a job”?
Chris added, “And why wait at all when you could have gone right after work.”
“I know. When the tall guy told me a thousand I said there was no way I was doing anything against the law. This guy says it was a welding job, period, but there were a couple stipulations that might seem weird.”
“Such as?” Chris asked.
“They wouldn’t tell me until we met at the Food Lion, so I met them. They told me there that I had to let one of them drive Mr. Billy’s truck while I laid down in the back seat floorboard of the first truck.”
I looked at Chris then back at Ryan not much believing that I was hearing this.
“When I asked them why I had to do that, the other guy says it was because they didn’t want me to know where I was going. I asked why and they said it was because it was on Silver Dollar Hunting Club, which I had never heard of. They said I haven’t heard of it because the lease rate on this two thousand acres of property was $25,000 a year for each member on top of a $50,000 entry fee. There were only so many members each year and the hunting is out of this world. They keep it secret to keep the poachers out and to keep people from knowing about it. These two guys were the managers of the place”.
“For twenty-five grand a year, the deer better walk up to me shake my hand!” I exclaimed.
“That’s a lot?” Chris asked.
“Dad gum, that is a lot!” I said, “You can get a lease up and down the river for $30 an acre, tops. With that kind of money, they could afford to pay you that, Ryan. But that still ought to have made you wonder about what kind of deal it was, getting down in the back of a truck”.
“It got better, Mr. Mark. I told them I didn’t like the idea of not driving Mr. Billy’s truck since I was responsible for it, much less riding for ever how long in floorboard. This guy just smiles and looks at his buddy then back at me and says ‘how about 1500, then?’ He tells me where we are going is a clear cut road right down in the swamp and the worst that would happen to Mr. Billy’s truck is that it might get some mud on it. 1500 is a pile of money so I told him I’d do it and I got in the back seat of the truck and he gave me his coat to put my head on. The other guy took my keys and followed us after we finally left the parking lot of the Food Lion.”
“Finally left?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. He rode around in circles and stopped and backed up a few times. Told me he was sorry but he needed to make sure I couldn’t get back to where we were going. Once we did get going, I couldn’t tell you anything about it other than we must have been a good ways from town because it was a good hour before we stopped.”
THREE
“So that would be about 45 miles. That would be Butler, Cochran, Musella, and tons of other places. There’s no way to figure how far out you got.” I said.
“Do you have a smartphone?” Chris asked.
“Yes, sir, but they kept it until we got back.”
“Go ahead with your story, Ryan” I said.
“Wait a minute”, Chris jumped in, “do you remember any sounds, like a train?”
“No, sir”.
“What about the road? How the pavement sounded?”
“Well, we swapped over to a gravel road for a short while then what I figure to be a field road or a road through the woods.”
“Was it a right turn or a left turn off the main road?” Chris asked.
“I do think we turned left going in but turned left again when we got back out. When we got there and they let me out, we were in deep woods. I looked around some but it was pitch black outside and the trees kept me from seeing city lights but I could hear some traffic. I did catch the Little Dipper so I knew which way was north but that didn’t help me any because I was all crossed up on the way back.”
“What was the job?” I asked.
“Well, they had brought my service truck in first and had backed it up to a gooseneck trailer, which they must have been pulling out with their truck because I knew it had a gooseneck ball in the bed of it from other times they had been by the shop. The trailer had some age on it and they had broke it where the neck meets the frame of the trailer. This trailer looked like a cattle trailer, the kind with sides built on it.”
“Did you get a look in the trailer?” I asked.
“Now that was something. I was looking over the frame and started to walk back toward the end of it but the other guy stopped me and said what we were looking at was the only thing they needed fixing. I said I was only looking to get an idea of how much weight was on the trailer. I said that the road we came in on dipped left and right a lot and that would put a strain on the where the neck meets the frame which is why it broke in the first place. He said they were pulling out some logs from trees that had been cut down, so it would be that much weight. But I can tell you this, Mr. Mark, there was some timber on the back of that trailer but there was also metal and it was burnt metal.”
“How do you know?” Chris asked.
“Because I have been around burnt metal a lot the past couple months and that is what it smelled like to me. Anyway, I got the neck welded back and had to add a piece to the trailer to make the weld.”
“Would you recognize the trailer by the weld if you ever saw it? I doubt there’d be another gooseneck with that type repair job on it” Chris asked.
“Yes, sir, I am sure I would. It was only about fourteen feet long and fairly rusted up. It was pretty old so that new weld sticks out if you see it.”
“What next?” I asked.
“I got done with the job and they went back and dropped me at the Food Lion. I couldn’t swear we went the same way back because like I said, it seemed like they made a left coming in and a left going out so I’m not sure. We stopped a couple times and made a U-turn, though.”
“Ok, Ryan, that’s a heck of a story,” Chris said, “but let’s talk about ride. Any idea which way you had gone?”
“I am sure we didn’t go west toward Twiggs County or Hawkinsville”.
“How do you figure that?” I asked.
“Because I am positive we didn’t cross over railroad tracks.”
“That’s right.” I said “There would have been a crossing right before 247 or out toward Fort Valley in either route.”
Chris started with questions. “Anything you can remember about the place?”
“We were back in the woods a good bit and I am pretty sure we were near water – at least a half mile or so.”
“Think about the ride. You already know you didn’t go over train tracks but is there anything else you remember? A curve? A bridge? Any other sounds you might can think of?”
“The guy had the radio up so I couldn’t hear too much at all on the outside but I could feel when we went over gravel or the rumble strips before a red light or something. We stopped a several times after we left Food Lion but it could have been in any direction.”
“Old pavement? New pavement?”
“It seems toward the end we were at some old pavement because it didn’t seem flat and even.
”
“Chris, that could be a hundred places as far out as Butler probably, maybe Roberta. Ryan, why do you think it was an hour?” I asked.
“Because the news on the radio station came on three times and I figure that is every half-hour, right? It came on while we were turning around at the Food Lion then another time, then a third time when we were on the gravel road.”
“Smart boy, here, Gary”, I said.
“Not too dang smart to get involved in something like that”, he said.
“Gary, I am not sure that he has done anything wrong. He took a ride out to a welding job, did the job, and came back. That’s it. Weird as it sounds, I am not sure what was going on”.
Chris jumped in. “What we do know is that the job was something they desperately needed done at night, done in secret, and that there was burnt metal on that trailer, probably. We already know they’ve done something with slagging copper which points toward breaking the law but isn’t absolutely. I would doubt we’ll see that trailer in the daytime, wherever it is. I also doubt you will ever see those two guys at your welding shop again.”
“I think we need to find where this Silver Dollar Hunting Club is – if there is such a place. That whole story could very well be a cover. Like you said, that is a pile of money – too much money – for a real hunting club.”
Chris continued, “What I think we need to do is take a look at the recent copper thefts and see if that can tell us anything”.
I turned to Ryan and Gary, “Y’all just go home or go to work like usual and if you think of