boots”. He and I walked up to the sheriff. “Did y’all get them?”
“Yes and no”, he answered, “we did get one of the drivers, being the one with the tattoo on his neck, and the trailer with a couple hundred pounds of copper bricks. But we missed the other guy. We have men back at his truck and but he hasn’t got there. He left the boat were it was and jumped the creek, I guess. I don’t know what made him run except that maybe the driver was supposed to call him to let him know he had made it out. But we’ll get him – we have patrols all along Houston Road and on the railroad tracks in case he heads out that way. But that creek is up with all this rain and if he tried to cross it or float down it, we might not find his body for a couple days”.
“Put someone on the tracks where the old logging road comes up to the Elrod property. If he got across the creek onto that island, he might have crossed where we did and could be heading out that direction. Unless,” he thought for a moment,” unless the water is up enough to cover that tree.”
“Then he is trapped on that island or drowned, one or the other” the sheriff finished.
We made our way down to the creek which was swollen with the recent rainwater. There were many more trees in the water than we had seen a few days ago, making it much more treacherous. In conditions like this, it isn’t the trees you see that are dangerous, it is the underwater debris that can tangle up with your clothes and drag you under.
Several minutes later, Jimmy showed up on his four wheeler and was dragging a boat behind him.
“I threw this old jon boat on the back of my truck and got on over here” he said. “There isn’t a motor but it was something I could drag back here.”
“That’s what we need!” I exclaimed. We pulled that boat through the brush and briars upstream well past the end of the island. The plan was to slide right across the creek without having to maneuver too much in the current. Still, it was like crossing a busy intersection full of people who wanted you to join their direction.
Jimmy, Chris and I got in and pushed off. We paddled furiously across the creek and landed on the island some twenty feet further into the island beyond the marks we had found the other day. Jimmy pushed himself and the boat back across to pick up others and bring them over after they drug the boat back upstream to our original starting point. I pulled my pistol and Chris I began a search of the island. It was pooled with water and mud; all of the sand on the banks from the days before was now under four or five feet of water.
Others got across, although one deputy mis-stepped and fell in the creek. He made it out on the other side and collapsed in exhaustion.
We scoured the island, including the location of the sweet gum tree that was now underwater, making it impossible to use as a bridge. The current on the ox-bow side was significantly less than the creek but still a dangerous route. After some time looking over the island, the skinny, bearded man was not to be found.
Chris, Jimmy, and I and others met at the center of the island. “I guess he crossed and headed south” Jimmy said. “He isn’t here”.
“He might still be” Chris smiled and waved for us to follow. He motioned for us to be quiet as he made his way to the Dakota fire hole. The cover was on the drum and the melting form used to make bricks was laying several feet to the right. Jimmy walked over and turned it with his foot and looked to me wondering how it came out of the hole.
Chris slowly walked over to the pit and pointed down at the lid. I realized what he was doing but was too late to stop him. He leaned over to slide the lid back when suddenly one hand threw it back while another raised a gun toward Chris and fired. He fell backward and landed next to the air pipe. A head stuck out of the fire hole.
SIX
“Drop it!” I yelled first then yelled “Chris!” The copper thief looked around to see several guns pointed in his direction and thought better of the situation and raised his hands as he stood up. I ran to Chris’ side as he lay on the muddy ground.
“I think I do need boots” he said.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, looking over him for a gunshot wound.
“No, I slipped on this mud on my way back” he said. “I can’t hear anything but ringing in my ears”.
I smiled at him, glad my friend wasn’t hurt. “That was a stupid thing to do” I said, helping him to his feet. While Chris clearly had experience in detection and forensics, it became more evident that he lacked any experience out in the field.
A couple deputies led the copper thief out to the boats. A rope had been strung across the swollen creek to act as a ferry for crossing. Jimmy walked over and said “He had just enough time to get the melting pot out and get some water down in there to make sure the fire was out. They probably put it out after their last mold anyway which they have to wait a good while to cool. Otherwise, he’d have cooked himself in there. Without the air hole, he might have suffocated, too. He got lucky.”
“He probably doesn’t think so now”, I said. “But Chris here is the lucky one. Look buddy, when it comes to the guns and shooting part, leave that to me”.
“I will try to remember that” Chris replied.
A week later, I called Gary and asked them to meet us back at the shop behind my house. Not long after we got there, he and Ryan also pulled up and we sat on the same buckets from when they first started this whole story.
“Gary, I think that Ryan has done more good by telling us what was going on than any wrong he might have done welding that trailer back together” I said and began to explain what we had discovered about the island in Echeconnee Creek and the Dakota fire pit.
The sheriff drove up and shook hands with everyone and took one of the buckets. He started in with Ryan on his decision making but thanked him for making the right choice in letting us know.
“But next time, call my office. The Marshals, even this one”, he nodded in my direction, “have a lot better things to do with their time than local crime.”
He turned on his bucket in my direction, “But don’t misunderstand that, Mark, we appreciate your help. And his, too, whoever he is” and looked in Chris’ direction.
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