The Squadron Inn Mystery Read online

The Squadron Inn Mystery

  By Mark Hall

  Copyright 2015 74Blues Publishing

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  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful for Amanda and the times she looked at me with the ‘what are you doing?’ look and let me keep writing.

  One

  I drove by the Squadron Inn off Watson Boulevard on Willie Lee Parkway in Warner Robins the other day and noticed it had been finally torn down and that reminded me of what happened there that Fall a couple years ago. They’ve even added a building behind the shopping center; I think I am glad it wasn’t there back then. A great deal happened on and near that spot and I decided to put it down on paper. It isn’t every day that you come that close to a famous criminal.

  That Saturday morning in October, the sun had been up for a good while and a light fog had rolled in to the food plot I was looking over. It was cold but there wasn’t a wind at all so it was tolerable. I was looking down the tree line on the right side of the food plot. Small oaks reached their braches out toward the field and I could barely make out movement just inside the trees eighty yards or so from my stand but I had absolutely no line of sight to see what it might be. I had a very good idea that it was a deer and a pretty good idea it was a buck. The rut had come and gone weeks ago when you might be able to count on a buck losing his mind a little bit and making himself vulnerable but that wasn’t the case here. This one stood there, just out of sight and pawed at the ground.

  Hunting doesn’t always mean shooting, though. I watched patiently for several minutes and periodically looked around so I wouldn’t miss another deer from a different direction because I was trying to stare down this one. I thought about the grunt call in my field bag. My brother had given it to me and the premise behind it is fairly simple. This call makes a low grunting sound that intends to mimic the aggressive grunt another buck might make when he feels like asserting his dominance on another. The response I wanted was for this guy to not take kindly to another buck trying to move in on his area, causing him to take that one more step out of the trees so I might get a good look at him.

  Hunting doesn’t always mean shooting, though. I took the grunt call out and gave it two or three good grunts and watched the tree line. Nothing. Not a movement or a noise. I waited another few minutes and gave another grunt and got the same results. It was like that deer had backed straight out of where he was standing and disappeared into the trees and fog.

  “I might name him Ghost or something like that”, I told Chris Calhoun later that morning as I was walking into my house. Chris was a thin guy and I wasn’t and had a head full of brown hair and I didn’t have a head full of anything; both points he liked to bring up often.

  “So the grunt that should have brought him out actually made him go the other way?” Chris asked. Chris knew an awful lot about a lot of subjects but hunting in central Georgia wasn’t one of them.

  “The right word is ‘might’ have brought him out. During the rut it is much more likely that he would have come out to see who was muscling in on his territory but we are past that time now. He is an old, smart deer for keeping his cool like that. All he needed to do was step out and I would have had him. Well, I would have had a look at him anyway”.

  “Ghost” Chris said, running his hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes.

  “Ghost” I replied, rubbing my close-cut and nearly bald head.

  Chris and I had been friends for a few years now since he was dropped off in my office and placed into my care for witness protection. I’m a U.S. Marshal based out of Macon but live in Warner Robins. Chris had come in that night with no paperwork, no name, no identification, and it appeared no were to go but up. I do my job by the book but when my boss calls to tell me to take him in with no questions of the agents who brought him, I say ‘yes, sir’. I didn’t even ask if they wanted coffee.

  I put Chris in a house a street over from mine and found him a job at the Ace Hardware down in Perry. Occasionally there are times when local law enforcement might call me in to help them with a case especially if it might fall into the jurisdiction of the Marshal Service. The law enforcement community is not especially large here in Middle Georgia and we all know each other and help each other regardless of where a jurisdiction line might fall. Chris had been helpful in a couple of these cases and was especially important to piecing together what happened at Rozar Park in Perry last Spring.

  My work uniform was now on which meant jeans, boots, and a Columbia shirt. I got my start as a game warden down in Waycross but a divorce and a bad night at work changed all that and I found a new start and a new home up here. The uniform got to stay the same for the most part.

  My cell phone rang and the name Jeff Allen was on the screen. Jeff was an investigator with the Warner Robins Police Department.

  “Hey Mark, do you know where that fella is that worked with you down in Perry on the dogfighting thing last Spring?” he asked.

  “Sure do, he is standing right here”. Chris looked up and wondered what was going on.

  “Well y’all come on to the Squadron Inn up here off of Watson”.

  “Didn’t a lot of it burn down this time last year”? I asked.

  “Sure did. This year, though, we have a body”.

  “A body?”

  “Yep. The night manager from the hotel across the street”.