Bill Baxley

Inside the main entrance of the hotel, there's a pale, tiled walkway that leads through the lobby.

The front desk is to the left, but keep walking past it and you enter a huge atrium, an open space surrounded by windows with an indoor garden of leafy green plants and trees.

The tiled walkway leads to a koi pond with a fountain at the center.

It's lush and humid inside, but despite all the windows, the feel is dim and moody.

Keep walking past the koi pond, and there's a short hallway that leads to the hotel's back parking lot.

It was here, outside the double doors of the Crown-Sterling Suites Hotel, where a deputy sheriff was killed.

No one saw the murder, but a few people heard gunshots.

Barry Rushikoff was working at the front desk when he made that 911 call.

Officer William Hardy, who went by Bill, had been a deputy with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office for 23 years.

He was also a security guard at the hotel where he worked the night shift to make extra money.

Hardy was 5'10", had a thin mustache, and wore his hair in a jerry curl.

He was known to be easygoing and friendly.

When Deputy Hardy wasn't making hotel security rounds,

Barry usually saw him wearing his brown and tan deputy uniform, sitting at one of the tables in the hotel's atrium, smoking Moore brand menthol cigarettes and drinking coffee.

Barry wasn't the only person to hear the popping noises.

A few guests at the hotel also heard gunshots, including Marshall Kelly Cummings, a guest in a fourth-floor room directly above the hotel's back exit.

As I worked on this project, I started referring to Cummings as the Keebler cookie guy because in 1995, he worked for Keebler as a truck driver.

Cummings was staying at the Crown Sterling for a company training.

After the workday was over, he drank a few beers at the hotel bar with some co-workers, and then he and the other Keebler employee he was rooming with turned in between 10 and 11 p.m.

But Cummings was not asleep for long.