<p>A body found with items belonging to a Fort Benning soldier missing for 12 days was discovered Friday at a downtown hotel after guests complained of a foul odor in the lobby.</p><p>A maintenance worker at the DeSoto Hilton hotel found the body of a man inside a large piece of air-conditioning equipment. Firefighters wearing hazard suits removed the body several hours later.</p><p>Spc. Robert Hornbeck, 23, was last seen outside the hotel April 16 after a late night of bar-hopping with an Army buddy. He answered his cell phone briefly after his father arrived just after 3 a.m. to give him a ride. He said, "Dad, I'm on the stairs," then the connection went dead.</p><p>Savannah-Chatham County police said Friday they had not confirmed the body's identity, but revealed some of Hornbeck's personal belongings were found near the remains.</p><p>"Detectives are conducting a comprehensive and thorough investigation to determine the reasons behind this man's death," said Lt. Mike Wilkins, a police spokesman. "At this time, investigators do not have any reason to believe this person was the victim of a crime."</p><p>The body was being sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab in Savannah for an autopsy Sunday morning, Wilkins said.</p><p>Hornbeck traveled to Savannah to spend Easter weekend with his father and stepmother from Lapeer, Mich. He had returned to Fort Benning in January from a yearlong tour in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division.</p><p>Hornbeck was preparing to leave the Army at the end of April and return to the University of Michigan, where he studied psychology for two years before joining the Army in 2004.</p><p>He also had a wedding date to marry his college sweetheart in July.</p><p>Eric Hornbeck, the soldier's father, and his wife were at his brother's home in Savannah when police told them of the body discovered Friday.</p><p>"The are all just coming together and digesting it," said Ron Palefsky, a private investigator the family hired to help with the search. "I think the best way to describe it is they're in shock."</p><p>In an interview Tuesday, when about 70 volunteers turned out to help search the area, Eric Hornbeck said his son's friend, Jeremy Stone, had called him for a ride after the bars had closed at 3 a.m. that Sunday morning.</p><p>"Obviously they'd been drinking. He said they were lost, they were at the Hilton," he said. "Robert was madder than hell because Jeremy had taken his cell phone to call me, and Robert didn't want dad to come rescue him."</p><p>Eric Hornbeck arrived at the hotel about 7 minutes later, he said. He found Stone, who said he'd lost sight of Robert Hornbeck just minutes earlier. Then Eric Hornbeck called his son's cell phone.</p><p>"He answered the phone and said something about, `Dad, I'm on the stairs,'" he said. "I can't say if it went dead or he hung up. But that was the end of the conversation."</p><p>The Hornbecks spent nearly two weeks combing Savannah's downtown historic district. They posted fliers with Robert Hornbeck's photo in store windows, took out a full-page ad Sunday in the Savannah Morning News, and offered a $10,000 reward.</p>
