by Jim Gorant
In the morning the brown dog awakes in a four-foot-by-six-foot pen made of cinder blocks and chain link. Hanging from the gate that keeps her in is a piece of paper that, among other things, gives her an identity: Sussex 2602.
The building is brand-new and the Vick dogs are its first tenants. The kennels are built on two levels and broken into three rows. The brown dog recognizes some of the dogs around her but not all. She is drawn to one of the others in particular, a female almost the exact same color but a little bigger. She cannot get close to that other dog, though. She cannot get close to anything.
Four small windows let in a touch of natural light but it is overwhelmed by the yellowish glow of the fluorescents, which bounce off the white walls. Ceiling fans turn slowly. The vaulted aluminum roof and cavernous interior reflect sound, turning the place into an echo chamber, a bright shiny hall of noise.
The hum of the central air-conditioning that keeps the place cool is audible only when the barking subsides. So far that has not happened. The dogs bark and bark from the time they are brought. As they are fished out of their portable pens they bark about leaving these little safe zones. As they are led into the kennels, they bark at the strangeness of their new confines. They bark at the buzz of activity, at all the officers and officials coming and going, loading and unloading. They bark from hunger and thirst, and after they are fed and given water they bark because they have renewed energy.
After everything dies down they bark at the dogs around them, now closer than ever but still out of reach. They bark as the light goes out of the windows and out of the room. They bark because they do not like the feel of the cold concrete floor or know how to sleep on the strange little beds that sit in their pens-metal- or plastic-framed rectangles with a piece of cloth stretched across them. They bark when they realize they have no other choice. They bark and bark.
Through the night there are stretches of silence when they sleep but those too are shattered by barking when one of them wakes or rolls over and finds himself in a strange place, with foreign smells and no moon or stars over his head.
They bark because it is morning and the light once again streams through the glass. The place is new and strange. They paw at the chain link, chew on it. What will happen now? Who will come? When will they be fed again? All the newness and uncertainty makes them anxious, so they bark.
The brown dog shares those feelings and she barks some, too. She waits for what will come next. She sniffs at the ground beneath her, which is hard and cold and smells of a million things-paint and soap and people. She has to relieve herself but has no idea where to do it. She has never done it anywhere but on the soft ground, where she can sniff for an appropriate spot and then cover it up with dirt.
Back in the clearing, chained to the axle, she had a few places she usually used. They were as far away from the house as she could get. But there are no spots like that here. Instincts honed over thousands of years and woven into her genetic fabric impel her not to do it inside this space, where she eats and sleeps. So she works her way up and down the enclosure, sniffing and probing. She looks toward the windows, the daylight streaming through, smells the hint of outside air that comes through the vents, and whines a bit. She waits. She hopes there will be a chance to get outside.
Many of the other dogs have already gone, peeing to mark the space, to begin putting their scent down and claiming ownership of their spot. The results of their efforts sit puddled on the floor. Whatever else they have produced sits on the floor, too, and they bark about that as well, about having to sit with and walk around in their own piss and shit.
But there are no options and the brown dog can wait no more. She finds a spot in the corner, near the back of her area, and empties herself. Then she goes to the opposite corner, circles once, and lies down. She stares out the window and lets the sound of the barking wash over her.
Tires crunch on the gravel outside. The brown dog springs to her feet. All the dogs do. They bark at the sound and at the silence that follows it. Then comes the jangle of keys in the outer door. There are footsteps in the offices outside the main room, but still no one comes through the door. Other doors out in the hall open and close. The dogs bark and pace. Some of them jump up on their hind legs, pressing their front paws against the chain link.
At last the door swings open. A man comes in and the dogs bark and wag and shake their bodies with excitement. The man leaves again but reappears a moment later dragging a hose. He squeezes the nozzle and begins to spray water across the room. He moves down the line, hosing the bottom of each cage, letting the water sweep everything on the floor back into the drain and out of the building. Some dogs bite at the water as it flies past, some cower away from the stream, some sit utterly bemused and uncertain what to do. All of them bark.
Their cages are once again clean, but they are wet from the spray. The floor is wet and their little beds are wet too, so most of the dogs stand to stay out of the water. The man then goes around and puts fresh water in all of the bowls and gives each dog food. The brown dog eats. All the dogs eat and for a few minutes at least it is silent but for the chewing and the lapping.
By the time they are done, the man is gone and the door is once again closed. The meal seems to settle the dogs a little and some of them now sit or lie down in their space. Others pace. It is nice to be free of the heavy chain, but there are no birds or butterflies to chase here. There are no weeds to eat or rocks to chew. There is no circle in the dirt to trace over and over.
The brown dog- Sussex 2602-sits, her floppy ear asking questions of the world. The man had come and brought food, but would he be back, and when? And what would happen next? Would this room be their final stop? The anxiety and uncertainty wells up again and mingles with the boredom. The brown dog begins to bark. They all bark.
8
ON FRIDAY APRIL 27, 2007, two days after the raid at 1915 Moonlight Road, Michael Vick appeared at an event connected to the NFL Draft, which would take place the next day. It was his first public appearance since the news broke, and he was asked for an explanation. “I’m never at the house,” Vick said. “I left the house with my family members and my cousin. They just haven’t been doing the right thing. It’s unfortunate I have to take the heat. If I’m not there, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s a call for me to really tighten down on who I’m trying to take care of. When it all boils down, people will try to take advantage of you and leave you out to dry. Lesson learned for me.”
Jim Knorr didn’t catch the performance. He was working a cockfighting investigation in Page County, in northern Virginia. But he received a message on his office phone that day. It was from Bill Brinkman: “Call me about Vick.”
On Monday morning the two spoke on the phone and made plans to meet at Brinkman’s house a week later. When Knorr arrived in Surry County, Brinkman drove him by the Vick place, recounting the initial raid and what was found. Afterward the two went for dinner at Anna’s, an Italian restaurant in Smithfield, and Brinkman laid out the situation.
The initial raid had netted a fair amount of damning evidence but the case wasn’t a lock. First and foremost, they had the dogs. After that they had the training equipment, medical supplies, and all the rest. They had taken swabs of what they believed were bloodstains on the floor and walls of the large shed, but Brinkman wasn’t sure where to send the samples for confirmation. They had also received a call from a federal inmate claiming that before he was locked up he’d arranged and participated in dogfights with Bad Newz Kennels and Vick. A follow-up interview would be necessary.
Most important, he had Brownie. Brinkman sensed that the old guy knew even more than he had told so far, but he was a tough nut. He had no known address and spent his nights moving from one crash pad to another or dropping in on friends and relatives, and he made money doing odd jobs around town. Sometimes sullen and moody and sometimes ebullient, he would spoon out information in dribs and drabs, claiming to know nothing more one minute and then spill
ing a new load of information a while later.
Despite the lapses, Brinkman remained certain of Brownie’s willingness to testify. The guy had no fear of retribution. Still, Brinkman worried that he would either wander off or someone would convince him to change his mind about recounting what he had seen and heard at 1915 Moonlight Road. Brinkman felt that Brownie had to be put in a safe place for a while, preferably one outside of Surry County.
It was a big, complicated case, and Brinkman feared that Surry County didn’t have the resources or the expertise to pull off the investigation. He frequently worked alone or partnered with state police because he did not trust everyone around him. Over the years he’d even developed the habit of keeping the evidence he gathered during investigations locked up in his desk or car for fear of what would become of it if he turned it over.
Already he’d gotten the sense that not everyone in Surry County was on board with going after Michael Vick. The opportunity to search Vick’s house had come up quickly and unexpectedly, so the warrant had been filed and the raid scheduled without a lot of discussion among the local law enforcement hierarchy. When Brinkman first called in from the Vick house to request backup for the widening investigation, the officer who answered the call said, “You’ve got a lot of people around here pissed off.” Later that day, as Brinkman and others stood back and watched the dogs being led off the property, he had said out loud, “This case will probably lead to me getting fired.”
It didn’t take long to figure out the source of the discontent. Brinkman later told the Virginian Pilot that within a few days of the raid, his boss, Sheriff Harold Brown, told him that commonwealth attorney Gerald Poindexter, who represented the state of Virginia in Surry County, was unhappy with him. Soon thereafter, Brinkman was called into a meeting with Poindexter, who once represented Michael Boddie in a DWI case. Brinkman and Poindexter had clashed before. “Every time you met with him, it was a very unsettling, uncomfortable, degrading conversation,” Brinkman said to the Virginian Pilot. “Everything’s wrapped around race.”
Afterward, Brinkman claimed that Poindexter, who is black, made it clear that he didn’t like the idea of a young African American who had escaped from an underprivileged background and become something of an icon being dragged down, and he certainly didn’t want to be a part of it. (Brown and Poindexter later denied that any such conversations took place.)
When Poindexter subsequently reminded reporters that all the evidence was circumstantial and that even if dogfighting had taken place, it didn’t mean Vick was responsible, Brinkman took those statements as efforts to sway public opinion away from the idea that all roads led to Vick.
If the state truly wasn’t on board, it could be a significant problem. Virginia considered dogfighting and animal cruelty felonies, which made it an ideal venue to try the case. That was part of the reason Brinkman had reached out to Jim Knorr. He knew that if he could get the feds involved he could get around Poindexter. (A new federal law that would make dogfighting a felony was on the verge of being signed by President George W. Bush, but it would arrive too late for this case.) Brinkman and Knorr hoped there would be some other federal law that applied. They didn’t know all the answers, but they knew how to find out. There, in the dim light of a strip-mall Italian joint in rural Virginia, the two men planned their investigation.
The next day, Brinkman and Knorr found themselves outside 600 E. Main Street in Richmond, Virginia, a twenty-three-story office building highlighted by tan concrete, rows of black windows, and an architectural style that featured intersecting planes. It housed, among other things, the office of Chuck Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Brinkman and Knorr were scheduled to meet with assistant U.S. attorneys Brian Whisler and Mike Gill.
Brinkman had worked some with the feds before, but Knorr was intimate with the machinations of the national government, and this knowledge made him uneasy. After their last get-together Knorr had taken charge of Brownie, putting him up at a low-rent hotel in Virginia Beach. Knorr used some of his own cash to accomplish this, but when he went to his boss for funding, he was told that the agency didn’t want to spend money on “that two-bit dog case.”
After some arm twisting, Knorr got a small budget, but he wasn’t surprised that it was a struggle. As much as he loved working for the USDA and found the street agents as diligent and hardworking as anyone, the agency’s management could get bogged down in small-time thinking and bureaucratic politics. More than once he’d heard a certain deflating phrase uttered around the office: “No cases, no problems; big cases, big problems.” Agents sometimes joked that the department’s emblem should feature an ostrich with its head in the sand instead of an eagle. Such apathy was a sort of disease that infected government work, and it was never clear who had it until that person’s cooperation was required to get something done.
Had it spread to the attorneys for the Eastern District of Virginia? There was at least some chance that they would listen to the facts of Brinkman and Knorr’s case and decide that there wasn’t enough evidence to make it work or that they had bigger problems than some football player and his dogs.
In a nondescript conference room Brinkman and Knorr laid out what they had. Besides the evidence seized, they’d also been tipped that there were dog carcasses buried on the property, and they’d begun seeking a facility that could perform necropsies on the bodies, should they be able to find any.
The assistant attorneys listened attentively, and Mike Gill took the lead role as the conversation unfolded. Brinkman and Knorr were impressed by Gill. A lot of prosecutors talk down to law officers or only want surefire cases, making so many demands that they render it all but impossible for the investigation to succeed. But there was none of that with Gill. He was young, but he exuded confidence and experience. He knew what was needed and how to get it.
Best of all he was a regular guy. A Texan with an open face, black hair, and full curving eyebrows, he was the kind of guy who wore cowboy boots with a suit and guzzled Diet Cokes. Behind the desk in his office a Texas Christian University banner hung on the wall and pictures of his dogs-Toby, a German shepherd, and a beagle named Ginger-sat on one of the shelves. As Knorr said to Brinkman afterward, “He was the kind of guy you’d be happy to end up sitting next to on a plane.”
The way Gill saw it, there was evidence that the Bad Newz crew had crossed state lines to buy dogs, participate in dogfights and gamble illegally, all offenses that fell within the bounds of federal law. The case, in his view, was pretty strong, although some pieces were missing. The bigger problem, though, was that the federal government had no cause to become involved.
Whatever Brinkman’s past dealings with the local officials might have led him to believe about their intentions or abilities, Gill had no reason to think they wouldn’t advance and succeed with the case at the state level. And the state charges were serious, carrying penalties of up to five years in prison and a $2,500 fine. But that didn’t mean Gill was walking away completely. At the end of the meeting he summarized the situation: “We have to give them a chance to do their job,” he said. “And if they don’t, then we will.”
Surry County is a quiet place. In the county seat, Surry, there’s one light, and even that one is a blinker. There are short stretches of houses lined up next to one another, but it’s far more common to drive on Surry’s curving roads without another car in sight, widespread farms moving past like islands seen through a porthole. There are only seven thousand people in the entire county and everyone knows everyone, or at least seems to. There hasn’t been a felony murder case in forty years, and commonwealth attorney is a part-time position.
Gerald Poindexter, one of only two practicing attorneys in Surry, became county attorney in 1972, while his wife, Gammiel, was elected the commonwealth attorney, the person charged with prosecuting cases in the area on behalf of the state. But in 1995, Gammiel was appointed the general district court judge for the Sixth Judicial Circuit in
Hopewell. Poindexter rushed into the void left by his wife, winning election as commonwealth attorney, and holding both positions for a number of years before giving up the county job.
When he entered the small conference room in the Surry County municipal building at 10:00 A.M. on May 21, he was wearing a light-colored suit and tie. His wiry gray and black hair was brushed back from a wide, freckled face dominated by a bushy mustache. According to Knorr’s memo recounting the meeting, Pointdexter opened with a question: “Does anyone have evidence that Michael Vick is involved in dogfighting?” he asked in a smooth baritone. Assembled before him to review the investigation were the county administrator, Tyrone Franklin; three representatives of the Virginia State Police; Sheriff Brown; animal control officer Jamie Smith; Brinkman and Knorr; and Poindexter’s assistant, Robin Ely.
Brinkman spoke first, reviewing the details of what they had so far. In addition to the evidence seized, they had Brownie and at least two people in federal prison that could place Vick at dogfights on the property. Poindexter listened but responded by changing the subject. He may not have been in the best of moods, as the day before an animal control officer from another town had called him out in the media for not bringing charges yet. He made it clear he was unhappy about what had been printed and said it angered him when people suggested he would never charge Vick.
And yet, in the next breath, he contended that all the evidence they’d assembled so far was obtained illegally. He didn’t think it was legal to have dogs sniff cars in a public place, thus invalidating the Boddie arrest that led to the search at 1915 Moonlight Road, and he didn’t think it was legal to have the animal control officer along on a drug search, so Officer Smith’s testimony, which led to the warrant to search for dogfighting evidence, was invalid.