Free The Lost Dogs by Jim Gorant

leave. Knorr wasn’t satisfied.
    “Excuse me,” he said, “does everyone agree we should go forward with the second search?” Brinkman said yes. The Virginia State Police said yes. Everyone looked to Poindexter.
    “What do you think, Sheriff?” Poindexter responded.
    “I agree with the others,” Brown said.
    “Okay,” said Poindexter, “you’re the investigators.”

9
    JIM KNORR STOOD NEAR a boat launch at the Hog Island Wildlife Management Area. He strapped on his bulletproof vest and checked his weapon. It was a Wednesday afternoon, two days after the meeting in which he had convinced Poindexter that a second search was needed to dig up the bodies of the recently killed dogs.
    Straight out Route 650 on the James River, this state park was the local police’s favorite staging area, and it was where Brinkman had assembled before the initial raid. The appeal of this spot was its seclusion, and as Knorr stood there he could see only blacktop, reeds, and water. That, and twenty or thirty other law enforcement officials gathered to prep for the second raid on 1915 Moonlight Road. The group included Bill Brinkman and Virginia State Police officers, including a SWAT team and a forensics team. The plan was the same as last time: SWAT would go in first to secure the property, then everyone else would move in to finish the business at hand.
    Among the vehicles and equipment gathered were shovels, nose plugs, and body bags. The VSP forensics unit would do most of the heavy lifting on the exhumations, but what they would do once they unearthed the dogs remained an open question. Ideally the bodies would go into some sort of cold storage to preserve them as evidence, but Knorr had called around to a few such places and none were thrilled by the idea of stockpiling dead dogs for an indeterminate amount of time.
    Normally, Knorr wouldn’t have forged on with such an important question unanswered, but he was particularly eager to get back on the property and dig. Sometime between May 7 and May 18 the house had been broken into and burglarized. On the one hand this seemed neither outrageous nor alarming. The house was now both notorious and unoccupied, so there was a chance criminals and souvenir seekers had come to clean out whatever they could find. The missing items included three plasma TVs—sixty-two, forty-two, and thirty-two inches—two floor buffers, a vacuum, a leather sofa, and an upright washer and dryer, all valued at a total of $17,550.
    On the other hand, Knorr knew there was a possibility the Bad Newz crew had taken the stuff themselves to keep it from being confiscated and had reported it stolen to cover their tracks. Even more frightening, Knorr wondered if they were removing evidence from the house, and using burglary claims to give them an out in case investigators noticed anything missing.
    He suspected the worst, which was all the more reason why he was happy Brinkman had secured a warrant, a team had been assembled, and they were less than an hour away from executing the search. As the group huddled for one last run-through of the plan, Brinkman’s phone rang. He walked off as he spoke, then closed the phone and turned around.
    “We’re done,” he said. “We’re shut down.”
    “What?” Knorr said.
    “That was Brown. He and Poindexter said we can’t go forward with the warrant, said there was something wrong with it. Also said Vick has sold the house.”
    Knorr exhaled through tight lips. “Is that normal?”
    “In ten years,” Brinkman said, “he hasn’t questioned one of my warrants.”
    Knorr pulled out his own phone. “Mike Gill, please,” he said, then waited in silence. “Mike,” he said at last, “it’s Jim Knorr. We have a situation.”

    The next night Knorr was driving to Baltimore’s Camden Yards. The Orioles were hosting the Toronto Blue Jays and Knorr was going to the game with his son and his son’s friend. Knorr’s phone rang. It was Mike Gill, and he wanted to