The Lost Dogs by Jim Gorant

current events, too. The Duke lacrosse scandal was rattling to a close in the headlines and taking a little of the honor and integrity of government prosecutors with it. That case exploded into the national consciousness in March 2006, when a dancer hired to perform at a party hosted by the Duke team later claimed that she was raped by three of the team members. The Durham, North Carolina, district attorney, Michael Nifong, bungled the case by violating numerous procedural rules, presuming the guilt of the accused by saying in public that Durham would not become known for “a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl,” and calling the team “a bunch of hooligans.” Just over a year later, in April 2007, the North Carolina attorney general dismissed all the charges, and Nifong was disbarred for “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation” and convicted on contempt of court charges.
    The case was a black eye for government lawyers, and Durham was only 166 miles from Surry County. The lawyers of the Eastern District of Virginia surely didn’t want to see history repeat itself. They wanted to prove that the job could be done right—fairly, quickly, efficiently and without a media circus trailing behind.
    Poindexter may very well have filed charges the following week and successfully prosecuted the Bad Newz crew, but those possibilities would forever remain unexplored because when the information about the search for the dead dogs hit the news, Mike Gill made a decision. The U.S. attorney’s office of the Eastern District of Virginia was officially taking on the case.
    This good news came at a price for Brinkman, Knorr, and Gill. The failure or success of the operation would now fall squarely on them. They were aware of the outcry and how closely the case was being watched by both the public at large and the animal rescue community. The pressure was real and the longer the case went without any visible progress, the more it grew. They needed these jailhouse interviews to go well, and they needed to get back on that property. Soon.

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    THE SURRY COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER sits just outside the center of town at the end of a gravel access road that leads to something of a vehicle depot—a lot filled with old semi containers, a car trailer painted in camouflage, and a stable of garbage trucks. The back of the lot is taken up by an appliance dump, stacked with old stoves, leaking refrigerators, rusted-out water heaters, and broken-down washers and dryers. Off to the side lies a low, drab building—the shelter.
    Inside, there are fourteen four-foot-by-six-foot chain-link pens broken into two rows of seven, and at the end of April 2007 all but one of those pens were occupied by dogs from 1915 Moonlight Road. Within a few days of arriving the dogs felt as if they knew every inch of the place—the dull beige walls, the ceiling with its exposed beams, and the fans turning slowly. Eight small windows spread around the room let the daylight in, reminding them of where they were not.
    They weren’t made for this. Over centuries their bodies and minds and dispositions had been honed for activity, and their muscles longed for something to do. They had energy and power. They wanted to run and play. They needed things to occupy their minds. Things to chase, to watch, to chew on and figure out.
    Some paced to work off their energy, back and forth or round and round in little circles until they became dizzy and unsure of themselves. Some jumped, over and over, straight up in the air, delighting in the thrust it took to lift their bodies clear off the ground and in the momentary sensation of floating above the earth. They barked, too: at the other dogs, at the spinning fans above them, at nothing.
    Life in the clearing was bad, but this was bad too. A different bad. Their days now crept along with a dreary sameness. Long hours spent waiting for something, for a few moments of activity that never led to anything. Those