Brad sat in the third pew
on the right hand side of Mount View United Methodist. The
service had been going on for well over ninety minutes by now and
showed no signs of letting up. Ever since the new pastor
arrived the services had averaged two and a half hours. Brad
did not care for the young man. The previous pastor, Brother
Carl, had been unpretentious, friendly, and (most importantly) had
kept his services somewhere between an hour and hour fifteen minutes.
The new pastor, Elder Todd Brooks O.P., was young, passionate,
charismatic, and driven to bring everyone to Jesus. His
services lasted at least two hours and his sermons were usually the
greatest part of that. In fact, the young Elder was somewhere
around the sixty minute mark of his current sermon and showed no sign
of slowing down. He was going on about something having to do
with prayer and the Apostle James. Brad found himself unable to
concentrate on the fine points of the sermon.
He glanced at his watch.
It was ten thirty-six. In less than half an hour mass would start at
Saint Berlinda with Maggie sitting dutifully on the third row of
wooden chairs. Before Elder Todd Brooks O.P. came to town, Brad used
to go to services at Mount View United Methodist at nine and then
meet Maggie at Saint Berlinda for mass. However, faced with a
choice, Brad was a Methodist and he would go to his church rather
than hers. Besides, Mount View United was the biggest church in the
county and Brad figured his membership was worth at least two hundred
fifty votes every election. In a county where only about five
thousand people voted during the last presidential election, two
hundred and fifty votes were precious.
Things with Maggie were
almost back to normal. She sniped at him a little this morning
because he would not be at Father Tolton's final mass at Saint
Berlinda. Brad smiled a little. His wife was starting to return to
herself around him and he would soon be rid of this troublesome
priest.
The most surprising thing
had been Abby's reaction to all of it. Of course, living in the same
house as they did she heard the whole fight between her daughter and
Brad and she thought the way they were acting was silly. "My
Charley and me used to have fights bigger than that at least once a
week and he wasn't a fan of priests either. Sometimes I think the
only reason he ever went to mass was so he could stand outside and
smoke with his buddies in the Knights afterwards. Anyway, the way
you two were before wasn't natural. You have to blow up once in a
while to relieve some of the pressure. Otherwise you'll just start
to quietly hate each other. Now, get over yourselves." Abby
gave that speech after a couple days of watching them walk on
eggshells around each other and she had not said a word about it
since. However, she still rolled her eyes when she saw them being
careful around each other.
Meanwhile, as his
domestic life came back together, the county fell apart around them.
An army of federal agents and state troopers hit Bartlette County on
Tuesday morning. It seemed like half the town of Yared was arrested,
including everyone on the town council and the three officers at the
top of the six person police force. Then they arrested two deputies
from the Sheriff's Department, Sergeant Ian Minor and Captain Jeff
Sargent. When armed men broke in his front door, Jeff scrambled for
the rifle in his closet and they tazed him in the back just as he was
pulling it out, causing him to fire into his ceiling.
Brad only learned about
this when he was awakened by a call from the Sheriff. Sheriff Minton
was beside himself. After Brad got the Sheriff settled down he got a
quick shower and headed into the office. Then he started making
calls. Every call to FBI Special Agent Mazzota went straight to
voicemail. When Brad called the local State Police post, the phone
was answered by Kyle Dotson, the First Sergeant. Kyle was polite,
but he was clearly under orders not to talk to anyone in local law
enforcement. After a couple minutes Kyle made an excuse and hung up.
Brad was left sitting in his office at six-thirty with nothing to
do.
Before seven-thirty, the
Sheriff called four times. Each time he was more worked up, but had
no new information. At eight, Brad started to walk out of the
courthouse to go down the street to get breakfast, but when he opened
the door and saw the street flooded with police cars he went back
inside, called the Sheriff, and found out that every deputy had been
called in to the office.
By nine both Yusif and
Paula were in the office. Both had heard about the arrests on the
news and had questions, but Brad knew no more than they did. He
tried calling the Attorney General's office in Richmond. He got
fobbed off on some flunky who told him that they would get back to
him "as soon as practicable." Then, he made another
fruitless attempt to call Special Agent Mazzota. It was at this
point he decided to treat the situation as a political problem rather
than a law enforcement one.
He started at the top and
worked his way down. Brad headed Senator Salyer's last campaign in
far Southwest Virginia and his first call went to the Senator's
office in D.C. Surprisingly, he got through to her on his first
call. She was watching the news herself and wanted him to tell her
what was going on. When Brad told her he was being frozen out she
seemed to take it as a personal affront. Her voice was tinged with
determination and a bit of anger as she promised him that someone in
the FBI would be in contact before the day was over. After finishing
that call, Brad began calling every delegate or senator he knew in
Virginia's General Assembly. Once he mentioned the fact that Senator
Salyer was helping with the FBI, quite a few of them promised to help
with the Attorney General and the State Police.
At around eleven there
was an announcement made to the press by the U.S. Attorney for the
Western District of Virginia, but no one had contacted Brad.
Finally, at around three in the afternoon, a call came in from
Captain Fraley at the State Police Division headquarters in
Wytheville. The Captain had direct orders from Superintendent Boles
to brief Brad on the operation and if he could come to Wytheville the
next morning the State Police would fill him on everything they knew.
Shortly after that a call came from a D.C. number and a Special
Agent Sanderson told him that Special Agent Mazzato would be at the
Wednesday briefing to answer any questions he had for the federal
government.
The Wednesday morning
briefing was not a friendly affair. Nevertheless, it was eye opening.
Before they began, Brad was required to sign a document stating that
he would not disclose the information in the briefing to anyone in
local law enforcement – including the Sheriff and his own deputy
prosecutor. Then the FBI took over and briefed Brad.
There was nothing
terribly surprising about the first part of the briefing. The Poplins
were involved in a large scale drug ring which enjoyed their
protection in Yared. Everyone in Bartlette County knew the Poplins
were crooked, although their level of involvement in a multi-state
drug ring was more than Brad had thought them capable of. He knew
they were involved in cock fighting and gambling on high school
football, but never suspected they were doing much more than
providing a safe haven for small time drug dealers in town. Still, it
was not that he thought large time drug dealing was beyond their
desire; he had just thought it beyond their grasp.
In fact, the Sheriff's
refusal to do anything to clean up Yared was one of the main
frustrations of Brad's time as Commonwealth Attorney. As it turned
out, the State Police and FBI were also less than impressed by the
Sheriff's inactivity. For a long time they suspected he was involved.
However, after planting false information with the Sheriff three
times and waiting to see if there was any reaction from the drug
ring, they were eventually satisfied that he was not passing
information to its members. Their conclusion was that the Sheriff was
either not willing to risk the political fallout of cracking down on
Yared or that he was lazy – probably both.
However, they were
convinced that the Sheriff's Department had a number of corrupt
deputies. Of course, Brad knew which deputies had been arrested, but
it was still something of a shock when they told him that Jeff Sanger
was the person who decided that Bo Ross had to be killed. Apparently,
he thought was that with Bo out of the way he would have the inside
track to become the next sheriff. Ian Minor, Dave Jordan, and Oscar
Mickleson had each pointed a finger at Jeff.
When Brad pointed out
that the former deputies and Yared police officer lacked much in the
way of credibility, Agent Mazzato played a number of recordings which
the FBI recovered from Ian Minor's phone. The man had recorded a lot
of conversations with his fellow conspirators. In many of them there
were discussions about what Jeff wanted done and there were two in
which Jeff told Ian he wanted Bo out of the way so that he could
become sheriff. It was damning.
The first attempt to kill
Bo had been at a trailer on Baylor Ridge. They waited until the other
two deputies on duty were tied up elsewhere and then called in a
domestic disturbance. With everyone else busy, they knew Bo would
have to respond himself. The plan was to kill him and blame it on the
man who lived in the trailer. However, Bo got the call while he was
getting some coffee with Trooper Pillay and, bored at one in the
morning, the trooper decided to back him up. When the deputies saw
two cars arrive with flashing lights and realized the second was a
state trooper they retreated into the woods and left.
The second attempt to
kill Bo was more complicated. The Pahls were coming to trial and
everyone knew the Sheriff would assign Bo to look after court
security for such an important case. Technically Teddy Qualls was the
bailiff, but he was over sixty years old and retired on duty.
Generally, Judge Isom just let him sit in a chair and doze during
court as long as the Sheriff sent over help during serious cases.
It was easy to get Carr
and Boyd assigned as court security. The Sheriff had no money for
overtime and everyone knew a jury trial would mean working extra
hours. When Boyd and Carr volunteered it saved the Sheriff from
forcing someone else to work without getting paid.
According to the FBI,
there were two plans. The first called for Carr and Boyd to take the
Pahl brothers from the courthouse, but not deliver them to the
holding cell in the Sheriff's Department. They would stop in the
alley and give the Pahl brothers a couple of cigarettes to smoke.
After some time, Bo would come out of the courthouse to see what the
delay was. As soon as the door closed behind Bo in the alley, Minor
and Jordan were going to open fire. If they could get clear shots
they would shoot the Pahl brothers. If there was no clear shot they
would shoot over everyone's heads. However Bo reacted, once he
turned his back on the deputies in the alley, Carr was going to pull
out an old pistol he had taken during a search of the Pahl house and
shoot Bo in the back. Everything was going to be blamed on an escape
attempt by the Pahls.
Unknown to Carr and Boyd,
the actual plan was for everyone in the alley to die. Minor and
Jordan would start by shooting the Pahls. Then, as soon as they saw
Bo go down they would open fire on the deputies as well. They were
also going to shoot a hole in the propane tank in the alley and set
off a fireball to destroy evidence and stun anyone still alive so
that they could walk down the alley and finish the job.
However, once time came
to put everything in action, things starting going wrong. When the
deputies started to take the Pahl brothers out of the courtroom their
attorneys insisted on walking with them. The deputies refused at
first, but Grant Lasley started to throw a fit and Teddy Qualls told
them to let the civilians walk with them. Qualls was a sergeant, and
Bo was back in the Judge's office at the time, so the deputies had to
let the civilians come with them. They stopped in the alley as
planned with a herd of people instead of just the two prisoners. The
two deputies took a position on the side of the alley next to
courthouse, leaving the others clustered on the side next to the
Sheriff's department.
Bo
came out about fifteen minutes later. Minor and Jordan were in a car
in the parking lot and as soon as Minor saw the door close behind Bo
he pulled the car up and Jordan opened fire from the back seat with
an AR15. He sprayed fire at the Pahls and the civilians. When Bo ran
to open the door to the courthouse Carr shot him in the back four
times. Three of those bullets hit the kevlar vest Bo was wearing and,
although the vest held, the force of the bullets slammed Bo into the
door and knocked him off the porch behind the trash cans.
While that happened,
Minor got out of the car with his Stevens 200 30-06 and fired four
shots at the propane tank in the alley. One round missed entirely and
one hit at enough of an angle that it ricocheted into the ground.
However, two of the bullets struck true and propane spewed into the
alley in a white cloud. Jordan kept firing the AR15 to keep everyone
pinned down and hoping to set off the propane. After a few seconds
they realized gunfire was not going to set off the gas and fell back
on their backup plan. Minor had a street flare ready; he lit it and
threw it into the alley.
The explosion was much
larger than anything they had planned for. Special Agent Mazzota
spent several minutes trying to explain the forensic lab's
explanation for the size of the explosion, but most of it went over
Brad's head. Somehow the weight of the gas, the heat of the day, and
the enclosed area all combined to create an explosion which tore into
the Sheriff's Department and started secondary fires. It also scared
the hell out of the shooters. They jumped back into the car and took
off.
Then
they began the coverup. They drove the car, which had been purchased
for a couple hundred dollars cash
from
a man in Kentucky, out to an old strip job and set it on fire. After
that Minor drove to Pikeville, Kentucky where he would claim to have
spent his day off shopping and eating at Jerrys. Jordan was supposed
to do the same thing in Bristol, Virginia. However, a state trooper
recognized the "Don't tread on me" flag painted across
the entire
tailgate of Jordan's truck and chased him down to tell him about the
explosion. Thus, an hour after causing the explosion Dave Jordan was
on the scene investigating it.
After
they realized that the people in the alley survived, the conspirators
became hypervigilant - looking for anything that might signal someone
knew what they had done. The appearance of an unknown attorney
trying to speak privately with Yusif spooked them. That was the
reason Jordan went to Roanoke and beat the attorney to within an inch
of his life. And it turned out to be for nothing; the attorney had
nothing to do with the murders. He had been hired by the Democratic
Party of Bartlette to feel out Yusif as a possible candidate for
Commonwealth Attorney in the next election.
Brad
smirked to himself. If they'd just approached Yusif directly that
poor guy in Roanoke wouldn't be missing a couple teeth right now.
In
any event, the attack in Roanoke triggered the reaction by the feds.
When
Brad left the State Police office the only question in his
mind was how many people
he would be charging
with capital murder.
