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Small Town Corruption
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© By Reg Owens
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Although this book is a work of fiction and every name used is from the writers imagination, the events depicted are events from real life.
Its about greed, corruption, and stealing. Its about a group of Good Old Boys in high places who band together to control and fleece those who elected or hired them.
Since the first City Hall was built its been said you cant fight this immovable object but this book depicts how you not only can, but also SHOULD.
How? Become involved in what your local elected officials are doing. Form committees and hold them to the task of what they promised and raised their right hand while swearing to do. If those elected officials know youre watching them you can be sure theyll stay more in line.
The biggest penny pincher in town becomes Mr. Big Time Spender when its not HIS money hes spending.
A Good Old Boys Bubba System can spring up overnight if you dont have eyes and ears waiting to nip in the bud before they become smelly bitter weeds.
Elway County Councilman, Tom Cash continually fights the good Old boys, their Bubba System, and small town corruption. A fight he seems to lose on every turn until the Bubba System starts to crumble and all hell breaks loose.
The small town is Elway, located in the rolling foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Northeast Georgia. The main industry is granite quarries and finishing plants that produce the majority of grey granite cemetery monuments in the country.
The High School mascot is a Devil and the gym is called The Inferno. Some say this is why Elway has had so much trouble for so many years. The two main good guys in this novel are County Councilman Tom Cash and his friend freelance writer Greg Olsen who is writing a documentary of Elway County.
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Chapter 1
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About 100 years ago it was discovered that Elway County was sitting on a huge chunk of grey granite. An entrepreneur from the capital city of Atlanta arrived on the scene to begin quarrying the newfound source of revenue. At first the stone was made into curbing, which lasted much longer in the cold winters of the northern states than those made with concrete. When this blemish-free Elway granite curbing began to arrive at those cold weather states, the cemetery marker shops soon began placing orders for stone to be made into headstones, grave covers, and statues.
Thus a profitable new industry was born in this sleepy little town known heretofore only as the birthplace of a fabled character in a folk song. Self-made millionaires began to pop up like yellow flowered dandelion in a sea of green carpet grass. So did the greedy elected officials and public employees who scammed the hard working good people of Elway.
In the later part of the twentieth Century, one of those hard workers was a man who began working as a laborer in a granite quarry and worked his way up to owner of his own wholesale granite business. Bill Harley overcame many obstacles in his rise from the bottom. He and the Granite City Bank owned a 50-foot tin top building located directly behind his brick home built just 7 years ago.
Little did he know one Friday night his dreams were about to be challenged by black evil in the guise of law. Harley closed the mobile home office located next to his granite shed where he had spent the week getting out orders for markers and headstones. He had the 10-wheeler truck backed into one end of the shed where an overhead crane was used for loading each piece of stone when finished. It was a short walk to his house.
Later that evening after supper his wife left to go to a local NAACP meeting. Being an officer she was required to attend all the meetings. She was gone less than 30 minutes when the doorbell rang arousing Bill from a nap in his favorite reclining rocker.
He got up and made his way to the back door and opened it. There stood a white girl he knew, Lacy Swift.
Lacy, what are you doing way out here? Bill knew she lived in town over 10 miles from his home. She seemed nervous and fidgety.
I got a different car today and it stopped running. Its out on the highway in front of your house and I need to use your phone, is that OK?
Sure come on in, I will get the portable for you.
Do you mind if I use the bathroom first?
Not at all, down the hall, first door on the left.
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Lacy is staying in the bathroom a long time Bill thought, wondering if she was all right.
Hey, what the hell was that? Bill said to himself. He heard something at the back door like low speaking voices. All of a sudden there was a loud thud on the door. The door flew open and in a split second, Bill could see someone dressed entirely in black, hat, shoes, shirt, trousers, and a black drape mask over his face with two cut outs to see. It looked liked the mask of the Ku Klux Klan only black.
The back door flew back shut as quickly as it opened and hit the black-dressed person in the head and shifted the mask over to one side and blocking his vision. Bill had no idea who they were or what they wanted. He later learned that the Elway County Sheriff Bruce Harper set him up. Setting people up and taking their property was a regular routine for Sheriff Bruce.
Harper had been in office less than a year. About all he really knew about law enforcement was how to arrest people for drugs, many on bogus charges to take their possessions. This came easy because Sheriff
Bruce was hooked on drugs himself, however, only a few of his closest friends knew this.
Lacy Swift, local slut and bad check artist was hand picked by this conniving sheriff to plant three thousand dollars in marked bills in Bill Harleys bathroom. Once planted, she was supposed to leave the house, go out to her car and drive back to town. Now since it took so long for her to get back out of the house Harper decided to go ahead and batter the door open.
The man dressed in black was Harpers Chief Investigator known as Major Tater, about as dumb as a head of lettuce. When the door flew back and hit Taters face, blood began to roll down his jaw and he staggered backward.
A second deputy, attired in like-manner picked up the battering ram and hit the door even harder. The door flew back inside the house, hit the same kitchen cabinet, and quickly recoiled to smack nitwit number two, Inspector Chigger Cornwell upside the head with the same results. It was like the door was fighting back. And the door was winning.
Now you would think any moron would realize the door is unlocked after the first disastrous attempt. Better still, one could just simply reach out and turn the knob in the first place and walk right in. Not Major Tater he had an insatiable thirst for theatrics. He got his enjoys pretending he was acting in a Class B movie.
Earlier Major Tater was in the office of Chief Magistrate Lois Simpson obtaining a no-knock search warrant, which gives him the right to smash the door open without informing those inside. Being a goofus who carries one gun in sight and five others hidden, Major Tater lives in a James Bond dream world. He presents an expression of clueless numbskull with a hairless shinny dome to further his proof.
The Elway Police Department fired Tater for being the reason for too many lawsuits against the city. Harper hired him right away and it wasnt long before Elway County began gathering a harvest of Major Tater inspired lawsuits as well.
Finally, the third member of the dumb, dumber, and dumbest trio, Sheriff Bruce ordered his gang of unskilled deputies in black to collar the unsuspecting Bill Harley for selling drugs with the planted marked bills.
They had plenty of practice framing whomever they could and making the paper to promote Sheriff Bruce. His office walls are filled with framed photographs of his drug busts.
Altogether, seven of Harpers not so finest rushed in with Sheriff Bruce bringing up the rear. Bill Harley was grabbed and wrestled to the floor by all but the sheriff who began screaming,
Where is the drug money Harley? I know you got it. You might as well hand it over.
Harley had no idea what he was talking about and keep saying, What drug money? I have no drug money.
Now during all the excitement; Lacy with the three grand in the pocket of her tight blue jeans slipped by the eight-on-one Sheriffs posse. No one saw her make a getaway with a huge smile on her face grinning all the way back to town.
Major Taters partner Chigger Cornwell lived directly across the highway from Bill Harley. Could this be another reason why Harley was framed? Did Chigger resent having a black family living so close? Could it be that Sheriff Bruce wanted to condemn Harleys land, home, and business so he could sell it? Maybe it was all of the above.
After the army of Elways misfits searched high and low for the $3000 in marked bills, they finally gave up but arrested Harley anyway. Major Tater shoved him in the caged back seat of his patrol car and sped off toward the Elway County Detention Center. Sheriff Bruce left Tater in charge of the booking so the sheriff was driving home and thinking,
Wonder what happened to Lacy Swift, He gave her a 1999 model Chevy if she would help him set up Harley. Now it looks like she had set him up instead. Sheriff Bruce grew madder by the minute. The more he thought about it, the more furious he became. He picked up the radio mike, switched to scramble mode to keep from being heard by private scanners.
Tater, after you book that subject with you, pick up Lacy and put her in the hold. I will deal with that bitch Monday morning.
Ten four, Sheriff, barked Tater.
The devious Sheriff enjoys arresting people on Friday night and holding them over the weekend. Magistrate Simpson would not be available to issue a bail until office hours on Monday. The more he disliked someone the more malicious he treated them.
This would be proven later in a case where an inmate was tortured several days in his jail. In another incident, the son of one of the county councilmen was arrested and tortured by his gang of deputies so badly he was treated in ICU for 10 days.
Major Tater spent most of the night searching for Lacy Swift but the girl disappeared into the shadows to lay low for a while. She knew Sheriff Bruce would be after her butt when the money was missing.
I will just tell him I planted the money and Bill Harley must have found it, she thought while driving her county-bought, 99 Chevy down I-eighty five toward Atlanta, thanks to that dumb-ass Sheriff.
It was party time and she was about to spend her newly acquired windfall. Lacy laughed, and sang, and yelled all the way to the big city heading for the nightspots and a hellava big time.
Lacy Swift began at an early age as a wayward child. She was just thirteen years old when she lost her virginity in a statutory rape by a seventeen-year old high school junior who was never charged. She made the mistake of being overly flirty with all the boys even before puberty and neither her parents nor anyone else attempted to prevent her from going wild. They simply allowed her to do whatever she wanted.
The beautiful girl Lacy grew older and turned to wild parties with drinking and drugging. Some nights she came home in the wee small hours and other nights she never came home at all. There was nothing she wouldnt do. She always looked at least ten years older than her age and the wild times almost got the best of her.
On more than one occasion she was brought to Elway Memorial Hospital near death from drug overdose.
Now she was headed for more hard living with money in her purse that would soon be thrown away on drugs, liquor, and more body damaging parties.
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