Chapter 78

The drama of Mica and Janet dragged on while we worked on episode three of the second season of ‘That Bitch Tory’. On day one of the work on episode three Janet or I had to build the back story for our new character. His entrance into the story was in the last scene in episode two.

Tyler spent his first night in Sparta on his grandfather Jamison’s twenty acre farm. Twenty acres was about the size of two city blocks. It seemed like a pretty good sized piece of land to Tyler who had spent the last three years living on the Forsyth State Prison Farm. The first year he hated the place and the job he did there.

The second year he just hated the prison part of his life, but learned to enjoy working with his hands, and making things grow. During his third and final year he began working on his after prison plan.

His after prison plan was to take over his grandfather abandoned farm located in the tiny North Carolina mountain town of Sparta. Tyler went into his new venture with a thousand dollars cash. That was money he had left with his sister when he went inside. He used the money to start his new life.

His new life was based on what he learned in prison, as well as what his learned during his time in Afganistan. His crime was a bar fight, but the real crime was kicking the ass of a local politician’s son. Well the kid’s broken arm might have figured into it. He did three years of his his five year bit at the prison farm. He was a model prisoner. The parole board took that into account along with the fact that he was a war hero. Even after his release Ty battled PTSD. He was a complex character.

Meanwhile back in reality I rode my trike and cursed the cold. Janet got tired of the early morning bike rides quickly. I was glad to be honest. It allowed me to get back to my own schedule. Janet and I worked on the Bitch Tory and her daughter the equally bitchy daughter Shelly.

Shelly’s jail stay was only four days, but it changed her some. She learned a lesson from it. She learned to lie to her mother rather than confront her head on. It was a valuable life lesson. Most kids learned that much sooner, but Shelly had grown up sheltered by her grandparents. Without the war going on at home, Tory was able to concentrate on her new mission, finding and then destroying the illegal pot and moonshine black markets.

She decided the way to go was to coordinate with local cops to create a map of the hot spots. One of her first locale contact was with the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Department. From a deputy she found that there was one registered grower. Yes the deputy named Tyler as the county’s only legal pot grower. Tyler had been a resident of the county for only five years. He had turned his twenty acres of land fit only to hold the earth together into a well run farm. Then he began leasing land from others. He even bought another small family farm adjoining his grandfather’s place.

His crops were almost always vulnerable to attack from the petty criminals and Stoners in the area. That problem had to be addressed. to solve it he tried a cheap chain link fence. What made it cheap was the builder used fencing materials bought at a state prison surplus auction. The mesh had to be inspected, but it was mostly in good shape, just rusty looking. It wasn’t cheap but it paid for itself by ending most of the petty thefts. He tried a dog for each of the fields, but he found it not to be cost efficient enough. He found that CCTV and a 12guage was more cost effective. The problem was only a couple of months out of the year, so he didn’t hire a security response team the first couple of years. It was all trial and error, but there was enough money in his business to experiment.

His big money break came when he was contacted by a couple of mountain growers. They needed someone to bootleg their illegal crop. In his third year he began buying and selling someone else’s weed. It was mostly an inferior product, but it was damned profitable.

“We need to work more on the main characters,” Janet demanded.

“You got it. Now run with it,” I suggested in agreement.

By the end of the first day, I had my character fleshed out. Janet was still struggling with her new parts. Why don’t you concentrate on working Ty into the episode by having Jarrett investigate him. Janet had been looking for a way to ditch her days work, so she jumped on it.

It would be slow going to transfer the story line from the team to the investigation of Ty. He wasn’t even on anyone’s radar until Jarrett began investigating him. The team Tory sent to Sparta was Just Sarah and Jarrett first.

Jarrett talked to the local cops while Sarah ran the financial report for the privately held Tyler Farms LLC. Tyler for sure had a good lawyer. He was a small town ambulance chaser whose very bright, big city lawyer daughter consulted for him. She actually did the work, but her dad took credit for it, since her consulting was technically a violation of her contract with the big city firm.

Jarrett smelled something was not right, but had no evidence. Sarah also sensed something wasn’t quite right, but Tyler’s lawyer covered his tracks well. Jarrett and Sarah agree that Tyler needed to be looked into deeper.

“This is our season three story. The team investigates Tyler Farms,” Janet said it proudly like it was her idea all along.

I allowed her to think that. I trusted that Tonya would see though the layer of bullshit. When we ended day one of the new episode, we had written very little. On day two while I was gone for my morning trike ride, Janet began putting things on paper. She used my story of Tyler’s background with a lot more detail added by herself.