by Ben Follows
That was always a possibility, but planning for the interference of morons took too much intelligence and effort, and he didn’t think anyone smart enough would have stayed in Crescent Point.
He slid a small pistol into an ankle holster and several small knives into holsters on his thighs and upper arms. With his training, skills, and knowledge, he could probably take down the entire Crescent Point police force without a huge amount of difficulty.
Strength and slaughter, however, were not the mantras of The Compound. If he had to turn to killing, something had gone terribly wrong and he would soon become a target of The Compound instead of an agent.
Every agent died the same way, at their own hands or at the hands of one of their comrades. The greatest honor that could be bestowed upon an agent was dying on their own terms.
He got out a small duffel bag that contained clothes and pamphlets about Crescent Point. Concealed within the sides of the bag was the latest in high-tech surveillance equipment. He placed the bag by the door and sat down at the computer terminal.
There was more information on this computer database than any government had. Jake had never asked about how they had access to all this information. It wasn’t his place to ask.
He first searched up Dirk, and—not knowing his last name—he had to put in the information that he knew about him, essentially that he lived in Crescent Point and probably had a criminal record. He quickly came to Dirk Davidson. The mugshot matched the man he'd seen at the bar the night before, although he seemed more defeated, more downtrodden, more weakened by recent struggles.
His crimes were minor but plentiful, everything ranging from petty larceny to theft of a small local bank to unlawful possession of a firearm. His only violent crimes came when he was young—still in elementary school— and had beaten a bully to within an inch of his life for mocking his short stature. The bully had been hospitalized for a few months before being fit to return to school, by which point Dirk had been sentenced to three years in a juvenile detention hall for attempted murder, the opposing lawyer framing the bully as a hardworking, rule-abiding student with top grades. The lawyer had also tried to have Dirk tried as an adult and sent to prison, but the judge had thrown that out.
For a few years, during which the only information was reports from the detention hall, he seemed a typical prisoner, a few fights with fellow inmates but nothing serious. He didn’t get paroled and was released on the day his sentence ended. He didn’t return to Crescent Point, getting a job at a grocery store near the juvenile detention hall, visiting the former inmates who had become his only friends. The prison doctors made notes about him, worrying that he wasn’t adjusting properly to the outside world, but what did they expect? What other home did he have?
Dirk Davidson had returned to Crescent Point a year earlier, months after being fired from the grocery store—allegedly for stealing from the cash register, although the store owner hadn’t been able to prove it—and had bought a house a few blocks from where he’d grown up. There were dozens of police reports of concerned locals worried that he would assault their children or kill someone, and the police had kept a close watch on him.
They had seen nothing and after a few months had let the surveillance slide. Dirk wasn’t working or contributing to society, but he paid his taxes and kept his house in a good condition when he was there. Whatever he was doing to get his money was not on the police radar.
That was where the records stopped, except for tax returns and some receipts from local hardware stores that had been submitted to law enforcement. The police had interviewed him about the source of his income, and Dirk had filed a complaint with the regional police commissioner. The complaint had been received well, and Chief Williams was forced to stop his probe.
Dirk’s file ended there.
Jake moved onto Officer Amanda Obrasey.
She was as she seemed, a straight-A student who had chosen to protect the town she grew up after college. A speech Obrasey had given at an elementary school—the same school Dirk had attended—was in her file. Her file was filled with police work and medical files of her fiancé Zach and his rescue of the Lewis family, about how he was incapacitated for at least another six months, and that his ability to ever return to work was still in doubt.
He pulled up the page on the Lewis family and found that—beside the night where their farm had burned down, there was nothing special about them.
Next was Chief Williams, another person who was exactly as advertised. He was a high school athlete who had joined the force in the tradition of the four previous generations of his family. His pictures showed his slow progression from superstar athlete joining the force to fat, balding chief, but his smile and hopeful look never wavered. He had been married three times, none of the marriages lasting more than a few years. He had no children.
Jake made a note of his optimistic nature, wondering whether he could use it to his advantage. He went through the rest of his suspects quickly, not wanting to waste more time than he needed to.
Carl Magnusson was revealed to be a loving family man with a clean record. He was a member of the Maine Democratic party and the anti-gun lobby.
Agatha was an average hotel worker with nothing special about her besides two grandkids in New York City.
Janet, the waitress at Dianna’s diner where he had met with Harold, had worked at the diner for going on forty years. She had met her husband there, a man who had died of a heart attack five years prior. She taught a few baking classes at the local recreation center but otherwise was so boring that Jake felt his eyes glaze over as he read the short entry.
Zeke's was significantly longer than any of the others, since The Compound had done a full background check on him before making their offer. The offer was that he could keep his disgusting video store, which was hemorrhaging money, and they would pay him a good salary to keep it open. In exchange they would construct the bunker beneath the store, which he couldn’t enter. Zeke, feeling as though he had finally reached his dream of stepping into a Hollywood spy movie, had accepted without question. It allowed him to be lazy and sit around watching movies all day, not worrying about finances or appealing to customers, while waiting for secret agents to come and seek his help. It was a dream come true.
Last was Karen. He hesitated for a moment before searching her name.
He thought again of Doug and sighed. He faked a smile, looking up at the spot where he knew a camera was broadcasting his actions back to The Compound.
Karen was mostly what she appeared. She had grown up in Crescent Point and did well enough through high school not to attract attention. The only time she appeared in the town paper was when, as a member of the high school soccer team, she had come on in relief of the star player and scored the winning goal to clinch a playoff spot. That was her only moment of glory, since she hadn’t played during the playoffs, where Crescent Point High School was blown out in the first round.
Her only encounters with the police were over unpaid speeding tickets, which were plentiful. She had almost one a week for the last few years, despite having had her license taken away a year before. Yet the tickets kept coming, and there didn’t seem to be any effort to force her to pay, just a weekly ritual where another ticket was added to the endless pile. Jake thought of the camaraderie that the chief and Karen had shown at the bar. The chief—to Jake’s knowledge—had never paid for his drinks.
He smirked and closed the computer, having gathered all the information he needed.
He grabbed the duffel bag, left the basement, locked the door behind him, and made certain that he could hear the same gears shifting as it locked. He walked up the stairs, more confident now that he could feel the familiar weight of weapons against his skin. He made it to the top and stepped into the seedy store. Almost immediately the stench overcame him, and he had to rub his eyes to clear away the dust.
Zeke was squeezing back behind the counter, where he turned toward Jake and sat as though he h
adn’t just been sneaking peeks down the staircase.
“Good job,” said Jake. “I might be back. Remember, if we meet anywhere but here, you do not know me. Is that understood?”
Zeke nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Jake watched him, looking for the slightest indication of a lie.
“Good.”
He left the store, and just as he stepped into the parking lot he was greeted by the impossibly loud sound of transport trucks barreling through a small and quiet town.
He stood with the people gathered on the sidewalks as a procession of immense trucks interrupted the peace. They made their way down to the main street that ran along the beach before making wide, swooping right turns and heading toward the factories on the north shore.
Chapter 8
Chief Gordon Williams sat in his car outside the entrances to the factories, sipping a steaming cup of travel mug coffee. He had positioned his car so he couldn’t be seen from the entrance. The factories looked like gigantic perfect cubes of metal that—when they were clean—glistened in the sunlight. Now they were rusted and filthy from disuse, mud and dirt coating the outside walls. Some had begun to crumble away and others were covered in graffiti, some explicit.
The rain and snow over the last six months had done some cleaning, but not much. It was no longer the shining beacon of economic prosperity that it had been until five years before, when the major automobile corporation housed there had moved its center of production to China.
The area around the factories was unused save for the wildlife and teenagers looking to get drunk or high. Grass grew through the cracks in the road, and the houses—once the most popular houses among the working class—were empty, the doors hanging off the hinges or lying on the top step.
Behind him lay the forest that surrounded the factory, the leaves just beginning to sprout on the branches, and beyond the dense forest was the river that had come to be known as the north shore, despite the other side of the river being less than a thirty-foot swim away, although dumping from the factory had made the river unsafe for swimming.
He hadn’t intended to come so early, but his nerves had gotten the better of him and kept him awake half the night, fearful of what Dirk was involved in. It was true that Dirk hadn’t done anything that broke the law since his return to Crescent Point, but both his absence and his return weighed on Williams’s mind.
It was none of his business where Dirk got the money, and he didn’t have the probable cause to get a warrant of his bank records. He knew Dirk was right, but Crescent Point had never, to his knowledge, had an ex-con among them. There was no life to be made in a place where everyone knew you had spent time behind bars.
He had seen the message from Obrasey on his phone that morning but hadn’t listened to it. She would tell him whatever nonsense she had unearthed when she came into the station later.
He felt the trucks arriving before they rounded the corner and came toward him.
So there was some truth to what Dirk had said. The chief sipped his coffee.
The gates to the factories slid open, screeching along the rusty rails. They slid open, and the trucks rolled down the street and turned into the factories. Some of the drivers saw him sitting there observing them. Some glared, some waved, some ignored him. He didn’t respond to any of it.
As the trucks kept coming, counting into the twenties and thirties, Williams began to doubt his worries and fears. Maybe Dirk really was telling the truth.
Maybe the new owner thought Dirk deserved a second chance, or maybe he didn’t know about Dirk’s past. Williams made a note to let the boss know. If Dirk had been able to get a job like this, maybe he really was turning it around and trying to do good.
Only after all the trucks had driven through the gate and it had closed did Williams approach the gates. He stopped in front of them and stepped out of the car. Through them he could see the trucks lining up side by side, backing up one by one onto the loading docks.
There were three figures walking among the trucks and checking their contents. One of them looked up, and the chief raised his hand to wave. A few seconds later the man broke off from the group and walked toward the chief.
Dirk was smiling as he walked to the right of the gate. The gate lurched as it opened, and the chief stepped back in surprise.
Dirk was still smiling when the chief joined him on the other side. “Hey Chief, how’s it going?”
The chief shook his outstretched hand, unable to hide the shock. “I’m impressed,” he said. “I am really impressed that you told me the truth. This is amazing.”
Dirk began to walk back toward the factory. “I told you, Chief. I’m turning my life around. The boss wants to meet you. Bring the car in if you want.”
Chief Williams drove his car a hundred meters into the property. The two men Dirk had been speaking with broke off from the truck drivers and laborers who were unloading the trucks. The trucks were filled with boxes on which pictures of assembly line machines were plastered.
One of the men was Japanese, strong, and authoritative, the other was pale and white with spindly arms. Dirk stood on the Japanese man’s left side, his arms crossed and his shoulders back.
“Hello,” said the Japanese man with a faint trace of a Russian accent, “I am Dimitri Kulovich. It is very nice of you to come and examine the new factory. I would love to start our relationship on a positive note. I am the CEO of this little company of ours, and this is my head of finance, Paul Vincent.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Paul, shaking the chief’s hand. Paul’s hand was sweaty and slippery, and the chief had to wipe it off on his pants.
“Sorry,” said Paul, “I’m a bit nervous about all this.”
Dimitri glanced at him sideways then turned back to the chief. “Would you like a tour of the facilities, Chief? I would be more than happy to oblige.”
“No thanks,” said the chief. “I’ve been through this place a ton of times over the last few years. Kids love coming down here to get away from their parents. If you don’t mind, I’d like to send some officers to do a weekly check on the place until it opens. Just to make sure that everything is kosher.”
“Ah,” said Dimitri, waving a finger at him, “the kids will do anything if it will get them some freedom to experiment, eh?”
He laughed, and the chief joined in.
“You won’t have to worry about that anymore,” said Dimitri. “This factory will be the beacon of progress and power of Crescent Point. It will bring the town into the focus of the state. I will need your help and your support.”
Chief Williams looked over at Dirk, who avoided his eyes.
“Do you mind if we speak in private?” said the chief.
“Of course,” said Dimitri. “Come over here. My office will be set up overlooking the factory floor, but it has not yet been prepared for us to move in. We only got here this morning.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Williams. “As long as no one can hear us.”
Dimitri nodded, and they walked back to Chief Williams’s car. The chief lagged a few steps behind, trying to get a read on Dimitri, but it seemed impossible. He seemed out of place to have enough money to buy this place and shouldn’t have the motivation or inclination to run it. But looks could be deceiving, and Dimitri walked with a cool, relaxed confidence to the car that made it seem like he was in his comfort zone.
They stopped beside the car, and Dimitri looked back at the factory, letting out an appreciative sigh.
“What was it you wanted to talk about?” said Dimitri.
“I wanted to talk to you about Dirk.”
Dimitri smiled. “You want to ask if I know about his history? About his stint in juvy?”
The chief frowned. “Yes, that was exactly what it was.”
“I know all about it. More than you, probably.” Dimitri leaned back against the hood of the police car, his hands in his pockets. “I believe everyone deserves a second chance, and everything about Dirk—besid
es his criminal record—seemed to me like the perfect liaison to the city.”
“I understand. The city, however, does not. Dirk is a pariah in Crescent Point, and there have been countless requests for me to banish him from the city, as if this was some kind of dictatorship. Since his return, he’s been a model citizen. I’ll admit I had my doubts—like where his money was coming from—but those have disappeared now. I assume the money was coming from you?”
“Yes.”
“The people don’t like him. He represents all the things that they fear. This is a small town. We don’t have ex-cons here.”
The slightest trace of a smirk flashed across Dimitri’s face.
“Chief,” he said, “I agree that criminals are dangerous, but you must know as well as I that there are many good people who have spent time in prison and many terrible people who spend their whole lives free. I think Dirk falls into that first category.” He paused for a moment. “Do you mind if I tell you a story?”
“Go ahead.”
Dimitri cleared his throat. “My father was born in the Soviet Union, the child of Japanese defectors. He grew up outside Leningrad and saw little of the outside world. That was where I born. When I was eleven, my father heard through friends of his—working at a factory much like this one—that he was going to be killed as a suspected enemy of the state due to his background. My father was not a devoted follower of communism or the ideals of the Soviets, but he was not against them either. He didn’t care for politics and would have lived his entire life without ever stating a political opinion, had he been given the opportunity.
“Upon hearing that he had become a target for no reason other than his ethnicity, he took me and my mother and tried to sneak out of the country. We almost made it to West Germany when we were stopped by a patrol. There were only two Soviet soldiers, and they couldn’t have been older than their mid-twenties, not much older than Dirk is now. My father told us to run as soon as he gave the signal. I didn’t know what was happening, I knew only that I believed and trusted him. He took a knife he had smuggled with him and attacked one of the guards. They were so surprised that he managed to slice the first guard’s throat. We ran. When I looked back the other Soviet guard had recovered from his shock and gunned down my father.”