The Compound: A Thriller

by Ben Follows

  He smiled and zipped the bag back up. He looked around him, trying to judge the best way to get to the nearest town. He stood up using the crutches, slung the bag over his shoulder, and chose a direction at random to begin hopping through the trees.

  He had to take frequent breaks—he had never used crutches before and had never understood how exhausting using them was—and thought through his next moves. He had nowhere left to go, no one left to go to.

  He was too distracted by his pain to come up with any answer. He took the pills prescribed to him, cheating the dosages only when the pain became too great to bear.

  That evening, as the stars shined over the forest, helicopters began circling overhead, spotlights scanning the forest, looking for him. He rested against a trunk underneath dense foliage but was unable to sleep.

  Over the next several days he stayed in the forest, only moving when it was necessary. The rations began to run out. Occasionally he would hear the sound of patrols drifting through the forest, but they never came close enough to worry him.

  When three nights had passed and he was certain the search for him had been called off, he left the forest and found the doctor.

  Chapter 54

  Chief Williams tried to fish some of the remaining chicken out of his thermos of chicken noodle soup. He wasn’t really watching for anything, he was just killing time until the end of the day.

  It was almost three weeks since the events at the factory, and Crescent Point had never been in a worse situation, made even worse by the brief boom caused by the media attention. But Crescent Point’s fifteen minutes of fame had ended.

  The issue wasn’t that the crime rate was still increasing or that he was spending his nights drinking alone, his head hunched over the bar. The issue was that hope was gone. No one thought that Crescent Point had a future anymore.

  Tourism had disappeared since the factory explosion, and the citizens—many of whom had lived in Crescent Point their entire lives—were leaving. The grass on the front lawns of homes owned by the same family for generations had grown long and unwieldy, shutters hung off windows, paint was peeling, stray cats roamed the streets. The Bishop’s Inn, long a staple of Crescent Point, had ceased operations, the pool becoming a swamp. The entire town was one step away from being the setting of a horror movie.

  Those most involved in the story of Jake Lavelle and Frank Tanners had been among the first to leave, but they were far from the last. Only those with nowhere to go had remained, and the chief had been disheartened to find he was one of them.

  Carl Magnusson had left Crescent Point with his family to find somewhere else, somewhere as quaint and safe as Crescent Point was supposed to be. Frank Frederickson’s repair shop sat empty and vacant, unused and unwanted.

  Judith Frederickson had done the same, moving as far away as she could with the intention of letting Suzie grow up in a town that didn’t think of her father as a criminal. She’d left a note with the chief saying that if he saw Dirk Davidson, she wanted him to know she was sorry for treating him unfairly. The chief had thrown the letter in his fireplace.

  The police department was overstaffed, and the chief had started laying off his employees. Some had stayed on in unpaid positions, although that seemed to be mostly just to have something to do. Many still hoped to catch Obrasey’s killer, an idea that the chief supported with curt nods and unenthusiastic pats on the back.

  He looked up as a car flashed past him at a speed approaching double the speed limit. He sighed, closing the thermos and turning on the sirens.

  The black car pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. The chief pulled up behind it and climbed out of his car without writing a ticket.

  As he walked alongside the car, he said, “Karen, when are you going to learn you can’t just speed everywhere? I won’t be around forever. What is that up to? Five hundred unpaid tickets now?”

  He trailed off as he saw Karen’s expression. She hadn’t been okay ever since Obrasey’s funeral, but now she looked like she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

  “Karen?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was the quickest way to get your attention.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Karen hesitated for a moment. “He’s back.”

  The chief frowned. “Who’s back? Lavelle?”

  “No, the other guy. The one who owned the factory. Derek or something?”

  “Dimitri?”

  Karen looked to be on the verge of tears. “That’s it. I saw him coming into town. He was driving down the back roads toward the factory. I recognized him from when I was at the police station with Carl Magnusson.”

  The chief nodded. “Thanks for telling me. Are you doing all right, Karen? I mean seriously, how are you doing?”

  Karen looked ahead, avoiding his eyes. “I’ll be okay. I’m not there yet. I will be.”

  The chief nodded. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m always available to talk. Now, I need you to tell me exactly what you saw.”

  Karen nodded and swallowed before speaking.

  Chapter 55

  Half an hour later, the chief pulled up beside what remained of the factory. The investigation was long over, but the yellow tape still flapped in the wind around the charred mess.

  The gate hung on its hinges, and the chief had to exit his car and push the gate out of the way. He drove in, his eyes locked on the burned husk of the factory. Pieces of metal sat on the ground, and there seemed to be endless lines of melted machines sitting on the loading dock.

  The only thing that stood out among the wreckage was a red car, far from new and further from clean, but in better shape than anything around it. It hadn’t been there before; he would have remembered.

  He made sure the safety was off on his gun before exiting his car and walking toward the factory. The front door was open. He couldn’t remember if that was a change. He stepped through the door and into the front hallway. There were enough holes in the walls and roof that natural lighting illuminated large sections of hallway.

  There was a loud bang in the distance.

  Williams froze, listening for the source, trying to catch it again. It didn’t come again.

  He moved faster down the hallway toward the source, making as little noise as possible but still kicking a few stray pieces of metal or stumbling over missing tiles. Every time, he froze and listened, hoping he hadn’t been discovered, and every time, as though he had an guardian angel cloaking his sounds, he heard no changes.

  He entered the main factory. The machines that hadn’t been explosives themselves had mostly been obliterated in the explosion. At the far side of the room was the freight elevator that Officer Obrasey and Agent Emerson had gone down in and never came back up.

  Something moved in his peripheral vision. He jerked his head and caught a shadow moving in the room above the factory floor, the manager’s office. There was also a faint light coming from the room that he wouldn’t have seen if he wasn’t looking for it.

  He walked to the staircase and took his flashlight off his belt.

  He drew his gun and held it under the flashlight, the metal stairs creaking as he ascended. He made it to the top of the stairs, hearing nothing. He turned on the flashlight and pushed the door open with the bottom of his foot. As the door swung open, he said, “Police! Put your hands up!”

  Dimitri Kulovich stood in the beam of the flashlight, blinking hard as his eyes adjusted to the flashlight beam. The chief almost shot him upon seeing the small object in his hand, thinking it was a gun, but on further examination he saw it was a penlight.

  “Chief Williams?” said Dimitri. “What are you doing here?”

  The chief said nothing. Dimitri was favoring his right leg, and there were bandages on his neck and forehead.

  “Dimitri, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m just—there are some files I left here that I need for insurance purposes. I was just coming to see if maybe they had survive
d. I had them in a firebox.”

  “Show me,” said the chief, gesturing with his gun.

  Dimitri held up a disk in a plastic case in his hand. “There were files on this disk I needed.”

  “Give it to me,” said the chief. “I’ll look through it, and if I can’t find anything suspicious you can have it back.”

  “Chief,” said Dimitri, laughing, “this is my property. I still have the deed to this place. It’s my property.”

  “It’s been under a police and FBI investigation. An innocent person would come to the police and make sure that we had everything finished first before you moved back in.”

  “I didn’t want anyone to see me,” said Dimitri. “This town hates me. I wanted to come in under the radar. I’m sure you can understand that. Come on, Chief…”

  The chief paused for a moment before asking a question that had been bothering him. “Before Frank Tanners disappeared,” he said, “someone visited him at the repair shop and allegedly said something to him that made him so angry that he terrified his wife, who was waiting outside. That was you, wasn’t it? You tried to make a deal with him, and when he turned you down you stormed out. Then later that night you grabbed him on his way home and kept him here. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

  In the beam of the flashlight, it was tough to make out the creases and expressions on Dimitri’s face, but Chief Williams could have sworn that for just a moment Dimitri’s face had shown genuine panic. By the time Williams blinked, Dimitri looked confused, as though he was angry at even being accused of such a thing, but the chief had long ago learned to trust his instincts.

  “Chief,” said Dimitri, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Dimitri began to lower his hands.

  “Keep your hands up!” said the chief. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of the explosion of the factory and the murder of almost fifty people, including Officer Obrasey and FBI agent Andre Emerson. I will now read you your rights.”

  “Chief, what are you—“

  “Get down on your knees and turn your back to me!” the chief, waving the gun in the air. “Slide that DVD along the ground to me.”

  Dimitri scowled at him. “Chief, I can’t believe you would suspect—“

  “Put it on the ground!”

  Dimitri nodded, crouching down and placing the DVD on the ground. He slid it along the ground with one hand while the other went behind his back.

  “Keep your other hand up!” said the chief.

  Before Dimitri could move another inch, the chief fired three times, and the bullets hit Dimitri square in the chest, pushing him onto his back, a gun flying from his hand as the DVD came to a stop on the ground.

  Dimitri was gurgling blood, reaching for the gun that lay a few feet away, but he couldn’t reach it. The chief watched him, breathing heavily, as his struggles to grab the gun became less determined. His arm fell to the ground.

  The chief took a deep breath. In his thirty years as part of the Crescent Point Police Force, he had never been given cause to kill someone. Crescent Point was a place of peace.

  He turned on his radio, staring at the blood staining Dimitri’s shirt. Dimitri's head was slumped over to one side, his eyes lifeless, staring at the gun on the ground.

  The chief turned on his radio. “This is Chief Williams. I need a team out at the factory on the north shore. There’s a dead man here.”

  Chapter 56

  The chief ignored the shouts of the medical team as he walked away from the ambulance, throwing the panic blanket to the ground. They wanted to do a psychological evaluation before they let him leave, on account of him having killed someone, but the chief didn’t need that. He felt no guilt. If anything, he felt pride.

  John, the medical examiner who was doubling as a paramedic due to the lack of resources, told the medical team to stand down and let the chief do as he wished.

  The chief nodded to him before walking to Riley Edwards, who stood beside a car taking statements from a few officers who had arrived first on the scene.

  “Riley,” said the chief. “I need your laptop.”

  Riley brought his laptop from the back seat of the car. The chief was thankful that it had a DVD drive. He took the laptop with him and sat down against a shipping container. He started up the computer and signed into the guest account. He slipped the DVD into the slot. The video loaded and began to play.

  The video was of Frank Tanners tied to a chair, another dead man leaning on him. Dirk Davidson—off-screen—occasionally interjected something.

  The chief put a hand to his mouth as the video played.

  Chapter 57

  Riley’s laptop sat on the passenger seat of the chief’s car. He had confiscated it until the investigation was over. Riley had seemed irritated but had acquiesced.

  The chief took out his cell phone and called the number he’d been given a few weeks earlier. It rang three times before a voicemail message started.

  “Hey, this is Ken Thompson. Leave a message.” There was a beep.

  “Agent Thompson,” said the chief. “This is Chief Gordon Williams from Crescent Point. You should get here soon. Dimitri Kulovich was here, and now he’s dead. He was trying to retrieve a DVD from the remains of the factory. It has a pretty incriminating video on it. Meet me at the station. It is now about 2:00 p.m., and I’ll be there until about six this evening. Otherwise you can find me at my house. Thanks.”

  The chief hung up.

  He took a deep breath. He had a visit to make before he returned to the station. He had made the same drive a few weeks earlier, but it seemed shorter and easier this time.

  He pulled up on the side of the road and stepped onto the walkway. He walked to the door without hesitation.

  He knocked three times, then stepped back and waited. He heard the familiar sounds of Zach pushing himself up off the couch and grabbing his crutches. After Obrasey’s death, Zach’s mother had moved in to take care of him, although she didn’t appear to be there at the moment. The chief had met with him a few times to answer questions, but mostly Zach hadn’t wanted to be reminded of what had happened. He heard the click of the crutches along the ground as Zach approached the door. Zach unlocked the door and opened it.

  “Chief?” said Zach. “What are you doing here?”

  “I killed him, Zach. The man who killed Amanda.”

  Zach stared at him, eyes wide. “Was it Dirk—“

  “No, but he was involved. Dimitri Kulovich. He came back to get something from the factory. I killed him.”

  This time, Zach did not wait to be alone before he broke down. He lurched forward with a heavy sob, his crutches not able to hold his weight. Chief Williams caught him as he pitched forward, trying to balance on his one good leg.

  “Thank you,” said Zach, crying into the chief’s shoulder. “Thank you so much.”

  Chief Williams held him. “Everything will be all right.”

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  The chief stayed with Zach until his mother returned from the store and he had calmed down, a small but noticeable smile breaking through the wall of anguish he had built around himself over the last month.

  Chapter 58

  Agent Thompson was waiting in the chief’s office when he returned to the station, less than an hour after he had made the call.

  The chief closed the door and took his seat.

  “So,” he said. “How did you get here so fast?”

  Thompson smiled, but the bags under his eyes hinted that he hadn’t slept. “We received a tip that Dimitri was coming this direction, so we assumed he was coming to Crescent Point. We didn’t know why at the time. A few of your officers told me what happened. That’s impressive. You said you had a video?”

  The chief nodded. “Do you know what’s on it?”

  “No,” said Thompson, “but I think I know people who do. Can I see it?”

  Thompson watched the video on Riley’s laptop, his exp
ression flipping between shock and intrigue. When it finished, he looked up at the chief. “That’s Dirk Davidson, isn’t it?”

  “I’m certain of it,” said the chief. “He was directly involved, just like I suspected. And Dimitri is dead, by my hand. What about the other one? The accountant or whatever?”

  “Paul Vincent was found dead three days ago in a Virginia farmhouse. The mailman smelled something rancid inside the house and called the cops. Paul’s bank account had been cleared out and transferred to accounts in the Cayman Islands about a week ago. We haven’t gotten warrants for those yet, but I suspect we’ll find Dimitri was behind it.”

  “So, what was his plan?”

  Thompson hesitated. “It was to prove a point to one man. I’m sorry, that’s all I can tell you.”

  “All those deaths just to prove a point.” The chief paused. “What about Jake Lavelle?”

  Thompson shrugged. “The search for him is underway.”

  “Any luck?”

  “No.” Thompson exchanged a knowing glance with Chief Williams before standing. “I need to take this back to the FBI offices. Thank you for everything. If you ever need anything, you have my number. I’ve never said this to a cop before, but we wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.”

  “Thank you. Maybe now Emerson can rest peacefully.”

  Thompson smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Maybe. I hope this is an omen of great things to come. For not just you, of all of Crescent Point.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “I guess we will.” Thompson walked to the door and paused with his hand on the door handle. He turned back. “Thank you for avenging Emerson.”

  He opened the door and was gone before the chief could say anything else. He looked down at his desk, his own emotions rising to the surface.