Finding the home of "Joseph West" took a little bit of doing. The address we had was a rural lot number on a mountain road that had just enough asphalt on it to qualify as "improved." Unfortunately, the lots and houses along the road were widely separated and unnumbered, and usually the houses themselves weren't visible from the road through the evergreens. After a few miles of frustration, we went back and started over, this time slowing down for every mailbox and hoping that the Blascomb/West residence wasn't on one of the lanes whose mailbox had lost its identification to the elements.
Eventually, just when we were about to give up and visit the post office that served this route to get directions, we found a likely candidate. The sheet metal mailbox had originally been a slate gray, and the letters had more recently been painted on in a weak red that blended almost completely with the trails of rust running down the sides. I could positively identify a "B" at either end, plus a couple of rounded letters that could have been "C" and "O" in approximately the right places.
"V... G, E, R," I muttered.
"Huh?" said Sammy.
"Never mind," I said. "I think it says ‘Blascomb.' Should we find a place to park and walk in, or risk going up the lane?"
Sammy peered through the windshield to where the two-rut lane disappeared over a low rise in the trees.
"We walk, we may find ourselves clear in the next county," he said. "I got good shocks. Let's go."
A moment later we were testing those shocks, as Sammy tried valiantly to get his truck's wide wheelbase to pick one rut or other to stay in. I had my window down to listen for any unfriendly noises ahead. Or behind.
The lane went a good quarter mile back into the woods, then widened out into a small clearing on the steep southern side of a hill.
I had half-expected a quaint little getaway cottage, the kind that well-to-do vacationers maintain all over ski country, and wondered how a man on the run would end up in one. What I saw made more sense; the power lines ended at an ancient mobile home, as wide as you can get and still have it transported in one piece. One of its original colors was white; the other was hidden by mismatched automotive rust paint that had been sprayed in a patchwork over the lower half. A weathered porch of two-by-fours canted to one side beneath the front door. The roof was topped with a functional-looking aluminum chimney, and the near end of the trailer was hidden behind a stacked layer of chopped firewood. Worn patterns in the scrub in front of the door showed that two vehicles normally parked here; neither was present.
The lane looped up and through the trees on the hill above the mobile home, then around back and past the front door.
"Let's go park up in the trees on the hill," I said. "The trees are thick enough for cover, and we can wait for someone to get home."
"And then what?" Sammy asked.
"Then we see who comes home," I said.
Sammy drove up the ridge and into the trees far enough for the shadows to hide the truck, but close enough that we could see the top back of the trailer and the two parking spots out front.
And then we settled in to wait.
It was just past 2:30pm when we arrived at the mobile home. We watched some, talked some, and took turns finding places to relieve ourselves among the trees. After being assured that I was okay with watching alone for a while, Sammy folded his arms and settled his head down on his neck for a catnap.
Not long after 4pm, a beaten-up Toyota quarter-ton pickup rattled into the clearing and parked, and a man got out. I watched him through my binoculars.
Weston Blakely looked like an alternate-universe version of his brother, a more robust and outdoorsy version. His face was long and narrow like Joshua's, but the cheeks were ruddy and sunburned, and the lines around his mouth followed the pattern of a smile instead of the pull of gravity. His hair was long and pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail, and a wiry goatee grew on the end of his chin. He wore a red and black flannel shirt, unbleached denims, and workboots.
I watched as he disappeared out of view toward the front door, then emerge again and gather an armload of firewood.
Sammy was awake and watching beside me.
"I'm going down," I said. "I'm going to talk to him."
"Want me to come along?"
"No, you stay here. He's in hiding under an assumed name. I might be able to keep him calm by myself, but you'll just make him nervous enough to bolt. Just come on down if there's any trouble."
I slipped out of the car and half-walked, half-climbed down the hill. I had just reached the arbitrary "lawn" area when Weston came back out onto the porch, brushing bark off his shirt.
He caught sight of me and jumped, almost twisting his ankle. He grabbed hold of the porch rail awkwardly.
"Sorry," I said, trying for an easy-going smile. I kept my hands in the open. "I didn't mean to startle you."
He glanced from me to the clearing around the trailer, empty except for his own truck.
"Who're you? What do you want?" he said, his cautious words bearing an undercurrent of adrenaline.
"I'm looking for Joseph West. Is that you?"
He stepped back to the top of the porch and looked down.
"Who're you?" he repeated.
"My name's Rennie Avalon," I said. "I came up from St. Anselm looking for Joseph West."
I could see gears turning furiously behind his eyes, so I decided to give him a little more to work with.
"He's also known in some parts as Weston Joseph Blakely."
His nostrils flared, and his knuckles whitened on the porch rail.
"What do you want?" he asked, his voice gravelly from the effort of keeping it under control.
"Calm down," I said, taking a casual step forward but still keeping a good five or six yards between us. Without looking, I could tell that I was still just barely in Sammy's field of vision. "I'm not with the police or anyone like that."
"Who sent you?" Again his eyes darted from innocuous little me to the woods on all sides open to him, as if he thought me merely the messenger of something worse.
I kept my smile as open and soothing as possible.
"Your brother Joshua hired me to help him find you," I said.
He sucked in air through his nose, and then he did something I didn't expect.
His chin quivered and he began to cry.
"Dear God, no," he croaked.
