Hobson learned to live off the grid, and this was largely to blame for Charter’s inability to locate him for nearly twenty years.
Even if someone uses false identification, they leave recognizable patterns behind.
A man who loves to eat tuna sandwiches doesn’t stop loving tuna sandwiches just because he changed his name once or twice. Spending patterns were like fingerprints, and an analysis of spending patterns through bank records and credit histories was a fairly simple process for Charter. This was how they found some of the others.
Tracking someone with no bank accounts, no credit history, no utilities in today’s modern world proved to be another animal altogether. Some would say it was an impossibility. If a man learned to live completely off the grid, he left no trail, no fingerprints, he became a ghost. And that was completely true. Dewey Hobson eluded them, eludedhimbecause of this. That was until a few months ago, when David had a realization—rather than focus their search on where Dewey Hobson might have gone and done, focus the search on where he might go, what he might do, once he got there. While this was a large country filled with vast amounts of wilderness, there were only so many places where someone could live off the grid but still be relatively close to civilization to purchase supplies.
In college at Penn State, Dewey Hobson had been an avid reader. David suspected this was partly why Hobson chose to live off the grid. If he could pass his time with nothing more than a good book for company, and be happy, he could live in a hole in the ground with a thatch roof and be perfectly comfortable. Much like the man who ate tuna sandwiches, though, Hobson’s reading patternsoff gridwould be the same as his reading patternson grid, and that was where David told Charter to focus their efforts when he took it upon himself to find the last few original test subjects and put them down like the expired lab rats they were. Most believed libraries didn’t track the books checked out by their patrons due to privacy concerns. That was only partially true. Libraries did track this information, but they kept the data private, safely tucked away in computer databases accessible only to employees and the most skilled of hackers. Charter employed its share of skilled hackers, and these databases were, well, an open book.
As a kid, a teenager, and later an adult, Dewey Hobson had been an avid reader of Agatha Christie, Robert Ludlum, and Philip K. Dick. He also read every Western by Louis L’Amour. Hobson wasn’t alone in his love for these particular authors. They wrote some of the most popular books in existence. However, this odd combination of suspense, science fiction, and Westernswasdifferent. Most people stuck to one genre, maybe two. Few read this broadly.
When Charter began monitoring for individuals checking out library books by all four of these authors, they found Dewey Hobson the first time, hiding in Carte Del Playa, New Mexico. He moved on by the time David arrived there in 1996, but they soon found that same pattern at a library outside Waitsburn, Vermont. They nearly got him there. Waitsburn was so close. David probably missed him by a week, maybe two at most. That was a little over a year ago.
In May of this year, the pattern appeared yet again at the Eureka Public Library, just outside of Trego, Montana. Although a tiny library, they installed security cameras two years prior, and it took little effort for Charter to hack the feed and begin surveillance. Twenty years passed since the last known photograph of Dewey Hobson, but there was no mistaking him on the library camera feed. It was the large forehead. Hobson’s forehead was freakishly big. Even with the trapper’s hat, long hair, and beard, they spotted him rather easily. David dispatched a team shortly after that. They documented his movements, got pictures of his gray Ford Bronco, and learned where he lived. Each time he came to town from his small cabin on Marl Lake, they learned a little more.
Dewey Hobson would elude him no more.
David told Oliver and the others to wait back at the cars. He didn’t need them. Frankly, the last thing he needed was half a dozen people traipsing through the woods behind him, creating some kind of ungodly racket. Hobson’s cabin was nearly a mile hike from the closest logging road. As expected, they found Hobson’s Bronco hidden under camouflage netting within a cluster of trees just off that logging road. David told everyone to stay put and he’d go in alone. When he found the first tripwire, he was glad he did. One of his subordinates would have certainly triggered the trap. He found three more before he spotted the cabin.
At the center of a small clearing, the log cabin sat back about fifty feet from the lake shore. At best, the hand-built structure was only about four hundred square feet, but this actually made it larger than the one they found in Waitsburn. Firewood was stacked high on the side of the cabin, smoke trailed up from the stone chimney, and a rocking chair sat on the porch looking out over the water.
The rocking chair swayed slowly from back to front.
There was no wind.
The water was still.
Someone had just been sitting there.
David heard thecler-chunk!of someone chambering a shotgun round a few feet to his left.
“Hi, Dewey.” David said the name, careful not to sound threatening, then realizing it was virtually impossible to sound threatening while saying a name like Dewey. “This is a lovely place. So peaceful, all the way out here. I can see why you’re drawn to it.”
Dewey Hobson stepped out of the woods, keeping a safe distance. He most likely figured if he got too close, David would try to grab the barrel of the shotgun, maybe wrestle the weapon away from him. Of course, David had no need for such physical theatrics. He’d humor the man, though. There was no reason to upset him.
“I’m David Pickford.”
“Keith Pickford’s kid?”
David nodded.
“That supposed to comfort me somehow?”
It clearly hadn’t. Hobson took a step back. “I know all about your parents. Heard about it back when it happened. Get on your knees.”
“You’re a difficult man to find.”
“You got no business looking.”
David smiled at him. “You’re making me nervous, Dewey. How about you point that shotgun at the ground?”
“Okay.” Hobson lowered the barrel.
Hobson’s forehead puckered, and he raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure why he lowered the gun, he only understood that he had. When he tried to raise the shotgun again, his hand, his arm, both disobeyed. The gun remained limp at his side.
“Why don’t we go inside? We’ve got some catching up to do.”
“Okay.”
