This is the seventh in a series of posts that starts here.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked Seth. “Kill ‘em.” I knew he wasn’t joking. In a spot of luck, Google had automatically recorded my whereabouts of the evening including a 45-minute stay at an address in Chatfield, about 12 miles south of Rochester city limits. I knew this was good information, but I didn’t know how I was going to use it yet. I had to keep Seth calm and I couldn’t give him the address or something bad would happen, and I wasn’t ready for that.
We agreed to go about our normal lives for a few days and think about the best way to handle things. I didn’t want to arouse any suspicion by sending a tweaker to surveil the house, and even though I fantasized about it, it wasn’t time to set the house on fire. Seth left with a pocket full of meth, enough to keep him busy for a while and hopefully keep his mind off of this situation. I shut the door behind him, and stood in silence for a moment.
My body ached, particularly my face. When you go days without sleep or even so much as a nap, your body really feels it. I bolted the door and undressed. I grabbed the bag of new clothes that I had brought in from my car and headed for the bathroom. It had been three days since my last shower and the hot water burned every inch of my skin. As always, I used the small complimentary bar of soap to clean my body and my hair, I didn’t care about smelling fancy, I just wanted to get the dirt off. I let the water beat down on me and I liked the pain, it kept me awake. This was day five and I knew that soon the hallucinations would begin to take hold and things would get sloppy. I had to keep focused and the only way to do that was to keep getting high. If I went so much as two hours without snorting a line or hitting the pipe, I could drop like a rock wherever I was, no matter what I was doing.
I got lost in my head and drifted off under the calming hot rain and lost my balance. I reached out for support but just grabbed air and fell to the shower floor with a thud. “Fuck!” That was the other way to wake up; sudden jarring agony. I sat there for a minute in a daze. The snowflakes started to float down under my closed eyelids. Little white spots that drifted toward me from nowhere when my eyes were closed would eventually appear when my eyes were open. It was the first sign that my mind was starting to slip. I had to get out of this room or I would fall asleep for days and risk losing a lot of money and time.
I dried myself off slowly and got dressed. One nice thing about not having a home is never having to do laundry. I made enough money to buy a new outfit every day, and I just tossed the old stuff in the trash. I hid the drugs under the sink with the aid of a little duct tape, and removed all paraphernalia from plain sight. Small motel managers had a propensity to be nosy. They would often inspect rooms even when people were staying in them. I knew at some point after I left, the guy who carefully looked me over during my check-in would peek his head through the door and I didn’t want to give him any reason to call the police.
The transition from a dark, cavernous room to bright, cheerful daytime was annoying. I guessed that it was a weekday because of the amount of traffic this early in the morning. I wanted to go take a look at Driver’s house, but it would be a mistake to be seen anywhere near there. And I knew that in order for me and my family to be safe, I would have to kill all three of them at the same time.
