Data 1: 3:45 a.m.
Where the heck was Mike?
I glanced down at my Timex and confirmed he should have been here by now. How long was I supposed to give him?
My heart was still hammering from all the craziness that happened earlier. To think that Mike hitched the Taj RV to a train and likely killed four people. Then he burned down a trailer. After he killed Chuck. He was a psychopath, a serial killer at this point.
Trailer Alpha was toast; the fire trucks began arriving twenty minutes ago. Siren after siren blasted from down the street. Mike was supposed to torch it and meet me in my driveway so we could go to Gorey’s bowling alley and purge any remaining blackmail material.
The surveillance cameras were dead at the bowling alley. I knew that because I killed them myself. The after-hours cleaning crew would be finished, and we would have a decent window of time to do a different sort of cleanup.
I didn’t know who was scheduled to open the bowling alley that morning. The staff should begin to arrive around 9 a.m. to get ready for the 10 a.m. opening. Randy and Sam wouldn’t be among them, because they were currently dead in a camper at the bottom of the lake. No one would miss Randy or Sam until opening.
I wondered how long to give Mike. If he didn’t show up, I had to do the cleanup myself. Randy had a backup server somewhere in his office area. There was also sensitive material in lockers, some in envelopes I had dropped off yesterday myself. I didn’t know if they had been cleared, so I would need to check the lockers. If they were cleared, the materials were in Randy’s office.
I would also need to look in Sam’s room at the alley, the storage closets that had been converted to his pathetic little apartment. But since I was a grown man living in my grandma’s double-wide, who was I to call him pathetic?
I had a sinking feeling that something went wrong with the torching of Trailer Alpha. Otherwise, Mike would be here. He was a brainwashed military fanatic, so I couldn’t imagine him being late for anything, especially something critical.
I glanced at my watch again and decided to do it without him if he didn’t show up in the next twenty minutes. The bowling alley was only a mile away; Mike could make his way there on foot if he needed to. If we were delayed until after sunrise, it would increase our chances of getting busted. How would we explain getting caught ransacking Randy’s office, especially after they discovered he was dead?
