So, since I have time and nothing else to do, I’m going to go over to the Holiday House Motel. I might as well bike over there and get ice cream at the Duchess on the way back. I might as well shut my subconscious up.

UPDATE: 4 P.M.

That did not go how I thought it would. I don’t know what to make of what’s happened. I’m kind of shaking and I’m sitting here at the foot of my bed.

I went to the motel and said that a friend of my dad’s had been staying there a few days ago and left something at our house, and I was kind of worried because he didn’t come back for it. I sort of mumbled the name Ralph, and the woman behind the counter picked up on it right away. She said a man had been staying there, and he never actually checked out. He left his key in his room.

I have no idea where I came up with this, but I said that if I could get a copy of the bill I could take it to my dad and he could help take care of it. She hesitated for a moment, but then she went into the file cabinet and pulled it out. The man’s name isn’t Ralph—it’s Wendel Rolf. I couldn’t make out his whole address, but I saw that he’s from Albany, New York. The bill was for $64, which was for two nights.

So the man never checked out of the hotel?

What do I think happened? That Mr. Horne drowned him in the pool? And while he was doing so, the change fell out of the man’s pockets and landed at the bottom?

Like it’s an Alfred Hitchcock movie or something.

JUNE 13, 1978

This has to end. I have to put this out of my mind. Let me break it down, make sense of it. What is it that I think I heard and saw?

I’m reading back the conversation I wrote down from the other day:

Wendel Rolf: After Berlin, I never heard from you again. I thought the Russians killed you.

And then:

WR: Who was it you were following? Von Hessen? (Or whatever the name was.)

Mr. Horne: Yes.

WR: I don’t think they ever found him, did they?

Mr. Horne: I thought they found his body eventually.

WR: No. They never found him.

Mr. Horne: You keep up with this.

WR: Yes.

What does that add up to?

I can only think of one thing.

A man came to Mr. Horne’s house. They seemed to know each other from the war. There was tension between them. Something was wrong. Then the next day, the furniture was moved around. There was change in the pool. Mr. Horne acted strange. And the man never went back to his motel.

You read all kinds of stories about Nazis who escaped. People go looking for them. They take on new identities in different countries.