Sticky Floors

The motel room on North Carson Street had the tired smell of old cigarettes, wet towels, and something sour living underneath it all. Outside, traffic hissed by on the highway while a sheriff’s patrol vehicle sat baking in the noon sun.

A sergeant stood beside a car in the parking lot, watching a 34-year-old man rub his face with both hands like he was trying to wake himself from a bad dream.

“You got anything on you?” the sergeant asked.

The man looked down at the pavement. Then he reached into his pocket and handed over a bulbous pipe cloudy with white residue.

The sergeant held it up. “Anything else?”

The man sighed. “Probably.”

Deputies searched him beside the patrol car. A tooter straw came out first.

Then, little plastic baggies. One deputy shook his head softly while dropping everything into an evidence pouch.

“You got kids in there?” the sergeant asked.

The man nodded toward the motel room upstairs. “With her. She’s asleep.”

The sergeant looked toward the faded green door at the end of the walkway.

Inside the man’s vehicle, deputies found more things. A marijuana grinder sat on the passenger seat like somebody had forgotten it in plain sight. A blue bong rolled gently against the floorboard when the car door opened.

“Whole place is turning into a smoke shop,” one deputy muttered.

The man leaned against the patrol vehicle, wearing handcuffs.

“She ain’t hurting the kids,” he said quietly. “Neither am I.”

Nobody answered him.

Upstairs, deputies knocked on the motel room door.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then small footsteps slapped across the sticky floor inside.

A male juvenile opened the door halfway, eyes wide.

“The cops are here!” he yelled back into the room.

From somewhere deeper inside came the tired voice of the 41-year-old woman.

“I’m coming.”

The deputies waited while the room shifted and rustled. When the door opened wider, the smell rolled out first. Old food. Damp laundry. Burned chemicals.

The woman looked exhausted. Her hair hung loose around her face.

“You got a warrant?” she asked.

“We’re here because of him,” the sergeant said, nodding toward the parking lot below. “Mind if we come in?”

She stared for a second, then stepped aside.

The floor stuck to their boots with every step.

Near the entrance sat a mountain of clothes that looked less folded than abandoned. Towels littered the bathroom floor. Boxes were stacked against the walls so tightly that there was barely enough room to move between them. Two beds crowded the room, beside a cot with foam padding bent in the middle.

One deputy looked at the juvenile standing quietly near the television.

“You sleep here?”

The juvenile shrugged.

The sergeant’s eyes moved slowly around the room until they landed on a small coin purse sitting near the bed. Inside was a glass stem with a bulbous end dusted white. The room went still.

The woman sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “I know what this looks like,” she said.

“What does it look like?” the sergeant asked.

She rubbed her forehead. “Bad.”

Dispatch crackled over the radio a moment later. “The female’s got a warrant.”

The woman closed her eyes when she heard it. “Of course I do,” she whispered.

The sergeant read her Miranda warning while another deputy photographed the room. “You understand your rights?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Then came the questions.

She answered in a flat voice, staring at the carpet. “My ol’ man smokes in the bathroom sometimes,” she admitted. “Sometimes with the kids there.”

The sergeant looked at her carefully. “And you?”

“I go somewhere else.”

“To smoke?”

“A friend’s house.”

Deputies searched the room while the juveniles sat quietly on one of the beds. A red sparkling case appeared from the bathroom shelves. Inside was methamphetamine. Another deputy opened the medicine cabinet.

“Two bowls here.”

Near the microwave sat another grinder with marijuana packed inside. In the nightstand, deputies found a brown-and-white container holding more. Every discovery made the room smaller. The woman watched silently as evidence bags filled one after another.

Down in the parking lot, the man sat handcuffed in the patrol vehicle, staring at the motel window.

One deputy finally asked him, “You understand why you’re being charged?”

The man looked away toward the highway. “They had a roof,” he muttered. “They had beds.”

The deputy didn’t answer.

By evening, deputies had spoken with the juveniles, processed the room, and transported both adults to the detention center. Meanwhile, the motel door stayed open behind them for a long while afterward, the room inside quiet except for the humming air conditioner and the sound of traffic passing endlessly beyond North Carson Street.