This can also be viewed as WH rambling on in recollection of the truth, which is that he left the key in the mailbox because he wasn't staying at the house (it would seem there was an altercation or other issues prior to AJ's disappearance and he was staying away). The door key thing was a strange subconscious admission. Why did he think that mattered? Not the door key is also " I still have the door key." and he felt that was important to point out, oddly enough. I do believe he is talking about the house door key here, not a separate door key for the truck.
The thing is, when the interview originally was published ALL of it felt like some weird, subconscious and guilty rambling. It was so indecipherable that it was hard to figure out which parts had importance, if any. While some sentences jumped out from the start, others have shown significance as more info is released. You can really start to pick apart his thought process.
Let's not forget, Wesley Hadsell
is a career criminal who has managed to avoid serious punishment thus far. He has a family, friends, and a job. As much as we are seeing the worst of him now, he must have
some charm or ability to manipulate others. He does put serious thought into what he's saying and doing. He's clearly in over his head at this point, which is causing him to flail.
You can tell throughout the entire interview that he's carefully listening to his own story in his head as he says it. He's listening closely to make sure that what he is saying is coming across as authentic, and he is confirming the details of his story in his own head as he says them. The moments in which he corrects himself or jumps ahead of the audience prove that he is tailoring his speech in real-time.
Anyway, let's examine these new circumstances, shall we?
I got a call – I was at work out of town, not out of town, but an hour away. I wasn’t in my home residence, Norfolk home.
Here's an instance where WSers immediately sensed something off. He fumbles over this, corrects himself three times to varying degrees of specificity, and listlessly slips in that he has a second residence is one of these exact subconscious moments you're describing.
He says "I was at work out of town" because, baseline, he wants to sound like he wasn't in the area in the most general way possible. He catches himself instantly, correcting himself to say "not out of town, but an hour away" in case he gets some criticism from being out of town during her disappearance, and to account for possible witness sightings. Still, further, he realizes that saying he was at work has another set of constraints: they can check for time cards, consult employees, look at camera, etc.
He needs to backtrack one more time. By now, he's totally lost. He's getting flustered and the narrative he built before he answered the phone is not panning out. He knows, at this point, that he is staying in a hotel room - but we don't. He needs to quickly come up with something to say that would roughly equate "I was out of town at a hotel room that I'm staying in" without really saying it. He's not quite nimble enough, though, and he doesn't come up with something to fit the story -- he opts instead to move past this moment quickly by saying "I wasn’t in my home residence, Norfolk home." He decides to hope for the best and muddy the water
just a little bit, as opposed to risking his status by admitting he was living in a hotel.
There are SO MANY instances of this where the obvious details about what's really going on are laid out in front of us if we can pick through him carefully enough.