Psycho - Three Complete Novels (10 page)

“So far? Where have you been all day?”

“Where haven’t I been? I’ve covered this area from one end to another. Right now I’m in Parnassus.”

“That’s way down at the edge of the county, isn’t it? What about the highway in between?”

“I came out on it. But I understand I can come back another way, on an alternate.”

“Yes, that’s right. The old highway—it’s a county trunk now. But there’s absolutely nothing along that route. Not even a filling station.”

“Fellow in the restaurant here tells me there’s a motel back in through there.”

“Oh—come to think of it, I guess there is. The old Bates place. I didn’t know it was still open. It isn’t likely you’ll find anything there.”

“Well, it’s the last on the list. I’m coming back anyway, so I might as well stop in. How you holding?”

“All right.”

“And the girl?”

Sam lowered his voice. “She wants me to notify the authorities immediately. And I think she’s right. After what you’ve told me, I know she’s right.”

“Will you wait until I get there?”

“How long is it going to take?”

“An hour, maybe. Unless I run into something at this motel.” Arbogast hesitated. “Look, we made a bargain. I’m willing to keep my end of it. All I’m asking is for you to wait until I come back to town. Let me go with you to the police. It’ll be a lot easier to get co-operation that way, with me along. You know how it is with small-town law. The minute you ask them to put through a long-distance call they press the panic button.”

“We’ll give you an hour,” Sam said. “You can find us here at the store.”

He hung up and turned away.

“What did he say?” Lila asked. “He didn’t find out anything, did he?”

“Well, no, but he isn’t finished yet. There’s another place where he plans to stop—”

“Only one more place?”

“Don’t say it like that. Maybe he’ll hear something there. If not, he’s due back within an hour. We’ll go to the sheriff. You heard what I told him.”

“All right. We’ll wait. One hour, you said.”

It wasn’t a pleasant hour. Sam was almost grateful when the late Saturday afternoon crowd came in and he had an excuse to go out front and help wait on the overflow. He couldn’t pretend to be cheerful any longer, couldn’t make small talk. Not to her, nor to himself.

Because he was beginning to feel it now.

Something had happened.

Something had happened to Mary.

Something—

“Sam!”

He turned away from the cash register after completing a sale, and Lila was there. She’d come out from the back room and she was pointing at her wrist watch. “Sam, the hour’s up!”

“I know. Let’s give him a few more minutes, shall we? I’ve got to close up the store first, anyway.”

“All right. But only a few minutes.
Please!
If you knew how I felt—”

“I do know.” He squeezed her arm, squeezed out a smile. “Don’t worry, he’ll be here any second.”

But he didn’t come.

Sam and Summerfield shooed out the last straggler at five-thirty. Sam checked the register and Summerfield spread the dust covers for the night.

Still Arbogast didn’t appear.

Summerfield switched off the lights, prepared to depart. Sam got ready to lock the door.

No Arbogast.

“Now,” Lila said. “Let’s go now. If you don’t, then I w—”

“Listen!” Sam said. “It’s the phone.”

And, seconds later, “Hello?”

“Arbogast.”

“Where are you? You promised to—”

“Never mind what I promised.” The investigator’s voice was low, his words hurried. “I’m out at the motel, and I’ve only got a minute. Wanted to let you know why I hadn’t showed. Listen, I’ve found a lead. Your girl-friend was here, all right. Last Saturday night.”

“Mary? You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. I checked the register, got a chance to compare handwriting. Of course she used another name—Jane Wilson—and gave a phony address. I’ll have to get a court order to photostat the register entry, if we need proof.”

“What else did you find out?”

“Well, the car description tallies, and so does the description of the girl. The proprietor filled me in.”

“How’d you manage to get that information?”

“I pulled my badge and gave him the stolen car routine. He got all excited. A real oddball, this guy. Name’s Norman Bates. You know him?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

“He says the girl drove in Saturday night, around six. Paid in advance. It was a bad night, raining, and she was the only customer. Claims she pulled out early the next morning, before he came down to open up. He lives in a house behind the motel with his mother.”

“Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I put a little heat on him, about the car and all. And he let it slip that he’d invited the girl up to the house for supper. Said that was all there was to it, his mother could verify it.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No, but I’m going to. She’s up at the house, in her room. He tried to hand me a line that she’s too sick to see anyone, but I noticed her sitting at the bedroom window giving me the once-over when I drove in. So I told him I was going to have a little chat with his old lady whether he liked it or not.”

“But you have no authority—”

“Look, you want to find out about your girl-friend, don’t you? And he doesn’t seem to know anything about search warrants. Anyway, he hotfooted it off to the house, to tell his mother to get dressed. I thought I’d sneak through a call while he’s gone. So you stick around until I’m finished here. Oh-oh, he’s coming back. See you.”

The receiver clicked and the line went dead. Sam hung up. He turned to Lila and reported the conversation.

“Feel better now?”

“Yes. But I wish I knew—”

“We will know, in just a little while. Now all we have to do is wait.”

— 9 —

S
aturday afternoon, Norman shaved. He shaved only once a week, and always on a Saturday.

Norman didn’t like to shave, because of the mirror. It had those wavy lines in it. All mirrors seemed to have wavy lines that hurt his eyes.

Maybe the real trouble was that his eyes were bad. Yes that was it, because he remembered how he used to enjoy looking in the mirror as a boy. He liked to stand in front of the glass without any clothes on. One time Mother caught him at it and hit him on the side of the head with the big silver-handled hairbrush. She hit him hard, and it hurt. Mother said that was a nasty thing to do, to look at yourself that way.

He could still remember how it hurt, and how his head ached afterward. From then on it seemed he got a headache almost every time he looked in a mirror. Mother finally took him to the doctor and the doctor said he needed glasses. The glasses helped, but he still had trouble seeing properly when he gazed into a mirror. So after a while, he just didn’t, except when he couldn’t help it. And Mother was right. It
was
nasty to stare at yourself, all naked and unprotected; to peek at the blubbery fat, the short hairless arms, the big belly, and underneath it—

When you did, you wished you were somebody else. Somebody who was tall and lean and handsome, like Uncle Joe Considine. “Isn’t he the best-looking figure of a man you ever saw?” Mother used to remark.

It was the truth, too, and Norman had to admit it. But he still hated Uncle Joe Considine, even if he
was
handsome. And he wished Mother wouldn’t insist on calling him “Uncle Joe.” Because he wasn’t any real relation at all—just a friend who came around to visit Mother. And he got her to build the motel, too, after she sold the farm acreage.

That was strange. Mother always talked against men, and about Your-father-who-ran-off-and-deserted-me, and yet Uncle Joe Considine could wrap her around his little finger. He could do anything he wanted with Mother. It would be nice to be like that, and to look the way Uncle Joe Considine looked.

Oh, no, it wouldn’t!
Because Uncle Joe was dead.

Norman blinked at his reflection as he shaved. Funny how it had slipped his mind. Why it must be almost twenty years now. Time is relative, of course. Einstein said so, and he wasn’t the first to discover it—the ancients knew it too, and so did some of the modern mystics like Aleister Crowley and Ouspensky. Norman had read them all, and he even owned some of the books. Mother didn’t approve; she claimed these things were against religion, but that wasn’t the real reason. It was because when he read the books he wasn’t her little boy any more. He was a grown man, a man who studied the secrets of time and space and mastered the secrets of dimension and being.

It was like being two people, really—the child and the adult. Whenever he thought about Mother, he became a child again, with a child’s vocabulary, frames of reference, and emotional reactions. But when he was by himself—not actually by himself, but off in a book—he was a mature individual. Mature enough to understand that he might even be the victim of a mild form of schizophrenia, most likely some form of borderline neurosis.

Granted, it wasn’t the healthiest situation in the world. Being Mother’s little boy had its drawbacks. On the other hand, as long as he recognized the dangers he could cope with them, and with Mother. It was just lucky for her that he knew when to be a man; that he
did
know a few things about psychology and parapsychology too.

It had been lucky when Uncle Joe Considine died, and it was lucky again last week, when that girl came along. If he hadn’t acted as an adult, Mother would be in real trouble right now.

Norman fingered the razor. It was sharp, very sharp. He had to be careful not to cut himself. Yes, and he had to be careful to put it away when he finished shaving, to lock it up where Mother couldn’t get hold of it. He couldn’t trust Mother with anything that sharp. That’s why he did most of the cooking, and the dishes too. Mother still loved to clean house—her own room was always neat as a pin—but Norman always took charge of the kitchen. Not that he ever said anything to her, outright; he just took over.

She never questioned him, either, and he was glad of that. Things had gone along for a whole week now, since that girl had come last Saturday, and they hadn’t discussed the affair at all. It would have been awkward and embarrassing for both of them; Mother must have sensed it, for it seemed as if she deliberately avoided him—she spent a lot of time just resting in her room, and didn’t have much to say. Probably her conscience bothered her.

And that was as it should be. Murder was a terrible thing. Even if you’re not quite right in the head, you can realize that much. Mother must be suffering quite a bit.

Perhaps catharsis would help her, but Norman was glad she hadn’t spoken. Because
he
was suffering too. It wasn’t conscience that plagued him—it was fear.

All week long he’d waited for something to go wrong. Every time a car drove into the motel driveway, he just about jumped out of his skin. Even when cars merely drove past on the old highway, it made him nervous.

Last Saturday, of course, he’d finished cleaning up back there at the edge of the swamp. He took his own car down there and loaded the trailer with wood, and by the time he’d finished there wasn’t anything left that would look suspicious. The girl’s earring had gone into the swamp, too. And the other one hadn’t shown up. So he felt reasonably secure.

But on Thursday night, when the State Highway patrol car pulled into the driveway, he almost passed out. The officer just wanted to use the phone. Afterward, Norman was able to laugh to himself, yet at the time it wasn’t a joke at all.

Mother had been sitting at her window in the bedroom, and it was just as well the officer hadn’t seen her. Mother had looked out of the window a lot during the past week. Maybe she was worried about visitors too. Norman tried to tell her to stay out of sight, but he couldn’t bring himself to explain why. Any more than he could discuss with her why he wouldn’t permit her to come down to the motel and help out. He just saw to it that she didn’t. The house was the place where she belonged—you couldn’t trust Mother around strangers, not any more. And the less they knew about her, the better. He should never have told that girl—

Norman finished shaving and washed his hands again. He’d noticed this compulsion in himself, particularly during the past week. Guilt feelings. A regular Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare had known a lot about psychology. Norman wondered if he had known other things too. There was the ghost of Hamlet’s father, for example.

No time to think about that now. He had to get down to the motel and open up.

There’d been some business during the week, not very much. Norman never had more than three or four units occupied on a given night, and that was good. It meant he didn’t need to rent out Number Six. Number Six had been the girl’s room.

He hoped he’d never have to rent it out. He was done with that sort of thing—the peeking, the voyeurism. That was what caused all the trouble in the first place. If he hadn’t peeked, if he hadn’t been drinking—

No sense crying over spilt milk, though. Even if it hadn’t been
milk.

Norman wiped his hands, turning away from the mirror. Forget the past, let the dead bury the dead. Things were working out fine, and that was the only thing he had to remember. Mother was behaving herself, he was behaving himself, they were together as they always had been. A whole week had gone by without any trouble, and there wouldn’t
be
any trouble from now on. Particularly if he held firm to his resolve to behave like an adult instead of a child, a Mamma’s Boy. And he’d already made up his mind about
that.

He tightened his tie and left the bathroom. Mother was in her room, looking out of the window again. Norman wondered if he ought to say anything to her. No, better not. There might be an argument, and he wasn’t quite ready yet to face her. Let her look if she liked. Poor, sick old lady, chained to the house here. Let her watch the world go by.

That was the child speaking, of course. But he was willing to make such a concession, as long as he behaved like a sensible adult. As long as he locked the downstairs doors when he went out.