Psycho - Three Complete Novels (49 page)

“You don’t think—”

“That Mick could have had anything to do with it?” The Sheriff shook his head quickly. “No way either she or Joe Sontag could have pulled off something like that. No way, no motive, no weapon that we could locate.”

“Suppose they stashed the knife someplace first before Sontag went to call you?”

Engstrom shrugged. “Just doing that wouldn’t have gotten them off the hook. They’d both need a complete change of clothing. The way Terry was put down, whoever did the job was bound to get splashed. Neither Mick or her father had a drop of blood on their clothes or shoes, even though there was a big pool around the body. Just to make sure we sent what they were wearing that night over to Montrose for labwork.”

“If they didn’t do it, then who did? Don’t you have any clues?”

“Just what I put out in the press statements. The only fingerprints we came up with were the girls’. The killer didn’t touch anything inside the house and motel, or else he or she was wearing gloves.”

One of the Sheriff’s companions glanced toward him quickly. “He or she?”

“Who knows? Besides, I don’t want any of those women’s libbers to feel left out.”

“Come on, level with us. You must have some kind of theory.”

“I don’t have much use for theories.” The Sheriff paused long enough to swallow the remaining contents of his coffee cup. “Captain Banning put two of his men from the State Highway Patrol on full-time duty, just to see if they could come up with anything. Main thing they looked for was someplace nearby where a car might have been parked on the night of the murder. Couldn’t locate so much as a tire tread to show for it. Which means that whoever committed the murder was probably a transient.”

“Meaning you don’t think you’re going to find anyone?”

“Don’t be too sure of that. We’re still working on it.” The Sheriff’s coffee cup rattled down into the cradle of its saucer. “Now, if you boys will excuse me, I’m heading out for a little fresh air and sunshine.”

That was when Amy tuned out; she didn’t wait to hear which of the trio was paying for the coffee or whether they were going Dutch. In the end the three men left together and Amy did her best to down the rest of her pot roast before it got any colder. The waitress appeared to warm the coffee and stoically endured rejection of her dessert offers. When Amy paid, tipped, and left, the pie slices still lay in state, awaiting either a further viewing or decent burial tomorrow.

The clerk at the reception counter was obviously not into speed reading; his eyes and lips were still moving over the final pages of his comic as Amy crossed the lobby. But as she entered the elevator he must have glanced up, because she sensed his eyeballs boring into her back.

Or was she just edgy? The chance conversation she had overheard could be a godsend, but there was a hint of the diabolic in its details. Lack of details, rather; it was Amy’s own imagination that had supplied them and was still going about its grisly business now.
Pool of blood.
It was all too easy to expand that simple phrase into a full and explicitly gory story.

But was the story complete in itself, or merely a continuation? As Amy left the lonely elevator, moved down the lonely hall, and unlocked the door of her lonely room, questions were her only companions.

Once she switched on the lights she settled down in a chair and eased her feet out of their shoes. Had that weary waitress downstairs been able to kick off her shoes yet?

Amy shrugged the question off. It was the other questions that demanded an answer. Questions about connections. Somewhere in her yet-to-be-unpacked overnight bag was the collection of notes and data she’d carefully prepared and assembled but there was no need to consult them for details. All she needed now were the links in the chain of events.

It was more than thirty years ago that Norman Bates had been confined in the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and it was almost a decade ago that he’d murdered two visiting nuns and escaped, only to be killed in a struggle with a hitchhiker he’d picked up in a van stolen from the nuns. The charred body found in the burned van was mistakenly identified as that of the hitchhiker and Norman Bates was still sought as an escapee.

There were more killings, Mary Crane’s sister Lila and her husband, Sam Loomis, died in Fairvale on the night following Norman Bates’ escape. His physician at State Hospital, Dr. Adam Claiborne, undertook a search on his own that led him all the way to Hollywood where a film about Norman was being prepared. Both the film’s producer and its director died violent deaths and the actress playing Mary Crane narrowly averted the same fate.

Dr. Claiborne returned to State Hospital as an inmate rather than an attending physician. When his prized personal patient crashed out he’d apparently flipped in a similar fashion—Norman’s other persona was his mother, and Claiborne’s was Norman Bates.

Obviously Claiborne had not gone over the wall of the asylum to kill poor Terry Dowson so there was no connection there; at least none that would be obvious. On the other hand people had not suspected the connection between Norman and his dead mother. And years later, after all that continuing intensive therapy, no one at the hospital seemed to have realized he was still potenitally dangerous. Certainly Dr. Claiborne didn’t recognize his own schizoid disorder. And the murder victims out in California had no inkling that death was traveling in their direction from almost two thousand miles away.

But there was an overall connection, the apparently unrelated events did form a continuing chain, and somehow Amy sensed that last week’s tragedy was the last link.

At least she fervently hoped it was the last—although there was always a possibility that it was only the latest.

Latest.
Amy glanced at her watch. Almost nine, so there was probably still time. Reluctantly abandoning her cushioned comfort she rose and crossed to the bedstand on which the telephone rested. Reaching down into the shelf opening below, her fingers groped empty air. They repeated the exercise, when, one by one, she opened the drawers of the bureau. Either the hotel didn’t provide guests with the local phone directory or there was no such animal.

Amy picked up the phone and informed the desk clerk of her predicament. He must have finished his pursuit of literature for the evening, because he sounded a bit more friendly.

“I can get the number for you from down here,” he said. “Who do you wanta call?”

When she told him his voice did a double take.

“State Hospital?”

“That’s right,” Amy said. “Person-to-person, for Dr. Nicholas Steiner.”

There was momentary hesitation at the other end of the line. “Pretty late.”

Doing her good deed for the day, Amy resisted the impulse to inform him that she wasn’t calling for a time signal. “He’s expecting to hear from me.”

“Okay, lady. Just hang on and I’ll get him for you.”

A few minutes later she was talking to a nurse, and after another minute or so to Steiner himself.

“Dr. Steiner speaking.” The voice of an elderly man resonating through well-worn vocal cords. “I take it you’re calling from town?”

“That’s right. I’ll be staying here at the Fairvale Motel.

“Please—it’s
hotel.
They don’t like to mention motels in Fairvale.”

“Sorry,” Amy said. “It must have been a Freudian slip.”

His response was a dry chuckle and as she listened it seemed to have an echo. Either the rain was creating problems with the connection or there was somebody else on the line.

Amy chose her words carefully. “I was hoping it might be convenient for me to come out sometime tomorrow.”

Steiner cleared his throat. “I’ll have to ask.”

“You haven’t told him? Or shown him my letter?”

“Not yet. In view of what happened, I thought it best to wait for a more opportune moment.”

“Are you saying there might be a problem?”

“I hope not. I’ll know more after I talk to him tomorrow morning.”

“I was planning to spend a little time at the courthouse before noon, but I can get out to the hospital by two o’clock if you’re available. Of course I’ll give you a call first.”

“That won’t be necessary. If he refuses to allow you to invade his privacy, feel free to invade mine.”

His chuckle, her thanks, and the click of the receiver sounded simultaneously. All three conveyed a hollow quality and once again. Amy wondered about the possibility of eavesdropping.

But who was she to talk—wasn’t that what she was doing at dinner? It was something to think about, one consideration among many. But right now the priority was to unpack the overnight bag and distribute its contents wherever appropriate in the room, its closet, or the adjoining bath.

As she solved these problems in logistics Amy found herself stifling a yawn. Kicking off her shoes had eased foot-fatigue, but her body felt tired all over, and its encasement of skin and sinew could not be as easily removed.

Not that Amy really wanted to part with her body under any circumstances. She surveyed it with a touch of pride as she removed her makeup and stripped in the bathroom; for someone who would never see twenty-six again there really weren’t too many grounds for complaint. At least her legs were good and as long as she took it easy on the french fries her hips didn’t constitute a problem. She noted a tiny sag in her left breast, but in a way it only contributed to the natural look. Nobody would mistake her cleavage for Silicon Valley.

No one had been in a position to make such a mistake recently, worse luck. She dismissed the thought; this was neither the time nor the place for such activity. Outside, the cold rain was still coming down. But here in the shower stall the water was warm. The only chill came from a sudden, unexpected comparison of what she was presently doing and what Mary Crane had done those many long years ago or, more precisely, what had been done
to
her under the same circumstances.

How old was the Crane girl when she died? Amy withdrew a number from her memory-bank. Twenty-nine. In order to reach that age she’d have to stay here under the spray for an additional two years. In any case, enough of this shower-stalling.

Time to towel-dry her hair—there just wasn’t enough room to bring everything, which meant either she needed a larger bag or a smaller hair dryer. Time for powder, deodorant, and a fresh nightie for a wilted bod. Time to snuggle under the sheets and cast a final sidelong glance at the face of the wristwatch resting on the nightstand. Time to tell time.

It was exactly ten
P.M.
No need to ask for a wakeup call; her eyes would open automatically at seven
A.M.

Amy switched the lamp off. Somehow the rain sounded louder in the darkness. Perhaps it would stop before morning. Sunshine makes no sound.

No sound, nothing to disturb her, not even raindrops now. For a moment inner vision behind closed eyelids gave flickering glimpses of highways stretching ahead; it was as though she was reenacting the hours of driving today, editing them visually, then miniaturizing them on a microchip of memory.

Now both sound and vision had vanished, together with sensation. No rain, no pain, no Crane. Because Mary Crane was two years older, she’d died before Amy was born, so what was the point in bringing her back to life? Points were for knives and knives were for killing and nothing would happen as long as she remembered that, remembered next time to bring a bigger bag, buy a smaller dryer, stay out of the shower.

But she was in the shower again, because all at once she heard the water running, opened her eyes to see the shower curtain waving.

Only the water wasn’t coming from the showerhead and the curtain wasn’t flapping in the stall. Amy sat up quickly, switching on the lamp beside her. What she heard was the rain and what she saw flapping was the curtain before the window opening outward.

Open.
Amy was out of bed and halfway across the room before she fully realized the potential significance of the term. The window had been closed when she went to bed; although she remembered glancing out of it after her initial arrival, she couldn’t recall opening it then. Considering that there was a storm going on outside, there’d be no point.

She halted in midstride. Suppose there
was
a point? That’s what she’d been thinking about when she fell asleep, the point of a knife.

Amy glanced around the room. She’d left the closet open and its contents were plainly visible. The clothing on the hangers stirred slightly in the draft from the open window but the spaces between and behind the garments revealed nothing but their shadows.

The bathroom door was open too, and Amy tried to remember if it was poised at the same angle when she retired. Not that this would really make any difference; if the opening had been wide enough for her to exit, it was wide enough for someone else to enter.

Amy edged up to the bathroom doorway as quietly and cautiously as she could. Anyone lurking inside wouldn’t hear her barefoot passage across the room or the sudden thudding of her heart beneath the slight sag of her left breast.

All of which was stupid, she reminded herself, because she’d switched the lamp on and that would be signal enough for anyone in the bathroom to stop lurking and start—

Forget it. There was nobody in that bathroom. Amy quickened her pace, peered around the edge of the doorway, and slowed her heartbeat as she saw that the room and shower held nothing to be afraid of.

Except the
nothing
itself.

Turning, she made her way to the flapping curtain and the open window. The curtain billowed inward, giving her a glimpse of the rain pelting down on the bare expanse of the flat one-story roof directly below. Someone could have come to the window by way of that rooftop, clambered to the ledge, pushed the window up to enter.

Again she reminded herself there was no point, none that she could see and none—thank God—that she had felt. The explanation was simple; she’d forgotten to lock the window and it blew open.

Too simple. Amy pulled the window shut, adjusted the curtains, returned to bed, and—after a surprisingly short interval—fell asleep once again.