Psycho - Three Complete Novels (69 page)

The girl who worked for Doc Rawson, that Marge, was into his sample supply; he knew because Doc had told him. Said he was going to dump her as soon as he could find himself another. But so far nothing serious had happened and just because she popped a few pills didn’t necessarily tie in with a burning desire to get rid of this place.

It was the others who really wanted it destroyed, and for good reason.

Now, leaving the house, Engstrom regretted he couldn’t share their feeling. As an officer of the law he was responsible for the protection of life and property. The way things had been going, there were bound to be noises about how well he’d performed the first part of his duties. But if on top of that he let somebody burn down this place after it had been featured on the nightly news—

Engstrom shook his head.

It was up to him to keep everyone from playing with fire.

If not, he’d end up on the nightly news himself.

— 21 —

D
r. Steiner was waiting for Amy in the lobby, and at first glance she thought he was one of the patients.

But patients in institutions of this sort were not likely to be wearing business suits nor moving freely about in wheelchairs without anyone in attendance. If anything more was necessary, his greeting offered confirmation.

“Miss Haines? I’m Nicholas Steiner.”

His outstretched hand was cold but his smile was warm. His grip was weak, his voice strong. Contrasts or contradictions? Another question among many for which she’d be needing answers. Better try an easier one first.

“How did you recognize me, Dr. Steiner?”

“There’ve been descriptions.” The smile brightened. “Besides we don’t expect many visitors this late in the afternoon, particularly the kind who arrive carrying oversized notebooks under their arms.” Again the frail hand extended. “Suppose we make a deal? I’ll carry your purse and notebook on my lap and you wheel me back to my office.”

“Fair enough.” Amy stepped behind the chair and, following Steiner’s directions, turned and propelled it past the reception desk. The white-capped, dark-faced woman behind it looked up and smiled at Dr. Steiner as they passed. “See you got yourself a new nurse,” she said.

“That’s right,” Steiner said. “Don’t report me to the union.”

Amy steered the chair into the corridor beyond—the administrative area, she concluded, since most of the doors lining the route were open to reveal glimpses of office furniture or filing facilities.

“Hang a left here,” Steiner told her.

Here
was a modestly furnished but comfortably old-fashioned office; drapes instead of blinds, light incandescent rather than fluorescent, desk solid wood, not flimsy metal.

Amy wheeled Steiner up beside rather than behind it, across from the armchair in which she seated herself after retrieving purse and notebook. Extracting a pen from the former, she held it poised, flipping open the latter to an empty page.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “This must be quite a switch for you. Usually you’re the one who takes the notes.”

Steiner’s right hand loosened the folds of the scarf around his neck. “Usually I ask patients if they need some water before they start talking,” he said. “There’s a cooler over in the corner behind you, and a cup dispenser. If you don’t mind—”

“Of course.” Amy rose and obliged his request. As she settled back in the chair again he drank slowly, then placed the empty cup on the edge of the desk beside him.

“That’s better,” he murmured. “Throat’s still a little uncomfortable.”

Amy nodded. “I’ll try not to ask too many questions.”

“Ask as many questions as you wish. I’ll try not to give too many answers.”

“Suppose I start with an easy one.” Amy gripped her pen. “What was Dr. Claiborne like?”

“You call that an easy question?” The accompanying chuckle held a hint of hoarseness; then the voice sobered. “Depends on which Dr. Claiborne we’re talking about.

“The Adam Claiborne I knew—or thought I knew, as my associate here—was a caring and competent co-worker, a decent and highly intelligent man who was almost like a son to me.

“But he was also the son of Norman Bates.” Steiner expelled his breath in a silent sigh. “I failed him. All those years after he came back, all those attempts to help. And I failed him.”

“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “It must be painful for you to talk about this.”

“After what Adam did to me the other night, it’s painful to talk period.” Steiner gestured hastily. “Don’t take that as a hint. I want to talk. I
need
to. If this hadn’t happened, if I could do what you’ve been doing—”

Amy leaned forward. “You think you’d be able to identify the murderer?”

“Somebody must. And soon.”

“How would you go about it?”

Dr. Steiner shrugged. “Not the way Engstrom has, or Captain Banning. I’ve talked to them both and all they’re interested in is clues, alibis, and motives. The problem is they have no clues, alibis can be faked, and motives can be concealed.”

“Then where do you start?”

“The same place you did when you wrote your book about Bonnie Walton. You begin by constructing a profile of your subject.”

“But I knew in advance that Bonnie Walton was the guilty party. She’d already been convicted of murder. And the profile of her I constructed in advance turned out to be wrong.”

Steiner took another sip of water. “So you changed it, correcting errors on the basis of what you learned as you went along. And in the end it’s my opinion you came pretty close to the truth.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank yourself for doing an honest and thorough piece of work.” Steiner dropped his emptied paper cup into the waiting wastebasket beside the desk. “The point is, you probably never would have started the project if you hadn’t already formed a profile of the subject in your own mind. Right or wrong, you needed to visualize an image as a point of departure. Then interviews helped you correct that image as you went along.”

“Let’s talk about the image of a possible suspect in this case. Do you have enough to create such a profile now?”

Steiner frowned. “Only in generalities, on the basis of what little I’ve learned.”

As he spoke, Amy’s pen raced to keep pace with his words.

“No need to repeat what we both know. Actually there are just a few points of special interest that I think haven’t been given enough consideration.

“First off, in the murder of Terry Dowson. According to Captain Banning, Highway Patrol people couldn’t locate tire tread marks anywhere nearby. They say the storm must have washed them away, but I don’t think our suspect would have left it to chance. Because nothing else was left to chance; nothing turned up in the house that was of any use to the forensic lab. So far the same thing holds true for the murders of Doris Huntley and her lover.

“This doesn’t establish whether the homicides were premeditated or the result of circumstance but it does indicate the culprit is someone capable of careful and logical action to conceal these crimes. And, subsequently, to conceal identity. Which leaves us with only one remaining clue.”

Steiner paused for a moment and it was Amy’s impatience that broke the silence. “Aren’t you going to tell me what it is?”

Dr. Steiner nodded. “Let me put it in the form of a question. Why would anyone steal the wax figure of Norman’s mother?”

Now it was Amy who paused. “Some kind of a psycho? Someone who thought he was Norman?”

“If by ‘psycho’ you mean ‘psychopath’ then such a possibility exists. This type of personality disorder does not involve irrationality or psychotic patterns of behavior.”

“Then the murderer wouldn’t necessarily believe himself to be Norman.”

“But it could be someone who wanted us to
think
he had such a belief. If that’s true, there’s no reason the murderer couldn’t be female.”

“Or a fanatic.” Amy turned a page in her notebook. “Of either sex.” She raised the pen and strove to make her question seem casual. “Mind telling me the name of the patient who visited you from Fairvale today?”

“I’ve had several visitors.” Steiner’s reply was casual too. “Frankly, if any of them were patients it’s my obligation not to reveal their identities.”

Amy smiled. “That won’t be necessary. I think I saw the last one going to his car as I drove in. Reverend Archer, wasn’t it?”

“Archer was here, yes.” The casual note was missing from Steiner’s answer now. “Fact is he comes out on a regular basis to pay ministerial calls on some of our cases. That doesn’t make him a patient.”

“But fanaticism does.”

Amy too was far from casual; both voice and stare were direct.

Steiner sighed. “You understand this is privileged information?”

Amy lowered her pen. “I promise you I won’t write anything down.”

“Not for the moment, anyway. But my hunch is that the press will dig up all this material and a lot more, long before your book sees publication.” He hesitated. “I still don’t know—”

“Neither do I,” Amy said softly. “But I want to find out. Not just for the sake of the book, but because of my own involvement. In some ways I feel personally responsible for what happened last night.”

“Your only responsibility was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Steiner moved the wheelchair a few inches forward, his voice lowering. “Now about Archer. He and Norman Bates were friends. In high school, and after. Archer actually knew Norman’s mother; he used to go out to the house frequently before she first began seeing Joe Considine.”

“Her lover.” Amy nodded.

“And Norman’s enemy. Or so he thought.” Steiner settled back in his chair. “That’s when the trouble began. You and I both know what happened to Mrs. Bates and Considine, but at the time nobody suspected Norman. Apparently nobody had any reason to suspect him, except for Archer.”

“He knew?”

“From what he’s told me, Norman found out about his mother’s affair with Considine. In his eyes she had betrayed him; his rage grew to a point where he was openly voicing threats against them both. That’s when Archer stopped seeing Norman and by the time Mrs. Bates and Considine died Archer was already off to the university. But ever since then he’s carried guilt feelings about not speaking up.

“According to him, he never saw Norman again, which is not all that unusual when you consider Archer was away for eight years between the time he started university and his eventual return as an ordained minister of the gospel. By then Norman was already a recluse, except during the performance of his duties in running the motel.

“When they finally discovered what Norman had done over and above the call of duty, it was too late for Archer to do anything except condemn himself for not ever coming forward with his suspicions. I needn’t tell you what the man has gone through in the years that followed.”

“He hated Norman?”

Steiner shook his head. “He hated what Norman did to Fairvale and its reputation. He hated the notoriety he felt would follow Otto Remsbach’s plans to rebuild the house and the Bates Motel as a tourist attraction.”

“Enough for him to kill Remsbach?”

“Enough for him to make every effort that might prevent Remsbach’s plans from going through.” Dr. Steiner’s brow furrowed to betoken the thought behind it. “I’d say he was highly motivated, determined, perhaps obsessed to the point of fanaticism—but I’d draw the line at describing him as murderous. What I saw this afternoon was a sorrowing and deeply disturbed man.”

“Where was he last night?” Amy asked.

“He doesn’t know.” Steiner shrugged. “Amnesic fugue. Could be triggered by emotional distress. It happens.”

“It happened to Norman.” Amy paused. “Could Archer—”

Steiner gestured before she could continue. “We’re talking about an elderly diabetic.”

“I know this may sound foolish, but isn’t there such a thing as maniacal strength?”

“Rubbish.” Steiner’s smile softened his reply. “You might as well suggest I got up out of this wheelchair and sneaked off to commit those murders myself.”

“Anything is possible.” Amy could smile too. “Adam Claiborne almost did you in with just one hand.”

“True,” Steiner said. “I should have been more cautious. I was supposed to have a male nurse standing by but he went to the washroom. You might call it a security leak.”

He chuckled, then sobered. “Wasn’t so funny at the time.”

“What reason did Dr. Claiborne have for attacking you?”

Steiner’s voice was very sober now. “Because of my own stupidity. I ought never to have gotten into a discussion about the Grand Opening plans for the Bates place.”

Amy nodded. “You’re saying he took all this personally?”

“Very.” Steiner paused reflectively. “I should’ve remembered something he told me in one of our early sessions. ‘Norman Bates will never die.’ And in a way, of course, he didn’t. Because there was part of Claiborne therapy never reached; a part that still believed he was Norman.”

“Maybe he was.”

Dr. Steiner glanced up quickly. “You’re not serious—”

“Eric Dunstable is.”

“The self-styled demonologist?”

“I take it you know about him.”

“Bits and pieces. Not enough.” Steiner leaned forward. “I’d appreciate hearing more.”

He listened intently as Amy recited her contacts with Dunstable from the first momentary meeting in Chicago up until their most recent encounter a few hours ago. “So according to his theory Norman did live on through Dr. Claiborne and has taken possession of someone else after his death.”

“His theory?” Steiner’s right hand rose in a gesture of dismissal. “Demonic possession is one of the oldest and most widespread concepts in human history.”

“Does that mean you believe in it?”

“Quite the contrary. No amount of age or faith transforms fantasy into reality. Stop and think. There was a time, up until a few centuries ago, when it was generally accepted that the mentally ill were possessed by demons. Today we’re starting to believe there may be a physiological basis for certain types of schizophrenia—evil organisms instead of evil spirits. For all we know demons may turn out to be just molecules in a DNA chain.”