Robert Bloch's Psycho (17 page)

She kept hoping he'd change his mind, finally have had enough of living with a stick, and tell her he wanted them to be together all the time. Just in case, she romantically had a packed bag in the trunk of her car, with a sexy negligee and enough clothes to last several days if and when Myron ever told her that he wanted to be with her. Then they could hop in a car and go somewhere for a weekend or a whole week, as a start to their lives as a real couple.

It was foolish, she knew, but it gave her hope. They could be happy together, if Myron would just realize it.

*   *   *

Several nights later, a strong storm had come up across the land from the Gulf. The cold air, driven by the winds, was bone-chilling, but just below the edge of forming ice or snow. Huge raindrops fell out of the dark swirling skies onto the windshield of a car at the back of the parking lot for the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The car was black, and was dark inside as well.

A man was seated behind the wheel. He wasn't smoking, not wanting to risk drawing attention to himself by the flash of a match or the burning glow of a cigarette, if it could have been glimpsed at all through the maelstrom outside.

Such caution was probably unnecessary, anyway, since the few people he had seen leave the facility were holding umbrellas in front of them and keeping their heads down so as not to receive a face full of icy raindrops. Not once did any of them even glance in his direction.

Still, he was able to see them, at least when they opened their car doors and the dome lights illuminated their bodies and sometimes their faces. The man was watching for the person he thought of as his quarry, but he hadn't seen him yet. He wondered if he would. He had to get a sense of his prey's schedule, and he suspected that it wasn't a regular one, that under certain circumstances he would stay longer, leave earlier, perhaps even stay all night.

It wasn't easy to take the quarry. One didn't just waltz in and do it. That was how one got caught. And the man didn't want to get caught. He hadn't before, and he didn't intend to now.

What he intended to do was to take his man and make him pay for what he had done. Pay with his life.

The winds increased. The rain fell more heavily, drumming on the steel roof of the black car. The man leaned toward the windshield, turned the ignition key, and flicked on the wipers. Someone was coming into the parking lot with an umbrella over him …
wait
 … over him and a woman huddled close to him. He took her to a car and held the umbrella over her as she got into the driver's side, then waved goodbye as her car started and she drove away.

As the man with the umbrella started toward his own vehicle, the man in the black car recognized him. It was Dr. Felix Reed. Not his quarry. He turned off the wipers and leaned back on the seat, waiting for the next person to leave.

At this point, the man in the car wasn't sure where he would take his quarry, but once he had a better sense of the man's schedule, he would make the decision. Perhaps it would simply be best to do it as he had done it the last time. That had been efficient. And satisfying. It had been
deeply
satisfying. Vengeance always was. And vengeance was what he would take. Not for himself directly, but for those who shared his blood.

*   *   *

The storm continued through the night and into the next day, filled with buffeting winds and drenching rain. There were periods when it lessened in ferocity, but by early the following evening it had returned in its full strength. Thunder and lightning had been added to the mix as well, and the patients had been restless all day. A number of nurses and attendants had been asked to stay late and earn overtime, adding to the usually reduced night shift.

Naturally Eleanor Lindstrom and Myron Gunn were working late, overseeing their charges both professional (the nurses and attendants) and medical (the patients). Both had their hands full. With every new crash of thunder, certain rooms produced cries, bangings, and hammerings, and nurses armed with pills and hypos filled with sedatives were escorted by burly attendants into those rooms to administer medicinal calm, voluntarily received or not.

Most of the disturbed patients were talking about ghosts. It was as if the thunder and lightning had made them recall all the other tropes of horror films they might have seen when they were free, as well as ghostly tales they'd heard in their youth and there in the confines of the state hospital. The facility was rich in spectral lore and history.

The majority of patients bore the storm as anyone else would, but that still left dozens of terrified men in need of calming, and it took some time. Myron Gunn seemed to be everywhere at once, lending authority and muscle wherever they were needed. He was none too gentle with the patients, actually sitting on some of the recalcitrant ones who refused to submit to an injection.

Marie Radcliffe was concerned about Norman Bates, and when she saw Dr. Reed in one of the corridors, trying to lend some order to the chaos, she asked him if he wanted her to check on Norman. “Not necessary,” the doctor said. “I just did, and the thunder and lightning don't seem to be bothering him at all. His light's off and he's sleeping like a baby. Let's not disturb him.” Reed looked at his watch. “How long are you all here?”

“They asked the overtime people to stay until midnight. The storm is due to move out around then,” Marie said. “Although most of the patients are tractable at this point.”

“They seem to be. I think I'll head home. It's been a long day, and there really isn't anything else for me to do here. Maybe I'll grab a burger at Delsey's if they haven't been washed away. Did Ben stay tonight?”

“Yes,” Marie said with a smile.

“Good. Then you've got someone to walk you to your car.” He grinned. “Someone who might do a far better job than me.”

She laughed. “At least I remembered my umbrella today.”

“I doubt you could have left your house without it. See you tomorrow, Nurse.” And Dr. Reed disappeared down the hall toward his office.

*   *   *

Despite Marie Radcliffe's optimistic estimate, it took until nearly midnight for all the patients to settle down. Dr. Goldberg received the reports from Nurse Lindstrom and Myron Gunn, told them to dismiss everyone except the night staff, then retired to his office, where he would spend the night, as he often did.

Myron had always thought that was pretty cushy, to have a big office with a daybed and a bathroom with a shower. If he had that kind of setup, he would
never
go home to that dry, unloving bitch Marybelle, and he would bring Eleanor into his office with him too, and they could make love on something other than a big pallet of towels.

As he and Eleanor separated, she to find and dismiss the overtime nurses, he to do the same with the attendants, he thought that tonight might be a good time for him and Eleanor to get together in the basement again. It was much later than when they regularly left the hospital for the night, so there would be fewer snooping eyes. He had already called Marybelle to tell her that he didn't know when he'd be home, and Eleanor had no one to call anyway. They could do it the whole night if they really wanted to.

The more he thought about it, the more he wanted it to happen. Eleanor was a hell of a woman, and sometimes he thought he really loved her. She understood him in a way Marybelle never had, and he could see spending the rest of his life with her. It was a much prettier picture than growing old with Marybelle. That woman would continue to dry up until all that was left was hide and bones, and eventually even that would turn to dust and blow away. But it would be a long, long time before that happened.

Maybe Jesus wouldn't mind too much if he left Marybelle. Maybe he'd understand, even if Pastor Oley Crowe wouldn't. It's not like he'd be the
first
member of the First Baptist Holiness Church to get a divorce. Chuck and Joanie Medford had split up a few years back after Chuck caught Joanie with the Fuller Brush man, and Chuck still came to church and everybody treated him okay, even though they said behind his back that he deserved it for marrying a woman twenty years younger than him. And Jimbo Peters divorced his wife so he could marry the bookkeeper at his Ford dealership, and nobody groused about it much, especially after he donated enough for the church to buy a new electric organ.

Well, it wasn't a decision he had to make right away. He and Eleanor had been doing the deed for years now, and she never pressured him much. Might as well take your happiness where and when you can. Tomorrow would take care of itself.

At last he rounded up all the overtime attendants, most of whom had gathered in the staff break room, which was filled with cigarette smoke by the time Myron got there. He dismissed them all, and gruffly, almost grudgingly, offered thanks for their work, as though embarrassed that he needed their help to subdue the patients during the storm.

As they filed out, he got a cup of coffee from the machine and sat sipping it. He suspected that Eleanor would come to the break room looking for him. He could have gone to her office, but he didn't want to act like a dog in heat. And besides, after all the activity of the evening, he welcomed a chance to just sit down with a cup of java before exerting himself again, no matter how pleasurably. He stretched his muscles, thinking that he wasn't as young as he used to be. Hell, he wasn't young at all anymore. Fifty-two. All the more reason to think about making whatever changes he needed to make before he became too set in his ways.

By the time Eleanor came in, he had finished his coffee, and the brief rest had reinvigorated him. She stopped in the doorway when she saw him, and smiled a close-lipped, sultry smile.

“Evening, ma'am,” he said. “Buy you a cup of coffee?”

She leaned back into the corridor and looked both ways, then stepped back into the room, walked over to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and squeezed gently. Clever girl. She was thinking exactly what he was.

To further prove her cleverness, she was carrying a clipboard with papers on it, something they could look at and discuss if anyone saw them in the corridors. “So here we are,” Myron said, “just staying late and taking care of business after a crazier than usual night.”

“Working hard to make the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane as safe and efficient as it could possibly be,” Eleanor said.

“We ought to get citations,” Myron said, in a rare moment of humor.

“We ought to get
some
reward for such a hard night,” she said, squeezing his shoulder again.

“You know,” Myron said, getting to his feet, “maybe we ought to check the basement to make sure we didn't miss anybody down there. Hate to have someone think they had to stay when they could be on their way home.”

“You're all heart, Myron,” Eleanor said. “Let's go do a good deed.” And they walked together out of the break room and down the hall toward the stairway that led to the cellar.

*   *   *

Though she had been in the cellar thousands of times since she began working at the state hospital, Eleanor Lindstrom never really liked it. The stone walls and the hard floor were oppressive. It always felt like a dungeon to her.

She especially didn't like it at night, which she realized was ridiculous, since there were no windows down there, so day and night were both the same. Still, it felt different at night, and she always recalled the stories she had heard over the years about the ghosts of insane and demented men and women who inhabited the building all those years before. She tried to tell herself that the
living
creatures who resided there now were far worse than any ghosts, but she still couldn't keep the short hairs on the back of her neck from trembling when she had to go down there alone at night.

Now, thank God, she wasn't alone. Myron, the strongest and toughest man in the entire facility, was with her, so she didn't need to fear ghosts
or
patients. And, she reassured herself, she didn't need to fear being discovered making love by any wayward nurse or attendant. No one ever came down here this late, not until the laundry people started showing up at six in the morning.

The laundry area was far less disconcerting than the other parts of the cellar. For one thing, it was warmer. Heat from the washers and dryers gathered and remained in the rooms, so that even hours after the machines stopped running, it was still balmy.

The surroundings were less depressing as well. The rooms were painted white, and when Myron flicked on the overhead lights, the brightness, the smell of fresh laundry, and the memories of past lovemaking sessions eased Eleanor's mind. She could feel the tension flow out of her as Myron embraced her from behind, and she took in a deep breath of relief.

Together they walked toward a pallet of white towels. They were worn and thin, but an abundance of them made for wonderful softness beneath. When they stopped, Eleanor was surprised when Myron kissed her, not hard and roughly, with his usual brutal need, but almost tenderly, as though …

No. She wouldn't allow herself to think that. She would take this for what it was, nothing more, no matter how much she wanted it to be. Still, she kissed him back with as much passion as she felt coming from him. Holding her, he looked steadily into her face and started to unbutton her uniform blouse. She almost drew back, and he saw the question in her eyes. “Let's be naked,” he said with a rasp in his voice as he continued to undo the buttons. “Let's finally be naked.”

They had always made love partially clothed before, both for the sake of convenience and out of concern for being discovered, but there was no rush and no one to discover them now. Eleanor looked up at the shining fluorescent lights. “It's so bright…” Her protest was feeble, but Myron acted on it. He went to the bank of switches and turned off nearly all of them, so that only the constant light from the corridor illuminated their love nest.