Psycho (3 page)

Better still, Lila had departed, early in the morning, for Dallas—she did all the buying for the record shop now. And she wouldn't be back until Monday either.

Mary drove right to the apartment and packed; not everything, just her best clothes in the suitcase and the small overnight bag. She and Lila had three hundred and sixty dollars hidden away in an empty cold-cream jar, but she didn't touch that. Lila would need it when she had to keep up the apartment alone. Mary wished that she could write her sister a note of some kind, but she didn't dare. It would be hard for Lila in the days ahead; still, there was no help for it. Maybe something could be worked out later on.

Mary left the apartment around seven; an hour later she halted on the outskirts of a suburb and ate supper, then drove in under an OK USED CAR sign and traded her sedan for a coup. She lost money on the transaction; lost still more early the next morning when she repeated the performance in a town four hundred miles north. Around noon, when she traded again, she found herself in possession of thirty dollars in cash and a battered old heap with a crumpled left front fender, but she was not displeased. The important thing was to make a number of fast switches, cover her trail, and wind up with a junker that would take her as far as Fairvale. Once there she could drive further north, maybe as far as Springfield, and sell the last car under her name; how would the authorities trace down the whereabouts of a Mrs. Sam Loomis, living in a town a hundred miles from there?

Because she intended to become Mrs. Sam Loomis, and quickly. She'd walk in on Sam with this story about coming into the inheritance. Not forty thousand dollars—that would be too large a sum, and might require too 'much explanation—but maybe she'd say it was fifteen. And she'd tell him Lila had received an equal amount, quit her job abruptly, and gone off to Europe. That would explain why there was no sense inviting her to the wedding.

Maybe Sam would balk about taking the money, and certainly there'd be a lot of awkward questions to answer, but she'd get around him. She'd have to. They'd be married at once; that was the important thing. She'd have his name then, Mrs. Sam Loomis, wife of the proprietor of a hardware store in a town eight hundred miles away from the Lowery Agency.

The Lowery Agency didn't even know of Sam's existence. Of course they'd come to Lila, and she'd probably guess right away. But Lila wouldn't say anything—not until she contacted Mary first.

When that time came, Mary would have to be prepared to handle her sister, keep her quiet in front of Sam and the authorities. It shouldn't be too difficult—Lila owed her that much, for all the years Mary had worked to send her through school. Perhaps she could even give her part of the remaining twenty-five thousand dollars. Maybe she wouldn't take it. But there would be some solution; Mary hadn't planned that far ahead, but when the time came, the answer would be ready.

Right now she had to do one thing at a time, and the first step was to reach Fairvale. On the scale map it was a distance of a mere four inches. Four insignificant inches of red lines from one dot to another. But it had taken her eighteen hours to get this far; eighteen hours of endless vibration, eighteen hours of peering and squinting in headlight glare and sunlight reflection; eighteen hours of cramped contortion, of fighting the road and the wheel and the dulling, deadly onslaught of her own fatigue.

Now she had missed her turn and it was raining; the night had come down and she was lost, on a strange road.

Mary glanced into the rear-view mirror and caught a dim reflection of her face. The dark hair and the regular features were still familiar, but the smile had gone and her full lips were compressed to a taut line. Where had she seen that drawn, contorted countenance before?

In the mirror after Mom died, when you went to pieces
—

And here, all along, she'd thought of herself as being so calm, so cool, so composed. There had been no consciousness of fear, of regret, of guilt. But the mirror didn't lie. It told her the truth now.

It told her, wordlessly, to
stop
.
You can't stumble into Sam's arms looking like this, coming out of the night with your face and clothing giving away the story of hasty flight. Sure, your story is that you wanted to surprise him with the good news, but you'll have to look as though you're so happy you couldn't wait
.

The thing to do was to stay over somewhere tonight, get a decent rest, and arrive in Fairvale tomorrow morning, alert and refreshed.

If she turned around and drove back to the place where she made the wrong turnoff, she'd hit the main highway again. Then she could find a motel.

Mary nodded to herself, resisting the impulse to close her eyes, and then jerked erect, scanning the side of the road through the blur of rainswept darkness.

That's when she saw the sign, set beside the driveway which led to the small building off on the side.

MOTEL—VACANCY. The sign was unlit, but maybe they'd forgotten to switch it on, just as she'd forgotten to put on her headlights when the night suddenly descended.

Mary drove in, noting that the entire motel was dark, including the glass-front cubicle on the end which undoubtedly served as an office. Maybe the place was closed. She slowed down and peered in, then felt her tires roll over one of those electric signal cables. Now she could see the house on the hillside behind the motel; its front windows were lighted, and probably the proprietor was up there. He'd come down in a moment.

She switched off the ignition and waited. All at once she could hear the sullen patter of the rain and sense the sigh of the wind behind it. She remembered the sound, because it had rained like that the day Mom was buried, the day they lowered her into that little rectangle of darkness. And now the darkness was here, rising all around Mary. She was alone in the darkness. The money wouldn't help her and Sam wouldn't help her, because she'd taken the wrong turn back there and she was on a strange road. But no help for it—she'd made her grave now and now she must lie in it.

Why did she think that? It wasn't
grave
, it was
bed
.

She was still trying to puzzle it out when the big dark shadow emerged out of the other shadows and opened her car door.

"Looking for a room?"

Mary made up her mind very quickly, once she saw the fat, bespectacled face and heard the soft, hesitant voice. There wouldn't be any trouble.

She nodded and climbed out of the car, feeling the ache in her calves as she followed him to the door of the office. He unlocked it, stepped inside the cubicle and switched on the light.

"Sorry I didn't get down sooner. I've been up at the house—Mother isn't very well."

There was nothing distinctive, about the office, but it was warm and dry and bright. Mary shivered gratefully and smiled up at the fat man. He bent over the ledger on the counter.

"Our rooms are seven dollars, single. Would you like to take a look, first?"

"That won't be necessary." She opened her purse quickly, extracting a five-dollar bill and two singles and placing them on the counter as he pushed the register forward and held out a pen.

For a moment she hesitated, then wrote a name—
Jane Wilson
—and an address—
San Antonio, Texas
. She couldn't very well do anything about the Texas plates on the car.

"I'll get your bags," he said, and came around the counter. She followed him outside again. The money was in the glove compartment, still in the same big envelope secured by the heavy rubber band. Maybe the best thing to do was to leave it there; she'd lock the car, and nobody would disturb it.

He carried the bags over to the door of the room next to the office. It was the closest, and she didn't mind—the main thing was to get out of the rain.

"Nasty weather," he said, standing aside as she entered. "Have you been driving long?"

"All day."

He pressed a switch and the bedside lamp blossomed and sent forth yellow petals of light. The room was plainly but adequately furnished; she noted the shower stall in the bathroom beyond. Actually, she would have preferred a tub, but this would do.

"Everything all right?"

She nodded quickly, then remembered something. "Is there anywhere around here where I can get a bite to eat?"

"Well, let's see now. There used to be a root beer and hamburger stand up the road here about three miles, but I guess it's closed down now since the new highway came in. No, your best bet would be Fairvale."

"How far away is that?"

"About seventeen—eighteen miles. You keep going up the road until you come to a county trunk, turn right, and hit the main highway again. It's ten miles straight ahead, then. I'm surprised you didn't go through that way if you're heading north."

"I got lost."

The fat man nodded and sighed. "I thought as much. We don't get much regular traffic along here any more since that new road opened."

She smiled absently. He stood in the doorway, pursing his lips. When she looked up to meet his stare, he dropped his eyes and cleared his throat apologetically.

"Uh—Miss—I was just thinking. Maybe you don't feel like driving all the way up to Fairvale and back in this rain. I mean, I was just going to fix a little snack for myself up at the house. You'd be perfectly welcome to join me."

"Oh, I couldn't do that."

"Why not? No trouble at all. Mother's gone back to bed, and she won't be doing any cooking—I was only going to set out some cold cuts and make some coffee. If that's all right with you.

"Well—"

"Look, I'll just run along and get things ready."

"Thank you very much, Mr.—"

"Bates. Norman Bates." He backed against the door, bumping his shoulder. "Look, Ill leave you this flashlight for when you come up. You probably want to get out of those wet things first.

He turned away, but not before she caught a glimmer of his reddened face. Why, he was actually
embarrassed
!

For the first time in almost twenty hours a smile came to Mary Crane's face. She waited until the door closed behind him and then slipped out of her jacket. She opened her overnight bag on the bed and took out a print dress. She let it hang, hoping some of the wrinkles would disappear, while she used the bathroom facilities. Just time to freshen up a bit now, but when she came back she promised herself a good hot shower. That's what she needed; that, and sleep. But first a little food. Let's see, now—her make-up was in her purse, and she could wear the blue coat from the big suitcase—

Fifteen minutes later she was knocking on the door of the big frame house on the hillside.

A single lamp shone from the unshaded parlor window, but a brighter reflection blazed from upstairs. If his mother was ill, that's where she'd be.

Mary stood there, waiting for a response, but nothing happened. Maybe he was upstairs, too. She rapped again.

Meanwhile, she peered through the parlor window. At first glance she couldn't quite believe what she saw; she hadn't dreamed that such places still existed in this day and age.

Usually, even when a house is old, there are some signs of alteration and improvement in the interior. But the parlor she peered at had never been modernized ; the floral wallpaper, the dark, heavy, ornately scrolled mahogany woodwork, the turkey-red carpet, the high-backed, overstuffed furniture and the paneled fireplace were straight out of the Gay Nineties. There wasn't even a television set to intrude its incongruity in the scene, but she did notice an old wind-up gramophone on an end table. Now she could detect a low murmur of voices, and at first she thought it might be coming from the gramophone's bell-shaped horn; then she identified the source of the sound. It was coming from upstairs, from the lighted room.

Mary knocked again, using the end of the flashlight. This time she must have made her presence known, for the sound ceased abruptly, and she heard the faint thud of footsteps. A moment later she saw Mr. Bates descending the stairs. He came to the door and opened it, gesturing her forward.

"Sorry," he said. "I was just tucking Mother in for the night. Sometimes she's apt to be a bit difficult."

"You said she was ill. I wouldn't want to disturb her."

"Oh, you won't make any bother. She'll probably sleep like a baby." Mr. Bates glanced over his shoulder at the stairway, then lowered his voice. "Actually, she's not sick, not
physically
, that is. But sometimes she gets these spells—"

He nodded abruptly, then smiled. "Here, let me just take your coat and hang it up. There. Now, if you'll come this way—"

She followed him down a hallway which extended from under the stairs. "I hope you don't mind eating in the kitchen," he murmured. "Everything's all ready for us. Sit right down and I'll pour the coffee."

The kitchen was a complement of the parlor—lined with ceiling-high glassed-in cupboards grouped about an old-fashioned sink with a hand-pump attachment. The big wood stove squatted in one corner. But it gave off a grateful warmth, and the long wooden table bore a welcome display of sausage, cheese and homemade pickles in glass dishes scattered about on the red-and-white checkered cloth. Mary was not inclined to smile at the quaintness of it all, and even the inevitable hand-crocheted motto on the wall seemed appropriate enough.

God Bless Our Home
.

So be it. This was a lot better than sitting alone in some dingy small-town cafeteria.

Mr. Bates helped her fill her plate. "Go right ahead, don't wait for me! You must be hungry."

She
was
hungry, and she ate heartily, with such absorption that she scarcely noticed how little he was eating. When she became aware of it, she was faintly embarrassed.

"But you haven't touched a thing! I'll bet you really had your own supper earlier."

"No, I didn't. It's just that I'm not very hungry." He refilled her coffee cup. "I'm afraid Mother gets me a little upset sometimes." His voice lowered again, and the apologetic note returned. "I guess it's my fault. I'm not too good at taking care of her."