Psycho - Three Complete Novels (35 page)

And so did Claiborne’s inner voice.
Talk about screwing up—what’d you have to tell him that for? It’s obvious he’s emotionally involved with the girl. You need an ally and now you’ve got a jealous rival.

He smiled quickly, indicating casual dismissal of the statement. “But that’s not important. We’ve got to—what do they say out here?—lick the script. If you’re willing to revise along the lines I’ve indicated—”

“Indicated?” Ames’s antagonism was open now. “All that stuff about displacement, latent content, reaction-formation—it reads like a medical report!”

“Sorry. What I was trying to do—”

“Don’t draw diagrams. You’re playing doctor, aren’t you?” Ames shook his head. “Psychs are like economists, meteorologists, seismologists—just a bunch of guessers with gadgets. Someday all you shrinks will be replaced by computers.”

“Suits me.” Claiborne kept his cool. “But that’s not going to help us now. I’ll go along with the way you’ve handled Jan’s role. The big job is to eliminate some of the violence.”

“No way. I told you Vizzini wants it in.”

Claiborne shrugged. “Then we’ll have to change the emphasis.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The real problem with this kind of film isn’t violence itself—it’s the
attitude
toward violence. That’s where the danger lies today, in the way antisocial behavior is exploited as the final solution to everything. Heroes, antiheroes, or villains, all winning out by taking the law into their own hands. We can keep Norman’s behavior just as it is, without dulling the knife-edge or mopping up the blood. But let’s not justify it.”

Ames was listening now, and Claiborne pressed on quickly. “Let’s tell the truth for once. Make it clear that murder solves nothing; it’s not heroic, and Norman Bates is no one to envy or emulate. You actually won’t have much rewriting to do if you keep this in mind. All it takes is a slight shift of emphasis to show him as a driven, tormented man whose compulsive behavior brings misery instead of satisfaction.”

“And that’s your big solution?” Roy Ames grimaced. “Turn the clock back fifty years to tell the audience ‘Crime does not pay’?”

“Maybe it’s time to do just that. There was a hell of a lot less homicide fifty years ago, and what there was went on mainly among professional criminals. Now it’s Amateur Night—student terrorists, kids on the street, all competing for status by slaughter. Because our films, our television, our books and plays tell them that violence is rewarding.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of ‘the me generation’? This is what sells today.”

“Not exclusively. Damn it, I’m not a religious man, but I know the Bible is still a top best-seller. And it spells out its message loud and clear: ‘The wages of sin is death.’ ”

Ames stared at him for a long moment. It was no longer the stare of a jealous suitor; his concern now was for every writer’s love—the work at hand. “I get it. What you’re really pitching is what old Cecil B. De Mille did to get around the censors. Put in the orgies, but make sure you show the consequences. And you’re right about the changes. All that needs work are the scenes showing Norman’s reactions. Less gloating, more grief.” He paused. “Level with me. Did he actually feel that way?”

Claiborne nodded slowly. “In all my experience, I’ve never seen a more unhappy man.”

Roy Ames sighed and picked up the script again. “Might as well get to work. I should have pages sometime tomorrow, unless I run into problems.”

“If you do, give me a call.” Claiborne moved to the door. “Now I’ll get out of your way.”

He left the office, walked down the hall. For the first time since last night he felt a resurgence of hope. At least part of his task was done; the script would be improved and he’d managed to retain Roy Ames’s allegiance.

But not Norman’s.

That was the problem. If he could just sit down and talk, reason with him, explain that the script was being changed, assure him there was nothing to fear or resent. Maybe—just maybe—it still might work before anything happened.

Only he had to find him first.

Where?

Needles hid in haystacks. Searching for them was a waste of time. The easiest way to draw a needle out was with a magnet.

Claiborne moved onto the studio street, and it was there that realization came.

This
was the magnet. The studio itself—the magnet that had drawn Norman here.

No need to worry about a manhunt, private or public. Norman would come to the studio. If he hadn’t taken action before, it might merely mean that he’d just arrived. But he was on the scene now, and if he got onto the lot—

Claiborne glanced along the street in the direction of the main gate. The guard stood beside it, monitoring the cars as they drove up. There were other entrances, of course; he’d checked them out and knew that all were similarly protected.

Which meant nothing. Norman wouldn’t attempt to pass through a gate.

Claiborne turned and headed toward the rear of the lot, glancing at the studio wall to his left as he did so. The wall was a solid mass of masonry, high and thick. But thickness was irrelevant. Norman wasn’t going to tunnel his way through the wall. And height itself was no guarantee of protection. Anyone with a rope or a ladder could scale one of these walls unobserved in darkness. The lot was patrolled at night as well as by day, but once he was atop the wall, it would be a simple matter to wait until the coast was clear and drop down inside to seek shelter somewhere in the studio.

Now Claiborne moved past a concrete cluster of offices, set-storage sheds, the studio garage, wardrobe, and makeup departments. Many of these structures had outside stairways leading up to projection rooms and editing booths. Angled against the sides of the buildings were trucks, trailers, campers, and semis; beyond them loomed the vast sound stages with their tangle of overhead catwalks and equipment bins.

Turning right toward the rear of the lot, he came upon an empty, unpatrolled, deserted domain of standing exterior sets: a western street with a bar, livery stable, feed store, hotel, dance hall, bank, and sheriff’s office. Behind it was a small-town square boarded by the friendly façades of white houses nestling amid lawns and shrubbery, a high-steepled church, a bandstand in a wooded park. Beyond lay a big-city street with its shops and theaters and tenements; past that, still another half-dozen smaller enclaves of foreign settings.

There were a million hiding places here, and no security force could possibly cover them all completely. Once over the wall, Norman need only keep moving from place to place, stay out of sight. And it could have happened; for all Claiborne knew, he may have spent the night sleeping in Andy Hardy’s bed. He could be on the lot now.

If the studio was a magnet, it was also a haystack in its own right, offering far more concealment than the world outside. A needle would be safe here, but even more dangerous to others. Needles are sharp, they have eyes—

And so have I,
Claiborne told himself.
Watch and wait.
This was no time to spread panic, not without something substantial to support his suppositions, not until he was sure of his ground.

He turned and walked back, coming abreast of the sound stages. Number Seven, on his left, was open, its huge sliding doors secured in the slotted wall. On impulse, he approached and peered inside. A half-circle of sunlight revealed concrete flooring laced with snakelike coils of cable, but the vast area above and beyond was steeped in shadow.

Claiborne moved past the doorway, trying to adjust his vision to the inner gloom. He’d never seen these surroundings except in films
about
films, and then only as a background to accompany action. But there was no action here, only the solitude and the silence.

Stepping forward, he eyed the dim outline of the rounded roof high above the walkways. Somehow he hadn’t realized the immensity of the stage; block-long and bleak, it was like an old-style zeppelin hangar or the interior of a cathedral reared to some strange god of darkness.

The darkness wasn’t complete. Beyond the barricade of lath-and-plaster wall backgrounds encased in wooden supports, he caught a glimpse of dim light—a bare bulb dangling on a cord from an iron grid overhead. The area it lit was obscured by other walls mounted and joined together at right angles on three sides.

Claiborne approached it, passing a row of portable dressing rooms at his right. Their doors were closed, and no trace of illumination issued from beneath them.

A
million hiding places.

He started over to the nearest one, then slackened his pace before the wooden steps leading up to the door.

Suppose he was right? Suppose that by some crazy coincidence he’d actually find himself coming upon Norman, crouching there in the dark behind the door—crouching and waiting?

Claiborne hesitated, deep in internal debate.
What are you waiting for? Damn it, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find him?

He mounted the steps slowly.
Don’t worry. If he is in there, he’s frightened. As frightened as you are.

Again he paused. He
was
frightened, admit it; his tightened muscles offered tense testimony. There was a prickling across his scalp, a trickling beneath his armpits.

That was a normal reaction to fear, and he could accept it. But would Norman’s reaction be normal? When Norman was afraid, he lashed out. If he had a weapon—

You’ve faced that problem before. Occupational hazard, it comes with the territory. Only it won’t happen. He isn’t here, can’t be here, not with a million hiding places to choose from.

Claiborne reached for the door.

And heard the sound.

It was quite faint; even here, in the cavernous echo chamber of the sound stage, there was scarcely more than a hint of it. A rustling sound followed by a creak.

But it didn’t come from behind the door. The source was the lighted area beyond.

He turned away, descending the steps before the dressing room. Now there was silence, broken by the soft scraping of his own footsteps over concrete as he started forward. Even this was stilled as he slowed his pace, moving in quiet caution, feeling the fear, straining to detect a repetition of the rustling and the creaking.

Nothing.

He came to the open area at the right of the three-sided set where the light bulb dangled. There he halted, peering forward.

No one moved beneath the light. The set was deserted.

Slowly he started past the walls enclosing him on both sides, into the rectangular room set beyond. Then, as he entered, something changed. Looking down, he saw carpeting beneath his feet. Red and faded carpeting, the kind one finds only in old houses where old people ignore the passage of time.

And he was in such a house now, standing still in a room where time stood still.

Claiborne glanced at the old-fashioned dresser and vanity, their tops littered with mementos of long-ago yesterdays. A gilt clock, Dresden figurines, a pincushion, an ornate hand mirror, glass-stoppered bottles of scent. These objects, and a glimpse of the garments hanging from a rack in an open closet, told him he was in a woman’s bedroom, even before he saw the bed itself.

The bed stood in the far corner at the right, past the high-backed rocker facing the window in the shadows to the left. He stepped forward, surveying the contours of the four-poster, admiring the hand-embroidered bedspread. But as he neared it, he noted that the spread had been tucked in carelessly, so that a portion of the double pillow was visible at the top. On impulse he reached down and pulled the covers back, revealing grayish sheets dotted with brown flecks. And the telltale indentation of recent occupancy—the deep indentation that could only have been made by someone resting here a long time.

Someone.

Some thing.

Claiborne knew where he was now. He’d never seen it, never been there before, but he’d heard and read enough to recognize what it must be.

The bedroom of Norman’s mother.

It was here, of course, that the mummified body of Mrs. Bates, preserved by Norman’s crude attempts at taxidermy, had lain untouched and unsuspected for all those years while Norman preserved the illusion that she was still alive—a crazed invalid, confined to her room. But it was Norman himself who had been crazed, who had assumed her
persona
when he killed. Wearing her clothing, talking in her voice, here in this room.

No,
not this room. It’s only a set.

Claiborne confirmed the reality by contact, pulling the bedspread up again to hide the indented outline. But his scalp crawled as he did so, and he couldn’t hide the thought crawling beneath it.

What had it been like for Norman, living in the real house, sitting in the real bedroom night after night, mumbling to a mummy?
Mummy, Mommy—

Then he heard the sound again, the creaking and the rustling.

He turned as the shadows stirred.

The creaking came from the high-backed rocker facing the window.

And the rustling came from the dress as the old woman rose from the chair and glided toward him.

She came out of the shadows with her gray hair gleaming, mouth contorted in a ghastly rictus. Her arms rose, her hands scrabbled upward, the wig came off.

Claiborne stared at the grinning face—a face he’d seen so many times on the screen.

The face of Paul Morgan.

— 21 —

C
laiborne sat at the bar in the Tail o’ the Cock, still nursing a beer as Morgan ordered his second drink.

Wearing skintight jeans, the V-neck of his shirt spread to reveal the gold locket nestling against a hairy chest, Morgan bore no resemblance to the hunched old lady on the darkened set of the sound stage.

“Sorry about that,” he was saying. “I didn’t mean to shake you up.”

“Forget it. You don’t have to keep apologizing.” Claiborne shifted on his bar stool. “Actually, I had no business being there in the first place.”

“Neither did I.” Morgan reached for his glass as the bartender set it down before him. “It was Vizzini’s idea.”