by Robert Bloch
Claiborne turned away. As he did so, another mirror installed directly behind him caught his eye. It was angled to reflect the image of shoppers approaching the left-hand checkout counter at the front of the store, but at the moment only one man was moving through the checkout. He stared up and Claiborne saw his face.
The face of Norman Bates.
— 19 —
Thrusting his cart to one side, Claiborne raced down the aisle toward the front of the store, swerving midway to avoid a gaggle of oncoming shoppers, who scowled in annoyance as he careened past them.
Their irritation scarcely registered; it was Norman’s image that impelled him to the checkout, which in thirty seconds had already attracted a line-up of carts and customers.
But Norman was gone.
Claiborne halted, eyeing the unfamiliar faces, then pushed his way through the queue to confront the gum-chewing, bovine blonde behind the counter.
“Where is he?”
The rumination ceased as the blonde looked up.
“Your last customer—he was here just a minute ago—”
She shrugged, glancing automatically toward the nearest exit. Even as she did so, he elbowed his way past the counter, striding to the door.
The parking lot was almost full now; cars were moving in and out, patrons zigzagging across the open areas. Claiborne scanned the scene, searching for a familiar figure. He moved onto the lot, trying to locate vehicles on the point of pulling out.
There were three—no, four—and still another, way down at the far right. He hurried toward it as the car backed hastily into the open lane and then moved forward. In the glare of overhead floodlights he glimpsed a woman’s face behind the windshield and, beside it, the knoblike silhouette of a child’s head.
Turning, he started back to the center of the lot, then jumped at the blare of a horn directly behind him. He stepped aside just in time as a dune buggy zoomed past, the roar of its motor blending with the profanity of the mustached driver, who thrust his hand out to give him the finger.
Breathing heavily, Claiborne stared out across the area beyond, knowing as he did so that it just wasted effort now. Norman was gone.
But to where?
If he’d come here, it must mean that he was holed up someplace nearby, perhaps in one of the other motels lining the length of the boulevard.
Could they be checked out? There were dozens of places, not counting the big hotels, and Norman certainly wouldn’t have registered under his own name, if in fact he was registered at all. Trying to identify every one of the single men who might have occupied motel rooms during the past three days would be a major project, even for a police task force. A project they weren’t about to undertake unless Claiborne could offer them something more tangible than just his word.
Yes, I realize the man’s supposed to be dead, but I saw him there in the supermarket. No, I didn’t speak to him, he was up at the front of the store and I was at the back. Not directly, I saw him in one of those overhead mirrors, but I’m positive—
A lost cause. Claiborne sighed. There was nothing to do now except return to the market, retrieve his cart, and check out.
Walking back to the motel with his bag of groceries, he glanced around warily, searching the striations of light and shadow in the street. He’d seen Norman—but had Norman seen him? Had Norman followed him to the store, was he following him now?
Nothing stirred in the darkness.
Even so, he was relieved when he reached his room. The locked door yielded to the turn of the key, and when he switched on the light, the room revealed no sign of present occupancy or prior disturbance.
If Norman didn’t know his whereabouts, Claiborne was secure here, at least for now. And there was always the possibility of subjective error. Noise, light, fatigue, tension—they could all add up to a simple case of mistaken identity. That was what the police would say; that was what he himself would probably say if some patient came to him with a similar story.
Under the circumstances, there was no point in talking to Driscoll and the others. Telling them what he’d seen, or thought he’d seen, would only weaken his position unless he could offer proof. The thing to do now was exercise caution, watch and wait, and continue to emphasize the need for security. If Norman was here, he’d make his presence known soon enough.
If Norman was here.
Claiborne unpacked his groceries, put them away, shed his clothing, donned pajamas, and sank down on the bed. The air conditioner whispered to him.
Norman. Here. Planning something. Where? What?
Thank God he’d decided to stay on. At least he could keep his eyes and ears open, act as a sort of guardian angel to the others.
But even as he surrendered to sleep, a further question came.
Who would be guarding him if Norman acted?
There was no answer to that one. All he knew was that whatever happened, it would be soon.
— 20 —
Roy Ames’s office was in the same building as Driscoll’s, but there was no resemblance between the two. The cramped cubicle with its single window was smaller than the producer’s private washroom, and by no means as lavishly appointed.
When Claiborne opened the door, he found Ames already seated behind his desk, midway between the file cabinet and the single extra chair. Apparently he was accustomed to these close quarters; whatever his hangups, claustrophobia wasn’t one of them.
Blinking against morning sunlight radiating from the open window, Claiborne nodded a greeting and put his copy of the script down on the desktop.
Ames glanced at him expectantly. “Well, what do you think?” he said.
Claiborne hesitated, once again debating whether or not to reveal last night’s experience. No sense in taking that chance. And right now the script had priority.
“I’ve got some notes here,” Claiborne said. “If you’d like to go over them—”
“Great.”
Claiborne opened his briefcase and pulled out the yellow pages. “Hope you can read my handwriting.”
Ames managed.
His eyes moved rapidly over the scrawled sheets, revealing nothing. But Claiborne had no trouble recognizing his reactions. Long ago he’d learned that mouths are often most eloquent when not speaking. Ames’s mouth was no exception. At first the lips curved upward in a slight smile; then, as he read on, they tightened. And finally the upper lip curled, forming a fixed frown.
It was time to intervene. “Please remember one thing,” Claiborne said. “I’m not criticizing the writing. Just content, the violence.”
Ames looked up. “We use another term now. As in ‘box-office gross.’ ”
“I’m aware of that. But I thought you were trying to avoid it.”
“I did, in my first draft.” Ames was on the defensive. “Most of the stuff you object to here is Vizzini’s work. He did a partial rewrite and Driscoll went along with it.”
“Sounds as if I’m wasting my time,” Claiborne said. “As technical advisor, I thought I was the one to suggest changes.”
“Technical, yes. Suggest, yes. But Vizzini has the clout—script approval, casting, the works. I told you how he insisted on Jan just because she was a lookalike for Mary Crane.”
“That’s another thing,” Claiborne said. “Did you notice my comments on her scenes?”
“I noticed.” Ames’s voice was tight, and Claiborne cut in quickly.
“It just seems to me that her character comes across as a bit too simple, too one-dimensional—”
“Okay, so it shows.” Ames shrugged. “If you must know, I wrote it that way on purpose. Jan’s not ready for anything heavy, even though she thinks so, and I want to keep her from screwing up. She comes on pretty strong, but when you know her better, you’ll see there’s something else behind it.”
“I hope to,” Claiborne said. “Matter of fact, I ran into her on the lot just now. She invited me to have dinner tonight.”
Ames didn’t reply, but the sudd
en set of his silent lips spoke for him.
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 cat
hedral 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.
