*** SPOILER ALERT***
If you haven't seen or read CROOKED HOUSE this chapter will spoil who did it. I HIGHLY recommend CROOKED HOUSE. It's on AMAZON PRIME right now.
36.
~ The night Norman Bates was arrested, he'd been down in the basement. Chick Hogan had delivered a rare minx for him to stuff and mount and he'd been doing a bad job of it. The skin hadn't wanted to pull away from the body and there were several times he'd thought he'd seen it move. The horrible animal trying to bite him as it wiggled to free itself.
More than once Norman had cut himself with the knife trying to kill it again. Blood oozing out of his hands and greasing the fur of the animal.
He was hungry and tired and didn't want to go upstairs. He could feel Mother banging around in her room. Nights like this, she made ungodly noises. Almost as if she was throwing tantrums.
Norman had been staring into space when the blue and red lights flashed though his basement windows. The sirens blaring so loudly, followed by the sounds of police banging down his door.
He felt sick. Drained of life. His hands, wounded and bloodied, still clutching the dead minx which was now unsalvageable thanks to his negligence.
"Oh, no." he breathed. "Mother." The police were here. He knew exactly why. Knew they'd come for one of his girls or for Earnest. Rebecca had been right. She'd wanted him. They'd come at last.
He looked at the large walk in freezer where Rebecca was kept.
"Oh, no." he gasped again. She would no longer be safe now that strangers were trudging and stomping around upstairs. They find her and take her away.
He heard crashing and wondered what those awful men had broke.
"Mother." he said getting to his feet. They'd gone into Mother's room and found her. What must she be thinking?
"Mother?" Norman said hoarsely climbing the stairs and his hands becoming slippery on the knob.
The SWAT team had him face down in seconds. Shouting at him and lights over him. Demanding to know who's blood was on him.
Norman couldn't understand them.
"Leave us alone." he panted and wished they would go away.
~ It took hours for the crime scene to be secured. The unlucky investigator that found Rebecca's body in the freezer had thought she was a particularly dolled up mannequin at first. Her body so rigid and fake looking.
There had been a horrid scream from the rookie crime scene investigator that had alerted the entire team to the basement. She wasn't identified right away. In all honesty no one connected the long missing white collar criminal to Norman Bates. More than ten years had passed since she vanished without a trace after all. Could she have been there all this time? Detectives found her purse with her ID in the small bedroom upstairs. Dug up her dental records and matched her fingerprints. She was Rebecca Hamilton.
The disturbing details about Miss Hamilton was kept under wraps until she could be identified and family located. Her mother was dead but she still had brothers out there.
As for the house, it was the most peculiar thing investigators had ever seen.
No one had been in the once grand Queen Anne house for years and it seemed oddly frozen in time for the past decade. There was evidence Norman Bates was feeding a dog, yet, no dog was near the property and Norman had been putting dog food in the bowl for some time without it being eaten.
The large master bedroom on the second floor was locked but Norman had taken great pains to make it look as though it was still being inhabited by an old woman.
A rocking chair was by the large window overlooking the motel, the mattress was worn on one side and slept in. It was one of the few rooms in the house that looked well cared for. As if someone really was coming back to live in that room.
The rest of the house was dark and dreary. Norman hadn't changed the light bulbs and allowed the darkness to infest all the bedrooms.
In the smaller room, the same one where they found Rebecca's things, they found a tattered backpack with graffiti rock band names and a school ID belonging to a girl named Penny Lawson. A teenager from Nevada who'd run away before and usually went to live with her grandmother or a boyfriend. They found a suitcase belonging to an older woman who'd been missing for a month after she'd found her husband cheating.
Most damning of all, they found Audrey Decody's suitcase and a woman's robe covered in dirt.
When Norman was handcuffed and pulled to his feet, the police read him his rights. He knew then that it was all over. Knew his world was over. His safe place. He would never find his perfect girl, never talk to Rebecca again, and never feel the wonderful feeling of relief when he was home.
Mother would always be there though. Even now, she was laughing at him from the top of the stairs.
Norman Bates had let out a howl of frustration so loud that Norma Romero woke up in bed next to her husband in their Seattle apartment.
~ For just a moment, Norma almost thought she was back in the old house. That she could see a neon glow coming in her window that illuminated her skin with it's creepy unnatural blue glow.
Something was wrong. She knew it, but couldn't put a name to it. She turned to her husband who was sleeping peacefully.
Alex had come home late from his workout and, like always, he'd been a little frisky. She couldn't complain about him taking up the sport or keeping up with it for so long. It had kept him fit and given him a certain edge they had lost when they became parents.
She liked the defined arms and lean cut body he'd gotten. Liked that he had the sexual appetites of teenager sometimes and he only desired her.
Not wanting to wake him, Norma slipped out of bed and went to check on Julian.
Their son was sleeping in the same position at his father. The two of them fond of a belly down position. Norma checked to make sure Julian was still breathing before she covered him up more securely.
She had taken her phone with her and checked the time. Surprised it 3 in the morning. She didn't care how late it was here or how early it was in Florida. She texted Dylan and told him to text her back. She was honest. Admitting plainly she had a funny feeling.
"Norma?" came a sleepy voice behind her in the hallway and Norma looked to see Alex had woken up and followed her out of their bedroom.
"Just checking on Julian." she admitted. "Texting Dylan."
She held up her phone as though she were being silly.
"I had a bad dream." she whispered feeling her lower lip tremble.
Alex nodded.
"Come back to bed." he told her.
~ It felt good to rest her body on top of his. Alex had always been comforting this way. Always been her rock. Her happiness.
"I just had a bad thought is all." she told him. "I don't know why." She could feel the uneasiness rush out of her with every passing second. It was just a bad dream. Nothing terrible.
"Julian's fine." he said and yawned. He'd fallen back to sleep almost immediately.
"I know." she said uneasily.
~ Julian Romero found his parents interesting. He'd always known they'd had him later in life which meant, according to his own research, that there was a substantial generational gap and complications that went with it.
His parents didn't understand the culture of kids his age. If they had been younger, this might not have been a problem, but he'd read that when his parents were born and growing up, the internet hadn't even existed yet.
He couldn't imagine what kind of a world that was. Not to have a computer of your own. Not to be able to find out information in seconds. Now, his parents were so old fashioned they were actually cool again. Not trendy, but retro and hip. The envy of his friends and classmates. It was an odd thing for Julian to think about.
He knew they were still in love. Still intimate. He could see it in the way his father looked at his mother. His eyes lighting up when she entered a room and never seeming able to look away. Watching her every move as she fluttered around the living room, gathering Julian's book bag before walking him to school. Reminding him of all the things they had to do today.
He knew his mother still loved his father to. She made doctor's appointments for him and saw to it that he went. She made his favorite meals for dinner. She didn't say bad things about him to Julian when they were alone. Like the divorced mothers of all his friends.
Julian knew all these things about his parents but there was also a lot of things he didn't know about them. He understood his father was a former Sheriff of a small town but never knew where. His mother had once owned a hotel or motel in the same town at one point. After that, neither one of them would elaborate on their past much.
As Julian got older, and was put into the advanced reading programs, his father started reading the same books so they could talk about it. Advanced books his father had said he didn't read till he was in high school. 'Lord of the Flies, Watership Down, Treasure Island.'
Of all the reading material Julian was given, he liked Agatha Christie the best. It was easy to picture all the suspects and their motives. He could never figure out the crime without help though, and decided at last he wouldn't make a good detective.
Perhaps the reason he liked Agatha Christie was because her stories reminded him so much of his parents. The mystery of them; the secrets they kept. The fact they seemed so set in another more romantic era. He'd read "A Crooked House" for school and the ending had troubled him while at the same time, the characters had thrilled him.
He could easily picture his father as Charles Hayward; a brilliant private detective sent to solve a murder. His mother would naturally have been the beautiful Sophia Leonides. He sensed his mother kept the most secrets of all. That with her stylish but not trendy clothes, and how she carried herself, that she had to be a wealthy heiress of some kind.
His mother wasn't at all like the other mothers. She didn't show up to his school slightly hungover or in gym clothes strait from yoga or watching Netflix all day. She didn't dress in bright colors with too much make up. She was always dressed nicely, but very simply. Never jeans and her hair was always styled perfectly.
She looked like a politician's wife sometimes and Julian sometimes thought his parents were an odd match. By contrast his father always wore jeans, flannel and a leather jacket. He was either cleanly shaven, or he wasn't and his mother would laugh and scold him about not shaving when he kissed her.
His mother kept planners and charts and talked to business owners about the apartment building. She spoke to tenets about various things and was very professional. Julian knew she must be educated and very smart.
If she was some secret heiress, where did the money go? She'd told him herself they weren't rich. They lived in a small apartment down the hall from his father's office and his father always locked the doors and dead bolted them every night without fail. Even though there was 24 hour security at the front desk and the main entrance was locked and there were security cameras.
In his mind, he'd romanticized the idea that his mother had defied her wealthy family in some way. Gone against them and were shunned. That his mother was some hotel heiress and his dad had discovered her family had committed some horrid crime. Maybe he'd fallen in love with her and couldn't bare the thought of hurting her by turning in her father or whoever, so they'd runaway. They'd runaway and gotten married in secret and hidden.
His parents weren't on social media and didn't have many friends. It made sense.
Until it didn't. Suddenly, nothing made sense.
For school, Julian had to research his family tree and they had made the job easy for him. He knew his parents name and their birthdays but had been confused when the Norma Romero that showed up seemed correct, but couldn't possibly be right.
His mother couldn't be this Norma Calhoun with the same birthdate who was married to a John Massett and then to a Sam Bates two years later. His mother didn't have three sons, only one.
Julian had scowled at his screen when he saw his uncle's name. He'd always thought his mother's maiden name had been Norma Massett since uncle Dylan was her brother, but he was looking at a copy of his birth certificate that says he was born when she was still a teenager. What was most shocking of all was the name Norman Bates. He had to look twice to make sure it wasn't his mother's name repeated with a different last name. But no, it was another son. Born to his mother three years after his supposed uncle Dylan was.
His parents had never once mentioned this other son. There was no death record. No last known address other than a business directory to a place called the Bates Motel in Oregon.
Had that been the hotel or motel his mother had owned? The one his father had met his mother at? Julian looked it up online and found its' web sight was out of date and it had only a few dismal yelp reviews for lacking a pool and feeling so isolated.
Out of curiosity. He'd called the Bates Motel and no one picked up. When he called again, what sounded like an old woman answered, and when he asked to speak to Norman Bates, the old woman told him the Norman was sleeping.
It had sounded like the old woman was lying and Julian wondered if the old woman was maybe his own grandmother. Julian had asked his parents about his grandparents and was told they were dead. Was that the truth? Had his grandmother answered the phone?
After he had called the Bates Motel, he started taking his mother's things and putting them in his room.
~ If Alex Romero thought about Madeline Loomis at all, he only thought the missing young woman looked like his wife.
Madeline Loomis was featured on all the true crime shows lately because she was a beautiful blond woman with a cheating husband who'd mysteriously vanished a few months ago without a trace.
Alex, his police skills, dulled after so many years of private security, hadn't even noticed that she was missing from White Pine Bay. He hated those shrill true crime hosts, all of them females and former lawyers who immediately blamed the husband.
He had to agree with them though. Most of the time, it was the husband. Or someone very close to the girl. At any rate, she was dead. The idea of an actual 'Gone Girl' wasn't real.
He turned his attention away from the screen and the pretty face of Madeline Loomis that reminded him of Norma if they'd met twenty years sooner.
If they had met sooner, things would be different. They might not have gotten married. Or maybe they would have gotten married and had more children. Who knew. Just now, he was dealing with the one child they had.
"Triple chocolate?" he asked his son when Julian ordered his ice cream after the movie. "Alright, just don't tell the boss."
Julian had smiled and nodded. Both of them knew that Norma ran the show and they didn't question it. The woman in their life didn't like either of them eating too much sugar or seeing violent movies. But, what she didn't know wouldn't hurt them.
Alex and Julian had a long standing appointment whenever he made strait A's on his report card which was most of the time. They would go out to a movie and out for ice cream. They would spend the whole day together doing whatever Julian wanted.
"What did you think of the movie?" Alex asked.
"I liked the first one better." Julian admitted.
Alex nodded.
"Yeah, too many sequels can spoil it." he said. "What did you think of 'Crooked House'? I saw you got an A on your assignment."
"I liked it." Julian said. "But I don't think a child could kill anyone."
Alex almost argued with his son. Almost caught himself bringing up a painful past. That indeed children could kill. That children were perfectly capable of murder and he knew that long before he'd ever met Norman Bates.
Alex had been keeping up with the same reading list as his son for the past year now so that they'd have something to talk about it. Something to share. He worried his only child was quickly falling into the ranks of genius and he'd soon have nothing in common with him. Already he was in advanced classes and played piano well enough to be scouted for performing art schools.
Julian was quite and thoughtful, but not emotional like Norman had been. He was clever and resourceful like Dylan, but not as reckless. Julian was often times like a very small adult, especially when he said nothing.
"Julian, your mother says you've been taking things from around the house again." Alex said without preamble. "Her necklace? She said she found it in your room."
"Yes." Julian said simply. He son didn't feel the need to lie. The Romeros weren't a dysfunctional family who yelled at their child and made him afraid. As a result, Julian told the truth without fear of punishment. Still, his son's brutal honesty was shocking sometimes.
"Why?"
"I wanted to keep it safe." Julian explained.
"It was safe in her jewelry box. You know what you've done is stealing. Right?" Alex asked. He looked at his son and thought about the fine line between genius and sociopath.
Julian looked thoughtful.
"I wasn't hiding it. I wasn't keeping it from her." he explained.
"It wasn't yours to take." Alex said sternly. "You know better."
"Dad?" Julian asked. His expression deflecting this line of interrogation as irrelevant and was quickly being brushed off. "Who is Norman Bates?"
Alex leaned away. The question coming like a slap to the face he wasn't ready for.
"The Bates Motel… I called up there… did mom used to own it? What does it mean to us? Is Norman Bates her son? Is he really my brother?" Julian asked.