After stealing $40,000 from his employer, real estate agent Mario Crane runs away from his married girlfriend, his job and his life. He is overcome by exhaustion driving at night in a heavy rainstorm. Traveling on the back roads to avoid the police, he stops for the night at the ramshackle Bates Motel and meets the polite but skittish proprietor Nora Bate, a young woman with an interest in wood carving and a demanding relationship with her father.