Free Vision by Dean Koontz

to walk out, do it. Shall we terminate our arrangement?”
    She sagged back into her chair. “Sorry.” She seldom raised her voice. It wasn’t like her to shout at him. She was blushing.
    “No need to apologize,” he said. “But don’t you see that this experience twenty-four years ago might be the root of your problem? It could be the underlying cause of your insomnia, of your periodic deep depressions, of your anxiety attacks.”
    She felt weak. She closed her eyes. “You want me to pursue it.”
    “That would be a good idea.”
    “Help me start.”
    “You were six years old.”
    “Six...”
    “Your father had money then.”
    “Quite a lot of it.”
    “You lived on a small estate.”
    “Twenty acres,” she said. “Most of it landscaped. There was a full-time ... a full-time ...”
    “Gardener.”
    “Gardener,” she said. She wasn’t blushing anymore. Her cheeks were cold. Her hands were icy.
    “What was his name?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Of course you do.”
    “Berton Mitchell.”
    “Did you like him?”
    “At first I did.”
    “You said once that he teased you.”
    “In a fun way. And he had a special name for me.”
    “What did he call you?”
    “Contrary. As if that were my real name.”
    “Were you contrary?”
    “Not the least bit. He was teasing. He got it from the nursery rhyme. ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary’ ...”
    “When did you stop liking Berton Mitchell?”
    She wanted to be home with Max. She could almost feel his arms around her.
    “When did you stop liking him, Mary?”
    “That day in August.”
    “What happened?”
    “You know.”
    “Yes, I do know.”
    “Well then.”
    “But we never seem to get further into this thing unless we start from the top each time.”
    “I don’t want to get further into it.”
    But he was relentless. “What happened that day in August when you were six years old?”
    “Have you gotten any new glass dogs recently?”
    “What did Berton Mitchell do that day in August?”
    “He tried to rape me.”
     
 
Six P.M. Early winter night. The air was cool and fresh.
    He left the car at the coffee shop and walked north along the highway, his back to the traffic.
    He had a knife in one pocket, a revolver in the other. He kept his hands on both weapons.
    His shoes crunched in the gravel.
    The wind from the passing cars buffeted him, mussed his hair, pasted his overcoat to his legs.
    The beauty shop, Hair Today, occupied a small detached building on Main Street, just north of the Santa Ana city limits. With its imitation thatched roof, leaded windows, plaster and exposed-beam exterior, the place resembled a cottage in the English countryside—except for the floodlights shining on the front of it, and except for the pink and green paint job.
    The block was strictly commercial. Service stations, fast-food restaurants, real estate offices, dozens of small businesses, all of them nestled in neon and palm trees and jade-plant hedges, flourished like ugly flowers in the money-scented Orange County air. South of Hair Today was the sales lot of an imported automobile dealership. Row after row of sleek machines huddled in the night. Only the windshields and chrome gleamed malevolently under mercury-vapor lights. North, beyond the beauty shop, lay a three-screen motion picture theater, and beyond that a shopping center.
    A dirty white Cadillac and a shiny Triumph stood on the macadam parking area in front of Hair Today.
    He crossed the lot, walked between the cars, opened the cottage door, and went inside.
    The narrow front room was a lounge where women marked time until their appointments. The carpet was purple and plush, the chairs bright yellow, the drapes white. There were end tables, ashtrays, and stacks of magazines, but at this late hour there were no customers waiting.
    At the rear of the room was a purple and white counter. A cash register rested on it, and a woman with bleached blond hair sat on a stool behind it.
    In back of the