Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

don’t know anywhere else in Tokyo meet before crossing the zebra crossing scramble to go shopping at the 109 clothes place. I’d watched them while Steve sketched them, and then we’d eat something from a convenience store.
    I call his number again and get the same voice mail message. Steve can’t really be dead, he just can’t. Can he? I get an icy cold feeling in my gut and have to crouch down on my heels. My mind is spinning. If he died in an accident, he wouldn’t have tidied up before. He wasn’t capable of it, even if he wanted to disappear without telling me. So is Detective Watanabe telling the truth, and the body on the tracks really was Steve’s? If falling in front of the train was an accident, why has everything been conveniently removed from his apartment? I don’t know why, but I’m sure the two facts are connected.  
    Then I get another pain, spreading out from my gut. I feel sick. And I know why: If he didn’t clear out his apartment, his landlord didn’t and I didn’t, there was another possibility. A girlfriend.  
    I dry heave and wretch, spitting out the acid that has built up in my mouth onto the street. Three girls in high school uniforms push their way past me. One says: “Hello,” another “Oh my God,” the third, “Don’t touch me!” but I don’t think they know or care what they are saying, they just want to speak the only English they can remember at me. The tallest girl’s bag bumps into my back and I’m knocked off balance, my hands scuffing through the dirt. For a moment I think they’re going to apologise to me, but it’s just a pause before laughter. I’m ashamed. I skip to my feet and lunge forward with my arms raised above my head and bring them down like I’m going to slice off their heads.  
    “ Ra - men- do ,” I hear myself chanting in Japanese.
    The three stare at each other, amazed that a foreigner can speak Japanese, as if they had just heard a talking dog. And then the tallest girl bows her head. She’s showing respect, that I know the basic commands of kendo swordsmanship. I pull back to avoid striking her. But her bow is just a feint to the side, and I hurtle forward and lose my balance again, grazing knees and hands on the concrete. The tallest girl laughs, and says something to the other two that I don’t catch, but the meaning is clear. Don’t bother with the freak, she’s nothing . I’m not a talking dog, I’m less than a dog.
    Some time passes, I don’t know how long. A large man in a mask brushes past me. He is wearing a grey-green pinstripe suit and carries a walking stick like it’s a fashion accessory. He has bright pink socks, and dyed red hair, but he stares at me. I’m the one who doesn’t belong. I run, turn right up the hill, away from the Shibuya station, go left past a shop selling lace-up boots painted with Union Jacks, then past the museum of salt and tobacco before I slow down to catch my breath. The joke I’d shared with Steve, the ridiculousness of a museum dedicated to salt and tobacco, doesn’t seem funny any more. A waitress is wiping the table outside a café where me and Steve would sit watching the world. I nod to her like an old friend. She had served us every Sunday for the last six months that we’d been going out, but today she doesn’t even notice me.
    I look down at my leather boots. Without Steve, who else can I turn to? I know the answer, but I don’t want to admit it.
    I walk on, further away from the centre of Shibuya, north towards Yoyogi Park, letting my feet take me wherever. Past the impossibly expensive clothes boutiques, through back roads that end suddenly in a jumble of apartment buildings, Black Cat delivery depots and abandoned shopping bicycles chained to poles. When I’m in Shibuya with Steve, every street is unique, bustling with life and colour, funny half-English signs or half-crazy businesses, but now, alone, one street looks much like another.  
    I don’t know how long I’ve been