Free Shudder by Harry F. Kane Page A

hair passed him his coffee, spilling only a little of it. David nodded, took three of the long packets of sugar, and slowly approached the table of the brown-skinned man. The man watched him approach.
    â€œHi, are you Mister Chipada?” Dave asked in a low voice.
    â€œYes indeed,” said the man and smiled nervously, crinkling his eyes in a friendly manner, “and you are...er...Detective Cohran?”
    â€œThat’s right,” confirmed Dave. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girls on the madam’s table titter into his direction.
    To them everything was quite clear: Dave was on a homosexual blind date.
    With as much dignity as he could muster, he took out his notebook, put it on the table, frowned in order to concentrate, put a pen on top of the notebook, and nodded at Mister Chippada. “Shall we begin?”
    â€œBy all mean, by all means,” smiled Chippada, and unbuttoned the two top buttons of his shirt.
    More giggles from the girls reached Dave’s ears.

Chapter Eleven

    Dave got out of his car and headed home. It was almost nine in the evening and already quite dark.
    It always took him a few months to get used to the sun setting earlier when the summer was over. By the middle of winter, he would really integrate the idea that it gets dark at five, but by then the days would start growing again, and by the time he got used to that, they would start shrinking again.
    There was a group of young nomies hanging out by his block of flats, and Dave passed them with the total nonchalance every male must learn to fake in such situations.
    A defiant spit was spat behind him, but he knew it wasn’t aimed at him, it was just noisy juvenile display of bodily functions designed to show the world how little its opinions and mores mattered.
    He unlocked his apartment door, kicked it shut with urgent impatience, and ran for the toilet. Five minutes after he had gotten into his car, the urge to urinate had come, and it was a mighty struggle to contain it until he got home, but he had managed it.
    Very early in life Dave had noticed that one was able to control one’s strong toilet urges, while on the way to the toilet. While the toilet was still a theoretical holy grail of salvation, that is. Once the toilet was actually in sight, control fell apart, and it was a question of speed and dexterity in disentangling oneself from one’s pants, to be able to avert disaster.
    He was able to avert disaster once again.
    With a sign of relief, he plopped into the couch in front of the TV, kicked off his shoes, took off his jacket, extricated his notebook and pen from the inner pocket, pressed the ‘on’ button on the remote control, and leafed through his notes.
    All in all a good day’s work. He had managed to meet two out of three victims of the toy-basher. The leads were magnificent.
    Both had purchased their dolls from the
X-Sex
shop on the Garibaldi Boulevard. Both had done it just before the break-ins. Both claimed they did not know each other or the third one.
    Bardales had bought his doll the day before the break-in into his home and Chippada had purchased it on the same day a week later. His wife had gone on а weekend vacation alone and so Bardales had used the time to buy the toy, to have some quality alone time with himself.
    He had popped out to buy cigarettes from a nearby 24/7, and when he had returned, the intruder had already been and gone.
    What’s more, both victims had bought the exact same model, the cyberpunk fifth grader toy-girl. He was already feeling confident enough to bet that the third guy, Boyle, also belonged to the same pattern: very late at night, fifth grader, ransacked almost immediately after purchase.
    Dave glanced up at the TV and saw what was disturbing him. It was a clip of Sharkana, performing her
Snake Away
hit. She was dressed in a white flowing robe, an oriental looking tiara glinting on her head, and was waving a biblical staff