Midnight Special Read Online Free PDF Page B

midnight show. All twenty-five members of the audience, along with the projectionist and the guy who worked behind the concession counter, had been killed.
    The scene was left open and deserted. Matt supposed that in some big city there might have been crime scene tape cordoning it off, but Charlottesville, although not a small town, was definitely not a big city. When a fire breaks out in a town like Charlottesville, the volunteer fire department comes to put it out, not to investigate. So no one even thought of arson. They just clucked their tongues at the tragedy of it all and never gave a thought as to how the fire started.
    Matt wouldn’t have given a thought to it, either. If the midnight show at the Telegraph Hill Cinema hadn’t been Dinner at the Brooklyn Morgue .
    So he’d borrowed Gina’s car and taken the hour drive over Afton Mountain to Charlottesville. He didn’t know what he’d find. But he knew he’d find something. Mr. Dark would make sure of that.
    And he wasn’t disappointed.
    When he drove back to Harrisonburg, he found Gina sitting on the porch of her bluestone house, waiting for him. Veranda, he corrected himself. He had to remember he was in the South now.
    “Did you find anything?” she asked.
    He didn’t answer, but the way he slumped down next to her on the bench told her that he had.
    “So what are you going to do?” She handed him a Pabst and snuggled up to him.
    “It’s having another showing this weekend,” he said, dropping an arm over her shoulder.
    “Where?”
    “Los Angeles. At the New Fairfax.”
    They sipped beers in the moonlight. She nodded. “That’s where it started, isn’t it?”
    “Yep.”
    “You’d like to be there?”
    He shrugged. “Three days. I can’t get there in time.”
    “You could fly.”
    “I can’t afford it.”
    “I’ll give you the money.”
    He turned to look at her.
    “Why?” he asked her.
    “Because it matters to you.”
    “You don’t even know what’s going on. Not the whole story.”
    “You’ll tell me in time.”
    He shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t take money from you.”
    “Sure you can. I got frequent flier miles. I’ll never use them.”
    He kissed her long and fondly. “Why don’t you just think I’m crazy?”
    She smiled. “Because you don’t fuck like a crazy man.”

    He could have made a better first impression, Matt thought. Rather than just asking a total stranger if he could see the ladies’ room. It made him sound like a pervert.
    The young woman behind the glass didn’t take it that way, though. She considered, pursed her pierced lip, and said, “Just a second.”
    A minute later, the painted doors at the front of the theater were opening and the same girl, with the platinum blond hair, fingernail polish, and Bela Lugosi tattoos, beckoned him inside.
    “I have a reason—,” Matt started to say.
    “I know,” she cut him off. “You want to see where the murders happened.”
    She led him past the ornate stairs, past the concession stand with its ageless supply of Junior Mints and Good & Plenty. They walked past the open box office door, where she’d hung the sign that read “Be back in a minute, what’s it to you?,” straight to a door that said WOMEN in angry block letters.
    He paused in front of it. She asked him like she didn’t really care, just to pass the time, “You don’t look like the typical murder freak we get here. And, I’m sorry, but you don’t look like you’re writing a book or screenplay. Why do you want to see it?”
    “I don’t want to. I have to.”
    She nodded. “Intriguing.” And opened the door.
    Matt had never been in a ladies’ bathroom before. The first thing that struck him, aside from the lack of urinals, was how much like a men’s room it was. Just two stalls and a sink. Somehow he thought there would be more mystery to it. Another dream shattered ,he thought with a laugh.
    “That’s the mirror,” the young woman said. “Of course, it isn’t the