Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I swear to God, if it's another dead guy, I am so getting a raise, Sophie thought the day of the second death. 

It wasn't that she was a callous person. It wasn't that she even seriously believed it was another dead guy. But she definitely felt she deserved a raise after last week when she found Henry Kagan's corpse sprawled in his seat as if he'd just fallen asleep during a really boring old movie (they were all really boring old movies at The Festival). Except he was, in point of fact, very dead and Mr. Price hadn't given her a raise or anything. He just sent her home early, as if he were being nice, but then he didn't pay her for that time so really all he'd done was cheat her out of her hours.

"Hey! The movie's over," she called out. "Time to go home."

The shape did not move.

Sophie sighed and continued picking up discarded drink cups and napkins, muttering to herself about how gross people were when the theater provided large trash cans by every exit. 

"Time to go home," she repeated. 

She tossed a large popcorn bucket into the trash and grabbed the carpet sweeper. Bypassing several rows that were in need of a good sweep, she proceeded to the middle of the theater. With the handle of the sweeper, she poked at the sleeping man. It was probably rude, but she didn't want to risk it if the weirdo came up swinging.

It wasn't another dead guy. 

The figure slumped over and Sophie realized it was a dead woman. 

She almost looked a little like Aunt Jean, though maybe a bit younger. Sophie felt queasy. But she also felt a little pissed off. At nineteen years old, she really shouldn't have to put up with crap like this.

She turned and marched to the entrance at the back of the theater. She made sure she was standing by the door where Mr. Price would certainly be able to hear her when she screamed. It was a good classic, horror movie scream-queen kind of scream.

Price, of course, came running, as did Krissy Anne and even Carl came in from his smoke break to see what was going on. Mr. Price sent Sophie home again, but when she "hysterically" pleaded to stay because she needed her hours, he agreed to pay her for the full shift before having Krissy Anne give her a ride home. She still didn't get a raise, but a paid Saturday evening off was nothing to sneeze at.

The third time… the third time was too much. 

Sophie just froze in her tracks. Not again, the voice in her head whispered. 

Three people in as many weeks, it just wasn't possible. But it also wasn't possible that the guy had merely fallen asleep. Sure the movie was boring as hell, some crappy mafia film from the 1970s that was supposed to be a classic, but it was also full of gun fights and screaming and who could fall asleep during that?

She marched forward with the carpet sweeper, but when she reached the row in question she didn't even bother to poke. Maybe none of the other theater patrons noticed as they exited during the credits in the still-dim theater, but with the house lights on there was no mistaking the blood for anything else. 

Sophie wasn't even acting when she screamed.

"So get this," Sam said. "Jinxed movie theater."

Dean didn't even look up from his burger and fries. "Jinxed or cursed?" he asked before taking a big greasy bite.

"Is there a difference?" Mary asked.

"A trivial distinction," Castiel said.

Castiel and Mary were doing something in the middle of the bunker library that looked a bit like tai chi, but which they both insisted was nothing of the kind.

Sam shrugged and when he realized Dean wasn't looking at him he added, "Three deaths in three weeks. All during the Saturday matinee."

"The vics have anything in common?"

"A retired film buff, a local insurance agent, and a pharmacist on vacation from Minnesota."

"But the deaths were similar?" Dean asked.

"The first two appear to be natural causes, but the third was multiple gunshots."

Dean made an inarticulate noise behind a mouthful of dead cow. The fact that Sam knew he'd said, "So what?" was an indication of how well he knew his brother and had nothing to do with Dean's enunciation.

"No one in the theater heard gunshots. I mean, well, other than the gunshots in the movie itself."

Dean rolled his eyes and Sam knew he'd lost him.

"The killer would have had to perfectly time the shots to match the film for no one to have noticed anything amiss," he finished, unable to let it go without getting out his last point. "And after the other deaths… weird coincidence, don't you think?" 

"We're very busy," Castiel said tersely. Castiel's definition of busy seemed to include doing nothing, as slowly as possible, while looking constipated, which, now that Sam thought of it, could explain a few things.

"If you boys want to go take a look, I don't mind," Mary said. "Castiel and I can work at perfecting these Enochian power spells while you're gone."

Dean took another bite and made another sound. This one Sam translated as "Where?"

"Florida. Pinellas County," Sam said, knowing it was a no-go. If it had been winter, they'd have gone probably. But even Sam wasn't that keen on driving to cockroach country in the middle of summer. 

Dean slurped at the straw in his soda pop and then said, "Tell you what. Anyone bites it at the next matinee, we'll go check it out."

A week later, "bites" turned out to be an unfortunate word choice.
 

Sam would have thought he was completely immune to gore by now, but he still winced when the Medical Examiner carried the remains out in what looked like a large Tupperware container. "'The height and weight of the victim can only be estimated from the partial remains. The torso has been severed mid-thorax; there are no major organs remaining... Right arm has been severed above the elbow with massive tissue loss in the upper musculature... partially denuded bone remaining…'"

Dean didn't even have the decency to wait until the M.E. left the room before quipping to Sam, "'This was no boat accident.'"

"The victim was found in the middle of a cinema so that wasn't really one of our theories." Dr. Bradstreet was a fifty-something-year-old woman whose graying hair was pinned back with girlish plastic barrettes. She did not appear to possess a sense of humor. But she did seem to know her old movies. In the same dry tone, she continued. "So we didn't notify the Coast Guard despite the indications of 'the non-frenzied feeding of a large squalus.'"

"Squalus?" Sam repeated.

"Dude," Dean said, nudging him. "She's quoting the movie."

She nodded imperceptibly and continued quoting, "'The left arm, head, shoulders, sternum and portions of the rib cage are intact…' All accurate. It's eerie how precise this serial killer was. Every detail is authentic."

"Serial killer?" Dean asked.

"Unless you think it actually was a Longimanus or Isurus glauca, which," she added, "doesn't actually exist by the way. The longfin mako is Isurus paucus and the blue shark is Prionace glauca. The screenwriter got the species crisscrossed."

"So you definitely agree it's related to the shooting last week," Sam said.

"Nothing connects them other than place and time," she said. "So it's not really my job to speculate."

"But?" Dean prompted. 

"Sonny Corleone, shot for shot. Granted, I'm comparing a detailed autopsy with a blurry clip on YouTube, but as near as I can tell, the bullets all match."

"What made you think to even look for that?" Sam asked.

"It's the woman the week before that I can't figure out," she continued without answering.

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance.

"We heard something about recent deaths by natural causes," Dean said. "Maybe not so natural after all?"

"Cardiac arrest and leukemia. You can't murder someone with leukemia. Not instantly anyway and the tox screens were clean on both of them. I can't imagine how you'd fake either of those. Natural causes. Cases closed."

"But?" Dean prompted.

She said nothing.

"Off the record," Sam added. "Give us your craziest theory."

"I wasn't the one who examined the first man. That looked like a straightforward cardiac event. Older man with a history of heart disease, all the risk factors. Nothing suspicious. But the young woman. No family history of leukemia or any form of cancer, no diagnosis of her own on record and none of her friends were aware she was ill, yet severe build-up of white blood cells… she should have been in a great deal of pain, weak, and dizzy for weeks if not months before her death. You die of end-stage leukemia in a hospital or at home in hospice care. You don't just decide to pop out to a love story matinee. Absolutely none of it makes any sense."

"The connection with Sonny Corleone?" Dean prompted again when she didn't seem inclined to say more.

"Oh, I missed that entirely," she said. "Terrible tragedy of course, but nothing particularly unusual about a shooting death. It was this woman that made me look back at his autopsy notes. A woman dying of leukemia watching Love Story is unsettling and tragic. A woman being eaten by a shark while watching Jaws is just… just…" She gestured at the remains and took a deep breath before continuing. "So I decided to take another look at Godfather guy."

Sam blinked as he suddenly realized she hadn't been talking about a love story; it was the name of the film.

"Wait, so all the deaths match the films they were watching?" Dean asked and then without waiting for a reply asked, "What movie was heart attack guy at?"

"Cardiac arrest," she corrected without bothering to explain the difference. "Tales from the Crypt."

"Someone died of a heart attack in that?" Sam asked. He couldn't actually remember if he'd seen it or not. He'd seen a lot of old movies on free motel cable TV over the years. "Is that the one where the guy gets drowned by high tide?"

"Nah, that's Creepshow," Dean said. "That came out a decade later. We're talking Tales from the Crypt the original movie, right? Let's see, strangulation, car crash… " Dean snapped his fingers. "Heart attack. Guy sees Death following him, dies of fright. That's got to be the most boring death in the whole movie. Why that one?"

"Asking why implies the killer has rational motivations," Bradstreet said. "You're clearly dealing with someone who is completely insane. But," she added, "also… inhumanly efficient. Are we done?"

The Winchester brothers exchanged a shrug, which she took as permission to pack away what was left of the body. Sam flinched at the accompanying clattering sound. Morgues were, by necessity, cold and they nearly always echoed. It was almost certainly a side effect of needing to keep surfaces clean and sterile, thus no soft upholstery to baffle the noise. But it always felt to Sam as if morgues echoed with something more ominous. The cold and the echo seemed to be poetically connected. 

Dean left one of their fake FBI business cards on the table. "If you come up with anything else weird, like anything, like no matter how weird, call us."

"Maybe you could tell those guys at the theater to play a romantic comedy for a change this week," she called over her shoulder as they walked out.

They made it all the way to the car before Dean made the first chick flick joke.