Free The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) by Vin Suprynowicz

homes. Not one cop in a thousand ever saw the inside of a jail cell, and the FBI didn’t even count those deaths as homicides in their uniform crime statistics. You could ask ’em.
    * * *
    Marian spoke to Matthew as he came in the front door of the shop, jingling the merry little bell.
    “Your note says to plug this thing in with the computers, but Chantal said to double-check with you. Neither of us knows anything about a homing device.”
    “A … homing device?”
    “This thing. Your note. That is your writing, right?”
    The thing was heavy and looked like a glorified steel two-gallon paint can with a plug and wire coming out the side, though obviously it had been finished off with some fine machine work. And yes, the note was in Matthew’s handwriting, simply identifying the gizmo as a long-range homing beacon and recommending it be plugged into the same circuit as the computers.
    “My handwriting, yes, but I don’t remember writing it.”
    “That’s weird. I’m glad I waited.”
    “At least, I don’t think I’ve written this yet. ”
    “That’s even weirder, Matthew.”
    “Marian, surely you know quantum physics tells us events today can be impacted by things we’re not going to do till tomorrow. We’re only vibrations in a temporal matrix, after all. Every action launched here has to have a receptor waiting in the future, and vice versa.”
    “In other words, you don’t have any more idea what this thing is than we do.”
    “Chantal, babe?”
    “Yes, dear.” Chantal poked her lovely brunette head around the corner of Science Fiction, which she was putting back in order by author. The customers for some reason insisted on putting Asimov back under “I” and Heinlein under “R” … when they showed any signs of grasping “alphabetical order,” at all.
    “Do we still know some electronics genius down in Newport?”
    “Cory? Yeah. You going to send him the long-range homing beacon?”
    “If you think he’d be willing to check it out.”
    “I’ll call him.”
    “Ask him, if Skeezix can wrap this up and hand it to one of our favorite bus drivers, whether he can meet the bus in Middletown.”
    “Can do.”
    “I wonder if you can help me.” Customers always seemed to sneak up on Matthew when he wasn’t looking.
    “I can try.”
    “It’s my grandson. He wants books about the Titanic, absolutely anything about the Titanic.”
    “You’re in the right section, ma’am. Those are our shelves for ships and trains, but I can see from here the two books I was going to recommend are gone. We had a nice large-format book with cutaway drawings of the various deck plans, and Robert Ballard’s book on the discovery of the wreck, but they’re both large format books, quartos, and I can see from here they’ve both sold. We’ll stock them again if they turn up, but it’s hard to say when.”
    “Oh no.”
    “But I think we have something else that might work. Over here in fiction I think we recently put in — yes, here it is, A Night to Remember , by Walter Lord. This is a novel about the sinking of the Titanic, in fact it was the basis for the film version back in the ’50s, starring Walter Pigeon, no, Kenneth More, I think. Roy Ward Baker directed, and Eric Ambler wrote the screenplay, which a lot of people don’t know. This copy is from the Roy Ward Baker estate, actually.”
    Matthew held out the book — in a nice dust jacket and presumably a first — so the woman could take it from him. She didn’t, even though accepting something that’s held out to you is the more natural thing to do.
    “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll keep looking for something about the Titanic.” And she turned and briskly walked away.
    Matthew stood for a moment, wondering if there were some parallel universe in which encounters like that one — it wasn’t the first — might make some kind of sense. No peace for the wicked, though. A seller had brought Marian a box of books at the