LITMIR.BIZ

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said, “The first fictional example of a villain tying someone to railroad tracks seems to have appeared long before movies even existed, in an 1867 play called Under the Gaslight. Only – get this! – the villain tied a man to the tracks, and the leading lady had to rescue him. The same sort of thing happened in a short story and a few other plays around that time.”

      Riley could see that Jenn was quite caught up in what she’d found.

      Jenn continued, “As far as old-time movies are concerned, there were maybe two silent comedies in which this exact thing happened – a screaming, helpless damsel got tied to the tracks by a dastardly villain and got rescued by a handsome hero. But they were played for laughs, just like in Saturday morning cartoons.”

      Bill’s eyes widened with interest.

      “Parodies of something that was never real to begin with,” he said.

      “Exactly,” Jenn said.

      Bill shook his head.

      He said, “But steam locomotives were a part of everyday life back in those days – the first few decades of the twentieth century, I mean. Weren’t there any silent movies portraying someone in danger of getting run over by a train?”

      “Sure,” Jenn said. “Sometimes a character would get pushed or fall onto tracks and maybe get knocked unconscious when a train was coming. But that’s not the same scenario, is it? Besides, just like in that old play, the movie character in danger was usually a man who had to get rescued by the heroine!”

      Riley’s interest was thoroughly piqued now. She knew that Jenn wasn’t wasting her time looking into this sort of thing. They needed to know about anything that could be driving a killer. Part of that could be understanding all the cultural precedents of whatever scenarios they happened to be dealing with – even those that might be fictional.

      Or in this case, nonexistent, Riley thought.

      Anything that might have influenced the killer was of interest.

      She thought for a moment, then asked Jenn, “Does this mean that there have never been any real-life cases of people being murdered by getting tied to train tracks?”

      “Actually, it has happened in real life,” Jenn said, pointing to some more information on her computer screen. “Between 1874 and 1910, at least six people were killed that way. I can’t find many examples since, except for one very recently. In France, a man bound his estranged wife to train tracks on her birthday. Then he got in front of the oncoming high-speed train, so he died along with her – a murder-suicide. Otherwise, it seems to be a rare way to murder anyone. And none of those were serial killings.”

      Jenn turned her computer screen back toward her and fell quiet again.

      Riley mulled over what Jenn had just said …

      “… a rare way to murder anyone.”

      Riley thought …

      Rare, but not unheard of.

      She found herself wondering – had that string of murders between 1874 and 1910 been inspired by those old stage plays in which characters had been tied to train tracks? Riley knew of more recent instances of life imitating art in some horrible way – in which murderers were inspired by novels or movies or video games.

      Maybe things hadn’t changed all that much.

      Maybe people hadn’t changed all that much.

      And what about the killer they were about to look for?

      It seemed ridiculous to imagine that they were hunting some psychopath who was emulating a dastardly, melodramatic, mustache-twirling villain who had never really existed, not even in the movies.

      But what could be driving this killer?

      The situation was all too clear and all too familiar. Riley and her colleagues were going to have to answer that question, or more people would be killed.

      Riley sat watching as Jenn continued to work on her computer. It was an encouraging sight. For the time being, Jenn seemed to have shaken off her anxieties about the mysterious “Aunt Cora.”

      But how long will it last? Riley wondered.

      Anyway, the sight of Jenn so focused on research reminded Riley that she ought to be doing the same. She’d never worked a case involving trains before, and she had a lot to learn. She turned her attention back to her computer.

*

      Just as Meredith had said, Riley and her colleagues were greeted on the tarmac at O’Hare by a pair of uniformed railroad cops. They all introduced themselves, and Riley and her colleagues got into their vehicle.

      “We’d better hurry,” the cop in the passenger seat said. “The railroad bigwigs are really breathing down the chief’s neck to get that body off the tracks.”

      Bill asked, “How long will it take us to get there?”

      The cop who was driving said, “Usually an hour, but it won’t take us that long.”

      He turned on the lights and siren, and the car started wending its way through the heavy late afternoon traffic. It was a tense, chaotic, high-speed drive that eventually took them through the small town of Barnwell, Illinois. After that, they passed through a railroad crossing.

      The passenger cop pointed.

      “It looks like the killer turned off the road right next to the tracks in some kind of off-road vehicle. He drove alongside the tracks until he reached the place where he did the killing.”

      Soon they pulled over and parked next to a wooded area. Another police vehicle was parked there, and also a coroner’s van.

      The trees weren’t very dense. The cops led Riley and her colleagues straight through them to the railroad tracks, which were only some fifty feet away.

      Just then, the crime scene came into full view.

      Riley gulped hard at what she saw.

      Suddenly gone were any corny images of mustachioed villains and damsels in distress.

      This was all too real – and all too horrible.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      For a long moment, Riley stood staring at the body on the tracks. She’d seen corpses mangled in all kinds of horrifying ways. Even so, this victim presented a uniquely shocking spectacle. The woman had been beheaded cleanly by the wheels of the train, almost as if by a guillotine’s blade.

      Riley was surprised that the woman’s headless body seemed unscathed by the train that had passed over it. The victim was bound tightly with duct tape, her hands and arms taped to her sides, and her ankles taped together. Clothed in what had been an attractive outfit, the body was twisted in a desperate, writhing position. Where her neck was severed, blood was spattered on the crushed stones, the wooden ties, and the rail. The head had been thrown some six or seven feet down the embankment along the tracks. The woman’s eyes and mouth gaped up at the sky in an expression of frozen horror.

      Riley saw several people standing around the body, some of them wearing uniforms, some not. Riley figured they were a mix of local police and railroad cops. A man in a uniform came toward Riley and her colleagues.

      He said, “You’re the FBI folks, I take it. I’m Jude Cullen, Deputy Chief of Railroad Police for the Chicago region – ‘Bull’ Cullen, folks call me.”

      He sounded proud of the nickname. Riley knew from her research that “Bull” was general slang for a police officer on the railroad. Actually, in the railroad police organization they held the titles of Agent and Special Agent, much like the FBI. This one apparently preferred the sound of the more generic term.

      “It was my idea to get you guys here,” Cullen continued. “I hope the trip proves to be worth it. The sooner we can get the body away from here, the better.”

      As Riley and her colleagues introduced themselves, she looked Cullen over. He seemed remarkably young and had an exceptionally muscular physique, his arms bulging below the uniform’s

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