Once Bound

I’m on my way to view a decapitated body.

Her whole career was one long string of horrors. Was this really a life she wanted for April?

It’s not up to me, Riley reminded herself. It’s up to her.

Riley also felt strange about that awkward phone conversation she’d had with Jenn a little while ago. So much had been left unspoken, and Riley had no idea what might be going on right now between Jenn and Aunt Cora. And of course, now was no time to talk it out – not with Bill sitting right here with them.

Riley couldn’t help but wonder …

Was Jenn right? Should she turn in her badge?

Was Riley doing the young agent any favors by encouraging her to stay with the FBI?

And was Jenn in the right frame of mind to take on a new case right now?

Riley looked over at Jenn, who was sitting in her seat staring raptly at her computer.

Jenn certainly seemed fully focused at the moment – more so than Riley was, anyway.

Riley’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Bill’s voice.

“Tied to railroad tracks. It almost sounds like …”

Riley saw that Bill was also looking at his computer screen.

He paused, but Jenn finished his thought.

“Like one of those old-time silent movies, huh? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”

Bill shook his head.

“I sure don’t mean to make light of it … but I keep thinking of some mustachioed villain in a top hat tying a young damsel to the train tracks until some dashing hero comes along to rescue her. Isn’t that what always happened in silent movies?”

Jenn pointed at her computer screen.

She said, “Actually, not really. I’ve been doing some research on that. It’s a trope, all right, a cliché. And everybody seems to think they’ve seen it at one time or another, like some sort of urban legend. But it never seemed to show up in actual silent movies, at least not seriously.”

Jenn turned her computer screen around so that Bill and Riley could see it.

She 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.

*