CHAPTER FOUR

About a half hour later, Riley pulled into the parking lot at Quantico. When she’d asked Meredith how soon he wanted her there, she’d heard real urgency in his voice …

“Already. Sooner if possible.”

Of course, when Meredith called her at home, time was almost always running out—sometimes literally, as in her last case. The so-called Sandman had used sand timers to mark the hours that would elapse before his next brutal murder.

But today, something in Meredith’s tone told her that this situation was pressing in some unique way.

As she parked, she saw that Bill and Jenn were also just arriving in their own vehicles. She got out of her car and stood waiting for them.

Without exchanging many words, the three walked toward the building. Riley saw that, like her, Bill and Jenn had brought their go-bags along. None of them had needed to be told that they’d likely be flying out of Quantico in short order.

They checked into the building and headed toward Chief Meredith’s office. As soon as they got to his door, the burly, imposing African-American man burst out into the hallway. He’d obviously been notified of their arrival.

“No time for a conference,” he growled at the three agents. “We’ll talk and walk.”

As they hurried along with Meredith, Riley realized that they were headed straight to Quantico’s airstrip.

We really are in a hurry, Riley thought. It was unusual not to have at least a brief meeting to bring them up to speed on a new case.

Striding along beside Meredith, Bill asked, “What’s this all about, Chief?”

Meredith said, “Right now there’s a decapitated dead body on a train track near Barnwell, Illinois. It’s a line out of Chicago. A woman was bound to the tracks and run over by a freight train, just a few hours ago. It’s the second such killing in four days and there are apparently striking similarities. It looks like we’re dealing with a serial.”

Meredith began to walk a little faster, and the three agents scurried to keep up.

Riley asked, “Who called for the FBI?”

Meredith said, “I got the call from Jude Cullen, the Chicago area Deputy Chief of Railroad Police. He says he wants profilers there right away. I told him to leave the body where it was until my agents got a look at it.”

Meredith grunted a little.

“That’s a pretty tall order. Three more freight trains are scheduled along that track today, and a passenger train as well. Right now, they’re all on hold, and it’s already getting to be a mess. You need to get out there ASAP and get a look at the crime scene so the body can be moved and the trains can start running again. And then …”

Meredith grunted again.

“Well, you’ve got a killer to stop. And I’m pretty sure we all agree on one thing—he will kill again. Aside from that, you now know as much about the case as I do. Cullen will have to fill you in on anything else.”

The group stepped out onto the tarmac of the airstrip where the small jet was waiting, its engines already rumbling.

Over the sound, Meredith called out, “You’ll be met at O’Hare by some railroad cops. They’ll drive you straight to the crime scene.”

Meredith turned around and headed back into the building, and Riley and her colleagues mounted the steps and boarded the plane. The hastiness of their departure almost made Riley dizzy. She couldn’t remember Meredith ever rushing them out like that.

But it was hardly any surprise, considering that railroad traffic was stalled. Riley couldn’t imagine that enormous difficulties that might be causing right now.

Once the plane was airborne, the three agents opened their computers and got online to look for what little information they might find at this point.

Riley quickly saw that news of the most recent killing was already spreading, although the current victim’s name wasn’t yet available. But she saw that the previous victim’s name was Fern Bruder, a twenty-five-year-old woman whose decapitated body had been found on a train track near Allardt, Indiana.

Riley couldn’t find much else online about the murders. If the railroad police had any suspects or knew of any motive, that information hadn’t leaked to the public yet—which was a good thing as far as Riley was concerned.

Still, it was frustrating not to be able to learn more right now.

With so little to think about regarding the case, Riley found herself mulling over what had happened so far today. She still felt a pang about losing Liam—although she also realized …

“Losing” isn’t exactly the right word.

No, she and her family had done their very best for the boy. And now things had turned out for the best, and Liam was in the care of people who would love him and take good care of him.

Even so, Riley wondered …

Why does it feel like a loss?

Riley also had mixed feelings about buying April a gun and taking her to the shooting range. April’s show of maturity had certainly made Riley proud, and so had her budding marksmanship. Riley was also deeply touched that her daughter wanted to follow in her footsteps.

And yet … Riley couldn’t help but remind herself …

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.

*

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.