A curse of reading a lot, watching a lot of TV and movies, and recalling a lot of dreams is that I sometimes can’t recall where an idea came from…
So, can you think of a story with a plot like this?
It’s night. A woman is driving along, not bothering anyone, when someone suddenly dashes in front of her car, clearly not noticing that she was there. She tries very hard to stop, but she can’t, and she hits the man. He dies.
She is of course devastated.
However, what comes out immediately after the man’s death is that he wasn’t the only person on that road that night. Before our driver came along, another young woman or teenage girl desperately raced across the road. The now dead man was chasing her after she escaped his clutches, intending to kill her. As he had several other young people already.
Once everyone realizes that the driver accidentally killed a serial killer, they begin to treat her like a hero for ending his killing spree. She feels like knowing that the man was a murderer should make her feel less guilty about his death at her hands, but it really doesn’t. And no one seems to be able to understand why she’s so traumatized.
Sound familiar?
Not ringing any bells for anyone, huh?
This sounds familiar; it could be an episode of Elementary. Or Bones.
It sounds similar to Reasonable Doubt, but that’s with dudes and the details aren’t exactly the same.
Assistant DA runs over a guy while driving home drunk. He calls 911 from a nearby payphone and then takes off, driving home. Police arrest a man for the hit and run and our intrepid DA is given the case, where he sabotages it to let the wrongly accused guy go free. Turns out the accused was a serial killer, and the victim the DA ran over was the serial killer’s victim who had just managed to break free and run away when he got run over.
Kinda sorta like an early part of Fargo S2:
Peggy, a young housewife, is distracted one night as she’s driving down a country road past a diner. She hits a guy just outside the diner. Turns out he’s just killed a bunch of people inside the diner. Panicking, Peggy drives home with the guy - unbeknownst to her - stuck on her front grille, badly injured but still alive. He dies once she gets home and parks in her garage (or maybe she and her husband kill him? I forget).
This actually sounds very realistic to me, because a couple of weeks ago I was driving along, right after dark. I had just crossed a street with a green light when I saw a black shadow against the oncoming headlights. I slammed my brakes on just in time to not hit a guy who was running across the street–not in an intersection, not with a light, and dressed in dark clothing. The car next to me also slammed on its brakes but dinged the guy. He sort of spun around, stumbled, and kept running. And at this point two cops who were chasing the guy, seeing that traffic was all stopped, continued chasing him.
The car next to me pulled into a nearby parking lot, because you’re not supposed to leave the scene of an accident but you are supposed to move vehicles from traffic. I drove around the block (my son was with me, he said, “Hey, aren’t you not supposed to leave the scene?” I said, not my accident) and then pulled into the parking lot to give the other driver my name as a witness in case he needed it. Wasn’t that nice of me? I also thought maybe I would find out if they caught the guy. I didn’t.
Have heard nothing. I don’t even know if the cops caught the guy. But apparently whatever they wanted him for, he’d rather be dead than caught. Add jaywalking to whatever that was.
Reasonable Doubt sounds like it could have been kind of good, but I gather it wasn’t. The one in the OP sounds like it could also be kind of good, if anybody can remember what it was.