Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz (books to read for teens txt) 📕

Ruby might have only recently discovered this world, but she has quickly learned its ways. She knows, for example, that I don’t yet have my statistics listed over on the NamUs website, the official National Missing and Unidentified Persons System these self-appointed sleuths pull much of their information from. When she finds information about me on an unofficial site, when she reads: ‘Riverside Jane: Unknown female found 15 April 2014—White/Caucasian—Cause of Death: Strangulation’, she understands there is so much more to come. If my case remains unsolved, I will eventually get a NamUs profile of my own. It will contain an inventory of my remains (all parts recovered), and the condition of those remains will be outlined in polite terms (no decomposition or putrefaction for this Jane). There will be details about my height and weight and estimated age, along with an itemised list of the clothing I was wearing when my body was recovered. I will be allocated a searchable case number; I will become a series of check boxes and data entries, as the known facts of my case are divided up and classified.

A Dewy Decimal System for the dead, Ruby thought, when she first visited the NamUs site. She sat cross-legged on her bed, sipping at her vodka, as she clicked through this seemingly endless catalogue of the dead and the missing. She soon found herself unable to swallow, the alcohol coating her tongue and burning the roof of her mouth. Though Josh had suggested as much, the volume of cases on the NamUs site floored her. There were so many people missing, and so many people with numbers where their names should be.

Snap!

No one has come close to finding a match for Riverside Jane.

Ruby has frequented those true crime forums enough times now that she too sometimes calls me Riverside Jane. She cannot know how much I despise it; I do not wish to be tethered in this way to the place it happened. It. The thing they all want to know more about.

Central to this game, perhaps even more important than what it was, is whodunit. I am coming to understand that for many, my identity only has meaning in so far as it might help identify him. Him. The everyman behind each mystery, each sad, bad Jane Doe story. Never mind her after that: as soon as they know his name, he’ll be the one they talk about. He’ll be the one they want to know, the one who takes over the narrative.

They make movies about these men. Examine them from every angle. He becomes the central figure in the story, and the more damage he’s caused, the better.

If and when he’s caught, people will no doubt marvel at how he nearly got away with his crime, feel something akin to admiration for what this so-called ordinary guy almost pulled off. How did that nice man next door fool so many people? I never suspected a thing! Isn’t this what the neighbours always say, a little awe creeping in?

You won’t find Detective O’Byrne on any of those discussion threads. But here is something he is certain of: he will do it again. The nice man who murdered me. Have you ever taken years to step up to the edge of something you were wary of, and as soon as you jumped, it was like all the fear slackened, dissolved on impact? So that when you landed, you couldn’t remember, not for the life of you, what you had been so frightened of before? That’s how men like him explain it to O’Byrne. When they know their time is up.

It was surprisingly easy to kill her. They all say that. As if they might have done it earlier, had they only known. That’s why so many of them go back for more. You can only relive the first one so long, before you start forgetting what it was like to take a life.

My murderer remembers. He walked past this very building today in fact, pausing outside the lobby where Ruby now stands, her cheeks bright red, as the man behind the desk repeats his question.

‘Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?’

Embarrassed, Ruby shakes her head, mutters a thank you, and bolts from the lobby before further questions can be asked. As she leaves, her footsteps echo over my remains, but I manage to keep pace with her as she makes her way back uptown.

I thought about following him, too. When he came by. But I only got as far as the edge of him before I pulled back.

I will try harder next time.

See, Ruby didn’t recognise that Latin motto. Unable to translate the words, she had no idea it was a promise. But I know what it says, there on the wall above my dead body:

Let Conversation Cease, Let Laughter Flee. This is the Place Where Death Delights to Help the Living.

I do want to help the living. But I’m not yet ready to see where he goes.

They come for us all over this world.

Sometimes, if enough time has passed between one girl and the next, a city will be shocked awake when it happens. People will take to the streets with their signs and their anger, a crowd surge of protest and grief as they send a message across the town: We don’t want to be unsafe here. The police will tell women to be vigilant, to avoid certain places, they’ll tell men to make sure their loved ones get home safe from any place—because nowhere feels safe in those days and weeks after a dead girl is found. Women will push back hard against this, say, Tell men not to rape and murder us! Have stronger sentencing for violent crimes! We should not be the ones changing our behaviour here!

It might even seem that things will get better.

But after a while, the city will go back to its rhythms, it will once again become