Before You Knew My Name, Jacqueline Bublitz [best book club books for discussion txt] 📗

they’d found the Leica—the only thing, along with the purple sneakers and jacket, my benefactor could say for sure was missing from my room. Camera lens. A weapon of opportunity. This fit Detective O’Byrne’s profile of the man they were looking for. An anger-retaliatory type, someone impulsive with his rage. The excessive force used, the way the body was left face down, subjugated. Every offender leaves a series of clues about himself, and Detective O’Byrne had known the motivation of the man who killed Alice Lee from the moment he saw the placement of the young girl’s body on the rocks.

Ruby’s call was metal up his spine, bringing him to his feet. It wasn’t enough to bring Tom in, but O’Byrne was a patient man. The detective immediately had his team of undercover officers position themselves down at the river each day, a small parade of inconspicuous investigators jogging, stretching, sitting in the sun, eyes flicking when the tall, blond man returned again and again to the river. Watching as he leaned over the railings, stared out across the water. At the same time, detectives canvassed every camera store, every pawn shop in the vicinity. Showing an image of Tom Martin, asking, ‘Have you seen this man? Have you seen this man?’ over and over, looking for the proof they needed in a manner so direct that people stuttered over their No’s, wondering what would happen to the poor store owner or cashier who might say yes. One or two guessed this was all to do with the dead girl, the pretty one in the news, though they never said my name out loud, reluctant to find themselves caught up in something they had absolutely nothing to do with. Not this time around.

That same week, at O’Byrne’s request, they searched the river. Calculated shifting tides and weather patterns, and the days since Ruby saw Tom down on the rocks and heard him throw something into the water. The current gives up its secrets eventually. Messages in bottles show up on foreign shores a hundred years after being tossed into the sea. The Hudson River connects to the Atlantic Ocean, shares the same roiling water, feels the same pull of the moon. And so, they find it one night, in the brackish muck. Offered up by the tides, handed over. A Summar 50mm screw mount lens. Nickel-plated steel. Specks of my blood like rust in the grooves of the aperture ring. Turns out the past sticks to whatever it touches. You cannot simply wash it away.

Detective O’Byrne is quiet, thoughtful, as they inch closer to the unequivocal proof they need. He is certain they will not find the camera itself; this is a man who would like to preserve his souvenirs. Which leads O’Byrne to the matter of the photographs. Pictures, as Tom called them. That slip up of his was deliberate in its way. Men like this eventually give themselves away, they betray their own secrets, because they so desperately want to stay at the centre of things. Narcissism makes a person careless, no matter how clever they might be. If Tom held onto the camera, had it hidden somewhere, the undeveloped film must have been calling to him. Not knowing what was on that roll, especially when the body remained unidentified so long, would have a man like that burning up. Those pictures, whatever they might reveal, would be the ultimate proof of his achievement. Only he would know who the girl was. He could own every part of her now.

By O’Byrne’s calculation, Tom Martin would have been less likely to get the film developed once his victim was publicly identified, once that Jane Doe sketch was replaced with real life images of Alice Lee. Impulsivity has its limits, so they’d be looking for activity soon after the crime, and somewhere outside the city. These men might be careless, but in O’Byrne’s experience, they were seldom openly stupid.

It was the twelfth film processing lab they checked. A boutique store specialising in analogue photography, just on two hours’ drive from Manhattan. Well-promoted online, easy enough to find via a Google search. When they showed the lab owner a picture of Tom, she bit her lip and said, ‘Yeah, I think I remember him. He was here, maybe a month ago. From out of state, he said. Most people like him mail their film to us, and we send back a CD, but he said he wanted prints. He never came back, actually. I have those prints here, somewhere. And the negatives, too, of course. Some of them didn’t turn out so well …’

I left behind my version of the city. I took pictures of the strained wire bridges and the Chrysler Building, and people streaming out of the subway. I snapped Lady Liberty from the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, and the reflective rise of One World Trade Center. The disorientation of Times Square, and the statue of my namesake in Central Park, little kids hanging off her like decorations. I was in every one of these places and I captured every moment, and now they exist as proof I was here. Detective O’Byrne thumbs through each photograph, scans every black and white image, and it is the second to last shot that feels like a punch. Heavy rain. Rocks. A swollen river. The lights of New Jersey hazy on the other side of the water. And then the last picture I snapped. Lightning reflected in the flowing river, and because I was still learning, the hint of my purple sneaker in the bottom left of the frame. Here in his hands, he is holding my last moments. He is seeing what I saw, right before a man came out of the rain, and got angry enough to put his hands to my throat. To rip the camera from me and smash it down on my skull. Angry enough to thrust into my dying body, scraping my back against