The Stranger Beside Me

by Ann Rule

A second girl told a story very like the first. She had met the man with an injured arm on the seventeenth, and had carried some packages wrapped in butcher paper to his car for him. “Then he told me that he was having trouble getting it started and asked me to get in and try the ignition while he did something under the hood. I didn’t know him. I didn’t want to get in his car, and I just made some excuse about being in a hurry and I left.”

It's amazing how much the stories of the survivors all look the same. They sense something off and instead of forcing themselves to be polite, they run. That's the message I glean from much of the true crime and survival stories I've consumed- fuck politeness.