Fatal Vision

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. It was strange. I almost recognized the face, and its expression changed when I tried to change my own. It looked like someone was trying me on for size.

The storage unit was uncomfortably warm and I was starting to sweat. Arresting though the object in my hands was, I had a lot of work ahead of me and this wasn't getting it done. I wrapped the mirror back in the fraying velvet cloth in which I had found it and tucked it on top of the next load I was transferring to the back of my rented SUV.

I was trying hard not to feel resentful. I had been the obvious choice for the job, and it would have been a real shame if none of us had stepped forward to take it on. I was the only member of the current generation of cousins and siblings who was available at the moment, and if no one cleared out the unit by the end of the month, the storage company was going to auction off the contents.

I was currently "between jobs," as the saying goes. I had actually just closed down my business, a bookshop in Phoenix, because the owners of the strip mall had decided to tear the buildings down to build condos. They had brought out my lease, so I had a bit of a cushion before I had to start worrying about paying the rent and feeding myself. So I suppose I was the logical choice. Also, I already had my own storage unit in Phoenix to house the unsold stock I couldn't bear to part with. So there was that.

I can't say I didn't miss the bookshop. It had been an odd little place, and I had enjoyed the clientele, even if the profit margins were pretty close to non-existent. Some people would have called the titles on our shelves "new-age" and others might have accused us of dabbling in the so-called "occult," but I preferred "metaphysical," a term which went back to Ancient Greece. A confession - I wasn't actually all that disappointed to have been "forced" to close up, which was why I hadn't moved to a new location. The store was a lot of work to run and the material rewards, at least, were not commensurate.

So, here I was in Santa Rosa New Mexico, clearing out Granny's storage unit before they sold everything off to pay back rent. The contents had already been sifted through several times since Granny passed, so there wasn't anything left of any real monetary value. Some old furniture. A few boxes of well used china and pots and pans. They might have been antiques, but they had been pretty heavily used and to my untrained eye they seemed like nothing but junk. I kept some boxes of books. Granny hadn't been much of a reader, but she had some nice looking leather-bound editions of Shakespeare and Pope and Keats which might have some value in the antiquarian market. There was also a box or two of photos and genealogical papers. I was going to hold on to all of those. And there was the mirror.

I left most of the items I had retrieved in the back of the car when I parked in the hotel lot. I hoped that the security cameras worked, and that the SUV wouldn't be broken into. I took only one box of genealogy information and the mirror up to my room. I was pretty exhausted at that point. It had been a long day and the contents of the unit seemed to have a gravity about them that was unrelated to their weight and size. My former customers would have attributed it to their "energy," whatever that meant.

I had stopped to pick up some fast food on my way back, and as I nibbled at the lukewarm burger, I looked over some of the contents of the genealogy box. Someone had started filling in family tree forms. The writing looked like Granny's, but it could have been Grandaunt Barbara's. I couldn't tell. What was interesting was the entry for George and Josephine Baker. Josephine was my Great Great Great Grandmother. According to the information on the form, she was born in 1839 and had given birth to three daughters - Nora, Linda and Sandra. Linda Baker Samuels was my Great Great Grandmother, so Nora and Sandra were Great Great Grandaunts. The interesting part of the form had to do with Nora, who was born in 1860 and died in 1877, at the tender age of 17. Scribbled next to her name was a notation that caught my eye. Whoever had filled out the form had written "W. Bonney" followed by a question mark. Underneath Nora's name another name was written: "Amanda."

According to family lore, which as far as I knew had never been written down anywhere, Grandma and Grandpa Baker owned a farm somewhere near Silver City, New Mexico, back in the mid 1800's. Actually, Grandma Baker ran the farm while Grandpa spent his time prospecting. At one point, early in his career, Billy the Kid came by looking for a place to lie low and Grandma Baker hired him as a farmhand. Billy must have been around 17 or 18 at the time, close in age to Great Aunt Nora. The notation on the genealogy form interested me because Billy's name, or at last one of the names he went by, was William Bonney. Was Amanda the daughter of Billy and Great Aunt Nora? Aunt Nora was supposed to have died during childbirth, so Amanda must have been raised by Grandma Baker.

I no longer felt exhausted. This was thrilling! I had never found any written confirmation of the family tradition. I leapt up and paced around the room, running the dates and names through my head. As I paced, I noticed the mirror. I had forgotten about the strange reflection I saw in the storage unit. I would check it out again now. The weirdness I thought I had noticed before was probably just a trick of the fluorescent lighting. I uncovered the mirror and placed it on the hotel dresser. It was oval in shape, about five by eight inches. The frame was some kind of dark wood, dented in places but smoothed over from long use. Once again that face stared back at me, and once again I almost recognized it. Its expression seemed determined and bordered on cruel. The eyes seemed to follow me, daring me to take a closer look - to sit in front of the mirror's surface and try to match her gaze.

I awoke to the sound of someone knocking at the door of my room. I didn't remember getting onto the bed, but I was apparently lying on top of the bedspread fully dressed. Morning light was peeping in around the corners of the blackout shades. I had a headache and I had a horrible unbrushed taste in my mouth. The knocking continued.

I crawled off of the bed and shuffled over to the door. "Who is it, " I croaked.

"Sheriff's office," was the muffled reply. "Got a few questions to ask you."

I looked through the peephole in the door and saw the front of a khaki shirt. Whoever was there stepped forward so that I could see the badge pinned above the pocket.

"Just a minute," I called. "I'll be right there."

I stumbled to the bathroom, emptied my bladder, brushed the taste off my teeth and made an attempt to tidy my makeup and brush my hair. Not presentable, but at least a little better, I hoped. I returned to the door and opened it.

"Mornin', Ma'am." The sheriff or deputy or whatever he was was a pleasant enough fellow, clean cut and fit looking. He removed his cowboy hat and nodded in a respectful way.

"What can I do for you," I asked.

"Well, I'm here to ask about a little crime that happened last night..."

"My car!" I interrupted. "Was it stolen?"

"Seems to be parked out back, ma'am, so no."

"Wait! How do you know which one is mine?"

"White SUV with Nevada plates. Rental sticker on the rear bumper. I checked with the folks at the desk, ma'am."

"That's my car," I agreed. I noticed that he seemed to be studying my face closely. Was there something wrong with the makeup?

"I'm here at the request of the Sheriff's office from the next county over. I'm supposed to ask if you drove your SUV over to Fort Sumner last night."

"Fort Sumner?" I echoed. What on earth was going on? "No," I answered. "I was here all night. So was the car."

"Ma'am, I'm afraid the car was seen last night in Fort Sumner near a crime scene."

"A crime scene?" I was going to have to stop with the echoing. "What kind of crime?"

Again he was studying my face.

"A robbery, ma'am. Mind if I come in?" He started to step into the room.

"Wait," I objected. "Don't you need a warrant or something?"

He hesitated. "We can play it that way, ma'am, if you want. Right now this is just a friendly little visit."

"Well come in, I guess." I stepped back to let him pass. "I don't know anything about a robbery."

He walked the length of the room, obviously looking carefully at my belongings. He even peeked into the bathroom briefly.

"What was stolen?" I asked.

"Well that's an interesting question, ma'am. You sure you don't know anything about this?"

"About a robbery? No! I was here all night. I just..." I trailed off as I saw him examining the mirror.

"That's kind of interesting," he muttered.

"It's not stolen!" I insisted. "That came from my grandmother's storage unit!"

"Not much of a mirror, is it? Doesn't reflect anything."

I quickly covered it with the cloth.

"What's this all about?" I finally voiced my mounting irritation.

"Why don't we head downstairs to the breakfast room and get you a little coffee," he suggested calmingly. "Seems like you might need some."

"Sure," I replied. "Sure, let's go."

I grabbed my purse and my room key and followed him out the door.

As I sipped coffee and nibbled at a breakfast roll, my companion shared a few personal details. His name was Dave Hanson. He had been a Deputy Sheriff in Guadalupe County for three years and had grown up in Las Cruces, a town about four hours to the south. In return, I provided more personal information to Deputy Dave than my lawyer would probably have advised, if I had a lawyer. I told him I was in town to clear out Granny's unit, that I had family in Phoenix and Los Angeles, that I had recently closed my bookshop. He seemed friendly and sympathetic and made me feel comfortable opening up to him. When I described the speciality of my bookshop, he even expressed an interest in metaphysics, which I found a bit surprising for a sheriff from a small town in the middle of New Mexico.

Deputy Dave explained that there was quite a bit of apparently paranormal activity in the area. When the locals thought they saw things they didn't understand, they called the Sheriff's Office to investigate. He said there was an area nearby on the old Route 66 where sightings were especially frequent. Panicked drivers would call about figures wandering across the road in front of their cars in the middle of the night. The Deputy and his fellow officers would then arrive to find no evidence of any lost pedestrians. They eventually discovered that there had been a horrific bus accident in the area back in the 60's, which explained why the reports always mentioned people dressed as hippies.

I felt comfortable enough to mention my genealogical discovery, which was still very much on my mind. As soon as I mentioned the possible connection of my family with Billy the Kid, however, the Deputy completely changed his demeanor. Suddenly he was back to the business at hand and the friendly persona vanished.

"Were you aware that there's a Billy the Kid Museum in Fort Sumner?" he wanted to know.

"I thought the museum was somewhere in Texas," I replied, a little stunned by his change in tone.

"There's one there, too," he agreed, "but you knew about these museums?"

"Is that a problem?" I wondered.

"Someone driving your car visited the Billy the Kid Museum down in Fort Sumner last night," he insisted. “They broke in and robbed it."

"Why are you so sure it was my car?" I challenged.

"Ever hear of ALPR? Automatic License Plate Readers? I'm sure you have them back in Phoenix. Well, we have them here, too," the Deputy explained. "Your rental car was detected several times between here and Fort Sumner. We also have security footage showing it at the museum."

"But you don't have footage of me," I added.

"How do you know that?" he queried.

"Because I wasn't there!" I concluded.

"We have fingerprints from the museum." he continued.

"Not mine," I countered.

"That hasn't been verified," he admitted. "We didn't find a match in the national database. Were you ever fingerprinted?"

"Probably," I speculated, "but let's just resolve this right now. Take me to your office and get a fresh set of prints. You'll see that however the car got to that museum, I wasn't in it."

Deputy Dave was in his friendly persona again as he drove me down to the Sheriff's Office. He seemed quite relieved that he didn't have to use any coercion to get me to accompany him. The fingerprinting process was pleasant enough and as we waited for the system to complete the search, we chatted amiably in Dave's office.

The results were as I expected - no match. Deputy Dave found it curious, however, that my prints and those from the museum would have been almost identical in mirror image. He mentioned more times than necessary that he had never seen anything like it.

I accepted the Deputy's offer to drive me back to the hotel. On the way, it turned out that he had some more metaphysical topics he wanted to discuss. He wanted to know if people could leave an impression on objects - if things someone owned kept “a part of their essence." I asked if he wanted some kind of “psychic fingerprinting” to solve crimes and then told him that some of my former clientele claimed to have a skill called "psychometry," which meant they could pick up information about the last person who had touched a rock or a pen or a coin. Did it really work? I had tested it out a few times by asking these folks to tell me about a customer who had just been in the store handling something at the counter. Sometimes they were amazingly on target, but mostly it was uselessly vague or way off the mark.

We arrived at the hotel and Deputy Dave thanked me for my cooperation. I thanked him in return for the taxi service. He offered me his card so that I could call "if anything turned up." I wasn't sure what could possibly turn up at this point, but I took the card anyway.

As it turned out, I needed to use the card as soon as I opened the door to my room. The Deputy met me back outside the hotel where he had dropped me off minutes before. Apparently, he hadn't even made it to the stop sign down the street. The only reason I didn't hyperventilate during our ride in the elevator to the third floor was that I followed his calming suggestion to breathe deeply.

I opened the door again and he stepped in ahead of me, quickly assessing the situation. The room hadn't been turned completely upside down, but it had been thorough searched. The mattress of the bed had been pushed off the box spring. Most important to me, the mirror was missing.

Deputy Dave noticed some kind of stain on the box spring, touched it with his finger and gave a sniff.

"Gun oil," he concluded.

"Why is there gun oil on the bed?" I asked.

"It's from the rifle."

I looked at him in incomprehension.

"Billy the Kid's Winchester 1873," he explained. "It was stolen from the Fort Sumner museum last night.”

I noticed that the Deputy's eyes were sharply focused on me again.

"You still think I had something to do with it," I complained, "even after all the fingerprinting."

"Well," he drawled, "you could have had..."

"An accomplice!" I interrupted. "That's why you think the fingerprints didn't match?"

I didn't give him time to confirm or deny

"Why then," I asked, "did my so-called accomplice have to break in and make such a mess?"

"Maybe to put us off the track," he suggested. "But either way, someone hid the gun under the mattress."

I was stumped. It was all just so nonsensical.

Then I realized that no one had actually broken in. The door was undamaged, so it was someone with a key. Who had a key to the room besides me?

"We need to talk to the maid," I proposed. "She can tell us if the room was in this state when she came to clean it."

"I suppose that wouldn't hurt," he conceded.

The woman behind the front desk informed us that the maid responsible for my room had left early due to a “family emergency.” When we asked if this was typical behavior, she thought for a few minutes and then opined that as far as she knew, Manuela had never missed a day of work, although since she wasn’t on duty every day she couldn’t be certain. Deputy Dave flashed his badge in order to convince our informant to surrender Manuela’s full name, address and the make and model of her vehicle.

As we left the office, the Deputy asked if I was coming with him.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"To have a little chat with Manuela Lopez," he explained as if I was dense. "I want to find out more about this emergency and see if it involved Billy the Kid's rifle."

"You think she went home?" I asked.

He nodded. "Where else would she go?"

"Maybe we should ask, 'What is she going to do with the gun?'" I suggested.

"She'll sell it." Again he made it clear that I was being dense. "It's probably worth a few grand to some private collector."

"What about the mirror?" I persisted.

"What mirror?" his confidence was momentarily interrupted.

"The one I had on the dresser in my room. It's gone, too. I doubt it would be worth much, if anything, to a private collector."

"Right," he agreed. "It didn't reflect anything."

"Not for you," I added. "For me it showed the reflection of a woman’s face. No, not my face! Some strange woman who looked determined and... angry. It was like she wanted me to do something for her, like she was reaching into my mind..."

I ignored his skeptical expression as I invoked the memories.

"When was this?” he finally asked.

"Last night," I answered. "I tried to resist her and... the next thing I remember is waking up on the bed with you knocking at my door."

“So, what you are saying is…” he prompted.

“I’m saying that maybe Manuela looked into the mirror and saw that face and it… I don’t know… compelled her to take the gun.”

“Sounds like something from one of those books in your occult shop,” he muttered dismissively.

“Come on, it’s not that much weirder than ghosts wandering around on Route 66,” I objected. “That woman in the mirror looked like she wanted something very badly.”

In my mind, it was suddenly very clear to me what she wanted, but somehow I couldn’t say it out loud.

“That guy who killed Billy the Kid…” I began.

“Pat Garrett,” the Deputy filled in.

“Right. Wasn’t he a sheriff down in Lincoln County?”

“He was. Later on, after he quit, he had a ranch in Las Cruces. He ended up getting shot in the back down near there,” he informed me.

“Does he have any living descendants?” I asked.

“I heard he has a great great something grandson living in Albuquerque.”

“That’s where Manuela is going… I think.” It was a guess, but a pretty good one. “Someone should warn the grandson.”

“That supposed to be a joke?” asked Deputy Dave incredulously.

“Look,” I said, “you go on to Manuela’s house, but you can also track her car, right, using that license plate reader thing?” He nodded. “OK, go do your thing, but let me know if you find out she’s heading for Albuquerque. In the meantime I’m going to do some research.”

Back in my room I tidied some of the mess and then returned to the genealogy box. Among the papers I found an unsigned, undated typed manuscript titled "Family History." It started with a description of how Grandma and Grandpa Baker had met in St. Louis and then moved out West to find some land to farm. I skimmed down to the first mention of Aunt Nora. There was no indication of who the father of her baby might have been, only a description of the heartache that her death in childbirth brought to the family. My Great Great Grandmother Linda, Amanda's Aunt, must have been about 15 years old at the time. According to the "History," Grandma Baker tried to raise Amanda as her own, but she was "strong-willed" and "headstrong." When Amanda was only 17, Grandma "gave her consent" for Amanda to seek employment as a housemaid. This seemed like a diplomatic way of saying that Grandma kicked her out to fend for herself.

The next mention of Amanda located her in Las Cruces, where she was engaged to marry a ranch hand, but there was never any mention of them actually getting married. The ranch hand was left unnamed. Based on the dates given for nearby events, the engagement must have taken place between 1904 and 1906. The date of Amanda's death was given as 1918. She was a victim, apparently, of the influenza.

I located a notepad provided by the hotel and scribbled down some notes. Amanda would have left home in 1894 and the engagement was 10 or 12 years later, not long before Pat Garrett was killed in Las Cruces, near where she worked. I checked Garrett's biography in Wikipedia and discovered that the shooting took place in 1908, and a ranch hand named Jesse Wayne Brazel had confessed to it, claiming it was self-defense, even though Garrett's wounds were in his back. There was an eyewitness who backed up Brazel's version of the story, but he never showed up for the trial, so Brazel was acquitted. I had an interesting thought. What if Amanda had pulled the trigger to avenge her father and Brazel took responsibility because she was his fiancée? Certainly not impossible, and it accounted for quite a few coincidences.

But if Amanda had killed Garrett, then why did she need further revenge?

At that moment a text message from the Sheriff's office arrived on my phone. It was terse and to the point: "Not Albuquerque. Headed for Amarillo."

Amarillo, Texas? What could be the connection there? I kept paging through the contents of the genealogy box until I came across an interesting piece of correspondence. A document handwritten on letterhead of the Territorial Governor of New Mexico. It was dated March 21, 1889 and addressed to “Dear Miss Baker.” Written in the highly baroque style of late 19th century bureaucratese, it informed the recipient that it would not be possible to satisfy her request for issuing a posthumous pardon to Mr. William Bonney. First of all, the governor’s office had no record of any kind of pardon being offered during the lifetime of the accused. And secondly, the former territorial governor, General Lew Wallace, who had supposedly proposed such pardon, no longer held that post. General Wallace, formerly the United States minister to the Ottoman Empire, had now retired from public service and the recipient could contact him at his home address in Crawfordsville, Indiana..

I could easily understand how such a dismissive, condescending denial of a heartfelt attempt to clear her deceased father’s name could drive a young person to the most unladylike thoughts and behaviors. I quickly consulted Wikipedia regarding the career of Lew Wallace, Civil War general, author of the novel “Ben-Hur,” and sometime territorial governor and minister. He had died in Crawfordsville in 1905. A memorial had been constructed in the cemetery there, and several descendants were still local residents. The smartphone maps app showed me that Amarillo was on one of the possible routes from Santa Rosa to Crawfordsville.

I gathered my necessities and headed out to the rental car. There was a chance I could catch up with Manuela before anything unfortunate happened in Hoosier country.

I remembered from our conversation with the woman at the hotel desk that Manuela drove a white Subaru station wagon, so when I saw one disabled by the side of I-40 just past the Texas border, I pulled over.

The car was unoccupied. I peered through the side window and was sure I saw Granny’s mirror wrapped up on the back seat. I picked up a fist-sized piece of rock and smacked it on the window, to no obvious effect.

“I think you’d better put that rock down and step back from the car.” The voice was a woman’s, deep-pitched and authoritative, with a hint of a western twang.

I turned and saw a diminutive female pointing a rifle at my chest.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“You know who I am!” She brandished the gun at me. “ Which of those prissy bitches did you sprout from? They thought they were so superior! Now look who’s vandalizing a stranger’s property!”

“Manuela,” I said calmly. “Put the rifle down.”

“You don’t give the orders here. I told you to put the rock down,” she repeated. “I will shoot you. I’ve shot people before.”

“I don’t think so.” I took a step toward her. “Where did you find ammo for that antique?”

She pushed down the lever and returned it to its place.

“It’s loaded,” she insisted.

I took another step toward her and she pointed the rifle at my forehead. “This is going to be messy!”

At that moment the sound of a siren reached us. There were flashing lights approaching along the interstate. My assailant looked away briefly and I took the opportunity to use my rock. I threw it as hard as I could and hit her in the knuckles. She dropped the rifle and, to my very great surprise, it discharged. The bullet skittered away and thumped into Manuela’s car. The entity occupying her body scampered off into the darkness as a sheriff’s truck rumbled along the shoulder toward us.

I guess I must have almost passed out, because I was suddenly leaning heavily against Deputy Dave’s shoulder.

“She went that way.” I pointed to a stand of bushes and cacti.

“Wont get far,” assured the Deputy. “There’s some nastier varmints out there.”

Almost on cue, we heard a scream.

I complied with the Deputy’s instructions to “stay put” while he pursued the fugitive but decided to make efficient use of my time. I retrieved my rock and stepped over to Manuela’s Subaru. Before attacking the window again, I tried the door and amazingly found it to be unlocked. I snatched the mirror, unwrapped it and laid it on a flat area not too far from where I had been held at gunpoint. Taking care not to look at the reflection, I used my rock to smash the glass into bits, which I then spilled out of the frame into a glittering pile. I placed the rock over it and added a few more lumps of mineral to form a small mound marking the place where Amanda Baker Bonney had made her last stand.

As I wrapped the mirror frame in its cloth again and tucked it under my arm, I heard voices approaching.

One was a woman’s voice, young and high pitched, with a shaky tinge of terror.

“It bit me! I am poisoned!”

The other voice was that of Deputy Dave, calm and comforting.

“You’re going to be alright. You just got too close to a cholla. We’ll get you to the E.R. and they’ll take out the spines.”

Manuela was limping, so I helped her into the back of the sheriff’s truck. When she looked up at me there was gratitude in her eyes rather than implacable hatred. Amanda was gone.

The Deputy recovered the infamous Winchester 73 and walked up to me.

“Reckon you’ll be pressing charges?” He wanted to know.

“Me? I don’t think so.”

He lifted the rifle. “Once the museum gets this back, I don’t think they will either.”

When I had finally finished clearing out Granny’s storage unit, I got back on the I-40 to finish my drive to Crawfordsville, Indiana. Lewis Wallace’s memorial turns out to be an Egyptian style obelisk with a carved American flag draped over it. The inscription on it is a quote from his famous book: “I would not give up one hour of life as a Soul for a thousand years of life as a man.” I hope that at this point, my distantly removed cousin Amanda will agree.