You stare closely at her face on this night, just as you do every night. Funny how it’s her and not Longabaugh who you find yourself observing. You vaguely remember reading somewhere that the woman in the picture wasn’t even her, but someone else. You don’t know where you read that, though.
Besides, it only makes sense that this is the exact person the
Pinkertons claimed was Longabaugh’s companion. They used this very picture on
their WANTED signs, after all. Strange how they completely lost interest in her
after reports of Longabaugh’s demise surfaced. You could never imagine
something like that happening today.
Or could you? You look at the clock and see it’s almost one
thirty. In less than seven hours you’ll be at work, taking phone calls and
telling patients to sit and relax, that the doctor will be with them in just a
few minutes.
You go back to the picture.
What’s so striking is how attractive she was. Women back
then weren’t supposed to be as well kept up as that. At least women who hung
around men like Parker and Longabaugh weren’t. Who was she, really? Part of you
thinks she was simply a figment of some Pinkerton man’s imagination, a
composite of various women who ran in Longabaugh’s circle.
Yet if that were the case the picture would surely lose some
of its allure. For the person in the photo would then just be a forgotten and
largely unrecognized woman, and not the historical enigma whose been keeping
you, another forgotten and largely unrecognized woman, up at night.
Besides, the Pinkerton’s clearly kept quite an eye on her
(no pun intended). They may not have known her actual name, where she was from
or even what she did before meeting her criminal beau, but they knew what she
looked like and where she went. In other words, they knew she was an
individual, not a composite. They didn’t get paid to track composites.
They documented her movements with Longabaugh, after all.
New York. South America. The Saint Louis World’s Fair and back to South America
again before that final trip to San Francisco. It was there that she reportedly
parted ways with her famous bad boy forever. He returned south to come to his
bloody end while she disappeared into the proverbial ether.
Who was she, though?
You wonder if you’re insane to continue this ritual night
after night, this repeated viewing of a century old photograph, coupled with a compulsive
Google search for someone who, no matter which way you look at it, died in
obscurity long ago.
Perhaps you really are insane. Or perhaps everyone deserves to be identified, be they divorced receptionists, or the mysterious girlfriends of famous unsavory figures.
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