Chapter 3

One of the first things that I noticed, was a plug in for the phone, which the elder me had connected while hooking up the back end. My new computer was able to do a 'Caller ID' very easily. I had to let the phone ring at least three times for it to run a trace. I was working off a satellite phone system, after all.

Twice now, I was saved from answering calls from England. I let my machine answer them, with a 'leave your name and number after the beep' message. One was from the ministry house in London, the other was from the hotel where Courtney worked. I guess they were checking to see if I was really dead. I didn't return their calls, of course, much as it pained me not to.

I still had to get the work finishing my shelter for the helicopter. That meant a heating system had to be installed. The temp got down to well below zero during the winter months, and I didn't want the machine damaged after I finally purchased it.

I sighed. Everything seemed to be happening at once, and I needed to go somewhere and relax. I also needed to think my future through very carefully. What did I want to do? I knew from personal experience that a previous future me had captured two people who he had then left tied up in my home, leaving me to dispose of them.

Try as I might, I had been unable to access anything that looked like a burglary and that had led me to the conclusion that time had indeed been changed, or my future had changed, anyway. Damn it! Messing with time was a complicated business! My future self had to be very desperate to risk changing my life so drastically.

Something my future self had not taken into consideration, was that I might not want or be able to disassociate myself with Courtney and the Avery-Smythes. After all, they did know my alternate ID, and I had no plans to make yet another one. I sighed. I needed a vacation, and by god, I was going to take one, too!

Come on, Tom... well, Benjamin, now... Think!

I had the ability to go back into time. I could go to a nice quiet place, and relax. I just had to do it somewhere in the past, thereby giving myself time to consider and think through all my options.

So that was what I decided to do. I set about preparing for an extended vacation in the past. What better a vacation, than to find out for sure about something that was causing controversy to this day, over a 100 years later.

Yes, I am talking about Lizzie Borden. Did she or didn't she? While she had been found not guilty by a jury, the prosecution had presented a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence. In this day and age, it would have gotten someone found guilty.

Lizzie had been born in 1860, and her mother had died early. Her father remarried. Lizzie and her older sister never got along with their stepmother. Bitter arguments had ensued over the money their father spent at the behest of his new wife.

The end result was, in 1892, both the stepmother, and the father had been killed. The elder sister had been out of the house, elsewhere. Her story had been confirmed. She was in the clear.

No, everyone had decided that Lizzie had in fact committed this murder. To explain away the fact that no blood had spattered on her clothing... why, she must have done it in the nude!

This would be a perfect vacation for me. I was a nosy son of a gun, and had already figured out one mystery: the Kennedy assassination. Here was another mystery that was crying out for me to come and solve.

I easily got some money from the period, and clothing. I took three fairly decent gems to the New York of 1891, and sold them. A ruby and two emeralds later, and I wound up with a couple thousand dollars. This would give me more than enough to live comfortably in 1892. I would only be in Fall River, Massachusetts. The place of the infamous murders.

I placed several useful items in the between, checked what I already had there, and added a few other items. I then bought a ticket through an agency to New York City. It was a long, long trip. I did take extra care.

I was going back to my home state, after all. What made the trip even longer was I was making the trip in the past. I took a train from New York's train station. I decided that I would travel in 1950's. That period's money had been easy to come by, as well as the clothing.

Still, all in all, the trip was not too bad. I made my way to within a few blocks of a local church. Even in the 1950's, there was more than enough energy gathered to move me to the where/when I wanted to go.

I already knew of a boarding house close by. When I arrived, it was just two days prior to the date of the murders. I spent those two days getting to know the area. I went on walks, and went to the local library.

There were horse drawn cabs, and if you had the money (which I did), you could rent a horse. I quickly found the street she lived on, and the house, number 92. I did some recon from that area that lets me get into anywhere, unseen.

I had been thinking of the 'almost here' area, which I can use. It is unseen by the rest of my fellow man, but is accessible to me. I decided it must be part of the 'between', but sort of like at the edge. A beginning of the between, near the reality of the main world, so to speak.

I wish there was someone I could talk this over with, but my future self, and my experience of the past, has made me triply leery of revealing anything to anyone at all. Still, this 'area' was useful in getting me into, and moving me around freely, in places I had no business being.

I quickly identified Lizzie, and followed her around the house a bit, and on her errands. I also checked out her past a bit. She had a nasty temper. She seemed to be a sweet loving girl one moment; but when thwarted, or denied something she wanted, she became angry.

I spent a day getting this information down on tape, and firmly in my mind. She and her older sister were very close. One moment she doted on her father, the next she would give him that, "if looks could kill" look. I wondered if she were schizophrenic. A multiple personality?

I went back to my boarding house, and ate a very nice meal that evening. I would hate to be a homemaker in that day and age. It was August, and very hot. I can only imagine how hot the kitchen must be!

We had pot roast, sweet corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, and homemade bread. Butter was available and it was not that yellow color we are so used to. It was actually the normal color of butter, which is white. For some reason, modern butter is colored yellow. Since I grew up on a farm, I already knew that, though.

The table conversation consisted of Mark Twain's writings, and the latest that had been heard about Tom Edison, and what he was doing in New York. I threw in a comment or two on Twain's books that had already been written. Then, after dinner, I excused myself for an evening 'constitutional'. i.e., I took a walk.

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