Adios Angel (10 page)

Doreen greeted Zeb with a hug and a kiss. His
response, or rather the lack of his anticipated response, told her his mind was
somewhere else.

“You okay, sugar dumplin’?”

He wasn't.  There was no sense lying to Doreen.  He knew
she could read him like a map.

"Not really."

“Delbert?” she asked.

“We arrested the man who called in the bomb threats. 
He may be the guy that murdered Delbert.  He could be part of a group of crazy
people with bad ideas.  I don’t know for sure.”

The thought of Delbert created a painful tear that
slipped down Doreen’s cheek as she asked Zeb who he had arrested.

“An old man.  His name is Felipe Madrigal. To look at
him you wouldn’t think he had a bad bone in his body.  Most sociopaths can fool
you though.”

“Felipe Madrigal?  I don’t recognize the name.  I
thought I knew everybody around town.”

“He probably has never been in the Town Talk.  He
lives off of County 6, just south of the San Carlos Reservation.”

Zeb slipped out of his boots, hung his cowboy hat,
unbuckled his holster and walked to the refrigerator for a cold beer.  Doreen
had not seen him drink in a month of Sundays.

“Do you believe him?  I mean about not having made the
bomb?” asked Doreen.

Zeb took a few sips of the cold brew.  It was a good
question.  He did not have a good answer.

“I don’t think he is lying to me.  But, on the other
hand, I doubt like hell that he is telling me the whole truth either,” said Zeb
staring blankly at the television screen. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew Felipe
wanted to tell more than he was saying.  Was Felipe so full of remorse that he
couldn’t speak?  Was he in shock knowing that he had killed Delbert?  What was
the reason behind his half-truthful story?  Maybe Felipe Madrigal had something
to fear.  Maybe he was a true sociopath.  The sheriff knew for certain that being
behind locked jailhouse doors was not what scared Felipe.  The more he thought
about it, the more Zeb realized it probably was not even the thought of prison
that scared him.  What was behind Felipe Madrigal’s fear?  If he could answer
that question, he might understand a whole lot more.

Doreen, usually quick with the quip, said nothing as
she watched her man pondering his troubles.  Her own experiences told her there
was more, much more to this than he was saying.

“What are you thinkin’ about, Zeb?”

“Everything, Doe.  It just doesn’t make sense, any of
it.”

“I was thinkin’ about Corita Funke and how she must be
feeling, losin’ her only son.”

Zeb’s heart felt as though it were about to explode. 
His mind raced between seeing Delbert dead in his casket and Border Patrol
Agent Wendt, also an only child, dead from a bullet wound, in the remote desert
near the Mexican border.  Both men had been under his command, his direct
orders when they died. Who was he to have power over anyone’s life or death? 
Then Michael Parrish sprang into his mind.  He had put a bullet in him and
never given it a second thought, until now.

“I think I am going…”

“Crazy,” said Doreen filling in the blank.

For a few moments neither Zeb nor Doreen said a word. 

“I think I’m just feeling sorry for myself,” said Zeb.

“A pity party for one?” asked Doreen

“Yup,” said Zeb taking another pull on the beer.

“Been there.  Done that,” said Doreen.  “It don’t
work.  It only makes you run from reality.”

“Are we talking about the same thing here?” asked
Zeb.  “Or do you have something you want to tell me?”

Doreen took the beer from Zeb’s hand and set it on the
end table. 

“Zebulon Hanks, if you are going to be my husband,
there is something I have to tell you and I have to tell you now.”

Zeb sat up straight.  He stared his wife-to-be in the
eyes.  What was she about to tell him?  She had mentioned up on Mount Graham that
she was waiting for the right time to tell him something important.  He had
sensed that it was an important secret she held deep in her heart.  Was this
what she had been talking to Father McNamara about before he was murdered? Was
this about her crisis of faith?  Was this the thing she needed to get off her
chest so they could finally get married?  It had to be.  For a fraction of a
second he considered her timing bad, but just as quickly let go of that
thought.  Right now there wasn’t a good time for much of anything, so there
wasn’t a bad time for anything either.

“I am not who you think I am,” said Doreen.

Zeb looked into her eyes.  He loved her dearly.  But
why was she bringing this up right now?

“Wha…”

Doreen gently placed her finger over his lips and
began to tell a story he could never have imagined.  Indeed, Doreen was nothing
like she seemed to be.

“Doreen isn’t my real name.  My real name is Holly
Munson Jewell.  I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.”

Zeb was taken for a loop. 

“You grew up in Atlanta?  Georgia?  I guess that
explains your accent.”

“Yes, hon, it sure enough does.”

Zeb and Doreen stared at each as if they were seeing
each other for the first time.

“What?  Why?” asked Zeb.

Before Doreen could get another word out of her mouth
she began to weep.  What began as a few drops turned into a river of tears,
then abruptly inappropriate laughter.  Zeb’s confusion morphed into concern.

“Don’t worry, Zeb. It’s all right. I’m all right. It
just feels so dang good to finally get it all out there in the open.  I have
been waitin’ for years to tell someone the whole truth.  I’ve wanted to tell
you since the day we met.  Father McNamara knew most of it, but not
everything.”

“What is the truth?  Why haven’t you told me before
now?”

“I didn’t know how to tell ya’ about me.  I guess I
was hidin’.  It seems like keepin’ it all hid somehow protected me.  I knew I
had to tell you sooner or later.  Just listen, please, without judgin’ me. 
Then you can decide if you want to marry me or not.”

“Fair enough,” said Zeb, now intrigued as well as more
than a bit confused.

“My family, what there are of them, are good southern
folks.  But I have disappeared out of their lives…for now.”

Zeb’s head was spinning.  “Why?”

“It’s very complicated.  Someday, maybe even soon, I
will see them again.  Maybe not.  I dunno for sure what’s right anymore.”   

“Should I call you Doreen or Holly?”

“Let’s stick with Doreen for now,” she replied.

“And your family?”

“My father is alive and living in Georgia.  He’s a
retired high school agriculture teacher.  I miss him.  I wanna see him agin.  I
will when the timin’ is right.  My mother was a sickly woman who died shortly
after my birth.”

Zeb managed to say he was sorry to hear that before
being floored by Doreen’s next statement.

“I was married...”

“Married?” Zeb felt the anger of being lied to rising
through his flushed face. “To whom?”

“That’s what I couldn’t tell ya’.  Please be patient. 
I’ll explain it all.”

“Okay,” said Zeb.  “I can’t even begin to imagine what
the rest of the story is.”

Zeb gulped down a beer in one swallow and opened
another.

“Less than two months after I graduated from high
school I got married to Loren James Jewell.”

“Married?  You did say married?”

“Yes, you heard me right the first time.  This isn’t
any easier on me than it is on you, so please be patient.”

Zeb felt heat, anger, jealousy and rage as he downed
another half of a beer.  “Who in the hell is Loren James Jewell?”

“My high school sweetheart.  I was young; I was in
love.”

Zeb’s heart sank.  He knew he was not the first man in
Doreen’s life, but he did think he was going to be her first and only husband. 
Having that illusion shattered was painful.    It was all like a swirling eddy
in Zeb’s brain. Was she Holly or was she Doreen?  The questions in his mind far
outnumbered the answers.   He knew she was not a virgin when he first made love
to her but had no idea that she had been married.   The mere thought of Doreen
having been married was unsettling.  Even as he sat there pondering, he
realized how ridiculous that thought was, yet the pain remained.  Still, he had
to know about her past as it might concern their future together.

“What about your marriage?  Are you divorced?”

“I was tryin’ to tell you about that.  Loren and I
dated in high school.  We got married right after graduation, when I found out
I was pregnant.”

“You have a child?”

Doreen looked deeply into Zeb’s eyes and began to
cry.  He could tell this cry was different from any tears he had ever seen
anywhere.  These tears originated from a place deep in her heart.  He held her
close and then smothered her in his arms as the tears did not, seemingly could
no,t stop.  When she was mostly cried out, he was more confused than ever.

“I don’t know if I can make it through this,” said
Doreen.

“Please try,” said Zeb.  “I love you.  No matter what
you say, nothing will change that.”

His words felt slightly hollow as he spoke them. 
Doreen looked so deeply into Zeb’s eyes he could feel the track of her stare
right down to his heart.  He shivered.  That anyone could see so deeply into
his very being shook him.

“I feel like I can believe you,” she said.  “Yes, I
really do believe you.”  Her words also carried a twinge of doubt.  “Seven
months after our marriage our son, James Wellington Jewell, was born.”

Zeb’s heart sank to the floor. His mind raced in a
thousand directions.  He was at a loss for words.  He didn’t want to hear
another word.  How could she have possibly kept this from him?  He was about to
find out.

“When young James was two and a half years old, he and
I went to meet Loren for lunch at the Green Dragon Tavern.  Loren had just
stepped out of a cab and was waiting for us.  Little James saw his father and
began to run toward him.”  Doreen’s complexion turned ashen.  Tears welled in
her eyes but none came.  “Just as Loren bent down to pick him up a car veered
out of control and hit them.  Both of them died almost instantly.  I held them
both as they breathed their last breaths.”

With those words, Doreen collapsed into Zeb’s arms and
fell onto his lap where she wept tears of pain.  Zeb caressed her hair.  Untold
thoughts raced through his mind.  Who was this woman he now held?  Was she so
broken that she could not be put back together?  Did the horrible event she
just described prevent her from ever being whole again?  Or was she healing
from a horrible trauma right in front of his very eyes. What did this mean for
their relationship? Was it over?  Was this the real beginning? His mind went
everywhere.  His mind went nowhere.  Zeb had seen the look in Doreen’s eyes as
she went back to the time and place of the deaths of her husband and son.  It
took him back to the Mexican border and the death of Darren Wendt and to the
school basement and the explosion that had killed Delbert.  If he had periodic
flashbacks to Agent Wendt’s and Delbert’s deaths, he could not even imagine
what went through her mind.  What went on inside Doreen’s head had to be truly
horrifying.  Felipe Madrigal flashed through his mind.  He tried to push it
away, but Felipe was another person who was not what he seemed to be.  The
whole world seemed jumbled and crazy.  Eventually Doreen sat up, dried her
tears, silently made some tea, opened another beer for Zeb and announced she
wanted to tell him the whole story.

“The doctor said I was sufferin’ from an acute stress
disorder.  You and I would call it a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t face
myself.  I couldn’t even look in the mirror.  I couldn’t face anyone.   And, I
really couldn’t face the world.”

“What did you do?   Were you hospitalized?”

“The doctor tried to dope me up with them crazy people
pills to hide my feelin’s and emotions.  I couldn’t do that.  The medications
made me feel suicidal.  I went to a shrink.  That only made me feel worse.  I
even went to a Cherokee medicine man.  I think that mighta helped some, but not
a lot.   I had to face my monsters in my own way.  So, I did what I knew how to
do.  Loren was a motorcycle enthusiast.  He taught me how to ride.”

“So that’s where you learned,” said Zeb feeling
irrationally jealous that Loren had been the first to share the thrill of a
motorcycle ride with her.

“I had a Harley Davidson, a 978 FLH Electra-Glide.  I
sold everythin’ I owned.  I had some money from a settlement of the deaths of
Loren and James.  I called up a lawyer and he put the money into a trust.  Far
as I know most of it is still in that trust.  I never check on it.”

Zeb could only shake his head in disbelief.  This was
all too much, too fast.

“I took off on my Harley and rode across the country
and up to Alaska.  I rented a house on Kodiak Island for a year.  I got drunk
or stoned out of my mind every day for the better part of that year.  I watched
television and movies twenty hours a day.  When I was really messed up, I
wandered off into the woods hoping the bears would eat me, but they never did. 
Oh they saw me and watched me,” said Doreen with a laugh.  “But they must have
figured I was crazy and that a crazy woman’s meat wouldn’t be no good for eatin’.”