by Mark Reps
“Deputy Steele, check the house.”
She made her way to the door and quickly ascertained that Felipe Madrigal was alone, at least at this moment.
“No one is going to shoot you,” said Sheriff Hanks.
“Gracias, Señor Policia. Gracias.”
Felipe Madrigal fell to his knees, weeping.
“Suplico clemencia. Clemencia. Please have mercy on me, Señor Policia.”
Sheriff Hanks grabbed the little man under the arm and helped him to his feet. The man’s left eye was discolored and swollen. His face was sad and defeated. A salt and pepper beard surrounded a mouthful of yellowing teeth.
“Are you Felipe Madrigal?”
“Sí. I am Felipe Madrigal.”
“Did you phone the sheriff’s office in Safford and say you wanted to confess to the bomb threats at the high school and grade school in Safford?”
“Sí.”
“Do you know your rights?”
The old man responded with a puzzled look and turned toward Sheriff Hanks.
“Under the laws governing the State of Arizona and the United States of America you have the right to remain silent.”
The tired and haggard looking old man stared at the ground. His body trembled as Sheriff Hanks rattled off the Miranda mantra.
“Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”
The old man said nothing. He stood rigid, gazing open mouthed toward the ground.
“Should I read them to him in Spanish?” asked Deputy Steele. “I’m not so sure he understands everything you said.”
“I think you had better do that,” replied Sheriff Hanks.
Deputy Steele removed a Spanish copy of the Miranda rights from her pocket. She read fluently, sometimes not even looking at the words. When she asked the old man if he understood, the weathered old man responded by nodding his head up and down.
“Let’s put some cuffs on him and put him in the back seat of my car. I want to ask him a few questions on the way into town. Deputy Steele, you close up the house and follow me back to town.”
Sheriff Hanks headed south on County 6. He waited for Felipe Madrigal to say something. If the old man was the first to speak, he might feel less pressure. He might simply let things out, maybe even explain what he had been thinking by threatening the lives of hundreds of children. The sheriff drove slowly. His prisoner remained mum. Near town Zeb flipped down the visor to shade himself from the setting sun. In the rear view mirror he noticed Felipe holding his head forward. The prisoner wore a humble, sad expression on his face. The sheriff flipped the passenger’s side visor down to block the sun from his eyes.
“Gracias.”
“De nada”
“Habla Ud. español?” asked the old man.
“Un poco, no, not really,” replied the sheriff.
The old man returned to a stony silence.
“Felipe?”
“Sí?”
“Why did you call in those bomb threats?” Zeb glanced over his shoulder. The old man was quivering. “Felipe?”
“Sí?”
“Did you think that no one would get hurt when you made a bomb and put it in the grade school?”
“Señor Policia. I didn’t make no bomb. I didn’t put no bomb in the school!”
His meek voice suddenly became adamant. His dull eyes sharpened as he spoke.
“Who made the bomb, if you didn’t?”
Felipe cast his eyes toward the floor of the car, tipped his head forward and once again became mute.
“Is there anything you’d like to say to me now? We’re almost at the jail. The more you can tell me now the easier it will be for you. My deputy is dead. This won’t go easy for you.”
The old man’s voice was forlorn, fearful as he muttered three words.
“Mercy, mercy, mercy.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Felipe Madrigal barely uttered a word as he filled out some paperwork he obviously didn’t understand. His confusion and disorientation heightened as Deputy Steele inked his fingertips for identification. The look in his eyes spoke of a man who carried a heavy burden bearing down on his soul. Yet some unseen force rendered him mute.
A hand braided leather billfold revealed twelve dollars cash, a social security card, an expired Local 616 Morenci Copper Miner’s ID card and an Arizona driver’s license. According to the driver’s license Felipe Madrigal was sixty-five years old, five feet two inches tall, weighed a hundred twenty pounds. He had brown eyes and black hair.
Tucked away in the wallet was a Spanish version of a prayer to the Blessed Virgin and three small photos. One photo was Felipe dressed in a fine white suit with an Indian or Mexican woman in a traditional wedding dress. The second photo was a smiling, young girl in a white dress holding flowers and a Bible. From the age of the photo, Deputy Steele assumed it was his daughter. The final one was a young boy in a cap and gown. The deputy held the picture of Felipe and his wife on their wedding day. She held it close so her prisoner could see it clearly. Felipe shook his head.
“Ella está con Dios.”
“Que?” said Deputy Steele.
“She is with God,” said Felipe.
When she flashed the second photo, his eyes welled with tears.
“Ella está en un lugar mejor ahora.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t understand spoken Spanish very well,” said Kate.
The old man looked away, speaking silently, “She is in a better place now.”
“Felipe?”
“Sí?”
Deputy Steele showed him the picture of the young man.
“Who is this young man?”
Felipe Madrigal shook his head, almost defiantly.
“Is he your grandson?”
“My grandson has gone to devil,” replied Felipe.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Felipe spoke the words with a harsh determination. Deputy Steele once again asked about Felipe’s grandson but his unwillingness to discuss the young man stopped the conversation cold.
“Would you like something to eat?”
“No. No quiero comer…quiero fumar.”
Deputy Steele shrugged her shoulders.
“Could I have cigarette?”
“I’m sorry,” replied Deputy Steele. “There is no smoking in the jail.”
The tired looking old man lay down on the bed and rolled towards the wall. Breathing heavily through his mouth it sounded to Deputy Steele as though he was fighting back tears of distress and pain.
Kate was stymied. If Felipe made the bomb threat, why would he confess and then clam up? Maybe the old man did not have respect for her because she was a woman?
She walked to her office and removed the bomb threat tape from the locked desk drawer. She slid it into the tape player. There was no doubt the voice on the tape was that of Felipe Madrigal. A part of her genuinely wished that the recording was not this seemingly humble old man. A glance at the clock told her it was after nine. She knocked on Sheriff Hanks’ door.
“Come in. What have you got for me?”
“Not much, I’m sorry to say.”
Zeb kept his head down over some paperwork and grunted. Her response was more or less what he had anticipated.
“Sheriff, I think you might be able to get more out of Felipe Madrigal than I can. I think he would rather talk to a man. If he’s awake, I am willing to bet you can get him to chat. I think he might feel better if he got things off his chest.”
“I agree with you. It seems like things are weighing pretty heavy on him. I get the feeling he wants to tell us something. Did you learn anything that might help me to get him to talk?”
“He seems to open up when you get him to talk about his family, his wife and daughter that is, but not his grandson. I think if he believes we are here to help him, he might talk. But I don’t know for sure. I suspect he is very troubled.”
“We see a lot of troubled folks in here, but we
don’t see many like him do we, Kate? We don’t see many that had a hand in killing one of our own.”
It took everything the sheriff had inside him to hold back his anger.
“No, we sure don’t. Thank God for that. Sheriff,” said Kate.
“Yes?”
“It’s just not the same without Delbert around.”
Stony silence was the sheriff’s response. He did not need to be reminded that it would never be the same again. When you lose a man, a good man, you never forget. Zeb felt his anger rising as he headed for Felipe Madrigal’s cell. Felipe was lying on his side, half asleep and half weeping. Zeb put his hands on the cell door and listened. Could this whimpering old man possibly have made the bomb and planted it in the boiler room of the grade school? Could this man really be Delbert’s killer? The whimper turned into a soft snore. Zeb decided he would let the old man sleep on his guilt. Tomorrow would be here soon enough. The sheriff headed home. He gave orders to the night staff to check in on the prisoner to make sure he did not try to kill himself.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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...”
“Mar
ried?” 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.”