In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (11 page)

“No, but I don’t like the sound of it,” Annie answered, her eyes swinging from Virgil’s face to Kyle’s. She took in Vittetoe’s expression and fear shone in her eyes. “Kyle?”

Kyle shook his head.

“It’s like this, honey,” Virgil explained. “There’s this thing called the Myer’s Act. Under that law, if a person’s family thinks he or she might be incapable of managing his or her own affairs, and might well be a danger to themselves or others, they can have a warrant issued for that individual to be picked up in order to have him or her tested for competency.” Virgil sighed.

“There’s just such a warrant out on Gabe, Patricia Anne. That’s the reason he left there. A judge in Georgia had already ruled he was incompetent. Gabe was already in a clinic in Augusta and somehow he found out he was about to be picked up and taken to a private hospital for commitment.” He looked around at Kyle. “That’s probably why he took the money. He must’ve taken it to get as far away from his family as he could. I would have, too, if I’d been him.”

“He wasn’t all that incompetent if he had the forethought to steal money for his escape,” Kyle snarled.

“I don’t understand,” Annie said. “On what grounds had they declared him incompetent? Gabe is as sane as any of us.”

Virgil blushed a deep red. “He was being treated for an addiction to heroin. He just up and left the hospital one night, and they haven’t seen him since. They think someone helped him escape, but they never found out who.”

“Who signed for his arrest?” Jake asked.

“Some of his kin,” Virgil answered.

“Andrew Tremayne?” Annie asked, remembering the lawyer Mrs. Johannsen had mentioned. She didn’t believe for a moment that the man she had thought was her husband was a heroin addict.

“No. His father, Liam Tremayne, was the one who signed.”

Jake flinched. “I know that name.”

Virgil nodded. “There was a segment on him on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago. He’s as dirty as they come, but the Feds can’t prove it.”

“He’s Gabe’s father?” Annie gasped. Her face showed her consternation. “Gabe and I saw that show. I wanted to watch Life Goes On like we usually do, but Gabe insisted we watch 60 Minutes that night. He was glued to the set when that story about Liam Tremayne came on. I remember Gabe saying they ought to...” Tears filled her eyes. She clenched her hands together.

“Ought to what, Patricia Anne?”

Annie lifted her eyes to Virgil’s. “He said they ought to put the bastard in jail and throw away the key so he couldn’t hurt any more kids. The report said Tremayne’s organization was thought to be the largest distributor of heroin and cocaine in the South.” A tear slid down her cheek. “I thought Gabe was talking about the man hurting other kids by selling them cocaine.” Her eyes overflowed with tears. “Maybe that’s where those men got the drugs they gave Gabe.”

“That’s probably why he became a cop, Annie,” Kyle said quietly. “To stop men like his father.” His eyes pleaded with Annie. “I didn’t know about him being married. I really didn’t.”

“What does Annie do now?” Alinor asked.

“Well, the marriage isn’t legal, darling,” Jake answered. “That can be annulled right off.” He looked at his young neighbor. “Unless you want to press charges against him and have him brought back here.”

Virgil looked up, light registering behind his thick glasses. “Bigamy charges! That’s it! That’s how we can get him back. We can have him extradited here on bigamy charges.”

“Won’t wash,” Kyle said, remembering some of his civil law classes. “Bigamy’s a misdemeanor, Virgil, you know that. You can’t extradite on a misdemeanor. Besides, if there’s a question as to his competency, the marriage to Annie would be null and void anyway. They’d just say he didn’t know what he was doing.”

Virgil’s pug nose turned up. “Then we’ll charge those fellows who took him with kidnapping! That’s a federal crime.”

“How you gonna do that unless you find ‘em first?” Kyle snapped. “They could be half-way to Kentucky by now.” He shook his head. “Or farther.”

“I can give you a description of them,” Jake suggested. “Will that help?”

“Seems to me,” Alinor Mueller injected, “that those men were probably hired by Gabe’s family to come get him. Is there any kind of legal recourse for that?”

“What’s been done here is kidnapping. Pure and simple. They came into this state and illegally forced one of our residents, against his will, to accompany them back to Florida,” Virgil reminded them all. “If they’d come to us, had the correct papers for him to have been picked up, we’d have had him tested here to see if he was incompetent. If our psychiatrist said he wasn’t, that piece of paper they have on him in Georgia wouldn’t be worth diddle.”

“But they didn’t dare do that if nothing was wrong with Gabe, did they?” Alinor asked. “They couldn’t take the chance of him getting away from them.”

“So where does that leave us?” Jake asked.

“On Judge Terry Lampiere’s front porch first thing tomorrow morning,” Virgil stated.

Andrew R.
Tremayne spoke from across miles and miles of fiberoptic line. “Judge Lampiere, I can appreciate your concern, and the concern of my brother’s friends there in Iowa, about his safety. I, too, am worried sick about him, and have been for the last seven years. It had been just that long since we had heard anything from him or about him, even though we’ve been looking diligently all this time.

“You can imagine my delight when I learned he was living in Iowa. And yes, I have sent some family friends out there to try to persuade him to come back, but they haven’t arrived yet. The plane should be arriving later this afternoon.

“If someone has abducted James, and I pray to the Blessed Mother they haven’t, then those of his enemies who have also been searching for him have, without doubt, reached him first.”

Terrence Jean Lampiere rolled his eyes at the tone of voice coming to him from across the miles. Did the man in Atlanta think him a country bumpkin? From the slick, condescending way the bastard was speaking to him, the judge could well imagine the grin of amusement on the fellow’s face.

“We are aware your father has signed a request that your brother be picked up for involuntary hospitalization, counselor,” the Judge stated in a no-nonsense, direct tone. “We’re also aware of your family’s connections to organized crime.”

“That has never been proved,” came the waspish reply from Atlanta and the judge knew he’d touched a raw nerve.

“Be that as it may, your father, and Gabe James’ father—”

“James Gabriel Tremayne is my brother’s name,” Andrew snapped. “He may call himself anything he wants, but his family knows him as James.”

The judge went on as though he had not been interrupted. “...has been linked with crime families all over this country, and the men who abducted Gabe James were professionals. We have composite drawings of two of them. Our law enforcement agencies here will be faxing those drawings all over the state of Florida. When we find those men, Mr. Tremayne, we’ll call for an extradition order from your governor. I would imagine he’s not in the employ of the Tremayne Group.”

A hiss of fury came over the line. “What precisely are you intimating, Judge Lampiere?” Andrew growled. “I’ve told you my family did not have anything to do with kidnapping James.”

“If not your family, then perhaps the family of his wife, Kristen Marie Connors Tremayne,” the judge shot back. “Either way, we’ll prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

“If—” Andrew purred into the receiver. “—you can find the men who abducted him.”

Terry Lampiere’s gray eyes narrowed into thin slits of pure dislike. Even though he couldn’t see the man to whom he was speaking, he’d already developed an intense image of the slick, just-one-finger-outside-the-law litigator. He was receiving vivid flashes of a hard, cold face, glittering eyes filled with the unholy light of victory, a thin slit of a mouth that was grinning with that victory even as it hissed its warning. The man’s next words made the judge draw in his breath.

“You know James owed a lot of money to—shall we say, deadly people?—when he left Florida, don’t you, Judge Lampiere? I understand his gambling debts ran into five figures. These are men who don’t take running out on debts lightly.

“I’m sure you also know James stole nearly a quarter of a million dollars from his father-in-law when he skipped the state. My father has repaid that money out of respect for James’ wife, Kristen. After all, James can’t be held accountable for what he did during that time to feed the expensive monkey on his back. And if he doesn’t have any of that money left to settle up his debt, the men who took him just might not
ever
give him back.”

“Oh, we’ll get him back, counselor,” the judge bit out from between clenched teeth. “You have my word on that!”

There seemed to be a light chuckle from the other end of the line, although Andrew Tremayne’s voice was perfectly steady and seemingly sincere.

“I hope so, Judge Lampiere. For James’ sake, I certainly hope you find the men who abducted him. Our family will be praying for his safety.”

If Terry Lampiere could have crawled through the phone, he knew his fist would be plowing down Andrew Tremayne’s throat by now. It took every ounce of his professionalism and control to level his voice and taper off his temper to answer Tremayne’s sugary remark.

“If I  find out you had anything to do with Gabe’s disappearance—” he began, only to be cut off with Tremayne’s knife-through-hot-butter voice.

“I’m sure you went to a good law school, Judge, and you have no doubt numerous years on the bench with which to grasp what I am about to say. You are perfectly aware kidnapping is a federal offense and those who are a party to it are as culpable as those who actually commit the crime. Yes, our family would like to have James back. He is quite incompetent to manage his own affairs. His bigamous marriage to a woman in Iowa is proof positive of that.

“But, as you well know, we can’t serve papers for committal on him until he comes back into the state of Georgia. Once he does, we’ll have him picked up and remanded to a chemical dependency unit where, hopefully, we can help him kick his drug habit.”

“Gabe James does not have a drug habit,” the judge snarled.

“Gabe James might not,” Tremayne said in a reasonable voice, “but James Gabriel Tremayne certainly did. If you’d care to check, you’d see he was hospitalized in Florida several times for both alcohol and heroin addictions before my father had him transferred to a private clinic in Augusta.

“If James managed to kick his addiction while he was out there, the family will be utterly thrilled, but until we have proof positive he has, that he is no longer a danger to himself or to anyone else, and that he’s fully capable of taking care of his own affairs, the order for involuntary hospitalization will stand. We have only his best interests in mind.”

“I just bet you do,” the judge hissed before he slammed down the phone.

“Well?” Virgil asked, leaning over Terry Lampiere’s desk.

“You didn’t really think the man would admit to having his brother snatched, did you?” Terry asked, heaving an aggravated sigh as he stood. “There’s no doubt in my mind he did, though.”

“What did he sound like?” Kyle asked.

“Tough as nails and twice as sharp,” Terry grumbled. He poured himself another cup of coffee. “We’ll have one hell of a time finding those men who kidnapped Gabe. I don’t believe for a minute he’ll be taken back to Georgia to whatever hospital they had him in before. That could be too easily checked. And unless I miss my guess, once they get Gabe to Florida, his kidnapers will be entitled to a nice, long vacation in Sicily!”

“Dublin,” Kyle corrected. At the judge’s look, he shrugged. “They’re Irish mobsters.”

“That’s neither here nor there, Kyle. Those men will go underground once they’ve finished their job,” Lampiere prophesied.

“What can we do then?” Virgil inquired.

The judge sipped the hot brew in his cup, his eyes squinting from the steam. When he swallowed, he looked directly at Kyle.

“If we knew what hospital they’d take him to, we might be able to get in to see him, but chances are they’ll take him to a private clinic. They’ll probably register him under another name and  no one will be able to see him but the family. I’d imagine there are dozens of private clinics throughout Florida, which for the right amount of money, will look the other way. And we aren’t even sure that’s  where they’d take him.”

“You mean they could take him anywhere,” Kyle clarified.

Lampiere nodded. “Anywhere in the United States, Canada or Mexico.” His face took on a bleak look. “Or beyond.”

“My God,” Virgil breathed. “What are we going to tell Patricia Anne?”

“Tell her the truth, Virgil,” Terry advised. His eyes showed his concern for the young woman who was his eldest son’s teacher. “Tell her it may be a long time before she sees Gabe again.”

“If ever,” Kyle mumbled.

“If ever,” the judge agreed.

The midnight-brown
jet arced into its descent into Atlanta’s International Airport, the silver tips of its sweeping wings blinking red in the early morning sun as a flare of sunlight touched the plane’s wing span. The engine geared down and the jet’s nose leveled off as the runway came into sight. In the cockpit, the pilot’s hand was steady on the throttle, his face a relaxed, experienced visage of concentration as he neared his craft earthward. In his ears, the static voice of the controller, guiding, encouraging, beckoned him down. Those seated in the passenger compartment behind him were talking in louder than normal voices as the cabin pressure blocked off their hearing and kept them from understanding one another easily.