In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (8 page)

Milo barely had time to move out of the sheriff’s way as Virgil Kramer plowed through the door.

The dispatcher glanced at Dean and sniffed. “I wouldn’t wanna be them Feds when Virgil lays into ‘em.”

At twenty minutes
to six that evening, Iowa State Patrolman Kyle Vittetoe picked up his telephone.

Kyle’s sister, Ellen, watched him from the hallway as he nodded to something being asked of him, heard him answer quietly that he’d be right there. As he hung up the phone and just stood there, staring at the wall, fear rose in her heart and she walked to him.

“Kyle? Is something wrong?”

He turned to her. There was a look she’d never seen before in her brother’s dark eyes. Her hand went to his arm. “Kyle?”

“That was Virgil. Gabe’s been arrested,” he said in a hollow voice.

“Gabe? For what?” At her brother’s silence, fear shot through Ellen. “Who arrested him? Virgil?”

Kyle shook his head. “No. Virgil can’t find out who they were. They just came and took him.”

Ellen flinched. Her hand tightened on her brother’s arm. “When?”

Vittetoe plowed his trembling fingers through his hair. “About thirty minutes ago, I guess. Virgil’s with Annie.”

“How much does she know?”

“Virgil said she found some newspaper clippings that suggest Gabe might have been a cop down in Florida. Other than that, I don’t think she knows anything.”

“And Virgil?” Ellen watched her brother’s face turn angry.

“He’s got a call in to Florida. He’s mad as hell the Feds didn’t let him in on the bust.” A sick laugh pushed from Kyle’s tight lip. “‘Inter-agency protocol has been compromised,’” he said.

Ellen rubbed Kyle’s arm. “What are you going to tell him, Kyle?”

A long sigh, dredged up from Kyle Vittetoe, wavered out from between his clenched teeth. He shrugged. “The truth is as good a thing to tell him as not.”

“But Gabe asked you—”

Kyle shook his head. “It’s too late for promises now, Ellen. Gabe James is in deep shit and he ain’t got no shovel.”

Paul Oliver peeked
out from behind the bushes just west of the old bridge and watched with drunken fascination the curious goings-on taking place up on the road. He strained to hear the men talking, but all he could hear was the low mumble of their voices. He thought about trying to get closer to the gravel road, but with all the fallen branches, he figured he might call attention to himself and that was the last thing Paul wanted to do. Instead, he craned his neck around the black walnut tree blocking his view of the two vehicles and watched as the men who had climbed out of the car reached inside to drag something out.

“Get his legs, Brady,” he distinctly heard an angry voice growl.

“Oh, shit,” Paul whispered, fearful the men were about to drop a dead body over the side of the old wooden bridge.

He held his breath, staring with fearfully wide eyes as a body was lifted out of the car. Only when the men holding the sagging body moved toward the second vehicle, a dark van parked behind the car, did Paul let out his breath in a wavering relief of quiet sound.

“Hurry up! We can’t wait around ‘til the cops start looking for the car!”

The two men who had been driving the dark sedan scurried to the van behind the two men who carried the body. Ducking inside, the driver of the car helped the men lift their burden into the van. No sooner were all the men inside than the van’s lights came on and it moved into the road, the rear door slamming shut as the minivan picked up speed and crunched westward on the snow-packed gravel. An eerie silence followed the van’s departure.

Paul Oliver waited for what seemed like hours before he straightened up behind the bushes. He had been watching the car, looking for signs of movement inside. He looked around him, half expecting to see someone coming at him with a drawn gun, to silence him for witnessing whatever the hell it was he’d seen. He was about to step out from behind the bushes when headlights flashed over the rear of the sedan.

Paul ducked in blind panic, urine gushing out to stain his hunting pants. Once more he held his breath as another car pulled in behind the abandoned sedan. It wasn’t until he recognized the Sheriff’s emblem on the door that a wave of relief spread over Oliver. He flinched as the harsh yellow lights of the car’s Smith and Wesson bar began to rotate.

Deputy John Michalek picked up the radio mike and keyed it to call in the license number and make of the vehicle.

“Looks like it’s the one Mueller told us about,” Michalek told Milo Afton. “I’m gonna take a look at it.”

Opening his door, he picked up his flashlight, thumbed on the beam, and stepped out into the once-again falling snow, drawing his service revolver as he walked gingerly toward the sedan. He played the beam of his flashlight over the trunk, into the rear view window as he cautiously made his way along the side of the vehicle. Stepping closer, he aimed the light into the car, relieved when he found it empty. He was about to open the sedan’s door when he heard movement in the bushes. Automatically crouching, he swung his revolver toward the sound.

“Who’s there?” he yelled, his eyes narrowing in an effort to see through the large clumps of falling snow.

“Don’t shoot, Johnny!” he heard a voice he thought he recognized pleading. “It’s just me. Paul Oliver. Don’t you shoot now. I’m coming out!”

Pointing his flashlight toward the voice, Michalek watched as Oliver stumbled up the incline from the other side of the bridge. The old man lost his footing a couple of times as he pulled himself up onto the roadway. When he was standing on the gravel road, arms high above his head, his body rocking as he tried to maintain a semblance of sobriety, the deputy lowered his gun.

“What the hell are you doing out here, Paul?”

Oliver scrunched up his thin shoulders. “Just out for a stroll, Johnny.”

“Poaching out of season’s more like it,” the deputy spat. He holstered his gun. “You see where the people who drove this car went?”

“I did,” came the slurred reply.

“Then you better tell me about it.”

“I see. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, get an APB out on the van then,” Virgil barked into the telephone. “Something ain’t right here!” He slammed down the phone and frowned at Jake Mueller. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

“If them men was Federal agents, I’ll eat my hat,” Jake said. “What did you just find out?”

Virgil glanced into the living room where Annie James was sitting and lowered his voice. “Johnny Michalek found that sedan with the license number you called in. It was abandoned over on the other side of the Grange Camp about thirty minutes ago. That old drunk, Paul Oliver, was out hunting and said he saw the car and a black van. According to him, four men got out of the sedan and lifted a dead body into the back of the van.”

Jake’s face paled. “A dead body?”

Virgil snorted. “You know Oliver. He ain’t got a lick of sense. More’n likely Gabe was unconscious. Maybe drugged. I don’t know.”

Jake let out a long breath. “They was manhandling the boy, Virgil. He was scared shitless and I don’t mind telling you when that bastard pulled that widowmaker on me and stuck it in my ribs, I wasn’t feeling none too brave myself!” Jake flung out his hand in disgust. “Even if they was arresting Gabe for something, why in tarnation would they knock him out?”

“To keep him quiet,” Virgil replied. He pulled Jake with him into the kitchen.

When he was sure Annie James couldn’t hear them, he told Jake what he’d learned from the sources Dean Allen had called. “There isn’t any agency in Iowa that knows anything about a so-called warrant out for Gabe. It would have to have been a felony charge for any Feds to come out here to get Gabe and they’d have to have gone through the Jasper County judge to serve paper.

“Ain’t nobody from Florida or anywhere else either been up to the courthouse about a warrant for Gabe. We checked with the Feds, too, and they don’t know squat about any of this.”

Jake stared at him. “If they weren’t lawmen, Virgil, who the hell were they?”

“Mob flunkies,” a voice spoke from the doorway and both men turned to see Kyle Vittetoe standing in the breakfast room with his cap in his hands. His brown eyes were bleak. “And if we don’t get Gabe back before they leave Iowa, we’ll never see him again!”

Annie James
accepted the cup of tea from Nora Mueller and smiled her thanks. Bringing the steaming brew to her lips, she took a tentative sip of the apple-spiced liquid. She blinked against the rising steam, then lowered the cup to her lap where she braced it in the hollow of her left palm. Her eyes, glazed over with shock and confusion, strayed to the picture window and she stared out into the heavy fall of snow.

Watching her from the breakfast room doorway, Kyle knew she was struggling to keep from crying, for now and again her body would hitch.

“What are we gonna tell her?” Jake asked. He looked from Kyle to Virgil and back again.

Kyle turned his eyes from Annie to the old man. “She’s got to be told the truth, Jake. She’s got to know where she stands in all this.”

Virgil plowed a meaty hand through his thick, silver-shot hair and leaned against the doorjamb. “I wish you’d said something to me about Gabe, Kyle. If we’d known he needed protection, we could’ve been on the lookout.” He turned accusing gray eyes to the highway patrolman. “As it is now, we don’t know if Gabe James is alive or dead.”

Vittetoe’s eyes locked with Virgil’s. “Gabe asked me in confidence not to say nothing about his past. I ain’t never betrayed a man’s confidence before this, and I hate like hell to start doing it now!”

“Well, you’d best be thinking of a way to explain to Gabe’s wife why her husband’s in trouble with the mob,” Virgil shot back. He leaned his six-foot-tall frame against the doorjamb. “That he’s got mob connections at all scares the bejesus out of me!”

Kyle’s face turned rigid and red. “Gabe isn’t a criminal!”

“He stole someone else’s money, didn’t he?” Virgil bit out. “That’s larceny, officer.”

“He might’ve taken the money, Virgil,” Kyle grated, “but he took it to get away from them. If he’d stayed in Florida, he’d have wound up being fitted for cement galoshes.”

“He should’ve went to the Feds with what he knew! They might have put him in a witness protection program.”

“The witness protection program is about as reliable as my old ‘64 Harley! At least I can keep that cycle together with baling wire. The damned witness protection program’s so filled with moles, Gabe wouldn’t have lasted a year, what with him being an ex-cop. You know about how much protection Gabe would’ve got! My God, Virgil, what choice did he have but to run?”

Virgil lowered his voice to a grating rush as he glared up at Kyle. “If you’d come to me and told me the story, I’d have kept my mouth shut. You know damned well I’d have done everything I could to have kept Gabe safe. Now it’s too late. You done went and shut the barn door after the horse has left!”

“They won’t hurt him.”

The three men turned to stare at Annie through the doorway. She leaned forward and set her tea cup on the coffee table. Her eyes were hollow and empty as she looked at them. Folding her hands in her lap, she nodded. “His wife will see he isn’t hurt.”

Virgil walked into the den and sat on the edge of a chair. “Is there something you know that’ll help us find him, Patricia Anne?”

Slowly Annie moved her gaze from Kyle to Virgil. “All I know is that she won’t let her father hurt him.”

“Honey,” Virgil said in a soft, understanding voice, “what are you talking about?”

Ignoring Virgil’s comment, Annie went on. “Gabe’s safe. I know he’s safe, but I don’t think we’ll ever be allowed to see him again.” She shivered, looked down at her hands. “And they may come back to finish what they started.”

“Finish what?” Jake asked as he sat on the arm of his wife’s chair.

Annie shrugged. “Killing me.”

Their collective faces blanched white and their eyes widened. They looked at one another with concerned faces filled with fear.

“Why would they want to hurt you, Patricia Anne?” Virgil finally asked, breaking the long silence. “You didn’t have anything to do with stealing the money. You didn’t even know anything about Gabe’s past until this morning.”

“Virgil,” Nora Mueller said, catching the sheriff’s attention. “You didn’t understand what Annie said.” Her eyes locked on Virgil’s. “Annie found out Gabe has a wife down in Pensacola—a legal wife,” she stressed. She paused as the men gawked unbelievingly at her. “Most women don’t take kindly to finding out their husbands went off and married another woman. Especially if that wife is the daughter of a man capable of sending goons halfway across the country to pick up her runaway husband.”

“Wife?” Kyle whispered. He looked at Virgil. “He didn’t say anything about a wife.”

“Why would he have?” Annie asked in a bitter voice. She looked up at Kyle. “You’re a cop. He couldn’t very well have told you he’d committed bigamy now, could he?”

“Are you sure about this?” Jake asked. There was keen disappointment written on his aging face.