The Bequest (34 page)

Now it looked like he might be the one to disappear.
His foot hit a tree stump. He staggered, his legs weakened by loss of
blood from his chest, but strengthened by adrenaline. When he grabbed a
tree branch to steady himself and catch his breath, he heard rustling sounds
of leaves.
Hell!
She was chasing him.
He looked back and cocked his head to listen. It was already too dark
to see anything in these damn trees, but the sounds seemed close. And,
strangely, they seemed to come from in front of him instead of behind
him. Close. Very close.
He spun around and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Douglas Bozarth,” the man holding the gun said. “I’m California
Highway Patrol Detective Stillman.”
“A little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
“I get that a lot.”
“They’re with me,” a second man said. This one wore the uniform of
a Texas sheriff. A third man stood beside the sheriff. All three had guns
pointed at him.
“You’ve got two options,” Stillman said. “You can decide to test your
luck in court, or you can be carried out in a body-bag. Which is it going to
be?”
Bozarth raised his hands over his head and dropped to his knees.
“Where’s Teri Squire?” Stillman asked, while Waggoner handcuffed
Bozarth.
“And Chad Palmer?” the sheriff asked.
“Behind me, on a ridge,” Bozarth said. “I’d be careful if I were you.
She’s deadly with a rifle.”
Waggoner jerked Bozarth to his feet and led him out of the woods.
Stillman and Nichols went in search of the girl with the gun.

Teri lay silently on the ridge, rifle aimed below. She listened for sounds to
tell her where Bozarth might be and from what direction his attack might
come.

Minutes passed. Maybe even thirty minutes; she couldn’t tell—she
had lost all sense of time. Then she heard movement. She leaned forward
on her elbows, vision virtually nonexistent. Multiple footsteps, coming
closer.

Then a man’s voice. “Ms. Squire? It’s Detectives Nichols and
Stillman. CHP.”
She remained quiet. It could be a trick, though the voice certainly
sounded familiar, and it wasn’t Bozarth’s.
“We’ve got Bozarth. We need to know if you’re all right. And Dr.
Palmer.”
She’d only heard the detective a time or two, but that was definitely
his voice.
Still...
“Ms. Squire? This is Detective Stillman. We’re going to step forward
slowly. We understand you’ve got a rifle and are a pretty good shot with
it.”
“She’s goddamn Annie Oakley!” Chad yelled from behind her.
That drew laughs from the two men below. Even Teri had to smile.
“You’re out of your jurisdiction,” she said.
“Damned if we’re not.”
She stood. “We’re up here. Chad needs a doctor.”
“Okay,” Stillman said. “We’re coming up. Don’t shoot. We’re the
good guys.”
“I know that,” she said in a soft voice.

Teri rode with
Stillman and Nichols to the hospital, while Sheriff
Waggoner carted Doug Bozarth to the Bandera County Jail. Teri sat in the
back seat, her eyes glued to the night sky, watching the helicopter heading
toward San Antonio, forty-five miles southeast of Bandera. Although
Bandera had several good medical doctors in town, and a good emergency
clinic, Chad’s wound, especially with the blood loss, was deemed too
severe for the town’s limited facilities, so the helicopter was summoned to
deliver him to the closest hospital with the kind of trauma care facility that
his injury demanded.

“I’m sure he’s going to be okay,” Nichols said. He sat in the passenger
seat while his partner drove.
“He was just trying to protect me,” Teri said.
“I know.”
“I should have protected him. Just like I should have protected
Mona.” She fought back a sob, but made no effort to check the tears that
ran down her cheeks. “And Mike.”
“There’s nothing you could have done for Mike. And it looks like you
protected Dr. Palmer just fine.”
“Did Bozarth kill Mike?”
“We don’t know yet. We do think he was behind the attack on Ms.
Hirsch, though.”
“Why?”
“It’s just a guess at this point, but we noticed her laptop was on and
she was logged into the Internet, so Beverly Hills PD put their tech guy on
it. She’d been doing research on Doug Bozarth.”
“I asked her to,” Teri said. “But how would anybody know?”
“Who knows. Spyware? Some kind of virus? Maybe just a straight-out
hack job. Like I said, it’s just a guess, but Mr. Bozarth apparently likes his
privacy.”
Teri lapsed into silence. It wasn’t until they got on I-10 heading south
to San Antonio from the small town of Boerne that she spoke again.
“Why did he try to kill me?”
Stillman looked at her in the rearview mirror. “How much do you
know about him?”
“Not much. Mike and Bob said they vetted him, so I never saw the
need to look any deeper for myself.”
Nichols put his arm on the seat and turned to face the back. “Then
why did you have Ms. Hirsch doing Internet research on him?”
Teri started to answer, then bit back her reply. She didn’t know how
much they already
knew.
They knew
enough to
come
to Texas,
presumably after her, though, and not after Bozarth. It had just been her
good fortune—in a very strange way, of course—that they happened upon
a murder attempt that clearly painted her as a victim, not a perpetrator.
Assuming, of course, that Chad regained consciousness and corroborated
her story. But as far as she knew, they were looking for her. Because of
Mike? Did they think she had anything to do with that? The timing of the
calls would clear her of that, once they followed the technology trail and
placed her in Arizona or New Mexico, or maybe even Texas, at the time
of his death.
But what about Bob’s bizarre suicide? Or the demise of Leland
Number Two? Was she still a suspect in those deaths? She couldn’t tell
them of the late night meetings where she, Bozarth, Mike, and Bob
strategized and schemed—a prosecutor might say “conspired”—about
how to deal with the extortion effort by Leland Crowell. Even though she
never really knew what Bozarth had in mind, and even though she voiced
some concerns, she had closed her eyes and her mind to the possibilities,
content to let Doug Bozarth run free so long as it benefitted her.
“Ms. Squire?” Stillman said. “Something on your mind?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just worried about Chad.”
“You were about to say why you asked Ms. Hirsch to research Doug
Bozarth.”
“I guess it was too little, too late, but I started wondering where the
money came from. Back when this all started, I was so desperate for a
comeback, I was just glad Bob and Mike found investors. I didn’t ask
where the money came from, and I didn’t care. Like I said, Mike told me
they had vetted the investors and that the source of the funds was cleared
through the Patriot Act.”
“So what made you start worrying?”
“I wish I knew. But now I wish I hadn’t. If that’s what set this all in
motion, if it’s what put Mona and Chad in the hospital, and Mike...” She
choked up, and her voice trailed off.
“We’re just getting started on it,” Nichols said. “But it looks like you
were right to worry about where the money came from.”
“What have you found?” she asked.
“Nothing concrete. But we do know he made his money in the oil
and gas business, primarily in the Middle East. At least his legitimate
money. But there’s plenty of illegitimate money to be made in that part of
the world for a man with his contacts. We’re still trying to run that
down.”
“And you wouldn’t tell me if you had found anything, would you?”
He smiled and turned back around. “Here’s all you need to know:
You started checking him out, and he tried to kill you. I think you can
draw your own conclusions from that.”
“Am I a suspect for anything?” she asked.
“If you were, we’d have to Mirandize you,” Stillman said. “And we
haven’t, so again, draw your own conclusions.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way to University Hospital, just
off of Interstate 10, northwest of Loop 410 in San Antonio. They pulled
up to the emergency entrance and parked. Stillman opened the rear door
to let Teri out, and the two detectives escorted her inside. Nichols
approached the
front desk, made
his inquiry, and then returned to
Stillman and Teri.
“He’s still in surgery,” he said. “Looks like we’ll have to wait.”
Teri nodded. She found a seat in the half-empty waiting area and sat.
Exhaustion overwhelmed her. She slumped in the chair and closed her
eyes. The throbbing behind them kept pounding as she tried to force the
pain away.
“Ms. Squire?”
She opened her eyes and looked up at Nichols, who handed her a
bottle of water and two aspirins. It was a small kindness but a welcome
one.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said. She put the pills in her mouth, took
a swig of water, and swallowed. She leaned her head back and closed her
eyes. She had no idea how much time had passed when she felt a nudge at
her shoulder and a woman’s voice.
“Baby?”
She opened her eyes and looked into the face of her mother. “Oh,
Mama,” she said.
She broke into sobs as Mary put her arms around her and held tight.
“That’s okay, Baby. It’s all gonna be okay. Shhh shhh shhh.”
Nichols and Stillman stood across the waiting room and watched,
almost embarrassed to be intruding on such a private moment.
A gray-haired doctor clad in green scrubs entered the room. The
detectives both snapped to attention, as did Teri, pulling away from her
mother’s embrace. She and Mary stood and approached him.
“Are you Dr. Palmer’s family?” the doctor asked.
He scrutinized Teri, as if he knew who she was—or at least as if he
thought
he
was supposed
to know
who
she
was.
Teri guessed her
appearance, the product of a broken nose, driving all night, a chase
through the woods, and a gunfight, left her looking a whole lot less like
the famous actress Teri Squire than she appeared on the big screen.
“We’re the closest thing he has to it,” Mary said.
“So you must be Peggy,” he said to Teri. “I’m Dr. Owens, his
surgeon.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Teri noticed a glance pass between
Stillman and Nichols at the name “Peggy.” Let them be curious, she
thought. They’d probably figure it out sooner or later, anyway, if they
haven’t already.
“How is he?” Teri asked.
“He’s going to be just fine. The bullet didn’t hit any organs, but it
nicked an artery. We got that taken care of, but he lost a lot of blood.
We’re getting it pumped back in him as fast as we can, and he should be
up and about in just a matter of days.”
Teri let out a big sigh. She hadn’t been aware that she was holding
her breath until she let it go.
“Can I see him?” she asked.
“He’s asleep, and probably will be overnight.
He just had one
instruction for you before we put him under: Take care of the horses.”
She smiled. “That sounds like him.”
The doctor looked around the room, his eyes finally coming to rest
on Stillman and Nichols. “Are y’all the police?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Stillman said.
“He just had one instruction for you, too: Don’t talk to his client
without him being there. I assume you know which client he is referring
to.”
Now Stillman smiled. “I think he sometimes refers to her as Annie
Oakley.”
“Yes, well, I’ve delivered my messages, so I’ll leave you to sort them
out.”
The surgeon left without another word, clearly annoyed that a man
as talented as he had been reduced to being a messenger boy.
“What did he mean about talking to his client?” Mary asked Terri. “I
don’t understand.”
“He was talking about me, Mama.” Then something suddenly struck
her. Actually it was more of something that wasn’t there that struck her.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Mary dropped her head and looked at the floor. “He said he had work
to do. He said tending to the folks laid up in the hospital was woman’s
work.”
“So he knows I’m here.”
“He knows you weren’t hurt. Just Chad.”
“Does he know what happened out there?”
“Honey, I don’t even know what happened out there. I just know
that Chad got hurt.”
“That he got shot.”
“Yes.”
“Does Daddy think I did it?”
“Of course not, Baby.” She paused then looked up. “Did you?”
“Oh, Mama, how can you ask that?”
Teri looked away. She saw the detectives studiously ignoring the
conversation, which meant they were listening to every word.
She walked over to them. “Are you going to wait here until Chad
wakes up?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stillman said. “We need to talk to him about what
happened out there.”
“Am I free to go?”
“Yes, ma’am. Just don’t go too far.”
She turned, then stopped and looked back. “Am I safe now?”
The detectives exchanged glances again. By now she was pretty well
clued in on their little signals.
“Why am I not safe? Sheriff Waggoner’s got Bozarth. Who else is out
there?”
“Annemarie Crowell,” Nichols said.
“Annemarie? I know she’s a bit creepy but—”
“Did you know she was a hypnotist?”
That made sense, as Teri thought about it. Mike had first brought it
up, but now she remembered the way Annemarie had sat in her house,
speaking in a low monotone and swaying.
Had Annemarie been trying to hypnotize her? And if so, why?
“We think she may have killed her sons,” Nichols said. “And maybe
Bob Keene.”
“Sons?”
“Leland and Rodney. Twins. You may have met Rodney recently.”
Teri felt her knees go weak. Her head spun. She felt for a chair and
sat, lest she pass out and take a nose-dive on the floor. “What makes you
think she killed Bob? I thought it was a suicide. He walked out in front of a
truck.”
Then it hit her: Annemarie was a hypnotist! The parallels to
The
Precipice
were unmistakable. In her foggy state, she was slow putting the
pieces together, but that had been exactly what Mike had suggested in her
last conversation with him. Had Leland Crowell’s screenplay been a true
story, about a murderer who hypnotized others into doing her dirty work?
Is that why he had gone off the cliff—because his knowledge was a threat
to his mother? But that didn’t make sense. After all, it was Annemarie
who had hand-delivered the screenplay to her. If she had been covering
up, she would have buried it.
“We’re just guessing about all this right now,” Nichols said, “so I’d
prefer not to say anything. Just suffice it to say we have good reason to
think so.”
“And to make things worse,” Stillman said, “we’ve lost track of her.”
“Do you think she’s coming after me, too?” Teri asked. This was all
too much to process.
“But we have no reason to think she even knows you’re in Texas,”
Nichols said. “We lost track of her before you left town.”
Teri looked at her mother, whose face registered confusion. Teri had
left her completely in the dark on most of what had transpired over the
past few days. All Mary knew before was that her daughter was in trouble;
now she knew that she was also in danger. She had already lost one child.
From the look on her face, the possibility that she might lose another
seemed too much to bear.
“Take me back to Chad’s, Mama, so I can take care of the horses. I’ll
tell you everything on the way.”