The Reporter (21 page)

Minutes later, Alex rushed back into the kitchen, carrying his medical bag. He slammed the case on the table, snapped it open,
spread out supplies, and took Sally’s face in his hands.

“Luckily, the burns are superficial,” he muttered. “No serious damage, darling. You won’t have any scars.”

He began treating her with ointment. Sally was still wearing the sleeveless, low-cut black Alaia dress she’d had on the night
before when they’d gone to dinner at the beach. Her face, neck, and shoulders were splattered with angry, stinging red welts.

It was 8:15. The County Health Department opened at 8:00. Angela lowered Margaret into a kitchen chair and kept a comforting
arm around her; with her other hand, she picked up the wall phone, tucked it under her chin, punched in a number, and asked
for Gail Rosenberg, a social worker whom she worked with often. Angela explained the situation.

Mrs. Rosenberg had seen the news reports, she said. She agreed that what Dr. Cohen described constituted an emergency, and
on that basis, the patient could be brought in and held under observation for seventy-two hours. That would give them time
to arrange for continuing care. She would dispatch an ambulance to the Century City apartment right away, she told Dr. Cohen.

Hearing Angela’s side of the conversation, realizing what was happening, Meg wrenched herself out of the doctor’s grip and
struck at her ferociously. Alex leaped around the table and restrained her, and at the same time, he reached into his bag
for a hypodermic needle and deftly prepared a shot.

“This won’t hurt much, Meggie,” he said, “and you’re going to feel a lot better.” He picked up her arm and quickly administered
a strong tranquilizer. Almost instantly, Meg began to calm down.

Alex turned his attention back to Sally and continued dressing her burns. She was in pain, and terribly distraught. “Angela,”
she said, “I don’t want her at the County, I want her in a private facility… Westwood Psychiatric… somewhere clean, and close
by—”

“There’s no time,” Angela said resolutely. “As long as Margaret won’t consent, to commit her to private care would take
days, maybe weeks, of legal red tape. Yes, I know that’s what I told you we’d do, but that was months ago. Now…” she said,
looking down at Meg, who’d been anesthetized into docility, “now it’s too late for that.”

“No, I won’t have it!” Sally was sobbing now. “I’ve worked in hospitals all my life. County facilities are like bus terminals.
Cigarette butts on the floors, inmates walking into walls, ranting, urinating in the day rooms… Meggie would have to sleep
in a dorm with them—”

Angela didn’t have the heart to tell her that in the extreme stages of schizophrenia that she now observed in Margaret, she
simply could not be trusted in a private facility. Those hospitals were open, they often had spacious grounds, there were
very few restraints. Margaret would be up and out of there in a heartbeat. In her present condition, she was a danger to herself
and others, and at the rate her psychosis was escalating, they couldn’t afford a week, even a day. She had to be taken in
immediately.

“Please trust me, Sally,” Angela implored. “This is what’s best for her right now.”

“She’s right, darling,” Alex concurred.

The doorbell rang; the ambulance had arrived. Alex told the doorman to send the attendants up to the apartment. Meg sat in
a stupor, the result of the sedative combined with lack of sleep. Angela helped her up and steered her into the living room,
and Alex and Sally followed.

Alex opened the door to two white-coated paramedics, a man and a woman, who offered identification. “This is Margaret Davidson?”
asked the man, indicating Meg. As he removed a pair of soft plastic cuffs from his kit and started to approach her, Meg’s
vacant face was suddenly stricken with fear.

“What are you doing?” Sally asked. “You can’t put
handcuffs
on her!”

“It’s regulation, ma’am,” the attendant said.

“No!” Sally appealed to him. “It’s not necessary. We’ll be with her.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he countered. “We’re responsible if anything happens, and regulations are that the patient
must be restrained for transport.”

“Sally,” Alex said gently, “don’t fight this. It’ll only make it harder. Tell her, Angela.”

No one had noticed that Meg had gotten up and moved across the room to the French doors that led out onto the terrace. At
the sound of the doors opening, they all turned. Before anyone could get to her, Meg walked out onto the balcony, climbed
up on the stone parapet, and jumped nineteen floors to the pavement below.

R
ichard Winningham sat at his desk in the newsroom, studying the twenty-year-old yellowing crew sheet from the production of
Black
Sabbat.
Channel Six’s entertainment editor, Eric Jensen, had dug through his files and come up with it. Everyone who worked on the
film was listed, along with their titles and phone numbers, both at home and at the New England location. Winningham had tried
the home numbers of those on the first page of the list—the producer, the line producer, the associate producers, production
coordinator, casting director, location manager, first assistant director, second assistant director, and on down the line.
So far, not one of the phone numbers was current.

He went on to page two, starting with one of the three costumers—it was a Los Angeles number. A woman answered. He identified
himself and asked for Shirley Horowitz. Yes, she told him, she was Shirley Horowitz. A
small miracle
, Winningham thought, and he asked her about her work on the old movie,
Black Sabbat,
and particularly what she remembered about the young actress, Meg Davis. Mrs. Horowitz said she had seen the news coverage
that morning of Meg’s arrest.

“Such a shame,” she said. “I haven’t seen her since the picture,
but she was a lovely youngster. Do they really think she killed those people?”

“I don’t know,” he responded. “They couldn’t make the charges stick this morning, and as you saw, she was released.”

“Well, that Mr. Nathanson, he was a hard one, but I can’t believe Meg could do a thing like that,” she went on.

The newsman asked if she remembered anything unusual that might have happened to Meg on the set of
Black Sabbat,
the old colonial town in eastern Massachusetts.

“Oh, there was a lot of talk,” she told him. Winningham reminded her that he was taping the conversation.

“I don’t mind,” she returned. “I’m only saying the truth. He might have been a great actor, and I’m sorry that he was murdered,
but he was mighty strange, and if there’s any way I can help that troubled girl, I’m glad to do it.”

She said he should call the woman who was the head hairdresser on that shoot. “Barbara Lawrence,” she said. “She was Barbara
Blair then. I’ve worked with her quite a few times over the years, and I have her phone number. I think Barbara can tell you
a thing or two, Mr. Winningham.”

He checked the crew sheet. Barbara Blair, Hair Stylist. He called the number Shirley Horowitz gave him, which was different
from the one listed on the sheet. An answering machine referred him to yet another number, one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It
turned out to be the location of a movie shoot in progress. He was transferred to the makeup trailer, and Barbara Lawrence
came on the line.

Yes, she had some time, she said, and she told him that everyone on the Santa Fe set was talking about the shocking Meg Davis
news this morning, and her bizarre ranting about witchcraft. She was particularly upset by it, she told him, because she had
tried to take young Meg under her wing back then, from the day she walked in on the child and Nathanson in the actor’s trailer.

“I felt at the time that I should tell her mother,” Barbara Lawrence said, “but I was afraid she might pull Meg off the movie,
and we were halfway through it. It was a very difficult shoot, and we were behind schedule. I knew that if I were responsible
for losing Meg and stopping production, not to mention publicly embarrassing the star, I’d be fired, of course. And I was
young. It was my first big picture. I’d probably never get another one—”

“What did you see when you walked in on them?”

“Well, they were pushing me to get Meg done and out there in place, and I was supposed to do her hair stringy and matted with
dirt and blood, and I couldn’t find her, so I was running from the lunch line to the rest rooms to wardrobe asking everybody
where Meg was, and somebody said she was still in with Mr. Nathanson working on the afternoon scenes—”

“So you went to his trailer?”

“Yes, and by then I was frantic. I didn’t even knock, I just pushed the door open. Well, there was Jack Nathanson down on
all fours like a dog, in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, and little Meg was standing over him with his belt in her hand,
and he was saying, ‘Hit me… hit me, Meg.’ I was so shocked I just stood there with my mouth open, and he looked up and yelled
‘Get the fuck out of here!’ I don’t know why he didn’t have me fired that day. I guess he probably figured if he did, I’d
talk. But that was the damnedest line-running I’ve ever seen in all my years in the business.”

“Did
you tell anybody?” Winningham asked.

“I started to,” she said, “but everybody said ‘Shhhh!’ like it was some big, dark secret. And you know what? It
was.
Like I said, I wanted to keep my job, so I just went along to get along, and like everybody else, I didn’t say a word. I
don’t know how Sally Davidson could miss it, but I guess she did, or maybe, and this is a terrible thing to say about a mother,
maybe she knew
about it too, but pretended she didn’t. I mean, she was young herself, still in her twenties, and she was a single mother….”

“Would you tell that story on camera?” he asked her.

“No,” the woman said resolutely. “I can’t go on the news; you know this business. These old-boy producers and directors would
brand me a troublemaker, and I’d never get another job. Can’t you just say that a person who worked on the picture told you?
But please don’t say a hairdresser—”

“Sure,” Winningham said. “I understand your position.”

“I’ll tell you,” Barbara Lawrence went on, “Nathanson was a sleaze, and everyone on his films knew it. But he’s dead now,
he won’t be getting anybody hired or fired, and it’s about time this came out. That poor girl needs to know that it wasn’t
her fault. These abused kids blame themselves, you know, and when I saw her on the news this morning it made me cry.”

“How long did that behavior go on, do you know?” Winningham asked.

“Well, I can’t say, because I never saw it happen again,” she said, “and I’m sure he must have locked his door from that day
on. But I
can
tell you that he had that little girl alone in his trailer just about every day, and the shoot lasted for almost a year.”

Maxi came into the newsroom just as Richard was hanging up, and she leaned on the edge of his desk. “I changed clothes,” she
said.

“Good idea.” He laughed. “The Yankee cap wouldn’t really work for anchoring the news. How are you holding up, Maxi?” he asked,
his eyes concerned.

“Aside from the fact that someone tried to kill me last night, okay, I guess,” she said. “Yukon is struggling. Carlotta’s
funeral is this afternoon, and I need to get over there… for Ron.”

“You must be exhausted,” he said. “You didn’t get much sleep.”

“And you didn’t get any at all. You know,” she told him, “I’ve
been thinking all morning about Meg Davis and her strange raving, and there’s something wrong… something I’m missing…”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Two days ago I met her, and I listened to her harangue. And last night, that…that
person
who was in my house, who took that cross and—” She shuddered.

“Go
on,” Richard said.

“Well, we know that Meg Davis bought that cross at the auction, and I actually saw her with it on Sunday, and I heard her
eerie ranting that day, and the
world
heard it on the news this morning… but something is out of sync. Of course, I’m a frantic mess with all this. I’m probably
just overwrought…”

“Let’s go into your office,” Richard said. “I just found out something about Meg Davis that’s significant, I think.” They
walked across the noisy newsroom to Maxi’s office, went inside, and sat on the couch. He told her what he had learned about
the months of abuse that Meg Davis had probably endured on the set of
Black Sabbat
when she was ten years old.

Maxi’s face darkened. She’d learned the hard way that Nathanson was lascivious, but she’d never known that she might have
been married to a child molester. “Oh God, that poor little girl,” she managed.

“Yes,” Richard said. “If it’s true, then Meg Davis was a victim—”

“Wait a minute…. That’s it,” Maxi cried. “That’s what doesn’t mesh!”

“What do you mean?”

Maxi was silent for a long moment before she went on. “The Meg Davis I met on Sunday was a
victim
—sad, clearly disoriented, like a disturbed child—I felt sorry for her,” she said slowly. “The Meg Davis who was in my house
last night, who tried to kill me, who almost killed Yukon… that person was violent, angry, cruel—”

Maxi abruptly got up and went over to her desk. “Richard,”
she said, “I want you to listen to something.” She reached over to a rack and pulled out the audiotape of her conversation
with Meg Davis on the beach. She explained what it was, and told Richard that she had given a copy to the detectives who were
handling the Jack Nathanson murder investigation.

“Obviously, they can’t use it, and neither can we,” she said, “but I want you to listen to it.” She popped the cassette into
her playback machine.

…
Tell me again what your mission is, Meg.

I have to save Gia. I must keep the evil spirits from permeating her soul. 1 have the cross now, and if 1 keep it near Gia,
the witches will flee. God wants me to protect Gia so she wont be defiled like 1 am, so she can have a happy life….