The Reporter (35 page)

“I saw you, you know,” Zahna went on. “I was driving like a maniac down the street, and I saw you going past me in your fucking
big-deal black Corvette toward the house, Maxi Poole. Maxi
Pooler!”
she screeched, getting no response from the sweating, bleeding figure on the bed. Maxi had passed out. Zahna went over and
shook her.

“Wake up, Maxi Poole!” Zahna spat out. “We’re gonna have a party!”

R
ichard was driving; Pete was navigating. Doing 90 on the Ventura Freeway, the address on Sumac was fifteen minutes from the
station, tops. Richard was fervently hoping to pick up a Highway Patrol escort.

“Get off at the Van Nuys off-ramp,” Pete barked, “and for chrissake, try not to get us killed, okay?”

“Can’t find a cop when you need one,” Richard muttered.

“Now, south on Van Nuys, across Ventura Boulevard to something called Roblar Place, then hang a left. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Richard said, careening around corners at speeds the unwieldy news Van was definitely not meant to travel,
with its bulky microwave mast jutting in the air.

“Okay, down Roblar one block to Knobhill Drive, go south till you round a bend, and… yes! There’s Sumac Drive! Go
right,
go
right,
to 6420…” They both scanned the numbers on the small clapboard and stucco houses.

“There’s Maxi’s car!” Richard shouted. He screeched to a stop opposite the black Corvette, and he and Pete jumped out of the
van. The address was on the other side of the street, three houses down.

The gate was locked. Richard put his right hand on the top
crossrail, hoisted himself up and over the sharp, rusty iron spikes, and dropped to the ground on the other side.

“Open it for me,” Pete yelped, and Richard tried.

“Can’t,” he said, rattling the handle. “It’s locked from the inside—need a key.”

Richard left Pete standing on the dirt sidewalk eyeing the gate and the iron fence, while he sprinted up the path to the front
door. He rang the bell; no response. He tried the knob; the door was locked. He backed off and scoured the parched front yard,
mostly dirt and weeds, with a few persistent blades of grass. There was a small pile of rocks in a corner, probably used for
some kind of decorative garden at one time. He hefted the biggest boulder, about the size of a watermelon. Maxi was in there,
and she wasn’t having tea. She hadn’t shown up for work, and she hadn’t called in, so something was up, and Richard wasn’t
about to be polite.

Pete was laboriously trying to climb up the outside of the iron wall, not easy at 220 pounds in slippery Italian loafers.
He stopped and watched as Richard held the rock in front of him, dug in his Nikes, and made a fast run toward the house. Just
before he hit the front door, he shifted his hands behind the rock and slammed it through the hardwood, just inches from the
doorknob. The rock splintered the aged wood and opened a wide gash in the door as it fell inside.

Richard quickly reached in and grabbed the doorknob. He was relieved to feel it give, unlike the setup on the front gate.
The door pushed open. He barged into the living room bellowing, “Maxi! Maxi, where are you?”

Suddenly, from behind the door, someone grabbed him by the shoulder, and he heard his jacket being slashed down the back.
He whirled around to face a tall, thin, frenzied woman with glazed dark eyes. She’d reared back and was ready to strike again
with what Richard knew immediately was the
Black Sabbat
cross.

With both his hands, he landed a mighty shove at her mid
section, knocking her backward off her feet onto a cluttered glass-topped coffee table that shattered when she landed. With
four long strides Richard vaulted out of the dingy living room to the back of the house.

Stumbling into the bedroom, he gasped to see Maxi shackled to the bedposts, her head to one side, her eyes closed, and her
clothes ripped apart, revealing a gaping, bleeding wound that looked like it had rent her torso in two.

Was he too late? He leaped to the bedside and reached for the base of her neck to find a pulse. It was weak, but steady. “Maxi,”
he said. “Can you hear me, Maxi? It’s Richard. I’m going to get you out of here.”

He reached into his inside coat pocket where he always kept a few oversize paper clips to clamp scripts together in the field,
and he twisted one of them straight. Grasping the handcuffs on Maxi’s right hand, he inserted the aluminum tip into the lock.
Deftly moving it back and forth, he listened until the tumblers released, then opened the cuffs and gently removed Maxi’s
bruised wrist. He leaped around the bed and did the same with the other set of handcuffs.

He stripped off his jacket, revealing the bulletproof vest that had saved him from a vicious gash down his back. Before they
left, Pete and Richard had fastened on Kevlar vests—they were kept stored in the backs of all Channel Six vans.

Richard propped Maxi up and slipped his jacket behind her. Its silk lining would be safer against her skin than the filthy
bedding, he reasoned. He pulled her torn blouse back over her wounds, and buttoned his slashed coat across her chest.

Carefully picking Maxi up, he wondered if the deranged lady of the house had been knocked out. He’d been so intent on finding
Maxi that he’d left her there in the living room, sprawled in shattered glass. He didn’t hear any sounds now in the small
house.

Quickly, he loped out into the hallway, carrying Maxi. He
peered around the corner into the living room. Zahna Cole wasn’t there. The front door was still open, and he could see Pete
outside, standing in the middle of the street. Pete had evidently abandoned his attempt to scale the wall.

Richard ran to the door with Maxi in his arms, yelling, “Pete, quick, I’m going to hand Maxi over the gate to you; she’s hurt—”

In midstride, he was about to hit the stoop when Zahna flew at him with an unearthly shriek from behind the door. He shifted
Maxi’s weight to his left arm, ducked down, and with his right hand he lunged for the woman’s legs, getting a grip on one
of them and yanking it up from under her body.

She dropped to the floor, but immediately began pulling herself up. She was gaunt and frail-looking, but from somewhere she
was able to summon an uncanny strength. Richard darted back into the living room, quickly swooped Maxi down onto the couch,
and was about to turn and go for Zahna, but in the seconds that he’d been turned away, the woman had jumped onto his back
with tremendous force and was poised to deal him a strike to the neck with the deadly cross that was still clenched in her
fist.

In that instant, a blast ripped through the room, and her grasp on the weapon released. Richard threw himself over Maxi to
shield her, and watched the cross fall to the grimy carpet, to be anointed with a stream of blood that splattered off its
painted colors. He lunged for it, picked it up, and whirled around to see Zahna Cole clutching her bleeding wrist, and Mike
Cabello standing in the doorway holding a smoking gun.

K
atie Anderson, the nurse in charge of 5-South at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank, figuratively looked the other way
as visitors entered room 518. Hospital rules mandated that no more than two people could be at a patient’s bedside at one
time, but she couldn’t keep people from streaming in to see Maxi Poole, the Channel Six reporter. Maxi was one of her favorites
on the news. Katie had ordered extra chairs brought into the private room. They seemed to be a pretty well behaved group,
she noted, as she walked past 518 and glanced inside to make sure they weren’t getting into party mode.

“Pete waved us down and flagged the house,” Mike Cabello was saying, “and we shimmied over the wall and saw the Cole woman
just about to do a guillotine number on the crime dog, here,” he said, cocking his head at Richard, who was sitting on a chair
at the foot of Maxi’s bed.

“It was quite marvelous the way you were able to shoot that dreadful cross right out of her hand,” Maxi’s mother, Brigitte,
said to Mike Cabello. “You did that so you could take her alive, isn’t that right? So she’ll have to stand trial, and it’ll
clear the name of that poor young actress, Meg Davis.”

Cabello beamed at the commendation. Jon Johnson jumped
in. “Ma’am”—he addressed Maxi’s mother—“it’s only in the movies that lawmen aim for the legs, or the hand, or the gun.
Actually, we’re trained in life-threatening situations to aim for the largest area of the suspect’s body. My partner’s just
a bad shot.” Mike cuffed him hard on the shoulder.

“Just trying to keep you humble so I can live with you, buddy,” Jon protested.

“How did you two manage to get there in time?” Maxi asked the detectives. She was propped up on her own extra-large down pillows
from home. Her mother had brought them, along with a couple of pretty nightgowns and a robe, some personal articles and books,
and her comfy sheepskin slippers.

Pete Capra related how Cabello had asked him for an industry check on Zahna Cole yesterday afternoon because of the suspicious
way she’d set up an interview with Janet Orson. At the same time, he said, Richard was in the newsroom running down Maxi’s
lead on the Dracula costume, talking to merchants who’d recently sold them. “And I was up to my ass in alligators,” he said,
“so I asked Richard—”

“Pete, you’re not in the newsroom,” Richard interrupted. “Please excuse his language, Mrs. Poole—we can’t take him anywhere.”
Richard went on to explain about the costume shop selling a Dracula outfit to Zahna Cole.

“Nobody was terribly concerned about this woman until you didn’t show up for the Six O’clock, Maxi, and we tried to track
you down. I checked with Sotheby’s then, and found out that the woman in the sketches was Zahna Cole,” Richard said. “Between
Pete and your crisscross list we knocked down her address, and we jumped out there.”

“Jumped out there?” Pete echoed. “If you ever get the urge to ride a roller coaster, just have Winningham drive you around
town in one of our rickety news vans. Same sensation.”

Richard went on: “Anyway, while I drove, Pete was calling everybody in town—the cops, the sheriffs, nine-one-one, the
highway patrol; I think he also ordered pizza,” he said with a grin, looking sideways at Pete. “And he reached Mike and Jon
at KBIS, and told them to get over to Zahna Cole’s house ASAP.”

“Yeah.” Pete laughed, pointing at Richard. “If anyone needs backup, it’s this guy and me.”

“Speak for yourself, Mr. Capra,” Richard piped up. “You’re the one who couldn’t make it over the fence.”

“I planned it that way,” Pete offered as an alibi. “I stayed outside to wave Mike and Jon down, be sure they got to the right
place. Good thing, huh?”

“As it turns out, yes,” Richard conceded, “but thirty pounds less and you could have helped me overpower the she-devil.”

“Yeah, Pete!” chimed Wendy Harris, who was committed to vigorous daily workouts. “At
least
thirty pounds.”

“Okay, Winn, I concede you’re the big hero here,” Pete tossed out good-naturedly, eager to change the subject from the state
of his physique. “You were
wounded
,” he said with mock concern. “In the Brooks Brothers jacket!” Everybody laughed.

“Hey, that was an Armani,” Richard groused. “Cost me a week’s pay. Is the station going to buy me a new one?”

Pete’s turn to laugh. “Check your contract, crime dog,” he shot back. “Channel Six doesn’t provide wardrobe for newsies.”

“I’ll
buy you an Armani jacket,” Maxi’s dad put in. “I’ll buy you
six
of them, with pants to go with them!” Maxwell Poole was very grateful to Richard for saving his daughter’s life.

He and Brigitte had got the call from Pete Capra at their home in Manhattan at about 8:40 the night before, telling them that
Maxi had just been brought into the ER at St. Joseph’s—the two managed to make the ten o’clock red-eye to Los Angeles. On
the drive to JFK, Max put in a call to Dr. Rick Gold in Los Angeles, an old family friend and Maxi’s doctor in California.
Rick met them in the hospital lobby, and they went up to Maxi’s room. It was after one in the morning; Maxi was sleeping
fitfully. Brigitte sat down on the bed, put her hand on her daughter’s forehead, and kissed her gently. Maxi’s eyes fluttered
open, and in the dim illumination of the night-light she saw her mother bending over her, and her father standing by her side.

“Mom, Dad, you’re here,” she’d said weakly. Then, “Oh my God, am I dying?”

“No, darling.” Her mother smiled, dabbing at a couple of tears. “You’re going to be fine. Daddy and I just wanted to be here.
Dr. Rick is with us.” She drew the doctor into Maxi’s view. “He’s been conferring with the staff here.”

“Hi, Maxi,” Dr. Gold said. “Everything’s fine. You’ll be good as new, I promise.” Maxi attempted a smile. If Dr. Gold said
she was going to be okay, she could count on it.

“Daddy!” she said then, and held an unsteady hand out to her father.

He bent and kissed her protectively on the cheek. “I love you, little girl,” he murmured. Maxi drifted back to sleep.

Today, they’d found her heavily bandaged from her neck to her waist, but awake and alert, and eager to talk. She’d shuddered
as she filled her parents in on the details she could remember of the previous day’s events. Brigitte was horrified. Max was
proud of his girl, and tremendously relieved.

“Mom,” Maxi had whispered to her mother then, looking down at her bandaged body. “What am I going to
look
like? For the rest of my life I’ll have to wear turtlenecks, even on swimsuits.”

“I’m way ahead of you,” her mother said. “I’ve already had this discussion with Rick. He’s lining up the best plastic surgeon
in the country, who happens to be right here in Beverly Hills. Rick says name any Hollywood beauty, and Dr. Frank Kamer has
probably worked on her.”

Maxi sighed. She was lucky to have Brigitte and Max for parents. She was lucky to be alive. She was going to be released from
the hospital tomorrow, and so was Yukon. They would both
be hobbling around the house together, all bandaged up. But they would both recover fully, the experts said. Maxi wondered
idly if she could get the plastic-surgeon-to-the-stars to fix Yukon up too. Guess not, she thought, smiling to herself. Dr.
Sullivan had done a great job. Besides, Yukon had loads of hair to hide his scars.