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Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here

Where we left off in Part 169…

At the doors, his gaze swept the room once more for Jack, but not seeing him either, Clark continued outside. He checked up and down the street and saw the two guys he had overheard earlier standing near a bench, smoking, a block and half away. At least, he hadn’t lost them. He shuffled lower into his jacket, drooping his shoulders, as he walked casually towards them. A quick glance from under the brim of his hat, and Clark determined that they were in their late teens or early twenties.

“So, when do you want to hit it?” the younger man said to the older one.

“Tonight. Late. We’re supposed to take the till and bust up as many shelves as possible, make it look like a robbery gone bad. The boss thinks it’s the best way to teach Chen his lesson,” the older boy said. “He needs to pay one way or another.”

“Do you think he sells hair gel? If so, I need to pick some up,” the younger one said, running his hand through his greasy mullet. “My hair isn’t spiking the way it should, man. I look like some country douche bag.”

What was it about people from the city bashing hard working country folk? Okay, true, Clark had known some slackers at Smallville High, but still…

“You are a douche bag, Pete.” The older one chuckled at his lame pronouncement, blowing a puff of smoke into the air.

“Yeah, well, you’re my brother, so if I’m a douche bag, so are you,” Pete retorted. “Spikes are menacing, John. Without the spikes, I can’t strike fear into our customers.”

“Fear? Please, Pete. You couldn’t even scare that hooker into giving you a blow for free. How are you going to scare old man Chen into opening his till to you?” John said. He dropped his cigarette to the ground and smashed it out with the toe of his army boot.

“Hey, that’s not fair, John. Chen will open up to persuasion,” Pete said, stabbing the bench with his pocketknife. “Chicks are different, man. Anyway, I didn’t want your sloppy seconds. I do fine on my own.”

“Yeah. But I don’t have to pay for it,” John replied.

Clark was close enough now that he caught the older boy’s attention.

“Come on, Pete,” John said, nudging his brother’s shoulder with a nod back towards Clark. “Let’s go get ready for tonight.”

***

Part 170

Later that night, Superman saved two young men from being blown away from one angry man’s rifle. The grocery store owner, whose name was actually Ye-joon Kwok, was a refugee from North Korea. He and his son Sung-ho had escaped religious persecution to come to live and work in Metropolis. Pete and John Black hadn’t come close to frightening him as Ye-joon had seen much worse scare tactics back in his home country. He also had plenty to say to Superman, in Korean, about the Boss’s intimidation techniques since he and his son had opened this store. The Blacks were just the latest in a line of thugs who had threatened his family and vandalized the Kwoks’ store over the past year, including a fire that had sent Sung-ho to the hospital.

A sweeping scan into the back rooms of the store and down into the basement showed Superman that the Kwons had a nice side business in issuing false identity papers to those who needed them. Being an individual who wasn’t carrying legal papers himself, Clark decided not to turn him in for this indiscretion. It clearly was just a side business, as the grocery seemed to be doing well.

Clark decided he would speak to his friend Chen Chow down at the Chinatown Daily paper to see who was benefiting most from these identity cards. He trusted Chow to pass on the information to the proper channels at the MPD, if criminals more than refugees benefited from the Kwons’ side business. Kwon’s Grocery wasn’t located anywhere near Metropolis’s Chinatown, but Chow’s paper covered news in all the Asian communities within the city and beyond. If the Kwons helped mostly refugees, Superman would see how his foundation could help the refugees instead to get proper identification and asylum.

Through the front window of the store, Clark could see John Black sitting inside a patrol car. Pete Black had run off while Superman had captured his brother.

“Idiot,” a voice whispered from outside the patrol car.

Clark focused a little more strongly and saw that Pete had returned to the scene of the crime and was kneeling on the far side of the car, out of sight of the police officer guarding John. The window of the police cruiser was cracked open allowing the brothers to hear one another.

“I’m the idiot? I saved your butt and you came back?” mumbled John.

“Yeah, but my behind is under eighteen. You’re legal, so you’re going to the big house,” Pete reminded him snidely.

“I hate Superman,” John grumbled with annoyance, causing Clark a momentary smile. “Tell our contact that I got captured on purpose. While I’m inside, I’ll get rid of the Boss’s loose end awaiting trial.”

Clark frowned. That didn’t sound good. He was reminded how the elusive ‘Boss’ of his dimension had killed his old friend Jimmy Olsen. Was that ‘Boss’ and this ‘Boss’ the same man? It was too much of a coincidence for his books. If so, Jimmy needed to get out of the general jail populace before John Black got into it. It also would mean the man trying to extort money from the Kwons was Lex Luthor.

Was this the break in the case they were looking for? Why would Lex Luthor shake down low-level criminals around Metropolis? It didn’t make sense or fit his m.o. Most of the schemes, which Clark and Lois had suspected Luthor of, were white-collar crimes: skimming off the top of his charities, money laundering, cutting of corners when building his nuclear plant, insurance fraud, and so on. Then there were his unethical scientific procedures and development: Menken’s cyborgs, the intelligence serum used on those kids, the pheromone based perfume that Miranda had made, amongst others. Of course, those crimes were on top of the kidnapping, murder, and bombings.

Another stray thought came forward with the mention of this elusive Boss character. The man who had broken into his apartment, after Clark’s kidnapping and amnesia, told Superman and Cat that he had been hired by some guy named “The Boss” to kidnap Clark and rough him up a bit, so that Clark would back off for some reason. The man claimed that The Boss would get him for messing up the hit and ended up killing himself instead. Back off from what, Clark didn’t know. He had originally thought it was some story, but could it have been Lois? She had recently told him that Luthor knew about her relationship with Clark due to bugging the Lexor Honeymoon suite after the bombing. Again, the confession of the dead thug was hearsay, but there was a clear pattern of The Boss having a mean vindictive side to him and that fit in with what Clark knew about Luthor.

Clark decided he needed to talk to his sources about this Boss character and see what he could find out. He also should follow Pete Black and see if he could lead him up the food chain in The Boss’s organization. Then, and before John Black was processed, Superman needed to pay a visit to Inspector Henderson about protecting Jimmy Olsen in jail. Clark hadn’t been able to save his friend back in his old dimension, and he sure wasn’t going to let that happen again over here in this dimension.

***

Bill Henderson stared at the man seated across the table from him in the interview room at the Metropolis City Jail. The man was nondescript, stereotypically large in muscle, small on brain matter. Superman had caught him several months earlier in an attempted armed robbery of an electronics store. The would-be robber had also assaulted the store’s owner.

“Is it correct that you refused bail during your arraignment?” Bill asked.

“Yes, sir,” the man said, more politely than Henderson would have expected from a career criminal.

Henderson knew this man wanted something from him, hence the contrived manners, but he wasn’t sure what it could be. “Why is that, Mr. –” Bill glanced down at the file in his hand. “Emerson?”

“I felt I’d be safer on the inside,” admitted Scott ‘Crusher’ Emerson.

Bill quickly scanned the file in front of him again. “Is it because you purposely hurt a pregnant woman? Did you think that her husband or family would come after you?”

“I didn’t know she was pregnant when I shoved her, Officer, really,” Crusher said, his brow becoming visibly damp.

Mya Kashnush had been eight months pregnant at the time of Crusher’s robbery attempt. “That seems unlikely,” Bill replied.

“Like I told the officer who arrested me. She was behind the counter and I couldn’t see her belly. Honest!”

Thankfully, Mrs. Kashnush had given birth to a healthy baby girl just a month later, according to the file, and neither mother nor child seemed harmed by the event. Still, Bill didn’t feel like being generous. “I don’t have the power to reduce the charges you’re being held on, Mr. Emerson. I’m a police inspector, not a district attorney.”

“I knows that.”

“I, also, generally have nothing to do with crimes of this nature, Mr. Emerson,” Bill went on. “Nor am I the arresting officer on this case.” It wasn’t even a blip within his organized crime unit’s purview. Curiosity was the only reason that Bill had accepted this meeting.

“I knows that.”

“Could you explain to me why you specifically asked to speak with me, Mr. Emerson?”

“I heard some of the guys inside talking about you. They says you was tough, but honest. That you really listen. That you’re fair, treat us and those white-collar guys all the same, and not like punks. Some of those beat cops treat us no better than animals.”

Flattery would get him nowhere. Bill crossed his arms.

“First off, I want you to know that I wouldn’t have touched her, if I’d known she was pregnant. I don’t do that,” Crusher said, raising his handcuffed hands off the table.

Sure, Bill thought wryly, raising a disbelieving eyebrow.

“I’d’ve never taken the job if I’d have known she was going to have a baby,” Crusher said, tapping his hand as close to his file as he could reach. “I don’t disrespect mothers or children. Check my rap sheet, if you don’t believe me.”

Right. Crusher’s string of petty thefts and barroom assaults should make Bill believe him, why? His brow furrowed and he leaned forward. “Job?”

“Yeah. It was a job. I was employed, see, on contract, like on a trial basis. I worked for the man. Well, hired by the man of the man,” Crusher explained. “You can protect me, can’t you?”

Protection? Was that why Crusher Emerson had called him. “From who?”

“Geez! I don’t know. Everyone. He’s got guys everywhere and nobody knows his name. I want you guys to move me up-state, stick me in solitary, and throw away the key. The sooner I’m out of Metropolis, the safer I’ll be. Rumors are starting to spread that I’m a child abuser because of this rap, man. Hell, I’ll even go against my free lawyer’s advice and plead guilty to the charges. Just get me out of here!” Crusher said, slapping his hand on the table. “Or I’m a dead man.”

Bill could see fear in the man’s eyes. Crusher honestly believed someone was after him. “Which man did you work for?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say,” Crusher replied, shaking his head.

Well, that’s helpful. “He who didn’t say?” Bill asked. “Do you know the name of the man who hired you, your contact who gave you the details of the job?”

“John Black.”

Patrolmen had picked up a John Black the night before. He and his brother Pete had attempted and failed to shake down a corner grocery store owner. Superman had intervened, holding the older brother until the cops could arrive on the scene and arrest him.

The only reason Bill knew this was because Clark Kent had come by first thing that morning and requested protection for Jimmy Olsen, the kid who Luthor fingered as the mad bomber of the Daily Planet. Kent said that Superman had told him that he overheard the Black brothers discussing a hit of someone awaiting trial, not that that detail would narrow down the list of potential victims. The courts had been suffering a backlog since Superman came to town. According to Kent, Superman had heard John specifically mention some vague character known as “The Boss” to his brother, and Kent worried that it could be an alias for Lex Luthor. Apparently, Kent also remembered that the hit man who had tried to kill him during Nightfall had called his boss “The Boss” as well before jumping to his death. It was circumstantial at best, hearsay from a dead man at worst.

Then, again, Kent thought Lex Luthor was guilty of everything from tearing those ‘Do Not Remove’ tags off pillows to murder and kidnapping. Having Luthor be “The Boss” of some large ghost criminal organization, which not only shook down all the minor criminals in the city but also tried to kill him, would fit right into that. Bill also knew that Kent had a Nightfall-sized jones for the disreputable Ms. Lane, who was due to marry Luthor in a few days time, and was, therefore, likely to leap at any chance to stop said nuptials from happening. Although Henderson knew that Lane had, against his advice, gone deep undercover to expose Lex Luthor for trying to kill both Kent and Superman, Bill needed to take every little bit of hearsay Kent gave him about Luthor with enough grains of salt to sink Key West, unless the man had concrete proof. Henderson couldn’t hold Luthor on less. Unfortunately, all Kent had was a gut feeling and no evidence to back up his indigestion. The only reason Bill wasn’t dismissing the reporter out of hand was because… well, because he couldn’t.

Could Superman even get indigestion?

Henderson shook that last thought out of his head. Either way, John Black certainly had earned ‘person of interest’ status if both Kent and Crusher feared what he was capable of.

“I hears that John Black’s been arrested for beating up some Korean grocery store owner. After he’s been arraigned, he’ll be put in general pop with me. Then I’m as good as a dead man,” Crusher went on.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Bill suggested, pulling out his notepad. “John Black hired you to do a job?”

“Yeah.”

“What job, specifically? Tell me exactly, as best you can, your conversation with John Black when he hired you,” Bill clarified.

“The job was for a hit on the woman,” Crusher explained. “I wasn’t supposed to kill her, just rough her up a bit for her husband. I was suppose to make it look like a robbery, see. You know of her electronics store.”

Henderson’s eyes widened. “Her husband wanted his pregnant wife roughed up by a… you?”

“No! No!” exclaimed Crusher. “The Boss did as a message to her husband.”

Bill flipped open Crusher’s file again, scanning it. Raj Kashnush, Mya’s husband, worked for LexCorp in their computer science division. He seemed, on paper, a very law-abiding sort of man, and not the one to receive this type of threat from the industrious phantom ‘Boss’. “What kind of message?”

Crusher shrugged. “I was just the messenger.”

Great. Bill resisted the urge to roll his eyes in annoyance. No wonder Crusher failed if he didn’t even know the message he was supposed to have delivered. “So, how was Mr. Kashnush supposed to receive your message and not think this was some kind of random crime?”

“Oh, um… John Black said Kashnush had done some work for the Boss, and he wanted to remind him to keep his mouth shut about it. I was supposed to shoot her…” Crusher lifted up his hands asking Henderson to wait on judgment. “— but not kill her. Just rough her up a bit, you know shoot her in the arm or leg or something, end her up in the hospital. I was supposed to tell her to tell her husband that if he ever talked I’d be back to finish the job.”

“So, it was murder for hire job?” Bill asked.

“No!” Crusher insisted. “I’d have never killed her. Usually, I’m just an enforcer. You know, making sure people pay their protection money and stuff like that. This was the same type of gig, only I was supposed to give her a message. I’m no killer, Inspector. Her husband loves her, and he would’ve kept his mouth shut, and they’d’ve lived happily ever after. End of story.”

Did he really believe that fairy tale? How exactly did Crusher think that it was okay to rough up or shoot a woman, but that he’d ‘never hurt a woman or child’? Henderson decided that a debate was for the college psych or philosophy professors to figure out.

“Anyway, after I saw she was pregnant, I couldn’t do it. I told you that. I was never so happy as when Superman saved her and captured me, because nobody fails on a job for The Boss and lives to tell about it. You know what I mean?” Crusher continued, giving Bill an intense look. “That’s why I refused bail. I’m safer in here than out on the streets, where the likes of John Black walk free... used to walk free.”

“So, what was Kashnush not supposed to talk about?” Bill inquired, looking up from the file at this criminal.

Crusher shrugged again. “Beats me,” he said. “You’d have to ask him.” Then Crusher stood up, lifting up the hem of his prison shirt. He showed Henderson a pink scar on his gut. “I got the same message some months back.”

Bill glanced back down at the file, which indicated that Crusher had been stabbed in the lunchroom with a fork a week after his arraignment. “So, why are you talking if it signs your death warrant?”

“I’m no dummy. You’ll protect me, if I talk about what I know about the man. I’m just small fries, I knows that. You wants the man, the main man.” Crusher sat back down. “John Black’s no idiot, either. If he got captured, he did so on purpose to kill someone. Me.”

What kind of rocket scientist thought he was safer behind bars, when that was where he was stabbed? Henderson asked himself rhetorically. Then he decided that he couldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth. “I’ll speak with the D.A.’s office, Mr. Emerson, and see what we can work out,” Bill said, standing up and knocking on the door to inform the guard at the door that this meeting was over.

The guard took Crusher back to his cell. As soon as the man left, Henderson stayed a minute longer to organize his thoughts about what he had learned as he read over Crusher’s file.

The overworked and understaffed District Attorney’s office would be so thrilled about Crusher’s change in plea, especially if he was so willing to talk and rat out others, that they’d probably be willing to assure him of his protection. The question was if Kent was right and this “Boss” guy was Luthor, he was sure to have moles within the D.A.’s office. Henderson would have to do some research before deciding which D.A. to bring Crusher’s confession to.

Protocol stated he should bring it to the D.A. assigned to the case, but then again, protocol stated that Henderson shouldn’t have interviewed an accused man without his lawyer present or without informing the D.A.’s office, especially on a case where he wasn’t the arresting officer. He had already broken those latter rules, so breaking the former was of little consequence to him. His unit was known for bending guidelines to catch bigger fish, so usually the D.A.’s office was willing to look the other way. Bill just had to make sure he didn’t step on the mole’s toes as he did so, because that was the person most likely to call foul.

Scanning down the file, Bill saw that the Crusher’s arrest was during that first week in March, just after the whole Nightfall fiasco. The same one still currently being discussed ad nauseam on LNN, during their daily ‘bash Superman’ debate... Not that they allowed Superman supporters into the studio to air their opinions. LNN’s latest consensus was that the rumored Nightfall Virus, which changed all of EPRAD’s data to imply that Nightfall Major would have struck Earth instead of miss it, was merely an urban myth brought about by Superman fans and EPRAD supporters, trying to cover up Professor Daitch’s major miscalculation of the asteroid’s path.

Raj Kashnush was a computer programmer at LexCorp’s computer sciences division. Henderson decided to go ask him about what exactly this fabled Boss wanted him to keep his mouth shut.

***

Lois sat twiddling her thumbs in Lex’s office. Mrs. Cox had just interrupted her conversation with Lex, regarding the remodel of his mansion outside the city, to announce an urgent phone call. Lex had apologized and hurried into the adjacent room, his library.

Per her norm, Mrs. Cox refused to leave Lois unattended.

In the uncomfortable silence, Lois had asked her about Mr. Cox. Mrs. Cox’s informed Lois that her husband was dead in such a manner that left Lois feeling as if the woman had offed the man herself. Lois made a mental note to have Clark look into Mr. Cox’s demise.

Lois then inquired about “Project K”, the topic that Lex was currently discussing via telephone with some person or persons unknown to Lois in the next room.

Mrs. Cox had told her it was confidential.

When Lois had rebutted, through gritted teeth, that she and Lex didn’t keep secrets from one another, Mrs. Cox had actually smiled, calling Lois’s bluff, but still refusing to clarify what Project K entailed. Another unknown for the list, apparently.

After yet another glaring and awkward silence, Mrs. Cox had excused herself and left the office, most likely to return to her desk, leaving Lois blissfully alone. Lois had stolen to Lex’s desk to search the couple of folders Mrs. Cox had left for Lex’s perusal.

Technically, neither Lex nor Lois were supposed to be “in the office” until after their honeymoon, but Lex insisted that they review the plans for the mansion’s remodel before driving out to the country to walk the estate and have lunch. In fact, this had been the first time Lois had ever seen Lex so casually dressed. He wore a turtleneck with a blazer instead of his usual business suit and tie, and she had to say it didn’t agree with him. The man just looked… strange in the awkward sort of way.

Lois had only agreed to the outing, because she was starting to feel claustrophobic between staying in her apartment, dress fittings, and going over last minute wedding details with the wedding planner. Who knew what she might find hidden in the manor house? Anyway, she felt the fresh air might do her some good.

A flight in Superman’s arms away from Lex and this sham of a wedding would do her one better, but she had accept what she could for the moment. There would be plenty of time for that later.

Lex had said that he wanted to remodel his manor house in order to accommodate his soon-to-be married status and his new wife’s needs. Well, that was what he had said. Most of her suggestions, though, had been routinely undermined for Lex’s desires, such as the French doors to the balcony that she had said she liked being changed to sliding doors. She wondered if she had chosen sliders, if he would have gone with the French doors in order to override her.

It wasn’t as if she were actually ever going to willingly live with this man or marry him, but still the process was an eye-opener to what such a life with Lex would have been like if she had agreed to marry him for real. He often pretended to consult her opinion by giving choices between things. Such as, should they place the treadmill in their excessively huge bedroom or in a separate exercise room? Not whether she wanted to throw the damn thing off the side of a mountain instead of have it there to remind her of her curtailed freedom.

Lex had scheduled the remodel to be completed under Nigel St. John’s supervision during Lois and Lex’s month long honeymoon to some annoyingly undisclosed and “clothing optional” location. It wasn’t as if Lois would ever want to be relocated out of the city that she loved to further away than the ‘burbs’ to a house actually located ‘in the country’. She shivered in disgust. Ugh. Lex had told her that it would be as if they still lived in the city, because it would be a short helicopter ride away.

Evidently, Lex had forgotten Lois’s phobia about riding in helicopters with him.

Perhaps it was her fault. She had never informed her fiancé that she preferred flying Superman Express to work… or in general.

She smiled. Clark. Thinking about his gentle touches and caresses reminded her that her life wouldn’t always be this horrible nightmare of Stepfordian domesticated bliss.

Lois shook this thought out of her head. Flying with Clark to work implied them spending the night together… She shook her head again… which would never happen, if she didn’t start to focus on the task at hand.

She started flipping through the folders Mrs. Cox had left on Lex’s desk. One of the papers mentioned “Project K” in the job line, which drew her attention. It was an engineering schematic, showing how something would move within a tube. She pressed her lips together in frustration, wishing she had paid more attention in science class, because it made no sense to her whatsoever.

The next was clearly an invoice for building supplies, steel pipes, in fact. Her brow furrowed. Why would Lex want a hundred hollow one-inch pipes? All she could think of was plumbing. Did the diagram refer to water flow of some sort? Then, again, the monotony of construction details was not her forte. Did Project K have to do with the remodel of the mansion? If so, why hide it under some strange code name? She turned the page. This was followed by an invoice for gas canisters, but she wasn’t sure how the two went together. The last sheet was a bill from a welder.

Lois closed the file. Was her reporter’s intuition on the fritz? Project K appeared to be some kind of construction project, and Mrs. Cox’s refusal to talk about it could just be to get Lois’s goat. Lois’s sixth sense told her there was more to it than that. Knowing Lex’s penchant for naming things starting with the letter “L” and/or after himself, Project “K” had seemed a glaring anomaly.

The next folder down contained copy for a press release regarding the announcement for something called The Luthor House for the…

Lois couldn’t close the folder quickly enough. Another Luthor House? When would Lex stop? Weren’t there enough things, buildings, charities, businesses, etc., named after this man? It was impossible to escape from his name within Metropolis as it was.

She stepped away from Lex’s desk and over to the weapons case. Craning her neck, she checked to make sure that the door to the library was still closed. It was. Did Lex have some secret file drawer full of cooked books or personal diaries on the horrors he had committed, located somewhere under his weapon case? At this late date, she’d take a cabinet full of videotapes of surveillance of her apartment or handwritten notes detailing her mother’s abuduction, to nail Lex for something. Her fingers found a niche hidden under the curve of the edge of the cabinet. She gave it a slight tug and a drawer opened.

Eureka!

Sadly, the drawer only contained more ancient weapons for display, including a well-used and partially rusted mace. Lovely. After she closed the drawer, she caressed further along the edge of the cabinet. Where there was one drawer…

Her fingers brushed against a doorbell shaped button hidden underneath the curved edge of the display case. With a whizzing noise, not too unlike Superman’s arrival swoosh, the wall adjacent to the weapons case turned halfway open. Lois’s eyes bulged with anticipation.

Clark had said he had scanned a void between Lex’s office and his library, which he couldn’t x-ray. After a month of trying, Lois hadn’t found the mechanism to open it, or even where the door might be. This was it! She had finally done it. Lex was all but done for, now.

Her eyes darted from the cornucopia of items stored in the little room, including one of those guns the Toasters had used to burn down the West Side of Metropolis, to the padded wall with shackles in its four corners, which now jutted into Lex’s office. It was the other side of the boring blank wall, which normally occupied the space, and seeing the items caused ripples of freezing chills to radiate down her spine.

“Darling,” Lex’s voice suddenly intruded as the door to the library opened. “I’m sorry…”

Lois pressed the button again and pushed the door closed as she rushed to Lex’s arms so that he wouldn’t notice what she had found. Against her desires, she rested her head on Lex’s shoulder. “I thought you said that this whole week was going to be about us?” she said, before not being able to stand his embrace any longer and taking a step back.

“It is, darling. It is,” Lex said, kissing her cheek when she turned her lips away at the last second.

“Then what is this Project K? Why is it important enough that it would pull you away from our first full day together in weeks?” Lois said, adding a pout and a bat of her eyelashes.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about, darling,” Lex reassured her by dismissing her suspicions as nothing and, therefore, accomplishing the opposite effect.

She turned away from him, unable to look this man in the eyes, not wanting him to see the disgust she was finding difficult to hide in her own. She tried to force her determination to forefront of her mind as she sat back down at the table.

“Is everything all right, darling?” Lex said, sitting down next to her and resting his hand on her far shoulder so that his chest rested against her shoulder closest to him.

It was a cold type of embrace and it made her stiffen.

Lois pulled away from Lex to pick up her purse from the floor. Snapping it open, she removed that pen Jimbo had gotten her from the spy shop. She had called him from the electronics room at LNN after her meeting with Robertson using Clark’s mobile phone. She had hoped to abscond with some hidden recording device, with which to bug Lex or his office, but everything in LNN’s storeroom was more the standard ‘in-your-face’ microphones of television reporters. The stealthy stuff used for undercover investigations must have been located elsewhere under lock and key. Right before she had left her final day at LNN, Jimbo’s “pen” microphone had arrived disguised as a wedding gift.

“Yes, of course,” she lied in a blatant manner as she fiddled with the pen nervously in her fingers, looking back to the blueprints. “Tell me about the other changes you made since we last discussed the plans.”

“Lois,” Lex said, turning her to face him. “What is it, darling? I can see something is bothering you.”

After seeing that padded torture wall, Lois didn’t want to contemplate what kind of sick pleasures Lex had planned for their wedded bliss. Yet, her mind wouldn’t comply. Lois glanced away, so Lex wouldn’t see her eyes opening wide as her imagination raced with possibilities. She was a professional reporter and she couldn’t let this new development rattle her, Lois told herself.

He put his finger under her jaw, tilted her chin up, and softly kissed her lips. She jerked away from him and rose to her feet.

“Lois?”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, apologizing more to Clark for ruining her undercover persona than to Lex for pulling away. It was one thing to flirt with Lex and accept his proposal as part of her undercover guise, but to have intimate knowledge of his deviant sexual practices, ones he might be planning to force on her, was hitting too close for comfort, even though she knew she would never give him the opportunity to use them. She took a deep breath, tried to push down the bile forming in her throat, and grasped the first topic she could think of. “It’s Mrs. Cox. I don’t like her.”

Lex set his hands on her shoulders. “We’ve been over this, Lois. She’s the finest personal assistant I’ve ever had…”

Was he trying to make her feel guilty for pettily hating Mrs. Cox? “She doesn’t like me, either, Lex. I think she has a crush on you,” Lois said, using her invisible sword to cut the binds between master and servant… mistress.

“Nonsense!” Lex said. “And even if she did, it’s you I’m marrying, pet, not her.”

Pet? Her mind rankled more keenly at this endearment than his usual ‘darling’.

“Still. I asked her about Project K and she wouldn’t tell me about it.”

“Oh, darling. Is that all? Mrs. Cox didn’t tell you merely because it’s a surprise for our honeymoon,” he reassured Lois, while trying to build Mrs. Cox back up in her esteem. It didn’t work.

What kind of honeymoon surprise would need welded steel pipes and gas canisters? Was he planning on holding her hostage and gassing her with Revenge? Miranda had been one of his ex-girlfriends, and her death had been staged, according to Clark, to appear to be an apparent suicide after her meeting with Lex. A meeting in which Lex admitted that he categorically rejected Miranda’s advances.

Had he killed Miranda for spraying him with Revenge? Lois could picture that from a man who made her mother disappear over one accidentally spilled glass of wine. Lois was unable to hide a shiver of dread as she sat back down at the table. They still hadn’t had any word from her mother since that luncheon back six weeks earlier.

“She implied that you keep secrets from me,” Lois said, willing tears to her eyes. She hated acting like a whimpering female, but as Lex sat down beside her, she could tell he was lapping up her faux jealousy. “Oh, Lex. Please tell me we aren’t going to have one of those kind of marriages. My parents kept secrets from one another and it drove them apart.”

“Of course not, darling,” Lex lied, pulling her back into his arms, more forcefully this time.

“Why would Mrs. Cox do that? Why would she try to make me distrust you somehow?” Lois whined, setting the microphone pen onto the table.

“I don’t know, darling, but I’ll certainly talk to her,” he insisted.

For some reason, the padded wall with shackles flashed across her mind. What would he do to Mrs. Cox? Lois hated the woman, yes, but she didn’t want Lex to harm her, or make her disappear as he had with Monique Kahn, Miranda, and Lois’s mother. No, no matter how much Lois despised the woman, Mrs. Cox had to survive. She knew too much about Lex’s operation. She would make a terrific star witness for the prosecution.

“Oh, please, don’t, Lex. I’m so embarrassed by these jealous feelings. Please don’t mention them to her,” Lois pleaded. “Maybe I was just reading into her words what wasn’t there just because she wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know.”

“That was probably it, darling. I swear to you, Mrs. Cox means nothing more to me than any other employee,” he said. “If I cannot make you see how much I love you and only you during our honeymoon, I’ll dismiss her as soon as we return to Metropolis.”

A sly grin grew on Lois’s lips. Gotcha. She bet Lex’s mistress wouldn’t be thrilled by Lex’s pronouncement of his feelings. Now, all she had to do was get that recording into Mrs. Cox’s hands.

***End of Part 170***

Part 171

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The term Stepfordian comes from the book The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin and the 1976 film based upon it.