And you all thought I'd abandoned this...
TOCWarning: possible disturbing imagery.
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The fire department was still working on the fire when she arrived. It looked like they were having trouble putting it out. The clinic was in an historic brick store front that had the interior completely updated. It had a state-of-the-art fire-suppression system but that obviously had not been sufficient. It wasn’t an ordinary fire then – there were accelerants involved which meant it was arson.
Lois could only hope that the patients and staff made it out safely.
The clinic was staffed by Metropolis General Hospital from various female-oriented departments – OB/Gyn, breast health, others. The clinic boasted a state-of-the-art birthing suite, breast cancer out-patient treatment center, pre-natal care and education, even a well-baby center.
Unfortunately, what everyone who didn’t use the clinic seemed to focus on were the free contraceptives and the fact that the clinic also performed abortions.
A fire marshal drove up. Metropolis had more than 140 fire marshals and supervisors. Lois didn’t know all of them on sight, but she knew this one – Amanda Brown, the marshal that had investigated the clinic bombings two years before. At least she was the lead investigator before.
Brown was heading for the fire chief. Lois took a deep breath and approached them.
“Did anyone make it out?” Lois asked after introducing herself.
The stricken look on the chief’s face told more than he probably realized. It was Tuesday and Lois knew that Tuesday’s were busy at the clinic – it was the day they offered free services for poor women with children. Chances were good that unless someone had called in a warning, the building had been packed with mothers and babies.
Brown pulled Lois back as the chief shouted into his microphone, warning his people that the front of the building was failing. The sound was horrific as the lintels above the wide storefront windows failed and the brick above came crashing down.
“Has anyone claimed responsibility yet?” Lois asked as soon as she could hear again. The fire still roared like an angry beast, spewing flame into the sky. Behind her an LNN news truck was set up and Linda Montoya was covering the story from the safety of distance.
“What makes you think this wasn’t an accident?” Brown asked. “I mean, I expect there’re plenty of things that can go boom in a hospital.”
“And we both know better than that,” Lois said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t already be here.”
Brown beckoned her to move further away from the noise and the news van. “You can’t quote me on this,” she said, “but it all the earmarks of the Disciples of Light. And there’s a rumor that they were behind that bomb the cops found right after Thanksgiving last year in Millennium Park.”
That hadn’t been Lois’s story, but she knew about it. The FBI had gotten wind of a car bomb scheduled to go off during the tree lighting ceremony. Luckily for Metropolis the bomb was a dud – or at least that’s what was announced. Lois’s experience told her there was no doubt more than that but the FBI was being tight-lipped about it. Now she suspected she knew why – the Disciples of Light cultists were on the rampage again.
Oddly, she didn’t remember a bomb going off at a clinic
before. Had Superman stopped that bombing? Had he managed to neutralize the Disciples of Light? Or were things even more different than she had been observed over the past months?
-o-o-o-
“Jimmy, get me everything we have on the Disciples of Light,” Lois ordered as soon as she walked into the bull pen.
Jimmy gave her a blank look.
“Disciples of Light… They were responsible for a series of abortion clinic bombings two years ago. Their leader was sentenced to life without parole,” she explained.
Jimmy’s expression cleared and he nodded, heading off to get what she’d asked for.
“That bunch of nut jobs is at it again?” Perry asked. Lois hadn’t noticed he’d been standing in the door of his office.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“You know that Jacob Weber’s conviction was over-turned on appeal, don’t you?” Perry said. “It happened while you were missing.”
“But…” Lois began. Then she stopped as she realized that once again she remembered something that hadn’t happened. She had covered Weber’s appeal process before. Weber had claimed that he’d been hounded and framed by the ‘pinko liberal media’ working with the ‘welfare state’. Luckily the appeals court hadn’t bought into Weber’s ravings. It also hadn’t hurt that Tom Morrow, the attorney that had originally represented Weber, had come under investigation for jury tampering among other things and had been unable to represent Weber during the appeal process.
And Lois had been the one to start looking at Weber’s attorney. She swore when she realized that here, Weber had no doubt gotten out because the appeals court judge had been suborned by Morrow.
“Hon, are you okay?” Perry asked.
“Yeah,” Lois lied. “I just can’t believe any judge would have let that psychopath out of prison. And now there’re forty people dead, half of them babies because of that sicko.”
“Lois, we’re supposed to report the facts, not…”
“Fact, Perry, the same type of bomb that was used two years ago by Weber’s ‘followers’ to bomb women’s clinics was found in Millennium Park and at the Clinton Street Women’s Clinic. Fact, Weber’s back in Metropolis conducting rallies and inviting all the wackos he can to join his sick cause. Fact, nearly everyone who died today was a racial minority even though the clinic is in a racially diverse part of town.”
Perry’s eyebrows were threatening to climb into his hairline. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Fact, Perry, somebody murdered my doctor. I could have been in there.”
“How much of this can we print?” he asked after a moment.
“My sources say all the signs are there, but they’re both ongoing investigations. They can’t state anything definitively except that there’s a strong possibility it was arson.”
“Okay, we’ll go with just the facts on the Women’s Clinic for now.”
“Perry!” Lois protested. She knew the story was bigger than just the fire.
He held up his hand. “For now,” he repeated, looking around the room for someone. He spotted them. “Jimmy, Eduardo, I need a twelve inch sidebar on the history of hate crimes in Metropolis. Concentrate on hate crimes against women, women’s doctors, and women’s clinics.”
“Anti-abortion groups?” Eduard asked.
“Don’t tar ‘em all with the same brush,” Perry warned. “Just the ones who seem to think that murder is the best way to get their point across.”
“Disciples of Light?” Jimmy chimed in.
“Sounds like a good place to start,” Perry agreed.
“Thanks, Perry,” Lois said softly.
He nodded then peered at her more closely. “When were you planning to tell me you were in the family way?”
“How…?” Lois began.
“I didn’t get to be a man in my position because I can yodel.” He sighed. “Is the father that Kent fella’ I sent packing?”
“Yes… no,” she said, sounding as confused as she felt. “I remember meeting him and letting things get out of hand. I remember. But something happened. Something weird. He didn’t remember me at all.”
“Date rape gone bad?” Perry suggested.
Lois shook her head. “The man I knew would never have done that. And I know I didn’t do it to him.”
“Somebody out to get both of you?” Perry suggested.
“Nobody knew I was in town,” Lois said. “And I doubt Clark had, has, an enemy in the world.”
Perry nodded knowingly. “You know my door’s always open, right?”
“Thanks, Chief,” Lois said. “Now I have some rats to look into.”
Perry’s eyebrows climbed again.
“Somebody helped that sicko get out of prison,” Lois explained. “I want to know who, and why.”
-o-o-o-
Remembering facts from before had advantages – Lois knew where to start looking for the information she needed on Weber’s attorney and had a good start on the judge who had overturned Weber’s conviction. Lois accepted – applauded in fact – the right of every person to a fair trail, the right to appeal that conviction. But Weber getting out on a technicality was just wrong.
“Morrow was a slick one,” Judge Meredith Sachs admitted over coffee across the street from the New Troy Courthouse. Lois knew many people in law enforcement – she’d covered the crime beat long before becoming an investigative journalist. She knew many people in the various district attorneys’ offices around the city and more than a few of the judges. Sachs was one who had always had time for reporters, especially female reporters who didn’t misquote her.
“And I’ve no idea what Judge Wheaton was thinking when he agreed with Morrow that the original trial was tainted by press interference,” Sachs added.
“Any possibility he was suborned?” Lois asked, keeping her voice low.
Sachs shrugged. “I doubt Morrow would have been able to do it. But Wheaton did retire suddenly no more than a month later. He claimed it was for health reasons. Of course, White’s editorials didn’t help.”
Lois had to agree. She’s read through the Planet’s coverage of Weber’s release and Perry had pulled no punches when writing about Judge Wheaton’s miscarriage of justice in letting Weber out of prison. Who was there to give justice to the victims of Weber’s crimes?
“If Morrow didn’t have the means to turn Wheaton, who did?”
“Ask yourself who wins with Weber out on the street blowing up buildings, making people afraid to speak out against his extremism and his tactics?”
-o-o-o-
Judge Sachs had pointed Lois in the direction of ADA Mayson Drake. Drake had been one of Wheaton’s most outspoken critics at the time of Weber’s release. And surprisingly, Drake made time in her busy schedule to talk to Lois. Lois suspected that Sachs had called ahead to pave the way for her.
“You can’t just assume that when a judge makes a decision the DA’s office and the Daily Planet disagrees with that the judge in question has been suborned,” Drake warned when Lois asked about Wheaton’s decision and raised the possibility of Morrow having tampered with the appeals process.
“Before I left to cover a story in Africa, I was looking into some of the other cases where Tom Morrow got acquittals when it should have been a slam dunk for the DA’s office.”
Drake gave her a sharp look and Lois knew that Drake knew she was right about Morrow.
Drake sighed. “There’s a lot of suspicion surrounding Morrow and he should be investigated but Clemmons doesn’t seem to see it that way.”
Matt Clemmons was New Troy’s District Attorney. Lois recalled comments from people who followed the ‘court scene’ in Metropolis. According to them, while Clemmons wasn’t a great lawyer, he was an extremely savvy politician with an eye on higher offices. And high profile convictions against organized crime should have been Clemmons’ ticket to name recognition in the next election. But the cases lost to Morrow had been exactly the cases Clemmons needed to have won.
Lois knew something else as well. “I think you’ll find that Clemmons went to school with Morrow.” Lois was gratified at the sudden look of comprehension on Drake’s face.
-o-o-o-
Clemmons’ possible - make that probable – past relationship with Weber’s attorney didn’t explain why Morrow had worked so hard on getting the misogynistic sociopath released.
Besides, attorneys like Morrow cost money – lots of money. Money that someone like Weber wouldn’t have wanted to spend for services from someone like Morrow. And in a case like this Morrow would have wanted a huge retainer. People like Weber thought they were above the system, that they didn’t need the assistance of ‘slaves of the system’ like Morrow. People like Weber thought they were smarter than everyone else and were more likely to fire their lawyer, even kill them if the opportunity arose, than listen to them. Therefore someone Weber respected enough to obey had given Weber orders to shut up and let Morrow do the talking on the appeal.
The question was: who? Who wanted Weber out murdering innocent mothers and babies and who had both the money and the clout to make both Morrow and Weber listen and obey?
Not Luthor. As tempting as it might be to blame the billionaire for all of Metropolis’s troubles, there was no real evidence that Luthor was the infamous ‘Boss’ and there was no hint that any of Luthor’s subsidiaries would benefit from the fire-bombing of a women’s clinic in that part of town. Besides, had Luthor or ‘the Boss’ been involved, the clinic would have been burned when the building was empty. Multiple deaths would make the incident the focus of federal and local investigations plus public sentiment would end up making the location into a memorial.
Intergang? As with Luthor, they would have everything to lose and little to gain by the mass murder of women and babies. Besides, there was no evidence they’d made any inroads into Metropolis.
But if not one of the big players of organized crime, then who? Someone with access to money, no doubt. An industrialist with extremist tendencies, maybe. There were more than a few of those in the country, men who thought that laws and regulations were for lesser beings because the pursuit of money and power trumped everything else. Owners of companies that railed against the high price of education then brought in highly trained employees from overseas because the USA didn’t produce what they needed – thanks in part to an underfunded education system.
Jimmy’s research hadn’t given her any leads. Whoever had paid Morrow’s retainer hid their tracks well.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Cat’s voice brought Lois out of her ruminations. “You’ve been staring at that screen for a good fifteen minutes,” Cat added.
“What do you do when you’re stuck?” Lois asked. She didn’t want to admit it but she’d run into a wall.
“Go do something else. Change of perspective,” Cat said. “Not that the Metropolis social scene leads to many mysteries that need heavy research…” Cat’s voice trailed off and her expression turned thoughtful.
“You just thought of an angle,” Lois stated.
“Maybe. What are the usual reasons for an arson fire?”
“Insurance fraud, extortion, murder, cover up a previous crime,” Lois listed.
“Well, if we take out insurance fraud and extortion, then that leaves murder and covering up a previous crime. So what was the crime being covered up? Or if it was murder who was the actual target?”
“You think Weber and his bunch didn’t do it?”
“I didn’t say that. But they make awfully convincing scapegoats if they didn’t.”
Lois shook her head. “Everything points to them.”
“Does it? The Disciples of Light have never targeted mothers and babies before. It was always the doctors and the buildings. So why would they kill the very people they claim they’re trying to protect?”
“Because they’re psychopaths that just want an excuse to keep women barefoot and pregnant and in sexual bondage,” Lois countered hotly. Cat’s eyes went wide at her outburst and Lois abruptly realized how demented she sounded.
“That’s a pretty serious knee jerk reaction,” Cat said after a moment. “Want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
Cat nodded to the open door of Perry’s office. Lois followed her gaze to see Perry scowling at her.
“I figure you can talk to me or you can talk to Perry, or a shrink.”
Lois snorted. “I don’t need a shrink.”
“I’ve heard that the people who protest the most loudly about not needing one are the one’s that need help the most,” Cat stated.
“It’s personal,” Lois stated after a long moment.
“Not if it affects your work,” Cat stated.
Lois glared at her. “I think I liked you better when you were an empty-headed bimbo.”
Cat chuckled. “See how well my disguise works. I have never been empty-headed.”
-o-o-o-
“So, want to tell me about it?” Cat asked after they’d eaten. She’d brought pizza, salad, and soda over to Lois’s apartment after Lois had gotten off work and to Lois’s surprise Cat had arrived dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans instead one of her usual psychedelic skin-tight dresses.
“You assume there’s something to tell.”
“I know there’s something to tell and I’m guessing it’s more than just that it was your doctor who got killed along with all the moms and babies. And I don’t think it’s hormones making you sensitive all of a sudden.”
“It could be hormones,” Lois countered. “And I’m not completely insensitive, you know.”
Cat’s wry grin told Lois that the other woman didn’t believe her but it wasn’t worth arguing about.
“To tell the truth, the thing with the Smart Kids spooked me a little. The people who should have been taking care of them, who should have been looking out after their best interests, made sure they were safe, didn’t. It hit a little close to home for me. And how many kids are out there with even less protection than they had. How many kids are out there being exploited in even worse ways?”
“I can’t argue with you there. As journalists all we can do is present the facts and ask the hard questions that people don’t want to think about, like who is ultimately responsible for a child’s well-being when the parents or caregivers have ideas on what constitutes well-being that are at odds with what the law says and the rest of society believes. And who is responsible when the parents refuse to be responsible?”
“Exactly.”
“But there’s more,” Cat observed.
“Yeah,” Lois admitted slowly. “I know the arguments for and against allowing abortion and I agree that abortion is a lousy method of birth control. But I’m always left asking where do the mother’s rights come in if the child isn’t going to survive, or if the mother won’t, or if the child is conceived due to rape? We have laws against cruel and unusual punishment but isn’t it cruel and unusual punishment for force a woman who did not ask to be impregnated to relive that trauma every waking moment because she isn’t allowed to ‘get rid of’ the public evidence of her attack? And then to add insult to injury, depending on the jurisdiction she may end up paying the medical expenses, not to mention the public humiliation, the effects on her relationships…”
“Lois, were you…?” Cat asked gently.
“Was I raped?” Lois completed for her. “No.”
“But…” Cat prompted.
“Remember the Margot Stratton case?” Lois asked.
To Lois’s surprise Cat nodded. It hadn’t exactly been headline news at the time in Metropolis, much less Gotham where Cat was originally from.
“Kid raped and impregnated by her extremist stepdad and allowed to die in childbirth while his buddies looked on because they claimed to abhor medical intervention in ‘God’s will’,” Cat said. “That was one of the cases we looked at in my ‘Ethics and Society’ class way back when.”
“She was a classmate of mine,” Lois said. “She was a good kid who didn’t deserve any of the stuff that happened to her. And the whole ‘God’s will’ and ‘no medical intervention’ was complete bunkum because he certainly didn’t turn down medical intervention when he was diagnosed with cancer a year later. No, he was trying to cover up that he’d raped a twelve year-old girl he was supposed to be caring for and protecting and was using his alleged religious beliefs to get away with murder. Luckily Metropolis has some strict rules on when the Medical Examiner gets involved. The ME was able to prove her stepdad was the father of her baby and therefore guilty of statutory rape if nothing else. At least that put him in prison for a while. But his buddies in the Disciples of Light got of scot free.”
“They were starting to make news then,” Cat stated. “A lot of people bought into their BS.”
“A lot of people still are. The whole ‘a woman is precious and should be honored and protected’ is so seductive, so long as you don’t look at their underlying assumptions and the logical outcomes of those assumptions.”
“You would have liked my Ethics and Society class,” Cat commented. “The women argued that if the world was really like what the Disciples of Light seemed to assume it was, that men couldn’t and shouldn’t be held responsible for attacking women because human females of any age were, by their nature, too wanton and seductive to be resisted, then, instead of being locked away or covered up, all women should be trained in self-defense and allowed to carry weapons and all rapists should summarily be surgically castrated. Then, in a couple generations we might end up with men who actually have enough self-restraint to be allowed out in public without leashes.
“Luckily most of the world isn’t actually like that and the vast majority of men can be trusted not to attack women and girls even off-leash.
“Of course,” Cat continued, “we still have the mystery of why the Disciples of Light would attack a clinic full of women and babies they claim to want to protect, assuming it was them, and if it wasn’t them, who did do it? And, who arranged for Weber to get out of prison so he could either plan the crime or be framed for it.”
“You really think Weber and his bunch of fanatics might be innocent?”
“Innocent isn’t a word I’d ever use for that bunch, but if I were going to frame somebody for a crime against a women’s clinic, they’d be at the top of my list.”
-o-o-o-
A break in the case came two days later when it was revealed that the fingerprints of one of Weber’s lieutenants, a Daniel Simons, was found inside the casing of what was left of the incendiary device that started the fire that destroyed the clinic and took so many innocent lives. He had a record of violence against women and was considered a ‘person of interest’ in more than one rape in the greater Metropolis area. The Feds were labeling it a hate crime.
But now Lois wasn’t so sure. Cat identified one of the victims as being a former Price House manager from Philadelphia. A woman who had been seen in the company of Bill Church, Jr. until her abrupt departure from Price House several months before. Rumor had it that she had been pregnant with Junior’s baby and he’d wanted nothing to do with it.
“Is there a link between Church or Price House and either Weber or Simons?” Lois asked Cat.
Cat was back in less than forty-five minutes. “My sources tell me that Junior and Tom Morrow go golfing together at least once a week. But, they also say this isn’t the first time Junior’s had a little indiscretion on the way. The other times he either paid for the abortion or just paid the women off after making them agree to not go after him for paternity.”
“Maybe this one didn’t want to get paid off?” Lois suggested.
“Maybe,” Cat admitted.
“Um, ladies, is there something I need to know here?” Perry asked. Lois hadn’t realized he’d been standing close enough to hear them.
“We may have something on the clinic fire…” Lois started.
“We?” Perry repeated. “As in Lois Lane and Cat Grant working together? As in Lois Lane has been replaced by a pod person because the real Lois Lane would never collaborate with anyone, much less Cat Grant?”
“I’m not that bad,” Lois protested.
“Honey, we had one intern threaten to jump off the building after a day of trying to ‘help’ you,” Perry came back.
Lois chose not to respond to Perry’s comment. She hadn’t been mean to the young man in question – she knew she hadn’t been mean to him – but he had been so preternaturally cheerful and helpful that it had brought out all her negative instincts. It wasn’t something she was especially proud of but it was in the past and all she could do now was to promise to not do it again.
“Cat came up with an angle that looks promising,” Lois said.
“Promising?” Cat echoed.
“Okay, more than just promising,” Lois conceded.
“Go on.”
“What if the crime was just meant to look like one of Weber’s abortion clinic bombings but was really meant to murder a specific person they knew would be in the clinic at that time?” Cat explained.
“Who?”
“Bill Church Junior’s pregnant ex-girlfriend.”
“You know Bill Senior and I go way back, don’t you?” Perry asked. “I used to bounce Bill Junior on my knee when he was a baby.”
“You think we should stop?” Cat asked.
“Hell, no,” Perry responded. “If the Churches are involved in that atrocity, nail their hides to the wall. But make sure our behinds aren’t hanging in the wind while you do it.”
-o-o-o-
Bill Junior turned state’s evidence against Weber and his followers in trade for dropping the first-degree murder charges against him. Once the FBI and MPD started looking, all the evidence pointed to Bill Junior being the money behind the Disciples of Light, now officially designated a terrorist group.
The investigation by Lane and Grant led to discovering a correlation between Price House and Intergang. A strong enough correlation to convince Clemmons and Drake to initiate a criminal investigation into the Church discount shopping/real estate empire and its possible links to organized crime. Like dominos it all started tumbling down.
And Perry hadn’t yet ordered her to only cover safe subjects in safe venues. Yet.
