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

Author’s Note: Lex Luthor has been a very naughty boy, and I’m issuing a WHAM warning as some things in this part might make some people uneasy (or queasy).
Where we left off in Part 175…

“Lex Luthor is eating at the Champagne Room at the Bristol?” Jimbo said, trying and failing to cover his guffaw. He could sell that photo for thousands of dollars to the tabloids. “I thought that only senior citizens ate there.”

“It’s a good restaurant!”

“It was a topnotch restaurant in the time of Dragonetti, Lois. It’s been on downward spiral since before the 1970s,” he corrected.

“It’s my grandmother’s favorite restaurant,” Lois snapped.

“You can ask them to hold it for me at the desk and I’ll come by in a couple hours…”

“I’ll go,” Jack said, entering CK’s bedroom. “Lex Luthor doesn’t know me.”

“Jack said he’d go,” Jimbo repeated to Lois. He turned to Jack. “Do you know where the Bristol is?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Dude, I’ve lived here my entire life. I probably know these streets better than you do.”

“Okay. Fine. Lois is going to leave a package for you at the front desk. Is that okay, Lois?” Jimbo asked, talking to both of them at once.

“Works for me,” Lois replied.

“Is the Englishman there?”

“Is Nigel St. John with you?” Jimbo repeated Jack’s question to Lois.

“No. He’s at the manor house, outside of town, supervising the renovations.”

“That’s outside of Henderson’s jurisdiction,” Jimbo said.

“Then Henderson will have to contact the sheriff’s office, so he doesn’t get away. Let Henderson know that when he gets the warrant that it needs to include Lex’s office and not just his penthouse. He has a secret room in there with tons of evidence and that was just from a quick glance. I’ll write up instructions on how to open the secret room in the package, which will have the microphone pen you sent me. Have Henderson play it for Mrs. Cox, if she gives him the silent treatment when he interviews her.”

“Gotcha!” Jimbo said, jotting that down on the notepad next to CK’s bed.

“I’ve got to go. I’ve been in the ladies room much too long already. Good luck!” Lois said and hung up.

They were going to need it.

***

Part 176

Clark lifted his head as he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. The television above his cage drew his gaze again. Luthor had returned to Lois’s apartment. He stared at them once more making out on her settee, not knowing how long Luthor had been there before he had caught Clark’s eye.

He refused to look away. He still needed to find proof that this woman wasn’t Lois.

Clark couldn’t tell if it were another day or later on in the same day. Lois still wore the same robe, but Luthor had changed into a different suit. That meant nothing after the wrinkled condition his previous suit had been in when he had left.

Her expressions and mannerisms weren’t distinctly someone else’s, yet, nor were they a perfect match for Lois’s. One tended to act differently with different people. Clark wanted to believe that she wasn’t Lois. He wanted the assurance that Lois wouldn’t willfully do these things with that man.

She had lied to Clark, though. She had gone behind his back and been dishonest with him. Lois had cheated on him, even if she hadn’t called it that. True, she said that she hadn’t told him only because she was trying to protect him and her investigation, knowing that Clark would stop her if he knew it was fake. She had also blamed him for being the first one in their relationship to be less than honest.

Then again, who was to say that Lois wasn’t still lying to him? Not only had she lied to Clark, but she had also lied to Luthor. She had told that awful man that she would marry him. Clark didn’t know if her acceptance of marriage had included a protestation of love. Just because he hadn’t heard her say anything of the sort to Luthor during the whole time he had been observing them that didn’t mean she hadn’t said it earlier on. She had led Luthor on, so it was possible that she could even now be leading Clark on, building up his love and esteem for her, raising his expectations for a future together, only to make this torment in the cage all the more painful.

Perhaps he had completely misjudged Lois. Maybe Lex Luthor wasn’t the most evil person in Metropolis.

He pushed this possibility away. Even just considering Lois had used him, made Clark weaker. It made the bite of the Kryptonite more intense. He could feel it tearing into his soul and devouring his hopes, his dreams, and his future.

Lois had accused him that day in the park of not trusting her and not trusting in her love. He believed in the United States justice ideal that someone was not guilty until proven otherwise. Therefore, he would lead with the assumption that the woman currently sticking her tongue down Luthor’s throat was someone other than the woman Clark loved. He had to believe it. Mrs. Cox impersonating Lois in Luthor’s office had been a lie, so it stood to reason that this woman was, too. He wouldn’t survive otherwise.

The Lois on the monitor climbed onto Luthor’s lap, straddling him, and blocking Clark’s view of Luthor’s face. The pearl pink robe slipped down her shoulders and naked back, proving once more that Lois wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Clark tried to study her skin, looking for any blemishes that didn’t match what he knew of Lois’s skin. Unfortunately, he didn’t know Lois’s body intimately enough.

Clark tried to disassociate this woman’s body and what it was doing from the woman whom he knew loved him, but the images proved too much, too similar. The burning in his stomach caused by the repressed bile made him turn away and gag in dry heaves.

He couldn’t watch.

He couldn’t look away.

“It’s a lie. It isn’t Lois,” he murmured to himself as he lay down with his face against the cool concrete floor. “It’s a lie.”

*************************
The Wedding of the Century
*************************

“Okay, Miss Lois,” said Enrique, the middle aged and highly stylish stylist at the Bristol’s salon.

His thick Cuban accent pierced through her relaxed state as he brought her back up into a sitting position. He had magical fingers, that man. She had almost fallen back asleep while he washed her hair and massaged her scalp, which wasn’t surprising being that her grandmother had made the Bristol wake up call set for six a.m.

When she still worked at the Daily Planet, six a.m. was when she had left her apartment to walk to work. Yet, despite the lack of surveillance in her grandmother’s suite at the Bristol, Lois hadn’t been able to sleep. It might have been the anticipation of seeing Lex’s face when he realized that she would never marry him, or the culmination of what felt like an exceedingly long investigation, or the worry that her mother still might not show.

In truth, though, it had been the lack of her mobile phone ringing. She kept turning on the light to check that she hadn’t missed Clark’s call or the battery still had power. In between each check of her mobile phone, a million questions had raced through her mind.

Had Clark gone to the roof of her Carter Avenue apartment building and waited in vain for her to appear? No, he could have easily scanned inside to see that she wasn’t there. What would he have thought, though, at not being able to find her?

Had he not thought that she had wanted him to call her after leaving that message with Jimbo?

Had he gotten the message from Jimbo?

Had he understood the message from Jimbo? Or had Clark thought she had changed her mind and was going to marry that horrid, horrid man?

Had he flown off to who knew where, because of a misunderstood message without reconfirming it from her first?

Would she ever see him again? Of this, she was 98.998 percent certain she would. He had to know how much she loved him. Didn’t he? Hadn’t she been quite plain and obvious about it every time they had met since the Daily Planet exploded? Subtlety apparently was lost on Kryptonians.

By two a.m., her phone had officially died and she didn’t have a charger to reboot it. Then her questions changed tone. Would Clark be trying to call her now and worry when he couldn’t find or reach her? Or would he not try to call because it was so late at night?

“Miss Lois?” When she didn’t respond, Enrique removed one of the cucumber slices covering her closed eyelids. “Niña?”

“Mmmm,” Lois mumbled. A bite of toast and three cups of coffee hadn’t pulled her completely awake and she didn’t really want to pull herself from this relaxed state, yet.

After her mobile phone died, she still hadn’t been able to sleep. She kept tossing and turning, wondering what would happen today.

Would her mother show?

Would Henderson get the warrant in time to stop the wedding? What if he didn’t? What would she do? Well, certainly not marry Lex. That was for sure. But would she even walk down the aisle? Would she just send word that she couldn’t go through with it?

And, mostly, to where had Clark disappeared?

Had he chosen the night she was to escape from Lex as the next night to bolt from their relationship? Typical. Whenever it seemed that their relationship could be going somewhere that was when Clark was most likely to run, or fly in his case, away. What was he so afraid of?

Where had he disappeared off to after saving Denny from the Luthor House for Homeless Children fire?

Had Clark thought Lois had known about the fire and blissfully gone about as if she didn’t care? Was this why he had disappeared after the fire, because she hadn’t come down to make sure everyone was all right? She would have if she had known, but Lex had put her on a news blackout for her “day of pampering” at The Spa. She hadn’t thought about it until she lay there in the big comfy bed and stared up at the ceiling, then it had been so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t noticed.

Why hadn’t Lex told her at brunch the previous morning about the fire? Why hadn’t Mrs. Cox interrupted their brunch with the announcement of the fire? Apparently, the fire started shortly after Lex’s town car had picked her up at her apartment. She couldn’t believe that Lex hadn’t known about the fire prior to her arrival for brunch. How cold a heart did Lex have to either not care or not mention the fire, despite all of the work Lois had put in at the Luthor House? How could he have sat leisurely enjoying his breakfast as those kids choked on smoke and dodged flames?

How did Jimbo know it was a bomb and not accidental as the Met Star had reported it was? Who set the fire? Was it one of Lex’s minions?

Lois had watched LNN for an hour after her grandmother had sent her to bed and there had been no mention of Superman sightings after the fire. She had grilled Lex about it at dinner and he claimed it had been faulty wiring to the boiler in the basement, which had caused a spark and made the gas to the boiler explode. He had patted her hand and told her it was nothing for her to worry about. Everything that could be done for those kids had been.

Liar!

Somehow, the Daily Planet team knew better. She hated being so deep undercover that she ended up being out of the loop.

“Lois, chop! Chop!” Mother Arnold’s voice and clapping hands cut through her drowsy state and made her eyes fly open. “Enrique didn’t come in early on his day off, so you can sleep.”

Lois smiled sheepishly at Enrique.

Whenever Mother Arnold came into the city, Enrique always styled her hair. It seemed as if Lois had known Enrique almost as long as her grandmother. Several times, Mother Arnold had brought Lois along and Enrique would enthrall her with stories from his childhood growing up in Havana as Mother Arnold sat under the domed hair dryer.

What was it about older ladies and getting their hair done on what seemed to be a weekly basis? Was women’s hair so difficult to style once it went silver or white?

Lois stood up and followed Enrique’s outstretched hand towards his stylist chair. “How would you like me to style your hair for the wedding, niña?”

“Cut it short,” ordered Mother Arnold. “Like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, don’t you think, Enrique?”

“Mother Arnold!” Lois gasped, raising her hands to cover her head. What was wrong with her?

“While you were in the restroom last night during dinner, Lex suggested that since I insisted on having you stay at the Bristol with me that he would send a car to pick you up and take you to Lex Tower by seven-thirty as you had to meet your stylists by eight,” Mother Arnold explained, taking a sip of her coffee. “I told him ‘Thank you’ but to not send the car until nine o’clock as you wouldn’t be going to that appointment. I had made other plans for you. He, then, asserted that it had already been arranged. I reminded him that, traditionally, it was the bride’s family who was in charge of making her presentable for the wedding, not the groom. As the sole representative of your family at this wedding, I would prepare my granddaughter for the most important day of her life, not him. I told him that you would be in more than capable hands with Enrique and his crew.”

“Thank you, madam,” Enrique said with nod of his head. “I appreciate the compliment.”

“I bet Lex didn’t like that,” Lois murmured under her breath.

Mother Arnold smiled. “Of course he didn’t. Most men don’t like it when women tell them what do. Rich men, especially. Boorish control freaks, all of them,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “When he saw that I would be unyielding to his demands, he gave me one of those charming crocodile smiles you warned me about on the car ride over to the Bristol, and said, ‘make sure not to change a hair on her head as I love her just the way she is.’”

Ugh. Lois dropped her hands from her hair and looked into Enrique’s mirror. “What does that mean?” she asked rhetorically to the woman reflected there. “Is he saying that he wouldn’t love me if I changed in any way?” She looked over at her grandmother and set her hand over the older lady’s. Had it been a veiled threat? Did she need to worry about Mother Arnold’s safety, and Enrique’s, as well as her own mother?

Again, she wondered what torment a real marriage to such a man would be like. Would he control every aspect of her life and appearance? Not too surprising given the treatment she had received over the last few months. After those visits to Dr. Heller, despite no scarring from her run-in with those thugs in Suicide Slum, Lois could easily see Lex nudging her to get a nip here or a tuck there, as the years passed. She shivered with the mental image of him turning her slowly into some plastic doll, agelessly always twenty-seven.

Lex hadn’t said anything when she had cut her hair after he shot her, but then again, she couldn’t recall seeing him until over a month later at the Metro Club. On the other hand, Clark hadn’t been able to stop staring at her, speechless in his admiration. His gaze had made her feel sexy when her arm in a sling had made her feel anything but that. He had even implied that she would turn Superman on…

But Clark was Superman, so that meant…oh.

Oh! She flushed as she now realized what Clark had been saying, then.

She had wanted him, and he had wanted her. What if she hadn’t chosen the Superman persona over his human ‘Clark’ persona, then? Would their pasta night have ended differently?

Images of her tearing off Clark’s shirt and kissing down his bare chest flashed, and then returned and lingered at the forefront of her mind. Pure fantasy. Only this time, she wouldn’t be hurt and would have the use of both hands. Her body pressed against his. Him trapped between her and his chair with nowhere to go but up.

Pasta… What if there had been a spot of marinara sauce on his clavicle? Surely, he wouldn’t mind if she kissed it off.

Would he have told her the truth first? She shook her head. Why hadn’t he told her the truth, anyway? He knew that she loved him. Did it really matter which side of him she loved first when in the end, they were both him? He had to have known then she desired both sides of him.

“Lois?” Mother Arnold’s voice cut into her fantasy daydream.

“Hmmm.”

“Your hair?”

“If it brings you back to me, I don’t care how you look,” Clark’s voice echoed inside her head. He had said that when she had arrived at his apartment with that short spiky wig. “I prefer you, whoever you are.”

“Cut it short,” Lois announced. “But more Roman Holiday Audrey, than Sabrina Audrey, I think, Enrique.”

Enrique took a step back and looked between the two women, finally stopping on Mother Arnold.

“It’s her head, Enrique. She gets the final say,” Mother Arnold replied with a wave of her hand.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a nod as he combed Lois’s hair.

Snip. Snip. A lock of brown hair landed on the floor.

Lois had made her decision.

There was no going back now.

God, she couldn’t wait to get her hands on that man.

***

Bill Henderson knocked on the door before opening it. A tall, slender, stunningly beautiful brunette woman, dressed provocatively in a black double-breasted suit, sat at his interview table.

“Elizabeth Cox?” Bill asked. They hadn’t been formally introduced the time Luthor and his entourage had invaded his office.

“You know that I am,” she replied. “Your men dragged me down here, didn’t they?”

“Inspector William Henderson, MPD,” he replied, holding up his badge as proof and ignoring her remarks. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have some questions for you.”

“As I told Detective Jones, this really isn’t a good time,” she said, standing up. “My boss is getting married in a couple of hours. They caught me just as I was heading down to Lex Tower. We can talk later.”

Bill repressed the urge to smile, having heard the tape Lois had passed to him through Jack Miner. Instead, he leaned forward and whispered, “Are you sure that Lex Luthor wants you to attend his wedding, Mrs. Cox?”

She stiffened. “What are you implying? I mean, of course he wants me there. I’m his assistant. He needs me to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.”

Bill raised an eyebrow. “But isn’t that what getting married is all about, Mrs. Cox? Getting hitched?”

“That’s not what…” She exhaled and crossed her arms, glowering at him.

She clearly had no sense of humor.

He held out his hand to indicate that she should sit back down. After narrowing her glare at him, she did. He sat down opposite her before speaking, “I mean, are you sure that you want to delay speaking with me until your boss is safely out of the country with his new young bride?”

Mrs. Cox pressed her lips into a thin smile. “Not that it is any of your business, Inspector, but Mr. and Mrs. Luthor aren’t scheduled to leave on their honeymoon until tomorrow. Tonight will be spent at his Penthouse Suite.”

Bill shrugged, and said wryly, “I’m sure he won’t change his plans after hearing that I wish to speak with you, if he hasn’t already.”

“Why would he do that? He has nothing to fear.”

“But you don’t even know what I intend to ask you,” he retorted. “How well did you know Monique Kahn?”

“We’d met,” Mrs. Cox replied.

“It was rumored that she was dating someone high up at LexCorp. Do you know anything about that?” he asked.

She shrugged. “LexCorp is a big company. It could have been one of over a hundred men, Inspector. I don’t see what…”

“Did you realize that Mr. Luthor had a life insurance policy on her? And collected one hundred thousand dollars upon the discovery of her body?” Bill asked.

“LexCorp insures all its top employees. It’s a common practice to offset the cost of finding, hiring, and training a new employee,” Mrs. Cox explained. “There’s nothing illegal about it.”

Bill raised an eyebrow. “Even for contract, or temporary, employees such as Ms. Kahn? By the way, it’s considered both motive and insurance fraud if the murderer is also the one who receives the money.”

“LexCorp received the money, not any individual,” she replied. “One hundred thousand dollars is a mere drop in the bucket for LexCorp, so hardly a motive to kill anyone. Anyway, as far as I know, the law still can’t charge a non-living entity, such as a corporation, with murder.”

“It’s employees, on the other hand... Just out of curiosity, Mrs. Cox, does LexCorp have a policy out on you?” he asked. “Or are you not high level enough to require one?”

Mrs. Cox only replied with a non-verbal scowl, so he decided to move on.

“Ms. Kahn was found less than six miles from your boss’s country estate outside the city. She had been starved, whipped, chased through the forest barefoot, and finally shot to death in the back with what appears to be an arrow.” He drew a photo out of the manila folder he had brought into the room and tossed it onto the table in front of her. “Gotham County investigators weren’t a hundred percent certain, since the arrows were cut out of her flesh with a hunting knife. And then, her naked body was dragged by scavenging animals to the location where it was found.”

Mrs. Cox blanched at the graphic photo and glanced away. “Many people live in the country. Are you interviewing all of them?” Her brow furrowed. “Anyway, isn’t that outside of your jurisdiction?”

He drew the picture back and returned it to the folder. “I don’t like murderers to roam free on my city streets, no matter where the murder occurred, Mrs. Cox. By the way, what happened to Mr. Cox?”

She smirked. “He died. A heart attack while having sex.”

Not making love, he noted, having sex.

Mrs. Cox paused, gazing at him as if challenging him to probe further. When he didn’t, she stood up and continued, “If there’s nothing else, Inspector, I really must be…”

“Sit,” he said aloud this time. He pulled another photo out of the manila folder and slid it across the table at her.

Mrs. Cox sat down and glanced down at the photo. “It’s a watch.”

“Do you recognize it?”

She looked at him with annoyance. “It’s a Gucci watch.”

“Do you own one?” he asked.

“Is it illegal to own Gucci watches, now?” she retorted, not answering his question.

“No,” he said, pointing at the photo. “This one was found on the wrist of that ex-LexCorp funded chemist turned perfumer ‘Miranda’, who drugged the employees of the Daily Planet in February and who was later found dead in her shop of an apparent suicide. Lex Luthor has already admitted to having a relationship with her several years ago.”

Mrs. Cox looked bored, so Bill pulled out another photo. “This watch was on Dr. Antoinette Baines’s wrist, when her helicopter leaving EPRAD blew up last spring. It also was a silver Gucci watch.” He slid another photo across the table. “This watch was found in the personal effects of Monique Kahn by her sister.” It matched the first watch in appearance. Dr. Baines’s watch was more twisted metal than recognizable. He drew out another photo of a watch. “This one was found in a storage locker belonging to Toni Taylor of the Metro organization, currently serving time at the New Troy’s Women’s Prison for the Westside fires, which lowered the property values allowing Lex Luthor to purchase the land cheaply.”

“Good for Gucci. They must be doing well,” Mrs. Cox said dryly.

“All of these women are known or presumed associates of Lex Luthor,” he answered. “So, I ask again. Do you have a similar watch?”

“You must know I do or you wouldn’t be asking me,” she said.

He pulled out a faxed copy of an invoice he received from a Gucci distributor, thanks to Catherine’s tip. “Here’s a bill to Lex Luthor for the bulk purchase of fifty silver Gucci watches.”

“So, Mr. Luthor is generous. Is that a crime?”

“Do you also know that all of these watches…” He indicated the photos laid out on the table. “— possessed tracking chips?”

She frowned and leaned forward, studying the photos. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, that someone added a chip to all of these watches so that he could know where the watch, and, therefore, the wearer was at any time,” he explained and saw that Mrs. Cox had started rubbing her bare wrist. “Three of those women are dead and one is in jail.”

“I still don’t know what…”

“Where is your watch, Mrs. Cox?”

“I didn’t wear it today,” she snapped. “How do I know that the MPD didn’t put tracking devices into these watches?”

“Because we don’t have that big of a budget,” Bill answered calmly. He gathered up the photos, replaced them into his folder, and pulled out another one. “This photo was taken from the ATM across the street from the Daily Planet the day it was bombed.”

Mrs. Cox glanced down at the photo, her face turning pale.

“See that time stamp there?” He pointed at it. “It corresponds to roughly the exact time our witness saw you entering the building.” He turned the photo so that it was right side up to him. “Nice lunchbox. I never knew you were such a fan of Superman.”

“He did a lot for Metropolis,” she said dryly.

“Isn’t he the greatest?” Bill beamed at her. She didn’t return his smile. With a shrug, he pulled another photo out of the folder. “See this photo. This shows you leaving the Daily Planet building just a little while later.”

“And as you can plainly see, I still have my lunchbox. Thanks for proving my innocence, Inspector,” she replied.

“Uh-huh,” Henderson said, pressing his lips together. “Looks pretty convincing, doesn’t it? Darn coincidental that you, a mere secretary at LexCor…”

“Personal Assistant,” Mrs. Cox corrected.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m Mr. Luthor’s Personal and Senior Administrative Assistant. I am not a secretary,” she repeated.

“You answer his phones? You type up his letters? You schedule his appointments?” Henderson asked, standing up and walking over to the intercom. “You file his correspondence, don’t you?”

“Well, yes…”

“You’re his secretary.” He pushed the button on the intercom. “Jones, could you bring that evidence into the interview room?”

“On it!” a male voice replied.

Henderson sat back down.

“I do much more than that,” Mrs. Cox growled.

Bill laced his hands together and leaned forward. “Such as?”

Mrs. Cox leaned back in her chair. “Anything Mr. Luthor requires.”

He stared at her and he swore his eyebrow rose of its own volition. “Gee, it must be nice to be a billionaire,” he said roughly. He cleared his throat.

She leaned forward, but before she could speak, the door opened and Detective Jones, the same formerly uniformed officer who guarded John Doe at the hospital during Nightfall, entered the room. He set a cassette recorder down on the table and hit play.

“Still. I asked her about Project K and she wouldn’t tell me about it,” Lois Lane’s voice could clearly be heard on the tape.

“No, no, no!” Henderson yelled at his Detective. “Not the recording from our bug in Luthor’s office. The other evidence.”

Detective Jones ran quickly out of the room.

“Oh, darling. Is that all? Mrs. Cox didn’t tell you merely because it’s a surprise for our honeymoon,” Lex Luthor replied.

Henderson went to turn off the tape. “I’m sorry about that.”

Mrs. Cox held up her hand to stop him. “No, it’s okay.”

“She implied that you keep secrets from me,” Lois said on the tape. Her voice sounding as if she were about to cry. “Oh, Lex. Please tell me we aren’t going to have one of those kinds of marriages. My parents kept secrets from one another and it drove them apart.”

“Of course not, darling,” Lex replied.

“Why would Mrs. Cox do that? Why would she try to make me distrust you somehow?” Lane whined.

“B*tch,” Mrs. Cox grumbled.

Henderson had to grant it to Lane. She really knew how to push someone’s buttons. It was a gift that she had in spades and she knew how to use it. Not that he would ever admit to admiring her talent, though. She was too smug for his liking to begin with.

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

Mrs. Cox relaxed back in her chair, a smirk on her lips.

“Oh, please, don’t, Lex. I’m so embarrassed by these jealous feelings. Please don’t mention them to her,” Lane 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.”

Mrs. Cox’s brow creased as she leaned towards the tape recorder. “Why? Why would she…”

“That was probably it, darling. I swear to you, Mrs. Cox means nothing more to me than any other employee,” Luthor 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.”

Mrs. Cox held up her hand. “I’ve heard enough.”

Bill stopped the tape.

“I really should be going,” Mrs. Cox said, standing up. “Mr. Luthor is…”

Jones entered carrying an evidence bag holding a lunchbox with images of flying Superman on it. He set it down on the table. Mrs. Cox stared at the lunchbox and sat back down.

“Is this your lunchbox?” Bill asked. “The one you’re photographed with.”

“I don’t know. It looks like it,” she said. “I lost mine.”

“Oh, don’t you remember dumping it in a trashcan several blocks from the Daily Planet that morning?” he asked, sliding another security camera photo across the table to her. The photo showed her doing just that. “Funny thing about that, though, Mrs. Cox,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Your fingerprints aren’t on this lunch box anywhere.”

“I kept it clean,” she said flatly.

“Oh. I didn’t say there weren’t any fingerprints on it, just none of yours. It had the fingerprints of our witness who fished it out of the trashcan where you threw it away, and it had the fingerprints of one James M. Olsen, employee at the Daily Planet and recently arrested for bombing it. He’s been set free, by the way. It even had the fingerprints of his cousin and roommate James B. Olsen.” He fished another plastic evidence baggy out of his folder and tossed it onto the table. “The man who has a receipt for the purchase of said lunchbox.” Bill picked up the lunchbox and held it up so she could see the name etched on the bottom of the box. “Is there some reason you have Mr. Olsen’s name on your lunchbox?”

“Oh, sir?” Jones said, before Mrs. Cox could reply.

“Yes, Detective, what is it?” Bill said slowly, facing his subordinate, who knew he was just playing along with the script.

Jones cleared his throat. “We found Mrs. Cox’s watch during our search of her apartment. It also had a tracking beacon in it.”

“Oh, that’s right. This is for you as well.” Bill handed her a folded piece of paper.

“What’s this?” she said, unfolding the paper. “A warrant for my arrest? I have done nothing wrong!”

Bill snatched that paper away. “My bad. I meant to hand you this one, first.” He handed her another piece of paper.

“A warrant to search my apartment?”

“Just routine,” he murmured.

“What’s going on here?” she roared.

“Since the cat’s out of the bag… Mrs. Elizabeth Cox, you’re under arrest for the bombing of the Daily Planet building and the murder of the two Daily Planet employees killed in the blast. You have the right to remain silent…”

“I need to call Lex,” she said, rushing towards the door and knocking Henderson’s file folder to the floor. The photographs he had shown her flew across the room, littering the floor.

Detective Jones caught her arm.

“Who do you think told us we should talk to you, Mrs. Cox?” Bill asked, standing up. “You have the right to an attorney…”

She stopped fighting Jones. “What?”

“The right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one…”

Mrs. Cox waved for him to stop. “I know my Miranda Rights. What do you mean Lex told you to talk to me?”

“When we stopped by Lex Tower this morning looking for you, assuming wrongly that you’d already be there, we were told we could find you at your apartment. Actually, I believe his exact words were…” Bill scoffed, “‘I could see her stopping the wedding at ‘just cause’. Wasn’t that it, Jones?”

“That sounds familiar,” replied the younger officer.

Maybe, someday, he would let Mrs. Cox know that it was a LexCorp security guard, just about to leave his shift, who had said that, not Mr. Luthor himself.

“I don’t believe you,” Mrs. Cox said, raising her chin in defiance.

“That’s your right. Just as it’s your right to have an attorney provided to you if your wealthy boyfriend won’t lend you his. It’s probably for the best anyway to have your own lawyer, anyway, because Sheldon Bender won’t have your best interests at heart, since you aren’t actually the one paying his fees,” Bill suggested. “It’s his job to keep Lex Luthor out of jail, Mrs. Cox. If he had to choose a side, whom would he choose? You can decide at any time to exercise these rights, even before we question you, should you wish.”

“You’re already questioned me!” she screamed.

“Yes, but we aren’t required to read you your Miranda Rights until we actually charge you with a crime, Mrs. Cox,” Bill explained. “It isn’t as if you’ve told us anything we haven’t already known the answers to. Nor do you have to answer any questions or issue any statements. Now, do you understand each of these rights as I have explained them to you?” he asked.

Mrs. Cox scowled at him, again.

“Oh, right. You already said that you did. Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?” Bill asked. “Please remember that if you work with us, instead of fight us, then it will be less likely that anyone will be able to flee the country with his young bride, leaving you to rot in a jail cell as his new scapegoat. You’re a smart woman, Mrs. Cox. You know we’re not after some lowly secretary. We’re after The Boss.”

She didn’t say anything as Detective Jones attached handcuffs to her wrists behind her back. Her eyes didn’t catch Henderson’s as Jones patted her down, but remained focused on the floor, now littered by photographs from his file. Bill didn’t know if it was embarrassment at her circumstances that kept her mute, or if she was actually considering his request. Finally, her gaze swept past him and over to the tape recorder still sitting on the interview table.

Detective Jones shook his head at Henderson once he was done searching her. He hadn’t found any weapons on her. Jones took hold of her elbow and waited for instruction.

“Well, Mrs. Cox? Are you ready to tell us what you really do for Mr. Luthor and about the billions he’s earned that we don’t know about, or do you want proceed to booking?” Bill asked. They had a case against Luthor without her testimony, but he knew that with it they would have an even better one.

She gave him such a cold stare that, for the longest second, he began to believe that she would continue to do anything for her boss, even though Henderson had tried to prove to her that Luthor wouldn’t reciprocate.

“Jones, have those agents from the FBI arrived yet?” Bill asked. “They had said that they wanted a word with Mrs. Cox as well, when we informed them what we discovered about her boss.”

“They hadn’t arrived yet, last I heard, sir. Should I go double check?” Jones replied.

“No, no. I’m sure they’ll make their presence known, Jones. They always do.”

Mrs. Cox’s eyes turned menacing, and yet the smallest of smiles crept up the side of her mouth. “What do you want to know, Inspector?”

Henderson held out a hand towards the chair she had just recently vacated. “Out of curiosity, what’s this Project K you wouldn’t tell Ms. Lane about?”

Detective Jones led Mrs. Cox back to her seat, where he switched her handcuffs to lock in front of her.

She leaned back in her chair, rested her hands in her lap, and grinned at Henderson. “Oh, I believe I’ll save that golden nugget for Lex’s trial. What else?”

***End of Part 176***

Part 177

Comments

“Roman Holiday” is a 1953 romantic comedy directed by William Wyler. The film starred Audrey Hepburn as a Royal Princess visiting Rome and the Gregory Peck as a newspaper reporter who shows her the city all the while trying to get the story of a lifetime.

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