On the first Saturday of October, Clark and Bobbie met beside Lois’ grave. “You mind if I go first?” he asked.
“Not at all. Take your time.”
He knelt and thought about Lois, how much he missed her, how much he wished she were still around to challenge him, to smile at him, to partner with him, to break into buildings beside him, to need his help and his love. There was still a void in his heart, a Lois-shaped part of his life she couldn’t fill.
But he wasn’t alone anymore. He had good friends, like Perry and Jimmy and Ellen and Lucy, and he still had his parents.
And now Bobbie was his friend.
He silently told Lois good-bye for now, then stood. He let out a deep sigh and turned to Bobbie. “Thank you. Shall we visit Glen now?”
She almost smiled, then nodded. “Come on. And when we get through, it’s my day to buy at Starways.”
He watched her kneel and touch the foot of Glen’s grave. She bowed her head, but unlike the first few times he’d watched over her, she didn’t shudder or jerk in place or weep silently. Bobbie obviously still missed Glen, but she seemed to have reached the other side of her grief, the place where she’d started looking up and around again.
It was similar to the place he thought he’d reached.
After a moment, she stood and put her hands in her pockets, then turned and nodded to him. As they walked away from Glen’s grave, they met Lucy as she laid a bouquet at Lois’ headstone.
“Lucy!” Clark called out. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too, Clark. You’re looking sharp today.” She peered past his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Oh! I’m sorry. Bobbie, this is Lucy Lane, Lois’ younger sister. Lucy, this is Detective Roberta Tracey.”
The two women shook hands. “Hi, Lucy. Please call me Bobbie. Clark’s told me a lot about you.”
Lucy’s eyebrow rose. “Really?” Bobbie nodded back. “Good stuff, I hope,” added Lucy.
Bobbie smiled and release Lucy’s hand. “Oh, sure, nothing but good stuff, at least so far. Congratulations on your good grades. We need more honest paralegals. Someone has to keep all those attorneys on the straight and narrow. Hey, how’s your mom doing?”
“Mom?” Lucy eyed Clark for a moment. “She’s, uh, she’s okay. She changed jobs last month – now she’s a nurse’s training supervisor at Metro Medical. Seems to like it so far.” She glanced at Clark. “Could I talk to you privately for a minute?”
Bobbie smiled easily. “No problem, Lucy. You two chat away, take all the time you need. It’s really nice to finally meet you. I’ll go wait for you at Starways, Clark.”
Lucy watched her stride away. “A detective, Clark? Are you in some kind of legal trouble?”
“No, of course—”
“Because I know a couple of good lawyers. I mean, she seems nice and all that, but I bet she’s armed and can shoot the pips out of an ace at twenty—”
“Lucy! Cut that out!”
Lucy giggled and tapped him on the chest with her fist. “Sorry, Clark, but you’re the closest thing I have to a big brother, and I have to be able to tease you somehow.”
He sighed dramatically, then smiled. “Okay, I’ll give you the teasing thing. But you’ve just about used up your quota for the week.”
They chuckled together. “She seems nice, Clark. Really. How long have you known her?”
“Oh – about five, maybe six months.”
Lucy frowned slightly. “That’s a long time for her to know that much about Mom and me and us know nothing about her.”
He wanted to be irritated, but instead he felt chagrined. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been hiding her on purpose.”
“How did you two meet?”
He frowned at her. “What is this, the third degree? Or a cross-examination?”
She grinned and punched him in the shoulder. “Neither one, you big ninny! But I want to know what’s happening in your life, especially since you haven’t mentioned her to me or to Mom. What are you hiding?”
“Nothing! Honest, Lucy, we met right here.”
Lucy’s smile faded. “You – you mean you met right here at Lois’ grave? What on earth was she doing here?”
He sighed for real. “Bill Henderson sent her. It’s a toss-up as to whether he wanted her to keep me safe or me to keep her safe.”
“Keep her safe?”
“Yes.” He waved one hand toward Glen’s grave. “Her partner is buried over there. She thinks it was her fault that he’s dead, and it’s not true. She’s not responsible.”
“Ah, I see. So what you have in common is your excessive and unjustified guilt, your shared sense of loss, and your martyr complexes.”
“Lucy—”
“Come on, Clark! I know who to blame for Lois! It was—”
“Lucy, please, don’t start in on Superman again.”
She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was much smaller. “I was kinda hoping you’d forgotten about that.”
“Let me see, you said you hated Superman with everything you had within you, you hoped he never slept peacefully again for the rest of his life, that if he’d been there at the attorney’s office that day you would’ve tried to kill him—”
“I know, I know!” She waved her hands. “I’m sorry I said all of that and more. My only defense is that I was in the anger stage of grief because my sister had just died.”
“At the hands of Superman.”
“No.” She looked at her feet for a long moment before continuing. “That Nigel guy, the British secret agent, Lex Luthor’s pet killer, was responsible. I’m not sorry he’s dead. And Jason Mazik was responsible, too. I’m glad he got life without parole. Superman just did what Lois asked him to do.” She lifted her eyes to him. “I still don’t think it was a particularly smart thing to do, but I know how Lois was. If she had an idea about doing something, you couldn’t stop her with anything less than a tank.”
Clark grinned slightly. “That’s true.”
“And you shouldn’t blame yourself either, Clark. You didn’t kill her. Superman didn’t kill her. The bad guys did.” He ducked his head until she reached out and lifted his chin with two fingers. “Okay, big guy?”
“Okay, yeah.”
“You believe me?”
He looked into her eyes. “I’m trying to.”
“Good.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s all any sister-type girl can ask for.” She stepped back and made shooing motions. “Now go and have coffee with your detective.”
He grinned and started walking. “She’s not my detective!”
“Sure, Clark, sure. Come by for dinner one night this week. I want you to meet my new boyfriend. Wednesday at seven would be good. And bring Bobbie. Mom will want to meet her.”
He stopped and rolled his eyes at her. “Lucy—”
“Come on, Clark! I want to get to know her better. She seems nice.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about what you think of her. I just hope this boyfriend of yours is a good guy.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, you’ll like Ryan. He has a steady job and a good future. He’s an electrician.”
“Really?”
“Really. And he gets paid regularly.”
“That's always a big plus.” He hesitated, then said, “At least you know he can always light up your life.”
He turned and escaped to the coffee shop before she could throw something at him. Her hearty laugh, though, did pursue him all the way to the door.
*****
As Clark walked into the shop, Kendra, their regular waitress, called him over to the register. “Mr. Kent, Detective Tracey asked me to tell you that she got a call on her cell phone about the time she came in and had to go to work and that she’ll meet you here next week.”
He was surprised at the depth of his disappointment, but he tried to hide it. “I see. Thank you for delivering the message, Kendra.”
The girl leaned closer and lowered her voice. “For what it’s worth, Mr. Kent, she was totally pi – uh, she was really mad about having to leave. Something about a dead body not far from here.”
A dead body? His eyes widened. “Thank you.”
Maybe he could scrape up a story and salvage the day.
It didn’t occur to him until much later that it was the first time he’d chased a story lead entirely on his own since before Lois’ funeral.
*****
As he exited the building, he thought it might be advantageous if Superman showed up instead of Clark Kent. So he ducked into an alley to change, then rose above the rooftops to look for a nearby congregation of police.
Then he wondered if “congregation” were the correct term for such a gathering. He’d have to look it up. He knew that a group of baboons was a “troop,” a group of buffalo was an “obstinacy,” a gathering of cheetahs was a “coalition,” and multiple pandas were an “embarrassment,” but police officers?
Maybe they were like plovers. A rare gathering of plovers was a “congregation.”
He spotted Bill Henderson getting out of his car in front of a run-down apartment building. He landed a few yards from him and called out, “Inspector Henderson!”
Bill’s head snapped around and he registered surprise. “Superman! What are you doing here?”
“I saw the police activity and decided to offer my assistance. Anything I can do?”
“Don’t know yet. We’re checking out a body in this building. Come on in with me but don’t touch anything.”
He resisted the urge to respond flippantly and followed Bill into the foyer. “What do you know about the victim, Inspector?”
“He was found face down in a pool of blood in the basement laundry room. Gunshot wound under his chin. Officer on the scene thinks he bled out after taking the bullet.”
Superman nodded. Then he looked up and saw Bobbie Tracey interviewing someone and taking notes. He almost lifted his hand and called out a greeting to her, then realized how stupid that would be, since she’d never met Superman before. So he simply smoothed his hair with his upraised hand.
No one seemed to notice his awkward gesture. Bill led him down the stairs to the basement laundry room as the detectives tried to keep their interview subjects on track and deflect their attention from the costumed hero.
“There he is. Please stay here outside the doorway. We’re still gathering evidence.”
Superman nodded to Bill and crossed his arms. He listened to the conversation and learned that no weapon had been found, that the preliminary estimate was that the victim had been dead for anywhere from four to twelve hours, that neither his wallet or watch was missing, and so far no one in the building had admitted to hearing or seeing anything out of the ordinary. He watched the two detectives take notes and snap pictures, and he could tell they had just started examining the body.
The victim looked to be slightly less than six feet tall and gaunt to the point of being undernourished. He had stringy brown hair and an uneven ratty beard. Superman X-rayed the man’s left arm, which was sprawled to the side and covered with a heavy jacket, and saw the scars of heavy intravenous drug use inside the man’s elbow.
“Inspector?”
“Yes, Superman?”
“Have you checked him for track marks?”
“Can’t get the jacket sleeves up far enough without moving the body, and we can’t move the body until the ME gives the okay. Why, did you take a look?”
He nodded. “It appears that your victim was a long-term intravenous drug user. Some of the tracks on his left arm are pretty fresh. His body is hiding his right arm, so I can’t see it clearly enough to check for tracks.”
Bill nodded. “Might not make a difference if he was right-handed. You see anything else that might help us?”
He frowned and swept the body with his special vision. “There’s a bullet lodged in his head behind his left eye. It looks like a small caliber round, maybe a twenty-two or a twenty-five. It appears to have entered under his chin and traveled up into his head. And there’s a small-caliber semi-auto pistol in his right hand, trapped under his body.”
Henderson looked at one of the detectives. “You sure you guys haven’t moved him yet?”
The man shook his head. “No way. The uniform who found him checked his left wrist for a pulse, but that’s it. Nobody’s touched him since then. Been waiting for the medical examiner.”
Henderson nodded and turned back to the hero. “You think it’s a suicide, Superman?”
Superman shrugged. “Not my call, but it wouldn’t surprise me, given the position of the pistol, the angle of the wound, the bullet’s location, and the way the body is arranged.”
Henderson grunted almost angrily. “I hate suicides. I’d much rather hunt down a killer than tell some family that Daddy or Bubba or Sonny offed himself. I think it’s worse than telling them that their loved one is dead.”
The scene of someone telling his parents that he’d killed himself suddenly flashed across Superman’s brain. He leaned against the doorpost and wondered how he could have been so selfish and inconsiderate to even consider committing suicide, knowing what it would do to his parents.
And to Perry.
And to Lucy and Ellen.
And to Jimmy.
And – and now to Bobbie.
Who was suddenly standing beside him. She extended her hand towards him but didn’t touch him. “Hey. Um, Superman? Are you – are you okay?”
He forced himself to stand upright. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine. It’s just—” He gestured to the body on the floor.
She frowned and pulled her hand back. “You’ve seen stiffs before, haven’t you?”
“Yes. But suicides – they’re different. And – I don’t know, it just hit me how hard it will be for his family and friends.”
“Yeah. Hard.”
The odd tone in her voice drew his gaze, but she just nodded awkwardly and turned away from him to speak to her boss. “Hey, Bill, I got an ID and address for the victim. Name’s Randall Young, lives on the – he had a place on the third floor of this building, apartment thirty-two-B. Manager has the spare key and is more than willing to let us in.”
In an overly casual way, Bill asked, “You want to look it over, Detective Tracey?”
Bobbie hesitated, then seemed to force herself to match her boss’s demeanor. Superman could see that her deliberate nonchalance didn't fool Bill, either. “Sure. I’ll take a uniform up with me.”
Bill looked around. “Better yet, take May Ling. She can take any pictures you might need.”
Bobbie nodded. “Okay. May, you ready?”
The tiny Asian woman nodded. “I got all the shots I need here.”
“Let’s go.”
Superman stepped back to allow the two women to pass him. As he did, Bobbie glanced at him with a slight frown on her face, but said nothing.
He leaned into the laundry room. “Inspector, unless there’s something else I can do, I’ll be on my way.”
“Thanks, Superman. You’ve helped a lot, saved us maybe a couple of hours here. I hope you don’t find any more bodies today.”
Superman paused and looked down at Randall Young’s mortal remains. “I hope the same for you, Inspector.”
*****
Bobbie led May up the stairs to Young’s apartment. The brief climb allowed her to get control over her reaction to the suicide victim.
This was her first suicide investigation as a detective, the first since Glen’s death. She’d been called to three others as a uniformed patrol officer, but she hadn’t gone much past recording the facts for the investigators and telling rubberneckers to “move along, folks, nothing to see here, move along, please move along.” It was the first time she’d dug into the background of someone who’d taken his own life.
Bobbie nodded at the uniformed officer guarding the apartment door and pushed it open. She scanned the room, then stepped aside and said, “You first, May.”
The older woman nodded and lifted her camera. “Anything you want me to focus on?”
“Don’t know yet. We’ll want a couple of shots in the front room, at least one each in the kitchen and bathroom, assuming nothing’s weird there, and a couple in the bedroom. Let me know if you find a note.”
“Will do.” May moved into the room and touched off her camera twice, then moved to the tiny kitchenette. Bobbie watched her flash unit light up the grimy cabinets and the sink full of dirty dishes.
May nodded to herself, then stepped to the bathroom. From her vantage point, Bobbie couldn’t see anything that indicated violence or that another person had lived there.
May stopped in the doorway of the bedroom and changed film canisters. “I can’t wait till we go digital,” she muttered. “As soon as the resolution gets high enough and the prices low enough, I won’t touch another roll of film again.”
Bobbie grunted. “See anything yet?”
The camera flashed again, from the bedroom door. “Not yet – wait.” May took one step into the room and took a shot of what Bobbie thought was the pillow on the bed.
“Looks like a note of some kind, Detective. You want to come bag it?”
“You got a shot of it where it sits now?”
“In the can.”
Bobbie stepped closer as she donned latex gloves. She picked up the piece of paper and read it slowly, then her breath caught in her throat and she almost lost her balance.
“Bobbie!”
“Wh-what?”
“You’re awfully pale. You okay?”
Bobbie’s mouth moved but nothing came out. May grabbed her upper arm and steadied her. “Come on, Bobbie, hold it together. This is evidence in Randall Young’s death, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Bobbie took a breath and licked her lips. “Superman was right about this guy whacking himself.”
“Then we need to get this to Bill. You have an evidence bag, don’t you?”
Bobbie reached into her jacket and pulled out a thin plastic bag. “Got it. Let’s go put a big black bow on this case.”
*****
The story Clark filed later that day was on page three of the Sunday metro section, but it was the first byline he’d garnered without Perry assigning him the story since before Lois had died. The thought that he’d taken a material step back to the land of the living that day didn’t cross his mind until weeks later.
Clark was sorry that Randall Young had taken his own life, sorry that his family would never see him again, sorry that someone so young had run out of hope so completely and permanently. But the next morning, as he checked out the Sunday paper, he felt a tiny rush of something almost indefinably pleasant as he looked at his name above the article. He had a little bounce in his step when he arrived at work on Monday.
He didn’t know that Perry had watched him come in and had nodded in approval. Or that Perry would share this tiny step forward with Jonathan and Martha on the phone before he left the office that evening.
Or that Perry would also relate this item to Bill Henderson in the furtherance of their benign conspiracy.
*****
Clark changed out of his professional clothes that Monday evening and thought about calling Jimmy to see if he was free. Then he remembered that he still hadn’t talked to Bobbie about dinner with the Lanes on Wednesday evening, so he picked up his phone to dial her number.
Before he punched in the fourth digit, someone knocked at his front door. A frown creased his face – that had sounded like Bobbie’s knock. But she couldn’t be there. He’d just tried to call her.
He hung up the phone and set a mental reminder to call Bobbie about dinner with the Lanes, then walked to the front door.
Bobbie was standing there, her hands in her jacket pockets and her head bent forward. She glanced up and said, “Hi.”
Surprised, all Clark could manage was “Hi yourself.” After a moment he realized that she surely hadn’t come over to stand in his doorway, so he backed up a step. “Care to come in?”
She took two long steps and stopped at the head of the stairs leading down to his living area. She glanced around the room and said, “Pretty tidy for a bachelor pad.”
“I try to keep it clean. My dad says that any animal can live in filth, but only humans could choose to live in cleanliness.”
She nodded. “Sounds like something Glen might have said. Or my dad.”
He stood beside her for a long moment, watching her look around the apartment, then said, “I’m sorry, my manners must have run away to hide. Would you like to sit down?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, thanks.”
She perched on the front edge of the couch as close to the front door as she could get. Clark couldn’t figure out what was bothering her. “Would you like something to drink? I have tea, several kinds of soft drinks, ice water—”
“No.” She apparently realized how sharp her tone was, because she looked at him and spoke softly. “I’m sorry. No, I don’t need anything to drink, but thank you.”
He slowly moved to the far end of the couch and sat down. “Bobbie, is something wrong?”
“Uh – no. Yes. Maybe.” She fell back and covered her face with her hands. “I really don’t know.”
He clasped his hands together and put them in his lap. “Why don’t you try to tell me about it?”
Her hands came down slowly. She didn’t look at Clark. “Uh – okay. It – it’s about the story you wrote. About Randall Young. The suicide on Saturday, the thing that took me away from Starways.”
“What about it?”
She dropped her hands and filled her lungs. “Bill had me make the call to his family Saturday afternoon. They live in some little town in Illinois, just a wide spot in the road, like you wrote in your story, and right now I don’t remember the name of the town. I got a local sheriff’s deputy to go to his parents’ house and call me when he arrived, and I got on the phone with the dad and told him what had happened to his son. I could – I could hear him trying not to cry when he called his wife to the phone and I had to go through the whole thing all over again with her.”
She stopped for a moment and fluttered her hands, then continued. “We found a note on his bed – that wasn’t in the story, you didn’t know about it, probably just as well you didn’t – anyway, the note said he was a junkie, broke, friendless, sick, and he was sure his family didn’t want him back, that all he could do was this one last favor to them. The poor guy was totally out of hope.” She looked at Clark with liquid eyes. “He was wrong. So very wrong. I could tell, even over the phone, even though I’d never met them. They still loved him, would have taken him back in a heartbeat, would’ve done anything they could to help him get straight.” She stopped and wiped her cheeks. “But he didn’t give them the chance.”
Clark nodded but didn’t say anything. He scooted a little closer to Bobbie.
“It – it made me realize how selfish I’d been. About Glen, I mean. If I’d managed to kill myself – I don’t know what my mother would have done. And his parents, too. They always acted like I was already their daughter.” She stopped and shuddered. “Just thinking about all of them coming to my funeral – man, it just creeps me out.” She shook her head. “It would have been so wrong to do that to them.”
He slowly reached out and took her hands in his. “I know,” he almost whispered. “I feel the same way.”
She lifted a surprised face to him. “You do?”
He nodded. “I don’t know whether or not you heard what Bill said to Superman about hating to tell a family that one member had chosen suicide as a solution to the problems of life.”
She licked her lips and looked away but didn’t move her hands. “Yeah. I heard that.”
“I reacted just about the way you did when I heard that. It hit me how devastated my family and friends would be, how cheated they’d feel, and that the only thing killing myself would accomplish would be to unload my pain onto all of them. They’d all feel as if they’d failed me, that if they’d tried just a little harder I wouldn’t be dead.” He stopped to wipe his own cheeks, then looked at his damp fingers.
He hadn’t realized he’d started weeping.
After a long moment, he felt Bobbie’s fingertips brushing away the moisture on his face. Her hand stopped and she looked deep into his eyes, then pulled back and stood. “I should go now. Thanks for letting me dump all this on you. I – I’m sorry if I hurt you in any way.”
He stood also but didn’t reach for her. “Don’t be. You didn’t do anything wrong and you didn’t cause any hurt. And I’m glad I could help, even just a little bit.”
She flashed him a shy smile. “You did more than you know. If nothing else, at least I know I’m not the only self-centered weirdo in town.”
He chuckled. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”
She smiled brighter and pushed a strand of hair back over her ear. “I’m glad I could help. Hey, you know, I – I need to get going. Thanks again for your time.”
She turned to go and he said, “Bobbie? You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
She stopped and said over her shoulder, “I think it would be best if I left. I kinda want to stay a little too much right now.”
He sighed. “I think I understand. I’ll see you Wednesday about six-thirty, okay?”
She turned and frowned at him. “You will? Why?”
He grinned impishly at her. “Lucy invited both of us to dinner Wednesday night. She wants me to meet her new boyfriend, and she probably wants you there to be a buffer for her so I don’t get too big brother-ish with him.”
“Huh.” Bobbie tilted her head in thought for a long moment, then her face cleared and she nodded. “Okay. I’ll meet you here if that’s okay with you. We can ride together since I don’t know the address.”
“It’s a date,” he chirped.
She frowned again and Clark mentally slapped himself. “I’m sorry. That just slipped out. It doesn’t have to be a date, it’s just two friends having dinner with some other friends.”
She shrugged. “I don’t mind. You can think of it like that.” She reached out and pulled the door open, then gave him a shy smile. “But I’m telling Bill that we’ve got a date. It’ll get him off my back for a little while.”
Bobbie was through the door before Clark could respond.
Huh. That was interesting. It was almost as if Bobbie liked the thought of going on a date with him.
Maybe he liked the idea of it being an actual date too.
*****
Bobbie walked to her car, thinking unfamiliar thoughts.
The sense of déjà vu she’d felt at the crime scene when she’d looked at a shaky Superman returned with even more force. He’d said many of the same things that Clark had said. And he’d said them with a similar intensity.
How did Clark know what Bill had said to Superman? Were they that close? There was nothing in Clark’s article that hinted that he and Superman had talked about Randall Young, and Bill usually didn’t say things like that to reporters, even those he trusted. Those thoughts showed that Bill was human after all under that crusty exterior, but those thoughts were also very personal, very private, and not intended for public consumption.
And something about Clark’s body language just now made her think of Superman, too. She wasn’t sure what it was, or why the association popped up in her mind, but it did. She’d have to think about it, mull it over, cogitate on it, try to solidify whatever link was in her mind and determine if it was something real or if she was just imagining things.
Maybe—
No.
Couldn’t be.
Could it?
No way. Not possible.
Or was it?
Wouldn’t it be weird if Clark really was Superman? Or maybe if Superman was really Clark?
No. Crazy to even think it. Too freaky.
She wasn’t sure whether she hoped it was true or hoped it wasn’t.
