Detectives Pat Sheehan and Gina Monroe looked around the worn storage building. City records showed that the building had been condemned over a year before and had been scheduled for demolition and through a paper work snafu had managed to stay standing. They noted the beaten down weeds in front of the front door, the relatively fresh tire tracks around back. The tracks appeared to belong to an old car with narrow tires. A car from the late thirties, early forties, maybe. Monroe called in for a search warrant.
Sheehan tried the door. It was locked and the lock looked fairly new but it was also cheap. He made quick work of it. He carefully opened the door and peered in. There was no one in the office/sitting room. He pulled out his service pistol and pushed the door open. Monroe was behind him, her own pistol out.
“Police! Come out with your hands over your heads!” Sheehan called out. No answer. He stepped into the room, motioning for his partner to check out one of the doors. She jerked open the closet door and checked behind the clothes. Nothing except the thirties’ style suits and overcoats, along with one sequined dress.
“The reports said the woman with Capone was wearing a gold sequined dress last night, didn’t they?” Monroe asked her partner.
“Yep,” Sheehan agreed.
Monroe pulled out the dress. “How much you want to bet this is it?”
“Let’s check out the back room,” Sheehan said, nodding to the other door.
This time, Monroe took point, opening the door fast as her partner covered her. Again, there was no one there. But Monroe’s jaw dropped at what she saw. A mad scientist’s lab straight out of a fifties science fiction movie. Monroe stepped closer to the large vat filled with blue goo and something that almost looked like a human body. “Holy mother of God,” Monroe murmured.
Sheehan pulled his radio out from beneath his jacket. “Dispatch, this is unit twenty-five. We need the lab boys out to 1500 Old North Road. And some backup would be nice.” He turned to his partner. “Just in case they come back.”
“Let’s wait outside,” Monroe suggested. “This place gives me the creeps.”
0 0 0
Lupe Leocadio-Escuderio smiled toothily at the youngster manning the ticket booth at the Rosebud Cineplex. The kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen and was quaking in his boots at the sight of the three panda cars, and the SWAT team van parked in the truck zone in front of the theater. The kid didn’t know about the teams already stationed at the back of the building, covering the emergency exits.
The kid had already identified John Dillinger from one of the bank holdup photos. “He’s been here everyday for the past four days,” the kid said. “
“You’re sure he’s here?” Leocadio asked. The kid nodded, staring at the Kevlar vested and helmeted officer. “How many people are in the building?” she asked.
“About a dozen customers. It’s been a slow week. Then there’s Joey, he’s the projectionist, and Lindsey at the counter. And me, of course.”
Leocadio nodded and walked over to the SWAT team van. “About fifteen people in the building, three of them employees. We have to assume Dillinger is armed and dangerous,” she told them before waving her people into the building. One of the probies, Flint, kept looking up in the sky. “If the Blue Boy Scout was going to be here to help, he’d already be here,” she told him.
“Do you think he’s okay?” Flint asked.
“For somebody’s who’s not a cop, yeah,” Leocadio said with a chuckle.
“No, I mean, nobody’s seen him since yesterday and there’s a rumor that Capone had something that could hurt him.”
Leocadio shrugged. “We’re talkin’ about Superman, here. I don’t know anything that could hurt him, do you?”
“You’re probably right,” Flint admitted. “But it’d be nice to know where he is.”
“He’ll show up,” Leocadio promised. “In the meantime, we have a killer to catch.” She gave him a push through the doors, into the building. With or without Superman’s help, they had a job to do.
0 0 0
“Mister Kent, I don’t believe you understand the seriousness of your condition,” Doctor Bryant was saying.
“I really don’t want to be here,” Clark repeated more than a little petulantly. “I just want to go home. I’ll be okay.” He was betrayed by the heart monitor as his pulse jumped.
“Clark, we’ve been through this before,” Lois said, almost yelling at him. He could be so stubborn sometimes. She knew he was feeling a little better. His fever had broken earlier and the refrigeration blanket was now gone. She’d given him his glasses, the ones he’d lost at the club and he almost looked normal now.
“You are not going to go home and miraculously be okay,” she told him in her most commanding voice, the tone that usually got him to cooperate even if he didn’t really want to. “It doesn’t work that way. You are going to stay here and get better!”
“Lo-is,” Clark hissed at her. “You don’t understand.”
“You keep telling me that, but you won’t explain it so I can understand,” she told him angrily.
“Mister Kent, if you’re worried Capone and his people are going to find you here,” Bryant began calmly, “you should know there’s been a police guard outside the ICU ever since the police got confirmation of your identity.”
Clark shook his head. “That’s not it.”
Bryant sighed. “Can I convince you to stay overnight so we can do some more lab tests?”
“No more tests,” Clark said, lips pulled thin. Lois could see the tension in his jaw. Despite the bandages, he was clenching his fists.
Bryant gave him a curious, speculative look. “What if the tests were done by an outside lab? A number instead of a name?”
“You can do that?” Clark asked. The fear was still in his voice, but tempered with a touch of hope. He unclenched his hands, splaying out his fingers as if to stretch them, trying to force himself to relax.
“I know some people over at STAR Labs and Bernie Klein’s a good guy. So yes, I can do that,” Bryant assured him. “Provided you stay and cooperate with us. You can always change your mind later.”
Clark nodded but he didn’t look happy about it. Lois had the feeling something important had just happened but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what or why.
“So, since I’m supposed to stay in bed and rest, what am I allowed to do?” Clark asked. There was still a little boy petulance in his voice and expression.
Bryant grinned. “I recommend sleep, mostly. We can’t allow TVs, radios, or computers, in the ICU. They interfere with the equipment. And I don’t recommend you reading any newspapers for a few days at least. No sense getting upset about things you can’t do anything about. However we’re reasonably confident that given time and rest, you will make a complete recovery.”
“So, how long do you think that’ll take?” Clark asked.
“It depends on how fast you heal. For you, it may be a couple weeks, for somebody else, maybe several months. And just so you know, I have you scheduled for another CAT scan this afternoon to make sure we got all the shrapnel out of your chest,” Bryant said. “Also, hospitals are no places for heroes. If you have pain, let the nurse know and we’ll take care of it. Pain is not a good thing. It’s a sign that there’s something wrong. You’ve had major surgery and your heart has been damaged and I have no idea what sort of long term issues we can expect from the green crystals that were in the bullets. By the way, we’ve sent those over to STAR Labs for analysis.”
“Have you got anything back on them, yet?” Lois asked.
“They confirmed it was kryptonite,” Bryant told her. “The stuff that may or may not be able to hurt Superman?”
Clark was chewing on the inside of his lip, a habit that Lois had noticed he fell back on when he was contemplating saying something he really didn’t want to. “We have reason to believe that kryptonite could be fatal to him,” Clark said softly. “I’m not a scientist. I can’t tell you how or why, just that it is.”
Again, Lois had the feeling she was missing something. All the pieces were there, she just couldn’t quite see the big picture that would make it all make sense.
“Doctor, just out of curiosity, who ordered the police guard?” Clark asked.
“A cop named Henderson,” Bryant told him. “Bill Henderson? I gather he’s a friend of yours.” He chuckled and walked out of the room.
Clark laid back on the bed pillows and closed his eyes, not bothering to take off his glasses.
“Clark?” Lois asked.
“Yeah?” He didn’t open his eyes.
“How about I go to your apartment and bring back some books for you?”
“Thanks,” he said. She turned to leave. “Lois?”
She stopped and looked back at him. He was watching her again, eyes dark behind his glasses. He looked worried and tired, face drawn and pale. He was picking at the bed sheet.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so… difficult?” he said. “It’s just that I’ve never really been hurt or sick, at least not bad enough to end up in a hospital. I, ah…”
“It’s okay, Clark,” she assured him. “Everybody acts a little weird when they’re scared. And this is a pretty scary place.” She started for the door again. “I’ll be back in a little bit. So try and get some rest. And no trying to get in touch with Superman to get you out of here, either,” she joked.
He gave her an odd not quite worried look before saying: “Not much chance of that happening, is there?”
