Monroe watched as the forensics techs finished their work. They had confirmed there were traces of blood on the dress. Further tests would determine whose blood it was. The medical examiner’s office had sent a van to pick up the vat with the ‘body’ in it. The M.E.s people were waiting for the site team to release the ‘body.’
Suddenly, the ‘body’ sat up, blue goo sliding off him to reveal a small man with a smooth, boyish face and brown hair. “What the devil’s going on here? Who are you people?”
“I should ask the same thing of you,” Monroe said. The technicians had stopped their work, packing away their equipment. “I’m Detective Monroe, Metropolis Police. And you are?”
“George Nelson,” the man said. “Why am I in this goo? What’s going on here?”
Monroe shrugged. “Let’s get Mister Nelson here some clothes before we take him down to headquarters,” she instructed.
“Why are you taking me down to headquarters?”
“Routine questioning,” Sheehan said, walking in. “Oh, and welcome to 1994, Mister Gillis. And in case you didn’t know, there’s still no statute of limitations on murder.”
0 0 0
Dillinger’s first and only demand was for a lawyer. He refused to talk to anyone any further.
Leocadio muttered imprecations under her breath in Spanish as she watched the lawyer in the expensive suit walk in and demand to speak with John Dillinger. She personally led the way to the small interrogation room where Dillinger was being held.
“How can Dillinger afford somebody out of Crane, Steele, and Associates?” Wolfe asked her as they waited outside for the lawyer to finish. She shook her head.
“Probably getting the money from the same place Capone did for his bribes,” Leocadio pointed out. “There wasn’t a hundred grand in all the bank jobs they pulled all together. If Luthor wasn’t dead, I’d be seriously looking at that bastard.”
“We have complaints about Capone from at least ten different people,” Wolfe told her. “And that includes four union officials.”
“And have you noticed all the people on the list had issues with Luthor or LuthorCorp before the breakup?”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Wolfe told her. “The NIA’s looking into some stuff and they’ve promised to share their findings, so has the FBI.”
Leocadio raised an eyebrow at him. “The Feds are letting us handle four bank robberies?”
Wolfe shrugged. “Go figure.”
“The Feds don’t just hand us cases. Not high profile ones like this,” Leocadio told him with a grimace. “If Kent wasn’t in the hospital, I’d ask him and Lane to see what they come up with.”
“Hey, he’s the first time one of my murder cases turned into ‘assault with a deadly weapon’ instead of the other way around,” Wolfe told her. “I’m waiting for his doctor to give permission for me to question him. The DA’s ordered protection for him and for Lane, too. Apparently the bullets Kent took were meant for Superman, but Kent and Lane are on the hit list of whoever it is that’s footing the bill for Capone and company.”
“Lane with a bodyguard?” Leocadio chuckled. “That’s a laugh. Superman would have a hard time keeping up with Mad Dog Lane.”
0 0 0
Lois led the two Kents onto the eighteenth floor of Metropolis General Hospital. She walked over to the isolation unit and peered through with large window. The bed was empty and neatly made. There was no sign of Clark. No sign Clark had ever been there. Even the police officer who’d been assigned to protect him was gone.
Lois ran to the nurse’s station by the elevators. “Where’s Clark? Where’s Mister Kent?” she asked in near panic. A nurse she didn’t recognize looked at her curiously.
“Mister Kent?”
“The man in the isolation ICU this morning, where is he?” she asked as Martha and Jonathan caught up with her. Her heart felt like it was in her mouth as she waited for the nurse to figure out who she was talking about. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t be dead.
“Miss Lane, right?” the nurse asked. Lois nodded. “He should be in post-op by now.”
“Post-op? Why?” Martha asked.
Another curious look from the nurse.
“They’re his parents,” Lois explained. “Why is he in post-op? Why did he need more surgery?”
The nurse shook her head. “The doctor should be out shortly.”
The elevator doors opened and a uniformed police officer stepped out. “Miss Lane?” the officer said, spotting Lois at the nurses’ station. “I’m Joe Murphy,” he introduced himself, shaking her hand. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you this morning.”
“Mister and Missus Kent, Clark’s parents,” Lois introduced them to the officer. “What did you want to tell me?”
“The DA’s office has ordered police protection for both you and Mister Kent,” Murphy explained.
“I can’t do my job with a body guard hanging around,” Lois told him.
“Lois, you can’t do your job if you’re dead,” Jonathan reminded her.
Murphy nodded. “Look, Kent was shot with bullets obviously meant for Superman. We haven’t been able to get in touch with Superman to warn him…”
“Clark got in touch with him before… before we went out to the club,” Lois told him. Yeah, Clark knew someone was gunning for Superman. He just hadn’t believed it could really happen. Or did he know it was possible and chose to ignore the fact that he really could get hurt?
“Have you talked to the big guy since then?” Murphy asked.
Lois shook her head. “The world’s a big place,” she said. “He could be anywhere. But I’ll remind him when I see him.”
One of the elevators opened and a rough looking man with the face of a boxer stepped out and looked around. He was wearing green scrubs and his eyes were hard and cold. Lois was certain she had seen him before, somewhere.
The club. He was one of the thugs with Capone. He was one of the ones who dragged Clark away.
“Murphy,” Lois pitched her voice low. “The man that just came out of the elevator was with Capone last night at the club.”
“You’re sure?” Murphy asked. Lois nodded.
“Hospital personnel wear photo ID and I don’t see his tag,” she added.
Murphy walked closer to the man. “Can I see your ID please?” he asked.
The man looked confused, frowning at Murphy.
“Your ID… Can I see it?” Murphy rephrased.
Instead then man placed his right hand behind his back as though reaching for something at his waist.
Murphy pulled his gun. “Hands where I can see them, nice and slow,” he ordered.
Lois watched the unfolding drama as though mesmerized. One part of her brain screamed for her to run. Another part watched, fascinated. Martha grabbed her arm and broke her out of her trance. The two women backed away from the elevators, toward the nurses’ station. The nurse pulled them behind the counter, hunkering down by the back wall. Jonathan joined them, trying to squeeze his bulk into the small space.
Lois knew the counter wouldn’t be much protection, but it was at least a little protection if shots started being fired. The nurse was already on the phone to hospital security. Satisfied that Martha and Jonathan were as protected as they could be under the circumstances, Lois peeked around the corner of the counter.
Two shots rang out in the confines of the elevator lobby. The man in scrubs grabbed his belly and ran for the stairwell beside the elevators. Murphy ran after him, even though Lois saw blood running down his left arm.
Lois uncoiled herself from behind the counter and started toward the stairwell.
“Lois?” Martha called. Lois stopped short. “Let the police handle it, please?”
“Martha, I’m a reporter,” Lois told her, heading for the stairwell again. “This is what I do. I’ll be back soon.”
She followed the trail of blood down the stairs to the floor below. She jumped as two sharp reports echoed through the stairwell. The trail led to the fire door. She opened the door and peeked around it into the elevator lobby. Capone’s goon was nowhere to be seen. But the rest of the lobby appeared to be in controlled chaos as nurses and orderlies tended to two more victims. Murphy was talking to two men in hospital security uniforms while a nurse bandaged his arm.
“What happened?” Lois asked, opening the door wider and stepping into the lobby.
“The goon shot two nurses and disappeared into one of the patient wings,” Murphy told her. “Hospital security is starting a room to room search and backup’s coming. We’ll find him. He’s not going very far.” He peered at her. “I need to get back to my post. Want to come with me?”
Lois nodded and helped Murphy to his feet.
0 0 0
He was back in the ICU room, attached to the monitors once again. He heard the beeps and chirps and hums and wondered fuzzily how anybody could get any rest with it being so loud and bright. He distinctly remembered the doctor telling him he needed to rest. He had a vague memory of being wheeled into another room with more loud machinery, being told to stay very still while the machine moved around him. Then he’d felt light-headed and dizzy, more than he had before, and panic seemed to ensue all around him.
Another brightly lit room, a mask that smelled of latex over his face, then nothing. Now his chest hurt like hell and his back ached worse than it had before. He hadn’t noticed the pain on the inside of his thigh before either, or was that new?
He kept his eyes closed as he tried to block out all the noise, the light that stabbed through his eyelids. He tried to go back to sleep in hopes that when he woke up for real, all this would turn out to be a horrible nightmare.
“Clark?” A familiar voice called to him. A woman’s voice. Mom?
“I’m right here, honey,” she said. He wasn’t sure if he’d spoken aloud or not. He managed to crack open one eye and then the other. She was here. Mom was here, watching him with worried eyes.
“Mom?” He was sure he’d said it aloud this time, although his voice sounded weak even in his own ears. He felt her hand running through his hair, brushing it away from his face.
“What…?” he asked, not quite sure what he was asking. His brain didn’t seem to work quite right. He recognized the fact, but wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.
“Perry called us last night and said you’d been shot,” Martha explained quietly. “We got worried when you didn’t get in touch to explain what had happened, so we flew out.”
“Lois told us what happened,” his dad’s voice rumbled softly over the noise of the monitors. He moved his head to see his father’s broad face peering down at him from the other side of the narrow bed.
“Hurts,” Clark managed to croak out. “Why? What happened?”
“Don’t you remember?” Jonathan asked, keeping his voice low.
He managed a nod. “I remember going to the club with Lois and getting shot.” He remembered that very clearly. Dillinger had grabbed Lois and he had stepped in to defend her. He remembered Barrow pulling the trigger on his gun, being astonished at the sudden dizziness he felt, the burning in his chest. Then nothing except nightmares.
“I remember waking up and Lois being here, I think. Maybe I was dreaming it. I keep hoping I’m dreaming this.” He gestured vaguely to the monitors beside the bed, then dropped his hand back on the mattress. He had no strength left to do any more than that.
“Doctor Bryant wasn’t sure he got all the radioactive material out of your chest,” Jonathan explained. “Turns out he hadn’t. Then you started bleeding internally. Apparently it had burned a hole in one of your arteries. He had to do a graft to repair it.”
“When can I go home?” He was so tired. The lights were too bright overhead and the noises too loud, even without super-hearing.
“Doctor Bryant wants to see how fast you start to heal,” Martha answered. “You could be home in a few days.”
“Clark?” another voice, Lois’s voice. He looked over to the door and saw her standing there. She was still wearing one of his old sweatshirts and she looked absolutely beautiful.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Like I got shot,” he answered weakly. He saw the concerned look Lois gave his mother.
“Bryant found more kryptonite in his chest,” Martha explained simply. Lois nodded and Clark had a sense than something had passed between the two women. Something he didn’t understand.
There was a tickle in his chest, like the beginning of a cough. Martha peered into his face. “Clark, is there something wrong?”
Clark shook his head as the cough broke through. It felt like his chest was tearing apart from the inside as he tried to sit up. He started choking, trying to keep from coughing, trying to keep the pain away. Jonathan pulled the pillow off the bed and handed it to him.
“Hold the pillow tight against your chest while you cough,” he instructed. Clark followed his instructions and was surprised to find that it helped.
“How did you know?” Clark wondered aloud as soon as he’d caught his breath.
“We all have secrets, son,” Jonathan said. “Remember your last quarter at college? When your mom told you I spent the night in the hospital from the flu and she ordered you not to come home from school?”
Clark nodded. He remembered being worried because his mom’s order was so unusual.
“It wasn’t the flu. I was in for a double bypass, and your mom was bound and determined you weren’t going to blow your last quarter at school worrying about me,” he said. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’re going through.”
“But, why didn’t you tell me?” Clark asked. He was feeling a little stronger, but what they were telling him was leaving him perplexed.
“Clark, was there anything you could have done?” Martha asked.
“I could have been there for you,” he protested weakly. “You should have told me.”
“You would have worried yourself sick and probably failed your classes,” Martha told him. “If things had gotten bad, I would have called you and had you come home. But everything went fine. Your father was home only a couple days after the operation.”
