The Vampire Murders: 4/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
Henderson regarded him for another long moment. "They were undercover officers," he said abruptly and very grimly. "I had the fun of informing their families that they weren't coming home."
Clark nodded. "I'm sorry," he said.
"I'm going to get whoever did this," Henderson said. "I don't buy the drained of blood explanation for a minute. Somebody murdered two of my best men."
Again, Clark nodded. "Is there any connection you know of to the homeless man who was found a couple of days before?" he asked.
Henderson shook his head. "We don't know. He was a former NASA employee who'd been living on the streets for several years. We're still looking into his background to see if we can make a connection, but there must be something. We'll find it, and when we do, hopefully it will help us identify the killer."
"Thanks." Clark regarded Henderson soberly. "I'm sorry about your men. If I find out anything concrete, you'll be the first to know. For the record, I don't believe in vampires, either."
"Don't tell me you came here out of curiosity," Henderson said.
"No, but like you, I don't know anything yet. All I have are a few guesses. At least you eliminated one question." He glanced at the clock on the wall of Henderson's office. "You'll be hearing from me, but I need to go. Thanks again."
**********
And now, Part 4:
Old Town was lit up like a Christmas tree when Lois and Clark drove along the street that passed in front of the huge box-like building, but, except for the lights along the roof that illuminated the area in front of the door and along the sides of the Cost Mart building, the vacant parking lot was dim. There were a few light poles supposedly for security, but the actual illumination there was pathetic in Lois's opinion. They could stay in the shadows without too much trouble, she thought. She had also spotted a videocamera covering the entrance, this afternoon, but she hadn't noticed any others, so getting in might not be impossible. There was always the probable danger of security guards, but they could be avoided if one was careful. In any case, the first place to check was probably the construction zone. It was by far the easiest to access.
Lois parked the Cherokee a block from the Cost Mart, near the Old Town Theater and she and Clark walked briskly through the cold, crisp November air toward their destination.
"There'll be security guards around," Clark said softly. His thoughts had obviously been paralleling hers.
"I know. Just stay alert." Lois approached the parking lot, walking quietly but not stealthily, careful to keep out of the light. Clark kept pace with her, moving silently on her left, and Lois had to give him credit. When Clark wanted to be quiet, he was really quiet, which led her to wonder peripherally where he had learned it. Her partner had, of course, traveled the world before he had come to work at the Planet. Hadn't he mentioned once that he'd learned to dance from a Nigerian princess? She seemed to recall him saying that on some occasion or other but the event escaped her. But in the time she had known him she had come to realize that her partner wasn't nearly the novice that she had branded him when they had first met. In fact, it hadn't taken long before her (to be honest) contempt had faded to be replaced by reluctant, if unspoken, respect.
"Where first?" Clark's whisper was a bare thread of sound.
"The construction area. We might as well look at the easiest part first."
Clark didn't answer but changed direction slightly. Remembering his extraordinary night vision, Lois followed. Her partner might wear glasses but she had discovered on a previous black bag job that he had the best night sight of anyone she'd ever known. Sure enough, they had gone barely a hundred feet when one of the yellow wooden barricades loomed out of the dimness, its reflective bands glowing faintly in the dark. They maneuvered around it and moved slowly into the area of broken pavement and piles of dirt and rocks.
Clark stopped. "Here," he said. "There's a ladder." He paused. "I'll go first," he added.
"Go ahead," Lois said. She crouched down on her heels to present less of a silhouette for anyone who might glance in the direction of the lot. "Hurry up."
"Right." Clark swung himself down the rungs of the ladder. Lois waited, pulling her jacket more tightly around herself. After a moment, she heard a faint whistle. She felt around, found the cold metal of the ladder and slid her feet over the edge of the hole. After a few seconds of fumbling, her foot touched a rung and she began her descent.
It was almost completely dark in the hole, for here even the starlight was blocked. She counted the rungs as she descended and as she reached forty-two her foot hit stone.
Stone. Her mind registered the fact. Not dirt.
A hand touched her arm very lightly, and Clark's voice said, "Back this way. Away from the opening."
She followed the tug of his hand, and a few steps along he stopped. "Cover your eyes."
She obeyed, but the flare of light against her eyelids almost made her jump. Slowly, she opened her eyes, letting them adjust to the light. Clark had turned his mag-light on low and was shielding it with one hand, allowing only a tiny beam of light to escape.
Lois blinked away the sudden watering of her eyes, letting them adjust to what was actually very faint light. Clark had turned the flash away from her, shining it on rough stone walls. Lois squinted around at what she could see of the place. "What's this? Some kind of subway tunnel or something?"
"I don't think so," Clark said. "Let's take a look around."
The tunnel stretched away in both directions, featureless. The walls were rough concrete, and now that she looked, the stone floor wasn't really stone, but concrete as well, thoroughly tracked with muddy footprints. They moved along it as quietly as they could, heading, Lois thought, in the direction of the Cost Mart building.
The passage turned suddenly, ran on another hundred feet or so, and they were abruptly faced with a metal door, set in the stone. Lois carefully tried the doorknob.
"Locked," she whispered. "I don't see a keyhole."
"Probably bolted on the other side," Clark whispered back. "I think we're close to the Cost Mart store. I guess they didn't want anybody getting in by accident. Look." He shined the light on the door frame, revealing a small, black button.
"Doorbell," Lois said. "I guess we're supposed to ring for admittance. I don't think we'd better do that."
"Probably not," Clark agreed. "My question is what do you suppose this tunnel is for?"
"It looks like some kind of secret entrance into Cost Mart. How far down are we?"
Clark looked around. "I'm not sure. Twenty, maybe thirty feet."
"So this leads into the basement of Cost Mart?"
"I think we're too far down for that. Maybe a sub-basement," Clark said. "Maybe tomorrow Jimmy could find us the plans for this place." He flashed the light around again, still keeping the light carefully shielded. "What do you want to do next?"
Lois had been thinking about that. "Well, there's nothing to stop us from going to see where the tunnel comes from, is there? Maybe that'll tell us why they have a secret entrance into their store. Do you suppose they could be smuggling in something?"
"I'd say that isn't impossible. Maybe even likely, if they're actually part of Intergang." Clark suited the action to the word, and moments later, they came again to the ladder by which they had found this place. Now they started in the other direction.
The tunnel ran relatively straight for some distance. The walls were rough concrete and here and there they encountered places where wooden timbers supported walls and ceiling. It looked as if the construction were still in progress in this part of the tunnel. In several places the walls were literally dirt, and in one spot it appeared there had been a small collapse. More wooden timbers braced the spot.
Just beyond that, the tunnel made a sharp turn to the right. Again it ran on straight for perhaps fifteen feet and abruptly came to an end. They were faced with another ladder. They looked at each other. After a moment's pause, Clark handed her the mag-light. "Hold this. I'll go up and take a look," he said quietly.
Lois started to object, but the words froze in her throat at the sound of voices from above them. "Get the first box. I'll help lower it down."
"Wish they'd hurry and install the hoist," another voice said peppering the simple remark with four profanities. Lois sensed rather than saw Clark glance uneasily at her.
"Yeah. I'll be happier when they finish fixing this whole end," the first voice said, matching the previous speaker with several expletives of his own. "Every time I take the stuff through here, I'm afraid the ceiling's going to come down on me." From above came the scraping sound of something being lifted, and pale light sifted through the opening.
Clark tugged on Lois's arm and they retreated quickly in the direction from which they had just come. They rounded the corner and Lois stopped.
"Why are you stopping?" Clark whispered.
"I want to see what they're doing," she whispered back. At once, she peeked around the wooden beam that braced the ceiling at this point to peer back at the exit.
In the low light, she saw a man swing down the ladder. He held a flashlight in one hand, and now he turned to shine it upwards. Something came into view -- a good-sized box, lowered down on some kind of rope arrangement.
"Come on!" Clark whispered urgently.
Reluctantly, Lois yielded to his tug on her arm, and they started back the way they had come, but almost at once Lois saw, well up the tunnel, a flicker of light. Someone was coming toward them from that direction as well, holding a flashlight to light his way. They were trapped.
Clark's hand on her arm tightened, and then he was pulling her toward the area of the small cave-in. He tugged her back into the shadows of the timbers that had been placed there to support the crumbling wall and pulled her down to her hands and knees, and instantly she realized his intention. Maybe, in the dimness of the tunnel, if they crouched down and were very quiet, they might not be seen.
The place where the fall of dirt had occurred was deeper and roomier than she had realized. Feeling with her hands so as not to hit anything and cause a further fall of dirt, Lois crawled forward a little farther, followed by Clark, and quite suddenly there was more room around them, and a musty smell that she couldn't identify.
The wall where the collapse had taken place had fallen in because there was an opening on the other side, she realized, after a confused second or two. There must be one of the old, disused subway tunnels back here, after all. It looked as if Murphy was looking the other way for once.
No. Clark was pulling her to her feet and tugging her away from the hole in the wall, and they were walking on stone, this time, not concrete or dirt. The floor was rough, carved stone, as if someone had chipped this narrow little tunnel out of the living rock. In the very faint light of the nearly completely shielded mag-light, she could see that Clark was bending down to walk, as the roof was only a few inches higher than Lois's head.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
"I don't know." His voice was barely audible, and he abruptly switched off his light. "Sh."
Together, they paused in the pitch darkness, listening.
There was the sound of scuffling feet, unidentifiable thumps and muffled voices. Lois held perfectly still, one hand in Clark's, trying to breathe quietly as the sounds seemed to pause just beyond the crumbling entrance to the tunnel. She held her breath.
Then the sounds were retreating, and Lois found herself able to breathe again. "Whew! That was close!"
Clark also drew a deep breath. "A little too close for my taste."
"Lucky we found this tunnel. Where are we?"
Clark twisted on the mag-light again, still shielding the light with one hand, and flashed it cautiously around over the floor and walls. Then he bent closer to the rough stone wall, examining something. "Look."
"At what?"
He pointed at the wall. "Looks like some kind of primitive drawings."
Lois moved closer and examined what he had found in the beam of the mag-light. "What are they? Stone age drawings or something?"
"I don't know." Clark was frowning at the faded scrawls on the stone. "Didn't this area originally have an Indian tribe or something living here when the European settlers first came?"
Lois squinted at the faint lines scratched on the wall. "Yeah. They did. We studied them in third grade, I think. Is that what this is?"
"I think maybe so," Clark said. "The construction people must have broken through the wall when they started digging here. It's a good thing they didn't come in here and start messing it up. This could be a valuable archeological find for Metropolis."
Lois was less interested in the archeology of the tunnel than the modern criminals on the other side of the wall. "Do you think they're gone?"
Her partner covered his light again and moved back to the hole through which they had come. Lois followed, trying to make no noise at all.
A faint clang alerted her at once to the fact that someone else was approaching, followed at once by the mutter of voices. More men were moving around in the outer tunnel. Clark's light abruptly went off, leaving them in pitch darkness.
"Hurry up!" one voice was heard to growl. "They need to get the stuff moved down here before the prowl car comes around again."
More thumps and scraping sounds. Something thudded heavily to the floor. More sounds of effort and someone cursed fluently. Then, at last, she heard the sounds of retreating footsteps.
"Great," Lois whispered. "It sounds like there's going to be a lot of traffic through here for a while."
Approaching voices and footsteps underlined her observation.
Clark tugged on her hand, pulling her away from the opening. A short distance down the low tunnel, they stopped and he again turned on his light, shielding it with his hand.
"Now what?" Lois whispered.
"Well, maybe there's some way out of here. The tunnel goes in both directions."
Lois regarded his face in the dim illumination of the shaded mag-light. "Optimistic, aren't you? But I guess checking around is better than sitting here waiting for hours. Can you manage? This place isn't exactly roomy."
Clark's lips twitched. "I noticed. I'll be fine. Which way?"
Lois shrugged. "Since we're here to check on Cost Mart, let's go toward it. Who knows -- maybe they've broken another hole in the tunnel somewhere."
"Your wish is my command." Clark turned and started in the direction that Lois judged to be the general direction in which the huge warehouse-sized store lay. If nothing else, she thought, maybe they could find more Indian artifacts. It might make a good story about the cultural history of Metropolis -- after they managed to figure out what was going on with this operation, of course. Whatever this was, there were three dead men to account for, very probably connected with it.
Every ten feet or so, Clark paused and flashed his light on the walls. The drawings or writings or whatever they were, were becoming denser and clearer as they progressed and now Lois began to recognize some of the symbols. There was a human figure in some kind of robes, and a little farther on a cross and as they went along, other rough drawings of a religious nature.
"Looks like the settlers converted some of the local inhabitants," Lois remarked softly. "Well, that makes sense. This wasn't exactly Plymouth Rock, but there were colonies all around here that came for religious freedom. I guess some of the indigenous people recorded some of the history of the early colony. I remember a little of it from my New Troy Social Studies in elementary school."
"Looks like it," Clark said. He ducked his head to avoid a particularly low patch of ceiling. He had uncovered his light now, and flashed it around the tunnel. There was a square opening in the tunnel on the left, and he flashed his light inside. "Looks like some kind of living quarters. You know, I think this whole area was leveled for industrial development about fifty years ago. There were hills here. I wonder if this was part of a native settlement or something."
"Could have been," Lois agreed. "They weren't nearly as worried about destroying historical stuff fifty years ago as they are now."
Clark flashed his light inside the room, illuminating walls and floor. Lois looked over his shoulder and drew back slightly at the sight.
Half a dozen wrapped forms lay on wooden platforms, and the shape of the forms told her without doubt that the forms were human. A rough wooden cross adorned the wall, and the stone walls were thick with the Indian hieroglyphs. The musty smell was much more pronounced than it had been farther back.
"That explains it," Clark said. "It's a burial ground. A crypt, of sorts. I'll bet if we were to explore this place, we'd find a lot of these."
"Yeah, well I'd like to get out of here," Lois said. "This is getting creepy."
"Yeah." Clark backed out of the room. They went on in silence, but a moment later their trip came to a stop. The tunnel ended in another room with more mummies, if that was what they were, Lois thought.
"I guess we go back the other way," Clark said after a moment.
"Yeah," Lois agreed. "Come on."
**********
tbc
