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

When we last saw Lois in Part 116 …

Before Lois made it to the lobby of the police station, Inspector Henderson blocked her way. He had his feet shoulder width apart, his arms were crossed, and he stared intently at her. He must have been taking lessons from Superman. She slowed her pace.

“This better be important, Henderson, I’ve had a long night, and I have an innocent man to set free,” Lois said.

“Not exactly the wisest thing to say after being arrested for harboring a fugitive, Ms. Lane,” Henderson retorted.

“Hardy-har-har,” Lois grumbled. “He’s innocent, Harrison’s still alive, and I’m going to prove both! Since Detective Reed and MPD aren’t doing their jobs and are arresting the wrong people…”

“We got you, didn’t we?” he said wryly. “But that’s not why I’m here. I just have some questions for you, if you’d be so kind to accompany me to my office.” He held out his hand towards the elevator, down another hall.

She glared at him and stomped off in the direction he indicated. “Fine, but you’re going to regret it. I’ve gotten little sleep, I’m pressed for time, and grouchier than ever.”

“Don’t worry, Ms. Lane, I’ve smelled worse,” he replied.

“Don’t press your luck, Henderson.”

“Tsk. Tsk. Are you threatening me, Ms. Lane?” Henderson asked, his eyes alight with humor. “I’m one of the good guys, remember.”

“Not feeling very pro-good guy at the moment,” she grumbled, stepping into the elevator. Where in the hell had her good guy been all night?

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Henderson said, and pressed the button for his floor.

***

Part 117

“Okay, Henderson, you’re being overly friendly,” Lois accused the inspector as she watched him glance through his office window to the street below. She took a sip of the coffee that he had just brought her and grimaced.

“Your bail hearing was during breakfast, Ms. Lane. I assumed you might be hungry,” he replied.

That was true. The slice of pizza she had eaten at her apartment before Detecitve Reed had arrested her and Eugene Laderman had been a good twelve plus hours earlier. She reached over and took a donut out of the box on Henderson’s desk. He raised a brow.

“What?” she said with a full mouth. “You practically offered it to me.”

He shrugged. Returning to his desk, he sat down and opened a folder. He removed a photo from inside and slid it towards her.

Lois choked on her donut. It was a photo of her watch. The Kryptonite watch that Lex had given to her at Christmas. She coughed several times, trying to clear the donut crumbs from her lungs.

“Are you all right?” Henderson asked, not out of concern, but more as if he had expected this reaction. Had Cat ratted her out?

She nodded.

“Good. Would you like to tell me about this?” he asked.

“Not really,” she replied.

Henderson pressed his lips together, shut the box of donuts, and moved it out of her reach. Great. He was playing both good cop and bad cop with her… multiple personalities cop.

“Where did you find this?” Lois asked.

“If you don’t mind, Ms. Lane, I’ll ask the questions.”

She did mind, but she figured she might learn more if she played his game. She sat back in her chair and took another sip of her coffee. That was a mistake, she realized, as it oozed lukewarm down her throat. How had he gotten the watch before Cat, or had Cat turned in the watch to him once she and her brother-in-law had found it? The photo showed Henderson had clearly logged it into evidence. Lois couldn’t picture Cat as a law and order type, but then again, her brother-in-law did work for the MPD, so maybe he turned it over to the good inspector.

“What do you know about this watch?” Henderson asked.

“Not much,” Lois admitted, somewhat truthfully.

“It’s yours, I presume.”

“No,” she replied. It wasn’t hers. Lex gave it to her. She refused it and gave it back. He slipped it into her briefcase, and she threw it away. She had never accepted it.

Henderson raised a brow. “But?”

“But, what? It isn’t mine,” Lois insisted and took another sip of her gasoline flavored coffee.

“Uh-huh,” he said, leaning back in his chair and pulling the photo back into his folder. “So, I should just ask Kent about it then.”

“No!” she gasped.

“No?” he repeated slowly, tilting his head as he gazed at her.

Crap. She fell right into that trap. She blamed the sleepless night in a holding cell, listening to Big Bertha’s life story. “Clark doesn’t know anything about it,” Lois said.

Henderson shook his head and waved his index finger at her. “I’m not so sure that’s true. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Why don’t you tell me what you know about it?” Lois threw back. Two could play at this game.

Henderson thought about that for a moment, and then shrugged. “About six weeks ago, a jeweler in the diamond district had his neck broken. His shop was set ablaze to cover up the murder. The fire spread to neighboring shops, decimating a series of historic buildings and businesses.”

This story sounded vaguely familiar. Six weeks ago would make it roughly the beginning of February, but she hadn’t written about any major fires back at that time. Lois had been covering Eugene’s trial at the end of January, but then his lawyer had been able to get a continuance. She remembered that because she was suddenly ‘free’, and since Valdez had the flu, Perry had sent her to cover that luncheon with government contractors. Lois had bumped into Lex there, and he had hit on her. It had been the first time she had seen him since the Christmas Eve get-together at Luthor House for the Homeless Children. Lex had been drunk and upset that she wasn’t wearing the watch. No, wait, not drunk, Miranda had sprayed him with her love potion. Oh, God, was that only six weeks ago? The following day, Clark had flaked out of a press conference to cover that fire. Understandable now that she knew the truth, but at the time very annoying. Boring press conferences were much better with Clark’s presence to joke with during the down time waiting for politicians to appear.

Lois raised a hand to her head. “Clark covered that fire. If I recall correctly it took Superman to put it out. Are you saying that the murder had something to do with this watch?” she asked, leaning forward. She could tie Lex directly to the watch. If Henderson could link the watch to this dead jeweler, did that mean she could tie Lex to this jeweler’s murder? Only… only, it was her word against Lex’s that he gave her the Kryptonite watch. Damn! Moreover, nobody had ever seen her with it, or saw him give it to her. It was all circumstantial evidence, too. Double damn!

“According to the brother of the dead jeweler, the crystals on this watch were cut in his style,” Henderson said.

Superman had worked that fire, but Clark hadn’t gotten sick. He had been there next to her at the meeting right after that. “‘A child playing with matchsticks’,” Lois murmured, repeating Clark’s excuse for not attending the press conference of the mayor’s resignation.

If Clark had been at the fire, and there had been Kryptonite present, wouldn’t it have made him sick? Therefore, the jeweler didn’t have any Kryptonite remaining in his shop. Then again, if he had made the watch, or cut down the crystals for the watch, it would have been at least five to six weeks earlier.

“Excuse me?” Henderson asked.

“Something Clark had quoted from someone at the MFD arson squad about the buildings burning like matchsticks,” Lois explained, shaking her head as if it was inconsequential. “Was the jeweler’s murderer ever caught?”

“His murder is still unsolved,” Henderson said. “Do you have any information regarding that crime, Ms. Lane? I’m sure the homicide department would love to hear your theory.” He said this in such a way that made Lois doubt his sincerity.

“No. I don’t. I don’t know anything about it actually, except what Clark wrote in his article,” she said. Something that the inspector said nagged at her. “If you’re not investigating the jeweler’s murder in relation to the watch, then what is your interest in it?”

“Well, you may have noticed, Lois, the invisible sign outside my door, which reads ‘Organized Crime Division’,” Henderson said.

“Yeah, if I investigated organized crime, I’d probably not brag about it either,” Lois admitted. “So, why are you telling me?”

“You asked my interest in the jeweler’s murder. He died in a manner which tagged it as ‘organized crime’, and then not a month later, a possible piece of his workmanship shows up smack dab in the middle of another one of my investigations,” he said. “Did you give Kent the watch, or did he find it elsewhere during his inquiries into the jeweler’s murder?”

Or, thirdly, could it all have been a terrible coincidence?

“Wait. Clark had this watch on his person when you found him?” she sputtered. That would certainly explain his lack of powers. She thought he had merely swum over the general vicinity of the watch, which caused him to lose his strength and abilities. On the other hand, had Henderson sent divers down to search for evidence after they discovered someone had tried to kill Clark there, and just assumed that Clark had the watch on him when they found it?

“I think it’s your turn to talk, Ms. Lane,” Henderson said. “What do you know about this watch?”

Lois wished she knew what Henderson already knew, so she knew what to tell him. Why had he waited until this moment to ask her about the watch? How had Henderson tied Lois to the watch? Did he only assume Lois knew about it because MPD had found it on Clark’s person when they had dragged him from the water? Asking Clark would be pointless because he had no memories of right before the abduction, so was that why Henderson came to her? Had Cat contacted him? If so, what had Cat said?

“I found that watch in my briefcase on Christmas morning,” Lois said, after drawing out her response time with a sip of coffee. Really, when would she learn? “I dropped it into the bay when I went to check out the floater that was pulled from the water there.”

“That seems like a strange reaction to receiving a gift,” Henderson said.

She hadn’t said it was a gift. “It was an ugly watch, so I figured I was doing the world a service,” she replied. So much for her good intentions.

“So, you weren’t wearing the watch, and it didn’t just happen to slip off your wrist and fall into the bay while you were there?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and tapping a finger to his lips.

Yeah, that would have been a better story. “No.”

“What if those crystals had been priceless gemstones?”

Lois shrugged. “I’m not one of those women who drool over expensive rocks,” she said. This was also true. She appreciated gems only for their aesthetic, not monetary, value. “Are they priceless gemstones?”

Henderson smiled. “You could say that. They’re so rare nobody seems to know what they are.”

They? Did that mean that the red crystals were red Kryptonite? Superman had never mentioned red Kryptonite. Then again, he had never mentioned the green type either until she pressed him about it. She felt like slugging Clark. How was she supposed to keep him safe if he kept her out of the loop?

“Someone put this watch in your briefcase on Christmas, and on the same day, you tossed it in the bay? Is that not correct?” he repeated, jotting down some notes.

“Pretty much,” Lois replied. Save for the part about Lex having tried and failed to give her the watch the night before, and admitting at that luncheon in February that he had slipped it into her briefcase before she had left the Christmas Eve party.

“Who put this into your briefcase?”

She shook her head. “I accidentally left my briefcase at work on Christmas Eve. Anyone could have slipped it inside,” she said. She now understood how Clark could say one thing, which sounded like another, without truly lying. He was sneaky that way.

“Did Kent see you drop it into the bay?” he asked, leaning forward.

“What do you think?” Lois scoffed. “The big Boy Scout? Please.”

Henderson nodded and wrote something else down. “Can anyone verify your story?”

“The office was swimming with reporters early on Christmas morning,” she said wryly. “Of course not.”

“Did Kent work Christmas?”

Lois thought for a moment. “Yeah. Later on in the day, he came in. We had been out late the night…”

Henderson’s brows rose up his forehead. “Oh?”

“What is this? The dating game? Clark and I are friends and partners, nothing more,” she lied. “We hang out sometimes. That night, Cat Grant had invited us to her family’s Christmas party…”

“Oh? Cat Grant?” he repeated.

“There an echo in here?”

He held up his hands.

“Yeah. Cat Grant.” Lois waved her hand. “She and Clark are buddies. They do underwater basket weaving together or something; who knows? We went to her family’s party.”

“Meanwhile, back at the office sat your briefcase, completely unguarded?” Henderson said, thankfully returning to the topic at hand, instead of tiptoeing into what Lois and Clark attending Cat’s party together meant. “So, you’re saying it’s a coincidence?” he asked.

“What is?”

“Your partner being found in Hob’s Bay with this bauble stuck around his shoe,” he said.

Lois’s jaw dropped for a brief moment. “Stuck around his shoe?”

“You’re right. I think there is an echo in here,” Henderson remarked with smile. Damn smart-aleck.

“How did it get around his shoe?” she asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” he said, and sighed.

“Was it there all night?” Lois asked. Maybe red Kryptonite does something different to Clark than green does, she thought. Green Kryptonite takes away Clark’s powers, but what if red made him stronger? Nah, if that were the case, Clark wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital with an IV in his arm.

Henderson shrugged, pulling a different notepad out of his desk drawer. He wrote on it while he spoke, “With your statement, we can officially cross off the list that Clark took the watch off Joe Rory’s boat, or that Joe Rory, or company, gave Clark the watch. Perhaps it was pulled to the surface of the water by the boat’s motor, or wake, and somehow latched itself onto Mr. Kent.”

That seemed as implausible as Clark ending up at the exact same dock where she had just happened to throw away a Kryptonite studded watch.

“If you’re done with the watch, can I have it back?” she asked.

“Back? But you claimed it wasn’t yours,” Henderson replied.

Touché. Well played, Inspector. “I hope you’re keeping it in a secure vault, now that it turns out to be made of priceless gemstones after all.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Fine, rare crystals,” Lois corrected, with a roll of her eyes. Last thing she or Clark needed was to have Lex find out that MPD had her watch and steal it back.

Henderson tore a sheet of paper off his notepad and slid it across the desk to her. “Thank you very much for your time, Ms. Lane.”

“My pleasure,” Lois grumbled, grabbing up the note and heading gratefully to the door. She threw away her still half-full cup of coffee, and then glanced at the paper in her hand. “What is this?” she snapped, turning back to the inspector.

“It’s a ticket, Ms. Lane, for littering. Please pay it on your way out.”

***

Clark and Perry arrived for Lois’s seven thirty a.m. bail hearing at the courthouse to discover that the bailiff had moved it up two hours. They then hightailed it over to the Twelfth Precinct to bail her out.

“What do you mean someone else has bailed her out already?” Perry hollered at the clerk. “Who else…?”

Clark set his hand on his boss’s shoulder. “Perry.”

The Chief glanced back at him, and Clark shook his head.

“You mean…?” Perry sputtered.

Clark nodded. “Who else?”

“Why in tarnation would Lois let him do that?”

“Because she was in jail?” Clark guessed. At least, he hoped that was the only reason she would allow her ‘source’ Lex Luthor to bail her out. “And she wanted to get out?”

“That woman…” Perry grumbled, leaving the counter.

“Right there with you, Chief,” Clark replied.

“Now, son,” Perry said, stopping and holding up his hand. “We don’t know anything for sure. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“She’s being reckless, a total loose cannon,” Clark said, finally putting words to the acid build up in his stomach.

“Clark,” Perry said, lowering his voice. “That’s who she is. She doesn’t do anything halfway. Trust me, son. You don’t want to change her.”

A smile curled up on the edge of Clark’s lips. “No… I lo… I know that I wouldn’t want that. I just wish she’d let me in. I wish she’d be more cautious. How can I protect her… er… as her partner, if she keeps me at arm’s length?”

Perry patted his arm. “You figure out the answer to that question, I sure hope you’d let me know.” He laughed.

Clark joined in with a slight chuckle. It was nice to know that Lois didn’t drive only him crazy with her leap-without-looking attitude. “I’m going to check out some things here, Chief. I’ll meet you back at the office.”

“You do that. I’ve got a busy day,” Perry said with a wink. “A very busy day.”

Oh, that’s right. “Happy fiftieth birthday, Chief,” Clark said, shaking his hand.

“Thanks, son. How did you…?” Perry glanced down at his salmon shirt and black vest. “Guess it’s kind of obvious, my mid-life crisis, huh?”

“A bit.”

Perry lifted up a finger. “Don’t tell anyone!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Clark said. “Uh… Sir, you aren’t thinking about running for office, are you?”

“What office?” Perry inquired. “Public office? Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to be one of those guys.” He shook his head adamantly.

Clark smiled. “Glad to hear it, sir.”

After Perry left, Clark went to talk to Detective Reed, but she wasn’t in, so he decided to stop by Inspector Henderson’s office. Lois had said something about the MPD taking his answering machine tape. He knocked on Henderson’s open door.

Inspector Henderson glanced up, shut the folder in front of him, and waved Clark inside. “Kent, if you’re looking for your partner, you’re several floors off and twenty-five minutes too late.”

“So I’ve been told,” Clark said.

Henderson nodded for Clark to shut the door, so he did. “Well, I’m glad you stopped by. I have some new questions for you. How’s your memory?”

Clark sighed. That wasn’t a new question. Henderson asked him it every time they spoke. He wished he had a better answer. “The same. Lois mentioned something about Detective Wolfe taking my answering machine tape while I was missing.”

“You can pick up a replacement at any drugstore,” Henderson said. “I’ve got to keep that one for our investigation.”

“I understand, only… Lois said it had messages on it. Maybe if I listened to it, it might jog my memory,” Clark suggested.

It was a crazy theory, but he didn’t want to head back to the newsroom only to find that Lois still hadn’t arrived. He was trying his darndest to trust her, but sometimes he needed to distract himself from hunting her down every time she wasn’t where he expected her to be. Luthor had a façade of an upstanding citizen to maintain, and Clark hoped that meant not harming a public figure such as Lois. He had half hoped that Lois’s arrest would scare the billionaire off. Clearly not. People normally didn’t bail out from jail people with whom they no longer wanted to associate.

“That’s a good idea,” Henderson replied, crossing to his filing cabinet. He pulled open a drawer and started leafing through it. “I met your friend Catherine Grant last night. Nice woman. Funny.”

“That she is,” Clark agreed. His brow furrowed. “Where did you meet Cat?”

“Down at the docks off Hob’s Bay,” Henderson said, closing the drawer and returning to his desk.

Clark’s heart rate increased. “Docks?”

“Where we found you, to be exact. She said that she wanted to check it out, and I happened to be out there confirming a hunch,” Henderson said smoothly, so smoothly in fact Clark wasn’t sure that Henderson was telling him the full truth.

“Please tell me she left before you did,” Clark said.

“We left together,” Henderson said, and Clark exhaled. “Put your mind at ease, Kent, she wasn’t alone. She was with her brother-in-law Simon Miller, who just happens to be an MPD Crime Scene Tech.”

Clark smiled. Cat was full of surprises. “I haven’t met Simon,” he said.

“I didn’t know you and Cat were so close,” Henderson said, pulling out a mini-cassette player from his desk drawer and setting on his desk.

“Cat invited Lois and me to her family’s Christmas Eve party,” Clark explained. “We were introduced to much of Cat’s family that night.”

Henderson nodded and then pointed at Clark. “I’m glad you brought that up.” He flipped open the file he had been reading when Clark had knocked on his door, picked up a photo, and slid it across the desk to him.

Clark’s heart skipped a beat as he broke out in a sweat. The watch was real. It was almost as if he could feel the Kryptonite shards pierce his skin as they had in his nightmare. He tried to take a deep breath, but only managed several shallow ones, before picking up the photo with a shaking hand. He knew his reaction could only be from his nightmare, as Kryptonite couldn’t harm him through a photograph. “Where? I… This… What is this?” he finally asked.

Henderson had been leaning forward, studying him, but when Clark looked at him, he sat back. “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me. You recognize it.” It wasn’t a question.

Clark shook his head. “Out of a dream… a nightmare, really.”

“Why don’t you tell me about that?” Henderson asked.

“I’d rather not.”

Henderson’s brows rose.

Clark coughed. “It’s personal.” He hoped his cheeks hadn’t reddened as he glanced away. In the dream, he and Lois had been in the midst of rapture when Luthor had interrupted them.

“I’ll be discreet, Kent,” Henderson promised softly. “It’s possible that your dream has something to do with your disappearance.”

“I doubt it,” Clark replied, setting the photo back down on the desk. “Wait. Does this have to do with my abduction?” He pointed at the picture.

Henderson hesitated a moment before answering with care. “We’ll see about that. Why don’t you tell me in what context the watch played in your dream?”

“It’s a watch?” Clark exclaimed, picking up the photo again and studying it closer. “Oh, God, it is a watch.” He took a deep breath and exhaled, trembling. “In my dream, Lois was wearing this watch. It had been a gift from Luthor. He shot it off her wrist, and it… it… killed us both.”

“Hmmmm,” Henderson contemplated this answer. “Where were you when this happened?”

Clark set down the picture upside-down. “At the Daily Planet, in the stairwell.”

Henderson frowned.

“I told you it didn’t have anything to do with my attempted murder.”

“Probably not,” Henderson replied, and then shot him a grin. “Unless Lois had something to do with your abduction.”

Clark didn’t even dignify that statement with a response.

“Let’s listen to that answering machine tape, shall we?” Henderson went on, and Clark nodded his agreement.

“Hi, Lois,” Clark heard his own voice say.

Henderson clicked off the machine. “Sorry, wrong tape.”

Clark leaned forward. “No, let me hear it.” He caught the policeman’s eyes. “Please.” He was missing so much of that night that he didn’t even remember leaving this message on Lois’s machine, despite Lois having mentioned it to him. He was curious what he had said.

The inspector nodded and started the tape again.

“I tried to reach you at the office, but Joe told me you were out. Don’t worry about Superman; he’s invulnerable. I’m sure he’s fine. I don’t think EPRAD Control is expecting him back until late tonight, anyway. I’m guessing you’re on the way home. I’ll meet you there. I’m on my way, so I’ll see you in a few, and, yes, I have quite a story to tell you. I love you, minha.”

Clark leaned back in his chair. Telling Lois not to worry about him because he was invulnerable on the very night he was abducted and exposed to Kryptonite seemed quite ironic now, but not enough so to make him smile. Minha. That seemed so long ago, and Clark wondered if Lois could ever really be ‘his’. He cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said.

Henderson popped out that tape and taking another one from the file, placed it into the machine. “Any idea what that story was you were planning on telling your partner, loverboy?”

Clark blushed. No point in denying that he and Lois were a couple to Henderson. Clearly, the man wasn’t buying the whole “just partners” ruse. Clark had been going to tell Lois he was Superman. He sounded so hopeful and excited, full of pride from blowing up Nightfall Major. Clark wished he could recall better what those feelings felt like. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t spread that around, Inspector,” he murmured.

“Hey, you’ve got my sympathies, Kent,” Henderson said. “Is it some form of aversion therapy?”

Clark shot him a dirty look.

With a grin, Henderson started the second tape.

“Clearly, Miss Smarty Pants didn’t relay my message,” Cat’s sharp voice softened as she continued, “I need to talk to someone, and you’re it, Clark. So, call me!” Instead of beeping, as his answering machine did to indicate the end of a message, it just went to dead air for fifteen seconds.

“Cat Grant,” Clark told Henderson, in case the officer didn’t recognize her voice. The man nodded.

“Good morning, Mr. Kent. This is Scott Splodshow, and I’m calling from the National Bank of New Troy, in regards to your safety deposit box. Please contact me at…” and he left a phone number.

Clark’s brow furrowed and he held up a hand. “Wait. My bank contacted me about my safety deposit box? It shouldn’t be up for renewal yet. I rented it last May. Why would they call me?” He looked at the inspector in confusion.

Henderson stopped the tape. “Kent, I’m sorry. I thought you knew,” he said. “The National Bank of New Troy was robbed the night before Superman left to deal with Nightfall Major. Your safety deposit box was one of the ones hit.”

Clark stood up. “Robbed?” Henderson must be wrong. “No! It can’t be!”

“I’m sorry,” Henderson repeated.

Clark bit his bottom lip and slowly sank back down to his chair. “Everything’s gone?”

The inspector nodded.

Clark’s shoulders slumped. He didn’t care about the gold, but his one and only photo of his folks had been in there for safekeeping. He closed his eyes. “Why?... Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“I’m sorry. Somehow in the confusion of you not having any memories, and then having them again, toss in Nightfall Minor, I thought Ms. Lane had told you, and she must have thought I had done the same. I am terribly sorry,” Henderson said, flipping open a notepad. “May I ask what was stolen?”

Clark cleared his throat. “There were some gold nuggets… I don’t know. A couple of thousand worth maybe,” he murmured. “A picture of my folks.” It was as if those robbers stole his whole past from him. He had nothing left from his old dimension, except some old newspaper clippings and a few odd pieces of clothing.

Several minutes passed before Clark glimpsed up to find Henderson staring at him. At his glance, the inspector seemed to find himself, gazed down at his notepad and asked, “Anything else? Any papers or other valuables?”

Clark shook his head. “No, that’s it.” And now it was all gone, forever.

“Hmmm,” Henderson said contemplatively. “Ms. Lane had theorized that whoever was after you, robbed both your apartment and your safety deposit box in hopes of learning more about you, and was also responsible for several other attempts on your life.”

“Several?”

The inspector flipped a couple of pages over in the file. “Almost hit by a car during the Nightfall eclipse. The bombing at the Lexor Honeymoon suite.” He glanced over at Clark. “Honeymoon suite, eh?”

Clark ignored this remark. “That was perpetrated by Rourke. I doubt he had anything to do with my abduction, being that he’s dead. There’s no proof that the hit-and-run was aiming at me in particular. It could have been just a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, no other attempts have been made since Joe Rory...” He cleared his throat. “Jumped to his death.”

“So, you should rest on your laurels now?” Henderson said dryly. “Free and clear?”

“I wish I knew,” Clark said softly, looking at his hands. “It’s the not knowing that’s killing me. All I can do is live my life and hope we find an answer to who’s behind this, and soon.”

Henderson nodded and set the photo back into the file.

“Wait. Tell me about the watch,” Clark said. “What does this have to do with my abduction?”

“One of the men who pulled you from the water found it on you. He pocketed it before the police and EMT arrived,” Henderson explained. “He had seemed jumpy when I first interviewed him about the event, and I knew he was holding something back. Friday, he came into my office and turned over the watch, telling me he had been racked with guilt for keeping it, especially after hearing that you still have partial amnesia over the event. He said he hopes that the watch will be the clue that leads us to find whoever did this to you.” The inspector pushed the picture back towards Clark. “Is it?”

Early last week, Clark had visited Reed Frazer and Jake Simpleton at the warehouse beside where they had found him in the water. He had returned the sunglasses and thanked the two men for saving him. He wished he could’ve done more than shake their hands, but wasn’t sure what. Gratitude had always been enough for him.

Staring at the photo of the watch, Clark could almost see the red and green stones glow like Kryptonite, and he was thankful that Henderson had only shown him a picture of the watch. If those green crystals really were Kryptonite… Clark shook his head. It must be his nightmare about Luthor killing him and Lois, which was polluting his mind; other than that, the watch still seemed unfamiliar. “I’m sorry, Inspector. I’m still a blank slate. I have no idea where that watch came from or how I had it in my possession.”

“It’s okay, Clark. It was worth a shot,” Henderson reassured him.

Clark was sure Henderson must feel just as frustrated about his lack of memories as he did.

***End of Part 117***

Part 118

I had so much fun writing the Cat and Henderson scene, I needed to bring him back for a double encore. Comments