Dead or Alive pt 11
Lex Luthor sat in his living room, watching the large plasma screen television. Superman was flying above the cemetery. People had seen him from airplanes. They'd seen him in China. They'd seen him in Bangladesh. It seemed like there wasn't a country in the world that hadn't seen him fly overhead.
He snapped open his phone. "What's going on? I thought you shot Mr. Blue Tights. Why am I seeing spandex all over the television?"
"He got away, Boss. The kryptonite bullet was stolen by Lois Lane. The police caught everyone else."
"Slow down. Explain this to me. Pretend I'm a patient man."
"There's nothing to explain, Sir. The kryptonite didn't work against him."
"Get him!" Luthor slammed the phone down, muttering obscenities under his breath.
Dead or Alive pt 12
Clark pushed his dirty breakfast dishes away and pulled the blue velvet ring box out of his pocket. He flipped open his notepad and pulled our a pen. He turned the box over, carefully studying it with his intense vision. He needed a pair of tweezers and a piece of clean paper, no a piece of clean glass. The picture of himself with his parents was covered in glass. That would do.
He carefully applied rows of tape to the glass, forming squares to separate his findings, then turned his attention to the box. Tiny fragments of dust clung between the hairs of velvet nap. He removed several of them onto the glass, careful to keep them within one of the squares he’d made. Fifty particles per square should be enough. He recognized some of the particles as being from the beige satin the coffin bed was lined in, but others could have been dust mites from the person’s skin or flakes of dry skin which would carry the person’s DNA. It was worth looking into.
Then he carefully opened the box and removed the piece of paper with the tweezers. The name in the top of the box was 'Foster’s Jewelers'. He wrote it on the pad. Moving to the desk, he checked for the name in the yellow pages. Sure enough, the store was located on Spadina Avenue, 221. He wrote down the address and the phone number.
He zoomed in on the ring, finding finger prints on it. Quickly he sketched the partial prints onto a new page of paper. He also removed a new group of dust particles from the velvet that surrounded the ring, moving them carefully to a second square on the glass.
He donned a pair of plastic surgical gloves, then pulled the ring out. He tipped it so the light shone on the inside of the gold band. Engraved tiny numbers and letters reflected the light. He recorded them on the first page in his notebook beneath the jeweler’s name.
Perhaps he didn’t need to do any of this, the jeweler could easily tell if the ring had come from his store, and who the purchaser had been. But Clark was busy gathering the data first. He didn’t want to miss any details in his haste, or be led to the wrong person.
‘All my love, Kara’ was also engraved into the inside of the ring. He wrote it down. Perhaps it was time to phone the jewelers, or to head over there.
He opened the note and read it again, “Clark Kent, if you’re not really dead and if you ever get out alive, will you marry me?”
It gave him the same reaction he’d had when he’d first read it. Panic. Someone had discovered his identity. He smoothed out the note and looked closely for fingerprints. He recognized his own and focused in on the other ones on both sides of the paper. Flipping to the sketch page, he copied the fingerprints one at a time, trying to arrange them by size, perhaps to give an accurate picture of the entire hand.
The prints were smaller than his own, but larger than Lois’. The woman they belonged to was probably of medium build. With the tweezers, he pulled the tab by the hinge inside the box, removing the velvet-covered cardboard that held the ring. He turned it over. It was white. A tiny bit of adhesive stuck to it, probably where the price had been. Beside it were smudged prints, likely from whomever removed the price from the box. He looked for bits of dust and gathered them onto a third square of the glass.
He quickly replaced the contents of the ring box, except for the note, and slid it into his jacket pocket which hung on the back of his chair.
He found another piece of glass and lay it carefully on top of his findings glass, then put them in a manilla envelope which he carefully placed inside a briefcase that he rarely used.
He cleared off his breakfast dishes, washed and dried them and put them away. In another second he’d tidied up the bathroom from his shower, made his bed and tidied the rest of the apartment.
He looked at himself in the mirror. His white shirt and dark suit looked nice. The green and silver silk tie looked good, too. He ran his comb through his hair, then stepped over to put his jacket on.
He had a similar suit, but it was the one he'd left in the hospital hallway. He wondered if there'd been any identification in the pockets. He'd not seen his wallet recently. Perhaps that's where it was. He'd have to go by and see if it was found.
It seemed a bit silly to get all dressed up just so, then to spin into the suit and fly off to work. Oh well, it was part of the routine.
Taking off from his balcony had its drawbacks. People could easily see him. He’d been thinking for some time that he really needed a more secure entrance to his apartment when he arrived home in his Superman suit. For that reason, he’d spent part of his early morning working on a tunnel. Since he lived in the basement floor of the apartment building, it was the logical move. He’d lifted the carpet in the entrance room and created a tunnel beneath the city. The exit of his tunnel was in a field just outside of town. He’d placed a large boulder in the end of the tunnel so no one could follow it to his apartment. He’d had to drill a winding route to avoid the sewer system and the underground parking lots.
He’d been too easy to watch or to hear taking off and landing. He’d not be making sonic booms anymore either.
He spun into the suit, picked up the briefcase, lifted the carpet and the trap door and dropped into the vertical hole that gradually angled off to the edge of town. Then he rocketed up the several hundred meters to the boulder at the top, lifted it off and replaced it before flying to the Daily Planet building.
Perry watched as Clark came out of the stairwell, straightening his tie. He couldn’t wait to have a word with his most interesting reporter. Clark had a few things to tell him as well.
He nodded to his boss as he saw him standing in his doorway signaling him to come in. It was a long conversation. Perry wasn’t interested in the platitudes Clark had given him as excuses the other day. This time he wanted and got the whole story.
