Home V: Obsession -- 13/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
Rob glanced at his wrist talker. "It's getting late," he said. "We'd better get back to the hotel and let Clark and Lori get some sleep, dear. They have to work in the morning."
"My goodness, yes." Mariann set down her empty coffee cup. "Lori needs her rest. Do you suppose you could give me that recipe tomorrow, when you've had a chance to write it down, Clark?"
"Actually, I can give you my file card," Clark said. "I know it by heart, and never need to check the recipe anymore. I'll get it." He turned and went into the kitchen where, Lori knew, he would write the recipe at super speed and return within seconds.
The kitchen door swung open, and Clark returned with a file card that bore the recipe in his neat handwriting. "Here you go."
Mariann accepted the card and tucked it into her handbag. "Thank you," she said. "This is very nice of you, Clark."
"Don't mention it." Clark gave Lori a hand up from the sofa and they followed her parents to the door, where they retrieved their coats from the antique coat tree.
As he opened the door, Rob glanced down at Lori's waistline. "I'm looking forward to being a grandfather again. Be careful in the meantime, Princess."
"I will," she said.
**********
And now, Part 13:
After Lori's parents had gone, Clark looked at his beautiful wife. She looked tired, he thought, and it wasn't a bit surprising. It had been a trying day, and as usual, Lori had been in the middle of it. "Would you like more coffeecake?" he asked.
Not unexpectedly, she nodded. "A glass of milk would be nice, too. Do we still have some?"
"Of course." Clark grinned companionably at her. "I never let us run out of your favorite beverage. I'll be right back with some."
He returned a moment later with a tall glass of milk. The coffeecake still sat on the table in front of the sofa, and Lori had helped herself to a large square of it.
"Here you go," he said, setting the milk down on the table.
"Just a minute." Lori lifted the glass, swiped at the milk ring with the napkin that Clark had provided earlier for the coffeecake, and then at the bottom of the glass. "You'll get another ring in the varnish, and I just had the other one sanded out and the surface redone. This thing is an antique, did you know? The guy who did the job works for a place that buys and sells antique furniture. He said this table was worth about ten thousand dollars. He wanted to buy it, but I said no."
"This table?" Clark eyed his mother's coffee table with new interest. "This was the coffee table Mom had in her living room from as far back as I can remember."
"I figured that, but you have to remember, stuff that was around when you were a kid is historical now. Speaking of which, I didn't know you knew my grandmother. It looks like you saved my life before my father was even born."
"Yeah, I guess so. It's not really a coincidence, though," Clark said. "She was my great-niece by marriage, even though she didn't know it. Lucy Lane was her grandmother, and she was worried when Katy decided to be a cop, so I kind of kept an eye on her until she got to be the Police Commissioner and wasn't likely to get shot at anymore. After Superman retired, I made a point of showing up as Clark Kent often enough that she didn't think anything of it. She didn't know who I was, of course, but Lois and I both felt better about it."
"So I really am descended from Lois's sister," Lori said. "It's kind of nice that I'm related to the Lanes, even if I never knew it before."
"Yeah, it is." Clark settled down on the sofa and put his arm around her, resting his hand on the tiny bulge that was their baby. "Your parents sure seem to be supporters of the family, too. I was pleasantly surprised." Under the hand that rested on her side, something fluttered very gently. Lori apparently didn't feel anything, but Clark sat up abruptly. "Did you feel that?"
Lori lowered the glass of milk. "Feel what?"
"I think I just felt the baby move." Again the faintest of flutters. "There it is again."
"That? I thought it was just -- well -- gas bubbles or something," Lori said. She ducked her head, and Clark grinned at her obvious embarrassment.
"I don't think so," he said. "That's definitely Junior." He spoke to her middle. "Hey there, kiddo. It's nice to know you're awake."
Lori giggled. "Did you do that with CJ and the others?"
"You bet I did." Clark stroked the spot where he had felt the tiny movement. "In case you hadn't figured it out, I like kids a lot."
"Yeah, it hadn't totally escaped my attention," Lori said. "It's really nice seeing you so excited about this."
Clark tightened his arm. "I am. I haven't been a new dad for a long time."
"Well, you're going to be one in just a few more months," Lori said.
"And you still don't want to know the sex?" Clark asked.
She shook her head determinedly. "If I have to go through labor, I want a nice surprise at the end."
"Well," Clark pointed out, "it's got to be one or the other."
"Oh, I know. But it's not knowing which that makes it a surprise." She looked at him with a slight frown. "Do you *really* want to know, Clark? I guess I could let you peek if you want, but --"
He shook his head at once, putting his other arm around her and pulling her close to his chest. "Nope. If you don't want to, then I don't either. We'll wait and find out together." Holding her tight against him, he again felt the slight flutter in her abdomen that was the movement of his unborn child. Lori sighed and put her head against his shoulder.
Clark dropped a kiss on top of her head, which was the only spot he could reach. "Time for bed, honey. I think you've had enough for one day."
**********
The morning weather was a complete change from the night before, as they had discovered when Lori looked out the window shortly after rising. Snow was twinkling down so heavily when they pulled out of the apartment's parking garage that she could barely see the street in front of them. Clark switched on the virtual navigation system and they proceeded slowly along avenues made slippery with snow and slush.
Rush hour was a nightmare this morning. Cars slipped and slid on the slick surfaces, and traffic was unusually heavy. The lordly air vehicles had been grounded because of the storm and commuters who normally flew in to work were traversing the streets with their earthbound brethren. After two blocks of creeping forward by inches, and a near miss by the pilot of a Slipstream Scooter, who couldn't be bothered by such irrelevancies as physics, snow or traffic laws, Clark pulled into a side street and cut the engine.
"What are you doing?" Lori asked.
Her husband's form blurred for a second in the seat, and resolved into the colorful figure of Superman. "I'm going to fly us in. No one will notice in this, and if I don't we're still going to be sitting in traffic when lunch hour rolls around."
He had a point. Lori watched as he got out and disappeared into the falling snow. An instant later, she felt the vehicle lifted as if it were a toy, and then the ground was falling away. Under her feet, she knew that Clark was holding the Jeep with the care that she had seen when he landed passenger shuttles, but it was still a source of amazement to her that the man who held her in his arms with such gentleness could hoist their groundcar, which must weigh well over a ton, like a feather pillow.
Suddenly, the clouds of show vanished, and Lori realized that they had entered the Planet's parking tier on the level of their reserved space. Clark set the Jeep on the pavement, blurred into Clark Kent, and calmly opened the driver's door. A moment later, they were pulling into their spot.
"I guess there's nobody around to see, huh?" Lori asked.
He shook his head and waved to the largely deserted parking area. "I'd say the office isn't going to be very full this morning," he observed. "There's Andrea's car, so I guess she's here, and there's Ned's scooter."
"Maybe the snow will let up in a bit," Lori said. "And people can always telecommute if necessary." She opened her door. "Shall we go?"
**********
The office was uncharacteristically quiet when they stepped out of the elevator. Andrea Waltham was at her desk with a cup of coffee perched precariously on one corner if it, leaning forward to read something on her screen. She looked up briefly, waved a hand vaguely at them in greeting and returned to her task. John Olsen was sitting on the edge of the snack table working on a cup of coffee and a doughnut while watching the row of vidscreens on one wall. News commentators could be seen standing in the heavy snow, clutching their coats around them while reporting on the inclement weather. He glanced around as Lori and Clark arrived at the table, and Lori snagged a doughnut.
"Big news flash," he remarked. "It's snowing. Of course, people might be able to tell that if they looked out the window."
"You think?" Lori asked brightly.
"I think the clues are fairly obvious if you look hard," John said. "And it's so unusual at this time of year."
Behind them, one of the doors in the bank of elevators opened and Barry Marston stepped in. He looked quickly around and crossed to the coffee machine, but it was obvious that the coffee wasn't his objective. "Clark, could I talk to you and Lori a minute?" He glanced at his boss. "Sorry, John, I just need to ask them a question."
"Sure; don't mind me," John said dryly.
Barry hesitated. "Could we go into the conference room?"
John cocked a sardonic eyebrow at Clark, but said nothing as they trailed Barry toward the conference room.
The door of the room closed behind them and Barry locked it with unnecessary force. He turned to face them, and Lori could see that his hands were shaking. "You're following the investigation of that fitness instructor who was killed the other day," he said. "Aren't you?"
"Ginnie Talbot?" Clark asked cautiously.
"Yeah. Deirdre said you're taking a class at the gym. I figured you were probably investigating the murder."
"Actually," Lori said, "it started out to be an ordinary maternity fitness class. Then Ginnie Talbot was killed and we decided to use our enrollment in the class as a way to do some snooping. Why?"
"Deirdre is missing," Barry said.
"Deirdre?" Lori said. There was a sinking sensation about the level of her stomach. "What do you mean?"
"We were out last night," Barry said. "She said she was ..." He broke off and swallowed convulsively. "She said she was scared. Ginnie Talbot had talked to her. She thought someone was spying on her -- then she was killed. And yesterday, after Dee got home, she said she thought someone had been in her place. Things were ... not quite where she'd left them. I took her home after our date and went through her apartment, just to be sure no one was there. Dee locked the whole place up when I left. She was supposed to call me this morning, but she didn't. I went over there -- it took forever in all the snow. Her apartment was unlocked and Dee is gone."
Lori looked at Clark, dismayed. "Do you suppose it could be?"
"It's possible," Clark said. "Where does Ms. Monitor live?"
"She has an apartment not far from the gym. I've been trying to convince her to move. The area isn't too good for a single woman, but Deirdre hadn't decided yet. What's going on? Do you guys have any idea?"
"Maybe," Clark said. "Let's not jump to any conclusions. Lori and I will go over there and look around, to see what we can find. Did you lock the place up when you left?"
"Yeah, I did." Barry produced a key. "I have a spare key, though." He glanced at the window where the snowfall, if anything, had grown heavier since they had arrived at work. "How are you going to make it in this?"
"We'll take the slidewalk," Clark said. "It'll be faster than the car. We have to go that way anyhow. We were going over to see Carla at Metro General at lunchtime."
Barry nodded distractedly. "Do you think you can do anything? The cops already told me they won't do anything for 48 hours, and that most of the time these people turn up on their own. They didn't listen to a thing I said!"
"I don't know," Clark said. "We do have some friends in the police department who might be able to help. Velma Chow will listen for certain if we tell her it may be connected to the other case."
Barry bit his lip. "I've been trying to talk Dee into a six-month contract," he said, "just to see if we're as compatible as I think we are. If anything's happened to her --"
"Look," Clark said, "let's not panic until we see what the situation is. We'll go over right now, all right?"
**********
John Olsen watched as Lori and Clark followed his business editor into the conference room and shut the door. Being the boss wasn't always a good thing, he mused, since the employees often wouldn't talk freely when you were anywhere around. Oh well, he'd come to terms with that when he'd taken this job eight years ago. He'd been an investigative reporter in his own right until then, and a pretty darned good one, if he did say so himself, but the Suits had tapped him for the job and it meant more money. Since Meriel had just entered her teens, the thoughts of paying for her college education had definitely influenced him, and Marilyn had concurred. It gave him set hours, unlike before, and though he sometimes worked late, it was still a good deal more to be desired than his hours as an investigative journalist.
There were times, though, that he missed the thrill of the chase. He gave a faint sigh and got to his feet. Duty called. Just because most of his staff wasn't here didn't mean he could slack off. There were bound to be things the absent newsroom staff would send to him to edit. It was just another day at the office as far as he was concerned.
Clark and Lori left the conference room with obvious haste and headed for the elevator. Barry Marsden followed at a half-run. "I'll be back later, Chief!" he flung over his shoulder, grabbing his coat from the rack as he passed.
John glanced after them, bemused, and then made an exception to his usual rule. *Clark,* he telepathed, *what's going on?*
*We're not sure yet,* Clark's mental voice said. *I hope our killer hasn't struck again. I'll let you know.*
John stared after his three reporters as they disappeared into the elevator. Whatever Barry's involvement in this thing was didn't bode well. Whoever this killer was, he -- or she, he amended -- seemed to be getting more determined to get rid of all possible competitors. If he kept this up, any woman Cooper looked at could be in danger. He wondered a little apprehensively who the victim was this time; but then, maybe it would turn out to be a false alarm. John made his way across the newsroom to his office. His computer was showing an icon that told him he had mail, as expected. He settled into his chair and pulled up the mail program. He checked through it quickly, deleting the occasional piece of spam that had sifted through his filters, and returned to the first piece of mail on the list, a short note from Barney Farrel informing him that he was going to meet a source this morning instead of coming in. The investigation into the city's finances was progressing, and an anonymous source had tipped him off that the pensions of the city employees might be involved. He was checking it out, and would report on his progress later.
John nodded to himself. Exposing corruption in high places was always good for circulation, and this looked as if it could turn into something a lot bigger than the sewer system story that had started it.
The second piece was addressed to him, but the return address looked unfamiliar. Still, it didn't appear to be spam, and his virus monitor said the message was clean, so he opened it.
**********
Deirdre Monitor lived on the second floor of a creaky apartment building barely a block from the one that Lori had occupied in the months between her graduation from NTSU and their marriage, Clark saw. It couldn't by any standards be considered a security apartment, and when they stepped into the three-room "suite" he glanced at the lock, examining it for signs that someone had broken it or otherwise entered the place by force.
There were no such signs, but that didn't make him feel much better. All it meant was that if anyone had entered it had probably been with Deirdre's cooperation. Considering that the person they hunted could very well be someone frequently at the gym, and probably familiar to the receptionist, the circumstance was no comfort at all.
The apartment was scrupulously neat. The bed had not been made, he saw when he looked into the tiny bedroom, but that wasn't surprising if she had been awakened in the middle of the night, or if someone had come by this morning. There was no sign of food preparation, and a frilly dressing gown lay on the foot of the unmade bed.
Lori was prowling around the bedroom and paused by the window. Barry stood in the doorway, obviously uncertain of what he should do, but watching them as they conducted their search.
"Clark," Lori said suddenly, "the window is unlocked."
Clark crossed the room to where she stood by the window, carefully not touching the frame or the glass. In this ancient structure, as in the one Lori had inhabited, none of the windows were powered, nor did they contain the self-darkening glass of more modern buildings. As she had said, the window's mechanical lock was not engaged, and there was the slightest, hair-thin gap between the window and its frame.
"Do you suppose she went out the window?" Lori asked.
"Maybe." Clark x-rayed the wall and at once saw the six-inch ledge that encircled the building perhaps a foot below the level of the window. If a person made herself very small and flat to the wall, it was barely possible that she could stand on such a ledge. Its surface was covered with snow, effectively eradicating any evidence if there ever had been any, but --
Clark frowned at the window glass. Were those the faintest, infinitesimal smudges on the glass? Smudges that could have been made by human hands, by someone attempting to close the window from the outside ...
Neither Lori nor Barry could see such marks, of course. They were only visible to his enhanced vision, but they told him that there was a good chance that Deirdre Monitor might still be alive. If someone had entered her apartment, perhaps with a key, and she had heard that person enter, she might have realized that her only way out was the window. It was a little far-fetched, but if she had realized that the intruder meant her harm, she might have taken the chance.
But in that case, who might the intruder have been? How could such a person have acquired her key?
"Barry," he asked suddenly, "has Deirdre by any chance, lost her keys recently?"
Barry looked surprised. "Yes she did," he said. "Two days ago she was saying that her keys had disappeared. She searched her whole place and the gym, but she didn't find them. Luckily, she had a spare."
Clark looked at Lori. "Looks like they may not have been lost."
"Yeah." Lori craned her neck, trying to see out the window. "What do you suppose she did? You think she got away?"
"Maybe," Clark said. "I think she went out the window and closed it behind her. The question is how did she get down? Lori, can you and Barry go down and see what you can see from below? I want to check out a few more things up here."
"Right away," Lori said. She crossed to the door and took their co-worker by the elbow. "Come on, Barry, let's take a look."
As soon as Clark heard the door close, he turned back to the window and began to x-ray the space beyond.
Deirdre's so-called "suite" was in the rear of the apartment house, and below, a narrow, littered alley ran parallel. A dumpster sat close to the side of the building perhaps twenty feet to the right. Clark x-rayed the dumpster and his heart jumped into his throat.
A woman's body lay amid the trash and debris, a woman clad in a nightgown and a coat, but no shoes. One ankle was black and blue, and swollen to the size of a watermelon. Deirdre Monitor was curled up in a corner of the metal container, and one of the big garbage bots was crunching mechanically toward it as he watched.
In an instant, he had thrust open the window and Superman hurled himself through.
Deirdre was covered in a layer of trash and snow, but she was breathing, and he could hear her heart beating -- slowly, much too slowly, but still beating. He scooped her out of the dumpster bare seconds ahead of the robot. She was unconscious, and her breathing was hoarse and ragged. Lori and Barry Marston rounded the corner as he carried the woman away from the bot and stretched her on the ground.
"Dee!" He heard Barry's shout, but paid no attention as he fanned her from head to toe with low-level heat vision, listening to her body's response as he did so. The snow around her melted at once and the water began to steam. He could hear her heartbeat begin to speed up as her body warmed, and her breathing grew infinitesimally stronger.
"Dee!" Barry flung himself to the ground next to her. "Ohmigod! Is she --"
Clark glanced quickly at Lori and then returned instantly to his task of sweeping Deirdre repeatedly from head to toe with heat vision. "She's alive," he said. "She's hypothermic, and has frostbite, assorted bumps and bruises, and a broken ankle. I'm going to take her to the emergency room." As he spoke he stooped, lifted her gently in his arms and rose smoothly into the air with all the care at his command. Behind him, he heard Lori speaking.
"Barry, why don't you head for the hospital. I'll go get Clark and we'll catch up with you."
**********
tbc
