Pale, Clark winced as he sank gingerly into his seat. His ribs had to be paining him, but Lois suspected that he was more shocked by the confrontation between himself and Simon Hunt.
“What was that, Clark?” Lois asked. “What was that thing he had?”
“It was the only memento I had left from my biological parents,” Clark said quietly. He was withdrawn and pensive. “It was stolen when I was sixteen.”
Lois slid into the driver’s seat moments later and turned to him. “So Simon Hunt has something that was stolen at about the same time as you were accused of murder.”
“It happened months before any of that.” Clark stared at the dashboard. “I don’t remember ever seeing him around here either.”
“So why is this thing so important then?” Lois asked. “He wouldn’t be waving it around like that if he didn’t think it would get a reaction out of you.”
“I don’t know why he thinks it’s important, but I don’t see that it has anything to do with what happened to Lilah and the coach.” Clark seemed to believe what he was saying, but it was obvious that there was a great deal he wasn‘t saying. Lois could see from the tension in his shoulders that he was waiting for her to ask questions that he didn’t want to answer.
“I thought we were through with keeping secrets.” She pulled the door closed and slipped her key into the ignition.
“I don’t know much about my parents,” Clark said. “They left a message for me, recorded in that. It was stolen before I got to hear more than part of the message.”
“Why is Simon Hunt so upset about a fancy tape recorder?” Lois asked.
“Maybe he thinks there’s something newsworthy about who my parents were.” Clark looked away, and Lois was again struck by how much he wasn’t saying.
“And this has nothing to do with the murders when you were eighteen?” Lois was skeptical. “Doesn’t it seem like a big coincidence that this is all happening now.”
“This is the first time I’ve been back in ten years. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen now.”
She squinted at him for a moment. “Maybe you’re John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s illegitimate love child.”
Clark snickered. “Sure. If you’re playing the odds, it’d be more likely to be Mick Jagger or Wilt Chamberlain.”
“Well, it would explain why a tabloid reporter was after you. Maybe it’s President Presley. That’d make a great story!”
Clark looked uneasy, though his paleness had begun to fade a little.
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“Not on your life,” Lois said cheerily.
She wasn’t going to stop until she found out the truth. She’d had enough of the mystery that was Clark Kent, and she was going to get to the bottom of it.
***************
Lois’s voice on the phone was aggrieved. “But Perry, there’s still a story here. The government may be gone, but the people are still here.”
She was silent for a moment, and Clark was grateful that for once he couldn’t hear the conversation on the other end of the line. He was miserable enough as it was.
Simon Hunt had the one link that he had to his native planet, and he knew more than he should. Everything that Clark had managed to accomplish was in jeopardy, and without his powers, Clark was frighteningly vulnerable. It was every nightmare he’d had about Lois, but ten times worse. At least with Lois, there was a chance that she’d have understood and made allowances. Hunt sounded like a fanatic who wasn’t going to stop until everything in his path was destroyed.
“What?” Lois turned slightly and frowned. She listened for several long moments.
Lois began scribbling rapidly on a scrap of paper near the phone. “So if he’s nosing around, there may be more to this than we thought. Thanks, Perry.”
Turning to Clark, Lois said, “Ten years ago, Simon Hunt didn’t exist. The paper trail dries up nine years ago in April. Before that, there’s nothing. Perry and the staffers couldn’t find out anything more. But when they tried, an agent from the NSA came to talk to them, asking why they were looking into his background.”
“Witness protection program?” Clark asked.
“They usually do a better job of faking records.” Lois shook her head. “Hunt has some influence in government, or at least he once did. Maybe he used to be in government. But for some reason he changed his identity nine year ago and hasn’t gone back.”
Worse and worse, Clark thought. Hunt had ties in the government, and he really was a fanatic.
“He’s spent most of his time since then chasing aliens. That might explain why he’s not still in the government; chasing little green men tend to make them look bad.”
“So this guy is a real life Mulder. How does that affect the story?” Clark fought to keep his voice calm and dispassionate.
“It explains his interest in the case. Perry’s going to fax me everything they’ve got on the guy. He says that the military aspect is tabled for the moment, but he wants us to concentrate on Hunt and his cronies.
“So you think the men in my room were working for Hunt?” Clark shook his head. “I really don’t think there’s any connection. There are plenty of reasons for a group of rednecks to get together to beat up on the town pariah. You don’t have to add in wild alien theories.”
“I think this guy may be dangerous. If he thinks you’re wrapped up in this whole alien thing, there’s no telling what he might do.”
“So we’ll be investigating him while he’s investigating us? That seems a little weird.”
“This is Smallville,” Lois said. “Which I’m increasingly coming to think is a synonym for weird.”
*************
There’d been a time when he’d kept a gun on him at all times, when he’d always been on the alert, looking over his shoulder, alert for any danger. Unfortunately, years as a reporter had dulled those instincts, leaving him in this predicament.
Simon grunted as his face was pressed into the brick wall. This was the casual cruelty that he remembered, the thing that had first convinced him that he had a tool he could use. He’d needed someone dangerous, someone willing to do anything. He’d gotten more than he’d bargained for. Sometimes tools turned to bite the hand that used them.
“Don‘t you think it‘s unwise to stick around?” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. He hadn’t gotten a look at what weapons the other man might have. “Seems a little stupid, given that people know you here.”
“I’ll worry about that.” The voice hadn’t changed; after all these years, it still gave him the chills. “I’m beginning to regret telling you about Clark. I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to confront him in front of his partner. What did you think you had to gain?”
“He’s sick,” Simon snarled. “That means something can hurt him..”
The pressure on the back of his neck eased. “Yeah. Imagine my surprise when the boys were actually able to break a couple of ribs.”
“Maybe it’ll be something fatal,” Simon said. “Maybe he’s picked up something nasty from that Lane woman.” He hesitated. “I think that something he came in to contact with made him sick. He was coming out of the Ross house when I saw him.
“Me and Pete, we go way back. He‘ll be more than happy to tell me what he knows. Don‘t worry about the Lane woman either. I’ll take care of her.” There was anticipation in his voice, and Simon had little doubt as to what “taking care” of her entailed.
“Just like you did the last three?” Simon grunted. “I made a mistake getting you out of prison.”
The blow to his kidneys was as sharp as it was unexpected.
“You choose to deal with the devil, you pay the price. ”
“I sat right next to him for two hours on the plane,” Simon said, horrified. “Who knows what sort of alien pathogens he may have exposed me to? You should have told me earlier.”
“And have you go off half cocked like you are now?” The pressure was gone suddenly. “I’ll be in touch. Don’t do anything that I’ll regret. You wouldn’t like it.”
Simon didn’t bother to look back as he heard the sounds of footsteps retreating. Their association had cost him his career, and there wasn’t a day that he didn’t regret it. Yet, without him, he’d have been clueless until it was too late.
What were a few dead women when weighed against the safety of the world?
***********************
Sitting across from Rachel Harris, Lois never would have thought the professional sitting across from her was the teenager who had intended to marry Clark. She was glad that the police station was less than a block away from the pharmacy; it was one of the few benefits of a small town.
As slow as the pharmacy was, it sounded as though she’d have plenty of time to talk with Rachel before Clark returned with his prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics.
“So have you found anything out about who the men who assaulted Clark last night might be?” Lois began.
“That’s an open investigation, Ms. Lane.” Rachel’s voice was irritable. “We’ve just started looking into the people who might want to harm Clark. It’s a pretty long list.”
“I kicked one last night and he limped on his way out.” Lois said. “You might look into it.”
“You told me that three times last night,” Rachel said tiredly. “There’s a couple of thousand men in Smallville who might fit what little description either of you were able to give me. It’s not something that gets solved in a couple of hours.”
Lois nodded, slowly. “So you think Clark killed those people ten years ago?”
Rachel shook her head. “I know he didn’t. He’s a bastard for what he did to me, but I know him well enough to know that he just isn’t capable of something like that.”
“The papers said that his alibi was flimsy, that the witnesses who say he was with them weren’t reliable.”
Grimacing, Rachel said, “You can’t always believe what you read in the paper, Ms. Lane. There were some discrepancies in the timeline, but I believe the witnesses.”
“Why is that?” Lois asked.
“I was one of them. While coach Holder and his wife were being murdered, Clark was breaking up with me in front of Pete Ross and Carl Perkins.”
“You weren’t considered a good witness?”
“It was ten o’clock when he ran out of the house, and the police dispatcher records him as calling for an ambulance at one minute after ten. It’s at least a twenty minute drive from my house to theirs.”
“So somebody had their clocks wrong.”
Rachel shook her head. “We were at my father’s house and he was always a fanatic about keeping the correct time. They checked the dispatcher’s clock afterwards. There weren’t any problems with that either.”
“So people looked at that and decided that you had to be lying to cover it up?”
“His girlfriend, his best friend and his foster brother are the only alibi that he has. What do you think?”
“I think people should have kept looking for the real killer.” Lois shook her head. “Somebody made a mistake, that’s all.”
“There wasn’t any mistake,” Rachel said. “After all this time, I just can’t understand it. Unless Clark Kent can somehow fly, I don’t see how he was able to get from one spot to another that fast.”
