******************
Part Thirteen
Lois sat at the kitchen table with her laptop typing a follow-up on the Hamilton murder. Clark and Anna had said they were flying to Smallville to see the grave where the baby remains and space ship were buried. Lois, lost in her work, had no idea of how long they were gone when she heard Clark’s characteristic whoosh. She sat back from her computer, waiting for her husband to join her. It didn’t take more than a few seconds.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"Hard to describe," he said hesitatingly. "We’d spent a lot of time talking about our childhood, especially what it was like getting our powers, but when we visited the grave, neither of us had anything to say."
"That’s understandable."
"Then I showed her the globe. I felt bad for her. She’d never had any sign from her birth parents. She had no idea about the world she came from."
"It’s the not knowing..." Lois said remembering the time when Clark was writing a series about adoption.
"And she really didn’t know. It came as a shock to her to realize that the mythology she and her parents had created was the wrong one."
"How did her parents feel about her coming from another planet?"
"She said they were fine with it. She was their daughter, and all that mattered was that she had come into their lives."
"Sounds like they’re nice people."
"I think they are. What I don’t understand is why Anna’s so hard on herself."
Lois didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she saved what she was working on and led Clark into the living room where she sat on sofa, patting the seat indicating that Clark should sit beside her.
"I’ve thought about this. I think that Anna’s problem is that she’s female."
"Female? How does that make a difference?"
"I may be projecting my life on her, but I can see connections. When I was a teenager, I was pretty smart..."
"One of the many qualities I love about you."
"Thank you, dear," she said placing a small peck on his cheek, "but I’m not sure I would have believed you when I was fifteen or sixteen. I wanted to be the same as all the other girls around me, and I didn’t want the boys to be intimidated by me."
"So what did you do?"
"I got 90 on the math test instead of 100, or I let Tommy Winters beat me at chess when I knew I could beat him."
"That’s not the Lois Lane I know."
"You’re right. At some point I understood that I wasn’t pleasing anyone, especially not myself. If I wanted to get ahead in the world, I had to be myself and not hide my abilities."
"Which I personally find very attractive."
"But for Anna, I think as a teen-aged girl, she had more to hide than I did. Those superpowers developing made her faster, stronger, tougher than all the other kids around her. Boys would find her pretty intimidating."
"She hid it, though."
"How did you feel when you couldn’t get a touchdown each and every time you were out on the field?"
"Frustrated."
"I’d think so. Then, why did you play football, or any other sport, as a teenager?"
Clark thought a moment before he spoke. "I enjoyed being part of a team. It didn’t make me feel so different, so nerdy, and I liked the challenge of trying to control my abilities on the playing field." He paused. "And, to be honest, I had to be better than a decent player in order to get an athletic scholarship. We needed the money."
"Anna gave up sports before she went to college."
"Actually, we talked about that. Canadian universities don’t have athletic scholarships. She needed to work on her academics."
"But did she say why else she gave up sports."
"She mentioned that as she got older and stronger, the level of competition in girls’ leagues wasn’t as high as in boys’, and she didn’t want to stand out playing better than boys."
"She didn’t want to be different than her friends...her girlfriends. Clark, what was the first thing Anna did when she felt better after the Kryptonite exposure."
Clark glared at Lois, not following where she was going.
"She got a haircut," Lois said. "Now, when I had my hair cut short, it wasn’t a big deal. I made a decision that I would look more stylish with shorter hair, and then I followed through."
"I don't understand."
"I can get my hair cut whenever I want. Anna could never have what other women think nothing of like the latest hair style or a simple manicure or pedicure..."
"She couldn’t be the same as her friends..."
"Exactly. And what is important to teen-age girls is that they fit in with their friends."
"But she’s not a teenager anymore."
"Who knows how seemingly unimportant ideas influence us as we grow older?"
"They’ll dissect me like a frog," Clark muttered.
"What?"
"My dad used to warn me not to say anything about myself or bad men would come and take me away and dissect me like a frog. That image has always stuck with me, made me afraid to tell anyone the truth about myself. That’s why it was so hard for me to tell you, who deserved to know more than anyone else, the truth about myself."
"You had problems being truthful with me, but unlike Anna, you decided that you wanted to have a family life. Anna, I believe, has decided that a family life isn’t in the cards for her. So, rather than having a relationship with David, it’s easier to push him away. That way she doesn’t have to tell him and possibly be rejected."
"You are a brilliant woman, Lois Lane," Clark said, placing his wife on his lap and kissing her warmly on the lips. They sat together, Lois nibbling gently on Clark’s neck, wordlessly, enjoying their time together. But Lois’s mind returned to the article she had been finishing when Clark came home.
"Honey, would you mind looking at the article I was writing. Something seems to be missing."
"Do I have to move?" Clark asked.
"Yes. The laptop won’t come to you unless telekinesis is one of your powers."
Clark wrapped his arms around Lois. "Just a couple of more minutes," he drawled as he returned to kiss her.
The couple of minutes turned into a few more. As Clark’s hands began to creep under her shirt and begin to stroke her back, she knew that if she didn’t stop him immediately, she wouldn’t want to stop him at all.
"Clark," she whispered in his ear, "Please. I promise we’ll finish what we’ve started here later."
"Prolonged foreplay?"
"Something like that," she said, reluctantly sliding off his lap.
Clark followed her to the desk, sat down in front of the screen and began to read.
"Good. Good," he mumbled as he scrolled down the page, occasionally typing in a change. When he finished reading, he leaned back in the chair. "It’s good, but something’s missing."
"I know. That’s what’s bothering me, but I think we have everything. The ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, when’..."
"No ‘why’."
"Why Jeremy Hamilton was murdered."
"Exactly," Clark said.
"Newbury admitted that he worked for Marcy Turcovic, but Turcovic hasn’t told the police who gave her orders to hire Newbury. Why is she willing to take the fall for someone else?"
"Money?"
"I don’t think there’s enough money to compensate for living fifteen or twenty years in prison."
"We need to look closer at Marcy, who she works for, where she gets her money?"
"We should look around Huntsville where Jeremy was killed. Maybe Anna missed something."
Clark saved the story, and shut down the computer. "We can’t do anything tonight. Let’s talk to Perry about going up to Huntsville for a few days and look around. Meanwhile, I think this foreplay has been going on long enough." He effortlessly swept his wife in his arms and carried her upstairs.
******************
Huntsville, Ontario
A week had passed since his discovery, and there were times when David stopped dead in his tracks. Thoughts of Clark Kent or sightings of Superman on the news reminded him of his discovery. He thought about the modest man who let his dynamic wife appear to overshadow him in their daily life. And in that modesty, there was a strength that David tried to comprehend. What difficulties did that man have? He’d always assumed that Superman arrived on earth four years earlier when he made his first appearance saving the Messenger, but now he thought Superman, or rather Clark Kent, must have grown up on earth, had a family history, parents, siblings, much like Anna. What was it like for him to grow up knowing he was so different? How did he manage to be so normal, for if there was any word to describe the Clark Kent whom he’d met in Metropolis, it was normal. He liked the man. What had made Clark choose to become Superman? To expose himself to the world that way?
And there were times when he stopped as he thought about Anna, who had the same abilities as Superman, as Clark Kent, but had chosen another road to travel. Or had she? Who was she really? How much did he know about her, and how much did she keep hidden?
The woman he had fallen in love with was beautiful, headstrong, compassionate, determined, and intelligent. Did knowing that she was from Krypton, a different planet, a different species change her? He thought about that for a while, but it didn’t. She was the same person she had been last week. But, perhaps, her being Kryptonian explained why she kept telling him that it was impossible for them to date...the complications she referred to.
He knew a little about her family background, but it must have been difficult for her to grow up knowing she was so different from her parents and her brothers. He thought about his cousin, Simone, a very bright, talented girl, who struggled through adolescence, becoming anorexic, shutting off her parents and friends who tried to help her. Simone had only seen how overweight she was, how unacceptable her body was, and she believed that others saw the same image.
Did Anna worry about her image as well? David wondered how similar Anna’s physiology was to human women. Outwardly, she looked the same. He definitely had had no suspicious that she was different when they had made love.
He had so many questions.
******************
The cold lake water washed over Anna’s skin as she plunged deeper into the lake, the early morning sun’s rays illuminating the murky bottom. For the past several mornings, she had awakened early, leaving her home for Loon Lake where she had carefully explored lake bottom looking for answers. Newbury had said that he had seen Hamilton throwing something into the lake. She thought an archaeologist would have an interesting time interpreting what she had already found: a punctured water-wing, a pair of sunglasses, a wallet and more than a few condoms. On her last dive, she had pulled up a camping shovel, the kind that folded over at the blade. But the shovel didn’t hold the answer of what Hamilton was doing at the lake.
And that was what was bothering her. Even though Newbury and Turcovic were in the process of being extradited to Canada, Anna still wanted to know why they had killed Hamilton. Where was the notebook he was after, and what was in it?
Anna got out of the water and wrapped herself in a large towel. She wasn’t sure if she was so keen on finding some evidence in the lake or she was hiding from her own thoughts about David.
She couldn’t blame David for what had happened; she could only blame herself. After all, she was the one who had tricked him that night last fall. She had always known that when he found out about who that ‘woman’ had been, he would be mad at her. She wanted to be able to regret that night, but she couldn’t. She had made love with David, something she had only dreamed of doing, something she believed would never be repeated.
Now, he avoided her...and she was always conscious of where he was so she could get out of his way.
At least when she was searching for clues under the cool water, she concentrated on something other than David Morrow. And she did want to solve the mystery. The one thread hanging loose bothered her.
After a quick shower at home, Anna decided to get a coffee and muffin at Timmy’s. The swim and fresh air had made her hungry. She was surprised to see Lois and Clark at a table having a cup of coffee. They waved her over.
"You were the last people I expected to see here," Anna said as she approached their table.
"We were just waiting for a decent hour to visit your office," Clark said. "Join us and we’ll tell you why we’re here."
Anna sat down with them.
"Good coffee," Lois said.
"The best," Anna said lifting her large cup to show them how much she liked Timmy’s coffee. "I come here at least once a day."
"I can see why," Lois said, taking a sip of her coffee.
"So why are you two here? Summer cottage season doesn’t start for another month or so. Now all we’re famous for is our black flies."
"Not pleasure, Anna, business," Clark said.
"We’re not satisfied that we’ve told the whole story of Jeremy’s murder," Lois said. "It’s a senseless killing without a motive..."
"Why was Jeremy up here?" Clark asked.
"And why did Newbury follow him?"
"I’ve been thinking of the same thing," Anna said. "I’ve spent a few mornings sifting through the rocks, sand and pop-culture debris at the bottom of Loon Lake looking for some indication of why Hamilton was up here. I haven’t found anything."
"Maybe we can work on this together," Clark said. Then he lowered his voice. "We can double our special efforts."
"Why don’t we go back to my office where we can come up with a strategy," Anna said.
******************
Anna’s office hadn’t changed since she was last there, Lois thought, except that in the middle of it lay a nondescript camping shovel in a large plastic bag.
The three stood around Anna’s computer where she had called up a topographic map of the area. Lois had moved away from the screen knowing that staring at a map wasn’t going to help her think. She, personally, would prefer to see the actual area, the twigs and leaves covering the earth, the naturally worn pathways, the lake where Anna had found the shovel. Then she would scour every inch...
"Let’s assume that these are areas that Hamilton visited." Anna used her finger to point on her screen. "His car was found here, this is the end of the dock, and this is where his body was found. I’d recommend that we use those three areas as the perimeter of a triangle and search for the notebook."
"If there even was a notebook," Lois said a bit cynically.
"We have to assume there was; otherwise, we’d have nothing to go on," Anna said.
"I assume the two of you are going to use your vision gizmos to find it."
"Gizmos?" Anna asked.
"Lois sometimes has a funny way of describing some of my powers."
"Then gizmos it is."
Once Anna had made arrangements for her absence in the office, she drove Lois and Clark in her patrol car to Loon Lake.
"Do you use your powers a lot in your job?" Lois asked.
"Whenever I need. I don’t not use them. In fact, other than flying, I use my talents, my powers, whenever I need to. I’m not going to waste them; that’s for sure. I just use them as surreptitiously as possible. Using my x-ray vision here will be easy."
"How will you explain it if we find something?"
"Simple. Either excellent police work or dumb luck. We started digging in the right place."
Lois nudged Clark. "At least she thinks about her excuses ahead of time."
Anna parked the patrol car in almost the same spot where Hamilton’s Honda was found. She flattened the topographical map on the hood of the car as she and Clark decided on where to begin. Lois, not having x-ray vision, chose to wander down to the lake and enjoy the scenery, and see if she could see anything in the brush that might be a clue.
Several hours had passed before Lois heard Superman’s whoosh. Clark was in front of her.
"Anna found something. You wanna come and watch?"
"Sure."
Clark picked her up and floated her about a mile from where she had been enjoying the serenity of the lake waters lapping up against the narrow sandy shore.
"It’s about three feet down," Anna said staring at some twigs and leaves. "Shall I do the honours?"
"Go ahead," Clark said.
Anna took the shovel she kept in her trunk and quickly dug a small hole in the ground. She bent down and retrieved a plastic bag containing a package. Wearing gloves, she carefully undid the brown wrapping paper.
Clark put on the gloves Anna had handed him and removed a three-ring binder from the paper. He flipped through the pages. After a pause, he handed the notebook to Anna. "These are Emil Hamilton’s notes for cloning," he said sadly.
"Are you sure?" Lois asked.
"I’ve read them before."
"But he said he’d destroyed them," Lois said petulantly.
"I guess he didn’t."
"Is this the cloning you told me about, Lois?" Anna asked.
"Yes. But Emil had told us that he’d destroyed his notes," Lois answered. "He lied."
"Someone must have known the notebook still existed and that the cloning worked, but who?" Clark said.
"We wrote a follow-up article about the destroyed notes," Lois said.
"Several possibilities," Anna said. "Hamilton might have told someone or someone never knew he had destroyed the notes."
"Who?" Lois and Clark asked in tandem.
"Whatever happened to the gangster clones?" Anna asked.
"They went to prison. As far as I know those who are alive are still there," Clark said.
Lois pulled out her cell phone. "No reception here," she said tapping at the device in her hand. "If they’re smart enough to design cell phones, shouldn’t they be able to work when you need them? It’s no big deal when it works in the city where there are phones at every corner and in every store. You can borrow anyone’s phone or drop a quarter in a pay phone, but out here, in the middle of nowhere, where you really need a phone? Nothing. Nada..."
"And the ability to babble without taking a breath, Anna McLaren, is one of Lois Lane’s superpowers," Clark said giving his wife a playful hug.
"Clark, this isn’t funny. I wanted to call Jimmy to search the clones, see who they’ve been in contact with."
"You can use my satellite phone in the car," Anna said, pointing Lois toward the car..
Lois asked Jimmy to search the clones while Anna and Clark did a final search of the area, just in case they had forgotten something. They then returned to town.
******************
Anna had invited Lois and Clark back to her home nestled among white birch and tall evergreen trees, facing Duck Lake. The home, a summer cottage, had been enlarged and modernized over the years to accommodate the growing McLaren family and when Anna had decided to move to Huntsville, the house was winterized. Anna explained all of this to Lois and Clark who were sitting in the large living room on the well-worn sofas. "My brothers come up over the summer months with their families. On busy week-ends the place is overflowing with their kids."
When Anna had suggested bringing in Chinese food from the local take-out, Clark volunteered to bring food from his favourite Chinese restaurant. When he left to pick up the order, Lois had told Anna that he flew to Shanghai regularly for the most delicious dumplings she’d ever had.
After dinner, Anna set up her laptop in the living room and let Lois navigate to her e-mail to download the information Jimmy had sent her.
"I’m rather impressed with the Daily Planet’s databank," Anna said as she perused the files on the screen.
"That’s not from the Daily Planet. It’s from Jimmy Olsen who does a little bit of everything. He knows his way around cyberspace better than most professionals," Clark said.
"He’s rarely disappointed us," Lois added.
Lois looked over the list of infamous gangster names who were imprisoned after their capture. In the last three years, they had spent most of their time in different prisons, separated from each other. Basically each had remained in the same cell with a little movement for hearings. Few of them had had visitors except for their lawyers and psychologists who were trying to rehabilitate them. Three had died, of heart failure due to inadequate cloning procedures.
"There has to be a lot of money behind this," Clark ventured. "Otherwise, how would Turcovic and Newbury have gotten paid?"
"But the contacts these gangster clones had were very limited. The lawyers and psychologists were appointed by the courts, and even if they hadn’t, the clones don’t have contacts in the outside world anymore," Lois said.
"So we look for another angle,..." Anna said.
"Wait a minute," Lois interrupted. "This might be something." Clark stood behind Lois and looked over her shoulder to where she was pointing on the screen.
"They let Bonnie Parker work in the prison infirmary?" Anna asked after she’d come closer to the screen.
"I guess..." Clark started scrolling down the page quickly and speed reading. "And look who was in the infirmary."
"Amber Lake? Who’s that?" Anna asked.
"Tim and Amber Lake are a rich couple, now in prison for killing Bad Brain Johnson and kidnapping Lois and Superman..."
"Clark! Tim and Amber Lake. T...A...L. That must be them." Lois got up and went to the phone. After punching in the phone number, she stood, tapping her toes, waiting.
"Finally," she said into the mouthpiece. "Jimmy, I need you to look up and see if you can find a link to Tim and Amber Lake." She hung up the phone after telling Jimmy where he could contact her, then joined the others.
"The Lakes are a possibility. They had stolen Kryptonite from STAR Labs." Clark remembered the Kryptonite Tim and Amber had sent Perry along witth Superman’s cape to prove that the superhero was dead. "He must have kept some back and that’s what affected us in the warehouse."
"But didn’t Tim die a year ago or so?" Lois opened her eyes wide and stared at Clark. "That’s it!"
"Lois, find the date when Amber was in the infirmary and check it against the date when Tim had died," Clark said.
The only sound in the room was the tapping on computer keys...and then silence.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Lois squealed.
"Way to go, Lois," Clark said patting her back then bending over to give her a kiss.
"I’m glad you two are having a good time. Would either of you care to let me join the party?"
"Sorry," said Clark. "We got carried away. Let me explain. Tim and Amber Lake were very wealthy. Tim had inherited a lot of money from his father, and then he and Amber had invested it wisely. The two were obnoxiously in love."
"Being in the same room with them could make you throw up," Lois added.
"The two were inseparable. I’m sure they were both devastated when they ended up in different prisons."
"... with no conjugal visits."
"This is what I think happened. When Tim died, Amber must have been heart-broken. My guess is that she ended up in the infirmary where she met Bonnie Parker. The two of them spoke, and Bonnie told Amber she was a clone, but she was still Bonnie Parker."
"So Amber decided she had to get Tim back...no matter what the cost?" Anna asked.
"Exactly," Lois and Clark said at the same time.
Their conversation was interrupted by the phone. When Anna answered, she immediately handed the phone over to Lois who nodded and smiled as she listened to Jimmy. "Yes!" she said as she hung up the phone. "That was Jimmy. He was able to find a connection between the Lakes and He’s sending us the information as we speak."
"And now we have a motive." Anna picked up the phone and called the prosecutor.
A few minutes later, she joined Lois and Clark on the sofa. "We can now leave the details in the hands of the lawyers, she said. "There’s just one thing I’d like to know."
"Sure, anything," Lois said.
"Do you two always work like that? It was something else to watch."
"It took us a while, but we learned that together we’re stronger than one of us alone," Clark said.
"Thanks for dinner," Lois said, getting up. "It’s time for us to go home now. We have a story to write." She stepped over to Anna and hugged the woman. "Stay in touch, Anna. You’re family to Clark and me now."
"I will. It’s been a pleasure meeting both of you." She hugged Clark and kissed him on the cheek. "Before you go, there’s a rock on the other side of the lake. Check out the Northern Lights from there. The show should begin shortly."
Anna stood at the door. Clark walked down the stairs and spun into his Superman suit. He then lifted Lois in his arms and the two took off, heading to the rock.
************
tbc
