Bill wasn’t what Lois would have expected from one of Clark’s foster brothers. From what she’d seen of Carl and to a lesser extent Clark’s friend Pete, Lois would have expected him to be run down and beaten, especially after years in the prison system.
Instead, although he was short, he was hugely muscled and massively tattooed. The tattoos on his forearms were familiar; they were the same as the others Lois had seen when she was being chased. The other tattoos she saw covering his neck and his bald head weren’t familiar. The orange prison issue coveralls didn’t do anything to make him seem less threatening.
“I hear you’re a big shot reporter now,” Bill said. “Working at the New York Post.”
“The Daily Planet,” Clark said. “Is there anything you can tell me about the Sangrias?”
Bill shifted uneasily in his chair. “I don’t run with those guys anymore. I haven’t since Jess got killed.”
“Were you here for that?” Clark asked. “What happened?”
“Somebody made him drink Drano in the bathroom after lights out.” Bill shook his head. “He threw up all over himself. I saw the body when they carted him off.”
“So you haven’t worked with the Sangrias since then?”
“They dropped me like a hot potato a few months after that. It’s too bad too; Jess doing real good. He would have helped me out.” Bill leaned close. “I had to join the Aryans, and they’re real messed up. Don’t tell anybody I said so, though.”
Lois had the feeling that Bill wasn’t the brightest of Clark’s foster brothers. She leaned forward. “Did they say why they were dropping you?”
“Upper management thought I couldn’t keep my gob shut. Shows what they know. I haven’t said nothing in all this time.”
“Upper management?” Clark asked. He had a strange expression on his face, and he wasn’t looking at Bill at all. Instead he was staring out at the crowd of people separated only by long tables.
“I don’t understand it either,” Bill said. “I never told anybody any of Jess’s secrets, even after he died and couldn’t get me.”
“His secrets?” Lois asked quietly.
Bill glanced at Clark, then leaned forward slightly. “He said he had an angle that was gonna get him out. He never did tell me what it was, but I guess being all smart and everything didn’t help him that much.”
“Do you know anyone we might ask about the Sangrias?” Clark asked.
“There aren’t hardly any left here in the pen. I guess they just don’t get arrested. The ones that were here got dropped.”
The conversation didn’t get better after that, a seemingly endless sequence of inanities about what had happened to people in town that Lois had never met. This was the small town version of code talk, Lois supposed. Innuendo in the form of gossip.
Clark didn’t seem to be in the spirit of things. He stiffened at one point, and afterwards seemed increasingly restless and anxious.
“I just remembered an appointment,” Clark said, cutting Bill off in mid-conversation. “I promise that I’ll come visit you again soon.”
The happy expression on Bill’s face was untainted by doubt or guilt.
Clark rose to leave, and Lois followed closely behind. Clark’s expression was strained.
“Why are we leaving?” she asked. Despite Bill’s lack of intelligence, there was still a chance they might have gotten something useful out of him, once they got passed the usual gossip.
“I overheard someone talking about trouble at Pete’s place.”
Lois nodded shortly. It was still early; visiting hours at the prison were at 8:30 in the morning. “You didn’t hear anything more about it?”
Clark shook his head tersely.
Lois was glad that they’d gone back to the airport and rented from a different car rental place. She wasn’t looking forward to the conversation she was going to have with her original rental agency about the condition they’d left the car in. She was glad Clark had insisted they get the optional insurance, but she was sure the paperwork was going to be unpleasant and take a good long while.
Clark took the wheel, and for the first time since she’d known him, he was reckless. Jamming his foot on the accelerator, he caused the car to jerk as it shifted into gear. They’d parked on the road outside the prison, and the gravel spun beneath them.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to meet you there?” Lois asked as they whipped around the first curve.
Clark shook his head. “It’s not safe to leave you.”
The wheels skidded under them, and Lois winced as they made another curve, this time ignoring a stop sign and poor visibility caused by old, decrepit shacks on both sides of the road.
She was used to being the speed demon in the relationship, but this was a little scary.
“What did they say happened?” she asked, when they’d finally found a relatively straight stretch of road.
“They said the police were at Pete’s place, along with a couple of ambulances.” Clark didn’t have to say anything else.
“You think somebody found out he was talking to you?”
The car spun again, and Lois found her fingers gripping the seats.
The ride to Pete’s seemed to last forever.
******
Clark slowed as he approached the dirt road leading to Pete’s place. The last thing he needed was to be arrested right now. He could sense Lois’s anxiety beside him, but the thought that something had happened to Pete because of him was almost more than he could bear.
The ambulances were gone, though Pete’s yard was still filled with three police cars as well as a number of other unmarked vehicles. Men stood around, staring at the decayed, scraggly grass and auto parts left scattered around. It looked even more pathetic now, under the accusing, judging eyes of strangers, and Clark once again felt the sharp tinge of guilt. He should have been more involved, should have been there for Pete.
Pete’s life had spun out of control, and Clark had been on the other side of the world. Of all the people in Smallville, Pete had been the one person who was the closest thing Clark had had to a best friend.
One of the officers, a younger man that Clark didn’t recognize approached them as they left the car.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he began.
Lois stepped forward, pushing her press pass at him. “What happened here?”
Of course, being a member of the press didn’t give either of them the right to violate a crime scene. Lois was doubtlessly hoping that this was a rookie officer, unsure of himself and willing to bend rules that he didn’t know.
“We’ve been working with Sheriff Harris on a case related to this.”
“If you don’t know what happened here, how do you know it’s related to whatever it was that you were working on.”
Lois opened her mouth, searching for a reply when Rachel appeared at the door to the house. She looked tired, an unfamiliar expression of exhaustion on her face.
She stepped onto the porch and gestured to the officer. “Let them through Jack. I need to talk to them anyway.”
Pushing his way forward, Clark said, “Is Pete ok?”
The expression on Rachel’s face was enough. He didn’t need the small shake of her head to know the truth.
Clark felt the blood drain from his face. “He’s dead?”
“I’ve got some witnesses who say that you two might be the last people to see Pete alive.“
Taking a step in the direction of the house, Clark was surprised when Rachel stepped in front of him, an apologetic expression on her face. “I can’t let you inside. I don’t think you need to see it, and I can’t risk any contamination of the crime scene.”
Clark couldn’t help himself. He looked through the wall and immediately wished he hadn’t. The splashes of blood on the wall and the chalk outline on the floor were all that was left; the body had been taken away. But the vandalism, and the graffiti on the wall, the hateful, hurtful messages…that he didn’t need to see.
He paled even further.
“When was the last time you saw Pete?”
It was Lois who spoke, and it was good that she did, because the entire world seemed to be shrinking around Clark, constricting, and he almost felt as though he couldn’t catch his breath. He’d felt this way before, of course, when he’d seen the bodies of Lilah and the coach, and the similarities here were chilling.
He felt dazed, stunned. It wasn’t the sickness of the rock; he’d have felt that immediately. This was something different. This was grief, the protective numbness that had enveloped him after the deaths of his parents and yet again with Lilah.
“Clark!”
It took him a moment to realize that Rachel was saying his name.
“What?” he asked. His head felt muzzy, and the world felt unreal, as though he was in a dream.
“There are going to be some questions asked. The FBI has been asking questions about the murder of the coach and his wife…they think this may be part of a pattern.”
“A pattern?” Clark asked.
“Of murders, mostly of women. Thirty seven murders over the last ten years, all in a corridor that stretches from Smallville to Metropolis. They say that the patterns are the same, and since you were the first person under suspicion, they’ll be looking for you.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Lois asked.
“Whatever else has gone on between us, you don’t deserve this.” Rachel jerked her head back toward the house. “Hell, I don’t deserve this. Pete was my friend too. I’d hate to think they were using you as a scapegoat and the real killer is still out there.”
She hesitated. “It’s not pretty. What was done to Pete...to the other girls...nobody should have to go through that.”
“Aren’t you compromising a witness by telling us this?” Lois asked.
“I already did some checking. There were at least ten murders while Clark was in college. In eight of them, he was at least a thousand miles away playing football. This thing with Pete happened while you were in the hospital. The coroner is pretty clear about the time of death.”
“You don’t think the FBI will take all that into consideration?”
Rachel shook her head. “Watch your back, Clark. From what I hear, you’ve already got a target on it. By rights, I should take you into protective custody right now.”
“You don’t think you could protect us,” Clark said. It was a startling thought.
“The Smallville police department doesn’t have much of a budget for safe houses and the like.” Rachel leaned forward and spoke almost inaudibly. “Also, I don’t trust everyone that works for me. There’s been too many things going on, and too few people getting arrested for them.”
Clark nodded slowly, as though he understood what she was saying. All he could feel was the encroaching, familiar numbness. He’d been through this too many times before, the guilt, the grief. That his wounds had only recently begun to heal only made it more painful.
“I think the feds will be back soon,” Rachel said. “They were accompanying the body.”
Clark nodded. When Lois took the keys from him, he didn’t protest. He simply walked to the passengers side of the car and waited.
He slid bonelessly into his seat. When Lois turned to speak to him, he interrupted.
“The box with the rock...the one that hurt me. It’s gone.”
*********
Given everything that had happened, Clark had to be hurting right now. Lois risked a glance at him; he was pale and withdrawn, shaken. He’d been that way since they’d left Pete Ross’s place.
“We’re going to have to go by the sheriff’s office,” Lois said. “Rachel offered to lend us the fax machine there, since it isn’t safe to go back by the hotel.”
Clark nodded curtly, and he turned slightly and stared out the window.
“I should have saved them.” He said, in a low voice.
“Pete?” Lois asked. “You were in the hospital when it happened. You couldn’t...”
“I should have saved all of them,” Clark said. “Lilah, Coach Holder, Pete...there’s a list of dead people a mile long that I could have saved if I wasn’t worried about having a normal life. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t....” Clark shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You saved me,” Lois said. “And Lucy, and the people working at evidence storage. You save people. If there’s more that you can do....maybe we can work together to find out a better way.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Don’t quit on me now,” Lois said. “We owe it to Pete and the coach and all those girls to find out who did all of this.”
He nodded, but continued to stare.
It was several minutes before they reached the police station. Lois got out of the car and waited for Clark. When he emerged, it was like he was an older man, as though the weight of years had suddenly settled on him.
“The boys in research have promised to get everything they could find on the Sangrias, and on your brothers and any connection they may have with Simon Hunt.”
They stepped inside the police station. The mood inside was more somber than it had been the previous times Lois had been there.
Rachel wasn’t in, although the young officer than had stopped them.
“Agent Jack?” Lois said. “The sheriff was going to let us use your fax machine...”
He smiled and said, “It’s already here.”
Turning, he grabbed a stack of papers from the inbox.
Lois flipped through them as rapidly as she was able. “Hey! Some of Perry’s contacts finally came through. It looks like Simon Hunt isn’t who he seems to be. He used to be a federal agent with another name...they wouldn’t say who, but it seems that he wasn’t just thrown out of the bureau for being a kook. He did something illegal involving prisoners ten years ago.”
Clark looked over her shoulder, finally showing renewed signs of life. “I never knew that Jess was busted for drug dealing. I always thought he got caught joyriding along with the rest of them...”
“He served forty five days in jail before he died...” Lois said. “He had several visits from an FBI agent Trask, who said that he was interrogating him as a witness in interstate drug trafficking.”
“I’d have expected the DEA to handle something like that.” Clark murmured.
“It looks like Bill was wrong about when he died. He died in the hospital of poisoning. The body was removed from the hospital by a federal official. The name looks like it was expunged.”
“What do you bet it was Trask,” Clark says.
“So he brags that someone is going to get him out, he talks to someone named Trask, and he’s dead a few weeks later. Maybe he trusted the wrong guy.”
“Well, turning state’s evidence isn’t popular in prison,” Clark said. “But it’s a little suspicious that Hunt has the...” he turned slightly and looked at Officer Jack behind them. “heirloom, and was once a federal agent, and my brother was talking to a federal agent.”
“You think the heirloom stopped working at an inopportune time?” Lois asked.
“Well, it would make him look like a nut. But I’d have thought they’d have sent him in for a psychological evaluation instead of just dumping him, unless there were other problems.”
“Like faking the death of a prisoner in return for a gadget that didn’t keep working?”
The officer behind them said, “This is all very interesting, but some people are trying to work here.” He hesitated. “Oh...and Mr. Kent, I’m currently dating the local tax assessor, and I hear she’s looking for you.”
“What?” Clark looked befuddled.
“Something about unpaid taxes?” He shrugged. “She’s upstairs if you want to talk to her. She doesn’t go to lunch until noon.”
“I don’t have any property,” Clark said. “Not in Smallville, not anywhere really...”
They were upstairs shortly, with Clark muttering to himself. Lois continued to look through the paperwork from the Daily Planet.
The girl behind the desk was young, possibly Lucy’s age.
“My name is Clark Kent. I understand that you are looking for me?”
The girl turned to the filing cabinet behind her and pulled out a folder. She flipped through it for a moment, then said, “The assessed value of your property went up in the last appraisal period. While I know that you’ve been sending your taxes in regularly, you’ll need to make up the difference with cash, check or credit card.”
“What property? Clark asked.
“The farmhouse formerly owned by Jonathan and Martha Kent.”
“I lost that when my parents died,” Clark protested.
The woman shook her head. “Social security payments were made by your foster father Edward Handleman until you were eighteen. You’ve been sending money orders in every year since then.”
“No, I haven’t.” Clark said. “There has to be some sort of mistake.”
The woman pulled out a photocopy of a money order. “Is this your name?”
“That’s not my signature,” Clark said.
“Well, the property is still in your name, so if you pay the rest of the taxes, the farmhouse is yours.”
Clark squinted at the tax bill, then sighed. “I’ll send you a check.”
Lois turned to Clark and said, “Somebody’s been paying for your parents' place for the last ten years, knowing that you weren’t coming back.”
Clark said, “I think it’s time I go home.”
**********
The girl watched them go calmly. When the door to the stairwell slammed, she waited several minutes, filing paperwork and going back to her daily routine. Finally, she picked up the telephone receiver and punched in a number.
“They’re coming.”
