From part 10:
By five o’clock, armed with the paraphernalia of reporting, they hailed a cab and headed for the place Samuel Platt had told Lois he was staying.
---
The Girl Next Door, part 11:
The Bradner Apartments building looked like it might be slated for demolition soon, if it wasn’t already. There were several boarded windows, one of which also sported a grimy ‘NO TRESPASSING’ sign, partly obscured by graffiti. There was another sign near the door that read, ‘Bradner Apartments – FOR RENT’ with ‘Weekly rates’ in smaller letters underneath.
“Well, this explains why he looks like a street person,” Lois commented as they picked their way over the broken, weed-choked sidewalk and several bags of trash toward the main entrance. “He might as well be. Do you think he’s hiding out?”
“No… The building’s still in use.” Kent replied. “Remember, he was fired. He has no job; this is obviously a cheap place to live.”
The front door, grimy glass on the top half and graffiti-covered plywood on the lower half, opened into a dingy lobby. A bored-looking attendant of uncertain gender sat behind the desk, a cigarette hanging from his - or her - mouth and a cell phone to his or her ear. As they entered, he – or she - scowled at them and moved the phone away slightly with a grumbled “Hang on a sec, babe.”
“We got one-room apartments and a loft available,” he or she – there were no clues in the voice, either - began as they approached. “Rates by the week –“
“We aren’t here to rent; we’re looking for Samuel Platt,” Lois said shortly.
“Whatever,” came the reply. “He’s got one of the suites. Fourth floor, 403.” The attendant jerked a thumb toward the elevator and refocused his or her attention on the cell phone.
“The stairs, I think,” Kent suggested as they crossed the stained and buckled linoleum. “It’s… marginally safer, I suspect.”
Lois didn’t bother to agree; she merely turned with him toward the stairs.
The stairwell obviously did double duty as a storage area – or a junkyard. They passed a shoe, a broken light bulb, several Styrofoam cups – no Metropolis Coffee Company products here – and a tangle of plastic hangers, stepped over a few empty boxes, moved around a broken chair and several bags of trash, and began climbing.
The fourth floor hallway, as dingy as the lobby, was empty. Suite 403 was halfway down the hall on their left. As they approached, they could see that the door was not secure. It stood just slightly ajar, and when Lois reached for the handle, it swung partway open.
Lois and Clark glanced at each other before he cautiously pushed the door wider.
Very softly, he asked, “Should we call the police?”
She hesitated, and then answered, “Not… yet. Clark, he… he looked like a street bum. Several of the man’s contemporaries implied he was more than just a little odd. And… he had one shoe and one slipper… Maybe he just… lives this way.”
Clark - *Kent* - nodded, then rapped on the open door. “Dr. Platt?” he called. There was no answer. Lois extended her hearing – there was a heartbeat – rather fast, but steady – and a television show, both coming from the room ahead of them. The suite was laid out like a hotel room, with the bathroom and a miniscule kitchen on their left as they entered. The room widened toward the left at the end of the short hallway, which was strewn with boxes, books, scraps of paper, and a few crumpled items of clothing.
They picked their way through the mess just inside the door, and Kent called again, “Dr. Platt?”
Lois hesitated to use her special vision to look for the man; after one or two completely unintentional and embarrassing episodes when she was still learning to control it, she had resolved to use her vision only when she had no other choice.
The heartbeat remained steady, if fast, in her ears, and the TV droned on. Moving slightly ahead of Kent, Lois turned the corner, saying briskly, “Dr. Platt? You must not have heard us…”
A grey cat perched on the bed closest to the door; she realized it was the cat’s heartbeat she was hearing. At the same moment, she heard Kent behind her say urgently, “Wait, Lois –“ as she stepped past the end of the bed.
Only to freeze in her tracks. Dr. Platt - what was left of the man – was sprawled on the floor, obviously dead. He wasn’t a poor housekeeper. The place had been ransacked, and whoever had ransacked it either didn’t find what they were looking for, or more chilling – had found it but had killed him anyway. She’d seen bodies before, but not like this… Oh, god, it looked like he’d fought back, and his killer - or killers - had showed no mercy. And after… His cat had come to sit beside him at some point, because there were small bloody paw prints around him and on the bedspread -
With a small sound of distress, she turned away – to find Clark right behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand curving up over the back of her head, pressing her protectively to him. She could hear his heartbeat without any special use of her senses, strong and steady; it drowned out the sound of the cat’s. His arms were comforting, secure – it felt like coming home.
“I won’t let the dragons win,” she whispered, not realizing she’d said it loud enough for him to hear until Clark pulled back slightly and repeated, “Dragons, Lois?”
She drew a shuddering breath. She needed to be strong, but she wanted to stay where she was just a little longer, drawing strength from him. “Dragons, Clark.” She said it urgently, looking up at him, hoping he’d understand. “We can’t let the dragons win. We have to stop them - whoever did this.”
His arms tightened around her, and he drew her head back to his chest. His voice, deep and steady, said just above her head, “Don’t worry, Lois. We’ll both fight the dragons. And Lois - they won’t stand a chance.”
After a moment, she took a deep breath. Clark’s arms loosened as she stepped back slightly, but he didn’t let go of her until he’d drawn her back into the hallway, away from Dr. Platt’s body. She looked up into his dark, sympathetic eyes, and said softly, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied equally softly. “C’mon, let’s go into the hallway. We need to call the police.”
-----
It was several hours before they were back at the Planet, sitting at their desks. Treated at first with some suspicion, which was understandable under the circumstances, they’d gone from possible suspects to welcome sources of background information when Inspector Bill Henderson showed up.
They were almost the only two in the newsroom; the normal workday had ended well before they had returned. Lois looked over at her partner, who was concentrating on his computer screen as he wrote up his part of their notes. She knew what had happened to Dr. Platt bothered him as least as much as it bothered her – not only had he said as much in the taxi on their way back to the Planet, but he had chastised a young patrolman who’d made an inappropriate joke about the situation.
Watching him, she admitted that it was impossible to dislike him. Before she could think better of it, she said, “Clark?”
He looked up, his gaze softening as his eyes met hers. “Yes, Lois?”
“Thanks for…” she began awkwardly, “…you know… Thanks for earlier…”
He gave her a gentle smile. “It’s all right, Lois. You already thanked me.”
“I know I’m… probably difficult to work with,” she continued. “And I’m not very nice to you. It’s not like you weren’t probably warned before you even started working with me, but I’m… I’m the poster child for ‘doesn’t play well with others’…”
“Lois,” he insisted, “it’s okay, really –“
“I’m not sure I can change that about me, Clark.” She kept talking, needing him to understand.
“Lois.” He stood and came over to her side of the two desks, and squatted down beside her chair so that his eyes were almost level with hers. “I don’t want you to change. I… think we’re becoming friends?” He smiled at her, and she nodded tentatively.
“I like you just the way you are.“ He looked intently at her, unsmiling. “I like everything about you.” She stared back at him for a moment, and suddenly it was too much. She felt her heart racing, and her tension level rose.
He seemed to understand that things were getting a little too personal for her. Standing up, he moved back. Tucking his hands into his pockets, he leaned casually against the side of her desk where it met his, putting at least three feet of space between them. Smiling teasingly, he continued, “I even like you when you’re cranky.”
His comment lightened the mood instantly.
“Watch it, Kent,” she mock-growled at him.
With a laugh, he returned to his chair, and both went back their notes.
After a few moments, though, she stopped again. With a sigh, she said, “Who – why would they… Clark, he was harmless! I was the only one who believed him, anyway. Everyone else thought he was some down-and-out has-been, a nutcase. All you had to do was look at him – the crazy clothes, all his ‘research’ in a paper bag… Whoever did this could have just written him off as a mental case! Why… *torture* him and kill him?”
“But you did believe him, Lois.” Clark said it gently. “What if someone knew he’d come to you? An investigative reporter with an excellent reputation as the absolute *best* in the business. What if that someone had millions of dollars tied up in an illegal scheme? Would they take the chance you’d write him off as a nutcase?”
“I –“
“And have you considered that you may be in danger, Lois?” he continued. “I… can’t force you to, but you need to be careful when you’re out on your own.”
She shook her head dismissively. She was at less risk for danger than he would ever know, but she couldn’t tell him that. “I don’t think anyone knew –“
“Lois, the *whole newsroom* saw him here!” Clark exclaimed.
“Are you suggesting one of my – our – coworkers had something to do with this?” she demanded.
“No, of course not! He could have been followed – someone could have been in the lobby, or even on the street outside. All they had to do was watch the man enter the building – it’s no mystery as to what sort of business is housed in this building!”
About to snap back at him, she paused. “Okay…” she grudgingly conceded. “Maybe…”
He didn’t say anything else, just sat looking at her. After a moment, she said, “Okay, okay! Assuming you’re right, we need to work even harder to figure out what’s going on and who’s behind it. And with only Dr. Platt’s research notes, it’s going to be hard.”
“But we’re going to keep at it until we figure it out and stop them,” Clark said. “We’re going to fight your dragons, and we’re going to win.”
She stared at him. Princess Elizabeth’s prince had been a total loss, but it was beginning to look like Lois might have one that was a champion.
-----
“You know, just before Dr. Platt showed up, I was looking into a local philanthropist’s allegations of inferior materials and shoddy construction on Space Station Prometheus,” Lois said.
She and Clark were sitting on her living room floor, finishing a pizza. They had spent several hours painstakingly rereading Dr. Platt’s notes, and when he’d offered to get them a pizza she’d endorsed the idea wholeheartedly.
“This guy’s made this generous offer – more than once – to fund a space station. Not to fund *this* space station – to fund a new one. To start over entirely – new design, new name, and so on.” She looked over at Clark.
“Kind of over the top, I’d say,” he said. “Is he on the up-and-up?”
“Well, this guy – Lex Luthor - is… he’s been voted Man of the Year three times in a row, Clark. He’s squeaky clean.”
“But…?” Clark asked encouragingly.
“But in my opinion, he’s *too* clean,” she said. “I mean, just for kicks, I had Jimmy look for stuff – anything – on the guy. There’s tons of stuff on him – press releases, charitable contributions, the people he employs, the companies he owns… But there’s no history, Clark. I mean, *nothing*. Jimmy couldn’t find *anything* on the man before he came to Metropolis. He had to have grown up somewhere! But there’s nothing. Just his press release bio, a polished rags-to-riches story without any details. The whole thing is just too… pretty.”
“You think he has something to do with the problems this project is experiencing,” Clark said.
She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I put it all on the back burner of stuff to investigate, you know, because it did seem like some of the space station’s problems stemmed from faulty parts or poor construction. But based on what we’ve found in Dr. Platt’s notes – you know, the deliberate sabotage in the shuttle code, and with… what happened to Dr. Platt, I wonder…”
“If we should be investigating Lex Luthor more thoroughly?”
“Yes… It’s just…” She gave voice to her thoughts. “There’s no sign of his involvement at all – absolutely nothing that we can tie to him. But - his offer… I mean, a whole *different* space station… And there’s something about him… the one time I met him in person, all my… investigative reporter senses just *screamed* at me.” She looked at Clark. “I can’t explain it…”
“You don’t have to – I’ve had that feeling before. Can we go through what you *do* have on the man again? Let’s see what we can find if we both look through it. Tomorrow?”
“It’s a date,” she said without thinking. “Oh! I mean, not a… *date* date. I… What I meant was… You know, just… a confirmation that we’ll go over that information Jimmy found me. Tomorrow, at the Planet…“ Good lord, she was babbling. She *never* babbled. Hardly at all, anyway.
“Lois.” He briefly rested his hand on hers, and the sensation as well as the action stopped her words. She looked up at him. “I know what you meant. I’ll see you tomorrow at the Planet, and we’ll start on whatever you have so far. Okay?”
So saying, he rose to his feet, curling his hand around hers long enough to tug her to her own feet, and then he was offering his quiet “Good night.” as he opened her apartment door.
The sensation of his hand on hers lingered for what seemed like an awfully long time.
-----
They didn’t actually get started on their research plans until the afternoon.
After the morning meeting, Perry kept them behind to update him on their investigation, including Dr. Platt’s death. When he’d heard all of it, and they’d showed him Jimmy’s printout with the sabotage lines highlighted, he said, “I think we should print what we have so far.”
“But… Perry, we weren’t able to confirm anything with Dr. Platt,” Lois said. “All we really have are suspicions.”
“I’m talking about your discovery that one of the space shuttles’ main systems programming codes contains a small amount of possibly deliberate errors that render the program un-executable,” Perry said blandly.
Lois and Clark looked at each other. “Have you been talking to Jimmy?” Lois demanded.
Perry chuckled. “Now, darlin’, I didn’t get to be the editor of this fine paper because –“
“Yeah, yeah, because you can yodel,” she finished impatiently. “What I meant was… *Can* you yodel, Perry?” she asked, momentarily diverted by a sudden mental image of the editor on a mountainside like in those sore-throat-thingies TV commercials – no, wait, those guys used horns…
Clark’s laugh brought her back to the present. “Not that I want you to,” she said hastily, as both men laughed harder.
She glared at them both, then continued, “What I *meant* was, that was a pretty technical way to avoid saying ‘deliberate sabotage’, Perry.”
“Well, you have no proof it was actually sabotage. You can’t confirm it with Dr. Platt, nor does he directly address who might be responsible for the sabotage. What you *do* have is proof that the code is flawed. Making the code’s errors public knowledge will force EPRAD to take you seriously when you present them with the highlighted printout given to you by… your unnamed source.”
“What if delivering that printout to EPRAD headquarters plays into the wrong person’s hands?” Clark asked.
“We publish the story first. Then even if you deliver it unintentionally directly to the author of those lines, they’ll have to fix it – or answer to the inevitable Committee on Science investigation.”
“So… we write the first part of the story – that a former employee brought to our attention his suspicions of sabotage. And that he provided us with the code – well, the errors he’d found – which we have in turn presented to EPRAD after further investigation backs up the man’s claims…” Lois said.
“Yes – but only the man’s claims that there are errors,” Perry confirmed. “The sabotage is still only alleged. From there, go into the problems the whole program has been experiencing, and Dr. Platt’s death. Hold back your suspicions that it’s part of a bigger plot, and who might be behind it. That’s a story for another day.”
Lois and Clark spent the next hour writing and then fine-tuning the story, and turned it in to Perry. Then they delivered a copy of the flawed code to EPRAD with a request for comments. Not unpredictably, there were none, outside of an assurance that their information would be forwarded to the appropriate department.
Glancing back at the building as their taxi pulled away, Lois said with a grin, “I bet he just throws that printout in some non-urgent in-box. I wonder how he’ll explain that when our article appears in the evening edition of the Daily Planet?”
Clark’s laughter, warm and rich, made her feel the way she did when she drank hot chocolate.
---
Once again, late afternoon found them sitting in the conference room, this time looking through the information on Lex Luthor that Jimmy had given Lois. There was so much of it that, like Dr. Platt’s research, they needed more space than their desktops offered.
With a heavy sigh, Lois pushed the papers in front of her away in frustration. “Nothing!”
“Maybe we’re going about it wrong…” Clark mused, pushing his own stack of papers aside. “Instead of scouring all these sources for something that may not exist…”
“Clark, it *has* to be out there somewhere!” she protested.
“But it could have been deliberately removed – you suggested that last night,” he countered.
“So, you’re saying…?”
“What if we keep going over everything that *is* out there, but instead of hunting for a background that isn’t there, or anything obvious, we look for… I don’t know – subtle discrepancies, coincidences, lucky breaks in his business dealings… things like that?”
She nodded. “So… we really need more information about the companies he owns, the companies he’s acquired… Stuff like that, instead of stuff about the man himself…”
“Exactly.”
There was a quick rap on the open conference room door as Jimmy entered.
“Jimmy! Just the guy we need –“ Lois began, but the young man had also started speaking.
“Hey, you gotta see this, guys! EPRAD’s just announced that the next shuttle launch will take place as planned, a week from today.” He held up a copy of the evening edition with their story, under the headline ‘Possible Sabotage Discovered in Space Shuttle Launch Program,’ featured prominently on the front page. “The news anchor referred to your story - kind of, anyway… He said an investigative news team had called EPRAD’s attention to what appeared to be deliberate sabotage.”
“Huh. Faster than I expected,” Lois whispered to Clark, who chuckled as they followed the still-chattering Jimmy out into the newsroom.
“…I think they’re gonna let your Dr. Platt take the fall, though – they said a ‘disgruntled former employee’ was suspected, blah, blah, blah… And -”
By now the three of them had joined the crowd around the newsroom TV monitors, and Jimmy was shushed by several people. The anchor was saying, “…EPRAD has stated that their experts have rechecked every systems program, and have verified that only the launch sequence was affected. The code is being corrected, and an internal investigation is ongoing. And now, in other news…”
“All right, people, show’s over! Get those stories finished up; it’s almost quittin’ time!” Perry called loudly, and the crowd began to disperse, some voicing their opinions as they went.
“You know, a lot of people were surprised that the Congress of Nations didn’t take Mr. Luthor up on that offer…” one of the City Desk reporters commented to his companion as they headed for their desks. “I know I was…”
“Man, that guy’s got his hand in a lot of pots,” came the reply. “…’Course, he’s rolling in dough – he sounds like just what the space program needs…”
Rolling her eyes, Lois moved toward the conference room. “C’mon – we’ve still got a lot to do. Jimmy, I need you to - *we* need you to find us everything you can on a bunch of companies… Here, Clark’s got a list in here…”
As the two men followed her through the door, Jimmy asked, “Have you seen the model of Space Station Luthor, CK? It’s on display in the lobby of the LNN building. We – Perry, Lois, me, and a bunch of other Daily Planet people, saw it the night he unveiled it, at his big Orchid Ball –“
“Perry, Lois, *and I* saw the model, Jimmy,” Lois stated sharply. “Now look, we have barely a *week* to figure this out! We’ve got to get some kind of proof… *Someone* wants to stop that program, and I for one don’t think they’ll just go away. If the code is fixed, they’ll try something else.”
Clark nodded grimly. “Yes – I think so, too. Jimmy,” he continued, turning to the young man, “we need you to dig up some more information on a bunch of companies Luthor Industries has acquired over the last several years. Whatever you can find, and we’re not really interested in the glossy press release sort of stuff, okay?”
Jimmy took the list Clark proffered, skimmed down it and whistled softly. “Holy smoke! He’s gotten all these in the last *couple* of years? Man, you don’t want much, do you?” He flashed them both a grin. “I suppose you want it yesterday, right, Lois?”
She snorted, flashing a mildly exasperated look at Clark as he chuckled. “I *suppose* you can start on it in the morning,” she said with a heavy, put-upon sigh. “Clark and I will just have to do what we can with what we have…”
Jimmy nodded seriously. Lois Lane in a teasing mood was a pretty new phenomenon, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. “Well, you know, I can probably get you at least some of this in… Oh, I don’t know – gimme at least a couple hours, okay? I’m gonna have to do a little cracking, but you’d be surprised at how many companies have only a basic security setup… You can break in pretty easily if you use something like L0phtcrack –“ He stopped abruptly. “Uh… well, never mind. Anyway, I’ll… uh, get onto your research right away, okay?” He turned and started for the door, then stopped. “Um, Lois? I’m still gonna be an unnamed source, right?”
Lois lost the battle to suppress her smile. “Yeah, Jimmy – don’t worry. We’ll protect you just like we do all our sources.”
Her partner’s rich, hot chocolate laugh flowed around her as the young man exited.
They didn’t work past six o’clock; Lois had skipped her last two regular Tae Kwon Do sessions, what with the late night spent writing the story to expose – again – the slumlord, and then, last night, rereading Dr. Platt’s notes over pizza with Clark. She really needed to do the sparring tonight; she hadn’t realized how much she still used the exercises to help distract her from an intense investigation before heading into the enforced slower pace of the weekend. News didn’t take the weekend off, but access to a lot of information did. Government officials, city offices, and many other sources were usually unavailable on weekends.
And Clark apparently had somewhere to go, too, although she refused to ask outright, preferring that he volunteer any information. He didn’t.
It *had* to be a girlfriend, she thought glumly, and then pulled herself up sharply. It was nothing to do with her. They were *friends*. He’d said that – “I think we’re becoming friends, Lois?” And she’d agreed. It was… nice to have a friend. She didn’t need anything more.
-----
To be continued
