I've hit another small slump... but I do still have a buffer, so here's part 19.
From part 18:
Clark rose to his feet, and offered Henderson his hand. “Thanks, Bill. We’ll keep working on this.”
Lois had also risen to her feet. “We’ll get him, Bill.”
“If anyone can find the dirt on this guy, it’s you two,” Henderson replied. “And you’ve apparently got Superman helping you. He’s a pretty powerful asset, I’d say.”
“Yeah. He’s been invaluable so far,” Lois said with a smile. “C’mon, Clark – we’ve got a lot to do.”
They left Henderson’s office together, and, conscious of possible witnesses, hailed a cab instead of flying back to the Daily Planet.
-----
The Girl Next Door, part 19:
They spent part of the next morning contacting sources and asking questions - getting names of possible for-hire criminals who might take on a contract hit. And from the discouragingly long list, they had to verify who was incarcerated and who was free; who was known to be in the Metropolis area and who was documented to be elsewhere. Even with Jimmy’s help, it would be a slow process with no guarantee of success.
Midway through the morning, they heard a bulletin from the police radio in the command center, reporting that there was a robbery in progress at one of the downtown First Bank of Metropolis branches.
Lois and Clark were sitting side by side at his desk, working on their list of suspects. Lois dropped her pencil on the desk, stretched slightly, and glanced at Clark as he pushed back his chair, ready to stand up. “I need some good coffee, Clark,” she commented around a pretty realistic yawn. “Would you get me a Metropolis Coffee – Double Mocha Latte? From our usual place? They know how I like it there.”
The Metropolis Coffee Company shop in question was conveniently located close to the bank branch currently in need of Superman’s help, so if her partner got a story out of it, no one would think twice about it.
With a grin, he agreed cheerfully and headed up the ramp. Lois picked up her pencil and returned to her work, waiting – and within a few minutes she heard him from the roof. “Nice touch, partner – if it takes awhile to get back with your coffee, it’ll be because I just happened to be on the spot for a Superman story.” She had to stifle a grin; it was a good thing she had her head down, ostensibly concentrating on the papers in front of her.
Within moments of Clark’s comment, Perry bellowed from his office doorway, “Edmunds! Jenner! Get over to the Hayes Street branch of the First Bank of Metropolis; there’s a robbery in progress! Hustle!”
As Edmunds and Jenner hurried for the elevator, Lois casually leaned back and gazed at the ceiling, tapping her pencil against her lip as if in thought, and looked through the floors above the newsroom. As she had thought, Clark was gone. He probably hadn’t heard Perry’s shout; he would have been concentrating on the unfolding events at the bank.
With Superman involved, Edmunds and Jenner were likely to arrive as the drama ended; standoffs ended pretty quickly when he was around to help. So… should Clark worry about not being seen at the bank branch as himself? If he were to return with a Superman story, but Edmunds and Jenner didn’t see him at the bank… Or was she being too cautious?
How to warn him? She couldn’t very well call him on his cell phone. Maybe… She looked back down at the desk and focused on a mental picture of Clark’s face. <Clark?> She waited.
Nothing. She shut her eyes and blanked her mind further, blocking out as much of the newsroom noise as she could, and thought of Clark. No – better make it Superman.
Still nothing. Well, maybe she was only transmitting, not receiving. With her eyes still closed, she concentrated on sending him a message. <Clark, Edmunds and Jenner will be there. Be careful. Let them see Clark if you can.>
“Lois?”
She yelped and almost fell out of her chair as Jimmy’s voice sounded practically in her ear.
“Jimmy! Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?!” she snapped, more Mad Dog Lane than she’d been in quite a while. Her heart was actually pounding; not a particularly pleasant sensation.
He stepped back, hands raised placatingly. “Sorry, Lois. Really – I spoke to you once and you didn’t hear me; I wasn’t sure if you were okay or not. Are… you okay? Are you tired?”
“Uh, yeah. I…” She heard Clark’s heartbeat just before he stepped through the stairwell door, coffees in hand. “I just need my coffee,” she said with relief. Saved by Superman! Or more precisely, Clark – which was even better. She smiled at him as he approached, and he winked at her as he handed over her coffee.
“Here you are, partner! Knock some of that back and wake up; we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said teasingly. <Better than Superman?>
The question flashed through her mind as he sat down beside her, and she had to work hard not to react. Had he just…?
It was a good thing he kept talking; it took her a minute to regain her equilibrium. “Guess what happened while I was getting coffee?” he asked cheerfully. “A bank robbery at that branch near ‘our’ Metropolis Coffee shop. Superman stopped it, and I got a quick interview.”
“Cool! The Chief sent Edmunds and Jenner over there when it came over on the scanner,” Jimmy said, glancing at his watch. “But I’ll bet they’re not even there yet. Man, that is so cool – so you got to meet Superman, huh? We’re – Metropolis is - pretty lucky, right, guys? If he wasn’t around, that bank robbery might still be going on. But that dude just zips in and saves the day.” He shook his head admiringly. “And it’s all over already if you got to talk to him, right? That was like, what? Maybe twenty minutes, tops?”
As Clark laughed, Lois suppressed her smirk with a small amount of difficulty. Really, she had to get a handle on her tendency to react that way when people praised Superman to, well… Superman. Grinning like an idiot every time the man was mentioned would make her look like a brainless groupie with a crush the size of… Kansas. She fought an increasing urge to laugh.
<Kansas? Cute!>
She almost dropped the coffee cup.
“Whoa, there, partner –“ Clark reached over and steadied her hand. “You must be more tired than you thought, huh?”
<Nice save.> He didn’t react to the thought – no smile, no nod or wink. So… she wasn’t transmitting? This was so confusing, and –
“Oh! Guys!” Jimmy snapped his fingers and almost dropped a document he had tucked under his arm. “I got distracted… Sorry about that! I came over to tell you – you won’t believe what I found!” He stopped and glanced around. “Uh… that is, I’ve got some information…” As Lois and Clark looked at him inquiringly, he said much more quietly, “Um. It’s pretty… sensitive…”
Clark rose to his feet. “C’mon, Jim – let’s go talk in the conference room.” He pulled Lois’s chair back for her as she rose, and she flashed him a quick smile.
They had barely closed the conference room door behind them when Jimmy burst into speech. He waved the papers in the air. “You won’t believe this, guys! I went back to the EPRAD website… I was going to see if I could find any more code, you know? Well, I didn’t find any good stuff to explore – well, nothing interesting in the way of computer code, you know? Except… So then while I was wandering around in their computers, I got into a pretty secure area, and…” He stopped and glanced out into the newsroom. No one was paying them any attention; the conference rooms were used regularly by many of the Planet’s reporters, and frequently by Lois and Clark. There was nothing unusual about their presence there. “Um, do you think we should pull the blinds? In case, you know…”
Lois huffed impatiently as Clark smothered a laugh beside her. Elbowing him, she said briskly, “Jimmy, no one is looking this way. No one out there reads lips. No one out there has bugged this room. Now, give!”
“Well…” He set the papers on the table, then rushed into speech. “I found Antoinette Baines’ files. Her *personal* files. Not like… financial stuff, or taxes, or anything like that, you know? It’s a… like a diary, sorta. Or a letter, you know? Like a “just in case something happens to me” sort of thing… She says she’s got files outlining the whole sabotage program… Can I call it a program? Anyway, I couldn’t believe it! She had this information - in encrypted files, of course, but still! Right there in EPRAD’s main system… Where anybody could get at it – well, anybody with a good decryption program. I’ve got a couple I use pretty regularly… One of ‘em is just ace, man. She was using a pretty good level of encryption, but I cracked it anyway…” He ran out of breath.
“Jimmy, slow down!” Lois exclaimed, waving him to a chair. “Now, say it again-“
“Are you saying you’ve got solid proof of the sabotage?” Clark asked at nearly the same moment.
Jimmy dropped into the chair Lois had indicated, but he was so excited he was bouncing in it like a child waiting to be excused at the end of a meal. “Well… almost! Here, look –“ He slid the papers toward them. “She says here that she’s got a safety deposit box at a First Bank of Metropolis branch – someplace in the suburbs; she says which branch it is - where she’s got all kinds of proof of sabotage, including what, and who, and when, and all that. She’s got it all listed here, kinda in time order. She names –“ He glanced around the room again and lowered his voice. “…She names Lex Luthor as the mastermind, and she’s got dates and times – and recordings - of their meetings. And she lists a guy called John Black who she says Lex Luthor hired to kill Dr. Platt…” He ran out of breath.
“John Black? He’s on our list, Clark!” Lois told him urgently.
“We need to get this to Bill Henderson,” Clark said, reading the document over her shoulder. “I think – hope - this is what he’s looking for. He can probably get a search warrant for the safety deposit box, and it sounds like we’ll find our proof inside it.”
“Do you think there’s any way of us getting a look at it first?” Lois asked without much hope. “I mean… This is the story of the century, Clark! Well, almost, anyway. Do you think we can get in there somehow?”
“Not legally, Lois.”
“How about…” She hesitated. It wouldn’t be a good idea to refer to Superman’s - or anyone else’s - special abilities in Jimmy’s presence.
Clark understood what she wanted to ask. “I don’t think so, Lois. I think we need to do this as… legally as possible. We don’t want to give Luthor any possible way to wiggle out of any of this.”
She sighed. “What a pain. Okay, fine - but Bill better give us the absolute exclusive, Clark.”
Jimmy had been looking back and forth between them expectantly; now she turned to him and said, “Jimmy, that was excellent – no, *outstanding* work! You are a hacker of the first order!”
She watched interestedly as the young man blushed and gulped nervously at the same time, then took pity on him as Clark chuckled next to her.
“Seriously, Jimmy… That was great work. And don’t worry - you’ll be completely anonymous and protected, as we protect all of our confidential sources. But would you like to be listed as a special contributor for this article? Share the byline? It’s gonna be a killer article,” she added without a hint of conceit.
Clark’s chuckle turned into outright laughter as Jimmy gaped at her. Lois ‘Mad Dog’ Lane’s offering to share a byline was akin to a complete solar eclipse – so rare that most people had never, and would never, see it.
“Uh. Uh… Yeah. Gosh, thanks! You really mean it?” Jimmy stammered.
Now Lois laughed, too. “Yes, Jimmy. I really mean it. We’ll get Bill Henderson onto this stuff, extract his promise that it’s our exclusive, and finish the story. Stay within reach by cell or email, okay? When we get the ‘go’ on this, we’ll have you help us write it.”
After stammering his thanks multiple times, then making it as far as the door, only to turn back and thank her – them – once again, Jimmy finally left the room. He still looked dazed; Lois glanced up at Clark, who’d casually and unconsciously draped an arm across her shoulders as they sat there watching Jimmy leave.
He smiled at her; at the same moment they both remembered their… other problem. Clark moved away from her, slumping back in his chair with a sigh. “I hate this… having to watch how I treat you,” he muttered. “If only…”
“Yeah.” The lightness of the moment was completely gone.
With a determined effort, he straightened up and smiled at her. “Lois, you did good. That was very generous, to offer to share our byline with Jimmy.”
“He deserves it, Clark,” she said seriously, forcing herself to think only of their work. “Let’s get this stuff to Bill Henderson, okay?”
He stood and pulled out her chair for her. “Let’s fly,” he said with a straight face, and they exited the room laughing.
-----
They delivered the document to Bill Henderson, who lifted an eyebrow in enquiry when he glanced over at it. “And how do we explain where this came from?” he asked.
As Lois and Clark looked at each other, Henderson sighed. “I don’t mean I don’t appreciate this, people. This is dynamite, and I’ve got a judge standing by who’ll issue a search warrant for this safety deposit box so fast it’ll make your head spin. *But* - and that’s a big one – our girl didn’t leave this lying around, I’m sure.”
He leaned back in his chair. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Um. I don’t suppose ‘we found it’ is good enough?” Lois asked.
Henderson actually smiled. Lois blinked. Usually the man kept the straightest face she’d ever seen, even when he was joking.
She glanced at Clark. “Any ideas, Clark?”
“Well…” he said slowly, “She left this document in EPRAD’s main system, according to our source. Not in her private computer… So…”
The man was a genius. “Yes, Bill! Sure, it was encrypted, but it was out there in the public forum, if you will…” She ignored the raised eyebrow and hurried on. “No, really! She died on EPRAD’s property, and that document was in their main computer system. Companies have access to their employees’ email and stuff like that; surely they have legal access to anything she put in their system in the line of her work? And since her death was suspicious, it’s not like they’re not gonna search through everything she left behind for clues, right? And she obviously wanted someone to find this and read it; why else put it there? She –“
Henderson held up both hands. “All right, all right, Lane. You’ve got me convinced.” He shook his head, and his mouth quirked in another half smile. “Gimme…” He looked at the clock on his desk. “…About an hour and I’ll have a search warrant. I imagine you want to be present when we crack the box?”
“Yes!” They said it in unison, and Lois experienced another first when Henderson laughed out loud.
“Okay. Meet me back here at 5 pm.” Henderson was already reaching for the phone. As Clark held the office door for her, they heard Henderson say, “Harry? Bill Henderson. How fast can you get me a search warrant…?”
Outside the police station, Lois had to concentrate to keep from floating off the ground. Laughing, she turned to Clark.
“Yeah. Me too.” He replied, smiling, before she even spoke. She sobered almost instantly.
“Clark, I didn’t even ask my question yet. But you knew what I was going to say, didn’t you?”
He stared at her. “Yes…”
“Clark, did you hear me earlier, while you were at the bank?” she demanded.
He frowned. “Hear you? What do you mean? Like… just now?”
She grabbed his hand and tugged him across the street to one of the benches in the small shady park just down the block from the police station. It wasn’t a patch on Centennial Park, but it was a pleasant little place all the same. “Clark, I was… *thinking* at you while you were at the bank – while Superman was at the bank.”
“Maybe I was… too busy, Lois. I didn’t hear anything… Or should I say, I didn’t ‘receive’ anything from you.”
“But… what about the sleepy-here’s-your-coffee thing?” she asked. “And… the ‘better than Superman’ thing? And the Kansas thing?” She waved her hands around in emphasis. “I *know* you… *thought* those at me. I got ‘em, Clark. But…” She slumped on the bench. “Maybe I can’t send you anything. Just receive. I don’t think you… ‘heard’ my ‘nice save’ comment either, did you?”
He looked bemused. “Well, I… let’s see…” He ticked the items off on his fingers. “I picked up your relief to see me and your ‘tired’ thing with Jimmy when I came through the door. I ‘heard’ your thought about Clark being better than Superman – thank you for that, by the way, Lois,” he said warmly, smiling his special smile at her. “And I got your Kansas-sized crush comment, too,” he continued. “That was pretty funny. Lois Lane, groupie? I can’t see it.”
“But –“
“And I *have* picked up stuff from you, Lois,” he continued. “You *are* ‘sending’ me stuff. Otherwise… how could I ‘reply’ to your ‘I’m tired’ thought – or your ‘Clark is better’ thought – unless I picked up what you were thinking? Oh, yeah - and the inscription-or-instructions thing, in Kansas, with the ship.” He smiled at he said it. “That was pretty funny, too. It’d be just our luck that the inscription *was* just ship-opening instructions, or something like… ‘please change this baby’s diaper,’ or…”
She began laughing helplessly. “Clark!”
He laughed with her. And then stopped abruptly.
Her own laughter died as he grabbed her hands and leaned in close. “That’s it, Lois! Every time I’ve picked up something from you, or sent something to you mentally, we’ve been happy – laughing, or smiling. That’s it! That’s the key! I’m almost sure of it!”
She stared at him in wonder. “So…” she breathed. “We can really… Wow!”
“Yeah.” He smiled at her, and she *felt* the waves of affection rolling over her. It was at once the most wonderful and the most terrible thing she’d ever felt. They just *couldn’t* feel this way about each other!
She shut her eyes tightly. “Clark…”
She felt his hands gripping hers hard – hard enough to hurt if she weren’t invulnerable. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I –“
She opened her eyes, squared her shoulders, and stood up. He released her hands. “C’mon, Kent. We’ve got work to do. Henderson ought to have that warrant by now, don’t you think?”
He was also on his feet. “Yeah.” He sounded… relieved. And disappointed. A curious mixture, but she knew exactly how it felt.
“Let’s go, then,” she said briskly, and they turned together toward police headquarters again.
-----
The actual safety deposit box cracking was almost anticlimactic. While Lois and Clark waited with the bank’s tellers, the police and the bank’s security man supervised the bank manager as he opened the locked box.
The contents were removed to a lockable attaché case and borne away to Henderson’s car. Lois and Clark rode back to the station with him, which was a pretty weird experience since the back seat was equipped with a cage.
Once they’d settled in his office, Henderson paged quickly through the documents while Lois and Clark waited more or less patiently. The ‘more’ was on Clark’s part and the ‘less’ was on Lois’s part; at one point, Clark quietly reached for her hand and held it, which shouldn’t have helped stop her fidgeting, but did.
Finally, Henderson spread the papers out on the desk, and the three of them began to read. It was somewhat unusual for members of the press to be allowed to examine potential evidence, but Lois and Clark weren’t exactly typical reporters, nor was Bill Henderson a typical policeman.
“You helped break this story,” he’d told them upon entering his office. “Without some of the information you provided, we’d surely still be spinning our wheels over this. And I want this guy bad.”
Antoinette Baines had indeed stockpiled ample proof of both her and Lex Luthor’s involvement in the space program sabotage. She had listed who was in on it, who had masterminded the plan – Lex Luthor, and what her own role had been.
“Here’s something – she describes how she got Dr. Platt discredited. It was part of a plan to make him either step down or get him fired, so she could take over…” Lois handed the document to Henderson.
Clark exclaimed a minute later, “Here’s a handwritten message - it’s signed ‘L’ – that instructs her to destroy all correspondence related to… Here, I’ll read it… ‘Destroy all correspondence related to our plan to sabotage the space program, immediately. I wouldn’t have thought I would have to remind you of such precautions, Antoinette.’ And –“ He passed the document to Henderson. “Could a handwriting expert analyze that? I’d be willing to bet money that the author is Luther.”
“There’s also several tapes – apparently from surveillance cameras. Let’s see what they show.” Henderson put the first of the tapes into his office VCR, and they watched the grainy images with interest.
After watching all three of the tapes Antoinette Baines had left behind in the safety deposit box, Henderson allowed himself another of those rare smiles. “She kept it all. And these tapes will be admissible evidence, since they’re from an overt, legal surveillance system. I’d be willing to lay odds myself that she was supposed to dispose of those tapes and instead chose to keep them; Luthor obviously didn’t suspect that.”
The phone rang. Henderson picked it up, uttering a terse, “Henderson.” He listened for a moment, and then said, “Excellent. Put him in interrogation room one and get George in there; I’ll be along shortly. Make sure you do everything by the book; we don’t want any procedural errors on this one.”
He hit a button, ending the call, and then pressed another button. “Harris, get Johansen for me, will you? Thanks.” He replaced the receiver and looked across at Lois and Clark. “My men just picked up a guy called John Black.”
“He’s on Antoinette Baines’ list,” Clark said.
“He’s got an extensive record; the word is that he’s a hit man who’ll take just about any contract,” Henderson replied.
The phone beeped and a tinny voice announced, <Bill, Johansen’s on line three.>
Henderson picked up the phone, glancing at his watch. “Johansen? Where are you? …Good. Okay, it’s a go. Yes. And Rod? By the book at every step. Take only experienced men with you. Pick up the manservant, too.”
He hung up the phone again, leaned back in his chair, and allowed himself still another smile. It was just as surprising as the first one. “Now, we wait,” he said. “I need to go talk to this fellow, Black; can I offer you one of the conference rooms while I’m doing that? Or do you want to wait here?” He didn’t mention the fact that he was trusting them to respect his office privacy, nor anything about their promise not to break the story until he gave the word. He’d worked with Lois long enough to know that she was trustworthy, and that she would respect his request as long as he respected her right to be the first on the story once they did break it.
They opted to wait in Henderson’s office. “I want to look at those surveillance tapes again, Bill,” Lois told him. “I’m sure you’d rather we watched those in here.”
“Help yourselves to coffee – if you can stand police-issue brew,” Henderson merely said, and then stood and left the office, closing the door behind him.
“Can’t be any worse than the newsroom version at the end of the day,” Lois said.
---
to be continued
