“One of the Cortez cousins is a paramedic,” Clark said. “With everything that has happened, the family has been talking.”
Clark pulled smoothly out into traffic, and Lois glanced back at Jimmy, who seemed to be alert and conscious.
Turning back to Clark, Lois said “He remembered something.”
Clark nodded.
“Did he work in Sunnydale?” From what one of the Cortez men had said, the family had avoided the cit.
Clark shook his head. “He worked out of Norwalk, a city about twenty minutes southeast of Los Angeles. The closest State Psychiatric Hospital is there.”
“And Sunnydale was being swamped with new cases,” Lois said.
One of Jimmy’s news articles had mentioned that the Sunnydale Psychiatric Hospital had been overwhelmed with schizophrenic patients. The CDC had promised to investigate, but Jimmy hadn’t found anything further on the matter, with a single exception.
Apparently the patients had escaped the ward as a group, emptying the entire unit. Afterwards, there weren’t any mention at all of further cases, or the disposition of those who had to have been wandering the streets of Sunnydale.
Given what she’d heard about the place, she wondered just how long they’d managed to survive those streets. Sunnydale didn’t sound like it had been a city with much of a homeless problem.
The problem wouldn’t have been finding a good meal. It would have been avoiding being one.
“They started shifting some of their excess patients by ambulance to the state hospital. Those who were violent were escorted by Sheriff’s Deputy.”
Lois nodded impatiently. “So why does he remember a single patient after all this time?”
“The man had a tattoo on his forehead. He was docile when they put him in the ambulance, but he tried to escape in the middle of the trip.”
“So he went to the state psychiatric hospital two years ago.”
“That’s where we start.”
**********
Norwalk might have been a twenty minute drive southeast of Los Angeles, but getting there was a nightmare. Lois was used to the traffic in Metropolis which, Like Manhattan was compact and busy.
She wasn’t used to the sheer urban sprawl of Los Angeles. The distance from one place to another amazed her, and the sheer number of car accidents and subsequent slowing traffic was a problem.
It wasn’t even rush hour.
What should have been a forty five minute trip took almost three hours.
The city itself seemed nice enough. Small, neatly kept homes with well tended yards. These were the sort of homes Lois had once fantasized about having, before she’d realized that there was no such thing as Mr. Right.
She glanced over at Clark, who seemed to know where he was going.
Suburban bliss began to change, becoming darker and more neglected the closer they got to their destination.
It reflected Lois’s mood. She stared out the window as they found themselves passing through an industrial district.
She wondered how many of these places were abandoned, filled with the homeless. How many of these people were facing the same fate as Sunnydale’s had?
If monsters were real, why hadn’t she ever heard about them in her own town? Did they only exist in Sunnydale, or were they like cockroaches?
Did every city have its own monsters, hidden away where the average person couldn’t find them?
Life would have been easier if she’d never started that gunrunning story, if she’d never heard of Sunnydale.
They were back on the highway again, and Clark soon turned off onto another road.
The place was huge, with acre after acre of green lawns and trees. Mental health was apparently big business.
They’d soon have their answers.
**********
“We can’t help you.” The man at the desk was fussy and neat, and he stared at them disapprovingly.
“We’re just trying to find this man, and the last place he was known to be was here.” Lois said. “He may have vital information relating to a case of mass murders outside of Sunnydale.”
“If you have a warrant, I can speak with you. Otherwise, I can’t help you.” The man stared at her calmly.
“What are you trying to hide here?” Lois asked.
“Confidentiality rules exist for a reason, Ms. Lane. It’s difficult enough to get people to come in for psychiatric help that they genuinely need without the fear that their name will be released to the newspaper whenever a reporter gets an urge to do a story.”
“We have no intention of naming names.” Lois glanced over at Clark, who had spent the entire interview silently staring at the wall with his glasses pulled down to the bridge of his nose. “But it’s vitally important that we find this man. We think he could be in danger.”
“Then tell the police.”
Clark suddenly moved, shoving his glasses back up his nose.
“If you can’t help us with an individual case, could you help us with information about common procedures?”
The man nodded reluctantly.
“What happens to a homeless patient who is declared at least temporarily stable?”
“He is referred out to a number of shelters. The salvation army accepts some of these people.”
“Would it be possible to get a list of shelters in Los Angeles County that people are sent to?”
“There are six shelters that we commonly use.” The man said. He looked at Lois and sighed. “I’ll write down the addresses of all of them.”
***********
“How do we even know that he wasn’t picked up by other members of his cult?” Lois asked. She was still irritated by the officious man’s refusal to help.
Hadn’t he heard of freedom of press?
“How would they have even known where he was?” Clark asked. “Unless he called them to come pick him up, which is always a possibility, they would have hit the same roadblocks as we did.”
“You don’t think he was coherent enough to call them?” Lois asked.
“I think that there’s a lot of pressure on the hospital to make room for new patients,” Clark said grimly. “And not a lot of options for aftercare.”
“There are agencies…” Lois said. She hadn’t had much experience with the mentally ill. Her stories had always focused more on crime and corruption.
Through her family she understood alcoholism and depression, but schizophrenia was beyond her.
“Some of these people have problems taking their medications. If they can’t even find a roof to sleep under, how are they supposed to remember to take their meds or come to their appointments?”
“You have some experience with this?” Lois asked.
“I did some stories in Kansas,” Clark said. “I can’t imagine that things are better in the big city.”
Clark began to slow, and it took Lois a moment to realize why.
Traffic was backed up ahead, and everything was coming to a stop.
Rush hour had begun.
**********
Lois felt frustrated and angry. Clark had managed to get off the freeway and had managed some creative driving that had cut their drive time to only three hours, but it was still frustrating to realize that they had wasted most of the day on something that wasn’t likely to pan out.
“Why are we starting with this one?” Lois asked. “It’s on the middle of the list.”
It wasn’t even the closest to the hospital. There was one that was closer.
The sun was already setting, and with it, Lois’s sense of danger. In the back, Jimmy was laying on his side, asleep.
At least the hospital had ruled out a concussion.
“It’s one of the closest,” Clark said. “And I have a gut feeling.”
He touched his glasses self consciously, and Lois wondered what he was hiding.
It seemed strange for a man outwardly as honest as Clark to be hiding things, but there was something about him that had been nagging her for a while.
Something told her that there was more to him than met the eye. It wasn’t just his quiet confidence, his competence, or his excellent driving.
It certainly wasn’t that he was attractive, although he undeniably was.
In the few days she’d known him, he’d somehow grown more handsome than he was when she’d first met him.
Deep down, she liked him. She’d been through a great deal over the past few days, and the last thing she could have tolerated was a talkative, annoying partner.
He’d been sensitive enough to known what she’d needed, and he’d kept quiet.
Or perhaps that’s just how he was. Either way, his presence soothed her. In her old life she might have thought he was boring. She’d have been so busy chasing the next story that he would have faded into the background.
But out here, all alone with her thoughts, she could see him more clearly.
Perry had clearly known what he was doing in assigning him to this case.
Clark slowed the car again, and they soon pulled up in front of a nondescript brick building. A large crowd of men, mostly African American and Hispanic were standing outside the building.
It was clear from the way they were dressed that they didn’t have much. Homeless chic hadn’t really caught on in L.A.
Jimmy woke up, looking groggy.
“Watch the car,” Lois told him.
In Metropolis, a car like their rental would be stripped to the chasse in less than twenty minutes in some sections of town. This place looked like one of those places.
***********
“You honestly want me to remember someone that came through here two years ago?” the woman stared at them and laughed. “Do you know how many people we have coming through here every day? And now with the Sunnydale thing? We’ve got people sleeping on the floor.”
“We’re asking about a man with a tattoo on his forehead,” Lois said. “He would have been clearly mentally ill.”
She pulled out a close up photo of the tattoo taken from one of the corpses at the morgue.
The woman glanced at the picture then did a double take.
“I did know someone like that. He doesn’t come by anymore. He went by the name of Olaf.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“I’ve heard that he was harassing some of the kids over at the East Hills Teen Center.” The woman shook her head. “Getting people to take their medications is almost impossible, and when they are off them, things can deteriorate pretty fast.”
The woman wrote an address down on a sheet of paper. “Ask Anne Steele what she’s seen. Se’s the director of the teen center, and she might be able to give you a better lead.”
Lois glanced at Clark, and they both rose to their feet. “Thank you.”
*****************
“We’re getting closer,” Lois said. “I can feel it.”
Clark’s hunch had been correct. Lois wondered if he was hiding something. Maybe he had a source at the hospital that he didn’t want to reveal.
The East Hills Teen Center was in a part of town even more poverty stricken than the last place they’d visited. The interior was well kept, and the teenagers passing through seemed respectful and clean.
The director of the place was absurdly young however, barely out of her teens herself.
“How may I help you?” the woman asked. There was something about the way she looked at Clark that Lois didn’t like.
It was speculative interest, in the way a woman looks at a man.
“My name is Lois Lane and this is my partner Clark Kent,” Lois said, reaching out to shake hands. The woman’s hands were warm and human.
“We’re investigating the collapse of Sunnydale.” Lois said, continuing.
The woman’s expression changed. “I don’t have anything to say about Sunnydale.”
“You are a native?” Lois asked.
“We’re here looking into a mass grave outside of town. There were a number of men with this tattoo buried there, and we thing that a survivor may have escaped.” Clark spoke smoothly, and he smiled at Anne.
He handed her the photograph, and Lois noticed that her hands lingered a moment too long on his.
The woman…girl really, gasped as she saw the photograph.
“There’s a local street person who has a tattoo like this. He’s been harassing some of the kids, and I’ve had to call the police on several different occasions.”
“Any idea where he usually stays?”
Anne shook her head and handed the picture back to Clark. “Some of the kids do, though.”
She gestured, and a pair of young African American kids stepped forward.
The boys were more than happy to give directions to Olaf’s home.
************
Olaf’s home was a box in a dark alley behind a dumpster.
The entire alley smelled of garbage, rotting food and human urine. It was dark even to Lois’s newly enhanced vision, and Lois had an uneasy feeling of dread.
From the darkness, a deep, accented voice spoke.
“Are you here to kill me then, killer of men?”
Lois froze.
“Come to finish off the work of the Beast?” the voice continued, this time closer. “Brought your own creature and the monster inside.”
The thing that shuffled into the light was barely a man. The tattoo on his forehead, and the light of madness in his eyes were only accentuated by the long knife in his hand.
Lois took a step back, the blood draining from her face. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the knife.
He knew what she had done.
