Further On Down the Road
Direct Sequel to “The Road Taken”
Chapter One
>>>Thursday, 3:11 PM
“Ouch!”
Lois let out a sharp bark of pain as she caught a damaged fingernail on the side of her keyboard. She put the wounded digit in her mouth to suck out the hurt. It seemed to help a little.
If only she could draw out this story so easily. In the two months since the sinking of the freighter carrying the gunrunners, their cargo, and Lana Lang-Kent, she’d earned five more front-page banners, including two Superman stories, and had become a regular in the ‘A’ section. She’d also nailed a mood piece on a company of traveling Shakespeare players who had gone from flat broke to making a solid living in just over a year. Even Perry had liked it, saying that it was good enough for a Kerth nomination.
She pulled back her hand and glanced at the scar. The shallow furrow that a stray shotgun pellet had cut in her flesh hadn’t done any permanent damage, but it had left her with a reminder that the case which had killed Clark’s wife wasn’t closed. And she refused to stop working on it.
She accepted the accolades that came her way and kept on working on the gunrunners. She’d learned a little more about the operation since her shared byline with Clark detailing the explosion of the freighter Star of the Amazon, but not enough to print. She still didn’t know who the mysterious ‘boss’ actually was yet, but it was beginning to look more and more like the guy was also into lots and lots of other things, from crooked floating crap games to ‘protection’ rackets to political payoffs, both in the city and state governments. Whoever it was, he had money to burn and influence to peddle.
And not many people fit that profile, even on the East Coast, but so far she hadn’t found a pattern that matched any of her top prospects. In fact, she’d winnowed the list from eleven to five, but none of those five really fit the profile either.
On top of that, the mood in the newsroom seemed to be dominated by frustration. She was frustrated at how slowly her investigation was going. Claude Guilliot, her partner, was frustrated because she was pursuing that story and not responding to either his erratic leadership or his questionable personal charm. Perry was also frustrated because Lois and Claude, who had looked to be an unbeatable team on paper, clashed like a pair of divas at the Grammy awards ceremony.
She looked up from reading over her notes yet again, trying to find some angle she’d missed before, to see Claude heading towards her desk. Here he comes, she thought acidly, France’s gift to American women specifically and to the news profession in general. Maybe he’ll be in a good mood this time.
“Young lady partner!”
Not a good mood, she ruminated. “What is it, Claude?”
He thrust a handful of loose sticky notes in her face, his accent thick with anger. “What are the meanings of these?”
She sighed. “They’re my notes to myself on the state audit of the welfare department. I have names, phone numbers, call back dates, info on – “
He growled and hurled the notes to the floor. “I cannot work with such as these! This must be organized in the proper fashion! You must record your notes in a more professional manner! This will do never!”
She stood slowly and stared up into his eyes. “Claude, you either pick up all those notes and put them back where you found them or I’ll knock you down and break every one of your fingers at least once.”
“What? My fingers? Lois, you – “
There was ice in the air between them. “Now, Claude. Right now.”
Claude laughed and stepped back. Lois followed and intensified her glare into solid granite. He took a breath and lifted a finger. Her brows flexed and promised imminent and intense pain.
He nodded, suddenly nervous. “Of course, of course, I will pick them up. I was perhaps somewhat hasty, no?”
“Yes. You were.”
She backed up to her chair as Claude gathered the notes and put them on Lois’s desk. He took a deep breath. “Lois, would you please arrange on your computer these notes so that I also may use them?”
She smiled. Her face lit up like a railroad warning signal. “Of course, Claude! I’d be happy to. Is tomorrow morning soon enough?”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Mas oui, of course, yes.” He turned to go.
“Claude?” she cooed.
He turned back. “Yes?”
Still in coquette mode, she purred, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He frowned. “I do not believe so, no.”
She stepped close and twirled his tie between her fingers. “My dear, darling Claude, you forgot to THANK ME!”
As she spoke the last two words, she yanked his tie and pulled his face down close to hers. He sputtered, “O-of course, of course. Merci boucoup, my dear Lois, ah, thank you, thank you very much!” Lois held him there for a long breath. As he tried to avert his gaze from her titanium glare, Claude anxiously indicated his tie, still trapped in her steel grip. “Si vous plait? If you will please – eh?”
She let the tie slip out from between her fingers as he slowly straightened, then she reached up and patted his cheek gently. “You’re quite welcome, Claude.”
Perry had watched the entire exchange from the refuge of his office door. When Claude left, he meandered over to her and quietly said, “You know, you’re going to give that Frenchman a heart attack one of these days.”
Without turning, she replied, “And he’ll deserve every nanosecond of that agony.”
“Maybe you should pick on people your own size.”
“Maybe he could grow up, too.”
“Him? Grow up? Might as well wait for Elvis’s next live album.” Perry restrained his smile. “Don’t you have an appointment in twenty minutes or so?”
She blew out a long breath. “Yes. And don’t worry, I’ll be there on time.”
“I know, hon.” He released part of the smile he’d been holding back. “And be sure to tell Dr. Friskin ‘hi’ for me.”
Perry sighed to himself as he watched her leave. Mad Dog Lane, he thought. An apt appellation. It certainly suited her.
*****
“Do you want to sit down, Lois?”
“Uh, sure, yeah. Chair or couch?”
“It’s your choice. Whatever makes you more comfortable.”
“You tell me the same thing every time I ask that question, Dr. Friskin. You’d think I’d know the answer by now.”
“Just because we already know the answer to a question doesn’t ensure that we’ll act on it.”
“Yeah, we’ve talked about that before, too. I guess I’ll take the chair.”
“Okay, Lois, now that you’re comfortable, what do you want to talk about today?”
“I – I’m actually not all that comfortable.”
“I know. And it’s okay if you’re not comfortable. Being in a therapist’s office can be both relaxing and intimidating at the same time, even if you’ve been here before. Your inner defenses are like everyone else’s, and they tend to activate whenever anyone gets near them.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Anyway, you remember that secret I told you about last time?”
“Yes. Have you decided to tell me exactly what it is?”
“I wish I could. Believe me, I really wish I could. But it’s a secret about another person, not about me, and it’s nothing illegal or harmful or at all wrong, so I don’t feel free to share it, even with you.”
“You know I won’t ever divulge it to anyone.”
“I know. I just – Dr. Friskin, if you went to a therapist yourself, would you discuss my sessions with him or her? Even though you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that your own therapist would never reveal anything you said in that session?”
“I might discuss a case or a patient in very general terms, but I’d never reveal anything specific enough to identify any of my patients. You know that.”
“Of course I do. And this is the same kind of thing. I can’t tell you what it is without telling you who it is, and I don’t have that person’s permission to do that.”
“I see. In that case, you’re right, you shouldn’t tell me. But I don’t think that’s the only thing bothering you right now.”
“No. No, it’s not. See, when I was on the ship, Lana – I told you about Lana, right?”
“Yes, you did. Go on, please.”
“I wrote – I wrote that she was the one who defended us with the machine gun in the hold.”
“I remember the articles. You described her as quite heroic.”
“She was heroic, no exaggeration there at all. But – she loaded the gun and showed me how to fire it. She never pulled the trigger, not while I was with her.”
“Oh. Lois, are you saying that you were the one who – “
“The one who shot several men? That my nickname should really be Machine Gun Lane? That I killed several people that day? Yes! That’s what I’m saying!”
“Lois, it’s okay, please sit back down and – “
“Don’t you understand? I killed several men! I actually got a kick out of firing that gun! And if I had it all to do over again I’d do the same thing!”
“I can certainly understand why you’d feel that way.”
“And I’ve tried to tell myself that I hadn’t really killed anyone with it, that they would have died anyway when the ship blew up, or that they would have killed us if I hadn’t shot back at them! It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t help! I still shot them! I still killed them!”
“Lois, please sit down. Please.”
“Did you hear what I just said? Did you – “
“I heard you, Lois. Here’s the tissue box.”
“I – I don’t know – I don’t know if I can deal with this!”
“We’ll get through it together. I’ll help you.”
“How can I go on? I killed people! I deserve to be punished!”
“Were you trying to kill them?”
“No! No, I was just trying to keep them away from us.”
“You said you enjoyed firing the gun. Was that all you enjoyed?”
“Well – I enjoyed watching the bullets hit where I aimed. And I liked making all that noise.”
“But you said you weren’t trying to kill anyone.”
“I wasn’t! I was trying to keep us safe! I was just trying to keep their heads down! I had no idea I’d hit anyone until they told me!”
“Easy, Lois, easy. Tell me something. If you weren’t trying to shoot anyone, what was the thrill?”
“Um. The gun, I guess. I enjoyed shooting that gun. It – I don’t know! I guess it made me feel like I wasn’t a victim any more, like I had some control over what happened to me.”
“Do you still feel like a victim?”
“Well – no, I don’t. In fact, I almost feel like a bully sometimes.”
“How’s that?”
“I get mad. I get mad real easy, too. Really mad. And whatever it is that’s making me mad at the moment, it isn’t bad enough to make me that angry.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Before – before I came here today, I almost had a fight with Claude. You remember Claude?”
“Your French colleague? Yes, you told me about him.”
“I, um, I almost had a fight with him.”
“You said that already. Did you hit him?”
“No.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“No. Well, not really. Uh, well, yeah, maybe a little. But not too much.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I – “
“It’s okay, Lois, you can tell me. No one will judge you here.”
“I know. It’s just – Okay! I yelled at him and made him back away from me.”
“You are allowed to stand up for yourself, you know.”
“No! It’s not like that.”
“Then tell me what it was like.”
“I grabbed his tie and pulled his face down next to mine and I looked him in the eye and I could see fear.”
“Of you?”
“Of what I might do to him.”
“What did you want to do to him, Lois?”
“kiph humph”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear you.”
“I said I wanted to kill him!”
“Oh. Well. I see.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
“Is he dead, Lois?”
“No! But I was really mad and I wanted to kick him between the legs and pull his nose off and put out his eyes with a freshly sharpened pencil and disembowel him with a dull letter opener and strangle him with his own intestines but I stopped myself just in time!”
“Then what – “
“I’m going to get up and pace again, okay? I don’t much care what happens to me because I figure I’m living on borrowed time anyway but I can’t take risks that will put others in danger so I can’t do my job effectively and I can’t sleep and I don’t have any real friends and I’m so tired of being congratulated for killing all those people and he should have saved Lana and – and – “
“Go on, Lois, this is good. You need to get this out so you can manage it.”
“Manage it? Don’t you see? Didn’t you hear? He saved me! He should have saved Lana! I’m alive and she’s dead and she was worth ten of me!”
“I never met Lana Lang-Kent. I don’t know what she might have done with the rest of her life. But I do know you aren’t responsible for her death, and you don’t need to replace her life with yours now. Nor do you need to sacrifice your life to pay for her death.”
“Is – is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
“Maybe. Tell me, what do you think would have happened if you had done all those – very interesting things – to Claude?”
“Huh. I guess I would have been arrested. Gone to jail. Been convicted of murder. Gotten the death sentence. Boy, that would’ve been something, huh? Lois Lane, dead woman walking. Hey, you know when they put that last needle in your arm and then pump the drugs in and you take a permanent nap? You know that they swab the injection site with alcohol to clean it? Why do they do that?”
“I see you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“I’ve thought a lot about my own death, Dr. Friskin. I spent most of a day on that ship expecting my next breath to be my last breath. Then when Cl – when Superman pulled me out of there, I felt great, like I’d won every lottery that had ever been played. But when he – when the ship blew up with Lana still on board, I didn’t know how to feel. I still don’t.”
“May I make a suggestion, Lois?”
“Hey, you need to earn your hourly fee somehow.”
“I believe that, at least in part, what you’re feeling is called survivor’s guilt. People who make it through terrible times feel glad that they survived when others didn’t, and they feel guilty about being glad to be survivors, and they feel sad that people they knew aren’t around any more. It happens in corporate layoffs and battlefields, in police and fire departments and in cancer wards, in the aftermath of hurricanes and tornados. You’re not alone, Lois. Others know your pain.”
“I’d like to meet the sole survivor of a ship blowing up!”
“I’m not sure I know anyone is in your particular position, but there are many others who have experienced something similar.”
“Huh. Maybe I could learn something from them after all.”
“Then why don’t you come to a meeting? There’s a gathering Friday night at about seven. Do you have plans?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Here’s the address. You’re welcome to attend.”
“Are you running that session, too?”
“I’m one of the facilitators. The participants run the session. You can leave at any time, or you can stay until we turn off the lights. It’s entirely up to you.”
“So, this is your suggestion?”
“Yes. And that’s all it is, a suggestion. I hope to see you Friday evening, but if I don’t, that’s okay too. Now, I’m afraid our time is up for today. Shall I expect you next week?”
“Yeah. I’ll come as long as you can stand me.”
“You can come as long as you need to, Lois. Good-bye until next time.”
>>>Thursday, 5:32 PM
The note on Lois’s desk asked her to see Perry as soon as she got back, so she locked her purse in her desk drawer and knocked on his office door. “You wanted to see me, Chief?”
He waved her in. “Close the door, Lois. Sit down.”
She frowned. “Is something wrong? Am I getting fired or something?”
“What?” He goggled for a moment, then grinned. “No, nothing like that. I just need to talk to you for a minute.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“Clark is up.”
“Huh? Up where?”
He sat next to her and leaned closer. “Clark Kent is coming back to the office on Monday.”
“Oh.” She looked at the floor. “To work or to clean out his desk?”
“He’s coming back to work.”
“I see.” She sighed deeply. “The bean counters won’t let him work from Smallville any more?”
“Nope. He has to come in to the office to keep his job. As it is, he’s already used up all of his sick time and vacation for his first year, along with all the compassionate leave I can give him.”
“Hmm. So, why did you bring me in and tell me like this?”
“I wanted to make sure you and he were going to get along.”
“Get along? With Clark?” Her eyes bulged. “You’re kidding, right? It’ll be a wonder if he ever speaks to me again!”
She stood and paced, waving her hands. “I mean, Clark is a good writer and he might be a really good reporter someday but he’s just suffered a terrible loss and I haven’t talked to him since we were on the submarine together and – “
Perry reached for her hand but missed. “Lois?”
“ – and I don’t know if he blames me or if he even wants to be around me again and I don’t want to put any pressure on him and – “
He tried again. “Lois!”
“ – and he didn’t even look at me at Lana’s memorial service in Smallville back in July and I don’t know if he hates me or wishes I’d been on that ship instead of Lana when it blew up – “
He stood and grabbed her shoulders. “Lois! Stop it!”
She looked directly into his eyes. “What, Perry? Stop what?”
“Stop beating yourself up over something you’re not responsible for!”
Her eyes moistened and she spoke in a barely audible voice. “But I am responsible.”
“No, Lois, you’re not responsible! It’s not your fault!”
Her eyes filled with tears she didn’t know she still had. “Lana wouldn’t have been on that ship if I hadn’t dragged her into the middle of everything. Clark knows that, too. He’s probably coming back here to finish me off.” She stepped back and slipped out of Perry’s grasp. “And you know what? I’d let him.”
He shook his head. “You hate yourself that much?”
She wiped her face with one hand. “No, I don’t hate myself. I don’t want to end it all. But it would – it would be justice.”
Perry opened his mouth to answer, but instead his desk phone rang. “Nuts!” He picked up the receiver. “Managing Editor, Perry White speaking. Yes, they did. No! You can’t change the page two format without talking to me first! I mean before you change it, not after! You better not be thinking that asking forgiveness is easier than asking permission! No, you can’t – hold on a minute, Scott.” He covered the mouthpiece with his free hand. “Lois, I’m sorry, I have to handle this. But you’re selling yourself short, and I think you’re selling Kent short, too. Listen to him, then talk to him. I’ll check with you later.”
Lois nodded and left the office as Perry resumed chewing out Scott for overstepping his bounds. She slid into her chair and put her head in her hands.
Monday! Clark was coming back on Monday morning.
Today was Thursday. She had the entire weekend to plan what she would say to him when he walked into the bullpen. Three days and four nights to think and anticipate and go insane waiting, waiting for him to come in and clobber her or blame her or rip her head off or completely ignore her or fry her with his heat vision or fly her up above the stratosphere and let her fall back to earth and burn up from the friction or make it a point to tell her how much he hated her every time he saw her or –
She shook her head to stop the mental rant. She would know soon enough what Clark intended to do. She’d meant it when she’d told Perry she’d let Clark kill her if that was what he really wanted to do. She only wanted her heart’s agony to end.
>>>Friday, 7:51 AM
As soon as Lois came in, Perry handed her a new assignment. She was to write a profile piece on a charity ball scheduled for the following Friday evening, hosted and paid for by Metropolis’s resident mystery billionaire, Lex Luthor. It was a simple assignment, almost a puff piece, except for one thing: Lex Luthor was on Lois’s short list of candidates for the role of Criminal Mastermind of Metropolis. She thought he might be the big boss behind schemes like the gunrunning operation that had nearly killed her.
And Perry knew all the names on her list.
It whetted her appetite and gave her something constructive to do, which she figured Perry had intended. But that was not a reason to take the assignment lightly. There had to be something she could learn about Luthor, something that would either clear him or incriminate him.
But by the time lunch rolled around, she’d run into half a dozen firewalls designed to keep anyone from getting to the man himself. His biography was spotty, his current resume was vague, his few interviews were ambiguous, and his personality was a total mystery.
Her stomach demanded sustenance, so she scampered around the corner to a nearby deli and wolfed down a sandwich and soda. Then she came back and attacked the enigma of Lex Luthor once again.
Perry stopped by just after three o’clock. “How’s it going, oh budding star investigative reporter?”
Her only response was an inarticulate growl.
He patted her on the shoulder. “Oh, come on, now. It can’t be that bad.”
“Oh, yes it can. Look at this! Here’s Luthor’s Who’s Who entry, his three Metropolis Man of the Year award summaries, his official biography – all of half a page – and twenty-six gossip columns dating back two years about his stable of girlfriends, none of whom seem to be serious contenders for the title of the next Mrs. Lex Luthor because the man doesn’t seem to want anyone to be that close to him. Did you know he married a psychiatrist about eleven years ago?”
“Seems like I did hear about that from somewhere, yes. What did you find on her?”
“Her name is Dr. Arianna Carlin. No children, from Luthor or from anybody else. She went back to her own name after the divorce. The marriage only lasted about a year, and she’s been living off the alimony and the shares of his company since then. Except that she’s not married either and has a small private practice in upstate New Troy, I have even less information about her than I have about him. I have LexCorp’s last four yearly statement summaries, the list of companies to whose boards of directors he belongs, and that’s it! He hasn’t given a TV or print interview to an independent journalist in over four years!”
“Sounds like a pretty good start to me.”
She threw her hands in the air. “It’s a great start, but that’s all I have! I’ve hit a solid brick wall! I’ve been at this since you gave it to me this morning! I can’t find any personal information on him that hasn’t been sanitized, there’s no loose information about LexCorp or LexLabs or any of his businesses, nothing! Perry, this is just too smooth. He’s hiding something, and I think it may be something really big.”
He frowned. “Honey, I wasn’t asking for a Kerth-quality expose on him, just a profile to go along with the – “
“But it’s there! I can smell it! He’s hiding something, something big!”
He drew himself erect and went into ‘editor’ mode. “Lois, you can’t print what you smell. You have to have real, verifiable facts, and you know it. There may be a bigger story here than – “
“There is a big story here! I just know it!”
“Okay, Lois, stop and listen.” She drew in another breath, but subsided under the threat of his index finger and raised eyebrows. “First of all, you’re not officially on the investigative beat, even though I’ve given you a lot of leeway and you’ve done a good job so far. Second, you’ve gone through a really bad experience recently and you need to deal with all those leftover issues.”
“I am dealing with them!”
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m lecturing you. Third, Claude asked me this morning if he could work with someone else. He said you were ‘irascible and uncooperative’ and he didn’t think you two were a good fit as partners.”
She clenched her fists and punched her desk once. “Uncooperative? Irascible? Do you know what he suggested to me two weeks ago on that jewelry store stakeout? He said we should pass the time by – “
“Whoa! I can imagine what Claude said, but since you didn’t come to me about it right then, I can’t do much about it now. You need to write the piece I assigned you, okay? And you need to work with Claude as smoothly as you can. You can sniff around Lex Luthor in your spare time, but I need this piece for Tuesday’s morning edition. You have until four PM on Monday, got it?”
She huffed silently, but nodded. “I got it.”
“Good. I have a couple of other things you and Claude can work on together, too.”
“I thought he didn’t want me as a partner!”
“Doesn’t much matter what he wants. I sit at the managing editor’s desk, not Claude. I’ll send both of you an e-mail before the end of the day.”
She crossed her arms and pouted. “Okay, if I have to.”
“You do.” He patted her shoulder. “Keep up the good work, Lois. Just don’t bite the Frenchman’s head off. It’ll give you indigestion.”
Perry returned to his office, and Lois got up to visit the ladies’ room. As she was returning to her desk, she impulsively picked up the phone and dialed a number she was pretty sure Perry wouldn’t want her to dial.
“Good afternoon, LexCorp central offices, Metropolis. My name is Rebecca Connors. How may I direct your call?”
“Hi, Rebecca! My name is Lois Lane. I’m a reporter for the Daily Planet and I’m doing an article on Lex Luthor and I’d like to schedule an interview with him.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Lane, Mr. Luthor does not give interviews. It isn’t personal, I assure you, it’s his general policy.”
“I understand the policy, but I was hoping he’d make an exception for me.”
“I’m truly sorry, Ms. Lane. I’m afraid I can’t offer you any hope.”
“Will you at least pass my request up to him? Maybe he’ll see me.”
“Mr. Luthor hasn’t granted any interviews at all in almost three years, Ms. Lane. I will, of course, pass on your request, but I seriously doubt he’ll talk to you in person.”
“Okay, thanks anyway, Rebecca.”
“Thank you, Ms. Lane. Is there anything else I could help you with?”
Inspiration born of desperation struck her. “Yes! Will you let me interview you?”
“What?”
“I could interview you, you know, get the feel of the place, find out the ebb and flow of the business day, that kind of thing. What do you say?”
“Um – I – um – “
“Come on, Rebecca! It isn’t front page news, I know, but it’ll make a great addition to my article, whether or not Mr. Luthor agrees to see me. I’ll even buy you lunch. What do you say?”
“Uh – I’ll have to check with my supervisor, Ms. Lane, but – ”
“Call me Lois.”
“Um, okay, Lois. I’ll still have to check. Will you be at work tomorrow?”
“On Saturday? Reporters and receptionists never sleep, do we?”
“Ha-ha! Sometimes it seems that way. Please call me back by ten tomorrow and I’ll know by then if I can talk to you. I’ll answer this number.”
“Okay, Rebecca. Bye for now.”
“Good-bye, Lois.”
She laid the phone in its cradle and smiled. It was a small step towards the resolution of the story, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
