Chapter Twenty-Eight
>>>Tuesday, 6:53 PM
Martha surveyed her guests, trying to decide on the best course of action. If she turned them away, she might lose their last chance to help Dennis Lang, but if she invited them in, there was no way to predict how her husband and son would react to the intrusion.
Dennis looked terrible. He swayed in place as if he hadn’t slept for days. Ginny McCoy was in only slightly better shape, but at least her face didn’t display the despair and abject helplessness that Dennis’s did.
Martha hesitated, thinking furiously, but then she heard one of her men leave the living room and enter the kitchen. It sounded like Jonathan.
She made a decision. “You two come in out of the chill. I’ll get you something warm to drink. Coffee? Hot chocolate?”
“No thanks, Martha.” Dennis plodded past her into the living room. Martha gave Ginny a questioning look, but Ginny only shook her head and followed Dennis.
They didn’t get far. Dennis had stopped just past the doorway to stare at Clark, who was facing away from them with his arms crossed and his head down. To Martha, he looked like a man trying to hold himself together by strength alone, a strength which was failing as she watched.
As she stepped around Dennis, her son turned his head and saw their new guests. He dropped his arms to his sides and turned to face them. “Hello, Dennis.”
“Clark. I knew you were here. The news reports said you were missing, but I knew you’d be here.”
“Good to see you.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
Clark tilted his head quizzically. “Is something wrong, Dennis?”
“I want to know.”
“Know what?”
“Why you didn’t help my daughter.”
Behind him, Ginny threw her hands into the air. “Dennis! We’ve been over this a hundred times! Clark was on the life raft! What on earth could he have done to help Lana?”
Dennis only intensified his stare. “He could have saved her.”
“I tried, Dennis, but the – “
Dennis took an angry step forward. “You could have saved her! Why didn’t you?” His voice took on an angry, almost hysterical tone. “Tell me why, Clark!”
No one moved until Jonathan came back into the room carrying a soft drink can. His entrance seemed to break the spell which held them fast.
Ginny moved around in front of Dennis and grabbed one of his hands. “Dennis! Listen to me! Superman was there and he couldn’t save Lana! I know how much you miss her, but you can’t blame Clark for her death! He isn’t responsible!”
*****
In the Fortress, Lois’s head jerked up. She’d felt a questioning touch from Clark, but instead of concern for her, she read a mixture of fear and resignation through the link.
She turned and activated her newly acquired vision gizmo to look in on the Kent household. She recognized Dennis Lang and assumed that the woman trying to console him was Virginia McCoy. And they didn’t look like they were there for a simple social visit.
This was trouble. And maybe, for once, she could help Clark instead of simply making his life more complicated.
She floated down from the platform and began walking back to the house.
*****
Ginny was at her wit’s end. Nothing she had tried for the last few months had pulled Dennis out of his funk, not the fast-approaching holiday season, not strong suggestions from her that they schedule their wedding or simply elope in the dead of night, not her gesture of placing most of her belongings in storage and moving into Dennis’s house to take care of him. Her best efforts had gone unheeded. He remained fixated on blaming Lana’s husband for her death.
There was only one card left for her to play, and she knew she couldn’t bluff on this one. It had to be a real threat or nothing else she ever did with her life would be sure, especially in any relationship with Dennis.
“Dennis. Listen to me. I have tried to help you pull out of this. I’ve tried to let you grieve, tried to let you process this tragedy on your own terms – will you look at me when I’m talking to you!”
His head turned towards her, but his eyes refused to leave Clark for a moment. Finally his gaze snapped to her.
“Good. Now that I have your attention, let me say this one time and one time only. I love you, Dennis Lang, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I cannot be married to a man who can’t let go of his pain. You’ve pushed this obsession with blaming Clark into demonizing the man. He was hurt as much as you were! He lost his wife! There’s no way he would have let her die if he could have prevented it!”
Dennis’s voice was hollow. “Yes. He could have.”
She dropped his hand. “That’s it. I can’t take this any more, Dennis. I’m leaving and I’m not coming back. I hope you get past this someday, but when you do, don’t call me or come to see me. It’s over.”
He grabbed her arms with surprising strength. “Wait! I can prove it to you.” He turned his head and spoke over her shoulder. “Show her.”
Jonathan stepped forward and lifted his hand. “Dennis, wait, I think you should think – “
“SHOW HER!”
Dennis’s nearly insane scream shocked Ginny and she stepped backwards and tripped. Clark caught her just before she hit the floor. As he lifted her to her feet, she glanced up at his face and was surprised to see both resignation and determination there.
“All right, Dennis,” he said, “I’ll show her.”
He led her to the couch and gently pushed her down. “Stay right there for ten seconds and you’ll understand.”
She was too confused to argue, so she nodded. “Ten seconds.”
“Good.” Clark stepped back and began turning around.
He moved so fast his outline blurred.
Then the dark colors of his jeans and denim shirt turned electric blue and bright red.
Then he slowed to a stop.
Superman stood in front of her.
*****
Ginny couldn’t take her eyes off him. She heard Dennis yelling in the distance, saying, “See! I told you! See!” over and over again.
But the blue and red-clad man standing before her was Superman, not Clark. Yet she could see the similarities in build, in posture, in body shape, in his nose and mouth, and even his eyes.
She suddenly realized that Clark hadn’t been wearing his glasses when she and Dennis had burst in on the Kents. She took a breath and managed to say, “Clark?”
The hero nodded. “Yes, I’m Clark. I put on the bright clothes to play hero and then take them off to be a regular guy. I really am responsible for Lana’s death.”
The confession shook Ginny. Superman was a killer? Superman had taken a life?
Then her professional training and exact nature took hold. He hadn’t said that he’d killed anyone, he’d said that he’d been responsible for Lana’s death.
Not the same thing at all.
She glanced around and saw that the rest of the room’s occupants were as shocked as she had been. “Superman – Clark – what do I call you, anyway?”
“When I ‘m dressed up like a cartoon character, I’m Superman.” He whirled in place again and reverted to his previous casual attire. “When I’m dressed like this, I’m Clark Kent.”
She indicated his parents with her thumb. “I assume they already knew about your – your other outfit.”
He nodded. “Mom made it for me. I think they’re surprised that I agreed to reveal myself to you.”
She nodded. “We’ll come back to that later, if we need to. Right now, I want you to tell me why you think you’re responsible for Lana’s death.”
Dennis nearly jumped into her lap. “What? You heard him! He said he killed her! It’s his fault!”
She leaped to her feet and yelled in his face. “Shut up, Dennis!” Shocked, he took a step back. “He said, ‘I am responsible.’ He didn’t say, ‘I killed her.’ There’s a huge difference.”
“What possible difference – “
“I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking the question.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Ginny saw the kitchen door open and watched a sad-faced young woman move quietly into the house. Deciding that she probably wasn’t a threat to Superman, Ginny turned back to Clark. “I want you to tell us why you think you’re responsible for Lana’s death. And don’t leave anything out.”
Clark’s eyes turned bleak, but he nodded. “Please sit down. I’ve never told anyone else what I’m about to tell you, and it isn’t going to be easy for me.”
He waited while his parents sat in their own chairs. Ginny guided Dennis to the couch beside her. “I think we’re ready, Clark,” she said softly. “Please go ahead.”
He ducked his head and took a deep breath, then began. “You all know how I took Lois Lane off the ship first because she was actually being shot at. I used your criteria of ‘imminent danger,’ Dennis, to rescue the person who seems to be in the most trouble, and I put her in a life raft just over the horizon from the ship because I didn’t want anyone to spot her and raise the alarm. When she told me Lana had been wounded, I turned and flew back to the ship as fast as I could.
“I focused in on the hold where Lana was. She was talking to some guy and holding some kind of pistol-grip device I later found out was a deadman switch wired to several pounds of plastic explosive. She stood up and said something else to him, and just as I touched the side of the ship – I didn’t hear the shot but I saw the bullet as it – as it – it hit her and she dropped – she dropped the switch – and – “
He stopped talking. Ginny looked at his face and saw the tears flowing down. She saw his clenched fists waving impotently in front of him and realized why he’d said what he’d said.
She didn’t blame him. It wasn’t his fault that some idiot had shot Lana and made her detonate all those explosives. It wasn’t his fault that she’d been on the ship in the first place.
But he blamed himself. He was Superman, and therefore he had to save everyone. It wasn’t reasonable, but that was obviously how he felt.
She glanced around at the others in the room. Jonathan and Martha were holding onto each other for dear life. Martha was crying openly, and her husband had tears dripping from his chin.
But Dennis’s reaction was most important to her at the moment. His mouth hung open and his hands hung nervelessly from his wrists. She didn’t know what he’d expected to hear, but surely this wasn’t it. And she wondered how he’d react now.
Clark wiped his face with his hands and continued. “I looked for her – I looked for anyone – any survivors, any bodies, anything that might be a person, but there wasn’t anything left but pieces of the ship. I never found her – her body or – or any part of it. I never found any bodies. And I was so caught up in the search that I almost let Lois drown in the pressure wave from the explosion.”
He faced Dennis directly. “I’m sorry. I let you down. I let Lana down. I let myself down. I can’t – I will never forget what happened that day. And I will miss Lana for the rest of my life.”
He stood there, waiting for his dead wife’s father to respond to his confession. Finally Ginny leaned over and kissed Dennis on the cheek and said, “Dennis, it’s time to let this go. You know the whole story now. Do you still think Clark let your daughter die?”
Dennis turned to face her, held her gaze for a long moment, then sighed deeply. He stood in front of Clark and said, “No. I don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t understand what you were going through. And I never knew how close it was. Or how bad it was for you that day.” He embraced the younger man. “I wish things were different. I wish Lana were still here. But I was wrong. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong, Clark. And I’m so sorry that I’ve been blaming you for something you didn’t do.”
Clark slowly bowed his head and laid it on Dennis’s shoulder. His arms moved around his father-in-law and enclosed him in a backbreaking hug. Clark shared tears with Dennis, tears which cleansed their pain and washed away the immediate agony of Lana’s death from her father’s heart.
Then Ginny also broke down and began weeping.
In a few seconds, she felt a woman’s hand take hers. She looked up, expecting to see Martha kneeling beside her, but the young woman who’d silently padded into the kitchen was looking into her eyes.
Ginny wiped away the moisture and said, “Who are you?”
“Lois Lane.”
Dennis broke away from Clark. “You? You’re Lois Lane?”
“Yes.”
“Then you were there when – you were with Lana on the ship.”
“Yes.”
Softly, Dennis asked, “What can you tell me about my daughter?”
Lois looked up at him. “She was the bravest, strongest, most trustworthy person I’ve ever known, including Clark. She helped me get onto the ship when I was hurt and the kidnappers threatened to shoot me. She told me Clark was coming to help us. I didn’t believe her, but she didn’t let that stop her. She helped me break out of the cabin, and she shot and wounded a man who was aiming a shotgun at us. When she was hurt, she tried to go on like nothing had happened, and when I finally talked her into letting me treat her wound, she didn’t make a sound when I bandaged it. She encouraged me and lifted my spirits and kept me going. If she hadn’t been there, I’d be dead today.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I owe your daughter my life, Mr. Lang.”
Dennis lowered his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “I see. Tell me, whose idea was it to get a machine gun out of a storage box and use it on the bad guys?”
“Hers. But she – “
Lois suddenly stopped and Dennis’s head popped up. “What? ‘But she’ what, Ms. Lane?”
Lois bit her lip and seemed to shrink in on herself. Ginny gently touched Lois’s hair. “Lois? Please tell us. I think you need to say it, whatever it is.”
Lois looked around at all the faces pointed at her. With a shallow show of bravado, she said, “Hey, how’d I get to be the center of attention here?”
Dennis shifted closer to her. “Please. Tell us the rest.”
Tears began anew in Lois’s eyes. “I wrote – the story that went out said that Lana defended us with the machine gun.”
Clark nodded. “She did. I saw her with it in the hold of the ship.”
“That was after I left to find the radio room. All she did was pull the trigger and make some noise.” Lois took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I was the one – I don’t know how many I – I shot – but – Lana – Lana didn’t kill anyone.” She looked around again slowly. “I did.”
Martha gasped. “Oh, Lois, dear – “
“I didn’t mean to, especially not at first. I just wanted them to keep their heads down and not shoot at us. But I when I found out how easy it was to hit what I was aiming at, I let go a couple of long bursts at the doors at each end of the hold. When I climbed up the ladder, Lana covered me by shooting at the other end of the hold, but I found – I found bodies on the deck.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “I’d killed them.”
Dennis leaned back and looked up at Clark. “Did you know about this?”
Clark’s eyes were large and round as he shook his head slowly. “No. This is the first time I’ve heard this part of the story. But she’s telling the truth.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me, I can tell.”
For a moment, Dennis looked as if he would ask Clark another question, but then closed his mouth and nodded. “Lois? Thank you for telling me this. It bothered me to think that Lana had killed anyone, even someone who was trying to hurt her. But why did you write the story that way? Why didn’t you write the truth?”
Lois sniffed. “Two reasons. I was trying to portray Lana as the heroine in the story. Which she was, of course, but I wanted people to think she was just a notch below Wonder Woman. The second reason – I’m not real proud of.” She paused and licked her lips. “I was afraid of how people would deal with me if they knew I’d killed someone, probably several someones. I didn’t want to be known as Machine Gun Lane, Psycho Killer.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then looked at Dennis again. “Being Mad Dog Lane is bad enough.”
The tension eased and everyone relaxed a little.
Ginny put her hand on Lois’s. “How do you feel now?”
Lois wiped her eyes again. “Now? You mean this very moment? Or have I dealt with my survivor’s guilt and the nightmares and the feeling disconnected from humanity and – “
Ginny squeezed her hand. “Lois. Tell me how you feel this very moment.”
Lois’s eyes met Ginny’s. “I’m – dealing with it. I’m not finished dealing with it yet, but I think it’s getting better.” She smiled slightly. “I was able to talk to my therapist about her daughter’s wedding last week.”
Ginny smiled. “That’s good. That’s very good.”
Lois squeezed back. “Thank you. And now I’m going to be the bad cop again and ask you a question.”
“You’re going to be a bad cop? From just asking a question?”
“It’s an important question.”
Ginny nodded. She also noticed that her hand was trapped in Lois’s hand. The pressure wasn’t painful, but she doubted that she could have retrieved her hand at that moment unless Lois released her. “Go ahead.”
Lois took a deep breath. “Now you know about Clark and Superman. Who are you going to tell about this?”
“Hadn’t thought about it. Just learned it, remember?”
The pressure increased ever so slightly. It still wasn’t painful, but it was definitely there. “You have to understand that you can never tell anyone. Never. If the news got out about Superman’s other identity, Jonathan and Martha would be in danger, along with anyone else who was close to the family. And if anyone ever suspected that you knew Superman’s other identity, you’d be in danger.” Lois leaned closer and seemed to drive her eyes into Ginny’s. “Deadly danger.”
Ginny licked her lips. “Deadly danger from you?”
Ginny was barely aware of the other people in the room reacting to her question as Lois slowly shook her head. “No, not from me, and not from Clark. Neither of us is threatening you in any way. But there are bad guys lots worse than me who’d do anything – and I mean anything at all – to have something to threaten Superman with. You must not – you absolutely cannot – give them the means to make that threat real. Do you understand how important that is?”
Ginny looked around the room. She didn’t think anyone else would threaten her or try to warn her, but everyone was waiting for her to answer. It was worse than waiting for the final result in her oral doctoral exams.
She looked to Lois again. “I think I understand. I will never tell anyone about this secret. And I won’t even talk to Dennis about it unless we’re alone, like in a hot-air balloon at five thousand feet alone.”
Dennis smiled and took her hands away from Lois, apparently not realizing the pressure Lois had been exerting. “Oh, I think we could come up with some more interesting conversational topics if we just put our minds to it.”
He tugged her to her feet and turned to Jonathan. “Jon, I’m sorry I barged in like I did, but I’m glad I got to talk to Clark.” He offered the other man his hand. “I understand why Lana loved him so much. He’s a good man.”
Jonathan accepted the handshake. “Thank you, Dennis. If we had ended up with a daughter, I would have been proud of her if she’d been half the woman Lana was.”
Dennis’s eyes slipped shut for a moment and Ginny knew he was trying not to cry again. Then he looked back at Jonathan and said, “Thank you. I think we’ll be going now.”
Ginny took Martha’s hands, only to be swept up in a hug from the diminutive dynamo. “Ginny, you and Dennis can bust in on us any time. Please come and see us again.”
Ginny returned the hug. “Is it all right if we call ahead first?”
They shared a laugh. Ginny pulled back and smiled at the man she now knew was also Superman. “Thank you, Clark. I know it’s hard, but life happens whether or not you’re ready for it. Keep your chin up.”
“Thank you, Doctor McCoy.”
She waved an index finger at him. “You’re not my student, so you’d better call me Ginny.”
He nodded. “Okay, Ginny.”
She turned to Dennis. “I think we should leave now. We’ve got a bunch of things to talk about.”
He entwined his fingers with hers. “Yes, we do.”
*****
Lois watched through the wall as Dennis and Ginny drove away. She was glad that Dennis’s mind seemed to be more at ease about Lana. She hoped he was as convinced as he seemed to be that Clark would have done anything, would have turned time backwards had he been able, to save Lana.
And she’d been a bit surprised that Dennis didn’t like the idea of Lana shooting people. Lana actually had shot one man, but hadn’t killed him, and in fact had refrained from finishing the man off when he was at her mercy.
Thinking back on it now, Lois thought she would have blown the guy’s head off if she’d been holding the pistol. She definitely thought Lana should have. It might have saved her life.
She felt a feather touch on her shoulder. Martha’s voice whispered, “Dear, you should get some sleep. This has been a tiring evening for all of us.”
“Thanks, Martha, but I have to eat something. I’m starving again.”
“Again? Do you have a tapeworm or something?”
Lois sighed. “Bob told me that it’s going to take about three weeks for my body to learn to process sunlight like Clark’s body does. Until then, I’ll have to eat like a team of Clydesdales to keep up with my body’s energy demands.”
“Oh.” Martha nodded. “Is protein better for you than carbohydrates, or what?”
Lois smiled one-sidedly. “At this point, I don’t think it matters much. I might even be convinced to try sushi in the next couple of days.”
Martha smiled back. “Well, if you really want to try eating raw fish, I think I could convince Clark to noodle some catfish out of the river.”
Lois chuckled wearily. “I’m not that desperate yet, thanks. And I apologize for putting this burden on you.” She sighed. “I’d cook it myself if I thought I wouldn’t burn it to a crisp.”
“I’ll make something, Mom,” offered Clark.
Lois nodded. “I think we should make a phone call to our esteemed editor-in-chief while your mother slaves away over a hot stove.”
Martha turned to Jonathan. “Honey, do you still have those microwave meals in the big freezer?”
“I think there are six or seven still out there.”
“You told me you didn’t want them, didn’t you?”
He smiled a little. “I did, and yes, Lois can have them.” He stepped forward. “They aren’t all that tasty, Lois, but they’re big and filling and they’re easy to cook.”
She smiled. “Sounds like they’re made for me. Tell me where they are and I’ll get them.” She pointed to Clark. “You. Dial the phone.”
*****
Perry picked up his coat and shook his head. Two of his reporters were missing and presumed dead, another was in the hospital for observation after a mysterious accident, and everyone else on his short-handed staff was willing to run themselves into the ground to chase and catch whoever had set off that bomb. He felt guilty in not telling them that their comrades weren’t the slightest bit dead, but he consoled himself that they’d be doing exactly what they were doing now even if Clark and Lois were here helping them.
Lois. He sighed and ducked his head. By all rights she should have been dead more than once. She should have had her picture hanging on his wall along with the rest of the fallen ones. Yet she kept getting out of sure-death situations by the skin of her teeth, usually with the help of Superman but sometimes using her own dumb luck. One day, she’d run out of dumb luck and Superman would be busy elsewhere and she’d end up dead.
Just like Lana Lang-Kent had.
He shook off the bad feeling and reached for his office door, but the ringing phone stopped him in his tracks.
It might be Alice nagging for him to hurry. It might be some ticked-off advertiser. It might be more info on the Luthor Technologies lab bombing. It might be a telemarketer who was dialing random phone numbers and trying to sell shares in platinum mines in Greenland.
Or it might be Lois. Or Clark.
The coat slid off his arm and pooled in one of his guest chairs. “Hello?”
“Perry? This is Clark.”
A sigh of relief escaped. “I’m glad you called. These folks here are runnin’ themselves absolutely ragged chasing this story.”
“Are you any closer to finding out what happened?”
“The police know where the explosives were placed. They know that they were military-grade demolition charges, that SEMTEX stuff they use to blow up bridges and hardened gun emplacements. They know that they were rigged to bring down the whole building – which they did – and they know that the blasts were set off using a very sophisticated radio remote control.”
Clark waited for Perry to continue, and when he didn’t, he said, “But you don’t have any solid leads on who it was.”
“Nope. Closest we got is some street buzz that Lois’s mysterious ‘boss’ was somehow involved, and that some wisps of the trail lead back to LuthorCorp’s central office, but that ain’t proof. And I don’t think we’re going to learn anything else in the next couple of days. Son, I think it’s time for you two to come in out of the cold.”
He didn’t respond immediately, and Perry assumed he was asking Lois what she thought about it. Then Clark confirmed his hunch. “Lois agrees. And I think she’s right. If anyone was going to make a mistake and blow his cover, you would’ve picked up on it already.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. But whoever this character is, he’s careful and cagey and looks clean as a new whistle. You two can do a lot more here than you can there.”
There was another pause. “Okay, Perry. We’ll ride Superman Express back tomorrow, probably mid-morning. But we each have a personal stop to make first.”
Perry grinned to himself. “I understand. And make sure you bring your receipts back here. I wouldn’t want to short-change your parents on their contribution to the investigation.”
“I will. See you tomorrow.”
“Good. Hey, wait! Do you want me to announce your miraculous rescue, or would you prefer to give everyone here heart failure at the same time?”
Clark chortled into the phone. “Maybe you’d better let them know first. I can handle women falling at my feet, but the thought of a bunch of men doing the same thing gives me the creeps.”
Perry laughed. “Okay, Clark. See you two in here tomorrow morning. You guys aim for about eleven o’clock, will ya? Everybody should be done with their morning responsibilities by then.”
There was a brief pause. “Lois says eleven is good for her, too. Bye for now.”
The phone found the cradle, and the tired editor leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. They hadn’t really found anything incriminating on anyone. The only possible lead he could come up with was the name Alex Winfield. Whoever he was, he kept showing up in documentation concerning Luthor’s personal business deals.
But he also showed up in transactions involving Bob Fences and his software company. Granted, Winfield was a computer programmer, but why was he involved with so many different companies? Fences and Luthor had little in common, since Luthor built and used the hardware while Fences wrote the software that ran on Luthor’s machines.
Perry snapped his fingers. Maybe that was the connection. Maybe the enigmatic ‘boss’ was a small group instead of an individual. Maybe it was Luthor and Fences and two or three of the others Lois had on her list.
They’d have to look into that. He’d have Clark start on that side and Lois on the crime scene at the lab. Maybe they’d keep from killing each other that way.
And maybe he needed a good night’s sleep. He stood wearily and left.
But he tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning, trying to think of something else to do, some other avenue of investigation to pursue. He was glad that Alice’s work with the DA’s office sometimes kept her awake, too, so he knew she would understand when he got up to move to the guest room.
It didn’t help. He woke up abruptly at five-fifteen the next morning following a frightening dream he couldn’t remember, with no clearer idea of how to proceed than he had had the night before.
