Previously:
The sound of an ambulance which arrived and parked in front of the building broke the course of Lois' thoughts. She expected that the men who went out of the ambulance would take Lex's body to the morgue. They couldn't leave him like that, on the pavement. But the paramedics went out of the vehicle, very quickly carrying a stretcher inside the tower. Somebody else had been hurt. Lex had probably hurt one of the policemen pursuing him when he tried to run away.
Lois began to tell her friends her theory, that Superman and Clark were probably together and safe. That they had to be fine.
But the paramedics already returned from the building, accompanied by Henderson and numerous policemen. Lying unconsciously on the stretcher was Superman. The world slowed down again around Lois while the ambulance drove off, taking away the unconscious body of the superhero. Superman was not well. He was not protecting Clark. He was unconscious. And Clark was still reported missing since yesterday…
It was too much for Lois. She had had too many shocks that morning. She fainted.
********************
And now:
Part 2: Interrogations
When she woke up, she was sitting in the back of a police car parked in front of the LexTower. The door of the car next to her was open. And Perry, Jimmy and Jack were still there, near her. Henderson was with them. She could see that Lex's body had been removed, and a good part of the crowd had scattered.
Henderson gave her a cup with some water and she drank. Her mind cleared up, and she felt desperately tired. Clark had disappeared just when she had realized that she loved him. She had always lost all those that she had loved. Why had she thought that it would be different this time?
"You better, Lane?" the inspector Henderson asked with concern.
"Yes, thank you."
"Good. It's okay if I ask you some questions?" He started again on a more professional tone.
She would have liked to say no. She did not feel well enough to answer an interrogation right then, but she also knew that she had to do it. Wasting time would only aggravate the situation. They couldn't let the leads get cold if they wanted to find Clark, so she agreed with a nod.
"So, tell me. What do you know about the illegal activities of your fiancé?"
Lois shot him of the eyes. Was he accusing her of being Lex's accomplice?
"Absolutely nothing, Inspector," she answered with sourness. She had difficulty at hiding her anger at this very offensive question.
"Don't get all defensive, Lane. I accuse you of nothing. I know that if you had suspected something, you would have tried to expose him in an article, and then you would have come to talk to me about it. But I have to ask. It's my job," the policeman tried to calm her. "But I believe all the same that it is possible that you saw or heard things without knowing what it was all about, and that that could help us…"
Lois accepted his excuses and searched her memory for whatever it was that might indicate some of Lex' criminal activities, but to which she had paid no attention at the moment.
"Err… No, I never saw or heard anything strange. He never discussed work with me or in front of me. It was rare, at least, and nothing suspect, that is for sure. Oh... yes. There has indeed been something. Maybe," she added thoughtfully after a memory returned to her. "Last week, while we were preparing the plans for our future apartment, his assistant came to interrupt us to review his timetable with him. She spoke about tests for...err... about the series K, I believe. Or something like that. Then Lex went out to take a phone call, and when I asked this woman what the series K was, she said to me that it was confidential, and that Lex did not tell me everything. I have no idea what this series K could be. It may be a part of his legal business. Or maybe not. I don’t know."
"All right. Nothing else?"
"No, as I told you. He never talked business in front of me. And when I tried to ask him, he always answered me that he didn't want to annoy me with such boring things, and he changed subject. Dear God! I can't believe I was that stupid!"
"He fooled a lot of people. You shouldn't feel guilty. But try to remember, please. Nothing else? You sure?" Henderson insisted.
"He has a bunker under Metropolis. He showed it to me when Nightfall threatened to collide with Earth. It was very secure, and well enough maintained. Maybe he was just being careful in case he would need it, or maybe he used it regularly, I don't know, to hide certain things that he didn't want to see revealed in broad daylight," Lois added. But when the inspector reopened the mouth to ask another question, Lois interrupted him. "But Lex is dead now. Investigating him can wait! Clark is missing. You have to find him, it’s more urgent!"
"Clark?" Henderson asked, surprised.
"That's right, Inspector Henderson," Perry interrupted. "He didn't come back yesterday evening. He err… He accommodates us, all three. We have been waiting for him all night long, but he never returned."
"I believed that it was Kent who had found the evidence that you brought me this morning, the proof that Luthor was the Boss?" Henderson asked.
"Yes, it's true. He is the one who started our investigation, and he’s the one who found the evidence we brought you this morning. Apparently, he discovered all this yesterday. We waited for him, but when he did not return, we tried to find out where he could be, and we looked in his desk, where we found all his notes, which we handed to you. Thus, he must have returned and left again. Then we listened to the answering machine. He had a message from Luthor who wanted Clark to contact Superman for him. And this is all I know," the former editor in chief explained.
"Hm," Henderson grunted. He frowned, being lost in his reflections. "So, Luthor used Clark to lure Superman into his trap, and then Clark disappeared," the policeman recapitulated after a moment of silence.
"What trap, Henderson? What did Lex do to Superman?" Lois asked. In the tumult of all her feelings, she had totally forgotten that she had seen an ambulance taking away an unconscious Superman. She was terribly worried. What had Lex done to him?
"We don't know exactly. When Luthor tried to run away, we split up into several groups to search the whole building and cut off any possible route of escape. He went directly to the cellar, and the group of policemen which had followed him there had found Superman, unconscious, a prisoner in a cage. Apparently, Luthor had come down in order to kill him with an axe, but we think that he hadn’t had the time to do it because we were pursuing him. We have no idea what he had done to Superman before that, to put him into this state," Henderson explained.
"Wow!" Jimmy exclaimed. "I, I thought he was invulnerable. How did Luthor manage to discover a way to hurt him?"
"There are some rumors in the street," Jack added. "I heard a lot of them, before. One says that there is a pebble which can kill Superman. An allergy, or something like that. A stone from his planet. Maybe it's not only rumors."
"I have already heard that. Some months ago, a former soldier who was persuaded that Superman was a threat thought he could kill him with a piece of a meteorite. Clark called that Kryptonite. But the guy was completely crazy, and we have never found the slightest proof that that rock existed somewhere else that in his imagination," Lois added.
"You've never seen it?"
"No. Apparently, a piece had been sent to a laboratory for analysis, but the piece has disappeared. The guy from the lab swore that he had seen it, a green rock, fluorescent, but he wasn't able to prove it to us," she answered.
"We found Superman in a green cage, a fluorescent one," Henderson announced.
They all looked at each other silently, understanding what it meant. The most powerful man of the world could really be killed by a simple rock.
"Well, now at least, we know what Luthor has done to Superman. But that doesn't help us to find Clark," declared the detective before turning to Lois to ask her, "How does Clark usually contact Superman? Where does he go?"
"I have absolutely no idea. Clark and Superman are even more careful than Lex to keep their secrets. They never said anything. In fact, I've never even been sure that Clark knew how to contact him. It was just an impression that I had, sometimes, as if they talked to each other a lot, and were much closer than anybody imagined them to be. It was just a little too easy for Clark to get Superman to give us exclusives, you know. And sometimes, when I spoke with Superman, he seemed to know things I told Clark. Then I wondered, but I wasn't sure. A few weeks ago, late in the afternoon, I asked Clark to tell Superman that I would like to talk to him if he saw him, and Superman came to my apartment in the evening," Lois remembered with shame. How could she have done such a thing to Clark? Reject him, and then ask him to contact another man so that she could declare her undying love for him? She had really treated him awfully, but it wasn't the moment to feel sorry for what she'd done. "After that, I was sure that Clark really had a way to contact him, but I don't know how," she concluded.
"Yes, Clark knows how to keep his secrets, that's for sure," Jimmy added. "Every day, he disappeared, sometimes some minutes, sometimes some hours, and no one ever knew where he was."
"Thus, Clark is in the habit of disappearing without telling anyone?" Henderson asked.
"Yes, but not like that, Inspector," Jack explained. "Usually, he never disappears for such a long time. And he wouldn't have left like that, right after having managed to find everything he needed to nail Luthor. Clark hated him! He wanted to nail him for a long time. He was the one who launched our investigation. He absolutely wanted to see him in jail and to prevent the marriage! He wouldn't have left without explanation after he achieved his goal! To get Luthor arrested before the wedding was everything that has mattered for him in weeks!"
Lois was profoundly touched by Jack's testimony. Even when they weren't on good terms, Clark had continued to think of her. Everything he did to stop Lex was done only for her. Maybe she hadn't thrown away her last chance to be with him after all, if they ever found him.
"My God," she prayed silently, "make that we find him!"
********************
Lois was lying on her bed, wearing a bathrobe. Having answered all of Henderson's questions about Luthor, Superman and Clark Kent, Perry had taken her to her apartment. Fortunately, she had not returned the keys to her apartment yet, as Lex wanted her to do as the date of their wedding approached, or she wouldn't have anywhere to go any more.
Since Perry had retired, he had moved to Florida and, thus, didn't possess a house in Metropolis. He lived at Clark's for the moment. She wouldn't have been able to ask Jimmy, either, since he had lost his apartment when the Daily Planet had exploded, leaving him without a salary to pay the rent. He, too, had found refuge at Clark's. And Jack had been accommodated by a charity foyer, until he had been accused of having bombed the newspaper's building. Then, he had been sent to a center for young delinquents to await his trial, and when he had escaped from it, Clark had also taken him in.
As for Clark… He had disappeared. How would she have been able to ask him to accommodate her? And she didn't even know if she would have been welcome, anyway, after all these weeks of silence, a silence they only broke to quarrel.
Naturally, deeply inside, she knew that he wouldn't have let her down, but her pessimistic side made her doubt it. In their team, Clark had always been the optimist; it was him who always saw the good in everyone. That he hadn't been able to see any good at all in Lex should have told her something.
So, after all, she had been lucky to have kept her apartment, at least. Otherwise, the situation would have been even more complicated.
When Perry, Jimmy and Jack took her back home, she insisted on remaining alone. They had wanted to stay with her. They thought that she shouldn't remain alone after all the shocks she had undergone during the morning, but she couldn't bear their company. She needed to be on her own to digest all that had happened.
Within twenty-four hours, she had seen Clark again and had quarreled with him, and then she had realized that she loved him, but she had persisted in marrying Lex, whom she believed to be a friend and a good man. She had finally said no in front of the altar, to learn almost right then that her fiancé was one of the worst criminals of the planet, and she had seen him committing suicide. He had struck the ground hardly some feet away of her by jumping from the biggest tower of Metropolis. That happened less than one minute after she had learnt that Clark, the man that she really loved was missing. And before having the time to understand everything that had just happened, Superman had been taken away in an ambulance. He was in a coma…
She needed to be alone to recover. She wouldn't be able to do it with her friends there looking at her with worry. It would have been even more stressful. They had eventually agreed to go away, and she had quickly got rid of the wedding gown she was still wearing, and had taken a very long and warm shower to relax. That hadn't worked. And since then, she had been lying on her bed without moving, still wearing her bathrobe, and kept rehearsing the events of the day in her mind.
The interrogation of Henderson had been very disturbing, too. He had asked her to tell him about all the details which she could remember, about every evening she had spent with Lex during the time they were dating. He was obviously hoping for more evidence of Luthor's countless crimes.
Then he had questioned her about Superman. About everything she knew about him. Everything he had never said to her, either in an interview or in private. And about everything she had ever seen him doing… She and Clark were the two persons in the world who knew the superhero best. So, because Clark had disappeared, the police considered her as the person closest to him, and counted on her to inform them.
Regrettably, the more Henderson questioned her about Superman, the more she realized that she knew practically nothing about him. She didn't have the slightest idea of what he could do in his his spare time, when he was not saving somebody, nor of the place where he went… Nothing. She knew nothing about Superman that could be used by the police. The only personal thing which she knew about the superhero was that he possessed a globe which could produce the hologram of an old man dressed in white, bearing the famous S on his chest.
This globe had been in Clark's custody until Jack had broken into his apartment, then it had been sold on the black market. Superman had found it some days later, but categorically refused to make any comment on it. All he ever said was that it was a personal object which had been stolen from him, and that he was delighted to have it back.
Henderson had found this information very interesting. If they could find this globe, they could probably learn much more about Superman. Maybe they could even find somebody who knew something about how a Kryptonian body worked, which effects kryptonite had on Superman and how to cure him. The man in white might know all this. And they desperately needed that sort of information. Because Superman was in a coma, and the doctors had no idea how to treat him.
In most of the questions which Henderson had asked her on Superman, Lois had answered that she did not know. And all her instincts shouted to her that if Clark had been asked the same question, he would have known the answer. She had been suspecting for a long time that Clark knew more about the superhero than even she, but before this interrogation, she had never really realized the full extent of what she didn't know about him, and Clark probably knew all of it. Because she could feel, deep within her heart, that he knew the answers.
Henderson had then questioned her about Clark. About everything she knew of his life, in a general way, and about everything he had done these last few weeks since the explosion of the Daily Planet. Unfortunately, she had been unable to tell him much. Perry, Jimmy and Jack had filled in the blanks on their and Clark's investigation of Luthor.
What disturbed Lois more than anything else was all the questions about Clark's life in general which she had been unable to answer. If someone had asked her before if she knew her partner well, she would have said 'yes' without hesitation. She would not even have thought about it. She knew him very well.
But having undergone a deep interrogation about him, she knew that it was wrong. She knew little about him. There were numerous mysteries in his life which she had never even suspected. He kept far too many secrets, and he kept them well. She had not even suspected their presence. In fact, there was a whole piece of his life which was totally unknown of her.
Jimmy and Jack had raised a point. Clark used to disappear all the time, at the least convenient moments, for very variable durations, and had never really had any satisfactory excuse. She had no idea with whom he met regularly except people from the Planet, or if he had took part in extra-professional activities. What did he do when he was not with her? She had no idea.
He had traveled a lot, and nevertheless she knew almost nothing about the places he had lived, about the people he had met. Did he stay in touch with them? About how many languages did he speak? Some, she knew. But how much and which? That, she didn't know.
During their investigations, he had often shown that he knew things of which she was totally ignorant, but which turned out to be true in the end. Sometimes he said that it was by instinct or luck, other times that he had a snitch who had said this or that to him, but it occurred very often, and she didn't know anything about these snitches, or how he got his information.
It had been the same with Lex. For months, Clark had been telling her to be careful with Lex, that he was not what he seemed to be, but Clark always refused to be more precise. And nevertheless, he knew things he wasn't supposed to. Lois didn't have the slightest doubt about that any more.
And every time he had an "intuition" which helped them arrest the criminals whom they had investigated, she had accepted his explanations without even a hint of disbelief: intuition, luck, an unknown snitch… There were a lot of things Clark must have kept hidden from her, and she never realized it.
Just like Lex. He had spent months lying to her, and she had swallowed everything. She thought she was a hard-to-fool investigative reporter, but she had to admit that she was totally gullible. That was hard!
But she knew that she should not compare Clark to Lex. Lex lied because he was a criminal. And she knew that, whatever it was that Clark was hiding, he had to have a good reason to do it. The difference between him and Lex, was that Lex also lied about his real personality, his very character, and she refused to believe that of Clark. He was a good man, she felt it.
********************
The noise of somebody knocking on her door woke her up. She had fallen asleep in her bathrobe the previous day. She had not even eaten a thing. Her stomach had not allowed her to. But as soon as she opened her eyes, she realized that she was starving.
Slowly, she got up and went to the door. She looked through the peephole, then opened the door. It was Henderson.
"Do you have more questions for me, Inspector?"
"Hello to you too, Lane. Slept well?"
"No."
She moved to allow him to enter. He took seat on the sofa, and Lois sat down across from him.
"I came because I thought that you would like to know what our investigation has led to," Henderson said. Lois looked at him at once with great interest and a hardly disguised impatience. Had they finally found Clark? Was he well?
"Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon interrogating Luthor's personal assistant, Cox. She told us everything about his criminal activities, and believe me, you don't want to know the details. His activities reached far beyond Metropolis. He committed crimes in about all the countries of the World, and the dimension of his criminal activities is much larger than we expected, even after the evidence we got from your friends. He really was into everything."
"Awesome, Henderson," Lois cut him with impatience, "but what did she say about Clark? What did Luthor do to him? Where is he? What happened to him?"
"I'm sorry. She doesn't have the slightest idea," the policeman answered. "Luthor told her the day before yesterday, in the evening, that he intended to have him eliminated, but he also said that he would work out the details *after* the ceremony, that he wanted to see Superman die before getting rid of Kent. She had no idea if he had taken measures in his own hands or not. As she said, it would be rather unusual. He entrusts his missions to her, to Nigel St. John or to Asabi, or sometimes but rarely to other employees. But apparently, once he had entrusted an affair to one of them, he didn't put one of the others on it. To prevent them from knowing too much about the extent of his little schemes, and in order to always have a plan B when something failed. So she was very surprised that he should have asked someone else to let Kent disappear since he already had talked to her about it."
"Yes, but he did it!" Lois retorted. "So, have you interrogated St. John and Asabi? What did they say?"
"Unfortunately, Lois, none of them has been arrested. They succeeded in disappearing in the confusion. We are looking for them, but at the moment, we have no lead. I am sorry."
Lois was living a nightmare. Clark had disappeared before she could tell him that she loved him, before she could ask him for forgiveness for all that she had done and said to hurt him. She had been so stupid. When had her life become so miserable?
"So, what you're saying, Henderson, is that the only persons who know where Clark is and what happened to him are Lex, who died, St. John or Asabi, who are both untraceable, and maybe, with any luck, Superman, who is in a coma?" She recapitulated.
"Afraid so."
Lois felt as if she was about to break down. She couldn't bear it any more. At least, she wasn't hungry any more. It wouldn't be this morning either that she'd be able to swallow anything.
In Henderson's expression, she could see that he believed less and less in the possibility of discovering what had happened to Clark, unless luck began to turn their way. Things weren't going well.
The Life could be ironic sometimes. All the persons that she loved had left her. Her father as well as all her former boyfriends. And then, when she discovered that she loved a man of whom she knew without a doubt that he would never abandon her, he vanishes without leaving a trace. And hearing from Jack that Clark's main motivation to investigate Luthor was to prevent her impening marriage, proved to her that, even if their relationship was at its worst, he'd never let her down. Not that she needed that proof any more.
In face of the irony of the situation, Lois burst out laughing. It was the hysteric and joyless laughter of somebody who was about to lose it completely, and Henderson didn't really know what to say to help her overcome the shocks which had befallen her during the last twenty-four hours.
********************
