Home: Murder By Earthlight -- 18/19
by Nan Smith
Previously:
The tunnel slanted upward. Lori kept pace with the crowd, wondering how a fire could have possibly started in a place like the Luna Hilton. True, the walls were of stone, but many of the other parts weren't. Somehow, it seemed, no buildings were ever built by man that didn't have something in them that was flammable, although what that might be this time she didn't know.
In any case, how likely was this to be a coincidence? Maybe, although she doubted it. No less than Clark did she think that this situation was unlikely to be accidental, although why someone would set the hotel on fire was anybody's guess. Destruction of evidence, or an attempt to kill her, perhaps. She had to take that possibility into account, and she was sure that Clark would as well. The best thing she could do, she knew, was to stay in the presence of a number of people. It wouldn't serve the murderer's purpose for forty people to see him try to kill her, after all. Nevertheless, she was aware of her heart beating uncomfortably hard in her chest at the thought that there might be someone nearby who would very much like to see her dead.
**********
And now, Part 18:
"Stay together," Pete said. He swept the two women ahead of him, following the crowd of humanity as they made their way up the tunnel toward the surface. "I hope nobody panics."
Lori hoped so, too. The haze of smoke in the escape tunnel was slowly growing thicker, and people had noticed. The crowd behind her began to push at those in front of her and Lori got a shove from someone that nearly knocked her down.
"Hey!" she exclaimed. "I can't go any faster! There are people in front of me too!"
The man who had pushed her evidently didn't hear her, for he crowded forward, trying to shove her aside. Pete kept a hand on her arm, preventing the pusher from knocking her down and glared at the other man. "Snap out of it, Ray! You're going to get us all killed!"
His deeper voice seemed to shock Ray, whoever he was, for he recoiled at the snarl in Pete's voice. "We're going to suffocate!"
"No we won't, but we'll all be trampled if you keep that up! Calm down; we'll be fine!"
Ray gulped and seemed to get a grip on himself. The crowd moved forward, and Lori hoped sincerely that no one else would lose his head in this mob.
A whiff of thicker smoke, heavy with the smell of burning plastic, puffed from one of the ventilation shafts placed strategically along the walls of the tunnel. Lori kept her inevitable reflections to herself and moved forward, up the gently sloping tunnel. The lobby was only one floor down from the surface of the Moon. They didn't have that far to go.
Behind her, Ray muttered something about "Trapped like rats" and she looked over her shoulder to note with dismay that the man's eyes were wide and blank with panic. He was sweating heavily, and Lori judged that he was holding onto sanity by a thread. Perhaps the guy was claustrophobic, she guessed. If so, she could sympathize, but if he panicked in this crowd the results could be deadly.
"Let me out of here!" a woman's voice cried hysterically from somewhere behind them. "I can't breathe! Let me *out*!"
The words seemed to trigger a wave of fear in the crowd. Ray pushed forward again, nearly knocking Lori from her feet. Only Pete's grip on her arm saved her.
"Calm down!" Lori snapped. "You're going to start a panic!"
"We're gonna die!" Ray gasped as more smoke puffed into the tunnel. "We're all gonna die!"
Pete released Lori's arm and spun in his tracks. Quite clinically, he drew back a hand and struck the man across the face with the flat of his hand. "Shut up! Get a grip on yourself! Keep moving!"
Ray gave a gasp, clutching the offended spot with one hand, but he fell silent.
"The exit's up ahead," Pete said in a more normal tone. "It's not far. We'll make it." He grasped Lori's wrist once more and herded both her and Joanna ahead of him toward the opening.
Lori could hear coughing and a few muted sobs in the mob surrounding her but no one else seemed inclined to panic. The woman who had screamed was silent, and Lori hoped that someone had managed to calm her down. The exit grew closer and the crowd surged toward it.
In the entrance, someone was shouting at the crowd to walk, not to run. An emergency worker reached out and grabbed her wrist as Pete relinquished it. Lori was pulled through the opening and hands shoved her away from the entrance. Emergency workers were swarming the area, and she found that she was being chivvied toward a man in a paramedic's coverall. Several other medics, medical personnel and a single police officer swarmed around the impromptu first aid station.
"Over here, miss," someone was saying. "Are you hurt?"
"No," Lori stammered, looking around frantically for Pete and Joanna. Somehow, in the milling mob of evacuees, they had vanished.
The man checked her vitals and listened to her breathing. "You sound all right. No smoke inhalation that I can tell."
"There was only a little smoke in the escape tunnel," Lori said. "I'm all right, really."
"You seem to be. If you have any breathing problems later, be sure to see your doctor."
"I will," Lori assured him. "Thanks."
She left the aid station, looking around and wondering where Pete and Joanna had vanished to. Most likely they were at one of the other first aid stations that had quickly sprung up in the area. The mob of guests from the Luna Hilton had grown in the few minutes that she had spent with the paramedic, and it didn't seem likely that she was going to find them again, except perhaps by accident.
Well, as long as she stayed around the crowd of people she should still be all right. Nobody was going to try to harm her in full view of dozens of people.
"Miss, you need to move back," a voice said, and she turned to see a man in the coverall of a firefighter standing behind her. "We're evacuating people and you're in the way. Please move over to the area for evacuees for the moment until we give the 'all clear'."
Lori hesitated. "I'm with the press," she said.
"We'll be holding a briefing for the press after this situation is under control," the man said firmly. "I have to ask you to move, now."
Lori sighed and obeyed. There was a large group of people congregating in the park across the street, and a couple of men in the uniforms of the Luna City Police were waving people toward it. She headed in the direction the firefighter had indicated.
The crowd of evacuees from the hotel was milling around aimlessly. Many of them were watching the fire and the babble of voices was loud as people cried, swore, and discussed the emergency. One woman, some distance away, was having hysterics, and a man with her was trying to calm her down. Rubberneckers were also collecting, crowding the narrow thoroughfare between the hotel entrance and the park, and the police were having difficulty in persuading the crowd to move along. Lori looked around the mob of people, but there was no sign of Pete or Joanna. Of course that wasn't surprising, considering the size of the group. They were probably here somewhere.
Someone in the crowd bumped against her back, and she glanced backward, only to feel something sharp and pointed digging into her ribs.
"Not a sound," a male voice said. "One peep and you won't live long enough for anyone to save you."
Lori gasped. The knife dug deeper. "Walk straight ahead," the voice said softly. "Don't make a sound, and don't try to get away." A hand grasped her by the upper arm, but the point against her ribs underlined the threat in the voice. "Don't look around."
She didn't need to. The man's voice was familiar. Jason Decker, the investigator for Genie Electronics, had been in league with Tal all along, as she had suspected. And if she didn't figure out how to get away from him in the next few minutes, it wouldn't matter at all.
**********
Clark and Zeb worked quickly as a team, moving around the Luna Hilton, removing people who had become confused or were too panicked to follow the directions of the loudspeaker. Clark discovered a woman and a child in their hotel room, overcome by the heavy smoke of the burning insulation, and he moved them quickly up the emergency stairwell into the clear air of the domed city. The fire services were already on the scene and the hotel's sprinklers were in action. The fire, from what he could tell, was being rapidly brought under control, but the problem lay in the heavy fumes that still filled the hotel.
At last, when he was certain that no one remained trapped inside, he turned his attention to the cause of the fire, itself. As little as Lori, did he believe this had been an accident. He scanned the walls, searching for the source, but the Luna Hilton was large, and it was taking too much time for his comfort. He punched the button on his wrist talker. "Call Lori," he directed.
The faint beeping of a call in progress answered him, but Lori's reassuring voice did not reply. A chill ran up his neck.
*Zeb!* he called.
*What do you need?* his great grandson inquired at once.
*I need to go check on Lori. She's not answering her talker.*
*Go,* Zeb replied at once. "*I'll hang around for a bit and make sure the fire's out.*
"*Try to find where it started,* Clark directed, already on his way out.
*Will do." Zeb's voice said, but Clark barely noticed. He burst through the upper door of the stairs that ran up to the main exit and swooped above the crowd of evacuees that had gathered across the street from the hotel. Again he spoke to his phone.
"Call Lori."
The beeping of her phone was coming from somewhere nearby. Quickly, he zeroed in on the location with his enhanced hearing, and located the wrist talker. It lay on the grassy lawn of the park, near a path that ran back into a grove of trees.
*Zeb!* His mental voice must have been louder and more alarmed than he intended, for Zeb was instantly present, floating in the air a few feet above him.
"What's the matter?" he demanded, aloud.
"Lori's wrist talker. She's in trouble!"
"Oh man." Zeb glanced around. "I don't see her anywhere. Can you sense her?"
He forced down the panic that threatened to engulf him and closed his eyes, reaching out for his wife's thoughts and emotions.
The link that bound them together was present, which meant that she was alive. She was somewhere back in the direction that the path followed, but some distance away. "She's that way -- somewhere."
"You try to follow it as well as you can. I'll fly above the city and look for her." He swore softly under his breath. "All this noise is going to make it hard to hear her."
Clark had already noticed that. "Try," he said. "If the guy in our room found her --"
"I was thinking of that," Zeb said grimly. "Go!"
**********
Lori walked slowly, trying to play for time. Decker had made her drop her wrist talker on the grass so that she couldn't even try to call for help. She was wearing her emergency earrings, of course, but if she even spoke Clark's name loud enough to trigger the alarm she could wind up dead. It was, however, possible that Clark would guess that something was wrong, or that Pete or Joanna would see her if she delayed long enough.
Decker was having none of that. "Move!" he hissed in a whisper that was no less fierce for all that. "Nobody knows me here. In all this confusion, I'll be gone before anybody realizes what happened!"
"Take it easy with that thing!" she protested.
He jabbed the point harder against her side. "Quiet! Move!"
Lori fell silent. He had no intention of letting her live, she knew, but he obviously wanted to do his dirty work away from witnesses. He had to know that if he killed her in plain sight of a crowd of people, someone was bound to remember him, even if he got away. She also knew that he was aware that she would behave, on the chance that something would happen and she could escape him. She didn't want to die, even if they caught him later.
They moved down the little pebbled path toward the concealment of the park's big shade trees, leaving the crowd of people behind. Decker's grip on her arm didn't loosen. She knew very well that if she made a break for it, if she didn't manage to get free on the first attempt, she would die. Well, perhaps she could delay a little, if she was careful.
"You're looking for the disk Johnson had, aren't you?" she whispered.
"Shut up! You're not going to get away, Ms. Hotshot Reporter, You're going to tell me where it is, but not here!" Decker pushed her a little harder. "You've hidden it somewhere, and you're going to give it to me."
"I found it," she said softly. "Johnson left it at Heinlein's Cave. I had it with me when I came into the room while you were there. You killed Tal, didn't you?"
Decker chuckled. "Yes, I did," he said. "He killed Johnson, and I knew that he was going to kill me, if he could. But I was too smart for him."
Lori almost stumbled. "But why kill him in our hotel room?" she asked. "Can you at least tell me that?"
They had entered the trees, now, although there were people still within earshot. Decker didn't release her arm. "Keep moving," he said again. "I'm in a hurry."
"Can't you tell me?" Lori whispered. "I found him in the tub. Why did you kill him in my room?"
Decker laughed softly. "Did that bother you? We searched your room, and he tried to take me by surprise with a stunner. But I was ready for him. I stunned him first and dumped him in your tub. Couldn't have blood all over my clothes. People would have asked questions. But then you came in." He dug the knife in a little harder, and Lori felt it cut her skin. "Don't think you're going to get away, Reporter Girl. You're going to tell me everything I need to know. I've got too much invested in this. Move."
Lori continued to walk, but her mind was busy. He didn't know that she and Clark had given the disk to Brown. He must not have contacted his office since it happened -- which was possible, since he was afraid she might have recognized and identified him to the police. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to keep calm in spite of her pounding heart. Anything might give her a chance to make a break for it. Decker couldn't know about her brown belt in Tai Kwan Do, and he certainly didn't know that her husband was Superman. She had to keep her head and wait for her opportunity.
"Maybe we could make a deal," she said. He hadn't killed her so far; it seemed unlikely that he would do it even here as long as she kept her voice down. He wanted the disk. Maybe she could make use of that. "We can take the disk to your contact, whoever he is, split the money, and no one would be the wiser."
Decker simply laughed. "Why should I share with you, when I can have it all? It's not as if I have anything to lose by killing you. I have another question. Why didn't you identify me to the police?"
"Who says I didn't?" she asked.
"Because there's no search for me," he said, as if he were humoring a child. He pushed her again. "Keep moving. There's a Moon car right on the other side of the park." Another shove. "You saw me. The light flashed across my face. Why didn't you identify me?"
"Because I didn't see enough!" she snapped. "I wondered if it was you, though, and I told Clark! If something happens to me, you're going to come under suspicion."
"I'll take that chance," Decker said. Ahead, the lights of a Moon car blinked as they approached and the door slid open. "Get in, and don't try anything."
She couldn't get into the car with him, Lori knew. She was going to have to make her stand here.
"Well!" a very familiar voice behind her said. "Lori Lyons! I *knew* it! You're not worthy of him!"
Decker's hand jerked on her arm, and the knifepoint against her ribs scratched her side as the man started involuntarily. Lori twisted, breaking his grip on her arm, and ducked in the same motion, pivoting away. Her right foot came up in a hard kick to the side of Decker's knee.
She had never attempted her Tai Kwon Do moves under Moon gravity before, and her foot struck his calf instead of his knee. Decker howled in pain, but he didn't go down. He grabbed clumsily for her, the knife swinging up in preparation for a stab at her face. Somewhere in the background, she heard Stephanie Brooke voice a faint scream.
Lori jerked her face sideways as the knife slashed past, and pushed the hand gripping the knife across Decker's body with her left hand. With her right, she punched as hard as she could, taking him in the solar plexus. Decker doubled over with a grunt as the air was knocked from his lungs.
"Clark!" Lori screamed at the top of her lungs.
The double swoosh of two arriving super-beings almost deafened her. Decker was huddled on the ground, his arms clasped around his offended midsection, but Eclipse seized him by the back of his shirt, hauled him to his feet and removed the knife from his hand with inexorable strength. Stephanie ran.
"Get her!" Lori said quickly. "That's Stephanie!"
Superman looked her over quickly, assuring himself that she was unhurt, and whisked after Stephanie. The woman struggled futilely as he picked her from the ground, and brought her back to the three beside the Moon car.
Stephanie glared at Lori. "You're not worthy of him!" she repeated. "Clark belongs to me! I'll tell him what I saw!"
"Oh for the Lord's sake!" Lori said, her exasperation overcoming her self-control. "I was being kidnapped, you nitwit!"
Eclipse made an odd sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh. "I think a flight to the police station would be in order, don't you think so, Superman?"
"Yes, I do." Clark's voice was choked, and Lori looked sharply at him. Her husband was trying not to burst into laughter. "Ms. Lyons, do you mind if I give you a lift?"
"Not at all, Superman," she said. Inside, she was still shaking, but she could deal with that later. She felt Clark's arm encircle her reassuringly, and then they were flying. Lori closed her eyes, letting the sense of security that she always felt when she flew with him smooth away the last traces of fear. It was over.
**********
tbc
