The Vampire Murders: 16/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
A gust of air blew Lois's hair into her face. She brushed it back into place, only to see Superman standing beside them. "Superman!"
"Hi, Lois," he said. "Inspector Henderson. Clark Kent called me last night and told me what you'd discovered. I took a look around in Wilson's Cove, and I may have found something you're looking for."
Henderson's left eyebrow rose. "And that would be …?"
"I think I may have found the spot where the drugs came ashore."
And now, Part 16;
Henderson's eyebrows both snapped up at this announcement. "Can you show me where?"
Superman produced a sheet of paper. "I drew you a map," he said, matter-of-factly.
Lois leaned forward to see past Henderson's body. Superman's map was so precisely drawn that it looked like a very high resolution photograph of that section of the Metropolitan coastline, and she found herself once again in awe of the Man of Steel's many talents. The drawing showed an aerial view of Mariner's Cove, and the vacation cottage where they had emerged from the Cost Mart tunnel, and the neighboring Wilson's Cove, the reeds, and trees, and the inlets, as well as a very narrow path winding its way through the vegetation, to a section of the third inlet where trampled grass showed evidence of recent human presence. Superman glanced apologetically at Henderson.
"I discovered this early this morning," he explained. "Before dawn. I would have gone back with photographic equipment, but I didn't want to be seen over the area by day. If the people behind this are watching, it might have given away the fact that we suspect what they're up to."
"Probably," Henderson said, studying the drawing with critical approval. "We could use you as a police artist down at the station. I take it these positional points are accurate?"
Superman nodded. "Yes, they are. I hope this helps."
"It should. Thanks." Henderson glanced at Lois. "Tell Kent I needed to take off. I'll let you know how it comes out."
"Now wait a --" Lois might have been speaking to a wall. Henderson was gone almost as fast as Superman could move, she thought in disgust. And, by the way, where was Superman? In the split instant that she had looked away, he had vanished as silently as a ghost.
Clark rounded the corner. "Where's Henderson?"
"Superman showed up with a map," Lois said. "He said he'd found where the drugs were landed. Come on!"
"Where are we going?"
"Over to Wilson's Cove, of course!"
Clark's eyebrows flew up but he said nothing. A few moments later, they were on the sidewalk, looking around unsuccessfully for a cab.
"Where's a cab when you need one?" Lois grumbled. "They were all over the place a little while ago!"
Clark was looking vainly up and down the street. "I don't see any."
Lois growled under her breath and then made up her mind. "Come on."
"Where?" Clark inquired, falling into step beside her.
"There's a pay phone on the next block. We'll call a cab."
"Do you know where every pay phone in the city is?" Clark inquired curiously, keeping pace with her easily as she started down the sidewalk at a brisk pace.
"Mostly. I've had to phone in stories from most of 'em," Lois said shortly. "It's a good thing I didn't wear heels today."
Ten minutes later, she stepped into the phone booth and grabbed for the telephone book dangling from its metal cable. A moment later, she was talking to the cab company representative who answered her call. Emerging triumphantly at last, she found Clark drinking what appeared to be coffee from a Styrofoam cup.. "Where did you get that?"
He swallowed and nodded to the little booth a short distance away where a vendor was dispensing various drinks to passing citizens. "I got you a Cappuccino," he informed her, handing her a second capped container.
"Thanks." Lois accepted the drink. "The cab will be here in a minute. But I have a better idea than going over to Wilson's Cove."
"That was fast," Clark said, eyeing her with a slightly wary expression. "If we're not going to Wilson's Cove, where do you want to go?"
"Over to Mariner's Cove," Lois said.
"What for?"
"I figure Henderson can find the spot Superman told him about," Lois explained. "He's going to tell us about that anyway. I want to try to get a look around the guest cottages and see if we can find anything. We didn't really have much of a chance to look during the times we were there so far, but I don't think anyone's going to be hanging around there in broad daylight. Do you?"
"Well, except for the security guy," Clark pointed out in his usual maddeningly matter-of-fact way. "There's probably one there twenty-four-seven."
"We can get around him," Lois said confidently. "He'll never know we were there."
Clark opened his mouth and then closed it, which she took for assent, and a few minutes later, they were climbing into one of the rattier specimens of cabs from the Metro Cab Company. Lois gave the directions, and the vehicle took off with a shriek of abused tires. Hanging on grimly to Clark's arm with one hand and the door's safety grip with the other, Lois belatedly recalled the reason why she had vowed, for the thousandth time, never again to patronize a Metro cab when last she had had the misfortune to ride in one of these deathtraps, which had actually been this morning on the trip to the Metro Museum of Natural History. Why didn't she ever learn?
Amazingly enough, however, fifteen minutes later the cab rocketed to a stop at the curb, unscathed, and the driver glanced back at his shattered passengers. "That'll be sixty-four thirty-one," he informed them.
Wordlessly, Clark released his own grip on the seat where his fingers had left deep impressions in the cracked faux-leather and reached for his wallet. A moment later, they were standing on the sidewalk as the vehicle peeled away from the curb amid a blast of exhaust fumes and a screech of tires. Lois took a ragged breath and looked at her partner.
"After we're done, maybe we could take a bus back," she suggested.
"That's one of the better suggestions I've heard today," Clark said.
"Well, that's for later," Lois said, returning single-mindedly to business. "The resort's down this way. Let's go."
Clark moved to the position between her and the street and they began to walk. "Why do you do that?" Lois asked.
"Do what?"
"You always walk on the outside."
"That's the way Mom and Dad always taught me," he said. "Manners."
Lois glanced at him oddly. "Manners?"
"Sure. The guy always walks between the woman and the street."
"To protect her from dirt thrown by the horses?" she asked with a grin.
He grinned back. "Well, that was where the custom came from," he agreed. "Or so I'm told. Now it's just good manners."
She shook her head. "Smallville must have been a fun place to grow up in."
"Actually, it was," Clark said imperturbably. "At least for me." He was looking carefully around as they approached the strip of land that marked the border of the vacation resort. Some distance beyond the first of the cheerful little cottages, the ocean looked bright and blue with sunlight reflecting off the waves. Gulls circled above the beach and as Lois watched, she saw one sweep by almost overhead and drop something that struck the sidewalk sharply. At once the bird swooped down to snatch up part of the dropped whatever-it-was, and several others followed. The first bird launched himself and flapped away, the others in pursuit.
"What was that all about?" Lois asked.
"The first guy had some kind of shellfish, like a clam or an oyster or something," Clark said. "Gulls drop them on stone -- or in this case, the sidewalk -- to crack the shell so they can get at the inside part. The other gulls saw him do it and tried to steal his dinner."
"Oh," Lois said. She looked sideways at him. "Don't tell me they had an ocean in Kansas, too."
"Huh? Oh." Clark grinned. "I collect trivia."
"Yeah, I'd almost forgotten." Lois stopped and stood surveying the landscape. "Do you see any sign of the security guy?"
"Not so far. Let's go on. As long as we stay on the sidewalk they won't bother us even if they see us. The house is the last one in the row -- the white one -- about four blocks farther on down."
"I know," Lois said, resuming her pace. "Try to act casual, but see if you can spot the guard."
"I'm looking," Clark told her. He sauntered along as if he had no place urgent to go and Lois walked beside him, trying not to hurry. Charging along the sidewalk as fast as she wanted to go was certain to attract unwelcome attention, and if there was a guard anywhere around he was bound to get curious if he saw her rushing along, but it wasn't easy to go slowly. Some hunch that she wasn't even fully aware of was urging her to hurry up and check out the house, that maybe they would find more answers to the questions they had been trying to answer for the last couple of days if they could just get inside and have a little time to look around in daylight.
"There he goes," Clark said in a low voice. Lois followed his gaze and saw the chubby figure of the resort's security guard strolling along the beach in the opposite direction. "He doesn't look like he's in much of a hurry."
"Keep walking," Lois said. "Wait until we get the cottage between us and him. He doesn't look like he's expecting any trouble."
Clark didn't answer, but he continued to stroll casually beside her as they approached the end of the strip of land that marked Mariner's Cove. Lois glanced carefully over her shoulder to assure herself that they were safely concealed by the bulk of the cottage before she stepped off the sidewalk and strode confidently toward the building.
Clark was still beside her, looking in the direction of the surf. The security guard wasn't in view, and Lois moved to the right, keeping the building between them and the spot where she had last seen the man.
Clark pushed his glasses up on his nose. "I think he's still headed the other way," he said, keeping his voice low. "Got your lock pick?"
"Better," Lois informed him. "I stuck a wad of chewing gum into the latch last night, just in case we needed to get back in today. Unless somebody found it, we shouldn't have any trouble."
Clark's expression didn't change, but he nodded matter-of-factly.
They reached the corner of the house and Lois flattened herself against the wooden side. Very cautiously, she sneaked an eye around the corner.
The guard was much farther away now, his back still toward them. She looked back at Clark. "Let's go."
Their footfalls were silent in the white sand. Quietly, they moved around to the wooden porch where residents of the duplex could sit on warm summer evenings and watch the waves rolling in. A swinging wooden seat hung from the overhanging porch roof on each end of the structure, and toward the center, two doors, one to each half of the duplex, were closed and blank. Lois moved to the one on the left and experimentally tugged on the knob.
After an instant's initial resistance, it came open, and she looked triumphantly at her partner. Clark's lips twitched, but he said nothing, and together, they slipped quietly inside.
The room was almost familiar to Lois by this time, although she had only seen it by the light of a flashlight before. The floors were of polished hardwood, and there was no furniture to be seen -- probably it was stored somewhere for the winter, Lois figured, to be taken out when the place was rented out to the vacationers at the beginning of summer.
"There's the place where the basement door opens up," Clark said softly, pointing. "The closet's on the other side. I wonder if there's any kind of door opening from this side into the other half of the duplex."
"Maybe," Lois said. "Let's just look around for now, okay? I want to see if there's anything in here that we ought to know about."
Clark nodded, but Lois had the feeling he didn't entirely agree. Quietly, they moved past the alcove that housed the invisible trap door to the tunnel beneath Cost Mart's parking lot, and entered the back sections of the house.
A hallway led them to a small but elegant dining room and a kitchen with all the latest appliances. Lois observed the chrome dishwasher that looked as if it could handle the dirty dishes of a platoon of Marines, a stove with enough bells and whistles to satisfy the most exacting chef, and the formidable seven-foot matted steel refrigerator and freezer combination with attached icemaker, and briefly envied the next persons to enjoy the luxuries of this vacation cottage. But then, the place had been designed for well-to-do vacationers, so it wasn't really surprising, she supposed. On the opposite side from its entrance into the dining room, a door in the wall exited to what was probably the back steps.
On the other side of the hallway was a luxury bathroom with a tub the size of the Children's Pool at the Metro Public Beach, and a little farther down, three bedrooms with carpet that you could lose your feet in. The furniture, of course, wasn't in evidence, although she could see traces of where it had stood. A second, smaller, but no less luxurious bathroom attached to the master bedroom, but nowhere did they discover any sign of the criminal activities to which this place had been put two nights before.
In some disappointment, Lois turned back toward the front when Clark pulled her quickly into the smallest of the bedrooms and pushed the door gently shut.
"Clark! What are you --" she began when his hand closed over her mouth.
"Listen!"
Lois bit off the words mid-sentence.
From the direction of the living room, a door closed, and footsteps crossed the hardwood floor of the living room. The footsteps were abruptly muted as whoever it was apparently reached the carpeted hallway.
Clark tugged her wrist and she followed him as he crossed the room on silent feet and opened the closet door. They had barely entered the small room and pulled the door to, when the muffled footsteps paused outside the bedroom.
Lois held her breath.
Beside her, Clark moved softly, and then his hand was pulling her gently to the back of the closet. Lois went with the pull, expecting to encounter the wall.
"Duck your head," Clark's whisper directed. Lois obeyed.
It was just as dark, but somehow the closet seemed larger now than it should have been. There was the impression of more space around her. Clark reached past her and she heard the faintest of scrapes, as of a sliding panel, and then a soft click.
"What --"
"There was a sliding door in the back of the closet," Clark said, keeping his voice so low that she had to strain to hear the words. "I think we're in the other side of the duplex."
Lois reached back the way she had come, and her hand encountered polished wood. Then there was the faint sound of a latch turning, and a line of light appeared, at once showing her that they were in the mirror image of the closet where they had just been. Clark's silhouette was pressed against the door, and her partner was obviously taking in the lay of the land. After several long seconds, he pushed it open.
Lois peered out into the room beyond. It was exactly the same as the one they had just left, and she was aware of a stab of disappointment.
But Clark was moving forward into the room, taking care to make no sound at all. Not knowing what they might encounter, she figured that made sense. Besides, there was somebody in the other side of the duplex that might hear them if they weren't careful.
Clark paused by the door which hung slightly ajar, and listened. Lois strained her ears, but could near nothing but the distant sound of the surf. Still, it was highly suspicious that there had been a sliding door in the closet. She'd be willing to bet that it hadn't been part of the vacation cottage's original design.
"Hear anything?" she whispered, barely breathing the words.
He shook his head and pushed the door wider. Together, they tiptoed out into the hallway.
It was, as Lois expected, empty, however, leaving now was probably impossible, at least if they were planning on doing so without being discovered. Clark had turned toward the master bedroom and Lois followed him, the back of her neck prickling. They had no way of knowing if whoever had entered the other side of the duplex was going to come in here next.
The master bedroom's door was closed, and Clark paused, listening for several seconds before he quietly turned the knob and pushed it open.
**********
tbc
