The Vampire Murders: 22/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"Superman said that Henderson is withdrawing his men from Cost Mart," Clark said. "He wants to see what they'll do when they think they're not being watched anymore."
"You didn't tell me that last night," Lois said sharply.
"I forgot you didn't know," Clark said. "Henderson and Superman talked to your mysterious friend yesterday evening, and apparently he gave them some useful information. That's why Henderson is publicly withdrawing his men. He said he'd give us the exclusive if it pans out."
Lois shrugged. "If anything is going to happen, I want to be there for it," she said. "Hurry up and get dressed."
"I'm going to want to stop by my place to get something clean to wear," Clark said. "It'll only take a few minutes."
"Great. Then grab a Hot Pocket or something for breakfast and let's go. Every minute we waste, something big could be happening."
Later, she would recall that remark with a sense of irony.
**********
And now, Part 22:
"You know," Clark remarked a short time later, just as the beat-up vehicle that she had borrowed from Harvey Brown bounced sharply when one wheel hit a pothole in the street, "this truck reminds me of the one my dad had before he got his new one. Its shocks were pretty much gone, too."
Lois grunted inarticulately. "I just hope Henderson gets my Jeep back to me pretty soon. He never did say why they were keeping it so long."
"Well, since those two guys were killed in the park, and they probably drove your Jeep over there, there might have been some evidence in it that would help Henderson figure out who our 'vampire' really is, and maybe solve this thing," Clark said mildly, pointing out the obvious.
Lois didn't answer. The light sprinkling of raindrops that was half-slush, was getting thicker, and she turned on the windshield wipers, which promptly smeared mud across her field of view. She hit the washer button, but water failed to spray onto the glass.
"Maybe the water in the reservoir is frozen," Clark suggested.
"More likely it's empty," Lois said, squinting to see past the smeared mud. "Darn it; I can't see!"
A spatter of rain hit the glass suddenly, accompanied by tiny grains of ice that turned instantly to water on the windshield. The shredded windshield wiper swished back across the glass, marginally clearing some of the mud. Lois cussed under her breath. "Where the heck did the sun go? It was shining in my window this morning!"
"The weather report said there was a storm moving in," Clark said, helpfully. "I guess this is it."
Lois turned left onto Clinton Street and pulled up in front of Clark's apartment. "Hurry up," she told him. "I want to get over there and see what's happening."
Clark shook his head stubbornly. "I'm not leaving you by yourself," he said. "That business last night is a pretty good clue that somebody wants you out of the way."
"Oh, all right." Lois switched off the motor and dropped the key into her bag. The spray of water that greeted her as she opened the door almost convinced her to change her mind, but her promise to Henderson the night before had been for a reason. They half-ran up the steps to the apartment and Clark got the door open quickly and closed it as quickly behind them.
Lois mopped at her face. "Do vampires come out in the rain?"
"I wouldn't know," Clark said. "Never having met any vampires. I'll get you a towel and then change."
Lois accepted the thick, blue towel he handed her a moment later, and sat down on the comfortable old couch that occupied Clark's living room. Her partner vanished into his bedroom and she heard him moving around, opening his dresser drawers. Slowly, she began to dry her face and hair. It just figured, she thought, that the day they picked to go over to Cost Mart to see what would happen when Henderson's men were no longer in evidence, would be the day that the weather would turn nasty again. She picked up the remote control and turned on Clark's television.
The Metro Sports Channel was on, and she quickly switched the channel to LNN. Maybe they would have a weather report soon.
They did. Lois listened in dismay as the weather man cheerfully predicted the light rain to grow heavier and turn to snow by this afternoon. The storm was predicted to drop three to five inches of snow, and the wind from the northeast was expected to be fifteen to twenty miles per hour with gusts up to thirty. Great. Just great.
"You know," Clark said from behind her, "that our friendly smugglers probably won't be out until after dark. I just don't see them hauling in a bunch of contraband drugs and weapons during broad daylight. It's apt to attract attention, even in the rain. Or snow."
"I know," Lois said. "I just want to look over the lay of the land and find a good place to watch the action from, after dark."
"Maybe we could find a spot out of the weather," Clark suggested. "It's going to be a bit chilly."
"We'll wear warm clothes," Lois said. "Speaking of which, do you have a rain coat or an umbrella?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," Clark said, producing both items from his coat closet. "I think we'll only need them for a little while, though. I'm betting it'll be snowing by the time we get to Cost Mart."
Looking out the window at the wet, dreary landscape, and at the rain that had grown heavier in just the short time she had been in Clark's apartment, she was inclined to agree with him. The windshield of the truck was already beginning to collect a slight crusting of very wet snow. As usual, the weather forecasters were being too conservative in their forecasts, Lois thought, disgustedly. That was why her father had called them "weather guessers" when she had been a little girl. It had never failed to make her laugh.
Sternly banishing those long-past memories, Lois appropriated the rain coat, and opened the apartment door. "Let's go."
**********
Forty minutes later, after a pitched battle with bumper-to-bumper traffic working its way past several fender-bender collisions, Lois pulled the pickup to the side of the street half a block from Cost Mart and cut the engine. "We walk from here. I don't think they'll notice us as long as we don't do anything to stand out."
Clark looked thoughtfully at the sparsely-populated sidewalks, quite rightfully avoided by most sensible citizens who preferred to stay out of the mixture of freezing rain and snow that was falling on the city of Metropolis.
"We're just going to stand out because there's almost nobody out there right now," he pointed out.
"I see a few people," Lois contradicted him. "We'll just look like them. Nobody's looking at them."
Clark lowered his glasses casually and glanced around. There didn't seem to be any reason to worry, but his ingrained awareness of the fact that Lois and trouble went hand in hand made him aware of the potential for unforeseen difficulties. Still ….
He opened the door and got out, bringing the umbrella with him, and went around to Lois's side rather quickly to hold it over her head as she exited the truck. She gave him a brief, curious look but said nothing as she slid her feet to the slushy sidewalk and turned to slam the driver's door.
"Brrr," she commented, and pulled the leather jacket she wore -- also a relic of a different adventure with Clark, where he had ended up loaning her his jacket -- tighter around her shoulders. She tugged the hat she had chosen to protect her head and ears from the cold down a little farther on her head. "Let's head over to Cost Mart."
Together, they moved down the sidewalk at a brisk walk: that of people anxious to get in out of the weather. Clark looked around, trying to spot any potential trouble, but it seemed as if Lois was right again. After all, what smuggler would willingly be out in this stuff?
On the other hand, nobody said the bosses of Cost Mart and Intergang were worried about their employees' comfort.
The parking lot was only lightly populated today, and Clark saw virtually no one in the vicinity, but there were a fair number of persons clustered under the canopy that sheltered the entrance to the big store. They joined the crowd, keeping their faces down, and moved slowly into the building.
It was warm and dry inside, and Clark lowered the umbrella. Lois went to acquire a shopping cart. "Come on," she said. "Let's look around."
Clark nodded, still with that faint feeling of uneasiness prickling the short hairs on his neck. It was probably nothing, he told himself. If nothing else, Henderson very likely had his own men around in here, just to keep on top of things. Maybe even some of those solitary figures out on the sidewalk had been his people.
The noise level in this place, unfortunately, made the use of his super-hearing virtually impossible. Between the gabble of normal conversation and the echo-effect of this huge box-store, it wasn't at all easy to separate out individual voices, especially since he had no idea who he might be listening for.
"Where do you want to go?"
"To the back, where they're opening crates and stuff," Lois said. "Maybe we can pick up some gossip."
That didn't seem too dangerous. It wasn't likely that the ordinary employees of this place would know much about the smuggling operation run by the management. Of course, Lois had to know that, too, so it didn't totally surprise him when they drew near to the door in the back that led to the offices of the officials around here that Lois looked longingly at it. "I'd sure like to get another look back there," she said softly. "I'll bet anything you like that some of what's going on isn't day to day business."
Clark picked up a can of bug spray from the nearest shelf and pretended to be reading the ingredients on the back. "That's how you got in trouble in the first place."
"Yeah, but Brunner isn't here any longer," she pointed out. "If we can get hold of a couple of the T-shirts, nobody will know the difference."
"Don't bet on it. I'd wager a small sum on their having your face up on the bulletin board or something, just in case," Clark said.
"Look, can you create a diversion so I can slip back there?" Lois said. "I just want a peek. Come on, Clark!"
The mulish look on her face and a familiar sinking feeling in his stomach told him that Lois meant business. If he didn't do something, she would just go set a fire in the restroom or something to distract everyone. His lovely partner didn't kid around.
"All right," he said grudgingly. "Just a minute. Wait for me."
Her instant smile lit up her face. "I knew I could count on you!"
Clark ducked quickly around the end of the shelf of bug spray, out of the view of Lois and the watching cameras, looking around quickly with his enhanced vision. There. That stack of cans should make a satisfying crash if it came down next to the rack of mops, brooms and other cleaning products.
Wondering why he always let Lois maneuver him into these situations, he pursed his lips and released a sharp puff of air toward the base of the pyramid.
The results were all that he could have wished. A can on the bottom row tilted, apparently against all laws of physics, and slipped out from under the two it supported, destabilizing the entire pile. The cans came down with a crash and a clatter, rolling wildly in all directions. The stand with the display of cleaning equipment went over and collided with another display, this one of dog food. Those cans also cascaded down and the rolling cans became instant hazards to the employees rushing to the scene of the minor disaster, and the customers who immediately converged to see what was happening.
He stepped quickly back around the shelves to rejoin his partner, who was now making a direct path toward the door in the back. One of the young male employees heading for the location of the metallic avalanche went past her, never even looking at her, and Clark joined her a second later as she went through the door.
"That was good," Lois said softly. "I can always rely on you for a good distraction. Come on. Let's check out Brunner's office."
As much as he hated to admit it, he was putty in Lois's hands. Superman's great weakness wasn't Kryptonite. It was Lois Lane, and he'd known it for well over a year.
Still, that didn't mean he had to let her walk blindly into trouble. Looking around as casually as he could, and straining his ears to hear something besides the din in the big box store behind them, he followed Lois down the carpeted hallway toward the office of the erstwhile manager of this Cost Mart store.
At least the area was no longer cordoned off with yellow tape, although traces of the chalk outline where Brunner's body had lain were still visible on the expensive carpet. The secretary's desk was clear. Only a small plaque that said "Patricia Filner, Executive Assistant," a plastic cup that held two pencils and a pen, and a clean mug that usually would contain coffee or tea remained on the polished, wooden surface. There were no stacks of paper or any other signs of the woman's daily work evident to a first cursory glance.
"Looks like the secretary isn't here," Lois remarked, noting the obvious.
From somewhere down the hallway behind them, Clark heard the sounds of voices and the muffled scrape of approaching footsteps. This was, after all, the section of the Cost Mart store where all the management was conducted. He pushed Lois through the door of Brunner's office. "Somebody's coming!"
Lois didn't hesitate, but ducked behind the half-open door of the room and pulled Clark with her. "Quiet!"
Hiding behind the door, their backs pressed to the wall, they waited. The footsteps approached and paused just outside the room.
"After you," a voice said. Clark wrinkled his brow. That voice sounded very familiar. In fact, it sounded like ….
The footsteps entered the secretary's tiny office and stopped, barely five feet away from the two reporters, frozen behind the door of Brunner's former domain.
"So have you thought about my request?" Church's voice said. Something creaked, and there was the click of a closing door latch.
"Mr. Church, I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I'd rather not have anything more to do with this," a different voice said, softly. "I've done what you told me, and I promise I won't say a word to anybody. I'd just like my money, and a ticket to Montana with Patty. Nobody's ever going to find me there. "
"Well, Filner, I can understand that," the voice of Bill Church Junior replied, also in low tones. "But we're not quite finished yet. That Lane woman is snooping around much too closely for our comfort. We failed to pick her up last night, and the rumors about what happened to my men don't make any sense. I don't know what she did, but if Superman wasn't up to his bulging biceps in it, somebody's playing us for fools. You have one more appearance to make for us, and then you'll get your payment and that ride out of town. Deal?"
There was a long silence as the man called Filner apparently thought it over. "That guy that shot at me two nights ago, the cop, could have killed me. I don't want to get shot at again."
"Nobody's going to shoot at you," Church's voice replied, soothingly. "Even if somebody loses his head, he'll go for a body shot. It's what cops are trained to do. The vest will protect you, but it isn't likely to happen. You're a vampire, remember."
"Well …."
"And your help will be very much appreciated," Church continued, smoothly. "I imagine getting started in Montana will require some cash reserves, even for a talented actor such as yourself. We could double your payment, if that makes you feel any better, and then, once you finish this last job for us, no one will ever see you again. Isn't it worth a small risk?"
Another pause. "I guess so," Filner's voice said, a little doubtfully. "But I want to leave town right afterwards. I don't want anything more to do with any of this. There's too many dead people turning up. Something's not right. Mr. Brunner was drained of blood, just like that first guy in the park. Patty was so scared she didn't even come to work yesterday or today."
"Well, neither of you will have to worry about any of this after tonight," Church said. "Right after you make one, last appearance. Then it will all be over."
"All right. Is it okay if I pick up Patty's mug? Her sister gave it to her when she got the job with Mr. Brunner."
"No problem," Church said. "See me in my office in an hour and we'll go over the script."
"Yes sir." Clark heard the scrape as Filner apparently picked up the coffee mug. Cautiously, he turned his head and lowered his glasses. The solid wall disappeared before his eyes, and he saw the man whom Bill Church had called Filner.
He was a slender man of medium height with a narrow, pale face, dark, piercing eyes and thick, black hair. He had seen this face before, Clark thought, and his memory went back to the night he and Lois had first investigated the tunnel under the Cost Mart parking lot. This had been the man whom they had seen on the sidewalk outside the big store, just as they were leaving.
Several things were suddenly beginning to add up.
**********
tbc
