Chapter Six
Lois was frustrated.
Again.
She leaned toward the speakerphone and tried once more to convince the detective that Platt had been murdered, but he rebuffed her. “Sorry, Lane, but the coroner’s verdict is gonna read ‘suicide’ and there’s nothing either of us can do about it.”
“Come on, Bill! You could gather evidence to indicate that – “
“We gathered all the evidence at the scene. The contusions on Platt’s head and neck aren’t definitive enough to indicate that he was murdered. They could have been inflicted yesterday or a week ago. And nothing else at the scene or in his background points to his being murdered. This is a suicide. Leave it be.”
She barely restrained herself from punching the phone. “This isn’t over, Henderson! We’ll get you proof that this was murder and you’ll look like a buffoon!”
Henderson chuckled wearily. “Won’t be the first time, Lane. Now if you don’t mind, I have a few other things on my desk just crying out for my attention.”
This time she did slap the ‘off’ button as she stood. Bill Henderson was a good cop, maybe the most honest cop in Metropolis at his level of authority, but sometimes he lacked imagination. He couldn’t or wouldn’t take that intuitive leap to see what really lay behind the facade thrown up by the criminals he investigated. Still, he was always honest with her and never held back information unless he thought it would compromise his investigation.
She heard her name called, but she was still too angry to respond. Not until Clark touched her elbow and nodded toward the ramp from the elevators to the newsroom floor did she look up.
She barely restrained herself from snarling, “What?”
Clark blew out a tight breath through his nose. “Over by the elevators. That’s – “
“I know. That’s Mrs. Platt and her daughter Amy. I recognize them from the pictures in Platt’s apartment.”
As Lois led Clark to meet them, she heard Amy gently complain, “Mom, I was supposed to be at Susan’s by now. We have to go!”
Her mother folded her coat and put it in Amy’s lap. “I know, honey. Just wait over there by the elevator and give me a minute to talk to these folks and we’ll be on our way.”
“Okay, Mom, but don’t take too long. I’m going swimming with her, remember?”
She gently pushed Amy’s wheelchair toward the elevator bank. “I remember, dear. And I promise, I won’t be a minute.”
Amy took over and wheeled herself the rest of the way as her mother turned to face the two reporters. “I – I haven’t told her yet. I don’t – she didn’t understand why her father had to be away from us, so I don’t know – there’s no telling how she’ll react.”
Lois searched for some words of comfort, something she could say to help, but her mind remained blank. The only thing she could do was to reach out and touch the other woman’s arm and mutter, “Mrs. Platt, I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Platt blinked back a tear and smiled. “Thank you. Please call me Melody.”
“Of course, Melody. I’m Lois Lane and this is my partner, Clark Kent.”
She felt Clark step up beside her as Melody Platt took a deep breath to collect herself. “You see, everything we worked for was for Amy. The space lab on Prometheus was the only hope, and now – “
Lois interrupted with a question. “Mrs. Platt – I’m sorry, Melody – when you and Amy left your husband – “
Her soft blue eyes were suddenly liquid granite. “No. We did not leave him. We never left him. He made us leave. He was sure that they were going to come after him. He was afraid that Amy and I would get hurt, so he – he sent us away.”
Lois blinked. This was a new piece of information, one that changed the dynamic of Platt’s life and cast more doubt on the coroner’s verdict of suicide. “Do you have any idea who might have – “
Forcefully, Melody Platt broke into Lois’ question. “All I know is that Samuel knew that Prometheus was being sabotaged. And that knowledge got him killed.” She leaned closer to Lois and softened her voice. “Please help me. Don’t let his daughter grow up believing her father committed suicide.”
“We’ll try,” Clark assured her. “We promise.”
Lois nodded in agreement. “That goes for both of us, Melody.”
Melody smiled wearily. “Thank you.” She reached out for Lois’ hand to shake it, then Clark’s. “Thank you both.”
She turned and plodded to the elevators. Somehow she brightened as she neared her daughter, and they were chatting happily about the afternoon swimming session as the doors closed in front of them.
Lois dropped her head down for a moment to quickly wipe her eyes – she noticed that Clark pretended not to notice – then she turned to him and asked, “So, we’re going to prove that Samuel Platt was murdered?”
Clark nodded slowly. “Yep.”
“Any ideas on how we’re going to do that?”
“Nope. You?”
“Not at the moment. But I don’t believe that this is over. Whoever is responsible for Platt’s death isn’t finished.”
Jimmy’s voice cut across the newsroom. “Hey! Everybody! The Congress of Nations is making an announcement about the space program!”
The volume on the ceiling-mounted TV rose as the conversation level in the room plummeted. “…this special report from the Congress of Nations.”
A middle-aged but firm and confident woman wearing the robes of her native India came on the screen, flanked by several other members of the Congress of Nations. She stepped to the battery of microphones and calmly stated, “I am pleased to announce that we have unanimously decided that the space station Prometheus will proceed.”
A reporter called out, “What about Lex Luthor’s proposal?”
“This body would like to extend our deepest gratitude to Mr. Lex Luthor for his generous offer. But it is our firm belief that the space station should go forward as originally planned, a project dedicated to global cooperation for the advancement of science. The colonists’ launch, scheduled for next week, will depart as planned. The rockets will also carry an auxiliary propulsion module.”
A darker note entered the woman’s voice. “Should any serious problems arise, we would be forced to cancel the mission.” Then she smiled and lifted her head. “We don’t anticipate that happening. We anticipate success.”
Clark looked at Lois at the same time she looked at him. “So?” he drawled.
“So the space program goes forward. And if there’s a serious problem, we’ll be ready for it.”
A confident expression stole across his face. “And we’ll get to the truth.”
She felt her eyes focus on his. “You’ve got it, partner.”
Jimmy turned down the TV volume and gestured to Lois. “Conference room,” he mouthed.
She nodded. “Come on, Clark, Jimmy’s got something.”
Jimmy waited until they followed him into the room, then he closed the door. “So I gave Star Labs the copy of Dr. Platt’s report, and they recreated the launch on this big hologram. It was really smooth. Anyway, they concluded that Platt’s theory was right on, that it was deliberate sabotage, and that the transport explosion was no accident.” He hesitated a moment, then smiled and said, “Congrats!”
Lois leaped up in celebration and tried to punch Jimmy in the shoulder, but he leaned back and she missed. But she didn’t care, because they’d been right! She’d been right!
She turned to Clark and said, “We were right! Platt was right!”
Jimmy left on some other errand as Clark responded, “Yes! Now we can write the story.”
“No, now I can write the story.”
“With my help!”
“Yes, with your help, and now we can convince people that there was sabotage and if we can convince them who was behind it – “
“We can stop them!”
“Oh, Clark, this is great!” she squealed. Without thinking about it, she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck.
His arms slid around her waist and held her close, and it wasn’t long before she felt both of them shift from coworker-celebration-hug mode to man-woman-hug mode. She squeezed her eyes shut and held on for just one second more, then put her hands on his shoulders and pushed back.
He let her slide away, but she was sure he didn’t want to let her go – not that she was sure that she wanted him to let go. His eyes found hers again and they locked together. All she could see was those big brown orbs threatening to suck her into the whirlpool of his soul.
For the briefest moment, she desperately wanted to give herself up to that whirl of passion.
But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. That would be a disastrous event, right up there with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and Vesuvius erupting all over Pompeii in 79 and the time Lucy spilled nail polish on Lois’ favorite skirt when she was about to sneak out for a date she wasn’t supposed to go on.
Lois blinked and turned her head away, hoping to escape for the moment. Then he said, “Why don’t we have dinner?”
“Yes!” came to her mind, but instead she almost whispered, “Oh – I don’t know – “
“To – to celebrate. We should celebrate this victory.”
A victory dinner? Which, of course, would include Jimmy, given his important contributions to the story. “Well – sure, yeah, we can do that. A celebration dinner.”
He smiled and her heart nearly melted. Those perfect, brilliant teeth all but cried out for her to try to adhere her lips to them, assuming she could work her way into his mouth. She wondered for a wild moment if her schedule were clear enough to just break out and give herself to the moment and –
No! The Luthor interview was tonight! And he was too close, way too close. The pain and loss she’d felt emanating from Melody Platt still resonated in her psyche and she couldn’t risk getting hurt. Not now, not yet. “Wait! What am I talking about? I can’t! I – I have plans for tonight. I’m – I’m sorry.”
His smile faded and the world grew darker. “Luthor?”
It sounded like a challenge, and Mad Dog Lane never shrank from a challenge. Besides, Kent didn’t own her! She was her own woman, and she’d been reporting hard news in this city when he’d been counting mosquito larvae in Rhodesia. “Yeah. Luthor.”
He stood straighter and seemed to close in on himself. “The story you’ve been working on for months?”
The guy was jealous! And there was no reason for him to be. He had no claim on her, either personally or professionally, and she wasn’t about to put herself under his corn-fed thumb for any reason. She turned her back on him and stalked through the door. “Yes. The story I’ve been chasing for months.”
She knew her tone was too snarky, that Clark didn’t deserve the quick brush-off she was giving him, but her walls were up again and she wasn’t about to let him inside them. It was too big a risk for her, no matter how wonderful his eyes were or how weak her knees felt when he beamed that smile her way. This wasn’t just self-defense, it was personal survival.
He followed her out of the conference room onto the news floor. “Tell me something, Lois. Just how far are you willing to go to get this interview?”
That was below-the-belt tacky. But she didn’t want to make him too angry, so she tried to be conciliatory. As she picked up her purse and headed toward the elevators, she said, “Not that it’s any of your concern, but as I told you before, this is strictly business.”
He followed her, almost at her shoulder, and raised his voice. “What is your problem, anyway? You’ve had a chip on your shoulder since the day I met you. You resented the fact that – “
“That Perry foisted an inexperienced – “
“Snob!”
That stopped her in her tracks. “What?”
He stood at the bottom of the steps and glared at her, the interest and affection she’d seen just moments before gone as if it were never there. “You are a snob, Lois.”
She couldn’t believe he was saying that. “Well, coming from Mr. Green Jeans, that’s really – “
Her mind empty of acceptable insults, she turned away and took a step, but unreasoning anger flooded her and she spun to face him. “I live by three rules, Kent. I never get involved with my stories, I never let anyone else get there first, and I never sleep with anyone I work with.” She stared at him for a long moment, daring him to say anything else, then finished with, “This. Is. Business.”
She didn’t look at him again. The elevator doors closed and she headed down to the garage for her Jeep.
There were three other people in the elevator, none of whom knew her by her first name, so breaking into tears or even releasing a sniffle was out of the question. She held her reaction behind a wall of forced anger until she climbed into her Jeep and closed the door.
Then it hit her and she crumpled behind the steering wheel. She’d allowed her fear and the pain from her past to damage her relationship with her new partner, a man who’d learned more about her in the past few days than anyone else in Metropolis knew, with the possible exception of Cat Grant.
No. He knew more about her than Cat did. As wonderful as Cat had been to her, as many hours as they’d spent together consoling each other and crying on each other’s shoulder, Cat had never pierced as deeply into her heart as Clark had in such a short time. Every other man she’d known in the past six months would have run away from her tears and her memories. But Clark had embraced them, comforted her, accepted her as she was, and up until just a few moments before hadn’t pressed her to do or be anyone different than who she was.
And she’d learned to trust him in that short time. She’d come to believe that he’d never betray her or pressure her to do anything or be anything that wasn’t in her character. She wouldn’t have believed that he’d react to her the way he had, and she was sure it was her fault for pushing him away.
She’d have to fix it somehow. Perry couldn’t know that she’d lashed out at the rookie and all but taken his head off just because he’d challenged her sense of self. Clark didn’t seem like a person who’d hold a grudge, but she couldn’t be sure until she tried to apologize to him.
And that wouldn’t be easy.
Enough of Clark Kent. She needed to get ready for her dinner date with – her interview with Lex Luthor.
*****
I watched her stomp to the elevator and thought seriously about slamming my head against the wall, not that it would do me any harm or the wall any good. I just couldn’t believe how quickly I’d gone from holding her tenderly to insulting her and accusing her of unethical behavior in pursuit of a story. I knew she’d never let herself get too close to an interview subject. She was too smart, too wary, too cagey for that to happen.
But I’d let her get too close to me. When she’d said she’d have dinner with me, I’d felt like I’d set a new personal high altitude record. Then she’d shaken her head and told me she was having dinner with Luthor tonight. And my mind had just folded up and fallen down around my socks. I’d been hurt by that rejection, which wasn’t really a rejection, and I’d lashed out at her from my own pain and my own fear for her safety.
How stupid could I be, anyway? I knew she was a young widow. I knew that she was still grieving for her husband. I knew that she didn’t think she was ready for another relationship, and I knew that she was right. But I’d still let myself dream about it, just for a moment, when I’d held her and she’d held me and then we’d looked into each other’s eyes and if I hadn’t asked her to dinner I might have kissed her and then where would we be?
I guessed I could be incredibly stupid. Maybe it went along with my strength and speed. Incredibly strong, incredibly fast, incredibly idiotic. Made a twisted kind of sense to me.
And now what? What was I supposed to do to fix this? If I sent her flowers she might take it as some kind of romantic overture and stuff them down my throat. If I followed her and apologized she might think I was a weak-willed needy country boy with delusions of adequacy. If I did nothing she’d certainly think I believed every moronic thing I’d just said to her. I just didn’t know what to do.
Then Jimmy tapped me on the arm and leaned close. “The Chief wants to see you.”
I sighed. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not supposed to.”
I looked at him. He wasn’t at all happy with me, and I could guess why. Like everyone else in the newsroom, he felt like it was his responsibility to keep Lois from getting hurt too badly. I’d seen it in their interactions, how Jimmy watched Lois when he didn’t think anyone was looking. He never acted like a stalker or moped around love-sick. He was more like a pesky but faithful younger brother to her. But he did watch over her from a distance.
Like Perry did. I made my way to his office, ready to be fired.
But he surprised me. “Close the door, son. I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sit down, Kent. You’re making my neck hurt, looking up at you like this.”
I sat. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about, sir?”
He leaned back and gazed out the window, his face pregnant with an Elvis anecdote. “Did I just see Lois leave?”
“Yes, sir. She’s getting ready for her interview with Lex Luthor.”
He made a show of looking at his watch. “Kinda late in the day for an interview, isn’t it? Even for the great Lex Luthor?”
That little bit of sarcasm was telling. “I think it’s an interview over dinner.”
He nodded slowly. “In a fancy upscale and very expensive restaurant?”
“I don’t know.”
He waited, then turned his head to look at me again, still wearing that nothing-but-a-hound-dog expression. “But you don’t think so, do you?”
I sighed. “No, sir, I don’t.”
“I see.” He shifted in his chair to face me directly. “Is that why you and she were out there snarling at one another?”
I bit my lip, then decided to tell the truth. “Partly. Partly it was because I got stupid for a couple of minutes.”
He nodded again. “It happens, son. Everybody gets stupid sometimes. Even the King acted stupid after Lisa Marie was born. Course, it wasn’t the same kind of stupid. But you get my point, don’t you?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure I understood what he was trying to tell me, but I didn’t want to disagree with him, not yet. And certainly not about Elvis.
“Good. Then you’ll understand that I’m not mad at you when I give you a couple of creampuff assignments that will keep you out of Lois’ hair for a day or so.” He leaned back and linked his hands behind his head. “Give you both a chance to cool down a little.”
I nodded again. “Thanks, Chief.”
I got up to leave, but Perry stopped me. “Wait a minute, son. Isn’t your mother showing some of her art work here in Metropolis sometime soon?”
What did that have to do with the cost of tea in China? “Yes. It’s at the Longwell Gallery downtown, starting a week from Monday. Why?”
“Oh, I was thinking I’d go down there and see some of her sculptures. And I was hoping that you could come with me and explain them to me.”
I laughed. “Chief, I’m not sure I understand what my mother’s work means. She tells me that sometimes she doesn’t even know. Great art is intended to say different things to different people. At least that’s what she tells me when I don’t get it.”
He smiled. “That’s all the more reason for you to come with me. Alice used to tell me that I had no eye for beauty.” He looked up and seemed to peer back in time. “And I’d tell her that all the beauty I ever needed to see was in her.”
“Wow.” I swallowed – hadn’t meant to say that out loud. I searched for something to say and picked, “I wish I’d had the chance to meet her.”
“I do too, son,” he breathed. Then he stiffened, as if suddenly returning from his short trip down Memory Lane. “Learn from me, Kent. I love this paper. I have its ink in my veins. But I lost the best part of me when that drunk ran that red light four years ago. Alice was driving to a show – alone – and I was going to meet her there. But she died alone in that wreck because I was too wrapped up in some story to be where I’d told her I’d be. We were supposed to drive to the theatre together, but I let myself get stuck here and called her to tell her I’d be late and we argued over the phone and she drove in by herself and she died.”
I knew he’d intended to tell me not to neglect my own personal life for my professional life, but I could hear the guilt and pain in his voice. It sounded a lot like mine. “It wasn’t your fault, Perry. It was the drunk driver’s fault. You couldn’t have changed that. There was no way for you to make that guy not drunk, or to stop him from driving that night.”
“Her.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “The drunk driver was a woman?”
He nodded. “Had her two kids in the car, too. She got to the emergency room and they lost her there. The kids died at the scene. So did – so did Alice.” He sat back and wiped his face with his hands. “The cops said she was doing over ninety in a thirty-five zone, headlights turned off on a rainy night. Never hit the brakes, never swerved. Alice probably never saw her.”
I tried again, knowing it was in vain. “It wasn’t your fault, Perry. You couldn’t have known what would happen that night. There was nothing you could have done to change anything.”
“I know.” He exhaled some of his stress. “I know that in my mind, but my heart don’t want to listen. And you know what? Lois’ heart is like that. She isn’t responsible for Claude’s death, but she still blames herself. And you have to allow for that when you deal with her.”
I nodded. “I know that in my head, Chief.”
We looked at each other for a long moment, then his eyes changed and he made this ‘Aha’ movement with his head. “I see. You think I need to have this same talk with Lois too?”
I licked my lips. “That’s up to you, sir.” I waited a beat. “But maybe it wouldn’t hurt.”
He nodded. “I’ll take it under consideration. That’s about it, son.”
I stood and had reached for the door when he spoke again. “A lot of that goin’ on around here, ain’t it?”
I stopped and turned back to him. For a moment I felt as if he were looking down inside my soul, seeing the scars I carried from what I’d allowed Rachel to suffer. And I felt as if he were trying to tell me not to let my guilt guide my life.
He knew. I didn’t know how he knew – maybe he just knew in general and not specifically – but he knew.
I let out a long breath. “Yeah, Chief, a lot of that going around. Practically an epidemic.”
He nodded and broke the eye contact. “Just remember that hurtin’ somebody else ain’t medicine for that particular sickness.”
