Caped Fear

By Doc. Klein's LabRat <labrat@blueyonder.co.uk>

Rated PG-13

Submitted October 1999

Summary: Lois and Clark investigate a series of strange suicides
in Metropolis ... but it soon becomes clear that danger is much
closer to home than they ever imagined.

Edited and proofed by Becky, Elaine, Kath, LadyBiker and
Leapfrog. And special guest proofer, Wendy. ;) Edited for the
Archive in pg13 format by Jeanne.

Notes: Feedback welcome as always. Thanks to the Usual Suspects
for their able assistance in proofing above and beyond the call
of duty with this one and to Wanda and Nan, who helped out with
medical jargon and kept me right on hospital and ER procedure.

The poem quoted is "The Lady of Shalott" by Tennyson.

DISCLAIMER: The United Church of Salvation is an entirely
fictitious organization and completely unrelated to any other
religious group - corrupt or honest. No inference should be made
that it is connected to any actual group or persons.

***

It had already gone ten minutes past seven when Lois Lane reached
the townhouse.

Laden with grocery bags, she juggled the door keys awkwardly from
the pocket of her coat. Negotiating the lock was a little more
difficult, necessitating several muttered curses before she was
able to push the door aside with one thrust of a judicious elbow.
Ignoring its thump against the wall in her wake, she dumped the
bags onto the coat-rack shelf seconds before losing them
entirely. She shrugged quickly out of her coat, kicked the door
shut, and dragged a hand through her hair with a sigh before she
turned to switch on the living room lights.

She paused, surveying the tidy, comfortable room. Their home had
a curiously abandoned air this evening. Of course, most evenings,
she and Clark arrived home together after their day spent at the
Planet offices. On those few occasions when they didn't, her
husband would be waiting for her when she arrived, usually with
the enticing scents of whatever was on the evening's menu already
wafting through the townhouse from the kitchen.

If it were early enough, the local news would probably be on the
TV. If not, Clark's favorite piano music would be playing softly
on the CD player. If, by chance, she made it home first; some
light jazz, a little touch of blues...a soft ballad or two,
depending on her mood (and whether she was keen to influence
his)...and she'd be in the kitchen or working at her laptop, half
of her listening for the sound of his key in the lock or his
steps on the stairs or the faint swish of displaced air as he
alighted on the windowsill of the living room.

Either way, their home had never presented her with this air of
slightly sterile and cheerless welcome.

This evening, though, was different. This evening, Clark was in
Boston, one of a handful of guest speakers invited by the Boston
Association of Young Journalists to attend its annual conference.
The Kerth award-winning, internationally renowned, Daily Planet
journalist. Lois smiled.

So, Clark was in Boston. And she was alone.

Something she found curiously disconcerting all at once,
considering how many years she'd maintained the fiction - even to
herself - that she preferred things that way and how long she'd
kept to that creed. Strange how just a few months of marriage
could change a girl, she reflected, standing in the middle of the
empty living room, with those silent hours stretching before her.
Tonight, there'd be no companionable laughter or playful banter
as they cooked dinner together. No discussion of the day's events
or mulling over their latest story as they ate, or watched TV or
snuggled together on the sofa, or even forgot about all of the
above in the sheer pleasure of being together and --

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Lane!" she chided herself aloud. "It's
only *two* nights! And Boston's hardly New Krypton!"

The sound of her voice, breaking scornfully into the room's quiet
and overly loud, unnerved rather than soothed her as she'd
intended. She moved quickly across the room to switch on the TV,
turning the volume control up a notch or so higher than would
normally suit her. Katie Chang's cheerful voice pervaded the
room, like the gossip of an old friend. Lois paused for a moment,
attention reflexively fixed on the LNN city news report - one
newswoman to another - and then went to retrieve her groceries as
the subject matter began to bore her.

"And, don't forget," she reminded herself, with even more
asperity, as she headed for the kitchen, "that Clark did want you
to go along. You were the one who said you didn't want to risk
leaving the Valley Vale investigation right now. Not when it
*could* be close to breaking. Not when some trashy little hotshot
from the Metropolis Star could come along scooping us at the last
minute. 'Boston is out', you said. 'It's only two nights', *you*
said."

She paused, one hand on the kitchen's swing door. "Idiot!" she
condemned herself scathingly and, half a wail as she passed
through, "Why didn't you just go?!"

Katie had made way for Brock Thompson. Lois quickly tuned out his
sympathetic murmurs in the other room as she set about putting
away the groceries.

With everything neatly stored, she turned her thoughts to dinner,
but she wasn't hungry enough to make any effort at cooking
worthwhile. After a deal of fruitless rummaging, she finally
settled for a Continental Chicken Surprise TV dinner, and
Saran-Wrapped the unused portion. There were no longer any
dinners for one among the contents of Lois Lane's refrigerator.
It took seven minutes out of the evening as it cooked in the
microwave and she ate it sitting at the kitchen counter, still
set in its plastic tray. She followed it with a listless half
carton of Cherry Crunch ice cream, which was, perhaps more than
anything else, some indication of the maudlin levels to which her
mood had sunk.

Resorting to Cherry Crunch ice-cream didn't make her half as mad
however as the sudden despondent thought that occurred to her as
she washed up the utensils she'd used and dealt with the remains
of her meal. Namely, that she was going to miss their nightly
ritual of washing up together - her washing, Clark drying with
heat vision - a process which never failed to amuse her. And, in
truth, often gave her a sense of quiet enjoyment too; one of the
daily, small and trivial ways in which she was reminded of her
husband's uniqueness.

She paused, foot balanced on the pedal of the trashcan, frozen
over its open lid in the act of dropping in the foil tray, and
was so struck by the sheer absurdity of the thought that she
quite appalled herself. She was missing washing dishes now? She
shook her head sharply. Something, she told herself sternly,
removing her foot and letting the trashcan lid drop with a
decisive snap, was going to have to be done if Clark wasn't going
to return to a slack- jawed heap of wallowing marshmallow in
place of the wife he'd left behind.

She just didn't understand what had gotten into her. It was
hardly the first time they'd been separated since their marriage.
He'd been gone longer when Perry had sent him out to cover
Superman's International Peace Prize Award in Stockholm - and on
other occasions since. This was no different.

But, somehow, it *was* different, though she'd have been at a
loss to explain how if called to it. She'd been fighting against
this maudlin mood all day. He'd been on her mind to the point
where her lapses in concentration had culminated in Perry's
scathing demand to know why she'd just WAN'd her story to the
Berlin office, instead of the duty copy editor, and...

...and she was acting like some lovesick kid, she told herself
irritably, as the run of her thoughts began to depress her
again.

After a couple of minute's thought spent searching for something
which might distract her a time, she decided to make almond and
cherry pound cake for Clark's homecoming. It would be the first
time she'd used the recipe Martha had given her and she knew it
was one of Clark's favorite treats whenever they visited his
folks in Smallville. If she tapped into the special store of
culinary lore that Katie had left with her, the result should be
an appetizing mix of good old Mom Home-baked and Lois Lane
Special. Just what a hungry superhero needed to welcome him
home.

She set to work. As a trick to keeping her mind occupied with
matters other than her husband's absence, it seemed successful.
She was quickly engrossed as she set out ingredients, bowls and
utensils. Mixing and sifting, she began to hum softly to herself,
an old, sultry torch song, which lulled her even further. She did
think to wonder how Clark was getting on, but the thought failed
to dampen her mood this time.

A quick glance at the clock on the kitchen wall showed that, if
things were going to plan, he would be just about starting his
introductory speech by now: one down and two lectures to go. Lois
smiled and sent out a faint 'break a leg' wish to him through
whatever psychic links might lie between Metropolis and Boston
that evening. She had given him a more tangible good luck
message, of course, before he'd left. A message which had gotten
somewhat more tangible than either of them had planned, and if
Clark had been a trifle flushed and flustered when he'd finally
left for the airport, it was not entirely because he was, by
then, running almost twenty minutes behind schedule to meet his
flight into Boston.

Lois chuckled and then, as thoughts of that early morning
farewell overtook her, leaned absently against the counter,
oblivious to the liberal dusting of flour that coated her arms
and blouse...until the sharp trill of the oven timer announced
its readiness to receive her offering and jerked her rudely from
her daydream.

***

With the faintly tantalizing scent of baking cherries and apples
already beginning to fill the townhouse, Lois changed into
casual, linen pants and a well-worn, U-Met sweatshirt and sat
cross-legged before the coffee table. She took a sip of the
strong coffee she favored before she set herself to making sense
of the jumble of papers, diagrams and police reports piled
haphazardly before her.

"Okay, Mr. Valley Vale, where are you this evening?" she
murmured, picking up the first of the notes in the open file.

Valley Vale was a big case all right. She and Clark had been
nibbling at it for months. Superman had even tried to lend a
helping hand, but not even X-ray vision had been able to track
down the elusive grave robber who'd been terrorizing Metropolis
for over a year now. Actually, grave robber, Lois thought
distastefully, was something of a misnomer. She examined a batch
of glossy ten by eights, stamped 'Property of the Office of
Metropolis Medical Examiner', with a grimace. Valley Vale never
actually took anything away with him from the scene of his
violations. If you discounted the contents of his stomach, of
course.

The Metropolis PD, out of some misguided sense of public duty,
had, in the first instance, tried to keep a tight lid on the true
nature of the midnight attacks on the city's cemeteries. At
first, the only facts that even the most feisty and determined of
reporters could pry from them had been that graves had been dug
open and their contents spread liberally around the desecrated
sites. None of them had been recent interments - a small grace
that one, those involved in the clearing up considered. Most had
been plots at least half a century old.

Well-known and long held internal rivalries between the various
police departments had also taken its toll on the emerging truth.
The initial report from the forensic lab of visible teeth-marks
on the long bones of the first corpse had been scathingly
dismissed out of hand by Darren Peters, the detective in charge
of the case, as being nothing more than rat bites.

There had been more than one very public disagreement between the
forensic technician heading the investigation and the detective
before the evidence obtained from Valley Vale's second and third
visits to other cemeteries had revealed the awful truth beyond
questioning. That, somewhere at large in the city, someone was
spending his occasional evenings, when the urge struck him,
digging up graves and feasting liberally on the long dead bones
of their interred corpses before making off into the night.

Their ghoulish diner's first port of call, on that winter's
evening over a year previously, had been Valley Vale Cemetery
down in Northside. It hadn't taken long for the less salubrious
members of Metropolis' press to term him the Valley Vale Vampire,
a name that had stuck, despite Peters' attempts to shake it
loose. And that wasn't the only thing these days that the
detective was having trouble shaking. There were the increasingly
frequent and hysterical calls for his resignation, for one.
Charges of incompetence and mismanagement of the case flew at him
like sharp beaked birds, whenever he showed his face. Others
muttered ominously about paying local taxes for nothing, calls
for the case to be turned over to out of town law enforcement
agencies mounted, and, Lois heard through her own local police
sources, Peters spent more time these days fielding
butt-shredding calls from the mayor and the D.A. than he did
actually investigating Valley Vale.

Lois sympathized, to a certain extent. She knew Peters fairly
well, had had a couple of run ins with him over the years, found
him unbearably pompous and a bully to boot and she'd often been
heard to liken his investigative skills to the lumbering progress
of a dinosaur in the mating season, but he didn't really deserve
the crucifixion. There were, at the last count, over ninety
cemeteries within Metropolis city limits. Peters could hardly
stake out all of them, waiting for his vampire to show. Valley
Vale was smart enough not to hit the same cemetery twice and his
attacks, only nine in all of those months, were few and far
enough between to be wholly unpredictable. Valley Vale left few
clues, other than an imperfect dental impression and one solitary
footprint in mud that had proved inconclusive to furthering the
investigation. A common enough sports shoe, worn by millions in
the city, let alone bringing in out of town statistics.

In the absence of any real evidence, experts had rushed to give
their theories on Valley Vale's motivations. Psychologists,
canvassed both by the city and by the more unscrupulous
newspapers, had vouched forth their own pet analysis and criminal
profiles - many of them conflicting. The Metropolis Star had even
hired a psychic at one point, all to no avail. In fact, the
psychic, to Lois' eternal amusement, had concluded that the
perpetrator was in fact a genuine 'soul of the undead', the
reincarnation of a historically infamous tenth century English
vampire. Lois had seen a lot that was strange and weird in the
past four years but even she wasn't prepared to believe that
one.

Nope, Valley Vale, to Lois, was no vampire. What he was was
intriguing, slightly unnerving, but, more than that, he was
*news*. Real news. The sort of news a reporter could get her
teeth into. No pun intended. The biggest story she'd had in
months (they'd had in months) and she was determined to be the
one to break it - with her partner or without him.

She put down the gruesome photographs with a sigh. Only breaking
this one was looking less like a certainty with each day that
passed and she was aware that her assertion to Clark that that
breaking point was close had been nothing more than sheer wishful
thinking, when you got right down to it. Nothing about the case
made any sense. And she was sure, through her contacts at the
twenty- sixth precinct, that she had, at least, all of the
information available to Peters and his task force.

She spent the next two hours trudging through all the old ground
of the file. Everything was examined in detail, just as though
she hadn't gone over it a hundred times already, both alone and
with her partner. Still, she worried at it like a rat with a

***

She broke off the thought, with another glance for the nearest
photograph, and picked up a scale map of Metropolis instead. Each
of Valley Vale's previous hits was circled in red marker, a
scattering of sites that spread across the city like a chickenpox
rash. Though his attacks were irregular, he always struck on the
full moon.

Lois cast a brief, thoughtful glance out of the townhouse window.
The darkening sky was cloudy, but above them, she knew, that moon
rode in full sail. One more reason for Valley Vale to be high on
her mind this evening, prompting yet another futile and fruitless
search.

The connection with the full moon had lead to several theories
concerning Satanic practices, even theories that Valley Vale was
more than one person... a whole witches' coven stalking the
innocent metropolis. Lois wasn't convinced. But, no successful
reporter ever left even the slightest of chance stones unturned,
so they'd practically denuded the public library of all reference
books on the subject. Not to mention the Planet's reference
section. Many of them were spread in disarray on the table now,
jostling cheek by jowl with coldly sparse reports in the jargon
of forensic science.

"Valley Vale...Valley Vale...Valley Vale..." she repeated it
absently under her breath like a superstition as she studied the
jigsaw puzzle data spread around her. "Come on...come *on*..."

It was there. She knew it was there. Why couldn't she see it?

She was drawn to the map again: those red circles. As always,
they meant nothing. She supposed, if you squinted just right, you
could just about form them into a loose ring, with the attack on
St. Luke's in December forming a central pivot. She narrowed her
eyes still further, holding the map at a slight angle. She put it
down on the table again. On impulse she took a sheet of trace
paper and placed it on top, then began to connect those morbid
dots with a sweeping line of the marker, forming her imagined
arc. Halfway to completing the circle, however, she paused,
suddenly and inexplicably drawn to finish the task in a series of
straight lines rather than curved. She stared at the mismatched
route her pen had taken and then, almost absently, pulled the
paper higher to begin again. This time she made all of the
connecting lines between each red dot straight. Nor did she
connect them in the obvious arc, as she had before. The pen
moved, almost of its own violation, in a series of sharp
triangles and pointed angles to produce...

Lois stared at the design she'd created. Her eyes snapped back to
one of the reference books laid open on the table: 'Satanism and
Satanic Rites in the Twentieth Century'. Halfway up the page a
diagram, remarkably similar to the one she'd just created, had
been inserted into the text. A pentacle? Lois lifted a brow. Was
it really that simple? Her eyes traveled between map and book for
a moment and a rising tide of excitement swept over her as she
realized what she had before her. Valley Vale was hitting
cemeteries on the nearest course he could to forming a pentacle.
It was an imperfect representation, of course, no two cemeteries
were on the required direct line, but it was darned close! Too
darned close to be coincidence.

And something more.

The pentacle was incomplete. One line stayed blank, between two
points; one line only. One last hit? One last hit, from the mind
of a twisted soul, to form a blazing signal to the world of his
intentions and beliefs?

Lois tugged the trace paper clear with an inarticulate cry of
discovery and dragged the map close, almost unable to look.
There. Only one cemetery lay on a direct line between those two
unconnected points: St. Bartholomew's Garden of Eternal Rest in
City Heights.

She whacked her left knee soundly on the under-edge of the table
as she surged to her feet, sending half the table's contents to
the floor in a wild scatter of papers. She didn't even pause to
register the jolt of pain that swarmed up her leg as she swept
the living room like a whirlwind, thrusting objects into her
large, canvas purse as she went. She was halfway to the door when
she remembered the cake. Cursing, she hared through to the
kitchen and twisted the oven dial to the off position before
reversing course, snapping out lights as she went.

The slam of the outer lobby door coincided with the sudden sharp
ring from the phone by the stairs. It rang until the answering
machine cut in and then it was silent.

***

Clark Kent hated flying.

It was perhaps one of life's more ludicrous ironies, true. But to
a man who could circumnavigate the world in a matter of moments,
who passed through the petty borders which nations bound
themselves with as though they were of no import, who had been
known to visit thirty different countries in a day and without
working up much of a sweat besides, modern commercial air travel
was an exercise in frustration and exasperation, too unendurable
to be borne, with its boarding controls and regulations and its
interminably slow passage. Clark had once likened it, in an
uncharacteristic fit of pique after a particularly fractious
flight, to trying to make an important appointment, way across
town, in a Metrocab that was being driven by a blind cripple at
three miles per hour in a rush hour gridlock.

Lois had sympathized. Thanks to a brief, unexpected interlude one
year before when she had found ephemeral fame as UltraWoman and
been in possession, albeit briefly, of Superman's powers herself,
she'd even understood his resentment. Just a little. Not that
that made him feel any the better about it. Mostly, he was able
to shrug off his irritation with the knowledge that commercial
flight was an occasionally necessary evil in his life, but, every
now and then, such immutable logic counted as zilch against his
frustrations.

The eleven-forty commuter flight from Metropolis to Boston had
been just such an irritation: a series of disasters and delays
from beginning to end.

Now, standing before the cream draped Georgian windows of
Boston's prestigious Astoria hotel, Clark yawned massively and
scrubbed a hand through hair still dripping from the reviving
shower that had been his first port of call on returning to his
suite. Theoretically speaking, his muscles didn't record any
discomfort, but his mind still recalled the grueling flight,
cramped into the narrow Access American Airlines seat, even if
they didn't, and - as always - his mind won the toss. He ached
all over.

He rubbed fitfully at the tight, corded muscle at the back of his
neck and thought, wistfully, of the soothing hands of his wife.
He sighed and, more to get himself off *that* track than out of
any genuine concern, frowned briefly and scanned the streets
below him. His thoughts drifted into the background haze of his
mind as he focused all of his attention out into the night for
the briefest of instants; force of habit. But there wasn't
anything stirring out there that shouldn't be. Probably
fortunately, he thought, as he turned away with another yawn. It
wouldn't do for Superman to be visibly seen to be helping out in
Boston when so many people familiar with both of them knew Clark
Kent was attending a convention in the city.

Discarding the towel wrapped around his waist, he reached for the
fresh clothes he'd already laid out and began to dress. Tugging
with an absent hand at the knot in his tie, he sat on the edge of
the generously proportioned king-sized bed, intending to dial up
some room service.

Instead, as he reached for the elegant twenties style phone, he
paused, eyes drifting over the empty pillow beside him. A smile
softened his lips as he thought about his wife, remembering how
she'd been with him that morning, the softness of her in his arms
as they'd made love. He forgot about dialing room service. His
smile widened to a rueful chuckle. There weren't many people on
this planet that could pin Superman down to a bed and prevent him
from leaving, but his wife had pulled off that particular trick
more than once since they'd been married, he thought, amused, and
no doubt would again.

In just a few, short months she'd turned his world upside down
and he hadn't regretted a moment of it. But then, she'd been
doing that since the first moment he'd met her. It was a source
of constant wonderment to him that just one glance from her, one
word, one simple embrace, even the small, soft whispering of his
name, could render him as powerless as any man on Earth; his
strength, his powers, counting as nothing against hers.

His hand rested briefly on the embossed hotel emblem,
silk-embroidered into the pillow, and his smile faded. That he
missed her already didn't surprise him any, he could miss the
woman from one end of a room with her on the other: nothing new
there. Nor that he already regretted their decision that she
wouldn't accompany him to the conference.

At the time, the arguments against it had seemed simple enough
and whereas he'd been less than convinced by her seemingly
absolute confidence that the Valley Vale case was about to break,
it *could* have been close. Years of investigative journalism had
taught him never to underestimate a story's potential to blow
wide open on the one day in the year you chose to be looking
elsewhere for a lead. And in the one place you hadn't thought to
go looking. Losing the take to another reporter now, after all
their months of hard work, just didn't bear thinking about. And
it was only two nights away from home, after all.

Two nights without her warmth settled next to him in the small
hours of darkness. Two nights without her companionship. Two
nights without her.

He glanced over the bed again with a sigh.

"Idiot," he told himself. "She would have come along if you'd
asked hard enough."

More tempting thoughts of his beautiful, vivacious wife drifted
through his mind, which seemed to be in agreement with that
verdict.

He glanced at his watch, then, grinning, hooked the receiver from
the phone. He dialed quickly.

The soft burr of the call tone was replaced by his own voice as
the answering machine kicked in.

Clark sighed again. He waited for the beep and then left a brief
message. On consideration, as he cut the connection, he dialed a
second number, but her cellphone was switched off and he found
himself listening to another automated message. Frowning now, he
thought for a moment and then dialed for a third time. It was
late of course, but that had never stopped Lois before. If she'd
gotten the bit between her teeth on some story or other she was
likely to forget time existed. And, as Perry was fond of saying,
breaking news didn't keep office hours, so why should his
journalists? She *could* have been called in. That's what Perry
maintained beepers had been invented for - snagging reporters in
subways and on highways before they could escape his reach.

But she wasn't at the Planet either.

"You've reached the desk of Lois Lane. If you want to leave a
message..."

He took her advice, though he was sure she'd pick up the message
at home first. She probably had been working late on something,
was just now en route home.

He thought about that, frown deepening.

Maybe he'd just try their brownstone again in the next quarter
hour, he decided as he put down the receiver.

Just to be sure.

***

St. Bartholomew's Garden of Eternal Rest consisted of three acres
of softly rolling hillside and soothingly arranged oaks and elms.
It commanded an imperious position above the sprawling downtown
area of City Heights, which had sprung up around its serene
parkland in the past eighty years. Urban decay had taken its toll
of the cemetery's once stately calm. Its shrubs were overgrown,
tangled over years of neglect into dense jungle, pitted here and
there with broken toothed gravestones, many of them toppled into
the weed- choked ground, or leaning at crazed angles. Many others
had bonded into the vegetation over the years where they, and the
seekers after eternal peace they commemorated, were slowly
forgotten and left to decay.

It held an air, to the casual eye, of a sober Victorian matron,
now in her dotage, who slept fitfully in a dark, forgotten
corner. Given no more than a fleeting glance and less attention
than that by those who passed her by.

Heavy rain had swept the green slopes earlier in the evening,
leaving the grasslands lush with droplets of moisture, sparkling
like hidden jewels now under the moonlight. Rivulets of murky
water still trickled steadily from the half furled wings of
praying angels and trailed tears from the chubby cheeked faces of
putti who turned soulful eyes to the dark sky overhead. But the
storm had been brief, nothing more than a squall, already passed
and gone and forgotten. Nothing was permanent or long remembered
in this silent, atrophic world, save death.

In the darkness, the faint bell-like chimes of a monument clock
broke the silence somewhere to the west. A tinkling, ethereal
melody, punctuated by a single, mournful strike, before it too
faded.

The cloud cover lifted for a moment's grace, letting through a
weak beam of light from the moon sailing overhead. In the
darkness it was as unwelcome as a spotlight, pinning the dark
clothed figure that was currently shimmying its way up the high,
cast-iron railings on the cemetery's east side with all the grace
and expertise of a cat burglar.

Lois let out an explosive, irritated burst of air as one pants
leg caught hard on the barb of spiked wire woven into the
railings, just as she successfully reached the summit. She jerked
the cuff free, muttering a brief imprecation against the
absurdity of such security measures. Who did they think was going
to break in? Or out? Reason asserted itself in another moment.
She knew only too well why such ridiculous security measures were
necessary to guard the recently and unrecently departed. She was
breaking in, after all. And she knew it was likely - if her luck
was good and her perception of recent events correct - that
someone had very probably broken in before her too.

She glanced quickly around her with the thought, from her lofty
position, perched precariously some six feet above the ground.
But there was no sign that she had company.

Immediately below her, a wide, graveled path curved in a right
hand arc into a tasteful screening of lilac bushes. Where it ran
straight before the railings it was bordered on its opposite side
by a gently sloping hillside, dotted with the monuments and
stone-faced angels that guarded the slumber of its residents.
Nothing moved in that serene landscape, beneath the pale, often
clouded glow of the moon. Nothing broke the silence.

Lois warily adjusted her grip on the railing crossbar, avoiding
the razorsharp barbs of wire, and hitched her leg over before
lowering herself to dangle for an instant. She dropped to the
ground with a jolt, crouching momentarily as she took her
bearings. Then she reached into her purse. The Maglite felt
secure in her hand, more weapon than flashlight, as she held it
close against her thigh. She didn't switch it on, using the
moonlight instead to track her way in weaving progress through
the silent graves.

The boundary fence vanished quickly behind her, lost behind a
tangled and twisted screen of spiked bushes and half-submerged
and crumbling grave markers. She kept off the path for as long as
she could, but the chaotic undergrowth grew denser and eventually
she was forced out and onto the gravel. Progress was more
difficult here, the gravel slick and half flooded in places. She
negotiated streams she considered deeper than the Mississippi and
was in the middle of tip-toeing through one of the deepest,
muttering under her breath about new suede boots bought only the
week before and already half ruined, when the throaty,
treacle-thick chuckle floated through the still air towards her.

Straight out of a Bela Lugosi, fifties B movie.

Lois froze like a rabbit in headlights.

...Son of the Valley Vale Ripper...

...Graveyard Vampires at Dawn...

...Fangs of the Blood-Spattered Teenage Scream Queen...

Lois grimaced.

...Fangs of the Blood-Spattered Daily Planet Reporter...?

She gripped the Maglite against her thigh until her fingers
numbed and sternly told her wildly leaping imagination to cut it
out.

The sound came again, punctuated by a low burbling of incoherent
words. Lois drew in a tight breath and headed for its source,
easing her way between the stone markers to her right. One of
them, a huge, monolithic slab in monument to Edwardian
one-upmanship, provided ample cover for her to crouch behind. She
peered around its marble edge.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the deeper shadows
under the clutch of trees ahead. The figure crouched over the
grave, only a few dozen yards away, was dark clothed as she was,
nothing more than a small mound against the ground. Then the
Valley Vale Vampire lifted his head briefly, scanning the
landscape around him with the wary, darting motions of a hunted
beast and the washed out light caught the pale, angular planes of
his face as it turned in her direction. Moonlight shone like
silver pennies on the hollowed eyes. Noting it purely for the
fact that it further confirmed that her hunch had panned out,
Lois' mind simply refused to take any more notice than that of
the long thighbone that Valley Vale was currently clutching in
his left hand. Nor did it feel inclined to linger overlong on the
scatter of other bones and scraps of tattered rag that littered
the area around the open grave.

The flat, shiny stare swept over her and Lois shrank closer to
the stone, sure that she'd been seen. But Valley Vale ducked his
head again, his attention taken by his grisly task. Lois grinned
humorlessly from between clenched teeth, exhilaration rising in
her as she ducked back into hiding, setting her back to the solid
stone. She sent a brief glance skywards, in thanks to whatever
guide had lead her to her quarry, and then clenched
congratulatory fists against her thighs.

"Yes...! I knew it...I *knew* it...!"

She cut off the hiss of delighted breath, sharply.
Congratulations could wait. First things first, she fumbled in
her purse for her cellphone and hit the pre-dial button for her
local police source, before setting it close to her lips. The
soft burring tone of the connected line murmured at her ear and
was picked up as Lois shifted position to cast another quick
glance around the gravestone.

"26th Precinct. Herrera."

"Herrera? Herrera, it's Lois - " the soft hiss choked off as
Lois' eyes widened.

The site ahead of her was empty.

A laboring puff of breath exploded against her right ear.

Lois ducked sharply, all that saved her from having her skull
caved in like a ripe watermelon by the shovel Valley Vale aimed
at her head. The shovel struck the stone a millimeter shy of her
left ear as she jerked out of its path. Her head came up hard
against the sharp corner of the gravestone. She cried out as a
flashlight exploded behind her eyes and for an instant, she was
blind. Then she was looking up into the twisted rage in the podgy
face above her as Valley Vale hoisted the shovel over his head
for a second try. He was expecting her to try a frantic scrabble
away from him, of course. But Lois Lane was made of sterner
stuff. Instead of breaking sideways, as he'd figured she would,
she rolled quickly onto her left hip, brought herself up on her
elbow and swung her legs in a sweep that cut the legs out from
under her attacker and landed him hard on his side with an
explosive grunt of breath.

She was up and running an instant later. But he was quick,
unbelievably quick, at her back. She could hear him panting as he
closed on her. The cellphone was lost, squawking faintly in the
mud behind her. A frustrated grunt of impatience - frighteningly
close - gave her another bearing, enough to avoid another sweep
of the shovel as it was swung viciously after her. Ducking, she
tripped over something lying in her path and went sprawling. She
spun onto her back as he came at her again, heels skating wildly
in the churned up mud as she kicked her way clear of him. It only
registered that she was backing up against the edge of the torn
open grave Valley Vale had been feasting at when she realized she
was treading mud and slime uphill as she retreated. She froze,
eyeing Valley Vale warily, resisting the urge to glance behind
her into that dark and gaping pit.

Valley Vale lunged forward, like a pouncing beast, and bellowed
his frustration like one too as Lois avoided him with an
ungraceful slide sideways in the treacherous surface. As she came
level with him, her eyes fell on something, whitely gleaming in
the fickle light and among the mud. What had tripped her, she
realized. She grimaced, revulsion rising sour in her mouth, but
it was no time for a fit of the vapors. Grimly closing off her
mind to anything but escape, she grabbed out at the length of
long bone half buried in the churned up mud. Slick as candle-wax,
it rolled clear of her frantic fingers, setting her heart to
jolting heavily as it missed a beat, then her scrabbling lunge
for it brought it into her grasp. Clutching it tightly, she aimed
it in a straight-armed blow at Valley Vale, with the full weight
of her strength and a sudden flashflood of rage behind it.

Valley Vale shrieked like a castrated bull as the makeshift
weapon slammed into his thigh and sent him sprawling to his knees
and halfway over the edge of the pit in front of him. The
prospect of tumbling headfirst into that darkness seemed to
terrify him. It animated him in a screeching, scrabbling rush to
his feet, legs kicking a frantic dance until he found purchase
again.

Lois struck out at him a second time and missed as he skated in
the mud, almost ending nose-deep in the dirt herself before she
recovered. Regaining tentative balance, Valley Vale whirled to
face her. His balance wavered; he stepped back an uncertain pace.
The mud slope beneath him crumbled and he shifted stance
desperately to keep his footing, straddling the slope. In that
sudden moment of stillness, balance restored, crisis narrowly
averted, he looked up bullishly from beneath heavy brows at the
woman facing him and grinned, triumphant. Lois smiled back
sweetly, right into the piggish little eyes, and then aimed high,
coming up onto her knees and swinging the bone in a sudden, sharp
arc to bury it with some degree of not inconsiderable force
between the now chuckling monster's legs.

With a squeal that would have outdone a whole sty full of pigs,
Metropolis' only vampire collapsed in a writhing heap beside her,
curling himself around the throbbing center of his hurt as his
entire world filled with bright starbursts of agonizing pain.
Lois lay balanced on her elbows for a moment, breathing hard.
Then she made her way painfully to her feet. She staggered back a
pace, instinctively out of reach of Valley Vale's threshing feet.
She stared at the howling figure blankly and then, glancing
downwards, peeled her fingers distastefully one by one from the
bone and dropped it to the muddy ground. She scrubbed one palm
violently against the other with a shudder.

After a moment or so, she remembered the cellphone, still
shrilling faintly to itself a few yards away. Confident that
Valley Vale wasn't going anywhere for a time or two, she turned
her back on him contemptuously. She straightened her sodden,
mud-spattered jacket with two quick and violent tugs of her
hands, raked the dripping mess of her hair back from her face
with fingers that shook only marginally, and retrieved the
squawking instrument.

"Herrera? Lois Lane."

Something warm was trickling down the back of her ear and beneath
the collar of her jacket. She put up a hand, grimacing as she
touched the stickiness there and then moved the hand up to her
skull. She winced and felt a moment's blackening of her vision as
she met the soggy patch of matted hair. A dark drumming far back
behind her eyes heralded a full-blown headache to come. She put
the hand behind her, groping for the steadying edge of the
gravestone, and held on tight. When she was sure her voice wasn't
going to waver any, she went on, enunciating slowly and
carefully, "Herrera? You still there?"

Her conversation with the detective was brief, though twice as
long as it need have been as she worked her way through the
frequent, interrupting bursts of indignant disbelief her
announcement provoked. She was smiling when she cut the
connection.

She glanced over at Valley Vale. He'd curled himself tighter into
a fetal position and was whimpering from between clenched teeth.

"Oh, quit that," she snapped irritably.

Valley Vale stopped whimpering just long enough to blink up at
her in myopic shock, obviously hurt to the quick by her lack of
empathy, before he went back to his dirge.

Lois sighed and then stalked determinedly forward. She put her
hands on her knees and bent over the Vampire with a friendly
smile. "Okay, how about we do a deal here? *You* quit and *I*
don't kick you into that hole there and fill it in. What do you
say?"

The howl stopped, cut off as though by a knife. Valley Vale's
eyes flickered >from her to the open grave beside him and back
again. In the sudden silence left in the wake of his wailing, his
ragged breathing sounded harsh and rough. He studied Lois, as
though trying to figure if she was serious about that threat.
Lois brightened her smile a notch. Her tone sweetened. "If I
think you've been a good boy, I might just tell the cops you're
in there when they arrive. But, if I *don't*..."

Valley Vale's lower lip began to tremble. His eyes filled. His
fingers clawed slowly in the mud beside him until they turned up
a long bone buried there. He pulled it to his chest, wrapping his
arms around it like a child with a favorite teddy bear as he
began to slowly rock and croon below his breath.

Lois made a small sound of disgust and straightened. She hit the
second pre- dial button. This time the call was answered less
quickly and by someone only half as alert.

"Jimmy? Lois. Listen, grab your camera, I need you at St.
Bartholomew's Cemetery. City Heights. Right now. We don't have
much - what? Oh, I don't - hang on..." She snagged the phone
between ear and shoulder and plucked at the metal strap on one
upturned wrist. She squinted at the dimly glowing face of her
wristwatch and then returned her attention to the cellphone.
"Two-oh-four. You think you can -- " she broke off again,
listening intently. She raised a slow, measuring brow.

"Jimmy, you want to be the Kerth award-winning photographer who
took the first photos of the Valley Vale Vampire before his
arrest, or not? I mean because I can call Giles, or even
Annabel...I know they'd be only too happy to get in on the ground
floor on this, whether they've just crawled into bed after a wild
night's partying or

***

"

Her self-satisfied smile spread like cream as she realized she
was talking to a dial tone.

***

Clark replaced the telephone receiver, lips puckered into a tight
line as though he'd just bitten into something sour.

Ralph Pereira usually had that effect on him.

He beat down the soft pulse of annoyance talking with the man had
risen in him and scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He
found, not entirely to his surprise, that the hand that hadn't
been holding the receiver had clenched into an unconscious fist
against his thigh at some point during the conversation. He eased
the fingers steadily apart with a grimace.

Throughout the evening, he'd tried calling their brownstone
several times more, the Planet another three. But he got nothing
but answering machines. Lois' cellphone remained stubbornly
unconnected. As an afterthought, he'd tried Perry's private
office line and Jimmy's desk without much hope of success, and in
that, at least, he'd been rewarded. No one answered. It had taken
his final call to the newsroom before he'd found himself
unexpectedly connected to an unrecorded human voice.
Unfortunately, that voice had belonged to Ralph and he had hardly
been any the more welcome to listen to.

Ralph hadn't known where Lois might be or where she could have
gone, other than that she'd left the Planet just after six:
six-oh-three, to be precise. She hadn't been intending to go out
anywhere, certainly not to a movie or out to dinner, and had
planned to spend a quiet evening at home. This somewhat more
detailed than he'd expected answer to his query had shown an
exceptionally vivid interest in his wife's movements that had
risen Clark's eyebrows sharply before he filed it away for future
consideration.

Right then, though, he'd had more immediate matters than Ralph to
worry him.

And, as it happened, it seemed that Ralph had other things on his
mind too, things that could only be described as 'Clark's
Adventures in Convention- Land'. In short, just how many of
Boston's babes he'd been able to hit on since he'd arrived.
Clark's startled protests that there was nothing to relate had
been brushed aside as just so much pussyfooting around. Ralph
knew all about out of town conventions. Ralph had even been to
one. And, just buddy to buddy, Clark could confide in him some,
he wasn't gonna tell. Hey, as far as he was concerned, when the
cat was away, the mouse back home didn't need to know what it'd
been up to, right?

Clark had been halfway to telling him smartly that, actually,
this particular cat was much more interested in what the mouse
might be up to right then, before common sense cut in. Ralph had
been almost duty bound to put a spin on that one which Clark had
never intended to convey. He'd tried to keep a hold on patience.
But by the time Ralph had given up on dragging out some true
confessions from him and gotten around to confiding some lurid
and none too believable anecdotes concerning his own past
adventures (delivered in hushed and conspiratorial, all guys
together tones) Clark had pretty much given up on him
completely.

He'd left a brief message for Lois to call him when she could,
which was innocuous enough that even Ralph couldn't make any
capital out of it, but he had more confidence in the answering
machine to deliver it.

He sat for a moment, mulling over that conversation, then reached
for the phone again, punched in his home number and listened to a
voice he was rapidly becoming very bored with. He hung up, got
abruptly to his feet and wandered restlessly to stand before the
black sheen of the window.

"Lois..." he murmured. "Where *are* you?"

He closed his eyes, a stillness coming over him, every muscle in
his body tightening, every nerve straining to listen. Then he
grunted, shaking his head ruefully at himself. Was he really
expecting an answer?

Well...yeah, maybe he was. He couldn't deny that there was
something inside him that was attuned to his wife on a level he
could neither fathom nor explain. Something that went beyond
instinct, beyond his powers, surpassing anything and everything
he'd ever known or experienced before. Something he'd felt with
no other person on Earth. Not even his parents.

It had overtaken him gradually, the awareness of that link
between them. At first tentative, then growing, expanding,
deepening in him in rhythm with his burgeoning feelings for his
partner and entwining its way around his heart in much the same
way. He had always held her on the periphery of his awareness,
even from the first, but he was aware right from the first moment
he became attuned to it that this was something more than the
instinctive way every nerve-end in him seemed to leap to
attention and come alert whenever Lois walked into the room. More
than the way his skin tingled when she leaned across him to point
out some obvious 'error' in the story he'd just written or placed
an easy hand against his shoulder to get his attention as he sat
at his desk, or the way in which her voice sent ripples of slow
warmth coursing through him.

The unconscious awareness of her that settled itself deep in his
soul, that was something else again. Increasingly, with the
barest of flickering thought, he found himself able to pinpoint
her location at any given time and no matter where she was. As
though some vital compass point stretched between them. He could
close his eyes and there she would be, on a straight line out
from his thoughts of her and the image of her held in his mind's
eye.

For the longest time, perhaps naively but understandably so given
that he had never felt such strong feelings for any woman before,
he had simply thought it a natural extension of being in love. An
instinctive byproduct of being mentally attuned to another, of
holding them close, of knowing someone so completely and of being
completely known. He remembered how surprised he had been when it
had finally dawned on him that not everyone shared that bond with
their life partner, how awed that revelation had made him.

He remembered too, as clearly as if it had happened just that
morning, the moment when he had focused sharply on that awareness
for the first time, rather than simply accepting it at some
subconscious level. When he had realized that it was real and not
merely some romantic notion he had conjured up out of his
fantasies.

He had been sunk in despair and desperate, sitting morosely in
the middle of the cage in which the Lakes had trapped him. He had
looked across the gap - so small and yet as unbridgeable as the
deepest chasm - that separated him from Lois. And he had called
her name. Not overloud, certainly not a yell, he had simply
spoken commandingly, in a way that demanded she listen. And she
had woken instantly from the deep, miserable sleep into which
she'd drifted with no more prompting than that. As though she'd
heard him call her at a level beyond hearing, from somewhere
unconsciously tuned to him and from deep within.

Events had overtaken him at that point and it had only been days
later that it had occurred to him that he had witnessed something
at that moment that was extraordinary and awe inspiring and
perhaps just a little frightening.

It had been later that day that he had first, consciously, tried
out this mysterious, ethereal and fragile new power. From the
other side of the newsroom he would murmur her name and sometimes
she would look up from where she was pouring herself coffee or
engaged in conversation with one of their colleagues, to give him
a questioning look or tentative, half puzzled smile.

Sometimes she didn't though and he was unable to decide whether
she ever really heard him or whether it was simply that primitive
human instinct to become aware that it was being watched
intently.

But the revelation had come that afternoon. He had been sitting
at his desk, impatient and frustrated. Lois had vanished almost
twenty minutes earlier on some errand she hadn't deemed important
enough to let him in on and he wanted to get her input on the
story he'd just finished getting down on screen. Hardly thinking,
he'd reached out, determined to track her down - and to his
absolute shock had succeeded where he'd never been able to
before.

Lois ducked out on him frequently and finding her was sometimes
the biggest challenge in his day. He'd tried other ways to find
her in the past, but those were mostly doomed to failure from the
first.

His hearing was no good. How did you isolate one human heartbeat,
one familiar breath, out of the jumble and clamor of a busy
newsroom? Expanding his hearing meant he caught everything
surrounding him at an increased level, not just the heartbeat he
was hoping to find. Consequently, unless she was within what he'd
established as a limit of about a hundred paces of him, tracking
her among the glassy jangle of ringing phones, clanking copiers,
the hum of a hundred conversations, was impossible, no matter how
deeply the unique collection of breath and heat and pulse that
formed her was imprinted on his mind and heart. There were just
too many distractions.

He could isolate some. Old Mr. Jeffers up in the penthouse suite
above them had a latent heart murmur that caused an odd little
double hitch in every second breath. Gillian, down in Marketing,
suffered from asthma, which made her prone to a slightly breathy
whistle when she spoke, inaudible to any except any covertly
listening superhero. There were others too. But Lois, thankfully,
was healthy and therefore indistinguishable at a distance and
among the thundering roar of background static surrounding her.

His sense of smell could pinpoint her often, but it was a lesser
sense, and capable of distinguishing that particular concoction
of enticing scents which formed his partner only to a limited
range. His enhanced vision could find her wherever she was in the
building in the - literal - blink of an eye, but he used that
sparingly. Lois had once, jokingly, told him that she'd assumed
his frequent fussing with his glasses had been the signs of
astigmatism. She hadn't entirely been serious, he knew, but if
she had noted how frequently he played with them, then others
could too. And Clark, as always, fought hard to maintain an air
of almost banal normality when among his colleagues, fighting the
urge to do anything on a regular basis which might be noted,
filed away and consequently remarked on as a curiosity or
something out of the ordinary.

So, despite his other-worldly powers, he was mostly as helpless
as any normal man to find her at such times, his super advantage
no advantage at all. The bond between them though...that
pinpointed her accurately and unfailingly and from distances
greater than he could ever have imagined, more so if her emotions
were kicking out strongly, if she was excited or scared or
furious enough to spit. He had been able to sense her distress
and loneliness, the small, soft whimpering of a breaking heart,
even on board the ship speeding him unwillingly towards New
Krypton. And, incredibly, he now knew that Lois had heard his
reassurances that he would return, though he'd had little hope at
the time that she would.

And on *that* particular day at the Planet, beyond question, it
had led him unerringly into the bowels of the building, where
Lois was poring over a batch of old records. Nor had she looked
surprised to see him when he joined her.

But, it seemed now that whatever invisible threads bound them
together, whichever inner senses held her close within his heart,
they were transmitting nothing between Boston and Metropolis this
evening.

Perhaps Lois wasn't distressed right now?

He didn't know whether the thought cheered him or made him worry
more. Right now, she was probably tied to railway tracks,
watching the lights of the approaching train and cheerfully
confident that she wasn't in any serious trouble.

*Was* she in trouble?

He couldn't sense cheerful confidence from her either, which
might have been more worrying still.

There was, simply, nothing at all.

Should that make him feel better?

Or worse?

He sighed and pressed a forearm against the window's cool glass,
laying his forehead against the ridge of bone as he closed his
eyes, wearily.

At one time, Superman had briefly considered asking those
amazingly inventive guys at S.T.A.R. Labs to see if they couldn't
employ their talents to finding some means of enabling Lois to
contact him when all others failed. She couldn't always scream
for his help, he'd realized, when she was kidnapped, or tied to
barrels of explosives or thrown into rivers. Sometimes,
Metropolis' Villain of the Month had the foresight to gag his
captive...a sure fire and simple method of preventing Superman's
involvement in proceedings, and one which, when pushed to it, he
preferred as the restraining method of choice. It beat knocking
her over the head again. There was only so much the human skull
could stand to take. And Lois' had already taken more than most.

Still, a solution would be even better. He'd thought about the
Superman Signal Watch some bright spark had come up with before
and wondered about adapting it. He was sure that Klein and his
buddies could make something that would fit discreetly into some
piece of jewelry for Lois to wear. A bracelet perhaps, something
that could be easily activated and which would out-decibel her
screams if the need arose - a difficult task, certainly (Lois
could scream pretty loud), but not insurmountable. He'd been so
enamoured of the idea that he'd even begun to elaborate on it,
wondering about whether they could, perhaps, incorporate some
kind of tracking device in there too. Then he'd always be able to
find her, no matter where she'd gone. Or been taken.

He'd had the idiot lack of good judgement to mention the idea
only once to Lois. After which he'd wisely never mentioned it
again. Not even to his subconscious. It had been near enough a
full week before she'd forgiven him and longer than that before
she'd let him forget the lapse. He'd spent the greater part of
the remainder of that week fielding her ferocious glances and
listening to her low growls under her breath. There had been lots
of dark mutterings about 'belling the cat' and 'husbands who
think that signing a little bitty piece of paper gives them the
right to go tagging their wives like they were stray puppies
fresh out of the pound and liable to wander under the nearest
bus'. Together with lots more which he, quite frankly, hadn't had
the nerve to tune his hearing into.

He opened his eyes. A steady flicker in the darkness gave
testament to the fact that the heavy snowfall that had begun to
blanket the city earlier in the evening hadn't lessened any. The
approaching blizzard from the north seemed to have little respect
for the opinions of the LNN weathercaster, who'd earlier been
cheerfully confident that the unseasonable and unexpected squall
would have blown itself out long before midnight.

His fingers fisted into the velvet brocade of the flounced drapes
as he stared blindly into the snow-frosted street. Snow provided
good cover though. Few people would be out in the streets
tonight, braving the chill.

He sighed. It was the first admission he'd made to himself that
he intended to go searching for Lois. Even if it did mean
breaking the promise he'd given her before he'd left Metropolis.
In reality, he was honest enough to recognize, it was a decision
he'd been working his way up to all evening. Since the first time
that brownstone phone had rung out, unanswered. For a moment
though, the memory of the solemn concern in his wife's eyes just
before he'd left her held him from acting on it. Guilt could be a
more powerful restraint than any physical bonds.

He understood, very well, why she'd been concerned enough to make
him reiterate the promise they'd made to each other only a few
short months before. He shared it. After a brief moment of
indiscretion and a lapse of judgement had almost brought them to
the brink of discovery and disaster, they hadn't made that vow to
be more careful in future lightly. He knew how much their
security depended on his being careful. How risky it was for
Superman to be seen in the skies above Boston. How one, small
moment, taken recklessly without thought, could destroy the lives
they'd both worked so hard to gain; could put at risk the fragile
security on which those lives depended and shatter it in an
instant.

Secret rendezvous were out.

They'd agreed on that.

But then, he hadn't expected her to vanish on him as soon as he'd
left Metropolis' city limits.

And he couldn't just sit in his hotel room, wondering where she'd
gotten to and what disaster might have overtaken her between
office and brownstone. He knew she could look after herself, but
even the feistiest of reporters could find herself in more
trouble than she could handle, now and then - or more often than
that - and, if she *was* in trouble...This far out he'd never
hear her call for him. Never hear her scream for his help. Never
--

He shoved aside the sudden flood of bloody images that had
flashed into his mind with those thoughts.

He had to find out what had happened to her.

But he was in Boston and bound by the promise that he wouldn't
take to the air in anything that didn't have two wings and a tail
until he was safely within Metropolis city limits. Lois had been
very specific about it. Determined enough that he had been amused
by her insistence at the time. An amusement his wife hadn't been
impressed with as she'd pointed out snippily that the Astoria
was, after all, just four blocks clear of Logan Airport and what
with all those high-tech scanning and radar machines they had
these days...

He had teased her out of her concerns at the time - there was no
real danger of him being tracked by airport radar; he could fly
fast enough to beat it here or anywhere else, and he knew that
she was really simply finding reasons to feed her own anxiety,
but...

...but he wasn't amused now.

He *was* thinking hard.

And finding the glimmer of a loophole.

He had promised. But had he promised for Superman...or only for
Clark? For a moment, reviewing the conversation he'd had with his
wife before he'd left for the airport, he couldn't remember. But
increasingly, he was certain: In fact, during the entire
conversation, Superman had never actually been mentioned at all.

Q.E.D. Clark Kent was in Boston. But that didn't mean Superman
couldn't go looking for Lois.

Of course, it was a fine line in semantics that Lois was bound to
be less than impressed with, if he ever had to defend the
decision. But he had to know. And nothing less than flying back
to Metropolis to find out was going to settle him tonight.
Besides, he salved his conscience with logical sophistry, if she
was in trouble then she'd doubtless forgive him the lapse. And,
if she wasn't...

Well, they'd work on that.

Anyway, he could keep his distance. She'd never have to know he'd
been anywhere near.

Decision made, he straightened, loosening his grip on the drapes
to snick the latch clear and open up the tall windows to the
night's chill air.

***

They loaded Valley Vale into the ambulance by stretcher, still
whimpering, still jerking spasmodically. He'd refused to walk;
had expressed shrill disbelief that anyone would expect him to
try. Long before they got him there though, he'd come out of his
self-induced trance and recovered breath and wits enough to begin
ranting about lawsuits for unprovoked assault and wrongful
arrest. Considering the weight of evidence scattered behind him
in the mud, no one took much notice of these ravings.

On the edge of the bustle of activity that had invaded the
cemetery's calm a bare thirty minutes after Lois' call to him,
Detective Herrera watched the performance. He beckoned one of the
uniforms keeping watch over the grave, now swathed with streamers
of yellow ribbon marked 'Police line - do not cross', and
murmured a few brisk words in his ear. The officer nodded and
strode, hard-faced and narrow-eyed, for the ambulance, hitching
himself into the interior just before the EMTs slammed the doors
shut. The ambulance shrieked a trail into the night.

Herrera glanced across his shoulder at the dark pit behind him.
As always, he was struck by the snapshot unreality that took over
a crime scene once it was discovered. High banks of arc lights
towered on stick-insect tripods over the grave. Beneath their
sterile, unforgiving light, all sins were blasted into white-hot
discovery, no smallest detail left unknown. Figures in white
coveralls bustled here and there; uniformed cops stood guard
behind the lines of fluttering tape, steely eyes on the handful
of spectators who clustered on the barrier's other side. What
always spooked Herrera though was the silence. With this many
people around, it should never be this silent, he thought
soberly, as he always did. But his somber, heavy-jowled features
- which, in the past, one of his more astute girlfriends had once
likened to resembling 'a Basset Hound on Prozac' - showed none of
the emotions that flitted through his mind as he surveyed the
makeshift lab and its kneeling acolytes.

Valley Vale had been interrupted before he'd gotten down properly
to his midnight feast. This time. He'd left enough mementos
however to convince anyone beyond doubt that they did - finally -
have their man. The similarity to other sites he'd visited was
marked and Herrera carried images darkly in his mind of those
other sites, other feeding places, where grisly leftovers had
been scattered plentifully around graves cleft open by the
cannibalistic little pervert. His lips twisted, forming a thin
line of distaste.

He turned his back on the forensic team, shrugging the collar of
his coat up against the back of his neck as he shivered. He swept
the hillside until his steady, unperturbed gaze fixed on the
small tableau of figures over to the right of the crowd. His look
soured. Lois Lane was perched on the table top of a crumbling
Victorian monument. One hand held an antiseptic soaked pad to the
right side of her head as she absently fended off the
ministrations of a green coated figure with EMT stenciled on its
back and kept her attention on the burly cop facing her. The
wound didn't appear to be slowing her down any as she exchanged
heated comments with both men. Herrera recognized the cop right
off. Detective Darren Peters had been in charge of tracking down
Valley Vale >from the start - and making a poor job of it.

Caught between the scowling cop, the increasingly frustrated EMT,
and the righteous, holy wrath of his colleague, a youngster
wearing a camera slung around his neck and an expression that
hovered between intense excitement, flashing anger, and the wary
wish to be elsewhere, stood watching the proceedings. His head
swiveled like a spectator at a tennis match as he tried to keep
all of them in view at once, looking increasingly out of his
depth. Herrera recognized him vaguely as a Planet photographer
he'd seen before, mostly in the company of either Lois or her
partner, Clark Kent. But the kid's name currently escaped him.
Herrera sighed and began to make his way carefully up the
slippery slope.

"Hey, Herrera, can't you call off the dogs?" Lois flashed him an
irritated glance as he reached them and then turned it on
Peters.

"Not my case, Lois."

"Just doing my job, Lane," Peters said as a quick punctuation to
that, with a dark, warning 'butt out' glance for his colleague.
"Like I told you, you give me a statement, you get outta here.
Simple as that."

"And, like I've told *you*, I've already given a statement!"

"So you did." Peters glanced sourly at a notepad in his hand. "If
we published this instead of putting it in the Valley Vale file
it'd get you a Doug Lyndsay Fellowship Award for Original
Fiction."

A brief, upward flicker of Lois' left brow was her only comment
on this remarkable showing of literary awareness, from a guy
she'd been confident up till then could barely read...not
counting the funnies.

"Well, it's the only statement you're getting. And, talking of
stories, if you'll excuse me..." Lois hitched herself abruptly
from her perch and gathered up her purse and coat. The EMT made a
reaching movement in her direction and then held up abrupt,
surrendering hands as she flashed him a single, dark glance. He
picked up his kit and walked off stiffly with a shake of his
head. Lois dismissed him instantly to continue, "I've got a
deadline to -- "

"Forget the deadline." Peters shifted his weight, which wasn't
inconsiderable, effectively blocking her as she tried to pass
him. "I wanna know how you figured this out."

Something flickered in the eyes of the Planet's finest reporter.
Lois slumped back against the support of the stone tablet,
putting a hand abruptly to her head and closing her eyes. She
moaned softly and then looked around anxiously, after the
retreating EMT.

"You know...this headache's getting worse. Maybe I *should* do
like that EMT said and take a ride to the hospital. I'm feeling
kinda...woozy."

Peters' lips twisted. "Sure. Let's go. I'll tag along. You can
give me a statement while you're waiting in ER for three hours to
get seen."

Lois scowled, gave up the diversion, making a remarkably swift
recovery, and opened her mouth on a protest that was pre-empted
by the detective.

"Either way - here or down at St. Luke's - you tell me what went
down here, tonight, Lane. Or you and whatever story you think you
got ain't hitting the presses."

"I *told* you - "

"The truth! Not some dumb-assed fairy story!" Peters roared,
losing patience.

Over by the crime scene, several heads turned in their direction.
The EMT, halfway to the police barrier, didn't join them. He'd
already dealt with the woman. In fact, he considered it a miracle
he wasn't the one doing the yelling. Back at the graveside, Lois
fixed Peters with an imperious Medusan glare that might have made
lesser men than a hard-nosed Metropolis cop back off rapidly. And
frequently had. Peters, however, was immune. He lifted a brow and
then his arm, one flick of his wrist showing off a cheap Timex,
dressed in a threadbare brown strap.

"Time's ticking, Lane. Don't know how long we can keep the lid on
this one and I'm almost sure I heard the words 'Metropolis Star'
on the other side of that perimeter line when I came through.
Whadda ya say? Still thinking about that deadline...?"

Lois' scowl deepened on him. "Like I said, I had a hunch."

"A hunch? Lady, we been tailing this creep for near enough a year
an' he never left us jack one of a clue yit. An' you're trying to
tell me *you* figured it out all on your own?"

"Hey, what can I say? My mother fed me a lot of fish as a kid."
Lois gave him a sharp smile and then, as he stared her down
coldly, "Oh, what? Can I help it if my brains work without the
benefit of a paid vacation? I had a hunch, okay? You know...just
like the cops on TV?"

"Oh." Peters nodded. "Gee, I love those TV cops too. You ever see
that bit where they arrest a witness for failure to co-operate
with an ongoing homicide investigation? That's the part I like
best."

Lois folded her arms. "Homicide? Far as I know Boris Karloff back
there hasn't killed anyone..." she let it trail, an implicit
question in the words, dangling like bait.

Peters' face clenched. "No comment."

Lois' eyes lit. "So, he *did* - "

"I said 'no comment' an' that's what I meant, Lane."

"Oh, come on, just one little attributable quote, detective. Or
unattributable, if you like." She rummaged in her purse,
producing a tape recorder, which she thrust forward almost into
his chest as she eyed him interrogatively. "Who'd Boris kill?"

Peters' confident, bullying air had melted in a fraction of an
instant to the chagrined, hunched shouldered stance of a man who
realized he'd put his foot in it big time. Herrera hid a smile.
"Darren, I think the Doc wants a word."

"Huh?" Peters glanced around at him and then grasped the thrown
lifeline like a drowning man. "Oh! Oh, yeah! I'll be right back.
Keep her here," he added the rough warning over his shoulder as
he strode hastily away from them. "I ain't finished with you yit,
Lane."

Herrera watched him go.

"What's his problem anyway?" asked Lois, tightly.

"Guess he's none too keen on civilians breaking his big case,"
Herrera said dryly. He turned back to face her. "How's the
head?"

"What? Oh, it's nothing." She took away the antiseptic pad
distastefully. "Just a scrape. So, tell me, Herrera, who did
Valley Vale kill?"

Herrera chuckled. "Uh-uh, more than my life's worth. Try calling
Information."

Lois stared at him sourly.

"Palmer!" Herrera yelled, glancing around. "Palmer, get over
here! Escort Miss Lane and her...friend here to the gates, will
you?" he added as a young uniformed cop hurried over in response
to the summons.

"But, wait a minute - "

"Bye, Lois."

"Herrera!"

"This way, Miss Lane. Sir." Palmer ushered them before him,
ignoring her protests.

"Wait a minute." Lois balked and shook off the lightly
restraining grip he took on her arm as she turned back. "Hey,
Herrera!"

He was already halfway down the slope. He stopped, turned back
wearily. He knew it. He *never* got off that lightly. Not with
Lois Lane. He gave her a smile set in concrete for all that it
was sweet as ten-year-old syrup. "Yes, Lois?"

She smiled winsomely back at him. "I guess a lift uptown's out of
the question?" She waved the tape recorder at him. "Deadlines...?
And, since Peters did hold us here...I mean, you wouldn't want
the Planet to raise questions about obstructing the press in
legal pursuit of their constitutionally held rights to - "

"You didn't bring your car?" Herrera quirked a brow at her,
"How'd you get way up here without your car?"

"Oh, please, what'd you think I am, a few dozen rungs short of a
ladder?" Lois snorted. "Sure, I'm gonna run up here in a pale
silver Jeep and park it right outside some locked cemetery gates,
where any passing nosy cop could see it."

Herrera looked just a little sheepish. Admittedly, she had a
point.

Lois might just have had a hint of color staining her cheeks now
too. She ducked her head as she stuffed her tape recorder firmly
into her purse and busied herself in its depths for a long
moment. Actually, she did feel pretty dumb about that Jeep.
Silver? What on earth had possessed her? What had she been
thinking? A silver Jeep - for a woman who spent half her life on
stakeout or tailing down suspects to interrogate - could she have
picked a color more unlikely to blend into the background? Only
if she'd fitted it with a portable spotlight. Now a nice, dark
green would have been better. Wouldn't it? Or black. Black was
good. Except...well, she'd liked the silver. It was flashy.
Smart. It said things. Yeah, Lane, a snide inner voice (which had
a curiously deep masculine depth to its tone) snorted. It says,
'Hey, look, we're being tailed!' Lois shook her head slightly,
dislodging that mocking echo.

"You walked all the way up here from uptown?" Jimmy was looking
curiously at her.

Lois rolled her eyes. "No, I took a bus up to Lexington and
walked the last few miles. Are we going to stand here all night
discussing my travel arrangements?" she demanded, zipping the
purse decisively and slinging it across one shoulder. She folded
her arms tight.

Herrera looked pointedly to her companion. Jimmy looked
discomfited. "I brought my car," he said defensively. He glanced
at Lois and then back at the detective, suddenly looking
uncertain as to which direction he should be defending the
decision from. He shrugged. "It's just blocked in by all those
emergency vehicles."

Herrera followed his pointing finger to where the red Mustang was
backed up against the fence and pretty much surrounded. He
sighed. "Palmer."

"Yes, sir." Palmer nodded smartly. "Right away, sir. Uh, your
car, sir?"

"My car." He tossed him the keys and frowned sternly at the
reporter. "You owe me one, Lane."

Lois waggled her fingers at him before grabbing her photographer
by one arm and hustling him on at a run for the gates as Palmer
hurried to catch up.

Herrera chuckled before he went to break the news to Peters that
his star witness had ducked out on him.

As he came down the slope and saw the bulky cop arguing with the
medical examiner's assistant he laughed even harder. Sometimes,
it seemed like there just weren't any perks to his job at all.
But now and then...

He schooled his face to something approximating solemnity as
Peters, catching his soft laughter, looked up at him and
scowled.

***

High above the city, the Man of Steel flew steadily.

It was a cold night, colder still on the city heights, with frost
on the air and an unsteady, there-and-then-not drizzle that would
have chilled most anyone else to the bone. Superman, of course,
registered no discomfort, and might well not have done even if
his strengthened body could. He had other, more immediate things
on his mind.

The towers and spires of the city's skyscape whipped past him in
blurs and streaks, like the markers on a slalom ski-slope as he
wound his way through and between them. He barely noticed the
familiar landmarks as they flashed by and fell behind him. His
head turned in a slow arc, in tune with his enhanced vision as
the X-ray sweep steadily quartered the city below him, section by
methodical section.

As it turned out, leaving his hotel room hadn't been that much of
a risk after all. A careful scan of the area surrounding the
building for a range of five blocks had confirmed his suspicions
that the unfriendly weather would help him out there. Boston's
residents had abandoned her streets. Nevertheless, he'd taken off
from the ledge of his room window at a speed that would have
shown as nothing more than a fading blur to any watching human
eyes.

His first port of call had been their townhouse. His habitual
scan of the street below him had satisfied him that there was no
one walking past the building, nor any idle eyes watching the
street from the windows of the buildings opposite the townhouse.
No one to see him enter the home of Mr. and Mrs. Clark Kent from
the vantage point of the living room window, should he choose to.
Instead, he scanned the house itself. And found only darkened,
unoccupied rooms and an empty bed that showed no signs of having
been slept in.

The fact that Lois' silver Jeep Cherokee had been parked outside
hadn't given him cause for concern. In fact, it had been a small
solace. At least she'd reached home safely and hadn't been
ambushed on her way back from the Planet, which had begun to be
his concern. Wherever she had vanished to, it seemed likely that
she'd gone of her own free will and, wherever it had been, it had
been somewhere where taking the Jeep was a bad idea.

Which could mean she'd gone practically anywhere, he'd thought
dryly and he'd smiled quietly to himself as he'd lifted higher,
beginning to widen his search. The Jeep's complete impracticality
was still a source of lightweight tension between them, something
he rarely passed up the chance to tease her about. His smile
widened as he remembered their very first argument on the
subject.

It had been in his first week at the Planet. Lois had...mildly
irritated him. Again. About what he couldn't quite recall now.
But, whatever the source, it had made it a matter of pride to get
back at her. He'd thought he'd spotted his opportunity when he'd
followed her down to the underground parking area and seen the
Jeep. A silver Jeep. He'd raised a brow. Didn't she think a
silver Jeep was a little...well, ostentatious for an
investigative reporter who spent a major part of her time either
on stakeout or undercover, trying to get the bad guys? Lois,
clearly taken aback as she slid into the driver's seat, had
immediately been on the defensive. The Jeep was...stylish. It
said something.

"Yeah, it says, 'Hey, look, guys, we're being tailed!'" Clark had
snorted derisively.

Lois had protested that with a diatribe which had lasted a full
ten minutes. Clark had counted it to the second on his internal
clock as he stared out of the side window and pretended
disinterest.

"And vanity plates, Lois?" he'd interjected recklessly into her
first pause. "I mean, come on, you might as well just hang flags
from the rear windows! No wonder half the villains in this city
track you down!"

Lois had spluttered valiantly, but clearly had no answer for that
one. She'd contented herself with a frosty glare in his direction
and a few of the vilest epithets in her repertoire, hurled at an
unsuspecting elderly gent in a beat up Zodiac who had had the
temerity to signal his intention to enter the same lane as she
was in. Then she'd settled into a sullen silence for much of the
remainder of the afternoon.

Clark chuckled softly with the memory and then sobered as he
settled into his careful watch of the city below him.

He was in luck. He'd barely begun to scan the city when he found
his quarry in a dark colored car, being driven by a uniformed
cop. He frowned, drifting lower. Recognizing the vehicle license
plates though, he figured that it was probable that his wife
hadn't gone and gotten herself arrested, poking into something
she wasn't supposed to, after all. Herrera was no fool. He'd have
called for backup first. A flicker of a smile passed the Man of
Steel's lips. And would have needed it too. Lois Lane didn't
lightly let anything get in the way of the press' need to know.

The interior of the car was in darkness, but his enhanced vision
made it brighter. Lois was in the back seat, huddled up against
the side and hunched over the notepad resting on her knees as she
wrote feverishly. Superman recognized the set look in her face
only too well. His partner was getting down a take. Beside her,
Jimmy dozed fitfully, chin on chest, hands clutching protectively
at the camera slung around his neck. Superman let his gaze linger
on Lois again. She looked just fine. A bit disheveled,
maybe...actually pretty grubby, which was unusual enough in
itself, but unhurt, certainly.

They'd been working on a story. That much was obvious. And Lois
had obviously been in the thick of it to judge by the state of
her. Another smile. Why was he not surprised? With concern now on
the wane, reassured, a reporter's natural curiosity overtook him.
What story?

A faint wail of sirens caught at the edge of his hearing and he
lifted his head. He quickly picked out the fire truck as it
negotiated the narrow alleyways on Curtis Avenue. Heading for the
waterfront. He caught the thick plume of smoke. Warehouse fire.
That was it, of course. Bound to be. And, if he knew his partner,
she'd been crawling around right in the thick of that smoke and
heat. Which explained her appearance some. He shook his head as
he listened intently for a moment to the urgent splutter of radio
talk that was reaching him faintly from the alley. The fire was
already well in hand by the fire crews in attendance. It was
coded as CNPR - a Commercial blaze with No Persons Reported on
site. In other words, the building had been confirmed as empty
and no one needed rescuing from the blaze. And, with a third
truck already on its way, there was little need for Superman to
lend a hand. Everything was under control.

Turning his back on the docks, he followed the car instead, on
its circular route through the empty city streets. He quickly
guessed its destination. He increased his speed marginally to
overtake it and landed lightly on the high ledge of the Planet
building to watch as it drew into the curb below the famous iron
globe. Briefly, as Lois left the car and began to hustle Jimmy
impatiently into the building, he willed her to look up and see
him. One small, shared glance, one brief meeting of their eyes,
would have gone a long way to dispelling the distance that Boston
had put between them and the longing for her that distance had
seeded in him.

She didn't.

A soft sigh escaped him as she vanished into the lobby, Jimmy in
tow.

But he'd found what he'd come looking for, after all, and there
was no reason to linger. He turned, on his way to lifting off the
ledge, and found himself eye to baleful eye with the glowering
figure crouching at his side. He smiled.

"Well, anyway," he told the gap-toothed gargoyle watching him,
"she looked just fine to me. How about you?"

It appeared that the gargoyle held no opinion on the matter. Or,
if it did, it wasn't willing to share it with him any.

Superman's smile widened as he gave it a brief pat against its
flat-eared head and then rose smoothly into the air above it. He
freewheeled lazily around and out on a heading for Boston and
then paused, turning his head to where the rosy glow of dancing
flames cast a rippling reflection on the waterfront.

The third truck had been misdirected. It was on the other side of
town now, would take another thirty minutes to reach the scene,
and, meantime, that fire was sparking its way towards other
buildings in the area, fanned by a sudden, stiff rising breeze
coming off the water.

A splutter of radio talk reached his ears and abruptly upped the
ante. Control had just been in contact with the owner of the
warehouse. The stock was toxic, highly flammable paint and
decorating supplies. Caution was advised and the fire code had
been upgraded to MUHAZ. MUtual aid required - HAZardous materials
on site. If any of those supplies blew before the blaze could be
safely doused, a lot of Metropolis' fire heroes were going to be
directly in the line of greatest risk.

Superman glanced back across one shoulder briefly before he
sighed.

Lois was just going to kill him when she found out he'd been in
Metropolis fighting warehouse fires this evening.

He shrugged. And then grinned. But...he guessed a little
misdirection wouldn't hurt any. A touch of sleight-of-hand to
persuade folks Superman was still in town.

He headed for the warehouse.

***

At just a moment or so past three fifty five a.m., the Astoria's
main bar was near enough deserted.

At the far end of the service counter, the bartender polished
glasses to a pristine clarity with a judicious cloth and kept a
weather eye on his solitary customer, just in case he needed a
refill.

He hadn't for a while though.

Nor did he seem in the market for that other mainstay of the
bartender's bible: sympathetic conversation.

Clark sat on the barstool, idly staring into the tall, frosted
glass cradled in one hand and wishing he were somewhere else.

Acres of gleaming chrome and steel banisters and stair-rails in
swirling, art deco curves linked the bar's three levels.
Classical Muzak tinkled discreetly off in the distance. The
hotel's owners had worked hard at creating the right ambiance of
quiet congeniality. Clark had other words for it. Sterile and
soul-less were just two of them. He hated hotel bars; counted
himself fortunate he rarely had to spend time in them.

Right then, he could think of several other places he'd rather
have been spending time in. All of them had Lois in them.

Freed from his concern over her, he'd still found himself
restless and unready for sleep on his return to the hotel. The
shower he'd needed to rid himself of the grime he'd picked up at
the fire had only chased tiredness further from him and his mind
was over occupied with the story his wife and Jimmy were working
on. It hadn't been the warehouse after all, he'd established.
None of the fire crews in attendance had spoken to or seen any
reporters at the scene, and he knew that Lois would have gotten
an interview with at least one of them if she'd been there.

Intrigued, he'd considered calling to find out what they were
working on. But he knew that they'd be working under pressure of
the morning deadline to get the story out and how unwelcome a
call from a mildly curious partner would be. Still, his mind
wouldn't let it go. Finally, he'd gone downstairs to the hotel
lobby in search of a cafe that might be persuaded to serve him up
a half decent cup of coffee and a quiet corner where he could
wind down a touch before trying for sleep again. But the bistro
was shuttered and only the neon- coated calm of the bar provided
an escape from his room and a coffee maker that, he'd already
discovered, turned most brands of coffee into something
approximating swamp-mud.

At such a late hour, he'd been surprised to find even that still
in business, but the bartender - who'd cheerfully owned up, with
a half-abashed, college- kid smile, to the name of Jordan - had
confided that, with the Astoria playing host to three conventions
that weekend, the management would've been crazy not to keep the
bar open round the clock. Sure, it was abandoned now, Jordan had
gone on, in response to Clark's skeptical glance around the
deserted bar; most of the convention guests were out hitting the
local hotspots back in town. But when they closed around four
thirty...and if the Illinois Union of Stationary & Office
Accessories Reps. proved as thirsty as they had the previous
year...well, things were going to be heating up pretty soon.
Considering the shuttered bistro, Clark concluded wryly that the
management figured the Illinois USOAR weren't going to be much
interested in drinking coffee.

He glanced at his watch and noted that he had around twenty-five
minutes to make himself scarce. Sharing a bar in the early hours
with a tall glass was depressing enough. Sharing it with around a
hundred exuberant sales reps. was something even worse.

He took another sip of his drink, aware that his
uncharacteristically critical and anti-social mood was more a
product of his wishing he were back in Metropolis than anything
else.

"Hey, Kent...never would've figured you for a barfly."

Clark turned his head at the sudden, deep boom of a recognizable
voice from behind him and smiled, genuinely pleased to see the
tall, chubby figure of Mike Atwell join him at the bar. Atwell, a
graying African-American in his late sixties, was Director of the
BAYJ. He reminded Clark - and more than a few others who'd met
him over the years, even when he'd been a good few years younger
and carrying less poundage to boot - of a kindly grandfather
straight out of a Hans Christian Anderson story, with his
twinkling eyes set in round, Pillsbury-dough cheeks and his
chunky, lumbering body. But the outward softness of his frame hid
a hard-nosed bloodhound when it counted. Retired now, he'd been
an astute and brutally honest journalist in his day, with an
impressive pedigree to match his outgoing, easy manner and Clark
already counted him a friend. So, he took no offense as Atwell
went on, cheerfully laying an elbow to the bar and tilting his
head to study the tall glass by Clark's hand.

"So, what's all this? Late nightcap? Early hair of the dog?
Secret vices you didn't declare on your resume?"

"Spritzer and lime." Clark held up the glass briefly in mock
salute. He didn't ask Atwell any similar questions. The man drank
bourbon like another would drink mineral water - and with about
as much effect. A legacy from a reprobate youth spent in the
Navy, Atwell had confessed with a grin as he'd taken note of
Clark's curious glance at their first meeting, during which he'd
downed six doubles in the space of thirty minutes. Given his
habits, finding him sharing the solitude of the bar with him in
the graveyard hours of the morning was probably one of the least
surprising things Clark could think of. In fact, if he were going
to be surprised at anything, it would be that Mike hadn't turned
up sooner.

Atwell gave him a sour glance. "Something suspicious about a man
that haunts a hotel bar in the early hours and doesn't drink
liquor," he judged with a sniff. He beckoned the bartender and
glanced Clark's way as Jordan approached with professional
celerity. "Another?"

"No, I'm okay, thanks."

"Bourbon, thanks." Atwell told Jordan. "Make it a double. Hold
the rocks. Hold the water. Hold everything but the bourbon. So,"
he returned his attention to his prize speaker as Jordan nodded
and went to attend to his order, "what's the story then? Out of
town blues?"

He paused, gave Clark another speculative look and then nodded
his head in ponderous thought, as though a puzzle had just been
solved. "Ah...still haven't hooked up with that wife of yours
yet, huh?" He shrugged as Clark glanced at him. "Front desk says
you haven't had any calls incoming. Doesn't have you making any
calls back to the big city that last any longer than it takes to
hook up to a message service either. Except for one - to the
Daily Planet and you made one more answerphone call home after
that, so I figure it wasn't your wife you were talking to there
and that whoever you *were* talking to didn't know where she'd
gotten to. Hey, I used to be one of the best this old town could
muster, remember?" He shrugged again as Clark raised a brow. "I'm
curious, so sue me. It's a natural hazard of the profession. Wait
till you get to retirement age and see if your pitbull instincts
fade out. Anyway, I just figured I'd ask when I was passing,
since you seemed a touch...concerned, earlier."

Clark paused, but he could hardly tell Atwell that his concerns
on that score had been taken care of. "No, no calls, yet," he
agreed simply. "I'm sure she's okay though. Your seminar go
okay?" he asked, changing the subject. The sleight of hand was
helped by the arrival of Jordan with Atwell's order.

Atwell took his first sip of the whiskey and nodded. "Sure.
Actually, they paroled us early," he confided. He cast a brief
glance out into the blackness pressed up against the high picture
windows on the far side of the room. Dull thumps of whirling gray
snow hit briefly against the panes before swirling off into the
dark.

"Half the attendees failed to show anyway. Main Street was jammed
tight for half the afternoon, I hear. Most of 'em probably just
gave up and turned back for home instead. Should pick up tomorrow
though. I called the Weather Center this afternoon; they're
expecting it to ease up sometime early tomorrow morning. This
morning," he corrected himself, with a glance at the clock behind
the bar.

"Good," Clark murmured, casting a look at the windows too.

Atwell eased himself around on his bar-stool to face him and
quirked a brow upwards. "Now, why do I get the feeling that
wasn't entirely expressing concern that the BAYJ get enough
numbers in to justify this little jaunt instead of being
bankrupted by rain checks?"

"What?"

Atwell grinned. "Those flights looking likely to be cancelled
starting to bug you, huh?"

Clark gave him a troubled look. "Well - "

Atwell's grin widened. "Triple A say they got no plans to
re-schedule. Not just yet anyway. I called them too. Figured
you'd want to know."

Clark looked even more uncomfortable. "Thanks."

"Hey, don't mention it. I know how much of a rush you're in to
get back to the bright lights. Guess being stuck in a 'backwater'
like this one is tame for a big city reporter."

"Mike - "

Atwell chuckled, waving him down. "Ah, forget it, Kent, I'm just
foolin'. Hey, I know the drill. Used to be a proud new husband
myself way back when." He flashed that wide grin at his friend
again and then added, genially, "So, what about...Lois? Lois," he
pursed his lips as Clark nodded affirmation, "cute name. So, you
reckon she's pining for a reunion, same as you are, huh? Betting
she's sitting at home ticking down the hours till your plane gets
in?"

Clark smiled, thinking again of his earlier visit to Metropolis.
"Lois? Doubtful. Right now she's probably chasing down leads on
some hot breaking story."

"Ah." Atwell nodded sagely into his glass. "Jealous, huh?"

Clark laughed. "Green like Kryptonite," he confessed.

***

No truly great metropolitan newspaper ever really sleeps. At
whatever hour for others might herald the close of their business
day, its lights may dim, the clatter of its tickertape fade to a
listless tick, its offices empty, its computers run on downtime,
but it never really slips into slumber. Like a sleeping dragon,
it keeps one hot, suspicious eye on the world and its tail lashes
gently as it dozes, eager for battle and keen to respond to the
clarion call to arms.

The offices of the Daily Planet, viewed in the after midnight
hours, were no exception. Though activity was muted, far from the
bustling, oft-times frenzied, clamor of the day, the stillness
was illusionary. In the bowels of the building, perpetual in
their motion, the great, heavy printing presses rumbled smoothly
and relentlessly towards another dawn, another day and another
early edition.

On the upper levels, in the newsroom itself, where copy was typed
and editorial decisions made, there was darkness. But even here,
light broke shallow pools in the shadows and studious phantoms
flitted back and forth among the bookcases and conference rooms.
Occasionally they even passed by the slim figure that sat pertly
at its desk and tapped vigorous prose on the computer keyboard
before it. But for all the attention that Lois gave those
infrequent visitors, she might as well have been alone.

A faint crease of concentration furrowed her brow and her eyes
never left the blue illumination of her screen. She hadn't even
paused to remove her jacket on entering the office; had simply
swept in, all rush and bustle, dumped her purse at her feet and
launched into her take, with barely an absently grunted greeting
at a departing colleague who passed her en route to the
elevator.

She had taken a moment out of the frenzied capture of her story
only once when she'd collared Jimmy for an update on the progress
of the prints he was developing. One glance at his grinning face
as he'd sped past her desk, intent on his own private frenzy of
activity, had been enough to reassure her that the Planet's early
edition would carry pictures of the most wanted man in Metropolis
to accompany her take. She'd flashed the photographer an
answering grin and then sunk back into her own world.

She was oblivious to the slow shifting of gears as the Planet
warmed up to another day, as the activity around her became more
intense, as the offices filled and darkness lifted and coffee
began to percolate in the tireless rituals of the paper's world.

"Whoa, The King save us...Lois! I thought mud monsters from the
Black Lagoon had invaded us! Is there really one of my best
reporters under all that gunk?"

"Hi, Chief." Lois barely took her eyes from the computer screen
to acknowledge the arrival of a curious Perry White at her
shoulder. He looked her over again and then shook his head. It
was probably wiser not to ask. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Well, assuming you haven't gone and taken up mud wrestling as a
hobby...there some reason you're in this early? Aside from the
fact that Clark's outta town and you got nothing better to do
with your nights?" he added, wryly.

The question might just have held the merest hint of complaint.
These days the any hour, all hours, dedication Lois Lane had once
focused on her career had slipped some. Where, once, the sight of
her hammering at her keyboard in the dawn's early hours would
have provoked no comment, it was now rare enough to be remarked
upon. Not that White blamed her much for that attitude change,
but - just sometimes - an Editor in Chief with his mind more on
his paper than his employees and friends could regret its
passing.

"Maybe I should arrange for Kent to work more out of town
assignments," he murmured and then, as Lois gave him a dry
sideways glance, "What's so all fire important anyhow? We got a
scoop?" He leaned forward to peer hopefully at the developing
story on the screen. "Valley Vale?" He scanned further, eyes
widening. "Jumping Jehosaphat! You snared the Vampire? Well, how
in the King's name you manage that?"

Lois shrugged. "Staked him out."

White snapped her a glance and saw, to his amusement, that she
had offered the explanation in all seriousness.

"I see." He leaned closer, tone turning dry. "An' did he, you
know," he flapped his fingers in a flying motion, "try turnin'
into a bat first? Or did you string some raw onions round his
neck and get a white horse to dance on his grave?"

That got her full attention. "What?" She frowned up on him.

Perry chuckled. "Never mind."

"Here we go! Hot out the soup and looking good!"

Jimmy fairly bounced down the stairs to Lois' desk and dumped a
pile of eight by ten color prints beside her.

"This him?" White picked up one as Lois took another. "Doesn't
look like much, does he?"

Lois grimaced. "In the flesh. And he wasn't. These are good,
Jimmy," she added thoughtful praise.

"Worth getting dragged out of bed at two in the morning for," he
agreed with a grin.

Perry studied the photo another moment and then frowned, bringing
it closer to peer at it intently. He tilted it to catch the light
on a different angle. "What is that he's holding there?" he asked
finally.

Jimmy's pleased grin slipped a notch. He caught Lois' sudden
glance and then met his boss' enquiring eyes. "Uh...well..."

"Near as we can tell, left female femur," Lois rescued him,
nonchalantly. She frowned at the line she'd just typed and then
deleted half of it.

Perry took his eyes from the print abruptly to stare at her. "And
you included it in the shot?" He deepened the stare, reproving.
"Hell's bells! Jimmy...!"

"He wouldn't let go!" Lois protested, keying down to a new
paragraph. "What were we supposed to do? Forget about the
picture?"

"Well..." Perry sighed.

"Anyway, Jimmy blurred it best he could." She turned her head
briefly, tilted it to view the print in his hands with narrow
eyes. "No one'll even notice it, trust me." She patted him
confidently against the arm and returned to her take.

Perry sighed again. He put down the print with a shake of his
head. "Course, you know, Clark's gonna be greener than five week
old chili you broke this one while he was gone. Heard from him
yet?"

"He left a message on my machine last night. Just to let me know
he'd arrived at his hotel safely." She allowed herself a small
inward smile at that. Arriving safely at his destination was
something Clark never really had to concern himself with;
something she never had to worry about either. "I haven't had a
chance to get back to him yet."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure he went down a storm." Perry straightened, an
editor's priorities suddenly more important. "You gonna make the
morning edition with this? You only got half an hour till the
presses roll."

"Sure, Chief. Sending it down now."

"That's my girl," Perry said as she leapt to her feet and then,
concerned, as she paused to clutch at the edge of her desk, head
lowered and a crease marring her forehead, "Lois? You okay?"

"Yeah, sure, I'm fine." She drew in a deep breath and lifted her
head to smile at him. "Got a headache, that's all. Listen, I
gotta change out of these clothes, so - "

"Lois?" Perry's face tightened a touch as she turned away, giving
him a good view of the matted hair and blood soaked collar of her
jacket for the first time. "Honey, what happened? Shouldn't you
be down at Emergency getting that seen to?"

"Look, Perry, I appreciate the concern. Really. But it's nothing,
just a scratch. Honestly. I got it checked out at the SOC by one
of the EMTs. He said it was just fine."

"Actually, he said - "

"It was fine." A sharp glance silenced Jimmy's correction in its
tracks. The photographer shared a look with the Planet's editor.
Perry grimaced.

"What is this, some kinda guy thing?" Lois demanded scathingly,
catching it and scowling between them. "Hubby's out of town so
it's down to the rest of the frat house to look out for the
little woman till he gets back?"

Perry sighed. "Lois - "

"Well, *this* little woman can look out for herself. Now, if you
two *don't* *mind*, I'd like to get my take in the early edition
and go get some of this...gunk washed off!"

She reached down to snag her purse with one hand. Another of
those semaphore glances passed between the two men standing
beside her. Perry rolled his eyes ceilingward. Jimmy shrugged.

"Well, if you got it checked out, I guess..." Perry murmured,
doubtfully as Lois straightened up again to glare at them
fiercely.

"I did. And I'd like to drop the subject now," she told him
firmly. "If anyone wants me for the next hour I'll be down in the
locker room getting showered and changed."

She headed for the elevator.

Perry shrugged as Jimmy glanced at him. "Don't look at me, I'm
just the guy with his name on the letterhead," he grumbled as he
made for his office. "Sometimes, I wonder if my voice even gits
heard in here these days. Uh, Jimmy?" He turned back as Jimmy
eyed him attentively. "Just outta interest, what *did* that EMT
say?"

"That he thought it was fine, but that she should get it checked
out to be on the safe side," Jimmy said promptly. "He wanted to
take her on over to St. Luke's in the ambulance, with Valley
Vale, but she wouldn't go. Well, you know Lois..."

"Oh." White mulled that over. Then he coughed lightly. "Well,
son, why don't you keep an eye on her for a spell? Just in case.
I'd...uh, sure hate to have one of my best reporters out of the
loop."

Jimmy grinned and sobered as White raised a brow at him. "Sure,
Chief," he said hastily. "Stuck like glue. Uh," he amended, with
a glance for the elevator into which the subject of discussion
had now disappeared. "Once she's...outta the showers, course."

Perry eyed him narrowly. "Smart call, son," he drawled. He
pointed a stern finger at the photographer. "You let her outta
your sight for the rest of the day, you got me to answer to.
Capisce?"

Jimmy nodded smartly.

"Good. Well, hop to it, son! What we running here, some kinda
rest home for the elderly and infirm? Git those prints
downstairs! And get me some coffee on your way back up!"

"Yessir!"

***

As a matter of habit, Clark picked up the early edition of the
local paper on his way back to his room. He'd successfully
managed only three hours or so of restless sleep once abandoning
the bar to Mike, but an early morning walk in the crisp,
snow-tanged air had cleared the mugginess from his head some and
he was in cheerful mood as he chose a selection of papers from
the foyer stand and paid the vendor. The blizzard had played
havoc with distribution, it seemed; his choice was limited and,
disappointingly, there was no sign of the Planet's early morning
edition. He'd been looking forward to reading Lois' take.

The Boston Tribune had a lot in common with the Planet though,
carrying a mixture of local, national and international news. He
scanned the front page - an expose of shady dealing on city
officials' parking permits - as he waited for the elevator, and
flicked through the inner pages as he stepped absently into the
cage along with three or four other passengers.

"Which floor, sir?"

"Huh? Oh, fifteen. Thanks."

The elevator paused briefly for disembarking passengers on the
fifth floor as he reviewed the theater section on page three,
stopped again on floors ten and eleven. It took on two passengers
on the twelfth.

"Isn't this your floor?"

Clark glanced up at the middle-aged woman looking back at him
curiously and nodded, giving her a smile. "Yes, it is. Thanks."

He went back to his perusal of the paper as he walked slowly down
the corridor towards his room at its far end. He reached page
eight halfway along and the banner headline reared up to meet
him, stopping him dead in his tracks.

METROPOLIS VAMPIRE CAUGHT

His immediate thought, disappointment that someone had beaten
them to the take, after all those months of digging and sifting
through any evidence they could find for clues, was wiped smartly
clear as the sub-header directly underneath registered.

Daily Planet Reporter in Midnight Stakeout at Cemetery

"What the - ?"

An elderly woman, passing him at that particular moment, gave him
a haughty sidelong glance. The glossy coated Peke in her arms
echoed it. With those identical expressions of disapproval, and
the heavy-jowled cheeks the woman was carrying in the midst of a
podgy, overblown face, they might have been sisters.

Oblivious, Clark scanned the bulk of the story in a fraction of a
second and then raised his eyes to the ceiling, the newspaper
crumpling convulsively in his fist. "Unbelievable!" he hissed, an
explosive, exasperated growl that provoked the Peke into a
frothing-mouthed fit of yapping.

In deference to the savage look the Peke's owner gave him, he
offered an absent apology before he excused himself to stride
determinedly for his room. The woman watched him go with
unforgiving eyes before she gave her attention to soothing her
'poor little baby', as it choked itself furiously into a fit.

***

"Jimmy? Jimmy!"

Lois punctuated the yell with a wave of the sheaf of computer
data in her hand, half rising from her seat the better to gain
the attention of the Daily Planet's researcher, way across the
room. Jimmy glanced up from where he'd been trading a slow smile
with the new filing clerk: brunette curls down to the middle of
her back and blue eyes wider than a rabbit about to be run over
by a garbage truck, Lois thought cynically. Jimmy waved back with
a quick grin and jogged in her direction. By the time he reached
her desk, Lois was back at her keyboard and had typed in three
more paragraphs.

"Hey. What'd you need?"

"How about a researcher who can keep his body temperature level?"
Lois grumbled.

Jimmy grinned at her, unabashed. "She's cool, isn't she?" he
breathed admiringly, looking up to aim a wave at the new object
of his desire, before returning to Lois with a confidential,
"Leanore. Single, got a condo up in East Park..."

"Really? East Park...wow..." Lois glanced across at Leanore
appraisingly, before she went back to the sheaf of papers in her
hand. She raised a brow. "On her salary? Perry must be paying
higher than I thought."

"Yeah. Well," Jimmy lowered his voice, "don't pass it around,
but, actually, she's old man Jeffers' niece. Working out her time
for her journalism major. You know, getting some work
experience?"

"Ah. Well, I'd be careful, Jimmy, 'old man Jeffers' doesn't get
wind of exactly what kind of experience his niece is getting down
here in the newsroom," Lois warned him.

Jimmy ignored that, still lost in the glow of rose-tinged
appreciation. "Works out twice a week at the local gym... She
drives the coolest Cobra 427 - mint green - you know, man, that
thing can go! Zero to sixty in four seconds...maximum bhp of 410
at 5600 rpm...it's like taking off in the shuttle, I mean just
like...pow! Slams you back in your seat like an Exocet on full
charge...at least, it does when Leanore drives it."

He sighed, wistfully, and then, returning heroically to business,
leaned his elbows on the untidy clutter of the desk to enquire,
"So, anyway...what can I do for my other favorite lady this
morning?"

Lois reached for a small folder by her left elbow, passing it
over. "This guy. Dale Karvin? He's in town for - "

"Big 'praise an' raise' rally uptown." Jimmy looked up from the
open folder and shrugged. "It's been on all the local stations."

"'Praise an' raise'?"

"Well, it's what they do, isn't it? More raising than praising
too, if I hear tell right."

"I take it you're no fan?"

"Of Karvin's? Don't know him well enough to be anything about
him. Just not my scene is all. Are you?"

"Not especially. Can't say I know enough about the subject either
way. Which is why," she added meaningfully, "I'd like some
background on the man."

Jimmy snapped the folder to. "On my way, boss lady!"

Lois nodded and then dragged open her desk drawer and pulled out
a 100mg bottle of aspirin. Tipping out a couple onto her palm she
washed them down with a quick gulp of cooling coffee and grimaced
as she got to her feet.

"Head still hurting?" Jimmy paused with a frown.

"Yeah, a little. The fresh air'll blow away some cobwebs
though."

"Fresh air?" He turned to watch as she hooked her coat from the
rack. "Where you going?" he asked, alarmed.

"City Hall. I just got a call that the Mayor's about to hold a
press conference on Valley Vale's arraignment."

"But - " Jimmy glanced down at the folder in his hands and then
over to the editor's office.

"If you get anything on Karvin before I get back, just leave it
on my desk." Lois added hurriedly, glancing at her watch before
she snatched up her purse. "It's urgent, Jimmy. I need it before
I leave this evening, okay?"

"But the Chief said - "

She headed up the ramp at a run. "Thanks, Jimmy! I owe you one!"

Jimmy drew in a low breath and then puffed it out again,
considering. "You will if the Chief finds out I let you go
wandering off on your own," he agreed mildly, as he headed for
the reference section.

***

Estelle Pinchenski rattled the charity can under the nose of
another passer-by and kept the glazed smile fixed on her face
with an effort as she was ignored.

After another five minutes went by without so much as a sour
glance in her direction, she backed up into the shop doorway
behind her, letting the can drop to dangle from its loop around
her wrist and stuffing her chilled blue hands deeply into the
pockets of her camel coat. One of them was cold enough to have
been itching mercilessly for over an hour. She rubbed her palm
against the lining of her pocket in an abortive attempt to ease
that maddening tingle and then gave up with a sigh.

She glanced at her watch. Another half-hour and she was taking a
break. Martin could hardly say she hadn't tried. Course, she
lifted her eyes to the overcast sky with a scowl, Martin was
probably collecting inside the mall. Warm and cozy. She sniffed.
For a preacher and a Christian, she considered, Martin Gipe could
be a prize jerk, times.

But even cold hands and a chill that leeched its way right down
into her bones were worth it if they meant avoiding having to
listen to another lecture on how worthy a cause the United Church
was, how much her contribution was appreciated, how every single
one of them must do the very best they could to achieve the
Church's aims. All with that pious, pitying look that said she
was very far from performing high on any one of those targets.

Estelle sighed. And even enduring that pity, which made her want
to scream and drum her heels in frustration, was better than
spending another day in her apartment alone, watching the world
move past her window.

At least Martin gave her some attention, made getting up in the
morning worthwhile.

She wondered idly if tonight might just be the night she'd
persuade him to agree to her cooking dinner for him at her
apartment. Her mood slipped a notch further as she considered
bleakly that it probably wouldn't. There'd been a great many
excuses made already and she was sure another was in the offing.

What the hell was the guy's problem? She was attractive enough.
Wasn't she? She slipped a sideways glance into the store window
and then shied hastily away, like a deer startled by traffic,
before the slightly plump frame and haggard mouse face that
stared back at her could fully catch her eye. Estelle had avoided
catching her reflection in windows for over a decade and had no
intention of changing her mind now. In her mind's eye, another
woman lived, far removed from the prim, mousy little Estelle that
greeted her first thing in the morning from the depths of the
fly-speckled bathroom mirror in her dreary apartment. An Estelle
that charmed and turned heads and drew men like moths to a flame.
Just, in fact, like the heroine of her favorite novels. Fiery,
redheaded Madison Bel Marco, who effortlessly juggled a
successful modeling career with running a thriving fashion house
business and satisfying both a husband and two lovers - in
between secret assignments for the Government as one of their top
espionage agents, of course.

Estelle's narrow mouth turned down at the corners. Yeah, right,
she thought scornfully. She'd like to see Madison Bel Marco do
all that, after spending half her life nursing a sick, elderly
mother till she gave up and died. *Wasted* half her life. She'd
just like to see her do that, that was all. She could have been
successful, she pondered dismally, if she hadn't missed out on so
much, when it counted. When it mattered. When the best years of
her life were passing her by as she breathed in the sick air of
her mother's room and glanced longingly out of the two story
apartment window, in between dressing bedsores and emptying
bedpans, for something better she could only imagine in half
formed dreams.

Something better. She hadn't even known what it meant. Just that
it was something she was missing out on. Her teachers had told
her she was smart enough to go to college. And she had. She had
spent two wonderful, free and easy years at Bain College in
Detroit - a world away from the stifling home life she had known
and the grasping mother who chained her to it. That had been
before Mother's emphysema had been diagnosed, of course, and
she'd had to drop out of school to take up the burden of unpaid
nurse and care giver. Here in the miserable city of Metropolis,
to which Mother had moved when Estelle had left the family home.
To be nearer her friends, she'd said - now that she was alone.
Abandoned, she'd meant of course. By an ungrateful daughter more
intent on enjoying herself with her flighty friends than caring
for those she should. Friends! Estelle snorted. Friends who'd
hardly visited in over ten years and had quickly dropped out of
their lives. Friends who hadn't even bothered to turn up at the
funeral.

And then what? The ungrateful old witch had upped and died on
her, that's what. Left her alone. Squeezed out her youth and her
prime and then left her alone. Left her to molder in that empty
apartment in her turn, unwanted and unloved and with barely
enough education to hold down a job on the checkout of her local
five and dime.

The bitter, discontented line of Estelle's mouth tightened to a
thin line and then softened as her lips curved in a faint smile.

Until Martin. Martin had saved her. Would save her. She was sure
of it. She didn't much believe in God any more, but still, she
was sure He'd sent Martin 'specially for her.

She often thought, wonderingly, of how short a time she'd known
him. Only three months since he'd knocked on her door seeking
donations for the United Church of Salvation, for which he served
as an oft times preacher and full time collector. She'd persuaded
him to come on in a spell while she made a pretense of rooting
for her wallet and had plied him with weak coffee and home-baked
cookies in an effort to keep him, to stave off the moment when
he'd accept the coins she gave him and leave her to the silence
again. And he had listened. Actually listened to her. Actually
seemed to be interested in what she had to say. And by the time
he had left, he had drawn her into his world, infected her with
his enthusiasm for his faith. As soon as the following morning,
she had taken the small, gilt-embossed card he'd left with her,
dialed the first of the numbers printed there, and volunteered
her services to the Church.

Congratulating himself on his success in drawing another sinner
into the fold, Martin Gipe would, perhaps, have been shocked to
learn that Estelle didn't care two shakes for his precious
Church. He would certainly have been appalled to learn that
though she did count her contribution to its well being as a
labor of love, it was a love rather more firmly directed at him
than he would have felt comfortable with.

Tonight, Estelle thought dreamily as she stood in the doorway of
the store. Tonight was definitely going to be the moment she and
Madison Bel Marco had waited for all these years.

She stepped out into the street again and, fired by her hope that
things were about to - finally - come right, she managed to snag
seven contributions before she'd been at it more than five
minutes.

***

"Lois Lane's desk; Jimmy Olsen speaking."

"Jimmy! It's Clark. Where's Lois? I've been trying to get through
all morning and all I get is her machine!"

"Hey, C.K.! How's sunny Boston?"

"Sunny Boston's clouding over and heading for stormy. Which is,
curiously enough, just about where *my* mood is right now."

"Oh." Jimmy's mobile grin stiffened on his face as he heard the
dry note in Clark's voice. He winced. "Caught the early editions,
huh?" he guessed.

"Sure did. Caught the morning news report on LNN too." Clark's
tone turned drier still, taking on a falsely sweet note as he
added, over-brightly, "Can I talk to Lois now?"

"Uh, sorry, no can do. She's gone - "

"Gone?"

"Well, she hasn't been in since first thing. She - "

"But...she is okay, right?" Clark's acerbic manner tightened. "I
mean she looked okay when I saw her earlier and - "

"Saw her? When'd you see her?"

"Uh...on the news. On the...on the TV. In my room. This
morning."

"Really? I thought LNN just covered the capture. Lois was mostly
left out of it. Peters - you know that dope of a cop that's been
handling the case? - I think he'd just like it if Lois wasn't
involved at all. He's been trying to claim credit for the catch
all morning. Never even mentioned her to the press at the SOC."
Jimmy's tone regained its puzzled note, "In fact, most of the
media's just beginning to wake up to the fact that it was Lois
who caught Valley Vale right now. How'd - "

"I dunno. Maybe LNN had someone on the ground quicker than anyone
else. Jimmy, is Lois okay?"

"Oh, sure! She's fine! Just bruised up a little, that's all.
Banged up some. He put up one helluva fight." Jimmy puffed out an
admiring breath. "I mean, like, wooh!"

"He?" Clark repeated, disbelieving. "*He* put up a fight? Valley
Vale?!"

"Boy, did he ever! Lois though, I mean, man, she was like
something out of pro-am wrestling night - incredible! Like The
Ripper on a bad night, you know? Something else! Had him down and
out flat, on the ropes, in two rounds, although it was almost a
straight K.O., no penalties, no submissions, when he bounced her
off of that gravestone like that. I mean, I don't mind telling
you, C.K., when I got there, saw all that blood, just for a
minute there I thought for sure we were looking at - "

"Bounced her - ?! Blood? *What* blood? She was bleeding?"

Jimmy paused, running out of steam all at once like a runaway
diesel. There was an instant's silence.

"Uh, well...it...t was just a scrape. Didn't even need stitches
or anything. You know, I don't even believe half of what she said
he did. I mean, you know Lois, right? She was probably
exaggerating -- "

A long, tortured sigh crossed the wire.

"Jimmy..."

"Hey, C.K., it's cool, honest, I - "

"Did she get checked out? Did she go to the emergency room, get
seen by a doctor?"

"Well, no...but it really wasn't that bad. You know she's down at
City Hall right now, covering the press conference the Mayor and
Peters are holding on Valley Vale's arraignment. Listen, I can
get her to call you, she gets back in, if you want - "

"Yeah. Yeah, you do that. I've got some seminars to attend this
afternoon. If she can't reach me, tell her to talk to Mike
Atwell. He'll take a message."

"Sure thing, C.K."

"You're sure she's okay?"

"Absolutely. No problem."

"Okay."

"Hey, how'd you get along?" Jimmy changed the subject hastily as
Clark sounded less than convinced. "Wowed 'em with that speech of
yours, huh?"

"Uh, Jimmy, I...can't talk about that right now. Listen, I gotta
go. You'll make sure Lois gets that message?"

"Trust me. Catch her first thing."

"Okay." Clark paused, then, "Thanks, Jimmy."

"No sweat, C.K. Uh-oh." A faint bellow in the distance sharpened
his voice. "Chief's on the warpath. I gotta go! See you later!"

"Yeah, sure -- "

Clark paused as the droning buzz of the dial tone cut him off and
then hung up with a low sigh. The tight knot of worry was back in
his stomach again, like an ulcer. He was beginning to slot
together a picture of what had happened with Lois and Valley Vale
the previous evening, through the jumbled jigsaw pieces he'd
gathered from the papers and the news reports on TV and now from
Jimmy's enthusiastic account, and he wasn't liking what that
picture was amounting to.

Not one little bit.

Jimmy had seemed to think Lois was okay though. Perry obviously
did, or he'd have packed her off to Emergency by now, would never
have sent her out on assignment. He knew that. Course he did.

It was just that his stomach didn't.

An exuberant knock at his door lifted his head.

When he opened it, Mike Atwell beamed at him from the corridor.
"Clark!" He slapped a hand against Clark's shoulder in passing
and threw himself into an inelegant sprawl on one of the sofas.
"How you doing? Thought I'd just look in, see if you'd recovered
from your disgusting lack of self-control last night," he said,
cheerfully.

Clark grinned at him. "I was the one on water and lime,
remember?"

"Oh, yeah. So..." he grimaced, "I assume you don't have any
aspirin on you, then? Not having the need for them, as it were?"

"Sure. Somewhere..." Clark crossed the room to where his jacket
was draped over the back of a chair and fished in the inside
pocket. "Don't have much use for them myself. Never found that
they did anything for me, really. But, I usually keep some
handy..."

"Don't tell me, you were a first rate boy scout, right? Always
prepared."

Clark's smile widened as he switched to the right inside breast
pocket, having come up empty. "Well, actually, yeah. But, to be
honest, I keep them around in case Lois needs them."

"Right." Atwell grunted, as though he'd just confessed to
something obscene.

"Here."

Mike caught the tossed plastic packet, double handed, ripped it
open, and winced as he dry swallowed two of the pills. "Thanks.
Wooh, that was a doozy."

"Thought it didn't have any effect?" Clark asked him, dryly. Now
that he looked at him closely, the convention Chairman was
looking just a little gray around the gills.

Mike shrugged. "I don't throw up on the bartender or hassle young
women in elevators, I figure it's having no effect. I never said
nothing about the morning after."

"Oh," said Clark, dubiously.

Atwell gave him a steady look. "Kent, if we're gonna stay
friends, I just got one rule. You don't try and talk me outta
having the odd little double now and then and I won't mention
this nauseating affection you seem to have for your wife. Of the
two," he added musingly, "I tend to consider my vice the more
natural. Didn't anyone ever tell you affection should be saved
for mistresses? It's wasted on wives."

Clark chuckled. "Deal," he agreed.

"Anyway, that's enough about me for one day." Mike sat up
straighter, ditching his hangover like a duck shaking off water.
"Actually, I came up to let you know that we've had to shift the
program back a couple of hours this afternoon. Professor Dertman
called in. He's not going to make his two p.m. seminar.
Apparently, he's up to his well-paid butt in snow. Stuck on the
freeway just shy of the city limits like a loon on a bulrush.
It's gonna take him least that long to make it over here. You got
any objection to your final lecture moving up in line?"

"Not at all. Got nothing better to do this evening."

"Good. Knew you'd be a trouper about it," Mike grinned up on him,
irreverently. "Gives you a couple of free hours right now though,
right? So, you game for a little road trip?"

Clark took an involuntary glance at the frosted windows.

"Well, a sidewalk trip, then," Mike corrected himself. "Just
around the corner. I was talking to an old buddy of mine at the
Boston Trib. Says he'd be glad to show you around, you want to go
check out the competition?"

"Sure!" Clark said. It definitely beat sitting in his room trying
to persuade himself a second side-trip to Metropolis was out of
the question. "I'd appreciate that. Thanks."

"Yeah, well don't thank me too quick, Kent." Atwell got to his
feet to give him a wry look. "That was the good news."

Clark paused in the act of reaching for his jacket. "What's the
bad news?" he asked, warily.

Atwell coughed lightly. "Triple A just put out a flight flash on
the local station. They're up to their wings in snow too. Whole
airport's iced in like a tall double in a cool glass. Looks like
you're stuck with us till at least tomorrow morning."

"Oh, great."

"Yeah. Bummer, huh?"

"Tell me about it."

Atwell grinned. "Fear not, my friend," he said, laying a
companionable hand to the younger man's shoulder and guiding him
for the door. "We'll keep you occupied till your plane thaws
out." He gave Clark a broad wink as they emerged into the
corridor. "There sure are a lot of bars in Boston!"

***

Karen Culver was clearing her desk, just about ready to call it a
night, when she heard the faint commotion rising from the far end
of the corridor, outside her cubbyhole office.

/Great/, she thought sourly. /The one night of the year I get
tickets for La Boheme and they have to start again./

Sighing, she glanced at her watch.

Couldn't they have waited just ten more minutes till she was out
of the building?

For an instant, she considered sneaking out anyway. She'd waited
years for this treat, ever since she'd fallen head over heels in
love with a dark-eyed, silken-voiced Russian tenor called Serge
Minarsovka when she was barely out of pigtails and braces. All
those years of worship from the backs of album covers and sighing
over vinyl acoustics, leading up to this one, short six week run
in Metropolis from an operatic tenor who rarely left his home
country, wasn't something she was going to give up on now. And
she'd already been kept back, was already a good two hours late
in leaving, would have to rush if she was going to make the
performance in time.

But she knew what would happen if Mr. Gerrord heard that
eruption. And how unfair it would be to Richard, who would
undoubtedly take the blame for the disturbance. She muttered a
string of expletives and put down the files she'd been ready to
take home with her, before she stalked from her room, already
knowing what she'd find when she reached the large, walk-in
stationary cupboard.

Sure enough, Clive Harkus was throwing the bulk of his weight
around again, his bulky, bear-like frame blockading the slighter
figure of the boy he was yelling at into a corner of the wall.
Richard Carparon's weak blue eyes darted fitfully around the room
and Karen felt a flicker of shame that she had ever thought of
abandoning him when she saw relief flare in them at sight of her
across Harkus' shoulder.

"What the hell is going on here?" she demanded, though she knew
only too well.

Harkus glanced across his shoulder at her and, as usual, took a
second out to give her a leering once over that made her think
immediately about taking a shower, before he straightened away
from the boy cowering against the wall.

"Ricky Retard's messed it up again," he drawled sardonically. He
waved an arm around the metal-cast shelving that lined the room.
Richard flinched back against the wall with the movement, a soft
whimper escaping him before he bit it back behind clenched teeth.
Harkus gave him an impatient glance.

"I mean, come on, Karen, how many times you got to tell him? The
green files go on the top shelf. The gray ones go underneath." He
slapped the piles of offending files as he spoke. For no other
reason, Karen thought disgustedly, than that he knew the noise
would frighten the boy. She took a glance at the shelf and her
heart sank as she saw that Richard had gotten the colors reversed
again when he'd stocked up.

"I mean, jeez, it ain't that hard," Harkus went on. "You got
that?" He loomed over Richard again, raising his voice as though
the office junior was hard of hearing instead of just a little
slower than average. "It ain't hard. Retard." His voice had taken
on a singsong note with that last and he looked pleased with
himself for finding the rhyme.

"Don't call him that!" Karen snapped.

Harkus gave her a sardonic glance, a look that was at once both
knowing and full of mockery. Karen's color heightened. She was
honest enough to understand that her blush was half for anger,
half for embarrassment. She glanced at Richard, at the mute
pleading in his eyes, at the quiver in the smear of twisted mouth
that dragged his face awry as he fought back tears.

Ricky Retard.

She never thought of him like that, of course she didn't.

But she did.

Somewhere, deep in the dark, human depths of her soul, she did.

And she was ashamed of it. Ashamed because, no matter how hard
she tried, she couldn't fight it.

Sure, there was no harm in the boy. Richard might be...well, just
a little slow, no one was denying that. But he was helpful. Kind.
Why, he wouldn't kill even the meanest insect if he found one. He
wouldn't hear a word said against his Mama, Karen thought stoutly
in defense of him. Not even after she'd given him that sideways
sloping smile with a hot iron when he was only three years old,
and her, drunk as a mule and furious, just cause he wouldn't talk
as well as the kid down the street did. And when you pulled your
eyes higher than the ruined face, beyond the twisted mouth and
sluggish mind, when you looked deep into Richard Carparon's eyes,
you found the bright, clear soul of an angel buried in among the
blue.

But, sometimes, it was very hard to meet those eyes, hard not to
see the strangeness, the...deformity.

"I...didn't...I didn't..." Richard was murmuring, repeatedly now,
eyes fixed on her.

"Just leave him be, Clive," she said wearily and, softly, "It's
all right, Richard. You did all right, okay?"

"Why? He can't do the job, he ain't no good. Come on, Karen,
you're Personnel Manager, well as Andrew's little pet PA. It's
your job to - "

"Don't tell me what my job is! I know what *my* job is! My *job*
is making sure bullies like you don't cause trouble in my
department!"

"Aw, hey, Karen, lighten up." He swaggered for her, grin sharp as
a wolf's, voice sweetening to a cloying sentimental whine,
"Whassup, Karen? Don't like to see your little boyfriend get in
trouble? Huh?"

"He's not my -- " the denial lashed out at him before she could
control her anger and she bit off the retort as his grin widened
on her. She drew in a tight breath, stiffening her spine. "I've
told you before, Clive, I won't put up with this kind of
behavior," she went on, trying to hold onto her poise, although
she could feel tears of rage and frustration prickling at her
eyes. "You keep this up and I'm gonna have to report it to -- "

"To who? Who you think's gonna be interested? Hell, everyone
knows the Retard's only on the books because Gerrord's sucking up
to Karvin. Doing a little favor? Greasing a few wheels? Gerrord
doesn't care. Grow up, Karen, you - "

"What is going on here?" a new voice asked.

Karen started and turned to where Malcolm Gerrord stood,
frowning, in the doorway.

"Nothing. I was just getting some files." Harkus smiled at the
taller man as he plucked a batch of green and gray from the
shelves and then exited the room without another word.

"Karen?"

"Uh, I was just checking over the new stock with Richard, Mr.
Gerrord."

"I see." Gerrord's eyes flickered impatiently over the figure
hunched against the wall, barely concealing a twist of his lips
as he waved an arm out into the corridor. "Well, I think it's
time for your break, Richard. Isn't it?"

Richard ducked his head, giving Karen a sideways glance as he
passed. He scuttled past Gerrord, who turned to watch him
disappear along the corridor. Karen thought that he probably
didn't realize how deep his frown had gotten as he did, or how
much of his contempt for the boy was visible on his face.

"Karen?"

She started, suddenly realizing that he was watching her,
impatient again.

"Yes, sir?"

"I'm glad you're still here. I was hoping to catch you before you
left. I need these minutes typed up for tomorrow's meeting with
Gillens, and Jennifer's gone home already. If you wouldn't
mind...?"

She looked at the tape he extended and held in a sigh.

/Lucky old Jennifer./

/So much for La Boheme./

She smiled. A grade one, put upon PA's smile, just like they
taught at Secretarial School.

She could almost hear the nasal tones of Ms. Johns echo in her
head:

/Remember a good PA's three Golden Rules: Ever willing. Ever
ready. Ever efficient./

She smiled until her skin stretched.

"Sure thing, Mr. Gerrord. I'll get right on it."

***

"Lois!"

She glanced over her shoulder as she continued to pour herself
coffee and frowned as she saw Jimmy weaving his way towards her
at breakneck speed between the desks. "Hey, Jimmy, what's up?"

"Lois, I forgot - "

"Have you seen this?" she interrupted indignantly, waving a
fax-sheet at him. "Valley Vale swears he did all of his moonlight
digging while he was sleepwalking. Can't remember a thing. His
lawyers are already digging through five years of statistical
cases of homicidal somnambulism to prove causal effect." She
snorted her opinion of the defense as she plucked a spoon from
the rack and began to strip it of its paper coating.

Jimmy grinned. "Well, he sure wasn't walking in his sleep - or
anywhere else - after you got through with him," he commented
cheerfully.

Lois grunted absent agreement and then glanced up on him
enquiringly. "Forgot what?"

"What? Oh!" He shrugged apologetically. "C.K. called while you
were out at the Mayor's conference."

"Clark?" Lois hurled the paper wrapping from the spoon into the
wastebasket. She checked her watch and headed for her desk,
stirring coffee vigorously as she went. "Well, why didn't you say
so?"

"Sorry. I've been in the print lab all afternoon. I just
remembered."

"I've been trying to get him all day. Did he say anything about
how his speech went?" She parked the cup next to the untidy
clutter of files on her desk and slipped into her seat as she
reached for the phone.

"Uh, well actually, he seemed more interested in Valley Vale.
He'd picked up the early editions."

"Oh," Lois said, punching in the number of Clark's hotel. One
finger entwined itself in the telephone wire, looping it idly as
she waited for the connection to be made. After a moment, the
fingers of her other hand tapped an impatient rhythm against the
desktop.

"Astoria Hotel. Hold the line, please."

"I...uh...told him what had gone down. More or less," Jimmy
added. "Um...he seemed a little...tense."

The fingers stilled. Lois glanced up on him, registering a faint
note of guilt in his voice. His face confirmed it.

"Uh-huh." She leaned back casually in her chair, eyes widening
innocently. "So, you told him...what? Exactly?" she asked, in
that too-calm-almost- disinterested-in-the-answer tone which
Jimmy recognized all too well as being a prelude to trouble. He
swallowed, hard.

"Oh, you know. Bits and pieces..."

Lois quirked a brow at him.

Jimmy's voice rose an octave. "Nothing, really. Almost nothing,"
he defended himself rapidly and, as her eyes frosted over,
"Absolutely not a thing. I swear."

Lois thought about that for a moment or two as she listened to
the tinkle of Muzak in her left ear. She cleared her throat
faintly and then gently replaced the receiver.

"Um, I think I'll just call him later. From home," she decided.
She glanced at her watch again. "I mean, he's probably right in
the middle of dinner now." She glanced at Jimmy and he nodded
vigorously.

"Sure! Dinner!" He spread agreeing hands wide. "Four twenty.
Hotels serve up dinner. No doubt about it."

Lois nodded. She straightened. "And, anyway," her tone turned
brisk as she snatched up the papers on her desk and shuffled them
efficiently, "I really should get these reports into order,
before I do anything else."

Jimmy grinned, unable to resist. "Smart call," he approved.

Lois hit him with a swift look that sent the chill level in the
air rocketing downward another half dozen degrees and he sobered,
backing off with upraised hands. "Um, I think I'll get going now.
I'm taking Leanore bowling and" he gave her a sickly grin, "well,
I'd best not keep her waiting."

***

"Miss Culver?"

She turned quickly; the startled, jackrabbit whirling of a woman
walking in the dark alone and hearing an unfamiliar voice sound
her name. A male voice: thick and slurry.

Her fist clenched in the pocket of her blue wool coat and the
eyes of the man standing in the pool of shadow cast by the dim
streetlight behind him followed that tensing of muscles, before
they lifted to her face again.

"Richard?" She said uncertainly, peering into the gloom and then,
a stutter of nervous laughter emerging as she took a step closer,
quickly cut off, "My G-! Richard, you scared me."

"I did?" The blue eyes above the half-ruined mouth blinked at
her, puzzled, and she almost laughed out loud again. It was a
joke, all right. He was about as likely to scare anyone as a
half-tamed kitten.

Ricky Retard.

She shook her head, irritably. She was going to have to do
something about Clive - and real soon. His bullying the boy like
this wasn't fair. It just wasn't. Only, he was right, in his way.
That was the problem. She wasn't entirely sure that Gerrord would
do anything if she did report his behavior. She thought about
what Clive had said and wondered, half idly, whether Mr. Karvin
would be a better person to take this to. She filed the thought
away for future consideration later.

"I'm sorry, what did you say, Richard?" The frown that had crept
over her face cleared as she realized he'd spoken.

"Mr. Andrews. Mr. Andrews, he told me to give you this. You
forgit it."

"Oh!" She reached automatically for the blue folders with a click
of her tongue. The Gillens expenses file. She'd promised to check
out the figures at home, before tomorrow's meeting. Might as
well, she thought sourly. It wasn't as though she had anything
better to do with her evening, after all. "Thanks, Richard. I
swear I'd forget my own -- ow!" Her fingers snagged on something
sharp before she jerked them back with a hiss.

"Miss Culver? Miss Culver, you okay? You okay?"

"Stupid staples!" she said it as a curse, examining the growing
spot of blood on the tip of her index finger. She popped it into
her mouth to suck on it briefly.

"Miss Culver?"

She looked at Richard, abashed. "I'm okay," she said quickly, in
response to the rising tension in his voice and the sudden,
wide-eyed worry on his face. "Really." She smiled. "Well, anyway,
thanks for bringing these on out. You going home now too?" She
glanced back into the darkness. "I can give you a lift...?" she
trailed, making the offer only half-heartedly and barely
concealing her relief when it was rejected with a violent shake
of the boy's head.

"No, Mr. Karvin's coming for me. He said I could help. Tonight."
For a moment, something beautiful shone in the boy's eyes. Joy.
Worship.

"At the rally." Karen shook off her unease again and nodded. "You
like Mr. Karvin, Richard, don't you?" she added, smiling at him
again.

He nodded. "Yes."

"Good. Well, I'm sure you'll be a big help."

He frowned. "Ain't you going? Tonight?"

"Not tonight, no. Tomorrow, I think."

Richard's frown deepened, as though he couldn't imagine why she
would want to miss even one of Karvin's revivals.

She lifted the files in gentle reminder. "I've got something else
to do tonight."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay."

"Okay," she agreed. "Well, I'll see you in the morning then, huh?
Bright an' early?"

"Bright an' early!"

"Good. 'Night, Richard."

She turned swiftly, heels clicking a rapid tattoo on the paving.
She didn't look back until she was reversing the car out of her
parking bay.

Richard was still standing where she'd left him, eyes a pit of
shadows in the gloom.

***

Dale Karvin paused as he smoothed the lapels of the white linen
suit, lost suddenly in the reflection staring back at him from
the cheval glass.

He saw a man of indeterminate age, perhaps approaching somewhere
in his late thirties - an impression that was shy of his true age
by almost a decade - lean and tautly muscled, handsome in a
darkly brooding way. Stacy had always teased him that he could
have been a famous actor if he'd used his talents right. He was
made for the part of the hero of Victorian melodrama, she'd
insisted. A Rochester, perhaps - brooding, satanic good looks,
chocolate dark eyes inherited from a Mexican father and a wry
curve to the edge of his lips that gave an impression of a
serious demeanor always just verging on bursting into laughter.
Rochester would have been perfect.

He grimaced. If he'd used his talents right - somewhat ironic
that joke of hers, given how his life had turned out.

And hers.

Stacy had been in her grave these past two years. Taken by the
racking cancerous growth that had infested her lungs and reduced
her, inch by inch, to a pitiful shell of the bright, laughing
young woman she'd once been. And he, the great Dale Karvin,
internationally renowned healer, great, true friend of God, had
been unable to lift a finger to cure her or spare her pain.

/Rochester.../

His long, elegant fingers resumed their slow stroking at his
lapels. One corner of his mouth twitched as his eyes rested on
the ostentatious rings that adorned many of them. He wished he
could persuade Addley to let him give them up. But the crowd
seemed to expect them, somehow, he thought ruefully. Only one
meant anything at all: the wide and worn gold band on the ring
finger of his left hand. The rest were so much dross,
window-dressing, cold, lifeless props.

He shook his head, almost able to laugh aloud as his eyes
flickered to view the sumptuous hotel room laid out behind him,
the pristine, haute couture suit, the elegantly styled hair and
carefully manicured nails.

Using his talents right.

"Oh, Stacy," he murmured, going back to his preening. "What would
you think of me now?"

"I'm sure she'd be very proud, sir."

Karvin started slightly with the response and then straightened
his shoulders almost defensively. He scowled through the mirror's
reflected ice as his hands became more purposeful in their
grooming of the suit. "What do you want, Bob?"

Robert Addley smiled at him. "Car's waiting."

"Oh." Karvin gave himself one last once over in the mirror. He
held back a sigh. No, he didn't think his wife would be proud.
Maybe once, when he'd been doing things right, but no...not now.

He turned abruptly away and gathered up his wool coat and scarf.
"Bob, I'm still not sure about that second chorus. Don't you
think we should - "

"Now, Dale, I told you, it'll be just fine. It's an ideal point
to break. They'll be on the tips of their toes with excitement
after your healing session. We'll get ten times the donations if
we send the boxes round then, rather than at the end. Trust me."

Dale sighed. "We've got enough hymn cards laid out? And there's
enough room at the center of the stage for the wheelchairs? And -
?"

"Everything's under control."

"Is it?" He paused before reaching out for the door handle. "I
hope so," he murmured, almost too low to be heard. He frowned, as
he ushered his aide through and into the corridor. "What about
the water?"

"Plenty on tap."

"What?" Karvin looked back at him, puzzled.

"Sorry." Addley smirked. "Just a joke."

"Oh," Karvin said, sounding none the wiser and then, suddenly
getting the drift of the 'joke' and the double meaning in his
aide's words, "That's not funny, Bob."

"No." Addley's face grew suitably somber. But if anything he
sounded more amused. "I don't suppose it was."

***

"I'm just *saying*, I can't believe you went wandering around
that graveyard in the middle of the night, stalking some crazed
killer!"

"Oh, come on, Clark, what was he going to do? He only eats dead
people!"

"And that's supposed to make me feel better? Suppose he was
thinking about serving himself up something a little fresher than
leftovers for a change? Did you think of that?"

"Valley Vale never killed anyone."

"Peters thinks he has. It says here in the Tribune he expects to
be charging Merkovian with murder one in the next couple of days;
thinks he can tie him to the killing of a woman over in Curzon
Street a couple of months ago."

"He's wrong. I did some digging on that one. It doesn't match
Merkovian's MO. He's a genuine, southern deep-fried, pure grade
whacko, no doubt about it, but he's no killer. I'd stake my life
on Peters issuing a retraction on that before the week's out."

Clark refrained from reminding her that she had already done so.
His silence was ample reproof anyway.

"I'm fine. Really." She crossed mental fingers with that,
grimacing briefly over the still smarting patch on her scalp that
he was bound to lecture her on when he got back. "It was nothing,
honestly. He was a pussycat."

"With real sharp claws. I hear he put up a pretty good fight
before the police got there."

"Oh," Lois said tightly. "You did." She smiled stiffly into the
phone. "Well, you know how these hick papers get. They exaggerate
everything and -- "

"They didn't exaggerate you almost getting your brains pounded
out on some gravestone at two in the morning!"

"Oh, really, it wasn't anything like as serious as -- wait a
minute, how'd you know that? The only papers I saw said I got
knocked on the head a little. They didn't say how. Or when."

"When was *before* you got the idea to go sneaking into that
cemetery, if you ask me."

"Clark. No, come on, how did...?" Lois paused. "Jimmy..." she
hissed, in much the same tone that would have said, 'two-timing
skunk'.

"Don't go taking this out on Jimmy, Lois. At least *he* told me
the truth!"

"*I* told you the truth! Clark it was nothing. I swear! He took
just a little persuading to give up, that was all. It was a
*teensy* little tussle. Very minor. Hardly a scuffle. He just
tried to...cave in my skull and once I'd hit him a time or two he
lay down till the police arrived. That was all." She ignored the
faint choking sound that came across the open line in response to
this laconic explanation. "Actually, he was a little pathetic
really. Curled up whimpering and crying like that. If he hadn't
been such a piece of slime, I might almost have felt sorry for
him."

"Yeah, well I doubt the relatives of those people whose bones he
gnawed are giving him any sympathy. And I'm not that much
inclined to - "

A sudden, high-pitched burst of static drowned him. Lois winced,
yanking the receiver clear of her ear to avoid the piercing
whine, and then brought it back warily as it died.

"Clark? Clark are you there?"

" - gravestones at two in the morning!"

"I can't hear you."

"What?"

"I said, I...can't...hear...you!"

"Oh! It's this storm, honey. Phones have been in and out all day.
I can hear you real well."

"Clark, you hear everything real well."

"True." His warm chuckle briefly caressed her ear.

"What storm?"

"What *storm*? You haven't been watching the out of state news?
What kind of a reporter are you?"

"A tired one. I've been out chasing leads all day, not chowing
down on five- star room service. What news?"

"We've had snow storms here since yesterday afternoon. The
Weather Center said it'd clear by this morning -- "

"Let me guess. It didn't."

"Oh, *it* cleared."

"Well - "

"It was just that they forgot to mention there was a second one
on its way. It hit the Mid-Atlantic states this afternoon. Got
here around six."

"Six?" Lois' voice sharpened a notch. "Clark, are you going to be
able to fly out okay this evening?"

"Um, probably not without the cape, honey. Sorry. The entire
city's gridlocked, airport's closed down till tomorrow at least.
My flight's been rescheduled for tomorrow morning. Provisionally,
anyway."

"Clark! Why didn't you tell me that first thing?"

She quelled the sudden, sharp disappointment that had welled in
her with the realization that the severe weather would mean he'd
be delayed, knowing she had no right to it. Flying back on Monday
morning had been his original flight plan, after all. In that
respect, nothing had changed with the snowing in of Logan
Airport. It was only that the last of the messages she'd
discovered on the answering machine on her return home that
evening - there had been a few - had declared his intention to
come home early instead. His last commitment to the BAYJ program
would be done and dusted by nine. There was a scheduled flight
out of Boston at just after ten. It would bring him home by
midnight. A bit of a squeeze on his schedule, but worth it, he'd
maintained. Lois had figured it would be worth it too. And,
entitled to it or not, she still felt that disappointment keenly
as she listened to her husband's low sigh on the other end of the
line.

"Well, because I had other things on my mind. Getting back to
which..." he continued, curiously, "how'd you figure he'd be out
there anyway? At the cemetery?"

"Oh, it was easy enough once I'd worked out that he was operating
in a pentacle - south to west, north to south, south to east, and
so on. His last little picnic was in Hillingdon, that was on a
line due Southeast to Northwest. Given that, he only had St.
Bartholomew's left to raid if he was going to complete the
pattern."

"Well, sweetheart, if you were so sure he'd be there - " Clark
broke off, sharply. He'd long since given up on asking his wife
and partner such reasonable questions as why she wouldn't call
the police *before* stalking a crazed killer through a cemetery
at the dead of midnight, rather than making it an afterthought.
It just didn't pay. "Well, congratulations, anyway," he finished,
lamely.

"Thank you. You're on the byline, of course. You did do most of
the legwork on this one after all."

"But not all of it. Thanks anyway. Anything new come in?"

"It's mostly quiet. Perry's got me on that retrospective. You
know, the United Church of Salvation rally? Dale Karvin? The
Evangelist? Fortunate soul that I am, I'm going to be at the
performance of the decade this evening."

"Really? Isn't that just a little bit tame for you to be
covering? It's more Greg's line, isn't it? Civic Events? It's
just a straight nickel and dime puff piece, when you get right
down to it."

"Not from the pen of this reporter it isn't. Actually, I think it
was Perry's way of telling me to take it easy for a couple of
days after Valley Vale," Lois added ruefully.

"Ah, now there, you see! If Perry thinks -- "

"And I got the follow up on Valley Vale, of course," she
over-rode him determinedly. "But that's mostly tied up. You know
Peters is really going to have to work at it to get out of this
one with his pension intact."

"So I hear. I also hear he's working at it by trying to take the
credit for closing the case."

"Well, he's welcome to it."

"He is?" Clark sounded amused all at once. "Is this the same Lois
Lane, tenacious newswoman, who used to put a hex on anyone she
thought might cut her out of a scoop? Present company *not*
excluded."

"Maybe, I've learned that there are more important things in life
than being rich and famous," Lois told him, mock pious. "Or
getting your name in print. Which reminds me. It came as
something of a surprise to read in this morning's edition that a
certain superhero had been fire fighting down on the dock front
last night. In Metropolis that is." She paused, before asking,
sweetly, "This wouldn't be any superhero that *I* happen to know,
would it?"

There was a stretch of silence across the wire that was damming,
before Clark started in hastily, "I just heard the sirens that's
all and -- "

"Really? From all the way out there in Boston? Wow, sweetheart,
now that's what I call super-hearing!"

"Well - "

"Were you checking up on me?"

"No. Well...okay, I might have been."

"Clark - "

"Lois, I didn't know where you were! I wasn't getting an answer
at home or the office or on your cellphone - and then I hear from
Jimmy about how you almost got yourself killed out there in that
cemetery - !"

"I did not!" Lois denied and then, a shocked hiss, "You didn't
know that until today. Clark, you weren't back out here today,
were you? Again?"

"No. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to be," Clark told her,
frustrated. "I mean you might have been down in some emergency
room, or -- "

"Clark - "

"Lois, head wounds are serious, you know? You can get concussion
or an embolism or -- "

"Or a king-sized headache. Which is all that happened to me.
Clark, I took a couple of aspirin. It was gone by mid-afternoon.
Now, can we drop this? Please? I've just tied up one of the
biggest stories we've had in months. Can't we just celebrate
that? And you. I hear congratulations are in order for you too."

"For me?" he said, surprised. "What for?"

"Your lecture series. Mike Atwell says it was so well received
they're thinking about asking you back next year."

"Oh. That. Sorry. In all the excitement of discovering my wife
just about got her skull bashed in last night, while my back was
turned, it went clean out of my mind."

Lois sighed, plaintively. "Clark, please, don't lecture me right
now. I've had a real busy day and I'm tired and this is the first
chance we've had to talk in two days. I miss you."

"Well, I miss you too, honey, which is why I'd prefer you didn't
go putting yourself at risk when I'm not there to -- "

"Clark..."

His sigh filled the receiver. "Okay." He threw up mental hands,
surrendering. "We'll talk about it when I get back. So, when'd
you speak to Mike?" he changed the subject obediently.

"I called earlier, but the desk said you were out. He seems like
a nice guy."

"Yeah, he is. He's got a lot of good ideas," Clark agreed
absently.

"Clark? You okay?"

"Hmmmm? Oh, yeah. I was just...thinking. Listen, honey...about
this missing you thing and the flight delay..."

"Yes?"

"I mean, I know I did promise I'd stay put but...I'd kinda got to
looking forward to that midnight rendezvous and, well, I was
thinking, maybe I could put in a little...night flying of my own
tonight, after all. "

"Really?" Lois responded coolly. "And just where were you
thinking of...'night flying' to?"

"Oh, this little place I know, right in the heart of the city.
Food's good. The hostess is better."

"I see. Well, you know, I *was* planning on having an early
night..."

"Well, I wouldn't want to disrupt your plans any."

Lois chuckled. "When will you get here?"

"When will you get back from Karvin's rally?"

"Oh, around ten, ten thirty."

"Meet you upstairs at ten-thirty-five?" Clark suggested.

"I'll be waiting." Lois' mind was already distracted, pondering a
certain satin and antique lace negligee in his favorite burgundy,
which she'd been hoarding for a special occasion. And what
occasion could be more special than an unexpected visit from a
husband you hadn't seen in over thirty-six hours and who was
already desperately missed? She frowned.

"Clark, are you sure it'll be okay? You know what trouble we got
into last time. Maybe we shouldn't take the risk. Maybe we should
just wait until you--"

"Lois, don't worry. I'll be...discreet."

"But...well, that radar's pretty close by and - "

"There are ways to avoid that. Hey, trust me, okay? I've been
doing this a long time. I've kinda got it down pat." She could
hear the sudden grin in his voice now as he went on, "This
blizzard's gonna take care of risking anyone seeing me leave.
With the airport shut down and nothing flying around up there,
radar scan is gonna be minimal, and no one's going to think twice
about seeing Superman in the skies over Metropolis. We just have
to make sure no one sees him with you. Or sees me at all. And,
since I've got no intention of being anywhere but in my own
bedroom..."

Lois smiled. "Okay," she agreed quietly.

"Fine. I'll see you - " He was interrupted by a faint hammering.
"Oh, hey, hold on, sweetheart, there's someone at the door."

Lois shuffled the papers before her on the low table idly,
listening absently to the faint sounds of conversation played
against her ear, before the warm tones of her husband's voice
retook her concentration. "Lois? Sorry, looks like I'm gonna have
to take a rain check on that date."

"Problems?" Her heart tightened with the question, but his rueful
chuckle eased it.

"Only with over-zealous hosts. That was Mike Atwell and the rest
of the committee. They feel kinda sorry for their guest speaker,
sitting alone in his hotel room all evening. They've arranged
dinner at a club downtown. I guess it's nice of them, honey, I
can't really -- "

"No, you go. Go. Really, you should go. Have a nice evening." She
tried hard to hide her disappointment.

He heard it anyway.

"Lois, I'm real sorry...and I gotta go. They're waiting for me
downstairs. Listen, they won't keep me out too late. I'll be over
as soon as I can. Wait up for me? Oh, and Lois? Promise me you
won't go off doing anything else dangerous before I get home?"

"Clark - "

"Promise?"

"I promise," she said with exaggerated patience, "that I'm
intending to do nothing more dangerous in the next few hours than
make a pot of coffee. Maybe risk the cholesterol on a donut or
two. Oh, and death by boredom at Karvin's rally, of course."

"Good. I love you."

"Love you too."

She put down the receiver with a frustrated sigh.

***

Joseph Andrews ploughed with fevered fingers through the mess of
papers hibernating in the top drawer of his desk. As the subject
of his frantic search eluded him, he straightened with an
explosive curse to slam it shut. He loosened his tie with an
irritable tug and dragged a savage hand through his already
unruly hair.

"Well?"

He turned sharply at the arrival of his partner and scowled.

"It was right here on my desk this afternoon! I swear!"

"This afternoon isn't good enough, Joe. It isn't here now! We've
got to find it!"

"You think I don't know that?" Andrews slumped into the leather
chair beside him and leaned his elbows on the walnut desk. He
buried his head in weary hands and sighed heavily.

Gerrord leaned forward to plant his carefully manicured hands on
the desk. The office was lit by one single desk lamp. In its
backwash, his already starkly delineated features were
transformed abruptly into a jagged, boogeyman jumble of brutal
plains and sinister shadow as he stared down at his partner. Only
the cold glitter in his eyes showed points of light in that
darkness.

"Then start thinking what you did with it," he hissed.

Andrews lifted his head sharply. "I didn't do anything with it!"

"Yeah. Well, you sure didn't file it under 'confidential', like
you shoulda."

Andrews flushed.

"If that report gets into the wrong hands, Joe -- "

"I know! It won't. We'll find it."

"No. No, *we* won't find it, Joe. *You* will. You got that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure I will."

"You'd better." Gerrord's grim stare fixed him. "Because I'm not
taking the rap for this if it blows up in our face. You hear
me?"

"Okay!" Andrews snapped. He knew the mess they were in
was...probably...his fault. But there was only so far that a guy
could go, playing the guilt trip. He glared up balefully at his
partner. And, no matter what Gerrord said, he did not intend to
go down alone, if it came to it. But it wouldn't, he reassured
himself firmly. That damn report had to be *somewhere*. He'd only
just laid it down an hour before. It couldn't just vanish into
--

"Oh no," he groaned as the realization struck him.

Gerrord had moved to stand by the windows, staring out into the
darkness. He turned his head. "What?"

Andrews turned to face him, stricken. "Karen. I sent Richard out
after her when she left. With the Gillens files. They were piled
up there, in my in tray. The report was probably underneath
them."

Gerrord stared at him in silence for a moment. "Oh, you idiot,
Joe," he said at last. "You stupid, dumb - "

"Well, but it's okay, isn't it? You see? He had to have given it
to Karen. She'll realize it's not part of the Gillens account and
bring it back with her in the morning. Won't she?" Andrews added,
the hopeful look he was giving his partner fading in the face of
Gerrord's continuing, unblinking stare.

"And if she just happens to be curious enough to take a look at
it first?" Gerrord shook his head sharply. "No, we can't risk it.
You're gonna have to go over there, get it back."

"Now?"

"No," Gerrord snarled. "Why don't we sit around on our butts for
a month or so, see if the entire Metropolis press corps doesn't
start camping out on our doorstep first?" His voice rose abruptly
to a soft roar, "Of course, tonight! We got away with this one,
Joe. I don't know how, but we did. And we're not going to get
caught now because you don't know the meaning of close security
locks."

Andrews' lips tightened. "Okay," he agreed sullenly. "I'll go get
it."

"You do that." Gerrord eased his shoulders out of the tight line
they'd formed and buttoned up his jacket with steady hands before
he turned on his heel to exit the room.

It hadn't...exactly...been a threat.

But Andrews shivered suddenly before he gathered up his coat and
turned off the light.

***

"Pity Mike's Alley was closed for renovation, really, it's a
great place to go on a Sunday night, lots of stuff going on, real
cheap night out too...uh, not that that's why I wanted to go
there. I mean - oh, here we are!" Jimmy pulled in a deep,
steadying breath and tilted his head back to study the
Movie-Plex's huge white-lit billboard towering overhead. "So!
What you want to see?"

Leanore hooked one arm through his and snuggled up against his
side. "Oh, I don't know," she said in the breathy voice which had
fascinated him ever since she'd used it to say 'Hello' a week
earlier. She gave him a shy smile. "You choose. Something
romantic."

"Something..." Jimmy tried to gather his thoughts, which had
begun to scatter right around the point she'd snuggled up close
and gone AWOL completely by the time she'd gotten around to
flashing that smile. "Uh, something romantic." He grinned. "Well,
sure."

He scanned the board again and then made his way to the ticket
booth. Leanore clung to his arm like glue until they were
standing in line. Then, slipping free, she whispered in his ear,
"I'm gonna get something to drink. You want something?"

Jimmy shook his head. "Yeah, okay. I mean," he nodded rapidly,
"great! Sure!"

Leanore smiled. "Okay." But she stayed where she was, staring at
him. After a moment, she added, "What?"

"Huh?"

"Your drink. What will I get you?"

"Oh! Oh, whatever. Coke. Coke's fine. Diet. Not Regular.
Thanks."

She nodded. Flushed now, Jimmy watched her head for the
concession stands. It took him a time, but by the point where
he'd moved to second in line he'd managed to tear himself away
from following that undulating sway of hers and back to business.
He was feeling just a touch light-headed though as he fished in
his pocket for change.

"Sir?"

"Uh, two for three, please."

He picked up the tickets as they were pushed towards him through
the grill and then moved out of the way.

"Here you go."

He looked up. Leanore was standing by the glass doors, holding
out his Coke. She'd got popcorn too, Jimmy noted. Was this girl
perfect, or what? He thought that the decorative pot plant
towering beside her set off the highlights in her hair. Its broad
glossy leaves gave off the same burnished sheen in deep green and
yellow. He wondered what she'd look like in a swimsuit of the
same color.

"Jimmy?"

"Beautiful..." he answered and then, with a start, "Oh! Thanks."
He took the Coke hastily.

After a moment or so, Leanore said, "Shouldn't we go in?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah! Okay."

She reclaimed her place draped on his arm as he handed over their
tickets and found them seats.

When Jimmy settled into his seat he found he was sweating,
coldly. He shifted and fielded Leanore's concerned glance with a
smile. She smiled back. A touch uncertainly, he thought. He
wondered if he should talk about something. About what was the
difficulty. His mind searched for an opening gambit, growing
steadily more panicked as the silence between them stretched.
Finally, he found something.

He leaned across the armrest. "Do you - ?"

The lights went down.

Jimmy sighed and hunched back against his seat, castigating
himself mentally for an idiot.

"Popcorn?"

So sunk in self-castigation was he that Leanore's soft whisper
right up against his ear almost gave him heart failure. He jerked
violently and his elbow whacked the popcorn carton out of her
hand and over the row of seats in front of them. Fortunately,
they were empty. The popcorn however, was irretrievable. Leanore
fielded his mortified apologies with a smile that seemed only
just a little forced to Jimmy and offered to share the handful
she'd managed to extract before he'd disposed of the remainder so
unceremoniously. Jimmy tried to decline, grateful for the fact
that the darkened cinema probably hid his reddened cheeks.
Leanore insisted though.

The succession of promos and sales pitches for the concession
stands finished as Jimmy settled back into his seat again. He
took a mouthful of the salty, butter-coated popcorn, more to stop
it slowly sticking to his palms than because he was hungry. He
seemed to have lost his appetite, all at once.

The screen lit...

...and filled with a succession of writhing bodies. A cacophony
of excited moans and cries reverberated around the theater.

From somewhere among the almost unrecognizable expanse of naked
flesh heaving above them, a blood-red title waveringly emerged to
fill the screen, as the soundtrack thundered to the roar of a
thousand Harleys.

Hollywood Biker Chicks III: Unchained Melanie.

Jimmy choked on the popcorn.

Beside him, when he dared to give her a glance, Leanore's profile
was set in stone.

It was at that point, Jimmy concluded miserably later, that
things started to go just a little downhill.

***

Clark was locking up his room door when he heard his name being
bellowed across the corridor.

Mike Atwell gestured impatiently as he headed for him. "Hey,
Kent, what's the hold up? We got people waiting! There's a couple
of beers out there with our names on them, starting to warm up
and lose their chill! I mean," he grinned as he reached Clark's
side, "just how long does it take to whisper a few farewell sweet
nothings in your wife's ear? I got this great club in mind,
you'll love it," he went on deftly, putting a hand to his
friend's shoulder and hustling him for the elevator. "What did
you think of Dertman's lecture this afternoon?"

Clark, left slightly behind at the starting post by this rapid
switching from subject to subject, took a moment to catch up,
then said, "Great! Painted a pretty depressing future for us
though. I'm not sure I entirely agree that we'll be completely
paper-free by the year 2015. At least, I hope not. I think I'd
kinda miss the smell of fresh ink." He smiled. "And I can tell
you now what Perry's gonna make of Dertman's ideas for preventing
ink transfer from fresh copy to paying customers."

Atwell laughed heartily. "Yeah, that one raised a few brows.
Laminated pages!" he snorted. "Still, the guy's an original
thinker, I'll give him that."

"Greg Tidewell's seminar on new technology advancements was
interesting," Clark went on admiringly. "I think - oh no."

Atwell gave him a quick look and then followed his glance to
where they'd almost reached the elevator. An imperious looking
elderly lady was holding the doors for them with a sour
expression that said she wasn't going to be doing it for much
longer and was only doing it now because her mother had taught
her some basic manners, unlike the rest of the world, it seemed.
Unconsciously, in the face of that Gorgon stare, Atwell's pace
quickened marginally.

"What?" he asked Clark.

"Nothing." He sighed. "I just don't think she likes me very much.
Neither does the dog," he added.

Atwell looked at the rolls of fat and fur tucked under the
woman's arm and cradled close against her ample bosom. "That's a
dog?" he murmured. "I thought it was something the vacuum had
sicked up."

Clark bit down hard on his lip to stifle a laugh. Atwell smiled
broadly at the woman and murmured a few, charming words of thanks
as he entered the elevator, Clark at his heels.

"Lobby, please," Mike said.

The woman pressed the button and directed a black look at Clark
in the corner. The Peke growled softly and curled a lip to show a
brief flash of gleaming incisor. Clark sighed and then turned his
head sharply as the sound of raised voices came from the far end
of the corridor.

"What the - ?" Atwell said, puzzled.

A slightly built man dressed in black jogging pants and
sweatshirt and carrying a black briefcase was running headlong
for the elevator. Further back, two uniformed hotel security
guards chased him down, yelling for him to stop. One of them
pulled up sharply as he realized that their quarry was going to
make the elevator with seconds to spare, just as the doors began
to slip to a close.

"Hold that elevator!" he hollered.

Too late. The thin man twisted neatly sideways into the narrowing
gap and stood panting softly as the doors slammed shut, leaving
his frustrated pursuers on their wrong side. The newcomer took a
deep breath and then turned to face his fellow passengers calmly
as they stared at him.

"Parking, please," he said.

"Uh, wait a minute," Clark said as the woman reached for the
button. "I think your friends want to get on board."

The lift automatically began to descend.

"Yeah?" The man hunkered down to open the briefcase. "Well, I
think we've kinda reached our weight limit on this trip." He
thrust a hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of
entangled gold necklaces and bracelets, dumping them into the
case. He smiled at Clark. "So, why don't you just shut up and
tell the lady there to press the button?"

He snapped the case closed, rose to his feet, and the woman
squeaked as he pointed the snub-nosed pistol he'd just taken from
it at them.

"Less you got something else you want to chat about?" the thief
inquired mildly of Clark. "I mean, I got all the time in the
world to be standing here listening to you, fella. I'm just
starved for decent conversation. You gonna press that damn button
or stand there all day with your mouth open?" he snapped at the
woman.

"Don't," Clark advised her. "Look, those guards have radioed in
by now," he told the thief. "They'll have every floor crawling
with security. Why don't you just give me the gun and make things
easier on yourself?"

The thief sighed. "Why do I always get 'em? Don't anybody in this
town know how to do what they're told no more?" he muttered and
then, darting forward, he was suddenly beside the woman, one arm
wrapped tight around her throat to haul her close against his
side as his eyes, flint-hard, fixed on Clark.

The woman screamed shrilly. And then did it again.

"Shut up, lady. I ain't in the mood," the thief snarled and then,
pointing the gun hastily at the two men as Clark made the
faintest of moves forward, "Hold it right there! Stay back or the
bitch gets it!"

"You're not going to shoot anyone," Clark assured him quietly.
"Especially not an old woman who can't hurt you."

"Yeah?" the thief said belligerently. "Who said anything about
the broad? I'm talkin' 'bout this bitch here."

He put the pistol to the head of the Peke.

"People got themselves a real soft spot for little big-eyed,
wet-nosed things, I always find," he said with a sour grin.
"Keeps 'em in line better than anything else. I held up a five
an' dime once with a possum as a hostage. Owner couldn't wait to
empty the till so the poor little guy didn't get his head blowed
off good," he confided. "Now press for the parking level."

Clark's eyebrows rose sharply.

And all hell broke loose.

In quick succession:

The woman began to beat at the thief with her purse, screeching
insults. Apparently, the Peke wasn't a girl and she was taking
exception to this slur on his sexuality.

The thief, completely overwhelmed by the venom of her attack,
ducked and danced, trying to avoid her in the narrow space as he
yelled useless threats that she wasn't listening to.

The Peke - perhaps having that insult in mind as much as his
owner did - suddenly lunged forward and sunk his teeth, which
were sharp and sizeable for such a small beast, into the thief's
wrist.

With a yell, the thief involuntarily squeezed the pistol's
trigger as he jerked back his bleeding hand.

The gun, fortunately pointing skywards at the time, ploughed a
bullet into the elevator ceiling.

In a shower of sparks, the lights went out.

The gun fired again, the dull boom of the shot almost deafening
in the enclosed space.

The woman shrieked.

The Peke shrieked with her.

And Clark had had enough.

Under cover of the darkness, which was no hindrance to him in the
slightest, he reached out and calmly took the thief around the
throat with one hand. Getting a firm grip, he ran him forward
into the steel doors with just enough thrust to ensure he was out
cold when he let him go, and would have a fair sized headache
when he woke. The thief dropped to the floor in a heap, like a
stone.

The elevator lit with a faint, cherry glow.

"Everyone okay?" Atwell said urgently as he turned from the
emergency panel and surveyed the scene. He gave the unconscious
thief a glance and then looked to Clark, who shrugged.

"I think he panicked in the dark and ran into the doors."

"Oh." Atwell said. He glanced at the woman standing furiously in
the corner and stroking the Peke into submission with lots of
cooing and billing. "Ma'am? You okay?"

"Don't be ridiculous, of course I'm all right. Call the police.
Press that button. I want to see the Management at once. This is
disgraceful! I was told this hotel was safe!"

"Yeah." Mike glanced at the panel. "Well, that's a problem.
Because I don't think we're going anywhere for a while."

Clark followed his glance and held in a groan. The second bullet
had hit the panel, twisting the metal and burying itself in the
elevator's electronic innards.

Mike reached for the emergency call phone and paused as it rang
shrilly. He picked it up. "Yeah? No, everyone is okay. He's out
cold. Sure...okay...we'll find something to tie him with till you
get here. Okay, thanks. Hotel security," he told Clark as he
replaced the phone. "They heard the shots. They say it'll take
maybe three hours to get this thing back on line. They want us to
make sure he's secure. They'll pick him up when they get here.
Can I borrow your tie?"

Clark hesitated. "Uh, sure." He tugged it free and handed it
over. Mike hunkered down beside the unconscious man and used it
to bind his hands behind his back. He used his own tie to secure
the thief's feet and then rose to his own with a satisfied nod.

"Oughta hold him."

He bent to pick up the gun gingerly and then clicked on the
safety. He dragged the briefcase towards him and dropped the gun
into it, then put the case against the wall, below the damaged
panel.

"Well? And what are we supposed to do now?" the elderly woman
glared at them.

Mike shrugged. "I guess we're just gonna have to relax a time."
He let himself slip down the elevator wall until he was sitting
with his back against the steel and his legs drawn up against his
chest. His arms rested loosely across his knees. "You know, I
always said, first thing they should have in an elevator is a
bar," he told Clark solemnly.

"I'm not staying here for three hours!" the woman stormed. "I
have a dinner appointment! Let me have that phone! Hello? Hello?"
She slammed it back as the dial tone answered. "Doesn't anyone
know who I am? I won't be treated this way, do you hear me?"

"Lady, I think the entire hotel heard you. You want to keep it
down?"

"And, how dare you call me old, you brute!" She turned suddenly
on Clark, aiming a wild swipe at him with her purse and frowning
as he ducked out of its path. "I'll have you know I was sixty two
on my last birthday!"

Clark sighed. He could tell they were in for a very long wait.

The harridan in the corner gave up on abusing them and retreated
to the other side of the elevator, stroking the Peke and
grumbling under her breath.

Clark glanced up and then put up a hand to lay it flat on the
underside of the middle panel of the ceiling. It gave slightly,
lifting out of its frame as he pushed harder.

"What you doing?" Mike asked him lazily.

"Well, if I can get up here, I could make my way to the floor
above and - "

"What are you, nuts? Listen, Kent, time for playin' the hero is
when you got no choice. Or when you're in real trouble. We're
not. Security knows we're here. They'll get us out just fine. Sit
down and take the weight off those overdone muscles of yours."

"But - "

"You've been watching too many movies, Clark. What's the point?
You think she's gonna go crawling up there?" he indicated their
companion. "And I sure ain't, when I can take a slow, easy ride
down to the lobby in about the same time it'd take me to climb my
way out. So, come on, relax. You're not one of those nuts got a
problem with small spaces, are you?" he added warily. "Because we
got nothing left to tie you down with, you start losing it. You
realize that?"

Clark gave him a steady look. "No," he said.

"Well, good. Cause I'd hate to have to sit on you. Now, why don't
you sit down?"

Clark paused and gave the ceiling another glance before
reluctantly settling himself beside the convention Chairman.

"That's my boy." Atwell tapped a slow rhythm on one knee for a
moment and then shifted, uncomfortably. He loosened the top
couple of buttons on his shirt and glanced at Clark beside him.
"You'd best open up that collar there. It's gonna get heated up
in here mighty quick."

Clark paused, then gave him a faint smile. "I'm...just fine," he
said.

Atwell grunted. For a moment or two, silence settled on them.

"Don't suppose you happen to have a deck of cards on you?" Atwell
asked at last.

Clark sighed.

"Didn't think so," Atwell said.

***

Dale Karvin got only halfway through his performance - Twice
Nightly! Three Times On Sunday! Touring The Nation On God's Vital
Work! - before Lois decided she'd heard enough. There was no
story here. About all she could do with it was go over hard,
stony ground that had been well trodden before. Angle A: Karvin
was a true believer. He did good works, gave those who need it a
little faith, donated copiously to charities and kept his sainted
nose clean. Angle B: Karvin was a cynic, a scam artist, bleeding
the naive and lonely dry for whatever big bucks they could give.
He gave to no charity but those he set up as tax havens and was
as dirty as a crooked D.A. Either way hardly mattered. Lois had
been on this trail before. If Karvin was dirty, you could shout
it >from the rooftops and make no difference. The believers would
go on >believing. The skeptics would damn him just as they always
had.

She had to admit though, watching Karvin go through his paces as
he invited those petitioners at the front of the marquee to climb
on stage and be healed of their various ills, if it was a scam,
he made a good song and dance of it.

"Miss?"

She started as an elbow nudged at her arm and found herself
assaulted by the bland smile of the middle aged, well-dressed
woman on her left. The woman lifted the wooden bowl in her hands.
Lois took it blankly and then, realizing, "Oh!"

She rummaged in her purse for her wallet and dropped in a few
coins. She ignored the sniff of displeasure from her companion as
she passed the bowl on. Most of the contributions had been crisp
notes and more than a few had been twenties or larger.

" -- of the Blessed Spring! Drink of the holy water! Cleansed by
the hand of God! As your souls will be cleansed by the water of
the Spring!"

She frowned as Karvin's theatrically raised voice took her
attention again. He was holding what looked like a small, plastic
bottle over his head, much like a soda bottle, Lois thought
bemused. There was another nudge at her elbow and she turned her
head.

"What's this?" she said, as the woman offered her one of the
bottles.

"Water from the Spring." The woman nodded encouragingly,
obviously having decided that Lois was a newcomer, in need of a
guiding hand, rather than an irredeemable soul who was too
touched with the avarice of money to give it up lightly to a
greater cause.

Lois took the bottle automatically. Her first impression bore out
some. As far as she could tell, it was little different from any
bottle of mineral water you could purchase at any dime store. She
peered at the label. Blessed Spring. Sparkling Mineral Water from
God's own Heavenly Spring. Lois fought back a grimace. Up on the
stage, Karvin was still exhorting the flock to drink, while
reminding them that more of the blessed water could be purchased
outside the marquee after the rally -- a bargain at just $9.89
per bottle. God had high production costs, it seemed.

"We always drink the water of the Blessed Spring," whispered her
unasked for mentor. She took a quick gulp of the water herself,
her face transformed into ecstasy for a moment as she closed her
eyes and swallowed. "To cleanse the soul," she added, as Lois
hesitated. "Go on."

"How much?" Lois asked cynically, reaching for her purse again.
It didn't look like she was going to get off lightly on this one.
She wondered idly if Perry would kick off if she put it in under
expenses.

"It doesn't cost." The woman smiled. It transformed her face,
that smile. Lois felt her cheeks heat as though she'd been
reprimanded. "It's a gift. From God," the woman said. She turned
her head to look up reverently on the stage. "And from Reverend
Karvin, of course. Go on," she reiterated, bringing her attention
back to Lois and frowning at her.

Lois paused, but she figured it was easier than arguing. She
broke the bottle's seal with a twist of the cap and took a few
sips. It tasted like mineral water to her. It was warm and
slightly flat, with a metallic undertaste, but, in the
claustrophobic heat of the tent, it tasted better than it might
have done. She took several more gulps before she capped the
bottle and shoved it absently into her purse.

She hung on valiantly for another twenty minutes, but she knew
that unless she found an angle that no one else had figured on
before her, she wasn't going to be writing a story on Karvin any
time soon. She wouldn't do a puff piece. Not for anyone. Maybe if
she could get an interview with the man himself she might be able
to get more of a handle on it, she thought tiredly. Karvin's
acolyte gave her a reproving glance as she made her way through
the line with soft excuse me's.

Outside, a light starting drizzle replaced the heavy air inside
the tent. Lois paused for a moment, face upturned gratefully to
the welcome moisture, feeling it cool her heated cheeks. After a
moment or so though, it quickly became more freezing than
soothing. There was a definite chill in the air now. Lois
shivered and pulled the collar of her coat closer around her
throat as she set off purposefully for the Jeep, parked neatly to
the rear of the crowded parkway.

Her throat felt slimed by the stale water she'd drunk in the
tent, the taste of it still heavy and metallic in her mouth. She
thought about stopping off at a little roadside diner that she
knew for a cream soda. She glanced at her watch as she got behind
the wheel. It was already nine-thirty, but she doubted Clark
would arrive at the brownstone much before midnight. She'd plenty
of time before then to make a detour. She smiled as she fired up
the engine, mind skipping ahead to distant plans, and paused as
she glanced in the mirror and put the Jeep in reverse.

A few yards away, huddled under the pitiful shelter of the awning
overlap as the rain hardened, and illuminated by the sodium lamps
surrounding the marquee, a young, Hispanic woman was standing by
the main tent. A boy of around eight, wearing heavy leg braces
and hunched over, leaned dispiritedly against her side. The woman
was clutching a crumpled yellow card, like others that Lois had
noted being carried by some of the crowd within. All of those
invited onto the stage for healing by Karvin had had them pinned
to their jackets or blouses.

Lois hesitated a moment longer. But there was something in the
woman's body language that froze her hand on the gear. She sighed
and shifted it into park. She got out of the car.

"Are you okay?" she asked as she approached the pair
diffidently.

"They wouldn't let me in. I come all this way an' they wouldn't
let me in. I gotta get in. For Denny's sake." The woman glanced
down at the child, worriedly.

"Who wouldn't let you in?" Lois glanced back to the tent. "It's a
little crowded in there, but there's enough room still."

"Oh no, I gotta get to the front, you see? So Mr. Karvin can take
care of Denny."

She was one of the petitioners, Lois realized. One of the band of
people who'd brought loved ones here in the slim hope that Karvin
might produce a healing miracle where conventional medical lore
had failed. She frowned. "You said you'd come a distance?"

"From Atlanta."

Lois lifted a brow. "Atlanta? Well, that is a ways," she agreed.
She paused then asked, "Just on the chance you might get in?"

"Well, I wrote to 'em. And they sent me back my pass." She lifted
the yellow card. "But they said there's so many...so many...an'
Mr. Karvin can't help *every* -- " Suddenly, startlingly, she
broke down.

"Oh..." Lois hesitated, at a loss for a moment, then put an arm
awkwardly around the woman's shoulders and began to steer her to
the Jeep. "Why, don't we sit down over here, out of the rain, and
you can tell me all about it," she said. "Do you mind if I talk
to you? I'm from the Daily Planet..."

The woman nodded, looking at her gratefully.

Lois had found her angle.

***

Karen yawned as she emerged from the bathroom and wrapped her
terrycloth robe more securely around her still shivering body.
She put a hand to the radiator in the corner of the living room
and sighed, making a mental note to nag Mr. Mazetti again about
the lack of heat.

As she straightened away from the radiator, chill fingers brushed
their way across the back of her neck. She spun around with a
soft gasp, clutching the neck of the robe against her throat, and
then let loose a low breath. She stalked across the floor to the
bedroom window, shaking her head as she pushed aside the
billowing gauze streamers of the drapes and hauled the window
closed. After a pause, she locked it for good measure, even as
she chided herself for over-reacting. She looked pensively out of
the window for a moment, but saw nothing but the usual shadows
among the pools of lambent lamplight. A lone cat sashayed across
the empty street, tail held high and proud, before it disappeared
into the shrubbery of the garden opposite.

Karen turned her back on the window and headed for the living
room.

She was halfway across the room when the shadowy figure leapt at
her out of the darkness. Karen jerked violently away, and barely
managed to suppress the instinctive scream that bubbled up into
her throat as she realized in the same instant that panic took
her that it was merely her own reflection pacing her >from the
iced glass of the tall mirror beside the mantle. She leaned
heavily against the wall, clutching a hand against her chest as
her heart slowly slowed from its mad, frenzied leaping and
settled into something more like its normal rhythm. In the
mirror, her doppleganger image did likewise, staring back at her
with wide, white-rimmed eyes and a wild expression. After a
moment, the insane urge to giggle overtook her and she clapped
both hands to her mouth.

"Idiot!" she told herself, when she managed to get herself under
control.

She'd forgotten all about leaving the dumb thing there. She'd
woken late that morning, had been in a frantic drive to leave
before eight in the hopes that she might still catch the early
train, with none of the time she usually took to tidy things away
before she left for the office.

"What you doing?" she added, disgustedly, aloud. "Trying to give
yourself a coronary?"

Drawing her robe closer, and still calling herself seven kinds of
idiot, she padded across to the refrigerator and hauled out a
six-pack of soda. Laying the pack down beside the arm of the
sofa, she settled herself and snapped on the TV with the remote.

After a few moments of idle channel surfing, she left it on a
local news channel and ran down the sound to near mute, but not
quite - the soft backswell of voices provided some company at
least. Karen rarely switched off the TV these days, whether she
watched it or not. Not since her fiance, David, had moved out to
set up three blocks away with that redhead from accounting, three
months previously. Tuning out the TV to a background murmur in
her mind, she reached almost simultaneously for the folders which
Richard had given her earlier and a can of soda from the six-pack
on the floor.

Her groping hand closed around something soft and furry instead
of the can's slick surface. She shrieked, jerking back her
fingers and ending up in a huddle on her knees, staring at the
sofa's arm. Her mind filled with an image of something dark and
very large crouched in hiding on its other side. She was almost
sure, as she knelt there, rigid and unable to move, that she
could hear a faint squeak and scurrying in the shadows. Behind
her. She whipped around with a gasp and almost overbalanced. But
there was nothing stirring in the dark. Still, it took her a time
to turn back and slowly lean over the sofa's arm. She clutched
the flimsy weapon of a file in her hand, half raised in
anticipation, and then let it fall as she expelled a soft,
relieved breath. The pink furry mule, another leftover from her
displaced morning, lay innocently on its side beside the
sixpack.

Shaking her head, Karen picked it up and tossed it with a little
more force than was necessary to the other side of the room. What
in the world had gotten into her this evening?

What had gotten into her yesterday, she presumed. And the day
before that. She frowned. Just lately, she seemed to be jumping
at non-existent shadows more and more often. She had barely
avoided making a monumental fool of herself in the office
yesterday when she'd glanced up from her computer screen and been
sure, for just one heart-stopping moment, that the shadow of the
lamp on the desk beside her had been that of an intruder's hand
reaching for her throat. She had had to think fast to convince
Mr. Andrews that she had only been startled by an especially
large spider when she'd yelled out like that and, even then, he
had looked at her as though she was one can short of a sixpack.

Sometimes, her heart began racing all on its own, till it seemed
that she had to scream or her head would burst apart under the
pressure of its drumbeat thudding in her ribs. Sometimes, she
felt as though something dark and malevolent was crouching on her
shoulders, bowing her down with the weight of some future horror,
which she could neither see nor avoid. The sensation that
something dreadful was about to happen had crept up on her over
the past couple of days and now seemed like an insidious part of
her, which she could neither escape nor dispel.

"That's ridiculous!" she told herself impatiently and then, with
a sigh, she took herself in hand, steadying her nerves and
focusing her mind on more important matters. She refused to let
this nonsense distract her any more.

As she picked up the collection of folders, one slipped from the
bottom of the pile and fell to the carpet. With a frown, she bent
to retrieve it and raised a brow, before she sighed. Looked like
Richard had messed up again. The file, slim and red-bound, was
obviously one of Andrews' confidential production reports. It had
probably been on his desk, with the others, she realized. Richard
just hadn't noticed that it wasn't part of the pile. Andrews
would notice though. She put the report on the table in front of
her and wondered if she could make it into the office early
enough in the morning to put it back before Andrews arrived for
the day, or noticed its absence. She could save Richard one
bawling out tomorrow, at least.

She snuggled further into the sofa and flipped the first of the
Gillens expenses folders open. Nibbling thoughtfully at the tip
of her pen, she was quickly engrossed in working over the figures
for the monthly accounts.

So engrossed was she that she missed the first, tentative knock
at the door. The second, a touch louder and more impatient,
jerked up her head, startling her. She put the files down with a
glance at the clock above the TV and frowned as she saw how late
it was.

The frown deepened as she looked cautiously through the peephole.
She pulled the neck of her robe closer around her throat and then
opened the door on its safety chain, just enough to peer around
its edge.

"Mr. Andrews?" she said, puzzled. "What are you - is something
wrong?"

"Karen." He smiled at her. "No, no not at all. Well, hardly
enough to be bothered about really. It's just that - well, it's
rather urgent, I'm afraid. May I come in? It'll only take a
moment."

"Well - " Karen looked flustered. A hundred thoughts flashed
through her mind. Uppermost, her state of undress, the fact that
she hadn't gotten around to clearing away the remains of her
supper and she hadn't vacuumed at all today...

"Karen?"

She started. "Oh." She glanced behind her at the apartment. "Oh,
yeah, sure. Hang on." She closed the door, dragged a rough hand
through her unruly hair and snicked clear the chain, before
hauling it wide. She tugged at the neck of her robe again,
self-consciously.

"Come on in."

***

The brownstone was mostly in darkness by the time Superman landed
on the sill of the living room window; dimly lit from within by
the hazy flicker of the TV and one single lamp. He entered the
room carefully, closing the windows behind him as he glanced
across his shoulder to the sofa.

Settled deep into its corner, legs tucked gracefully beneath her,
his wife was asleep. Brief blue flashes in the glow of the screen
lit the burgundy satin of her robe and played color and shadow
against her skin. A half-open book had slipped from her lap and
onto the floor.

Clark smiled slightly as he spun out of the red and blue suit.
Burgundy. He loved that color on her. But then he liked her in
anything she wore. The smile became a crooked grin. And in
anything she didn't too.

He leaned over to switch off the TV and then bent to pick up the
book. He glanced briefly at its cover before he laid it on the
coffee table. It was a heavyweight text - 'Religious Evangelism
in Rural America: A Study of Sects and Sanctuaries' - by a well
known historical psychologist, whose name he faintly recognized.
As he put it down, a glossy eight by ten fluttered out >from
between its pages. Clark retrieved it from the floor and raised
his >brows at the darkly handsome man featured on the print,
before he glanced at his sleeping wife. He turned the print over
and shook his head with a smile as he found the blue inked stamp
mark on its reverse: 'Copyright of the United Church of
Salvation.'

He placed it carefully with the book and less than half a dozen
heartbeats later had settled onto the sofa beside Lois. He
studied her face for a moment, relaxed and softened in sleep, and
put a hand against her cheek before he leaned forward to place a
soft kiss against her temple, her cheek, the line of her jaw,
then lowered his head to trail more across the side of her neck.
He was rewarded almost instantly as Lois stirred, with a quiet
sigh.

"Hey," he said softly as her eyelids flickered and lifted and he
found himself the focus of those beautiful, deep and soulful
brown eyes.

"Hey, yourself." She hooked her arms around his neck as he
gathered her close and closed her eyes again as he continued
those tender caresses. His hands traced soft circles against her
back as he kissed the side of her throat. The satin had picked up
her warmth as she slept. He wrapped her tight, one arm rising to
cradle her shoulders as he made his way in a heated trail towards
her ear. He nuzzled delicately at the soft patch of sensitive
skin behind its lobe.

"Sorry, I'm late," he took breath to murmur against her skin.

"Late?" she repeated absently, already much more interested in
what he was doing and in the way that her body was responding to
it. She stretched her neck with a frown, as he set to intently
exploring the shell of her ear with a darting, lapping tongue,
and lifted the arm draped around his, trying to see her
wristwatch across his shoulder. "What time is it?"

"Almost three."

"Three...?" She drew back, fixing him with a suddenly alert gaze,
hands against his shoulders now, holding him at bay as he looked
at her, surprised. "You were out on the town with Mike Atwell and
his buddies till three in the morning?"

He raised a brow. "You really want to get into a discussion about
what you can get up to in the city at three in the morning?"

The words emerged more absently than he'd intended as his gaze
slid away from her face and down the exposed length of pale,
honey-colored skin at her throat, to where it seemed to find
something of intense interest. He trailed one finger of the hand
still cupped against the side of her neck down along the froth of
coffee-colored lace that formed a deep V against her skin and let
it come to rest at its lowest point. He hooked a finger into the
lace and tugged gently. "This is nice," he approved.

Lois ignored that - though not without considerable effort. She
tapped him against the chest with one finger as he leaned
forward, bending his head to place a small, gentle press of his
lips to the swell of one breast above the lace trim.

"*I* was working. And you were - ?"

He grimaced. "Actually, if you must know, I've spent most of the
evening stuck in an elevator. And the rest of it giving police
statements." He caressed the soft skin beneath his lips again and
then lifted his head to look at her.

"Superman was stuck in an elevator?" She looked as though she
might laugh.

"I'm serious," he told her, aggrieved. He sighed. "It's a long
story and I promise I'll tell you all about it later, but right
now - "

He pulled her against him again, one hand moving determinedly to
brush the satin from the sculpted curve of her shoulder. Then, as
he let his eyes feast on the satisfying expanse of warmly glowing
flesh he'd bared, his hand dropped lower to tug free the loose
knot of the robe's belt. Lois smiled.

"Right now..." she agreed, kissing him. A kiss that caught fire
all at once, flaring into passion.

Clark groaned, pressing restlessly against her lips as he slid
the robe open and discovered, not entirely to his surprise, that
there were no further barriers to exploring the satin warmth of
her skin, that she was naked beneath it.

"Oh God, honey..."

He lifted his head, found her mouth to kiss her briefly and
thoroughly in promise of granting every desire she cared to name
and then laid his cheek against hers, breathing hard and shallow
against her neck. Lois whimpered, burrowing tighter against him.
"Clark..." she murmured urgently.

He chuckled softly. "Come on."

He slipped his arms beneath her, lifting her with him as he rose
from the sofa. Lois tucked her head into the curve of his
shoulder as he carried her up the first of the stairs to the
lower landing. Her hair smelled faintly of lemon and ginger from
the shampoo she'd used; a scent he'd always associated with her,
right back to the days when they'd first met. He inhaled it
gratefully, feeling the deep welling sense of rightness with the
world he always had when he was with her.

He sighed softly, a small, thankful sound, and pressed his lips
lightly to the soft fall of that hair. He didn't think he'd ever
needed her so badly to take his mind off of an evening. He
thought about the last few hours and suppressed a shudder. The
hotel thief had recovered consciousness long before security had
rescued them from the elevator and they'd had nothing left to gag
him with. (Though Atwell had sardonically suggested the Peke as a
solution at one point - an idea that had provoked an inevitably
raucous response from its owner.) Spending several hours
listening to thief, dowager and convention Chairman trade insults
hadn't been Clark's best idea of an interesting evening. Even the
Peke had thrown in a snarl or two - mostly at him.

"You smell like Smokey the Bear," Lois suddenly roused herself to
murmur, half-accusing.

He laughed. "I spotted a big warehouse fire on the way over here;
made a detour. No one was hurt."

Lois lifted her head, the fog of desire fading as her eyes
sharpened. "Another one? Like last night?"

"Nope. Same one." He grinned at her, almost able to see her nose
twitch as she scented a take. "Nothing to interest us any. No
arsonists at work or insurance scams on the make. The fire
department thought it was out, but it'd gotten under the
floorboards and flared up again, that's all. It happens."

"Oh," Lois said, sounding disappointed. But her nose wrinkled
again, visibly this time.

"Don't worry, I'll shower when we get upstairs," he promised.

His wife nipped gently at his ear. "You won't you know," she told
him, lifting her head to meet his lips and devouring them in a
heady, potent kiss that sent him light-headed and dizzy all at
once. "I'm not waiting one more second to be with you tonight."

***

He awoke with a start, disorientated. He looked down at the
sleeping angel snuggled into his arms. Her head was tucked tight
beneath his chin and her breath tickled at his throat as she
slept the warm, sated sleep of the pleasantly exhausted. He
smiled slightly and eased the arm around her shoulders to give
him a view of the alarm clock. He'd been asleep for almost an
hour.

Clark shifted further and then paused. He had intended simply to
make her more comfortable, ease her beneath the covers, properly
dispense with the satin robe and then snuggle up against her warm
curves until he reclaimed sleep. But she was completely
irresistible as she lay there in his embrace, palely glowing in
the darkness, an enchanting, Lorelei siren he simply couldn't
resist.

He eased her into the supporting curve of his arm and put the
back of one soft hand against her throat, stroking lightly at the
smooth skin. He nuzzled his way in a warm trail across the line
of her jaw and up to tug gently at the lobe of her ear before
retracing his path and finding her mouth. He kissed her lazily,
pulling her closer against his chest as he probed his way between
her lips and into the damp warmth of her mouth.

He felt her stir against him and her arms lifted to enclose his
neck, her hands plunging into his hair as she came to slow,
sultry life against him, moaning softly and then eagerly as she
came fully awake.

Their bodies moved electrically in a slow, languid dance for a
time, their hands engaged in slow exploration and then he pulled
back slightly to look down into her flushed face and shining
eyes. He lifted a hand to stroke an errant strand of hair away
from her cheek and behind her ear and then leaned in again to
reclaim her lips in another sweet, heady kiss. He was in no
hurry.

Afterwards, he bundled her close against him, sighing softly, and
felt her echo that murmur of contentment against the skin of his
chest.

"I'm glad you broke your promise," she murmured drowsily, before
sleep claimed her for the night. Clark tilted his head to smile
down at her, amused, before he tightened his hold around the
small hand fisted into his own, pulling their joined grip higher
to lie against his chest. He slid his free arm further around her
waist, took a moment to gently pull the edges of her robe back
around her cooling body and tied the belt firmly around her
waist.

He stroked a slow, soothing thumb against one silk covered hip as
he pulled her closer, content to simply hold her like this
against him, letting the cooling beat of her heart and the soft,
rushing whisper of her pulse lull him into his own warm dreams.

***

"Culver? Hey, Culver! I know you're in there! Culver!"

Crouched in the corner, between the balcony wall and the glass
sheeting of the door, Karen Culver ducked her head into the
shelter of her arms, shivering.

"Go away...go away...go away..."

"Culver! Hey! Hey, you listening in there?" Another flurry of
thuds shook the door in its frame. Karen huddled further into
herself. She put her hands over her ears, face tightening,
trembling.

The pounding stopped abruptly, replaced by a rising grumble of
voices from the door's other side, one of which suddenly rose
sharply enough to become half- coherent.

"- then, just butt out! You want me to handle this or what? I
mean, me, I'd just as rather go back downstairs and watch another
hour of Jeopardy!"

The complaint brought another rumble of protest and then there
was a moment's pause before the swishing sound of Mazetti's
oversized carpet slippers faded down the corridor and into
silence.

Karen rocked slowly back and forth, murmuring.

After a time, her eyes darted to the railing. The voice in her
head whispered slyly at her. It urged her to her feet. It told
her there was only one way to stop the fear.

She glanced fearfully behind her once as she clambered upright,
pulling herself erect with one hand against the decorative
ironwork wall banding the balcony.

She stood for a moment, knuckles bone-white as they gripped the
rail. Oblivious to the chill wind as it whipped her robe into
streamers around her thighs, Karen tilted her head to one side,
listening. Down below, far down below, the lights of the city
twinkled up at her. For an instant, they seemed like eyes,
watching her. Then they spun, brightly welcoming, encouraging...

The sound of keys rattling in the lock startled her, jerking her
around.

"Culver?"

A virulent muttering followed Mazetti's tentative call as the
door jammed up tight against the tumbled collection of furniture
that had been piled haphazardly against its other side. As a
barrier it proved less than successful as Mazetti shoved harder,
pushing both door and barricade steadily aside, leaving a sliver
of space, enough for him to slide his bulky frame through. Wedged
in the doorway, he shoved again, until the door lay fully ajar.
He mumbled again as he fumbled for the lightswitch by the door.

"...dumb broad...what the hell she been playing - oh, there you
are!" He started as light flooded the room, enabling him to catch
sight of her, framed in the open doors of the balcony. His eyes
flicked over her, taking in her robe-clad figure interestedly,
before they rose to her face. Behind him, a small, curious crowd
peered around the doorframe. Most of them were wearing
nightclothes.

"I been gittin' complaints." He frowned at her. "All that
thumpin' an' bangin' going on. It's three in the morning, you
know! What the hell you doin', moving things around this time of
the morning. Folks're wanting to sleep. Those that can." He
rubbed a heavy hand at the small of his back with a grimace and
scowled at her again.

Karen stared at him. Her hands clutched the robe close around
her. She backed up against the balcony railing, moaning softly.

"Hey..." Mazetti's annoyance faded slightly as he realized there
was something more going on here than he might have supposed.
"Hey, you okay?" He took a step forward and jumped, startled, as
she shrieked. "What the - ?"

She flew at him, hands flailing, still screaming. She hit him
like a squalling, clawing cat. Stunned, he could do nothing to
defend himself as her nails slashed at his face. She was spitting
curses at him, wild accusations among violent sobs that made no
sense. Something about drapes and rats.

They spun in a brief dance as he fought himself free of her,
finally succeeding in getting enough of a grip on her that he
could shove her clear. She hit the edge of the balcony door and,
losing balance, came up hard against the wrought-ironwork wall.
Mazetti put a hand to one stinging cheek as he watched her warily
and stared wide-eyed at the bloody smears on his fingers.

"You crazy - " he whispered and broke off as she began to wail.
That pure, rising sound of terror lifted the hairs on the back of
his neck. He backed off, holding out shaking hands. "Look, I don'
want no trouble here. You understand me?" She ignored him and he
shook his head, lips twisting with disgust. "I don't know what
you're flying on, lady," he muttered. "But I'm outta here. Okay?
You hear me? I'm going!"

He turned his head for the open door. None of the curious
spectators seemed anxious to help him out though. He looked back,
helplessly, at Karen.

She clung, sobbing, to the rail and then doubled over, hands
clutching at her stomach as she began to retch.

"Aw, sweet - " Mazetti stared at her, angrily. "I'm calling the
cops. You hear me? I ain't gettin' in on this! No way! I'm
calling the cops!" He turned his head, searching the living room,
and then came back, impatiently, "Where you got the -- oh, sweet
- " His eyes widened. A small, shocked scream came from the
doorway. "Hey! Hey, get down from there!"

Karen Culver whipped her head around at his yell. For a moment,
the barest instant, their eyes met as she clung on the very edge
of balance, crouched atop the balcony's narrow ledge. Her eyes
were wild, like a hunted animal's. Yet, far down deep in their
depths, there seemed to be a plea too, a plea for him to save
her, stop her. Mazetti took a step forward, hand lifting
automatically.

"Now, look...I don't know what's going on here, but there ain't
no need for -- no!"

He yelled the useless demand as Karen turned back, her hair
swirling in a cloud around her pale face, fingers knuckling white
as they briefly tightened their grip and then pushed her clear.

Whoever it was in the doorway that was screaming did it again,
shrilly this time, a piercing screech that drilled its way
through his skull.

"No!" Mazetti yelled again. He checked his forward rush, standing
on the empty balcony, hands fisting at his sides.

Another shrill scream floated up to him, from the sidewalk below
this time, as some passer-by unexpectedly found the crumpled,
bloodied heap lying in their path. It was followed by the rise of
a male voice, urgent and demanding. Others joined it. Mazetti,
gray-faced now, walked out onto the balcony and looked over the
ledge.

Behind him, someone was talking about calling the cops.

Murmurs of gossip and rumor already began to rise in his wake.

Mazetti - streetwise, hard-nosed, seen it all before and couldn't
care less anyhow, Mazetti - staggered away from the balcony and
into Karen's pink and lilac tiled bathroom, where he disposed of
his supper of bologna and beans in a matter of somewhat messy
moments.

***

"Hey - why didn't you wake me?"

Lois smiled at her husband in the mirror as she molded herself to
his back and ran her hands across well-formed chest muscles,
still damp from his early shower. Warned by the faintly reddish
tinge to her husband's eyes, she was careful not to get in the
way of the narrow beam of heat being reflected off the mirror and
onto his jaw. Clark smiled back as he left off shaving and turned
his head to kiss her briefly as she stretched up to bring herself
into reach.

"You looked so peaceful. Besides," he grinned at her as he picked
up the bottle of cologne from the shelf above the sink, "I
figured you could probably do with the rest."

"Mmmmm." She rested her cheek against the warm skin of his
shoulder and sighed softly, stretching languidly against him.
"Well, that's one of the hazards of having a husband who doesn't
wear out too easy."

Clark chuckled. "Anyway," he teased, replacing the bottle and
turning to gather her into the circle of his arms. "Awake, you're
*much* too much of a temptation."

He kissed her lightly. Then, mock stern, fended her off --
somewhat ineffectually - as she lifted herself on her toes to
trail her lips across the line of his jaw, enjoying the newly
applied scent of spice and woodsmoke clinging to his skin.

"And, I have *got* to get back to the hotel before those streets
start filling up with the morning rush."

She got in his way as he put an apologetic hand to her shoulder,
blocking him as he headed for the door. "So...I can't *tempt* you
into another reunion then?" She glanced across her shoulder for
the bedroom and gave him a smoky smile as her fingers walked a
meandering path across his chest and onto his shoulders. "You
could make us one of your famous Kansas breakfasts and we
can..."

He fought a smile, maintaining a solemn facade as he tilted his
head to view her, considering. "Last night's reunion wasn't
enough?"

She shook her head, reaching up to entwine soft fingers in his
dampened hair. "One reunion with you is never enough." Her voice
was a low, throaty murmur that almost dissolved his willpower
there and then.

"True." He closed the fraction of distance necessary to meet her
lips. "Hey, I thought I was supposed to be the one with
super-stamina in this family?" he teased as she met him eagerly,
fire and heat in her lips as they moved vigorously against his
own.

"Well, exactly," Lois all but purred. She shifted to plant one
long finger in the center of his chest. "You're a challenge."

"I am?" He sounded almost startled by this declaration.

"Sure! To every red blooded female in the country." Her finger
began a slow, meandering and thoughtful path downwards. "I've
made it my life's work to wear you out."

"Really?" A curious note entered his tone. "How? Exactly?"

"Oh, I have my ways..."

He grinned. "You certainly do." He took hold of her exploring
hand and brought it up against his chest again, entwined in his
own. "Have I seen all of them yet?"

Lois smiled. "Uh-uh - not even close." She nuzzled her way across
his bare chest. "Want me to show you some of the others?" she
said, raising her head to kiss him again.

The kiss deepened, lingered, and then he drew back regretfully,
with a sigh. "Honey, I'd like nothing better. But, if I don't get
back to Boston before nine, Mike's gonna come looking to find
me."

Lois pouted up on him. "I'm beginning to dislike Mike," she
confided.

He laughed and kissed her again. "Mike's one of the good guys. He
thinks you have a cute name," he added, a mischievous twinkle
coming into his eyes.

His wife arched a sharp brow at him. "*This* is supposed to
endear him to me?"

He chuckled. "He's read some of your work."

"Mmmmm-hmmmm?" the inquiry came from the region of his left
shoulder as she began to tease a trail of soft, open-mouthed
kisses against his skin.

Clark closed his eyes. His hands lifted to stroke their way
through the thick spill of her hair, pressing her closer to the
firm muscle contracting under her lips. "He thinks you're one of
the best reporters he's ever read."

Lois paused. "One of?"

"Hey, honey, he's from Boston, cut him some slack."

"Hmmmph..." Lois snorted, unimpressed, but she seemed more
interested in her explorations now anyway.

Clark sighed. "Sweetheart - "

"Mmmmphhh...just...ten...more...minutes..." She punctuated the
soft plea with whispering caresses across his collarbone and
against his jaw, where the tight twitch of muscle gave testimony
to his struggle to resist her. "Please?" She lifted her head and
hit him full force with the soft, entreating glow of her dark,
bewitching eyes.

"Ten?" he said, the word seemingly drawn up out of the pit of his
belly and against his will. Lois moved to position her lips
within an inch of his. Her breath tickled at his skin,
distracting him as he continued, almost absently, "Just ten?"

Even he was able to hear the disappointment in his tone. He
winced, knowing he'd just handed her a weapon in this battle of
wills that she'd use to beat him into submission without the
slightest compunction.

"Well..." She gave him a coquettish glance from beneath those
impossibly long lashes and smiled her siren smile. "I suppose we
*could* in ten...if we're really...energetic."

That provoked a bark of laughter from him, half rueful, half
awe-struck. His eyes filled with soft affection as he looked down
at her. He considered that she had probably secured two hours
sleep at most, yet here she was, fresh as a daisy,
ready...willing...he groaned, the thought drifting as his mouth
closed warmly over hers and her hands began a soft exploration of
the muscles of his chest and back.

He struggled, distantly, to recall why this was a bad idea.

"Lois..." He pulled free with a sigh and paused as his eyes
caught on her robe, which had been pulled back off one shoulder,
exposing the smooth curve. He found her shoulders irresistible.
He drew in a deep, heavy breath. "Sweetheart, really,
I...can't..."

Lois narrowed her eyes. "Wrong answer, farmboy," she growled as
she reached up, splaying her fingers firmly against his cheeks,
pulling his head down to meet her halfway as she rose up onto her
toes and kissed him ferociously.

His lips surrendered immediately, just ahead of the flag waving
from the rest of his body, opening obediently beneath the firm
pressure of hers. His self- control headed for the nearest exit,
along with good sense and quite a few other things besides. He
groaned as she let him loose and turned her attention to a
distracting trail of hot little kisses along the line of his jaw
and throat.

"Oh, God, I knew this would happen... My Mom was right. I'm a
complete pushover, aren't I?" he complained, letting his head
fall forward until his forehead rested on her shoulder.

His wife's soft, triumphant laughter against the base of his jaw
thrilled him, in ways he was almost certain she had no idea she
was able to. He loved the way she took delight in winning the
argument, victorious in battle - even the little, trivial ones.
And he loved letting her win, savoring her delight - especially
over the little, trivial ones.

He faked a mournful sigh. "If the card carrying members of the
Arch Villains of Metropolis Union could see me now...

Lois was nibbling at his earlobe now, giving the task as much
solemn attention as she would have a guaranteed, smack you in the
face, Pulitzer Prize winning story.

His hand brushed its way higher against her back to cradle her,
easing her closer against him still, while the other gently ran
the curve of her other shoulder, baring it. His lips traced a
line of fire against the pulse-line of her throat, his breath
flooding harshly against her skin as his heartbeat rushed
thunderously to join hers.

Lois took time out from nuzzling gently at the sensitive patch of
skin just behind his ear to whisper a few provocative, teasing
words, which made him pause in his own ministrations and then
smile against the warm skin of her shoulder. Was that
anatomically possible, he wondered? He didn't know. He didn't
actually care. It was going to be fun finding out. His hand left
its comfortable perch and, ignoring her soft, wordless protest at
the loss, he reached to scoop her into his arms. She lifted her
head and met his kiss as he headed for the bedroom, their lips
melding in a heated caress.

He was halfway through the door when he suddenly paused.

Drowning in a haze of desire, it took Lois a moment or so to
realize she'd lost him. Then she left off teasing the shell of
his ear and raised her head to look at him, enquiringly. She
suppressed a sigh - barely - and pushed up with her hands on his
shoulders to look at him more steadily. "Go."

"Huh?" His eyes cleared, came back from the distance - a far
distance and one that didn't include her - and turned immediately
contrite. "Lois, I'm sorry -- - "

She shook her head. "Go," she said again, softly, and smiled at
him.

He hesitated, then nodded and adjusted his grip to ease her down
the length of his body to the ground, fingers enclosing her upper
arms tightly, as though reluctant to loose their hold. Despite
her exhortations, Lois clung to him when she made the ground and
he enclosed her in his arms, pressing her tighter to him in
sympathy and regret, before he released her.

"Listen," he said hastily, "I called Triple A. My plane's still
on schedule. It should get in around one. How about I meet you at
Cinchesko's for lunch?"

"Well, it's a little on the public side for a reunion..." She
smiled, letting go of him. "But, sure. Sounds good to me. If
you're delayed, I'll order you a very *large* helping of pasta,"
she promised archly.

He grinned at her. "Okay. Good. See you there then." He kissed
her quickly on the forehead and vanished into the bedroom.

"Be - " Lois called, but a sudden backwash of cool air that
stirred her hair against her neck told her he'd already gone. " -
careful," she finished in a rueful murmur, before she undid the
tie of her robe and turned on the shower.

***

"Ah, there you are." Andrews grinned up at his partner. He waved
the red-bound folder at him. "I got it."

Gerrord stared at the report and then fixed that dark look on
him. "So you did. The question is, Joe," he said thoughtfully,
watching his partner as though suddenly viewing a stranger - and
one that he was particularly wary of to boot, "just what exactly
did you do to get it?"

Andrews grin slipped. "What do you mean, what did I do? I did
what you said. I went over to Karen's apartment. I told her
Richard had probably given her the report by mistake and that I
couldn't wait until morning for her to bring it back, that I
needed to bone up on it before a meeting at eleven. I don't think
she'd read it any. She didn't seem interested - more bothered
about Richard getting into trouble over the mistake. I promised
her I'd let it lie and then I left. You can ask her yourself when
she comes in." He frowned, glancing at his watch. "She should
have been here half an hour ago."

"Difficult. She's dead, Joe."

Andrews, flicking through the report, his manner still
self-congratulatory, froze. He lifted his head. "What?"

"Karen is dead," Gerrord spaced the words out as though
explaining to a child. "She jumped from her balcony last night."
He paused. "At least...that's the story so far."

"The story so - ?" Andrews' bewildered repetition faltered. His
mouth fell open, worked soundlessly for a moment as Gerrord
continued to fix him with that clinical stare, then finally
recovered to blurt, "Wait a minute... My God! You think I - you
think I *killed* Karen to stop her talking about the report?"

Gerrord was still for a long moment. Then he shook his head. "No.
No, I can't say I do think that," he admitted. His lips twisted
in a sneer. "Clearing up after your own mistakes isn't really
your style, Joe, is it?"

Andrews was shaking his head, oblivious to the slight as he
murmured, "But why?" He looked shaken. "She was fine. She was
just fine when I left. Just like always." He glanced up sharply.
"You have to believe me, Malcolm! I - "

"I believe you."

Andrews nodded sickly. "But..." he started, after a moment's
thought, "what are we going to do? There'll be questions, won't
there? The police will be here and -- "

"Yes, they will be. And you'll answer them."

"But - "

Gerrord sighed. "Listen to me, Joe!" he snapped, killing the
panic rising in Andrews' face. "It's simple. You listening? You
tell them what they want to hear, understand? You don't know any
reason why a bright girl like Karen would want to go jumping off
balconies. Just the simple truth."

Andrews nodded and then hesitated a moment before he said slowly,
"Actually, there might have been. That guy she was shacked up
with..." His face twisted and then he snapped his fingers,
triumphant, "David...David Galloway. He walked out on her, dumped
her for that little redhead in accounting. What's her name...?"
He frowned impatiently and started as Gerrord said sharply,

"It doesn't matter! That's fine, stick with that then. She was
upset about it. Terribly upset. You caught her crying a couple of
times. Say what you like about Karen, Joe. Say anything you think
will keep them happy and close that case. But you keep your mouth
shut on anything else. You got that?"

Andrews nodded.

Gerrord echoed it. "Good. Oh, and Joe?" he added, turning back in
the doorway.

"Yeah?"

"Get that report under lock and key, better still, shred it. I
never want to see it again."

***

" - so now she figures my idea of a romantic night out is the
latest porn flick," Jimmy finished.

"It wasn't really a *porn* flick, Jimmy - " Lois tried soothing
him, but he was too sunk in maudlin self-castigation to be that
easily distracted. He glanced through the glass of the conference
room and sighed.

"She thinks I'm a jerk."

Lois followed his gaze to where Leanore was diligently filing on
the other side of the office and then came back to view him
sympathetically >from her perch on the opposite corner of the
table.

"Well, the air was just a little frosty this morning, when you
asked her if she wanted a coffee and danish," she admitted. She
leaned across to put a hand to his arm and squeezed gently. "Hey,
she'll get over it."

"You think?"

"Sure. Jimmy, it was an honest mistake. Could've happened to
anyone."

"It ever happened to you?" he asked, glumly.

"Well...no. But these new Movie-Plexis are confusing places at
times. How were you to know the program changed after ten?"

He gave her a less than convinced glance.

"I guess, it would have helped if screen three had been showing
something just a tad more...spiritual...though," Lois agreed,
with an apologetic shrug.

"Well, it wasn't showing Bambi, that's for sure," Jimmy said
mournfully. He gave her a pleading look. "So, what do I do now?"

"I don't know. Leave an anonymous note on Carol's desk?" she
suggested flippantly, referring to the Planet's resident advice
columnist and, then as he gave her a wounded look, "Sorry. Why
don't you just tell Leanore the truth? Maybe she'll accept an
apology first and an explanation later. Why don't you invite her
over for the evening, cook her a meal?" Lois leapt to her feet,
suddenly inspired as she snapped her fingers. "Clark has the
*greatest* recipe for beef and mushroom casserole. She'll love
it!"

"Really?" Jimmy looked dubious.

"Sure!"

"I dunno. I'm not much of a cook."

Lois put an arm lightly around his shoulders and leaned
conspiratorially close. "So, *I'll* cook." She sighed as his
doubtful look deepened. "Okay, okay, I'll get *Clark* to cook.
You collect. Half an hour to warm it up before Leanore arrives,
add a bottle of wine, and you'll be laughing over last night
before you know it." She patted him on the back and moved back
around the table to pick up the files she'd been working on when
he'd interrupted her.

Jimmy looked thoughtful. "Isn't that kinda...sneaky?" he said,
after a moment.

She hitched her shoulders at him, dryly ingenuous. "Hey, sneaky's
why I'm the best reporter the Planet's got! Now go. Ask!" She
pointed an imperious finger at the door.

Jimmy gave her a mock salute. "Absolutely! And, Lois?" He paused
in the doorway. "Thanks."

She smiled. "Anytime." The smile faded as she caught sight of the
clock on the far wall. "Oh! I'm late for lunch!" She hurried to
her desk and dumped the files as she grabbed for her purse and
jacket, waving a hand at him. "But we'll talk later, huh?"

"Sure."

***

Lois took the stairs instead of the elevator to save time and
arrived at the cafe slightly harried and ten minutes overdue. She
still found herself arriving before Clark, however.

The smiling waiter lead her to a table set beneath the tall,
arched windows and, after offering her the menu and taking her
order for cappuccino, retreated to leave her alone.

For a time, Lois occupied herself with idly watching the bustling
crowd outside.

By the time half an hour had passed, however, this entertainment
was wearing a trifle thin. There was only one person she wanted
to see and where he was was anyone's guess. She broke off her
pensive following of a red-coated woman, with a child in tow, and
glanced at her watch for the third time in so many minutes. She
sighed and took another sip of coffee. She wished she was near a
TV or radio. Sometimes, she thought, with another inner sigh,
listening to the news updates was her best chance of discovering
where her husband was.

She finished the coffee and, picking up her coat and purse, went
to pay her check.

The day, which had started overcast and threatening rain, had
turned pleasantly sunny. Drawn by the hot, spicy scents wafting
towards her - and prodded by a sudden low grumble in her stomach
to the reminder that one cup of cappuccino did not constitute
lunch by its standards - she picked up a chili dog from a
streetside vendor and liberally loaded it with onions and
cheese.

Threading her way through the press of the crowd towards the
Planet, she tangled briefly and spectacularly with a well-dressed
executive type coming in the other direction. She rebounded from
him with a sharp grunt and ended up landing hard on the
sidewalk.

"Hey!" All of Lois' hard bitten, let-'em-get-away-with-nothin'
city instincts leapt to the fore at this assault and she glared
up at her attacker from her position at his feet.

"Oh, good Lord - I'm terribly sorry! Here, let me..."

Lois growled ungraciously as he stuck out a hand to clasp hers
and dragged her to her feet. She snatched back her fingers and
brushed at her coat.

"I really should have been paying more attention to where I was
headed. But --"

"Yeah, you bet, buster!" Lois snapped furiously. "Next time, why
don't you - " She paused. A soft flush took over her cheeks and
she looked discomfited. If Clark were here, she knew, she'd be
getting Mr. Congeniality Lecture No. 53: the one about lightening
up and giving the twelve million or so other inhabitants who
shared the city with her a break. 'Hey, what more you want the
guy to do, Lois? He said he was sorry. He admitted it was his
fault...'

"Yeah, yeah..." Lois muttered crabbily under her breath.

"Excuse me?"

She looked back at the city gent and then patted at her coat
pockets with a suspicious scowl. /Nuts to trusting your fellow
man/, she growled at the disapproving mental image of her
husband. Having judged that the man watching her was no
pickpocket, she deepened the scowl on him.

"Just...just watch it next time, okay?" she said through clenched
teeth.

"I certainly will." He nodded, ignoring the edge to her
acceptance of his apology and gave her a polite smile before
heading on his way.

Lois watched him go for a moment, then rolled her eyes. "Idiots!"
she growled as she spun around on her heel, narrowly missing
another collision before stalking on her way. "This city's
populated by idiots!"

Despite her annoyance, by the time she reached the intersection
she had forgotten one small incident in an otherwise crowded
day.

Standing by the cluster of tables outside Cinchesko's cafe, the
man watched her cross the street. The faint smile was still on
his face as he rubbed the palm of his right hand against his
thigh, smearing clean the black stain spreading on his skin. When
he was sure the hand was clean, he meandered on his way,
whistling tunelessly beneath his breath.

***

Entering the lobby of the Daily Planet building, Lois walked to
the elevators and reached out to press the call button. It was
only then that she spotted the smear of black crossing her palm.
Clicking her tongue in exasperation, she rummaged in her purse,
sure she'd find a leaking pen. But the interior and its contents
were unmarked.

Shaking her head, she fished out a tissue and scrubbed at the ink
stain studiously until she cleared it best she could. Entering
the elevator, she got off a floor early and made a quick detour
for the rest room, where soap and hot water and more, vigorous
scrubbing, reduced the stain at least to a gray blur. She
deposited the tissue in the trash and took the single flight of
stairs to the next level and the newsroom.

"Thought you were meeting C.K. for lunch?" Jimmy said, surprised,
as she came through the open double doors from the stairwell and
headed for her desk. He eyed the chili dog with a grin. "He's not
working to a budget, is he?"

She ignored that, taking another bite of her impromptu lunch as
she dropped her purse at her feet. "'Were', being the operative
word. I guess he got delayed. Anything come in while I was gone?"
she added casually, keeping her eyes on the pile of papers on her
desk as she flicked through them.

"You missed Superman. Scaffolding collapsed on a building site on
Walnut and Main; couple of the workmen were hurt. Superman took
them to the hospital, but they were just shaken up, mostly. Perry
sent Eduardo down to cover it. Nothing else seems to be happening
out there. I guess we got slow times on the news front."

Lois nodded. "Uh-huh." She finished off the dog and dropped the
wrapping into the wastebasket. "How about on the romance front?"

He looked abashed.

"Jimmy?"

"Well, I haven't had a chance to - "

"Jimmy..."

"I will, I will. Swear to the Great Ghost of Elvis!" He held up
surrendering hands and then his face broke into a broad,
welcoming smile as his eyes shifted across her shoulder. "Hey,
C.K.!"

"Hey, Jimmy," Clark greeted him genially as he came down the
stairs. He put the travelbag he was carrying down beside his
desk. "Lois," he said, almost warily.

She smiled at him and opened her arms. He grinned as he gathered
her to him in a hug and she wrapped her arms tight around his
neck, pressing her cheek to his.

Clark wondered idly if there would ever come a time when he
didn't feel that familiar shockwave of arousal sweep him on
entering a room and catching first sight of his wife. Personally,
he thought with a quiet smile against her hair, as he nuzzled
lightly at its softness, he doubted it. He tightened his grip,
his hands spread flat between her shoulderblades and against the
small of her back, pressing her closer against him as he sighed
softly.

His smile broadened into another, irrepressible grin. "Missed
me?"

"Of course."

It wasn't entirely a charade for the benefit of onlookers. Their
passionate rendezvous of the previous evening may have assuaged
some of the loneliness and longing for her that being separated
from his wife had settled in him, but passion wasn't all there
was to being with Lois, and there'd been little time for quiet
companionship or snuggling and talking over their day, or just
plain catching up.

He'd still missed her in the few hours he'd spent between leaving
her and coming back to the Planet. Though they might only have
parted a scant few hours before, Clark felt as though he hadn't
seen her for days. And she felt so good, smelled so good, in his
arms as he held her tightly against him. He began to think about
that interrupted, early morning romp again and shifted, suddenly
uncomfortable. Lois heard his small sigh of regret as she eased
herself from his arms and smiled up on him, commiserating.

/Later.../ she mouthed a promise at him that set a steady flame
burning in the deep, chocolate colored eyes fixed on her face.

Beside them, Jimmy was grinning fit to bust. "I missed you too."

They looked at him, startled out of the private moment, and then
began to laugh. Jimmy's grin widened. "Hey, guys, I'm not kidding
here! Lois takes on more stories when you're outta town, C.K. A
fella could get run ragged doing research before you got back."

Lois aimed a mock swipe at him with the folder she was holding
and he ducked away, diplomatically leaving them to their reunion.
Even Jimmy Olsen could sometimes take a hint.

Clark watched him go with a smile and then turned his attention
back to his wife. "Sorry about lunch. I - "

"I heard. Jimmy said no one was badly hurt?"

"Just minor cuts and bruises; couple of broken bones. It was a
miracle no one got killed. But by the time Superman had taken
them to the hospital and made that broken scaffolding safe..."

Lois nodded. She hitched herself to sit on the edge of her desk
and tugged playfully at his tie, tightening its knot as she used
it as leverage to pull him closer to stand before her. "Well, you
can make it up to me later," she whispered, leaning forward
invitingly.

"Ooooh. If you insist." He took the invitation, exploring her
lips with a soft, gentle kiss, then put a hand to her shoulder as
he reined himself back >from the edge. /Later.../ he reminded
himself firmly as he slipped into the persona of inquisitive
journalist, his glance drawn to the clutter on the desk behind
her. "What you been working on?"

"Oh - "

"Digging up the dirt, by the looks of it," he interrupted with a
smile. "Literally."

"What?"

He took hold of her wrist and lifted her hand, turning it inwards
so that she could view her palm. Lois growled in disgust and
reached over to jerk a wad of tissue from the box beside her
computer.

"I thought I'd gotten rid of this," she muttered, scrubbing
violently at the dark patch still staining her skin.

"What is it, anyway?" He leaned over to take a closer look. "Ink?
Paint?"

"I don't know. I must've picked it up outside somewhere. I didn't
notice." She scrubbed a little more and then dropped the tissue
into the wastepaper basket with a grimace.

"Anyway, I haven't been scooping you out of anything exciting, so
you shouldn't worry," she said finally, when she was satisfied
she'd gotten as clean as was possible to get. There was still a
faint stain, but it was barely noticeable, she was sure.

She picked up a scatter of papers among the abandoned heap on her
desk, which, ludicrously, Clark had often heard her call a filing
system, before handing them over. "Perry's got me on light
duties," she added disgustedly.

She picked up another handful and waved them at him in emphasis
with the complaint as Clark settled himself absently into her
chair and began to peruse the paperwork. After a moment, a smile
spread on his face. "Bi-Annual Expenses Review? Since when did
this have to be in by April 1st?"

Lois gave him a helpless shrug, tone scathing. "Mmm-hmmm. You'd
be surprised at how many admin. jobs have suddenly acquired
urgent attention since I tangled with Valley Vale. I swear, he's
gonna have me running amok with an axe through here if I don't
get something to sink my teeth into soon!"

Clark chuckled. "Here," he put out a hand for the rest of the
papers. "give 'em to me. I'll work through them. I'm better at
mental arithmetic than you are."

"Are not!"

"Am too. And I can count faster as well," he added with a grin as
she gave him a mock offended look. Despite it, she handed over
the paperwork with celerity, before he could change his mind,
although she couldn't resist adding, tartly, "Anyway, God
invented calculators so people didn't have to *do* mental
arithmetic."

"And He invented superfast super-vision for when the calculator
batteries run out," Clark countered, winking at her before he
glanced down at the sheets in his hands.

"Mine is solar-powered," Lois muttered.

"He sure is," Clark drawled an agreement and heard her give up
her pique abruptly and chuckle softly as he began to scan the
scrawl of figures.

Lois picked up a newly opened file and began to read through it
idly, chewing fitfully at one corner of her lower lip.

Clark finished first, by which time Lois was pretty much
engrossed in her reading. He settled back against the chair to
wait her out, indulging himself in watching her. Taking a few
quiet moments out to appreciate his wife's sleek form was always
one of his favorite parts to the day and he always managed to
find some time out for the indulgence, no matter how hectic their
day became.

She'd dressed to impress, he realized suddenly with a small,
inward chuckle, his eyes thoughtfully roaming her slim curves.
Very obviously with this reunion in mind - a two-piece little
rust number that he recognized instantly. His eyes softened. She
knew it was an especial favorite of his. Had been ever since the
first time he'd seen her wearing it - on the night he'd returned
>from New Krypton sooner than either of them had ever hoped to
think of and >had been waiting for her outside her apartment. The
only thing he didn't usually like too much about the ensemble was
that the skirt was just a mite too long for his tastes as it
nudged her ankles.

He almost laughed out loud, as he noted now that she'd taken care
of that objection and teamed the simulated suede, rust-colored
vest top and the suit jacket with a skirt that was several inches
shorter than its predecessor. A whole *lot* shorter than its
predecessor, he amended approvingly as his eyes traveled up along
the glorious, enticing and shapely curves of his wife's legs.
Short enough to expose a generous length of smooth, firm thigh to
his appreciative gaze as she perched on the edge of her desk.

She'd dispensed with the fitted jacket before he arrived. It was
slung across the back of the chair he was sitting in. He let his
eyes wander over the bewitching way that the sleeveless top
molded itself to her curves.

Elsewhere too, he observed, she'd dressed with perhaps a more
intimate reunion in mind. There was a distinct and tantalizing
hint of silk and lace beneath that top. Clark shifted slightly in
his chair, paused for an instant, and then lifted a hand to shift
his glasses surreptitiously down onto the bridge of his nose.

"Don't even think about it, farmboy," his wife said, without
taking her eyes >from the file she was reading.

Caught in the indulgence, Clark flashed her an entirely unabashed
grin and then pushed on the arms of his chair to bring himself up
to stand. He planted his hands on either side of her, against the
desk, leaning close until their lips almost touched.

"Who, me?"

He brushed a feather light touch of his lips against the line of
her jaw and, as she tilted her head slightly in appreciation,
took the file from her unprotesting hands and laid it back on the
desk. He straightened to put his hands at her waist and lift her
from her perch to stand close against the lean length of his
muscular body.

"Yes, you, Mr. Innocent. We wouldn't want you to go spoiling your
surprise, now would we?"

"Surprise?" He dipped his head to nuzzle softly at her throat and
then bit gently at her ear.

"Mmmmm-hmmmm." Lois' eyes sparkled up into his as he lifted his
head. "So - " She trailed one finger down the length of his tie
and then let it hover, just a few short delectable inches shy of
the waistband of his pants, as she went on huskily, " - see
anything you want?"

He grinned. "Yup. But, I'll take a raincheck..." He reached to
hook a finger into the edge of the vest top as it lay at her
shoulder and used the leverage to tug her gently forward,
bringing her in close enough for another kiss.

He didn't have to tug too hard.

"Otherwise, people might talk," he added a low whisper, after a
moment.

Lois looked up on him with adoring eyes and he smiled. She
lowered her head to press her lips briefly and softly to his and
then planted them against his cheek. "Are you kidding, Kent? I
think by now we're beyond office gossip," she told him wryly in a
breathy murmur against his skin. "We could do the horizontal
lambada on my desk right now and no one would bat an eye."

He laughed quietly. "I wouldn't be too sure of that, Lois.
Although, it might be fun to - "

"Lois!

Lois jumped guiltily at that bellow from the other side of the
bullpen. Clark wasn't far behind her.

"You still working on that Karvin deal?"

She looked up as Perry came across the room. Clark let her loose,
stepping back a small pace as he cleared his throat softly. Lois
smoothed at her skirt as she smiled, warmly and entirely
guilelessly, at the approaching editor.

"Clark," he said, reaching out to clasp his reporter's hand
briefly. "Good to see you back. You pick up any good ideas out
there?"

"Hey, Chief. Sure. There was a lot of interesting stuff floating
around."

"Yeah? Well, good. Uh, we'll chew it over later, huh? Right now,
I got a problem I need your help on. Lois?" He turned back
purposefully. "Karvin?"

"Sent it down to copy before I left for lunch."

"Good." He gathered both of them with a look. "Uh, I just got off
the phone with an old golfing buddy of mine. Jake Culver. Used to
be a real big name in the newspaper business, till he decided he
liked the smell of rum more'n he did ink an' paper." Perry gave
them a rueful shrug. "Anyway, I owe him a favor or two and he
just called in to collect. You see this on the news this
morning?" He held out a black and white print for their
inspection.

Clark took the picture and gave it a quick once-over before
handing it on to Lois. She viewed the high school yearbook
picture of a shy smiling brunette with a seriously cute overbite
and pursed her lips.

"A little. Suicide case, isn't it? Didn't she jump from her
apartment building?"

"From the eighth floor balcony." Perry nodded. "She was Jake
Culver's niece. He hadn't seen her in a time, Karen lost touch
with the family when she moved to Metropolis and there was some
rift there, but he's convinced there's more to it than suicide."

"When he hasn't been in touch?" said Clark, doubtfully. "Has he
had any contact with her at all?"

"Nope. But he's still sure. He says the reason for the
estrangement between the family and Karen was the reason he knows
she didn't kill herself."

"Which was?"

"She took up with some Church group. Christian Fundamentalist, I
think. The family was strictly Methodist. They didn't approve of
the association. Karen moved out after some big bust up on the
thing."

Lois gave him a sardonic glance. "And what? Christians don't
throw themselves off balconies?"

"Well, you know...suicide's a sin," Perry said, shrugging.

"So's most anything, you get right down to it," Lois sniffed.
"But most people seem to ignore that when it suits."

"So, this friend of yours thinks, what?" Clark asked with a
frown, taking back the photo and studying it more intently. "That
she was murdered?"

"He wasn't too clear on that one," Perry admitted. "He just says
those old newshound guts of his have been playing him up since he
heard."

Clark looked at him, considering. "And you, Chief? What are your
instincts saying?"

"I dunno. Jake always had a nose for trouble. At the moment? I'd
say it's a waste of my two best reporters' time. But...Jake
Culver is an old friend. And I do owe him one. And" he plucked
the print from Clark's hand and shook his head over it, "if there
is something an inch shy of shady on this deal, you two are the
ones that are gonna find it."

Clark looked to Lois. She hitched her shoulders at him, deferring
the decision. He nodded at Perry. "We'll get right on it,
Chief."

***

Karen Culver's apartment building was situated in a neighborhood
on the outskirts of the heart of the city. It was like a thousand
others: modestly neat, running slightly to seed, but holding onto
its respectability with a grim determination. Paint in a subdued
shade of blue was peeling from the outside door and one pane of
the side window was boarded, but there was a freshly mounted
intercom security system on the wall and the little stretch of
front yard between the entrance and the sidewalk was neatly
tended.

Lois reached out for the first buzzer and then paused. She pushed
the door and gave her partner a meaningful glance across her
shoulder as it opened easily: so much for security. Clark
followed her closely as they entered the gloomy entrance hall.
Before them, a steep staircase ascended. A small line of
mailboxes filled the wall to their left. Other than that, the
hall was empty.

Lois tapped at his arm and nodded beyond him. "The super," she
said, indicating the door set into the wall opposite the stairs,
with its faded scrap of paper tacked haphazardly to its surface:
'Leo Mazetti - Superintendent'.

"Mazetti? Hey, I - " Clark started and then the door opened and a
short, tubby man with a receding hairline came out, pulling the
door shut and locking it tight behind him.

"Mr. Mazetti?" Lois asked.

"Yeah?" he answered disinterestedly, before glancing around to
view them. He took them in, in a head to toe inspection that
lasted a fraction of a second. "If you're from Welfare - "

"Um, no." She stuck out a hand. "I'm Lois Lane, this is Clark
Kent. We're reporters for - "

"Metropolis Star!"

"Uh...no." Lois withdrew her hand coolly. "Daily Planet
actually."

"Oh," Mazetti said. "Too bad. You know that Tania Sherman's real
good. Never go to a movie without checking out her reviews."

"Really." Lois fielded a glance from Clark before turning a
sugarcoated smile on the landlord. "Well, we don't know her." The
smile congealed. "At all."

Mazetti sniffed.

"Uh, Mr. Mazetti - " Clark got back on track hastily and was
interrupted as Mazetti frowned.

"Hey, don't I know you?"

Clark smiled. "Yeah. I rented one of your apartments? 344 - "

" - Clinton!" Mazetti shot back. "Right! I remember. Sold those
last year. That was a good building. I hear County's pulling 'em
down though; building a mall." His eyes flickered. "So, you
looking for something else? Hey, listen, you're in luck. I got
one free here. Ain't even advertised yet. Just got empty last --
"

"Oh no, that's okay." Clark half lifted a hand to stop the flow
of sales pitch. "I'm married now and -- "

"Oh. Oh...!" Mazetti's eyes flashed over Lois and he grinned. "I
gotcha. Well, hey, listen...Kent..." He took an over-familiar
hold on Clark's sleeve, hustling him to the other end of the
hallway, by the stairs, and lowering his voice to a
conspiratorial hiss when he got him there.

"These apartments here are just what you've been looking for.
Outta the way, real discreet." He glanced back across his
shoulder to where Lois was trying hard to overhear and just as
hard to avoid looking as though she was. Mazetti lowered his
voice a notch further. "No one'll ever think of tagging you two
together way out here. Little woman back home'll never suspect a
thing, believe me. Rest of the office? Won't have a clue."

Clark blinked. He glanced across the hall at Lois, trying hard to
hold back a smile as she hitched a curious brow at him. "Um..."
He smiled tightly at Mazetti instead as he turned the man around
with a light hand at his shoulder and guided him back along the
hall. "Mr. Mazetti, I'd like to introduce you to my *wife*..."

Mazetti looked up on him and then fixed that gaze on Lois. "Oh."

Clark avoided catching the coolly questioning look that Lois gave
him for the introduction. As a matter of long-standing habit, it
was an unwritten rule between them that when they were working on
an investigation she was his partner. Not his fiancee. Not his
wife. Too often, too many people...well, too many men, if he were
honest about it...reacted to those labels by relegating Lois to
the background. Lois, of course, never one to accept being pushed
aside lightly, had never been circumspect about bringing herself
into the foreground again, usually by way of some caustic
put-down that quickly corrected the offending individual's
attitude some. But it had always been simpler to just bypass the
problem all together. Especially when they were on shaky ground,
as now, and keen to keep the subject of their questioning sweet
in the hope of gaining some co-operation from him. He gave Lois
an 'explain later' frown and she eased up on him, slightly,
though her eyes said she'd expect one.

"What's she got a different name for then?" Mazetti asked,
looking away from Lois and onto him, curiously. "If she's your
wife?"

Clark winced. "Uh, we're investigating the death of one of your
tenants?" he said hurriedly as Lois' lips tightened into a
visibly thin line. "Karen - "

" - Culver. Yeah. Crazy kid. You know I blame these rock bands
they got on TV these days. I mean most of 'em got names would
give your maiden aunt a seizure."

"Rock bands?" Lois repeated, dubiously.

"Yeah, you know. I mean she had to be loaded to go out like that,
right?"

"Drugs?" Clark frowned.

"Well, not that I ever saw, I gotta admit. She kept herself to
herself, you know. Quiet. Never caused no trouble. But, it just
stands to figure, don't it? You don't go taking a high dive
without no warning you don't got cause. Right? And the way she
looked at me, like I was some kinda psycho killer -- "

"Wait a minute. You were there? When she jumped?"

"Sure I was there! I'd been hearing all that banging and thudding
for hours. I been havin' trouble sleeping, nights," the landlord
said sourly, rubbing a reflexive hand at the base of his spine.
"Back's been playing up. Old war wound," he added hopefully.
"Took a bullet in 'Nam. Ain't been the same since."

Clark traded a glance with Lois and tried not to look too
skeptical. Mazetti had offered various explanations for his
recurring back pain to him in the past, and had, in fact, he was
almost sure, told him at one point that he'd taken the injury
while working on his no-good cousin's Dodge without a jack.

Mazetti, perhaps belatedly recalling that he was talking to
someone who knew more about him than he might have supposed,
cleared his throat roughly and changed the subject. "Anyway,
might have gone up to see what was going on myself, 'cept its
none of my business what they get up to, nights. But then the
other tenants started calling, wanting to know what I was gonna
do about it. So I got no choice."

Clark nodded, sympathetic with the onerous duties of a landlord.
"And when you got there?"

"Well, she wouldn't open up. I was hollering an' poundin' on the
door and I knew she were in there. She'd called down earlier
mouthing off about the heating being on the fritz again. You know
that ain't my fault. I been onto half a dozen plumbing companies
already and -- "

"Yeah," Clark interrupted hastily. "So, you knew she was there.
And you let yourself in, I guess. With your key? When she didn't
answer?"

"Sure I did. Well, I was getting worried, you know? Actually,
just between you an' me, I was getting spooked. I could hear her
in there, muttering to herself, carrying on. I thought maybe she
was having some kinda fit or something. I mean, I mind - "

" - your own business," Clark agreed, with a faintly sardonic
smile. "Yeah, I know. And she was?"

"Out on the balcony. Looked pretty whacked, if you ask me. I
asked her if she were okay, if she needed a doc, and, like I say,
she looked like I was gonna...well, she looked pretty scared. She
went for me like a spitting cat. See?" He prodded a finger at the
fresh line of scratches marring his cheek and winced. "Just for
no reason at all! Anyway, next thing I know she's acting like she
figures she's Superman. I called the cops. That's all I can tell
you."

Lois hitched a brow at him. "And they believed you?"

"Hey I got witnesses!" Mazetti said, stung. "Half the damn
building was out there, watching. Best entertainment most of them
got for weeks. Anyways, I got nothing to do with her going over
like that. Ask anyone, they'll tell you! Cops took statements and
everything."

Clark pursed his lips. Lois shook her head slightly. He knew what
she was thinking. This story looked to be getting slimmer by the
second. There seemed little mystery to Karen Culver's death. In
fact, it was becoming all too depressingly and pitifully familiar
a tale. Still...he raised a questioning brow at her...since they
were here...?

She nodded. "Uh, Mr. Mazetti, we'd really like a look at Karen's
apartment, if -- "

"No deal," Mazetti shook his head firmly.

"Well, I know it's still cordoned off, but I'm sure the police
have finished with - "

"I already promised that guy from the Star I'd let him in first.
Said he'd be on over later this afternoon."

"Oh." She smiled. "Well, a promise is a promise, right? So...how
about we promise you more?" She fished in her purse.

Clark nudged at her elbow. "Lois..." he murmured reprovingly.

She frowned at him.

"The Star offered me a hundred," Mazetti said helpfully.

"A hundred!"

He shrugged. "Most of the kid's stuff's still in there. He
probably figures he can pick up something worth the cash. He says
he's bringing a photo guy along," he added.

"One twenty," Lois said promptly.

"Lois - "

"Make it one fifty, you got a deal."

Clark took firm hold on his partner's arm and held up an
interrupting finger at Mazetti. "Could you excuse us for just one
moment?" he told the landlord, giving him a tight smile.

"Clark - " Lois hissed as he trotted her over to the staircase.

"Lois, this is ridiculous. What are you gonna find in there
that's worth a hundred and fifty bucks?"

"*You* might want to let The Star scoop us on this one, but I'm -
!"

"Scoop us on *what*?" he protested. "There's no story here!"

She glared at him and hitched herself free of his grip before
setting off back towards Mazetti, heels clicking a staccato
rhythm against the board floor.

"Lois - " Clark rolled his eyes and followed her with a sigh.

"One fifty."

"Make it two hundred and you're in."

"You said one fifty!"

"That was before you started yammering about it. Hey, take it or
leave it, makes no difference to me. But make up your mind fast.
I got things to be doing, I can't be standing around here all
day."

Lois paused, hand fisted around her wallet, conflicting emotions
warring on her face. Clark raised a brow at her. She sighed,
pushing the wallet violently back into her purse.

"Okay, that's the way you want it." Mazetti hooked a thumb over
his shoulder. "Door's that way. Nice seeing you again, Kent," he
added blithely.

Lois opened her mouth hastily, taking a step after him as he
turned to go. Clark put out a restraining hand against her arm
and she looked up on him defensively. "We can't just -- "

"Hey, Floyd!"

Mazetti looked around and scowled at the stocky figure that had
just come through the door. "What you wanting, Carl?"

Carl looked surprised. "Two fifteen. You said you'd pick up Louie
at the gym."

"Floyd?" Lois leaned against her husband's shoulder and queried
out of the corner of her mouth.

Clark shrugged and bent his head closer to murmur back. "Leo's a
big boxing fan. All his friends call him Floyd. After Floyd
Patterson, you know? His hero."

"Oh," Lois said, obviously losing interest - and abandoning her
sudden suspicions that Leo - Floyd - Mazetti might be a career
criminal with a string of felonies and half a dozen aliases to
his name - if she were lucky.

"Oh. Oh, yeah." Mazetti said, disgruntled. He glanced back at
Lois. "So, you folks leaving or what?"

Lois paused, then stalked past him and out onto the sidewalk.
Clark gave Mazetti a commiserating smile as he followed. Mazetti
pulled the door shut behind him as he left.

"Okay, so what do we do now?" Clark asked his partner as they
watched Mazetti drive off. Lois walked back to the door and
pushed experimentally. It remained firmly closed. She sighed,
putting a hand to the voicebox mounted on the wall beside it.
Most of the apartment numbers were disconnected and unlit and the
others she tried simply buzzed out, unanswered. She returned to
Clark's side with a shake of her head.

"We'll never get in now." She tilted her head back, shading her
eyes with one hand as she scanned the windows overhead.

Pushing casual hands into his pockets, Clark leaned over until
his cheek was almost touching hers and followed her gaze. "I
wouldn't," he judged, solemnly, after a moment. "No ivy."

"What?"

He grinned at her. "I figured you were thinking about climbing on
up."

Lois took away her hand and gave him a withering glance. Which
promptly became intensely speculative. "I don't suppose - ?"

"Don't even think about it." He shook his head firmly. He glanced
upwards. "We don't even know which window it is." He lowered his
voice to the merest murmur as he ducked his head close again,
"And I am *not* laying Superman open to some indecency charge,
peeking in some old lady's window, trying to find it."

Lois' lips twitched.

"Anyway, it doesn't look to me like there's much of a story here,
so maybe we should just - "

"The Star's interested," Lois said firmly. "They must have
sniffed out *something* to be willing to pay for it and - "

"Can I help you folks?"

They turned to face the young, bearded man who'd stopped by the
door to watch them. He was wearing faded Levi's and a grayed out
T-shirt that might once have been black, under a studded leather
jacket. A red bandanna kept his tangled hair from out of his
face. He looked them over enquiringly.

"You here for the apartment?"

Clark shook his head. "Oh, no, we're not looking to rent -- "

"Oh, now don't be so hasty, sweetheart," Lois cooed, startling
him as she hooked her arm deftly through his. "I'm sure it's real
nice inside. It is out of the way and you were saying just the
other day how living right in the middle of the city is just
impossible. Weren't you?" Her grip on him tightened as she smiled
sunnily up at him.

"Was I? Oh! Yes...yes, I was." Clark shrugged at the newcomer.
"Smog. Traffic up and down the street. Can't sleep all night.
Um...so, we were thinking, something just a little further out
might be -- "

"Only, we were supposed to meet the landlord - Mr. Mazetti? - so
he could show us around. But he hasn't turned up and -- "

"Oh. Well, no sweat. Benny Mazetti," he introduced himself,
leaning forward to extend a hand with a smile. "Leo's my uncle.
You folks want to come on in, I can get the key for you in a
coupla shakes. Course," he went on as he unlocked the front door,
"things are in a bit of a mess right now. You know about the last
tenant?" He glanced across his shoulder and went on with a hitch
of his shoulders as they nodded, "Police still haven't cleared
up. But you can take a look, if you want."

"We sure do," Lois said. "Right, honey?"

"Can't wait," Clark murmured, ushering her ahead of him and into
the gloom of the building.

***

"So, you're figuring Jake Culver's got his wires crossed on this
one," Perry turned from where he'd been staring out of his office
window and fixed them with a tight stare.

"It's beginning to look that way." Clark told him. "We're waiting
for a copy of the pathology report to come in from the Medical
Examiner's Office. We'll know for sure then whether Karen Culver
was doped up on something when she went over that balcony."

Perry mulled that over. "Okay. Well, maybe we shouldn't pin this
down to anything yet. Till that report comes on in. Keep an open
mind."

They nodded.

"I gotta tell you though," Perry added solemnly as they made
their way out of his office, "I'm sure not looking forward to
telling Jake Culver his favorite niece was involved in this sort
of thing."

Clark picked up coffee for them both on the way to Lois' desk and
perched himself on its edge as he took his first sip. Lois drank
absently, eyes distant and fixed on the blank page of her screen.
Clark watched her for a time and then sighed heavily. He knew
that look.

"You don't think Mazetti got it right at all, do you?" he asked
at last.

"Hmmm?" She looked up on him, jerked out of her thoughts and then
leaned back in her chair, fingers tapping a faint, irritated
rhythm on the side of her cup. "I don't know, Clark. It just
doesn't...hang together right."

"What doesn't? That Karen Culver was an addict? That she OD'd and
tripped out enough to think taking a high drive from her balcony
was a real bright idea? Or that Mazetti told us the truth about
the night she died?"

She shook her head. "Maybe all of the above. Maybe none." She
gave him a steady look. "You know Mazetti. I'd have to go with
your assessment of him. Anyway, he did have witnesses."

"We didn't talk to any of them," Clark offered up, though
doubtfully.

"They're not going to tell us anything different," she confirmed
his own feeling on that. "But...there's still something..." She
kneaded a light hand at her ribs. "I've got this nagging feeling
in the pit of my stomach..."

"Chili dog you had for lunch?" he suggested, in mock sympathy.

"Reporter's intuition," she corrected, just as bland.

"Ah," he said, amused. "Of course."

The phone rang at her elbow and he leaned a casual arm against
the desk partition as she answered. He listened idly to her half
of the conversation, which didn't give him any clues, and tried
and failed to decipher the scrawl she noted down on her pad at
one point. He might have listened in, but Hank distracted him as
he stopped by the desk to ask his opinion on a new set of proof
negatives which would accompany the Culver take that evening and
by the time he'd finished checking them over, Lois was winding up
the call.

There was a familiar light in her eyes as she replaced the
receiver that made his own intuition suddenly sit up straight and
perk up its ears.

"That," she told him, triumphantly, "was the Medical Examiner's
Office. They're faxing through a copy preliminary report on the
bloodwork right now, but Adams was able to tell me one thing
right off."

"Let me guess. Karen Culver's bloodwork came back clean."

"Nope," she said, surprising him. "Karen Culver's blood was
loaded with adrenaline."

"Adrenaline?"

"In massive amounts." She glanced at her notepad. "Almost two
hundred times normal accepted levels."

"But, you can inject adrenaline, right?"

"Yes. But Karen didn't. Adams didn't find any puncture wounds on
her."

Clark lifted a considering brow. "Looks like I owe that chili dog
an apology. Anything else?"

"No sign she'd been using and abusing. They picked up traces of
something called TDR, a few other pollutant chemicals... won't
bore you with the full pedigree on that." She squinted at the
notepad again. "I couldn't even spell it. It's a standard
industrial defoliant."

"Weed-killer?"

"Yeah. But the levels they found in Karen's blood were tiny,
hardly worth mentioning."

She made a slight grimace of comment and Clark smiled,
recognizing it instantly. Pete Adams was a known stickler for
procedure, firmly of the old school. He shunned the modern trend
in forensic medicine for shorthand. Consequently, you could tell
an Adams autopsy report simply by its trademark attention to
detail. There was currently no legal requirement to stipulate
chemical content found in the bloodwork of an autopsied corpse
over .001 parts per million. Most modern ME's saved time by
simply grouping together harmless chemicals under that amount in
one miscellaneous group on the form. Adams, however, rigidly
maintained the old conventions of his university days, carefully
scribing each and every tiny anomaly found, whether important or
not. It was a habit that was, by turns, infinitely useful and
exceedingly irritating. Or so Lois maintained. Clark actually
preferred Adams 'dot to the last i' habits. At least with Adams,
you couldn't miss anything. But his eyes twinkled on his wife as
she went on:

"Adams says, with the amount of industrial facilities there are
in Metropolis and the current DPH listed pollution levels, we've
probably all got some levels of something similar in our blood."

"Nice to know," Clark grimaced.

"Mmmmmm."

"Is Adams offering any theories on the high adrenaline levels?"

"No. He says it could be the result of a dozen different things.
He'll have to do more tissue work before he'll go out on a limb
with any firm diagnosis. He did say that he'd never come across
recorded levels that were so high before, though. He thought it
was...intriguing," she added, meaningfully.

Clark made a moue of interest. If Adams thought it was
intriguing, it was certainly something they should consider
looking into. This was, after all, he reminded himself, possibly
the only man on the planet who could merit an exclamation point
after laconic. A man who cheerfully maintained that nothing
tasted better after a good autopsy than pepperoni pizza and root
beer, and who had once been sporting a tee-shirt emblazoned with
the legend: 'Read the Book...Seen the Movie...Wore the
T-shirt...Cut up the Cadaver...' when he and Lois had arrived to
question him about the story they'd been working on. He had, he
was fond of saying, seen just about everything the world could
possibly throw at a fella - with a few side-trips into the land
of strange and unusual to boot - and he hadn't seen anything yet
that was worth getting excitable over. For Adams, 'intriguing'
was like a yell of 'Eureka!' from the rooftops.

"Lois!" Jimmy trotted over to slap a sheaf of fax paper on her
desk in passing. "Just came in," he yelled back across his
shoulder.

"Thanks, Jimmy." Lois picked up the faxed report and scanned it.
"Nothing else out of the ordinary," she commented. "Some readings
for other chemicals, but nothing worth mentioning. A couple of
antibiotics...Malatheron..." She pursed her lips. "She must have
been out of the country recently to have been taking
anti-malarial protection. Analgesic derivatives...estrogenic
birth control...a few others. Pretty much run of the mill stuff.
*All* under legal ppm," she added a grumble. "Why can't he just
group these? Do I have *time* to go through eight page lists?"
But the complaint had little heat to it, as though it was more
habit than irritation and something she just couldn't resist.

Clark might have pointed out that there were considerably fewer
pages in that section of Adam's report than eight, but his mind
was currently elsewhere. "Flight or fight," he murmured.

"Excuse me?" she glanced up from the report to view him
curiously.

"Adrenaline. The body produces it as a response to certain
emotional stimuli: extreme fear or violent anger; aggression or
terror."

Lois shook her head slightly. "I don't see where you're going."

"Think about it, Lois, they're not emotions you usually associate
with a suicide statistic. Depression, despair...a rainy Sunday
afternoon...the Metropolitans down ten points in the final
quarter..." He shrugged. "That's what drives people over the
edge. What this says is that Karen Culver was either furious or
almost paralyzed with fear when she jumped off that balcony last
night."

"She was on a short trip down from a very long height, Clark.
That can be pretty terrifying. Believe me, I know." She covered
his hand briefly with her own. "And Superman wasn't around to
break her fall."

"Still... And what Mazetti said. About her attacking him like
that. He said she acted like she was - "

" - terrified," said Lois, quietly. She got to her feet, suddenly
decisive. "Come on."

"Where're we going?" Clark said, hitching himself from his perch
to follow.

"Gerrord-Andrews Pharmaceuticals. Let's just see if we can't
figure out what Karen Culver was doing with her life before last
night. And, maybe, what tipped her over the edge."

***

"Miss Lane, I really don't know what more I can say. Karen was
efficient at her job. It's going to be tough to replace her."
Joseph Andrews stared at them over the top of steepled fingers
and gave them a bland, apologetic smile.

Lois leaned forward. "She worked for you for...what? Six years?"

"Near enough that, yes."

"So, you must have known her...well."

Andrews looked nonplussed. "As I've said. She was - "

"Efficient. Yes." Lois slipped Clark a small glance. They were
getting nowhere here but round in decreasing circles. She rose to
her feet with a brisk smile. "Well, thank you for taking the time
to see us."

Andrews nodded, moving past them to open the door and usher them
out. "Entirely my pleasure, Miss Lane. Mr. Kent."

"Well, there's an epitaph for you," Lois murmured as they made
their way back towards the reception area. "Poor girl."

Clark grimaced an agreement. "Well, at least we got some
background on Karen >from her colleagues. We can write up a
fairly decent bio for the evening edition."

"I didn't join the Planet to churn out pre-prepared obits,
Clark," Lois said testily. "Why do I get the feeling we're being
kept out of the loop here? Missing something impor - "

"Did you know Karen?"

Clark turned his head at the interruption. Beside him, Lois
flinched slightly, a soft, barely heard gasp sticking in her
throat. Clark put a hand to her shoulder as he shook his head.
"No, we - "

"Richard!" A sharp voice called from further along the corridor.
"Aren't you supposed to be making coffee for Mr. Gerrord?" The
dark-suited, middle-aged woman gave them a small smile as she
reached them. "I'm sorry. He wasn't supposed to be -- "

"No, that's okay." Clark put out a reassuring hand and then
focused his attention back on the boy. "Richard? Did you work
with Karen?"

"Karen was my friend."

"Can we talk to you? About her?"

"Oh, I don't think - " Mr. Gerrord's secretary began, but Lois
smiled at her.

"We'd like to, if it's okay. Mr. Andrews did promise us we could
talk to anyone who knew Karen."

"Oh, yes, but Richard wouldn't know - "

"It's breaktime," Richard spoke up suddenly. "I made coffee. I
got my break now."

"Well, yes, but - "

"I got my break." There was a sullen finality in the reiteration,
which reduced the woman to sudden helplessness. Her mouth
puckered, impatiently. "Well, all right then. But don't be too
long, you hear?" She gave them a steady glance before walking
off.

"Why don't we go sit over there?" Lois indicated the small
hospitality area to one side of the reception desk. A cluster of
padded leather sofas had been arranged in a half moon and a low
table set against the wall behind them held a varied selection of
complimentary, non-alcoholic beverages.

Richard followed them, meekly now. His earlier flash of defiance
gone, he seemed ill at ease as he sat on the edge of the nearest
sofa.

"So..." Lois said brightly, seating herself opposite. Having
drawn Richard's attention, though, she seemed at a loss as to how
to continue. "You want some soda?" she asked finally.

"I'm not supposed to have soda." The brief flash of his eyes as
he looked up at her and then quickly away was wary.

"Oh. Well..." She glanced behind him at the display of bottles,
slightly nonplussed.

"I like water," Richard helped her out. "I'll get it!" he added
quickly, half rising again and looking abashed. Clark's hand on
his shoulder stilled the motion.

"That's okay, Richard. I got it," he told the boy with a smile.

Richard looked after him worriedly. "God's water," he said.
"That's best."

Clark paused then put down the bottle of Evian water he'd
automatically reached for and picked up something he thought
looked more like Richard's choice. 'Blessed Spring', the label
said. It was marked with an elegant black cross, edged in gilt.
Richard accepted the offered bottle with a nod, confirming his
theory. He drank noisily as Clark seated himself next to Lois and
then eyed them warily again as he drew the back of his hand
across his lips.

"Do you know what happened to Karen?" Clark asked him quietly.

The brightness on Richard's face died. He looked at the floor.
"Karen died. Mr. Karvin told me."

"Mr. Karvin?" Lois straightened. "Dale Karvin? The Evangelist?"

"Mr. Karvin looks out for me." Richard's face was suddenly
animated, his voice quickening. "He...he's my..." he floundered,
face twisting as though trying to remember something important.

When he began to look distressed, Clark said calmly, "That's
okay, Richard. Mr. Karvin looks after you, right?"

"Yes. The law says."

Clark nodded. "He's your legal guardian," he guessed.

"Yes! Like the law says," Richard agreed, nodding vigorously.

"That's good."

"I like Mr. Karvin."

"A lot of people do," Lois murmured, tone only slightly wry.
Richard missed the dryness and nodded, pleased.

"Yes, they do." He seemed to find the floor fascinating once
more.

Lois opened her mouth, but Clark's hand on her arm stopped her
from voicing whatever she'd been about to ask. He shook his head
at her slightly, content to wait the boy out. Finally, Richard
murmured, "Karen did a bad thing."

"Is that what Dale Karvin told you?" asked Clark. "That she did
something bad?"

Richard glanced up on them fiercely. "I know. I'm not *stupid*."
He dropped his gaze. "It was a bad thing. It wasn't right. She
was supposed to *know* that!" he spat out. Tears filled his eyes.
"She was supposed to know. God says it's a bad thing. Mr. Karvin
says."

Lois had begun to frown. Now, an inspirational light bloomed in
her eyes. "Karen was a member of Dale Karvin's Church?" she
blurted out in a guess.

Richard glanced up at her, puzzled. "Sure." He made it sound as
though everyone was. Or should be, at least. He lapsed back into
silence. "Karen was - a good person," he said after a moment, as
though reconciling her lapse of judgement with this opinion. "I
dunno why she..." He darted a troubled look at them. "She...she
wasn't in...she didn't get in any trouble, did she?"

"Trouble? What sort of trouble?"

Richard shrugged.

"Richard?" Clark prodded gently. "Why would Karen be in
trouble?"

The boy's unhappy stare deepened. "It was my fault. I gave her
it. I didn't mean to get her in trouble. Mr. Gerrord and Mr.
Andrews though, they were real mad. It wasn't Karen's fault. It
was mine."

"You gave her what? What were they mad about? Richard?"

He frowned, as though considering he'd already explained that.
"The report. I gave Karen the report. It was just a mistake. I
didn't mean -- " the soft voice had begun to rise as he grew
agitated, all at once. All the words, all the concerns that had
been churning inside him, spilling out in a flood now, "I didn't
mean it! I - !"

"Hey." Clark lifted a calming hand. "That's okay. We know it
wasn't Karen's fault. Or yours."

Richard was still. "You think?"

Clark smiled at him. "Sure, I -- "

"Richard, Jennifer needs more green files. Why don't you go take
some down to her?"

Richard glanced up as that voice interrupted them firmly and rose
quickly to his feet. Clark and Lois followed his lead, eyeing the
newcomer reservedly.

"Malcolm Gerrord." He extended a hand with a smile. "I'm a
partner with the company. Richard? The files?" he added as
Richard hesitated and Clark took the offered hand with a brief
nod of acknowledgement. The boy gave them a sideways glance and
then hurried off along the corridor.

Clark watched him go and then brought his attention back to
Gerrord.

"Richard can get upset very easily," Gerrord said smoothly.
"Especially about things he doesn't completely understand.
Karen's death was a great shock for him. He was very attached to
her."

Clark frowned at the reproof. "I'm sorry, we didn't think there'd
be any harm in asking -- "

"I think you've probably gotten all you can here, don't you?"
Gerrord suggested and, without waiting for their response, "Karen
was a nice girl. Everyone here's sorry for what happened to her.
But she was very...reserved. She didn't socialize with other
staff members much. I'm sure that her family would be better able
to give you an insight into her life. If that's what you're truly
after." He sounded dubious about that last.

Clark gave him a perfunctory smile. "Yes. I'm sure they could."

Gerrord nodded. His stiff manner unbent. Just a little. "I'm
sorry, but I'm sure you realize that this has all been very
upsetting for our employees. We want to keep that disturbance to
a minimum." He looked after the retreating boy. "Just what was
Richard getting wound up about now?" he asked.

Lois paused. But she saw no reason not to tell him, and every
reason to do so. Bald statements could gain you unexpected
answers, if you caught someone off balance enough. "Oh, he seemed
to think he might have gotten Karen into trouble over some
mistake on a report?"

Gerrord disappointed her. He sighed. "Oh that. A
misunderstanding, that's all." He smiled slightly. "Richard gets
things twisted very easily and quite often. He picked up a
confidential client file from Joseph's desk and gave it to Karen
by mistake. It included a production report for a particular
project. I had to...well, we were concerned about losing such
sensitive corporate information. About it getting into the wrong
hands. You understand. I had to impress on Richard that we have
to be careful, have to protect our client's interests. He took
the reprimand hard, I'm afraid."

He frowned. "Although I hadn't realized until now that he'd
assumed he'd gotten Karen into trouble over it too. Of course,
there was no question of that. I didn't actually get a chance to
talk to Karen about it at all, what with..." he stopped and then,
"...well, I'm sure you understand. I'll have another talk with
him, try to get him to see that it was nothing more than a storm
in a teacup. And, now," his manner turned brisk as he turned to
them once more, "if you don't mind, we have a very busy afternoon
ahead and I have an important meeting with some clients to
attend. So, if you'd like to come this way, I'll escort you
out."

"Is Dale Karvin one of them?" Lois asked as they followed him
along the corridor.

Clark gave her an inquisitive glance that was quickly aped by
Gerrord.

"One of what?"

"A client."

"Our client portfolio is confidential, Miss Lane. However," he
added, condescendingly, "I rather doubt Mr. Karvin has any need
or use for our products."

"But you do contribute substantially to the business end of
Karvin's Ministry, don't you?" She gave him a small smile. "The
Celestial Foundation? Right?" she prodded as he looked taken
aback.

"How do you know - ?"

"Well, it's no secret. Is it?"

"Well, naturally not," he recovered smoothly with a laugh. "We're
one of a number of companies who do. And Dale is just one of our
many charitable commitments. As I'm sure you also know. You'll
find little to investigate there, Miss Lane, I can assure you."

"I'm sure. Is Karvin a friend of yours? You called him Dale," she
said as he looked at her questioningly. "I assumed you must
be...close."

Gerrord looked just a little irked at being so easily
second-guessed. "He's a friend of my partner. Dale has a long
association with the company. He's supported us in many ways over
the past few years as his ministry has grown. In research."

"Chemical research?" Clark asked, interestedly.

Gerrord's rich laugh sounded again. "We're not talking about
global domination here, Mr. Kent. No - medical research into the
most virulent diseases that afflict us. Dale is a great
humanitarian. We share his ideals. And his hopes for a better
world, through increased medical knowledge."

Clark exchanged a dry glance with his wife behind Gerrord's back.
The man sounded like a promotional brochure.

"So, you'd call it something of a mutual partnership?" Lois went
on.

"I'd say so, yes. We contribute to the Foundation, which in turn
awards us the occasional research grant, along with many other
similar facilities of a charitable standing. And we run an
Employee Care Program with Dale's help. Bringing the
disadvantaged and disabled into the working environment; giving
them a chance to contribute they might not otherwise achieve."

"Like Richard?"

"Yes. Like Richard. Dale can always find us a few...misfits to
employ," a new, sour note entered Gerrord's voice. He gave them a
sardonic smile. "It's something of a hazard in
his...profession."

"But Richard's a lot more than just a charity case, isn't he? He
told us he was Dale Karvin's ward?"

"Richard was placed in county care, downstate, when he was three
years old. When he was sixteen the county, having fulfilled its
legal obligations for care, gave him ten dollars, packed him a
suitcase and stuck some other kid in his room. A local charity
found him an apartment and a job, but Richard didn't like the
job. He took off a week later. Quite what he did in the following
two years until he wandered into one of Dale's rallies in
Michigan is something of a mystery, but it wasn't doing him any
good, whatever it was. He was twenty pounds underweight and a
mess of bruises when Dale picked him out in the crowd and decided
to rescue him. I guess he felt slightly more obligation with
Richard than the usual refugees, given the boy's...obvious
disadvantages. He applied to have himself declared Richard's
legal guardian six months ago and that was approved shortly
after. Ah, here we are."

He opened the glass-fronted doors, gilt marked with the
Gerrord-Andrews logo, and stepped back pointedly.

"May I say, Miss Lane," he said abruptly as they passed him, "I
don't know quite what your interest is in Dale, though I can
guess." His lips pursed distastefully. "The disgraceful witch
hunt you press people conduct against men like Dale, and
evangelism in particular, is rather simplistic, I find. And
insulting. I don't know what you expect to find, but I can tell
you that if you're looking for dirt to dig up against Dale you'll
be disappointed. And I can assure you, you'll find no one in this
company who'll help you any with the search. Now, if you'll
excuse me..."

"Thank you. For your...time." Clark produced a business card from
his pocket and handed it over. The omission was obvious. Gerrord
hadn't really given them any help at all. "If you can think of
anything else..."

Gerrord regarded the offered card and then took it reluctantly.
He offered them a dismissive nod and then let go of the door and
stalked away. Clark caught it with one hand as it began to swing
to a close and allowed Lois to move ahead of him before following
her into the parking area.

"So, you still figure there's something sinister going on?" he
asked, giving her a thoughtful, sidelong glance as they crossed
the concrete lot.

Lois pursed her lips as he unlocked the Jeep door and opened it
for her. "I don't know. I thought we were onto something for a
minute there, when Richard mentioned the fuss over that
report..." She shook her head as she eased herself gracefully
into the driver's seat and took the keys from him. "I don't
know," she said again. "Maybe we're on a wild goose chase after
all."

She looked out of the window and past him to where the imposing
glass and steel framed facade of the Gerrord-Andrews building
reared impressively skywards. "Karen did have a reason, it seems,
for being depressed; losing her fiance like that. What a louse.
They spend two weeks on a romantic trip, cruising down the Nile,
and then he walks out the day after they get back? Sounds like
she was pretty down about it all."

Clark turned to follow her gaze. "Well, doesn't look like we're
going to find much else here, anyway. What about her family, like
Gerrord suggested?"

"We're not going to find anything there. None of them had even
traded Christmas cards with her since she left home. She might as
well be a stranger to them. I asked Jimmy to do a detailed
background check, but nothing's gonna come of that."

"So, unless Jimmy does turn up something or Adams comes up with a
reason for those high adrenaline levels, we put this one on the
back burner?"

"Don't see we've got any other choice. Jake Culver might not like
it, but it's looking more likely by the minute there's just no
other story here to cover, aside from the fact that Karen Culver
was just another lousy statistic."

Clark studied her, hearing something in her tone which seemed to
cast doubt on that and understanding that, no matter what she
said and no matter that there was little evidence to support the
effort, for some reason, she wasn't going to let go of Karen
Culver quite that easily. But he said nothing as he closed the
door of the Jeep and made his way around it to slide into the
passenger seat alongside her.

***

"Why not?" Bob Addley turned from the small corner bar where he'd
been mixing himself a stiff shot of bourbon.

"Because I've given my quota of interviews already, Bob." Karvin
gave him a disapproving look, which Addley ignored. He was well
aware of the preacher's long held views on liquor, but he saw no
reason to agree with him on them any. Certainly not when they
were out of the public eye and, definitely not when they were in
Karvin's sumptuous hotel suite - with its ample supply of
complimentary booze, just laying around, begging to be drunk.

"Steven?" He held out the glass in offer to the room's only other
occupant. Karvin's press aide hesitated, took a look at Karvin,
and then shook his head.

"A little early for me, Bob."

/Brown nosed, toadying little ape/, Addley thought. But he
shrugged as he added ice to his own glass and walked across the
room to seat himself on one of the leather sofas.

"Exactly. And all of them looked at you like you were something
they just scraped off their expensive Italian leather shoes," he
told Karvin caustically. "And then they went away and churned out
all the old 'Hooray Halleluiah' garbage they always do."

"You set up the approved list, Bob." Karvin sat back in his seat
and put both hands over his eyes for a moment, trying to rub his
face into some semblance of wakefulness, before he dropped them
to his lap with a grimace. "I don't choose them. I just talk to
them."

"Actually, Steve worked up the list."

"From your recommendations," Thurst said quickly.

"Boys..." Karvin doused them, tiredly. "The point is, I've talked
to every journalist and prime time correspondent I was supposed
to in this city and I'm not talking to any more."

"The point is," Addley corrected him, "this one's different." He
leaned over to snatch up the copy of the Daily Planet from among
the pile of newspapers spread on the low table between them and
held it up with a snap of his hands, so that Karvin could view
the page it had been folded to. As though he needed another look.
"I've been doing some digging on our Miss Lane. She's perfect."

"Perfect?" A new sharpness entered Karvin's voice, "Perfect for
what?"

Addley showed him a sharp-toothed smile. "Dale. As if I would."
He shook his head at his employer, amused. "I simply meant Miss
Lane is someone who should have been at the top of our publicity
list. Last two years out of three, as one half of the Lane & Kent
team, she's been right up there on top of the poll of
Metropolitans: The reporter they most trust to give it to them
straight. You get her on your side, she gives you a favorable
press, we could double our contributions in this town. Triple
them, maybe. They trust her, you understand that? Ticket sales
could go through the roof by the end of next week! This could be
our stepping-stone up to the heights, Dale. Next month you could
be playing in concert halls and opera houses, not just marquees
in shopping mall parking lots, next to the local Save It All!"

"I don't want that. I never wanted that." Karvin looked at him
helplessly. "You know I didn't. Bob, this is going too far. We
have to call a halt. We have to stop it here. Now. I - "

"Ah-ah." Addley wagged a reproving finger at him. "Can't deny the
faithful their day with God, Dale. Not sporting. All those
thousands of sinners out there. Millions of them. You owe them.
The Lord gave you a talent to use. It ain't right for you to deny
it to anyone in need of succor and the healing faith of Jesus,
now is it?"

Karvin was silent.

Addley smiled. "Steve, why don't you contact Miss Lane? Arrange
an interview. That okay, Dale?"

Karvin sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, that's okay. Now, if you don't mind,
I'm going to lay down before I get ready for the rally tonight."

Addley took a slow sip from his glass as he watched him cross the
room and disappear into the adjoining bedroom. "You know, Steve,
my boy," he said softly as the door snicked to a close, "I think
our Super Preacher's finally beginning to lose it."

"He's just tired, that's all." Thurst gave him a glance. "You
pushed him too hard."

"When he needs pushing, I push." Addley returned the look,
steadily. "That's what the man pays me for." He drained the glass
in one, long draught and rose to his feet. "Why don't you go make
that call?" he said as he began to prepare himself another shot.
"And Steve?"

Already en route to the door, Thurst turned back to look at him.

"While you're there, why don't you tell Miss Lane how personally
touched Mr. Karvin was by her article on the child? Tell her he's
inviting the mother over for a private consultation. See if he
can help there. Do what he can."

Thurst looked doubtful. "Dale's got a pretty tight schedule, Bob.
I don't know when - "

"Fit it in."

"Okay. Whatever you say. You're the boss."

He closed the door gently behind him, leaving Addley staring
after him, glass frozen halfway to his lips, his expression
perplexed.

"I am?" Addley murmured. He pondered it as he took a rough
swallow of the liquor and then he smiled broadly. "You know, I
think I am. I really do."

Laughter bubbled in his chest. He took a glance at the bedroom
door and squashed it firmly. But, still, a soft chuckle escaped
him as he settled himself on the sofa.

***

Lying fully dressed atop the king-sized bed, Dale Karvin listened
to the soft murmur of voices from the other room and tried to
unwind the twisted, tangled skeins of his life enough that he
could find the route back to where he'd gone wrong. When -
exactly - *had* it been? Six months ago? Last week? Last year?

He no longer knew.

There had been a time when what he was doing, what he wanted, had
been a clear, shining path opening up before him. How he'd
wandered off that path; tumbled into the dark, overgrown pit he
now inhabited, he would have been hard put to say.

There had been a time when everything had seemed so simple. When
the Lord spoke to him gently, guiding him; suffusing him with the
will to do good, to help the people who seemed to hear the voice
of their God in his words. Where had that will gone, these past
years? Where had that voice gone?

Addley had been a part of that change. And Stacy. She had been
his rock, his guiding light. Far more than any Bible or God could
ever be. Without her, he'd been rudderless on a stormy sea, cast
adrift and lost. He supposed that was why he'd been so grateful
to lean on Addley increasingly as time had passed. He knew Bob
saw him as a weak man. But he wasn't. He was just...adrift...and
fighting his way back to land.

He rolled over and fumbled on the nightstand for the bottle of
Excedrin he always kept handy. His head was beginning to throb
again. He took three of the painkillers and lay back, closing his
eyes, brow furrowed slightly in pain.

He wished he could go back. Back to simpler times.

But you can never go back.

He knew that.

The pain in his skull thudded into retreat and he began to
drift.

He dreamed of Stacy. And of days spent preaching at the local
fairs and church halls of his youth. The days when the Church had
meant something more to him than another buck in the collecting
tray and another sixty second soundbite on TV. Days when he'd
meant something to the Church, and to the people who listened to
him talk of God. And believed.

And, dreaming of these things, he smiled.

***

As she came downstairs, still dressed in her robe and fresh out
of a relaxing bath, Lois smiled to find Clark hunched over a
spread of papers on the coffee table before him. He was casually
dressed in jeans and navy polo shirt and sipping thoughtfully at
a glass of white wine as he scanned an open file.

"Hey," she greeted him and he looked up at her with an answering
smile.

"Hey." He handed her a glass, already poured, as she settled
herself on the arm of the sofa, beside him. "Oh, hey, wait." He
pulled it back as she reached for it and blew gently against the
glass before offering it again with a wink. "Freshly chilled."

"Thank you." She smiled as she relaxed back against the sofa's
plump cushions and took her first sip of the delicious, cool
California wine. "Decided what's for dinner?"

"Huh? Oh, no, I thought I'd wait for you. See what you were in
the mood for."

"Oh. Okay." She nodded and then leaned across him with a frown to
pick up a squat plastic bottle from the table. "Where'd you get
this?"

"What? Oh, that. It was in the refrigerator; thought I'd give it
a try." He made a small moue of distaste. "It's kinda stale
though. Anyway," he smiled up at her, taking the bottle of
Blessed Spring and replacing it on the table, before indicating
her glass, "thought you'd prefer this."

"Yes!" she agreed cheerfully, taking another sip. "Actually, I
meant to throw that out."

"I didn't even notice you pick it up. At Gerrord-Andrews," he
elaborated as she gave him a puzzled look.

"Oh, I didn't. I got it at Karvin's rally, Sunday night. You're
right, it's a little lacking in taste. You'd think, for $9.89 a
bottle, they'd flavor it at least!"

"$9.89?" Clark raised a brow at the offending bottle. "The wine
cost less than that."

Lois laughed. "Well, don't worry, I didn't pay for it. Karvin was
giving out free samples like it was straight from the faucet.
Didn't seem to be stopping the faithful buying it up by the crate
afterwards though. Even at that price."

"Well," he said lightly, putting down the file and reaching over
to pick up the Planet's early edition from the table, "steep or
not, it might be worth buying in more if it can inspire you like
this." He looked over her article approvingly. "This piece you
did on Karvin is real good stuff. What made you think of taking
the human interest angle, instead of just the usual straight
run-down on Karvin?"

"Oh, it was just an idea that came to me." She glanced at the
paper, sadly. "It's such a shame. Denny's such a sweet kid. But
the doctors that Merle's taken him to in the last year don't hold
out much hope."

Clark nodded absently. "It's very...balanced. Gives Karvin a fair
deal. Here, where you say he can't really be held to account for
the hopes and dreams of the people who follow him? That he can't
cure everyone who comes to him for help?"

Lois frowned. "Shouldn't it?"

"No. No, absolutely not! Actually, it's nice to see someone step
back from the edge a little. Evangelism's gotten a real bad press
over the last ten years. Most people would just have gone digging
for dirt and left it at that."

"Well, I'm not most people." She smiled as she leaned over to
kiss the back of his neck.

He lifted his head automatically, momentarily distracted as he
kissed her in return. "True," he agreed, before he went back to
skimming her article.

"Maybe I should send a copy to Joseph Andrews," Lois suggested
snippily.

He laughed. "Well, it's probably not what he'd expect of the big,
bad press corps, certainly. He has a point too, though, you know.
Most everyone else seems to have written Karvin off already as
just this year's scam artist. But this piece of yours really gets
down to the heart of the matter - scam artist or not, set
yourself up as a surrogate God and you end up disappointing a lot
of people. Even if you don't set out to and your intentions are
good."

Lois looked over the article herself. "Maybe he is just working
the crowd." She shrugged. "As far as this reporter's concerned,
the jury's still out on that one. But he's right on this issue.
No matter how much time he spends on petitioners like Merle he'll
never be able to find time for all of them. There are just too
many. They do the best they can - giving out the passes in
advance so no one turns up at these rallies uninvited and they do
say that there's still a chance that numbers will prevent pass
holders seeing Karvin at all. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you
though, Karvin's press aide called me this afternoon. He says
Karvin wants me to interview him. He read my article and he's
personally asked that Merle and Denny be given a private healing
session to see if he can help."

"Really? Well, that's good news." He glanced at her, as she
stayed silent. "Isn't it?"

She sighed. "I don't know. Maybe. I can't help feeling that
offering Merle false hope isn't really helping her at all. Or
Denny. Karvin's certainly got an impressive record on healing the
sick, but reports of his successes are largely anecdotal -
impossible to pin down to facts and figures, difficult to
distinguish between fantasy and genuine cures and just plain
wishful thinking."

Clark looked up at her. "Honey, hope is just hope. There's never
anything false about it, no matter how brief a time you have
it."

"It's just...well, I'd hate to be responsible for setting Merle
up for another fall. The way things are with Denny right now, she
just doesn't need another disappointment."

He smiled as he laid a reassuring hand on her arm. "Lois, this
article of yours got them there. It's up to them to take it from
here. You should be proud of yourself for getting them just a
little further along the road. Time to let it go, put it to bed,"
he advised. "Let them get on with it. This interview why you've
got so much background lying around?" he changed the subject
slightly, indicating the file.

"Be prepared," Lois told him. "Old reporters' motto."

"*Are* you an old reporter? I hadn't noticed. Besides," he added
with a grin, "I thought that was the Scouts?"

"We stole it."

"Oh." He picked up a sheaf of papers, clipped together at one
corner, from the file. The corporate logo of the Foundation that
backed Karvin's Ministry was gold embossed in the top right-hand
corner. "You know, this is pretty radical stuff. Even for a
backstreet preacher like Karvin. Have you read some of the things
he's planning on?"

"You think that's impressive, you should see his web site."

'Web site?' Clark mouthed. He grimaced. "Guess God needs a
helping hand getting the message across these days, huh?"

"Oh yeah. And cable can get you into fifty million homes across
the nation."

"Cable?"

She tapped the press release. "Page eight. He's planning on
starting up his own ministry on the Rhapsody Channel, next
month."

"Smooth," Clark murmured, lifting a darkly admiring brow. He
plucked the agency style photograph of Karvin from the file and
examined the clean-cut features. It was debatable whether he was
commenting on the man himself or his ambitions. "He seems to have
gotten ambitious awful fast," he went on. "Up to just a couple of
years ago he seemed happy enough being a local celebrity.
congregation of his own. Little house in the suburbs. Then, all
of a sudden..." He waved a hand over the spread of papers on the
table. "Web sites...cable ministries..." His lips quirked
suddenly. "And every merchandising gimmick you could mention,
from coffee mugs to stationery, all with the divine seal of
approval. Not to mention spiritual copyright."

Lois gave his shoulder a brief, consoling pat. "Jealous of a
little God-given superhero competition?" she teased.

He gave her a dry glance.

She reached across him to take hold of a corner of the print,
tilting it her way. "Fame and fortune aren't the only things he's
been God-given either. Don't you think? Scam artist or not, he
*is* sort of handsome..."

Clark pursed his lips, making a good pretense of considering the
question seriously, then shook his head. "Really? I can't see
it."

Lois grinned at him and rose to her feet. "Well, I've had enough
of Dale Karvin for one evening. How about I use up the last of
the chicken for dinner?" she suggested, dismissing the evangelist
as she made for the kitchen. "I can make cornbread and sweet
potatoes?"

"Sure. Whatever. Oh, by the way," he glanced up with a wry,
congratulatory smile as she paused, turning to face him, "the
early news from LNN reported that Darren Peters has retracted on
that murder one charge against Merkovian."

"Really?" Lois looked enormously pleased with herself as she
vanished through the kitchen door.

"Actually..." Clark tossed down the papers and followed, catching
up with her as she opened the freezer. He tugged the door gently
from her, closing it, and took her shoulders lightly in his hands
as he kissed her before continuing, "Since we missed out on
lunch, why don't we go out to dinner? Take the night off. We
could take in a movie?"

She looked up on him, archly. "Any movie? I get to choose?"

His lips twisted as though he'd just tasted something sour. He
knew what was coming. "Antonio Banderas?" he ventured,
reluctantly, sounding as though he was suggesting a trip to Hades
itself. They'd been having a mild, running battle on that one for
weeks now - he wasn't a fan, even if she seemed to be - and he'd
thought, until now, that he'd just about won it on points.

"It got good reviews. And Jimmy loved it."

He sighed, not exactly considering that a recommendation. But he
had missed her; his resistance was low. Besides, she was giving
him that look. The one that always somehow made him feel that he
was going to be the meanest jerk and lowest form of life on the
planet if he even considered arguing with her over something so
trivial. The one he'd never yet been able to form a defense
against. He sighed again. "Okay, fine. Antonio Banderas."

She grinned. "Thank you." She kissed him pertly and whirled away.
"Give me half an hour to change?"

Clark rolled his eyes. "Why does it *always* take you so long to
get dressed?"

"Because *I* don't have the benefit of superspeed. Besides," she
came back to drape herself seductively against the doorframe and
give him a smoldering look, "you know it's worth the wait."

Viewing that provocative pose with interest, Clark made a quick
move for her. Laughing, she darted away; through the kitchen
doors, into the living room - and cannoned into him at the bottom
of the stairs. She yelped as he took firm hold of her arms,
capturing her and tugging her close.

"Well, I can't argue with you on that one," he agreed, before he
kissed her - somewhat thoroughly. He took his time about it.

"That wasn't fair," she complained, just a little breathlessly,
when, finally, his lips left hers. "Don't you know the rules?"

"Rules?" He nuzzled softly at her neck.

"Rules. If you're going to chase me, you have to let me get
away." She ran her hands into his hair and brushed her lips
across his temple. "At least for a while."

He chuckled softly and lifted his head to glance upwards,
considering, as he settled her into the circle of his arms,
rocking her ever so slightly. "Does to the top of the stairs
count?"

"It might. But," she narrowed her eyes, suspiciously, "you
promised me a movie. This wouldn't be your way of welching on the
deal, would it?"

"As if I would. Besides, it's early yet. We could still make the
late show...?" It became a question as his grip shifted, pressing
her to him, his lips molding themselves to hers in a slow,
languid caress.

Lois drew back after a moment, took hold of his hand in answer,
and, with a secretive smile that was full of promise enough to
make the pulse beneath her fingers rise markedly, began to lead
him upstairs.

The phone rang as they reached the first landing.

Clark sighed and pressed regretful lips to the back of her neck,
before loosing his hand from hers. "Go on up," he told her as he
headed back downstairs. "Whoever it is, I'll get rid of them."

"Don't take too long." She smiled and then jogged up the second
flight.

Clark paused to watch her disappear onto the landing, enjoying
the smooth way she moved, before he expelled a low breath and
shook himself mentally to return his thoughts to matters at hand
- and the phone now shrilling its impatience on the low table
beside him.

"Hello? Oh, hi, Ji - what? Well, sure, she's right -- uh-huh..."
his tone became slightly bemused as he listened. "Okay, well,
hang on, I'll ask." He put a hand over the receiver and raised
his voice. "Lois? Lois!"

"Yeah?" She appeared at the top of the stairwell.

"It's Jimmy. He says Leanore says yes and what time can he
collect that casserole?"

***

"Don't you think you had enough, lady?" The bartender viewed the
disheveled woman slumped against his bar with barely concealed
disdain. "I mean, not that I care, but - "

"Great. 'cos I missed the sign saying you served up opinions
along with the liquor, when I came in." Estelle glared up at him.
"Just do what I'm paying you for." She held out the empty glass.

The bartender shrugged. "No skin off my nose." He poured her
another stiff shot of brandy and stalked off.

Estelle downed half of the sweet, cloying liquid in a couple of
gulps and nursed the rest, sitting on the barstool at a definite
list. After a moment, she began to mumble viciously under her
breath. It eventually resolved itself into something barely
louder than a growl as she drained the glass defiantly.

"...gonna do. I'll sue the ass off the creep. You see if I
don't!"

"Yeah, you do that, lady," the bartender agreed,
disinterestedly.

"Sue the ass -- " All at once the threat dissolved in a sob. More
followed, great, wracking whoops of pain and desolation.

"Aw, jeez..." the bartender reached for the empty glass beside
her, disgust heavy in his voice and face.

Estelle recoiled sharply. "Don't you touch me!"

He snorted. "Honey, believe me, I wouldn't touch you from fifty
paces out with that pool cue over there."

Estelle opened her mouth and caught sudden sight of her
reflection in the mirror opposite. She stared at the rat's tails
of dark hair, shot with salt and pepper streaks of gray, that
straggled around her shoulders; at the smeared makeup and ruined
lipstick; the blotchy, tear-raddled face. She watched that
stranger's face twist into sudden fury and bewilderingly, all at
once, it became her face, her arm that swung up sharply, her fist
that stuck the bartender a wild, glancing blow against the
cheek.

"You son of a bitch!" she screamed and then she pushed herself
violently away >from the bar counter and ran for the door.

Outside she held onto the wall, hauling in great breaths. She
felt dizzy and nauseated.

"Hey, lady, you okay?"

She jerked up her head and shook off the hand that had taken hold
of her arm with a snarl. "Get away from me!"

"Hey, Whoa!" The young man held up surrendering hands and then,
taking a closer look at her and at the fury swimming among liquor
bleary eyes, shook his head, hurrying off with a backwards glance
and a mutter.

Estelle stood, swaying slightly, in the middle of the flow of the
crowd that streamed past the bar. As though alerted by some
lemming like sixth sense, it parted around her and reformed at a
safe distance beyond, giving her a wide berth. Estelle glared
around her. She wanted to pound them all. Every last one of them.
What did they know about anything? What did they know about her?

Nothing, that's what.

She'd show them. She'd show them all what Estelle Pinchenski was
made of.

She made a weaving path to the edge of the sidewalk and peered
muzzily at the traffic streaming past. Her heart was racing. Fit
to bust, she thought, wonderingly. And she was floating again.
Floating on a sea of liquor and rage as the blood pounded a rapid
drumbeat in her ears. She glanced up at the lights, at the red
square of light that ordered her to wait.

But she couldn't wait. She'd been waiting half her life.

Waiting for something to change.

Waiting for the old witch to die.

Waiting for...for...

Waiting!

Just waiting! And, dammit, she wasn't gonna wait no more.

No more!

She'd had it with waiting.

She was going.

And the Lord help the first, sorry soul who tried to get in her
way that was all.

First sorry son of a bitch got in her way, she'd sue the ass off
'em!

She stepped off the sidewalk and marched determinedly into the
road ahead.

***

"You know," Clark mused as, companionably entwined, they made
their way lazily through the throng of people emerging from the
movie theater. "I never really liked that guy since he sent you
that bouquet, but I gotta admit he wasn't half bad." He tilted
his head to where hers lay against his shoulder, pressing his
cheek to her hair, and then added, "Still think he plays the
action hero far better than he does the romantic though."

Lois glanced up on him with a small smile. "He sent the bouquet
to UltraWoman, not me."

The reminder failed to cut any ice with Clark. "It was still you
he was after."

There was the faintest tang of jealousy in that, even now. Lois
shook her head slightly over it. "Oh, I think Lois Lane's
probably too tame for him," she assured him.

"Well," he smiled down on her as he tightened the arm hung
loosely across her shoulders, drawing her closer against him.
"She's not too tame for me."

Lois laughed softly.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing." They'd reached the Jeep now. She loosed her arm
>from around his waist and faced him, taking both his hands
lightly in hers. "It just occurred to me that I must be one of
the very few women in the world whose life is actually much more
exciting than anything Hollywood could come up with." She paused,
giving him an irreverent grin before adding, "And whose leading
man is *much* more romantic and heroic than any movie star."

"Oh..." He kissed her in reward for the compliment. "Well, I
guess that makes two of us who got lucky, because there isn't a
leading lady in the world can hold a candle to you." He pulled
her closer and kissed her again. Slowly. Lingeringly.

She tasted of white wine and peppermint from dinner, earlier, and
of chocolate >from the dessert he'd insisted on sharing with her,
since they were 'celebrating' his return. She had laughed,
shaking her head as she tried to decline, complaining that he was
trying to make her fat. But her laughter had turned to a soft
choke of dismay and her eyes had widened slightly, as he'd had
unexpectedly responded to her accusation with a murmured,
'Busted!' and a heartfelt sigh.

He'd settled back into his chair, letting the spoon laden with
Chocolate Cream Surprise rest back in its dish, in the wake of
this outrageous admission. Then he'd added, after a pause and
with a provocative wiggle of his eyebrows at her, that he hadn't
been trying with *chocolate*, however.

The confession - and the darkly wicked gleam of his eyes across
the table's soft candlelight - had made her splutter into her
wine, laughing all the harder and completely helplessly again.
But she'd gotten her own back, leaning across the table and, when
he obliged her by moving forward to intercept her halfway,
whispering in his ear, 'Down, boy!' and, a seductive and by now
all too familiar promise, 'Later!'

It seemed that 'later' had overcome them before they reached
home. Again. Clark smiled, a little ruefully, as he looked down
into his wife's upturned face. Her eyes were sparkling, lively
with excitement and just a little hazed still with desire. The
light evening breeze picked up slightly, tugging gently at her
hair and sweeping a few strands across her cheek. He reached out
automatically to brush them back behind one ear, causing her to
smile and focusing his attention on her lips, reddened by the
fierce longing which had been in his kiss a moment earlier.

Her perfume, warm, rich and slightly spiced, enveloped him in a
heady cloud, setting his pulse on a wild curve as his heart raced
to match hers. She was captivating...bewitching...and he wondered
if she'd be persuaded to let him drive. He was certain that with
just a little application...and perhaps some superfast
reflexes...he could make the journey home to the brownstone
through the busy evening streets in half the time she could.

He bent his head to kiss her again.

After some moments, he shifted to rest his cheek against hers,
breathing somewhat harder than he had before. "Maybe we should
finish this conversation back home," he murmured at her ear.

Lois chuckled as he released her and fumbled in her pocket before
raising a hand to dangle the car keys invitingly at him. He
laughed, shaking his head at her ability to second-guess him
every time. Taking the keys and rewarding her for her insight
with another gentle brush of his lips against hers, he moved to
tug open the Jeep door, allowing her to slip into the passenger
seat before he closed it after her.

The sharp blatt of a car horn turned his head. He took in the
scene further down the street in a fraction of a second, a
snapshot series of pictures. The woman struggling with the man in
the middle of the intersection; the checkered yellow Metrocab
that was bearing down on them, the driver giving them another
irritated blast as they continued to fight, ignoring that
warning; the blue flash of a second car as it moved out to
over-take the cab, its driver unaware of the two pedestrians in
his path.

There was no time to think about it. The crowd behind him had
thinned now, barely a hindrance as he darted past and between
them and into the darkness of the store doorway behind him. He
could do no more but trust to those shadows and the fact that
most people's attention was on the developing drama, to conceal
what he was about to do. In another instant, Superman burst out
of the darkness in a blur and along the street to pluck the
arguing couple into the air and deposit them safely on the
sidewalk, out of harm's way.

To his surprise, the woman left off fighting the man she'd been
with and turned on him instead.

"Let go! Let go, you - "

"Hey!" He took the brunt of her fists stoically. "Whoa, calm
down! Just - "

She ignored him, jerking furiously out of his grip before he
could realize her intent. Losing balance, she staggered back and
straight into the path of the oncoming traffic. A gray station
wagon ploughed into her before even super reflexes could save her
a second time. Superman was just a microsecond too late in
reaching her side.

He dropped to one knee beside her. She was alive, but she wasn't
going to stay that way for long. His X-ray vision catalogued a
mess of broken bones and there was a crush injury to her spine
that would have made him hesitate to move her, even if her
injuries hadn't made it pointless. He tried to take hold of her
hand, to offer some comfort at least, but she jerked it clear of
him. She gasped, twisting as pain raged through her broken body.

"Easy...just lie still," Superman urged her, softly.

Her eyes opened and he frowned at the venomous hate in that dark
glare as she stared up at him. "You tell him," she hissed. "You
tell that..." Blood bubbled thickly from the corner of her mouth
and she coughed, but she persisted as he tried to still her
again, "Tell him I'll sue the ass -- "

She coughed harder and the hands she'd twisted into the front of
his suit fell away. Her face, frozen in a rictus mask of rage,
twisted in a snarl.

Superman shook his head sadly as he got to his feet. He stood for
a moment, looking down at the dead woman, and then turned away.
He moved to tug open the door of the station wagon. The driver
was slumped forward into the wheel, fingers gripped
white-knuckled around the leather-bound frame. Superman put a
hand to his shoulder and pulled him carefully upright.

"Sir, you okay?"

The driver, clearly shaken, shook his head, eyes fixed on the
red-starred windscreen before him. "She just came straight
out...straight out..."

"I know. Are you okay? Sir? Are you hurt?"

"What?" He seemed to gather himself all at once. "Oh. No. No, I
don't think so."

Superman nodded and turned his head to where the man he'd rescued
was standing staring at the dead woman, gray-faced. He held up a
hand as the stern faced figure in blue and red stalked towards
him, steely eyed.

"I wasn't doing nothing, I swear!" he blurted. "I didn't even
know her!"

Superman stopped in front of him, arms folded. "What was going on
here?"

"Nothing! I saw her step out into the road. I tried to stop her,
pull her back, and she went nuts on me, kicking and screaming all
over the place. Crazy broad. I was just trying to get her out of
the way. You can ask them." He pointed back into the watching
crowd on the sidewalk. Several of them were already nodding
confirmation. "Ask any of them."

Superman sighed. "Okay. Look, why don't you stay with him?" He
indicated the station wagon's driver. "Till the ambulance
arrives. And," he glanced across his shoulder, "see if you can't
find something to cover her."

The man nodded, hurrying for the car.

Superman turned to survey the street. And the world turned gray,
shattered into a million pieces around him, shards of his life
splintering as cold, black and frightening pain sliced into the
pit of his belly. His heart clenched tight in his chest as terror
kicked it hard against his ribs.

The cab driver, swerving to avoid the couple in his path, had
collided with the blue Buick over-taking him. Although he'd
managed to recover control of his own vehicle, halting the cab
some distance away without further incident, the Buick had been
less fortunate. It had slewed across the road, dragging along the
side of several of the parked vehicles - which showed its trail
in buckled fenders and scraped wings and shattered head-lamps -
and had come to rest, right front wing buried in the driver's
door of the last in line. The Buick had struck the vehicle with
such force that it had slammed it sideways across the sidewalk
and up against the storefront on the other side, where it had
ripped it open like a shark nosing through paper; buckled the
metal into a twisted wreck as easily as though it had been set in
a vice.

A wreck that had once been a Jeep. Their Jeep. The Jeep which
had, only seconds before, been safely parked by the roadside,
with his wife --

"No..." Superman whispered, the word emerging jagged and torn
from the depths of his throat and then, a soundless cry of fear
and panic, "Lois!"

He launched himself into the air, to land on the frame of the
shattered store window in a heartbeat. The Buick's driver had
emerged, hanging onto the door of his wrecked vehicle. Blood was
leaking weakly from a thin gash on his forehead. He seemed dazed,
but otherwise unhurt.

"Get out of the way!" Superman bellowed.

The man stared at him blankly, but two figures detached
themselves from the watching crowd clustered on the sidewalk and
pulled him quickly to safety.

Superman put his shoulder to the edge of the Jeep and pushed it
clear of the storefront. It went with a tortured screech of
tearing metal, taking most of the windowframe's aluminum supports
with it. When it collided with the Buick, both vehicles ploughed
together across the street to come to rest in the center of the
road. Superman tore the Jeep's passenger door free and tossed it
aside, leaving it to clatter on the sidewalk, and --

-- and the Jeep was empty.

Straightening, he glanced desperately around him, heart jolting
sickeningly tight against his ribs...oh, god...if she'd been
thrown from the car on impact -- and found the familiar
white-coated figure only a few dozen yards away. Lois was
kneeling beside an elderly woman who was sitting, slumped, on the
edge of the sidewalk, head in hands.

In the blink of an eye and a blur of red and blue, Superman was
beside them. Startled by the suddenness of his appearance, Lois
jerked up her head with a soft gasp.

"Oh! Superman..."

He pulled her to her feet.

"Are you okay? I thought - "

She followed his glance for the ruined Jeep and her eyes widened.
She shook her head. "I got out when you - " she paused, lowering
her voice to a murmur as she looked warily around her, "You
didn't think I'd just sit there when something like this was
going down, did you?"

He shook his head, wonderingly. She felt so good in his hands. He
wanted to crush her to him, tight enough to feel the steady beat
of her heart against his, the warmth of her against him.
Something of that urge must have shown itself, naked, in his
face, because hers became alarmed. He realized he was still
holding on to her shoulders and let her go abruptly. The elderly
woman was watching them, curiously.

He cleared his throat. "Uh, well, if you're both okay..." He
hooked a thumb over his shoulder to the carnage behind them.
"I'll just go see if the police need any help."

Lois nodded. "It's just a nick," she said, confusing him before
he realized she was talking about the woman she'd been helping.
She hunkered down to apply the scarf in her hands, already
bloody, to the shallow line of fresh blood trailing the woman's
throat and glanced around her at the wash of broken glass
littering the sidewalk. "Lucky no one else got hit."

He nodded. "Well, I'll just - " He glanced to where blue strobe
lights were already filling the darkness.

"Sure. Go." She smiled up on him.

That smile was like the sun: warming and sustaining him all at
once.

He carried it with him as he went to help clear up the mess
Estelle Pinchenski had left as an epitaph.

***

"You're sure you're okay?"

Clark handed Lois the mug of chocolate he'd carried through from
the kitchen and settled beside her on the sofa as she sipped at
its welcome warmth. He laid a hand against the knee of the leg
she'd drawn up beneath her, as though needing the touch, that
contact, as reassurance.

"Because you'd tell me if you weren't. Right?"

She nodded, and put a hand to his cheek as he continued to study
her, concern filling his eyes. "I'm fine." She gave him a faint
smile. "And, don't think I haven't noticed you've X-rayed every
bone I've got at least twice since we got home, when you thought
I wasn't looking."

A definite exaggeration, Clark thought, giving her a reproachful
look. It had only been the once. And even then, with her refusing
to sit still for more than two minutes at a time, he'd been
unable to really get a lock on --

"There's nothing wrong with me, Clark. You want to worry about
something, worry about the Jeep."

"I don't care about the Jeep."

"Well, you should. Me, I loved that Jeep." She buried her nose in
the depths of her mug. "It was the first thing I bought after I
got my first big front page scoop at the Planet - the Griffin
expose - and I remember - "

"Lois..."

She paused, and then lifted her head to regard him soberly. "It's
okay. *I'm* okay. Really."

"When I saw it lying there, crushed up against that window, all
twisted up like that - " He stopped, an echo of the stark fear
he'd felt then rising in his face now. His throat tightened and
he shook his head, unable to force the words through.

She put down the mug and allowed herself to be drawn into his
arms. Letting him know, in the best way she could as she snuggled
close against his side, that she was there with him; real and
warm and unharmed. "I'm here," she whispered into his shoulder.

"But you might not have been. Lois - "

She drew herself back to look up steadily into his eyes. "Clark,
we've had this out before. You can't always be there. Not all the
time. You just have to accept that."

"This is different. Lois, you were right there! Just yards away
from me. And I had my mind on other people, so many other things,
I didn't even *notice* you were in trouble!"

"I wasn't in trouble."

"But you might have been. It was sheer luck you weren't. Lois, if
you'd been hurt because I thought someone else was more important
-- "

"Clark, you do what you can. That's all. I can't ask for any more
than that >from you. No one could. You can't keep watch on me
twenty-four hours a day. And, right beside me or a million miles
away, you're there for me when you can be. That's enough for me.
It should be enough for you too."

He smiled wanly at her, knowing she was right. He put a hand into
her hair and she pressed her cheek to his fingers.

"Why did she do it?" she asked, trying to divert him as she drew
away and picked up her mug again.

He heaved a sigh. "I don't know. That guy who tried to stop her
before I did said she was crazy. He said..." He frowned. "He said
she was yelling all sorts of wild things; threatening him if he
didn't leave her alone. A few people in the crowd said she'd been
drinking pretty heavily in a bar nearby for most of the evening."
He shook his head. "I guess, we'll just never know."

"I guess..." Lois murmured, eyes distant as she cradled the mug
in both hands and took another sip.

With one knee brought up against her chest so that she could use
its ledge to rest an arm on, one leg crossed beneath her,
barefoot, and dressed as she was in plain leggings and an over
baggy sweatshirt, she almost looked like a little kid, Clark
thought, watching her. There was a bruise smeared across the bone
of her right cheek that was already turning dark. She insisted it
was nothing. She also insisted she couldn't remember at which
point in the melee that Estelle Pinchenski had caused that she'd
gotten it. It gave her an illusion of vulnerability which made
him want to simply pull her into his arms, kiss her hard, and
promise her he'd never let anything hurt her again. Not ever.

"As I think I might just have mentioned in the past, I'm not a
six year old, Clark."

He started, pulled from his thoughts to find himself staring into
her solemn eyes. "What?"

She shook her head. "So..." She placed the mug carefully on the
table and shifted to draw both legs beneath her, facing him as
she sat back on her heels. "You can just take that look off your
face. I don't need coddling from you. I need *something*, but
it's not coddling."

He gave her a sudden grin. "Yeah?" He hitched himself nearer,
close enough to feel the cool touch of her breath against his
cheek, as he looked into her eyes. "So, what, exactly, *do* you
need from me?"

"Well, now, let's see." She smiled, threading her fingers
together at the back of his neck. "The number of a good auto body
repair shop would do for a start," she told him.

***

As it turned out, a good vehicle repair shop was more difficult
to find than they'd supposed.

Clark heard the familiar rising voice of his wife clear across
the newsroom floor as he came down the iron staircase from the
research section. As he approached, he noted that there was
suddenly a very wide area of clear space around Lois' desk, as
their colleagues all at once found other things to do that kept
them out of her line of fire. He had to admit that, even for
Lois, that voice was loud...and extremely annoyed.

He winced as he reached her desk in time to watch her slam the
telephone receiver down in a fit of furious pique.

"Bad news?" He put a soothing hand to her shoulder as he stopped
beside her chair.

"They're talking at least a month till we can get the Jeep back."
She stabbed her pencil at the offending page in her notepad,
where she'd jotted down the relevant details of her conversation
with the garage, before she tossed both onto her desk. "A month!
And that's including the two weeks it'll take them before they
even get started on repairing it! I've gone through every garage
I can find in the Yellow Pages and none of them will touch it any
quicker than that. That's if we had the chance to choose. I
should've noticed that small print clause tying us down to a
garage of our insurer's choice," she added a disgusted mutter.
"What an idiot!"

Clark tightened his grip slightly.

"God, those guys make my head ache."

She reached to haul open the desk drawer, unscrewed the cap on
the bottle of aspirin and shook out a couple, before dropping it
back and slamming the drawer shut. She chased the pills down with
a quick gulp of coffee and then leaned back against the backrest
of her chair. She kneaded at her temples with irritable fingers.

"You know the worst thing about this?"

"We miss out on our last one hundred discount stamps before the
gas station promotion ends?" Clark ventured. He made a vaguely
disappointed gesture. "We don't get the full set of matching
luggage, after all?"

She smiled, despite her annoyance. "No." She reached up and
tugged him down to her level with one hand clenched in his tie.
"If we could use a certain superhero repair service," she
whispered, "we could have it back by this evening."

"True." He grinned at her and straightened, smoothing a hand down
the tie and drawing it neatly out of her grip in the process.
"But I guess the loss adjuster would be surprised when he came
out to look it over. I'll get back on to the insurers about that
rental car, meantime," he promised as she looked downcast and
then, distracted suddenly as he frowned, "Looks like we're not
the only ones with problems though. Hey, morning, Jimmy," he
raised his voice cheerfully as the researcher slouched his way
down the ramp and headed towards them. Jimmy looked just a trifle
disheveled, as though he'd spent half the night sleeping in the
rumpled clothes he was wearing. "You okay?"

"Huh? Oh." Jimmy pulled a hand through his hair and threw himself
into a nearby chair. "I...didn't get much sleep last night."

Lois grinned across at him as she looked up from the mail she'd
begun to sort through. "I take it Leanore liked the casserole
then?"

Jimmy lifted his head from where he'd dropped it into tired hands
and gave her a long, steady look.

"No," he said at last. "Actually, she *would* have liked the
casserole, if you'd put a hold on the beef and made that mushroom
sauce just with mushrooms and without the hint of peanut oil," he
went on, oblivious to the small glance which Lois darted at her
husband and the quirk of Clark's brow at her in response.

Lois flushed a little, but she didn't correct Jimmy's
misconception that she had been the cook as the photographer
continued, "She's a vegan. And she's so allergic to peanut oil
that just the hint you put in sent her into a fit of anaphylactic
shock on the floor of my apartment. I had to dial 911. I've spent
most of the night down in an Emergency Room."

"Well, is she all right?" Clark said, startled, both by this and
by the determinedly mild tone Jimmy had used in the telling of
it.

"Oh, yeah. Soon as I told them what it was, they gave her an
injection. She usually carries an anti-allergic kit with her,
with a hypo in it, you know, for emergencies, but she'd forgotten
to bring it with her. I guess she didn't expect me to try and
kill her that particular evening. They gave her an adrenaline
shot; said they'll keep her in today for observation, just to be
sure, but she was fine when I left. She seemed to have a lot
of...energy...anyway," he concluded dismally. "And she sure
hadn't lost any of her vocabulary."

"Well, it wasn't your fault, Jimmy - " Lois started and he shook
his head. "No, sure it wasn't my fault," he agreed calmly.
"Course, Leanore did *ask* me if there was anything she should
know about the casserole before she ate it and I said no...so,
right now, I think it's probably fair to say she rates me on
about a par with Jeffrey Dahmer."

"You let her eat the casserole, knowing she was allergic to
peanuts?" Clark said, appalled.

"I didn't know it had peanut oil in it! I couldn't exactly tell
her I didn't know what was in it, because I hadn't cooked it,
could I? Not after telling her how I'd been slaving over a hot
stove all afternoon, 'specially for her. And I couldn't think of
any reason *why* someone would put *peanut oil* in a beef and
mushroom casserole! So, I said it was perfectly safe!"

His head swung towards Lois with that last. Since there was blame
being apportioned here, Lois gave up any pretense that she'd done
the cooking and looked to Clark.

"It was in the recipe!" Clark protested, defensively. "It was
only just a drop of peanut oil," he added, holding up thumb and
forefinger just a smidgen apart to indicate how tiny an amount it
had been.

Lois nodded, backing him up now that the blame had been firmly
laid where it belonged. "And it *was* just a mistake, Jimmy. It
could have - "

" - happened to anyone. Tell me about it. Anyway, strike two for
the romance of the year." He dropped his head to his hands again
with a heavy puff of breath.

"Sorry," Lois said.

Clark gave him a sympathetic glance. "Not working out like you
hoped it would, huh?"

"Let's just say, last night, we weren't laughing at the
'Hollywood Biker Chicks from Hell' any."

"'Hollywood *Biker* Chicks'?" repeated Clark, bemused.

Lois waved a hand at him. "Don't get him started," she warned.
She gave Jimmy an apologetic shrug. "Maybe this is a job for
Carol after all."

"Hey, the way my love life is going right now, it's a job for
Superman."

"Well, what can I say? Maybe you could - ?" she paused as he held
up a quick hand.

"Uh, no, Lois. Thanks, but no. That's okay."

Lois looked wounded.

Jimmy looked sideways, awkward all at once. "But...um, I was just
wondering...C.K., could I talk to you?" He glanced at Lois again.
"In private?"

"Me?" Clark gave him a startled glance. He was never comfortable
with people using his name in almost the same breath as
Superman's. But he shrugged obligingly. "Well, sure." He followed
Jimmy for the conference room, exchanging a wry glance with Lois
as he left.

"Listen, Jimmy," he started as he closed the door behind him, "if
you're going to ask *me* for advice on how to get the girl of
your dreams -- "

"Well, why not? You did something right with Lois, didn't you?"
Jimmy glanced through the glass windows as he spoke.

"Well, yeah, but that was only because Lois was smart enough to
figure out where I was going wrong and put me right," Clark told
him, sardonically.

"Yeah, but you know...how to get a girl interested," insisted
Jimmy.

"Jimmy - "

"Come on, C. K. What should I do? Flowers? Candy?"

"Just be yourself."

"I was myself. I was an idiot! Twice!"

Clark gave him an even look. "Jimmy, flowers and candy...well
they're okay. Any girl would appreciate those things. But, in the
end, it just comes down to whether you're right together, or not.
Believe me, if you are, it'll work out." He put a brief hand to
the young man's shoulder and gave him a helpless shrug before he
left the room.

"Yeah," Jimmy grumbled, glumly. "Superman told me the same thing
once. And look what happened there!" he raised his voice in a
yell, drawing several curious glances before he slumped into the
chair beside him. "Penny dumped me for a Pro-Am International
Federation Kick-Boxer! *And* he was two inches shorter than me!"
he added in a disgruntled mutter.

***

Retreating, Clark found Lois at the coffee station, pouring
herself a mugful of the thick, dark newsroom brew one handed as
she frowned over the sheaf of papers she was holding in the
other.

"What you got there?" He tilted his head, trying to read across
her shoulder.

"Police report on the accident last night." She handed him a
photograph. He recognized the woman he'd failed to save.

"You asked for a copy of this?" He glanced at the papers she was
holding and frowned. "Background reports too? Witness statements?
Why?"

"I was curious. Coffee?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Estelle Pinchenski," she told him, pouring a second cup. "She
lived alone on 87th Street. Quiet. No trouble. Neighbors hardly
knew enough about her to give the police any decent background,
even though she'd lived there almost ten years. With her mother,
before the woman died."

"Recently?"

"Um," Lois flipped back through a few pages and shook her head,
"no. Ten months."

He raised a brow, looking back at the picture. "Maybe recent
enough."

"Well, it seems the police think so too. They've more or less
closed the case as a suicide, already. They still have no real
idea why she did it though. Not that they seem especially keen to
know."

"And, let me guess. You don't think they're right. And you *do*
want to know why."

"Like I said, I'm curious."

"So, what else is new?"

"I've got an inquisitive streak; so sue me. Besides, apart from
this interview with Dale Karvin this afternoon, we've got nothing
much else on right now. It's been a real slow week, newswise.
So...." she gave him a sly sideways glance and lowered her voice,
conspiratorially, "...unless Superman wants to provide me with a
red hot, five alarm exclusive for tomorrow's front page - "

" - unlikely at the moment - "

" - I've got nothing else to sink my teeth into right now.
Don't..." she warned as he opened his mouth, his eyes twinkling
mischievously, "...even consider it. I'm talking strictly
business here, Kent."

Clark shrugged and inched his way significantly closer, nudging
her slightly with his hip. "Well, Superman *could* give you an
exclusive...but I doubt you'd want it printed on the front page,"
he murmured wickedly against her ear just before he caught the
lobe between his teeth and nibbled on it lightly before letting
it go again.

Lois' fought a smile, lips twitching as she studied the papers in
her hand slightly more intently than they deserved. "Business,
Kent," she repeated sweetly. "Remember?"

He sighed softly. "Okay. Anyone else we can talk to?" He glanced
down at the photo in his hands again. "Apart from the police or
those neighbors? Anyone who might have known her?"

"Oh, yes."

Clark took his eyes from the printout, alerted by something in
her tone on that last. She looked up on him.

"In the last few months, Estelle Pinchenski was spending her days
out and about charity collecting."

He didn't see what was coming. "Charity?" And then a glimmer got
through. "Which charity?" he asked, interestedly.

She smiled grimly. "United Church of Salvation."

Clark paused, taking that in as she walked off, and then
followed. "And?"

She glanced at him. "What do you mean, 'and'? It's obvious."

"It is?"

"Clark, we've had two young women kill themselves in the past two
days. You've read Karen Culver's background report and Richard
said she was a member of the United Church of Salvation."

"And...because they were both members of the same Church, you
figure there's a connection between them? Lois, do you know how
many people follow that Church? Do you know what the suicide rate
is in this city? It's a *big* city. People get lonely, you
know?"

His partner gave him one of her withering glances.

"It happens, Lois. It's tough, but it happens."

Her bottom lip jutted mulishly.

"Lois - "

"I'm just saying, it's...unusual." Lois said airily as she took a
sip of her coffee and nudged her mouse to eliminate her
SuperShield screensaver. "It's unusual. That's all."

He perched on the corner of her desk, put down his mug, and
folded his arms to study her. "And the unusual aspect is...?"

"Well...you know..."

"Ah," he tossed the word into the air before him with a faintly
superior smile, before tilting his head to view her again. "Now
that is unusual, I'll admit. Okay," he picked up the grainy photo
of Karen Culver from the open file on her desk, "let's see. She
left Molasses, Iowa for the big city when she was seventeen. She
was young. To have left her folks, I mean," he elaborated
defensively as she hitched a knowing brow at him. "Small town
girl in the big city?"

Lois flashed him a meaningful look as she slipped into her seat.
"Not all small town folks are spooked by the big city, Clark."

"I had you to keep me occupied. I didn't have time to get lonely.
Half the time, those first couple of months here, I felt as
though I'd been wrestling with a bear by the time I got home. I
was too exhausted to worry about being on my own."

She looked startled and then laughed, putting a brief,
companionable hand to his arm. "Well, if I'd known I had that
effect on you..."

"You'd have been ten times worse." His eyes showed his amusement
as he bent his head to engage her in a brief, sweet kiss. She
traced the line of his jaw with light fingers as he drew back and
then her eyes turned purposeful. Back to all business now, she
pulled Karen's photo easily from his grasp. After a moment spent
studying the youthful face, she dropped it back to the desk.

"She had a successful career. She was PA to the junior partner of
Gerrord- Andrews Pharmaceuticals." She ticked them off on her
fingers like points won on a scoreboard. "A position she seemed
happy with. We know she'd been headhunted by three other major
corporations in the past four months and she turned them all
down. And, you don't have to tell me," she added quickly as he
opened his mouth, "being happy in your career choice doesn't stop
you being lonely. But she *had* friends. Here in the city. She
wasn't painting Metropolis mauve with her social life, but she
seemed to be getting on well. Uh-uh," she decided. "Doesn't
jell."

She leaned back in her chair and looked up on him steadily,
pencil balanced delicately between her index fingers.

"You were the one who pointed out that her fiance had left her
for another woman just three months ago," he countered. "Joseph
Andrews said Karen was having trouble coming to terms with that.
Especially when both the fiance and the other woman worked at
Gerrord-Andrews too. Estelle Pinchenski was mourning the mother
she'd nursed for half her life. Losing someone like that, after
all that time, it leaves a pretty big gap. She had no other
family, no friends; she was alone for the first time in ten
years. And, probably, lonely."

Lois' stare didn't waver. After a moment, as he refused to be
intimidated, she clenched the pencil in one fist, stabbing it out
at him in pointed emphasis. "You're forgetting that connection
they both have to Dale Karvin."

"To the United Church. Not Karvin."

"Don't get pedantic with me, Clark. You know it's the same
thing."

"Karvin can't possibly know every single member of his Ministry
personally, and - "

"He must have known Karen though. He'd have seen her around when
he met with Gerrord or Andrews. And Estelle Pinchenski was more
than just a member of the Church; she was an active fundraiser.
Karvin's schedule here in Metropolis included a cheerleader
meeting with several of the most prolific of those. Estelle
*could* have been one of the honored few invited to hail the
leader. That's not impossible. It's not even improbable."

Clark looked even more skeptical than he had before. "That's
pretty slim, Lois. Even for you."

"It's a connection," Lois insisted sweetly, as she rose to her
feet. "Danish?" she added over her shoulder.

He sighed and followed her.

"All right, so it's a connection," he admitted as he leaned
against the stair railing and watched her choose two apple and
almond pastries from the box. "Not *much* of a connection,
but..." He accepted one of the pastries with a nod of thanks and
then raised surrendering hands as she quirked a challenging brow
at him.

He guessed she was right, after all. Karvin's name, and the name
of his Church for that matter, had already come up just once too
often in this investigation to be easily dismissed. It was sheer
coincidence, of course; no reason to doubt otherwise, but Lois
believed in coincidence with about as much faith as she did
fairies at the bottom of the garden and he had to admit he wasn't
that far behind her in that. Too many roads, it seemed, led to
Dale Karvin for him not to have become their greatest lead and
they'd chased down leads that were slimmer and tracked their way
to the truth on less, in their time.

Lois was watching him, expectantly.

"Okay..." he gave in, doubtfully. "Let's check it on out."

***

Herrera stood on the bank of the river, watching the Metropolis
PD cruiser angle its way towards him.

There was an air of tense expectation in the men with him and
around him. A splutter of radio-talk came from somewhere behind
him, but he didn't take his eyes from the approaching craft.
Engines shut down, it glided slowly through the backwash of the
murky water.

"We got positive, Inspector. They're bringing her in now."

He turned his head. Detective Saul Pearson, he always thought,
looked far too young to have earned himself that shield he
carried in his pocket. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, of tanned,
athletic build, he should have been more at home on the college
track than cruising the seedy downtown of Metropolis. He was
carrying a two-way radio in his left hand.

"Where they said?" was Herrera's only comment.

"Tide took her under the break, just like they figured."

Herrera nodded. The cruiser had nosed its way gently up against
the bank now. He stuck his hands deep in his pockets and took an
unhurried walk towards its prow. One of the river cops helped him
aboard with a grip against his sleeve and then stood back to let
him view the plastic shrouded heap in the middle of the deck.

Herrera went down on one knee beside it and twitched the edge of
the plastic sheet back. He took a long, lengthy look into the
wide, brown eyes of the dead girl and then let the sheet fall.
His left knee protested with a needle sharp prickle as he
straightened and he tilted back his head to stare up into the
blue, cloudless sky a moment, before he turned away.

He was getting too old for this.

He rooted in the depths of his pocket for a stick of the gum he
always carried since giving up on his favorite cigars two months
before, and stripped it of its silver foil before popping it into
his mouth.

"I.D.?" he asked.

The cruiser's pilot nodded. "Sure. She left everything she had up
there on the bridge before she jumped." He handed over a tooled
leather wallet. A pair of linked initials - GB - was worked in
gold in the lower right-hand corner.

"Everything?"

"Pretty much." The pilot looked back across his shoulder to where
the Medical Examiner's Assistant had arrived to carry out his
initial examination before the body was taken to the city
mortuary. A police photographer was obeying his directions to
record the body from angles of interest as he noted them. "Well,
just like you saw."

Herrera nodded. The girl had been nude when she'd apparently felt
the urge to take a late night swim. He looked up at the high
arches of the Memorial Bridge, further along the river.

"So, what's the story?" He thought he already knew. But he asked
anyway as he flipped open the wallet and flicked through a
plethora of credit cards to find the I.D.

"Kinda weird. Ginny Bolt. Twenty-six. College grad. Lives with
her parents in Armstrong Park."

Herrera raised a brow. "High rent." He looked at the solemn face
of the girl in the photo. There was little resemblance to the
girl he'd viewed a moment earlier. But then there rarely was when
they'd been in the water a while. Even as short a time as Ginny
Bolt had been. He grunted. "They been informed?"

"Got two uniforms on their way."

Herrera nodded. "Good. I'll want to talk to them later." Glancing
up from the wallet he caught sight of a familiar figure ambling
for him. He returned his attention briefly to the pilot. "Okay.
Thanks." He tapped him on the arm in dismissal with a nod, before
he jumped from the cruiser's edge to the bank and went to meet
the approaching figure halfway.

"Hey, Inglewood. What you doing here? This is kinda outta the
24th's patch, isn't it?"

"Hey, Dutch." Inglewood clasped his colleague's hand briefly and
then glanced beyond him to the cruiser. "Actually, I was in the
neighborhood when I heard the call come in. Thought I'd just take
a look, see what was going down, since I was passing." He cast a
glance at the stretcher with its cargo swathed in its black body
bag, as two of the coroner's staff wheeled it past them and
loaded it into the plain, black van parked beyond the police
tape.

"Look at this," Herrera said, wonderingly, tipping the wallet so
he could see it. "Kid had gold cards. Go figure."

"Rich *and* pretty," Inglewood noted, glancing at the photo on
the wallet's opposite side. He raised a brow. "Looks like it's
open season on pretty brunettes."

"Huh?" Herrera looked up at him with a frown.

"Got one of my own. That's why I'm down here. Just been informing
Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Harrow that their one and only daughter,
Tracy, checked out on them last night."

"Homicide?" Herrera asked, curiously.

"Uh-uh." He looked across his friend's shoulder at the bridge
looming black in the distance. "I hear your girl decided to go
midnight skinny-dipping."

"Yeah."

Inglewood shrugged. "Well, maybe mine wasn't so much of an
exhibitionist. She kept it simple. Tried to deep roast her skull
on medium high at her apartment building. One of her roommates
found her when she got home with her date. I guess that killed
that romance, stone cold," he added blackly. "Nothing like coming
home to find your room-mate deep fried to put the kibosh on your
love life."

"Suicide? Really?"

"Yeah, and they ain't the only ones. The 21st picked up another
three yesterday and this morning. And the 8th got one last
night." Inglewood shrugged as Herrera stared at him. "What can I
say? Maybe we just hit the silly season early. Go figure."

***

"How long did you say Estelle'd been living here?" Clark glanced
around him at the tidy little room, with its sparse, mismatched
collection of furniture and meager scattering of personal
effects. Although neat, in its Spartan way, there was a faint
odor of sickness in the room, just barely noticed beneath the
stale air and fainter tang of Lysol.

"Almost ten years. She moved in to nurse her mother when she took
ill. Not a lot to show for all that time," Lois judged, sadly,
echoing his own thoughts. She picked out a book from the case in
front of her - a glossy backed bodice- ripper of the sort you'd
find in any train station or airport living room - and flicked
aimlessly through the pages for a moment, before replacing it.
She glanced over at Clark as he rooted just as worthlessly
through a pile of unopened mail on the low table beside an
overstuffed sofa. "Find anything?"

He shook his head. "Circulars, mostly; a couple of bills."

Lois frowned. "What'll happen to her things?"

Clark shrugged. "I guess maybe Welfare..."

"Who are you? What are you doing in here?"

Lois glanced up to where the owner of that new voice was standing
in the apartment's open doorway, keys dangling uselessly from his
hand and a suspicious look on his thin, pallid face. One arm was
wrapped around the grocery bag he was cradling against his
chest.

"We're reporters. From the Daily Planet?" Clark gave him a
reassuring smile. "The landlord let us in. We're investigating
the death of Estelle - "

"There's nothing for you to find in here. She was a good woman.
She did her best. She nursed her mother, did you know that?" He
stopped, backing up against the door as though he'd said too
much. "I think you'd best leave."

"Mr. - ?" Clark paused, holding out the invitation. When it
wasn't accepted he went on, "Look, we're really not here to hurt
Estelle in any way. We just want to find out why she died."

The stranger glanced between them for a moment. "The Planet..."
he repeated, thoughtfully, as though trying to come to some
decision in his head, then he sighed. "Why?" The thin face
wavered for a moment, on the verge of something undefined. Then
its owner sagged against the doorframe. "I think," he said
softly, "she died because of me."

Lois blinked. "You?" she looked him over, dubiously.

A long, wavering sigh came from the man slumped in the doorway.
"I - please, if you don't mind...I have to sit down." He made his
way shakily to the sofa under the window, dropping the bag at his
feet.

"Sir? Are you all right?" Clark said, faintly alarmed. He glanced
around him and then made his way to the little kitchen nook off
the living room's far end. "Here," he said, returning with a
glass and offering it. "Drink this. It's just water," he added as
the glass received a wary look.

"Thank you." Their guest drank sparingly and, after a moment,
leaned his head back against the sofa's backrest with a low
breath. "I'm sorry, I really must apologize. It's just that it's
all been such a shock and - "

"Did you know Estelle Pinchenski?" Lois asked, taking a seat on
the chair opposite and leaning slightly forward to view him.

He snorted. "Not as well as I'd imagined I did, it seems. And not
as well as Estelle apparently hoped for either."

Lois exchanged a glance with Clark, who raised a brow.

"I'm sorry," their guest said again. He leaned forward suddenly,
extending a hand. "This must be very confusing for you. I'm
Martin Gipe. Reverend Martin Gipe." There was a slight emphasis
on the honorific.

"You were a friend of Estelle's?"

"No, not really. Well, yes, I guess." He gave them a helpless
look. "I'd only known Estelle for a very short time, you
understand. I wouldn't have said we were friends. She was a
colleague, a volunteer collector for the Foundation. But I
suppose, in many ways, I was the closest thing she had to a
friend. She was lonely." He trailed into silence, looking
thoughtful.

"The Foundation. That's the Celestial Foundation for
International Peace and Spiritual Enlightenment?"

Gipe nodded with a smile. "Yes. It's a wonderful project. I'm the
local coordinator." He looked at her, curiously. "Are you a
member of the Church?"

"No. No, I wrote an article on it."

"The Planet!" Gipe blurted. "You're Lois Lane!"

She nodded. Gipe glanced enquiringly across his shoulder and
Clark held out a hand. "Clark Kent. Miss Lane's partner."

"Ah." Gipe shook it firmly and then turned back to Lois, suddenly
animated. "Well, why didn't you say? That was a marvelous piece
you did on the Church, Miss Lane. Marvelous!"

"Well, thank you." She shrugged off the praise as Clark grinned
at her suddenly. Clearly, in Martin Gipe's eyes, she'd just been
elevated to near- sainthood.

Gipe confirmed it as he launched into more, ecstatic praise.
"Wonderful! You have no idea how very few of your colleagues take
a sensible view of the Church, Miss Lane. Why most of them are
quite appallingly blinkered in that respect and as for the Star,"
his mouth pulled down in a disapproving moue, "well, the least
said about *that* the better. Do you know they had the
unmitigated gall to suggest that Dale -- "

"Uh, yes. Mr. Gipe? Sorry, Reverend Gipe -- "

"Oh, Martin, please."

Lois smiled, though barely. "Martin. You were telling us about
Estelle?"

"Oh. Oh, yes." Gipe's enthusiasm deflated in an instant. "Yes,"
he said again, reluctantly.

"You said she was a volunteer..."

"Yes. I called in about...oh, now let's see. Almost three months
ago now. I try to collect for the Church at least once a month.
Door to door, you know? Estelle asked me in for coffee, she
seemed very interested..." he paused and then, continued hastily,
"Yes. Yes, most interested. I left a few flyers for her to look
at and she called me the following day, asking what she could do
to help. She did very well. Until -- " he came to an abrupt halt
and gave her a concerned look. "This is off the record, Miss
Lane. I mean - "

"Absolutely," Clark said quickly.

Gipe looked up at him. "Yes," he said, doubtfully. He looked back
at Lois and, seeming to come to a decision all at once, "As I
said, she was lonely. Anyone could see that. She'd spent most of
her life cooped up here in this apartment, nursing her mother.
When she died...well, I guess the rest of the world had just
about passed Estelle by, by that point. She told me once she'd
taken a trip to Tunisia about seven months back. Just checked out
most of the money her mother had left her and blew it all. Took
the first flight out; picked her destination pinning a map. Her
Big Adventure. That was the way she said it - you could almost
see the capitals hanging in air."

He sighed. "Sad thing is, I don't think she enjoyed it. Not one
little bit. I think travelling scared her. All those places,
people she didn't know, strange food, too hot weather. I think
she was glad to get back here, to where she felt safe. You know,
she spent half her life wishing she was free of this place and
then, when she got the chance to escape, she couldn't wait to
come back and hide here. I guess by then it had gotten its hold
on her, so she just couldn't shake it free. Certainly, she
wouldn't be persuaded to sign up for any of our voluntary work
programs. We do a lot of missionary work overseas; we're always
on the lookout for volunteers. But Estelle wasn't interested. I
think, until that night I came looking for donations, she hadn't
much stepped out of this room for months, other than to take up
her job and get food and suchlike. Yes," he added, face turning
thoughtful. "I think she must have been very lonely."

Lois' face flooded with sudden understanding. "And you were the
first person to come along in a long time and give her just a
little...friendship?"

Gipe flushed. "No! It was never like that." He sighed. "At least
not for me. Estelle...I swear to you, Miss Lane, I had no idea
she felt that way. If I had..." He shook his head. "Oh, I suppose
I was a blind fool, really. She'd asked me to have dinner with
her, here at the apartment, a couple of times. I always declined.
I'm a very busy man, you understand? And, besides..." His flush
deepened.

"You didn't really like her, much," Clark finished for him,
astutely.

Gipe gave him a swift, unhappy glance. "Not much of a Christian
attitude, is it?" he confessed. "I don't know. There was just
something about Estelle. Something...sometimes, she didn't seem
quite...balanced. She had a quite extra-ordinary temper." His
mouth twisted. "I found that out last night."

"Last night? You were there? When she died?"

"No. She'd asked me to dinner again. I was going to refuse, just
like the other times, but...well, she looked so...pathetic
really. And I thought if I gave in, perhaps she'd be satisfied,
give up asking."

"But she wasn't."

"Hardly. Oh, at first it was fine. A little boring, perhaps. We
spoke about the Church for a while. And then she..." Gipe's lips
tightened into a prim line. "Well, I wasn't interested in *that*
sort of relationship with her. I told her so."

"And she took it badly."

"She threw one of those planters at me!" Gipe said, pointing to a
small collection of pots on the side table. "She was shrieking
and hollering - it was just...quite dreadful." He looked
distraught for a moment, remembering. A man, Clark saw, who found
the slightest deviation from the quiet, ordered life he led as
shockingly distasteful. Any hint of a public scene would have
appalled him. "I left. And, then, this morning, I heard about
what she'd done."

Lois said, startled, "And you got to thinking she'd killed
herself because you rejected her?"

"Well, what else?" Gipe looked surprised. And, for the barest
instant, something flickered in his face that gave Lois as clear
an insight into the man as anything that he'd said. For a moment,
he'd shown pleasure in the thought. She understood that, for
Martin Gipe, the idea that he might exist in the mind's eye of
lonely women as a romantic hero, to be languished over like some
Victorian lothario with maidenly sighs and tragic self
destruction, was a fantasy dear to his heart. Looking over the
thin, stick-insect frame, scrubby hair and weak, hazel eyes, Lois
shook her head, wondering, as she often did in the course of her
work, at the depths of self delusion the human soul could stoop
to.

"Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about. The police
don't appear to think you were a factor in last night's events,"
she consoled him smartly, and, ignoring the faint flash of
disappointment that crossed his face as she rose to her feet,
"Thanks for telling us, though. We appreciate your help."

Following her rapid stride for the door, Clark turned back
suddenly as a thought occurred. "Can I ask - you knew she was
dead. What did you come here for?"

"Oh," Gipe reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out a
container of spray detergent and a sheaf of heavy-duty polythene
sacks. "I came to pack up Estelle's things, maybe clean up a
little. It was what she wanted," he added, half defensively. "She
often said, she'd leave everything she had to the Church, if she
could. And she had no one else."

"Right."

"Not that she had much to give." Gipe looked around the spartan
room, somewhat sadly. "Poor Estelle."

Clark nodded, anxious to leave now as he continued for the door.

"We don't know that she didn't, you know," he commented, giving
his partner a curious glance as he caught up with her on her way
down the stairs. "Estelle sounds pretty...intense. She might have
done it because of that fight. You read those witness statements.
The bartender said she was a whole lot mad at someone last night.
It could have been him."

"Yeah." Lois frowned irritably. "Well, that may well be. I just
couldn't let Don Juan back there get to being happy about it."
She hitched her purse around and began to fish in its depths as
she strode for the edge of the sidewalk.

"Oh," Clark said. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and shoved
his hands in his pockets, watching her. "Where you going?" he
asked.

Lois came to an abrupt halt, and then turned back to face him
with an exasperated mutter. Looking at the keys in her hand, he
knew she'd automatically been heading for a non-existent Jeep. He
grinned at her.

"Subway?" he invited.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Well, it's a nice enough day, I guess." He glanced upwards
judiciously into the cloudless sky overhead. "And the Planet's
only halfway across town." He brought the glance down to cover
the street, which was empty in both directions. "Difficult to get
a cab in this district. So, I guess we could always - " He
paused, smile fading.

Lois knew that look all too well. "What?"

"Electricity sub-station," he told her absently, still listening
to something only he could hear. "Someone's in trouble." His eyes
sharpened on her abruptly. "I gotta go."

"Sure. I'll meet you back at the Planet." She nodded and he
leaned forward to kiss her quickly against one cheek before he
sprinted off, already tugging at his tie.

Lois stood for a moment, watching after him, and then glanced
down at the redundant keys she was still carrying. She bounced
them distastefully on her palm. "Subway it is," she said.

She didn't sound happy about it.

***

Superman saw what the emergency was as soon as the sub power
station came into view.

At first, he assumed that the slight figure clinging to the
electricity pylon, several feet in the air above a crowd of
onlookers and quite clearly in trouble, was part of a maintenance
crew. But his perception changed as he flew closer.

He barely heard the faint, excited murmur that rose from the
crowd as they caught sight of him homing in on the young woman.
He stopped, floating gently just yards away from her, careful not
to startle her. Her face was pressed to the metal of the pylon,
hidden from him. His enhanced hearing picked out her soft murmur
though. It sounded like some kind of prayer, a litany of terror,
mumbled repeatedly and reduced by fear to being almost
nonsensical.

"Miss?" he said carefully.

She shook her head, moaning softly, pressing herself tighter to
the metal strut.

"It's okay. I'm going to get you down now. Just stay calm. I - "

She shrieked as he reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulder
and her head whipped up, her eyes reflecting stark terror back at
him. Madly, recklessly, she began a frantic, scrambling climb
further up the pylon, trying to get away >from him.

A chorus of shrill screams floated up from the crowd as her
grasping fingers closed on the power line overhead. Superman,
already seeing the danger, reached it first. The surge of manmade
lightening coursed through his body harmlessly, arcing around him
and the woman in a violent fireburst of sparks and light. Shaking
with fear, the woman screamed again and, losing grip, plummeted
off the pylon.

Superman caught her out of air before she'd fallen more than a
few yards. The angle was awkward and the jolt was enough to spin
him around in mid-air before he could correct himself. He
maintained his grip though. The woman lay limply in his arms, her
head lolling against his shoulder. Her long, dark brown hair
fluttered in the slipstream as he landed on the ground with
barely a jolt.

"She's okay. She just fainted, I think," he told the EMT who
approached him at a run, dragging a mobile stretcher behind him.
Superman set the woman down gently and the EMT drew a foil
blanket over her unconscious form before he wheeled the gurney
back to the ambulance at rapid speed.

"Superman! Superman, did she say anything? Did she tell you why
she did it?"

He found himself facing a barrage of mikes and questions as the
small knot of media crew among the onlookers pressed forward
around him.

"No. No, she said nothing," he told them. "Now, if you'll excuse
me, gentlemen...ladies..." He pushed his way through them,
politely, leaving them behind as he approached the ambulance.
Though frustrated in their quest for a juicy quote, none of the
hacks followed. They knew well enough that when Superman said 'no
comment' he meant it.

"Excuse me? Sir?" Superman waylaid one of the EMTs as he emerged
from the back of the ambulance. "Which hospital will you be
taking her to?"

The EMT looked across his shoulder. "Bill?"

"County General's nearest for this catchment area," his colleague
obliged him. "It's only ten minutes or so away, on Pilmington and
Third. Is there a problem, Superman?" he added with a frown.

"No. No, that's fine. Thank you."

Satisfied that Clark Kent would be able to trace the woman later,
he lifted himself skywards.

He was certain that Clark wouldn't be the only one wanting to ask
her a few questions when she woke up, either.

***

Most of his colleagues were gathered around the bank of TV
screens that kept them in touch with their rivals around the
world, when Clark came out of the elevator and down the ramp into
the bullpen.

Firming up the knot in his tie with one hand, he dumped the brown
bags he was carrying on Lois' desk and then slipped casually
through the back ranks to the front of the crowd and up beside
his partner.

"What's going on?"

She barely gave him a glance.

On the screen before him, the local LNN news report was in
mid-roll.

" - have already been dubbing the phenomenon, 'Lemming Spring',"
a primly coiffured Katrine Wallace told them, almost gleefully.
She had an air about her, Clark noted, of delivering the 'final
word' - something kooky or lightweight to round off the more
serious news and make the viewers forget the depressing catalogue
of wars, homicides, muggings and gangland crime that had gone
before. But then, he also noted, with a thin twist of his lips,
Katrine habitually adopted *that* particular tone no matter what
the news was, or how serious its content. Which was one of the
reasons why she'd never gotten beyond local daytime news
reporting.

"...from our minicam on the scene. The unnamed woman was later
taken to County General for treatment..."

He brought his attention back to the report and was surprised to
find himself watching Superman's rescue at the sub-station.

"That was quick," he murmured.

"...Metropolis Light & Power refused to comment on their security
procedures or to speculate on the woman's reasons for climbing
the pylon, but did issue a statement denying any liability for
her actions. Our reporter, however, spoke to one MLP employee who
claimed that the woman was part of a local environmental action
group intent on protesting over power utility connections with
the new, planned nuclear processing facility at Rockmount
Promontory. However, this station has been unable to confirm that
the woman or the other fatalities were members of the same
alleged action group or that they were the participants in an
alleged bizarre suicide pact. Meanwhile, power to the entire
downtown area was interrupted for over an hour while Superman
repaired the damaged transformer..."

"Huh?" Perry White turned a glance on him, attention attracted by
his murmur, and then scowled. "Kent! Where the hell were you when
this was going down?"

"Huh, Chief?"

"I gave you advance word on this suicide business yesterday and
you still couldn't join up the dots before every dime a minute
news station in the city! Judas H. Priest, what kinda reporters I
got working for me these days!" White threw up his hands in
disgust and headed for his office.

"But, Chief - !"

Clark winced as the door slammed behind Perry in a rattle of
glass and wildly waving blinds.

The crowd around the TV screens thinned out almost by magic, keen
to put distance between themselves and the object of Perry's
annoyance, just in case any of it rubbed off on them. On screen,
Katrine was putting the finishing touches to her report. Local
police sources were refusing to comment on the fact that over
half a dozen pretty, young brunettes had taken their own lives in
the past few days.

"They scooped us!" Lois was doing a slow burn as she stalked back
to her desk. She kicked out viciously at a wastepaper basket on
the way and Clark hurried after her.

"No, they didn't. Well," he amended with a glance back at the
screen, "not entirely. They've figured out there's something
going on. But they don't know what."

"*We* don't know what!" Lois said, in what was barely far removed
from a snarl.

"Well, no. But we're closer to the solution than they are."

She gave him a steady look. "How do you figure that one out? We
didn't even know that the Metropolis PD's had another six cases
like Karen and Estelle since yesterday."

"We're still ahead of the pack on points," he insisted. "I'm
telling you, Lois, this isn't about some lunatic fringe group of
protesters trying to attract attention to the cause." He lowered
his voice. "That woman Superman rescued from that pylon was
terrified. So terrified, she didn't even seem to know where she
was or what she was doing any more."

Lois dropped into her chair, throwing up frustrated hands.
"What's going on in this town? Suddenly it's like we're living in
L.A.!"

Clark gave her a commiserating look, understanding her
exasperation. "Maybe this interview with Karvin this afternoon
will give us something more to work on. That is, if you still
think he's in the picture?"

"Let's just say, he hasn't taken himself out of the picture. So
far, at least."

He nodded. "Okay. And, meantime," he reached out for her phone,
decisively, "maybe we can get Herrera to talk to us on this one."
He dialed in the number of the 6th floor operator at the 26th,
bypassing the main switchboard.

"Good luck," Lois said, morosely. She knew, just as he did, what
Katrine Wallace meant by no one being available from the police
department to answer reporters' questions on the case. The
switchboard down at the 26th had probably been jammed solid for
the past hour. Either that or Herrera had gone into hiding.

Clark had an edge on Katrine and her colleagues, however. He used
his name.

Over the years, the Daily Planet's ace reporting team of Lane &
Kent had amassed something of a reputation, not just in
Metropolis, for straight talking, straight dealing and fair,
unbiased reporting, which hadn't gone un- noted or unappreciated
by city officials. As a result, they had friends and sources in
places that most other reporters would have given their eye-teeth
for: In local and federal government offices, police departments,
business and finance houses, security agencies...right up to the
Presidential office itself. People who were agreeable to letting
them call in a favor now and then. People who often gave them
information before they were asked to, just on the off-chance
they might find it useful, people who were willing to help. The
bottom line was that they weren't only trusted - by people who
had no reason to trust the press at all - they were respected
too. And that respect often got them a foot in the door that had
just been slammed in the faces of their colleagues.

This time, it got him past the bland, 'no comment' of the
operator and a connection to Herrera's desk.

Not that it did him any good.

"In a meeting," he told Lois as he left a message with the
operator, thanked her for her help, and hung up.

"Great. Maybe he'll get back to us in time to tell us what he'd
like for Christmas this year," she said, sardonically.

"Yeah. So," he lightened his tone. "You want the good news?"

"Is there any?"

He reached to pick up one of the brown bags he'd put on her desk
when he'd come in and handed it over with a smile. "I got you
lunch. At that little deli you like on - " he stopped as she gave
him an unreadable look and then rummaged in her purse to produce
a couple of bags of her own.

"Great minds think alike." She sighed as she handed one over.
"Chicken salad and fries from the Happy Eater, downstairs."

"Oh," he said, taking her offering, ruefully.

Lois shook her head. "We have *got* to get coordinated," she told
him, firmly, before she opened the James Street Deli bag to
examine its contents curiously.

"Roast beef and sweet pickle on rye," he informed her, helpfully.
Her current fad.

"No coleslaw?" she complained, looking up on him.

"Lane! Kent! What you two still hanging around here for?" Perry's
sudden bellow from the other side of the room made her jump.
"Only suicide statistic you're gonna find in this office is when
they find your editor hanging from the light fixture, clutching
the latest batch of circulation figures! Now, get!"

"On our way, Chief!" said Clark, hastily.

"Right on it, Chief!" Lois yelled in the same moment, dumping the
bag on her desk and grabbing for her purse instead. "So much for
lunch," she murmured at Clark as she headed for the stairs.

Less inclined to abandon good food, especially when it smelled as
mouth- watering as that chicken sandwich, Clark took a moment
out, and risked his editor's wrath, to pick up the abandoned bags
and detour to the refrigerator with them, before he caught up
with Lois. They hustled for the elevator, Perry's low scowl
following them every step of the way.

"Well, you never know," Clark grinned at her as he reached past
her to punch the call button, "maybe Karvin'll do something
spectacular with a couple of loaves and some fishes, if we ask
real nice."

***

Clark regretted the flippancy of the remark as soon as he met
Dale Karvin. The man was so obviously and relentlessly sincere,
in his devotion at least, that it seemed just a little mean to
have been mocking him.

"Miss Lane? A pleasure to meet you." Karvin's grip was firm and
cool on hers, before his eyes flickered curiously across her
shoulder.

"My partner, Clark Kent," Lois did the introductions and Karvin
nodded.

"Ah, yes. And your husband too, I understand?"

Lois exchanged a glance with Clark. "Yes."

"The Daily Planet isn't the only organization with researchers,
*Miss* Lane." Karvin sounded amused. "Please, take a seat, both
of you. Would either of you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea?
Juice?"

"No, thank you."

Clark followed Lois' declination with a shake of his head.

"This is my aide, Robert Addley," Karvin indicated the slim,
neatly dressed man standing slightly to one side. Addley inclined
his head marginally at them.

"We've met," said Lois. "Haven't we?" The addition was slightly
hesitant as though she'd changed her mind between one moment and
the next.

"Have we?" Addley shook his head. "Not that I recall." He smiled
thinly at her. "And I'm sure I would."

To Clark's surprise, Lois flushed slightly.

Karvin glanced between them and then covered the small, awkward
moment of silence that followed with a bright, "And this is
Steven Thurst. Steve's my publicity hound." He gave Thurst an
affectionate smile before returning his attention to them.
"You've already spoken to him on the phone."

"Yes." Lois recovered poise. She returned her attention to the
preacher. "I wanted to thank you. For your interest in Merle and
Denny Turano. I don't know if you'll be able to help them, but I
do know they'll be grateful for anything you can do."

Karvin gave her a puzzled look and then turned it on Addley and
Thurst.

"Uh, Dale's just grateful your article brought the boy's dilemma
to his attention," Thurst interjected quickly. "He's looking
forward to meeting both of them in the next few days."

Karvin's puzzlement cleared. "Yes! Yes, indeed. Whatever I can
do."

Lois turned a cynical look on Clark, briefly, as the preacher
took a seat in the sumptuous leather sofa directly opposite
theirs. He studied them, the faint smile still hovering at his
lips. But his eyes were cool and measuring, wary.

"I have to say that your invitation was a little unexpected,"
Lois began smoothly, as she set out her tape recorder on the low
table between them. Steven Thurst was holding a recorder of his
own, ready to record his own copy of the conversation. That
paranoia didn't surprise her any.

"Really? May I ask why?"

"Well, I was under the impression that you only granted
interviews to an approved list of reporters. And neither of us
seemed to be on it."

"That sounds a little...insular of me, Miss Lane. Yes, I do limit
the interview circuit. But it's purely for considerations of
time. I'm quite willing to talk to anyone about God. Anyone who
wants to listen, that is."

Lois quirked a brow slightly at the low note of censure in that.

"I'd have thought you'd have been more anxious to talk to those
who won't," Clark suggested quietly.

Karvin gave him a glance, almost as though he'd forgotten he was
there. "I beg your pardon?"

"Well, isn't that your mission?" Lois continued the thought. "To
bring the word of God to the unenlightened? The uninitiated?
Talking just to the believers seems to be a done deal."

Karvin was silent a moment, then he chuckled quietly. "You know,
I rather like you, Miss Lane. Surprising really, because I didn't
think I would." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, with an air
of rolling up his sleeves for battle. "You're right, of course.
Preaching to the converted is deathly boring. It brings in the
dollars, though." He paused, allowing them time to react to the
cynicism and then added, eyes narrowing, "Is that what you want
to hear?"

"What we want to hear, Mr. Karvin, is the truth. Not
publicity-speak. We can get that at your press office."

"The truth. Ah. The truth about what?" Karvin mocked her again.
"God?"

Lois was holding down her temper now with an effort. And it
showed. "As you see the truth about God, yes, if that's what
you'd like to tell me. We want to know about you. The Church we
can find out about from anywhere."

"I published an excellent biography just last year. If I say so
myself. You can purchase it at any of our rallies for $39.95. Or
from our mail order address. Plus $1.70 mailing charge, of
course."

"Actually, I picked it up from the local library. No cost." Lois
took back the tape recorder, snapping it off and leaning forward
to face him. She was getting tired of this verbal fencing.
Despite her determination to keep the tone congenial, the man
seemed bound and set to rile her up. He'd just about succeeded
too.

"You invited me here, Mr. Karvin. Now, if you've changed your
mind about this interview that's fine, but we're very busy, so if
you don't want to talk to us on a sensible level, that's just
fine with me too. If you'll excuse us...?"

She got to her feet. Taken slightly by surprise by her move,
Clark was slow to follow suit. Karvin's bald attempts to rile
them had irritated him too, but Lois was usually more
professional than to terminate an interview just because the
subject wasn't co-operating. Not to mention just plain bulldog
persistent. Usually, she saw such obstruction as a challenge to
her abilities, rolled her sleeves up to her elbows and pitched in
to fight dirty. Quitting ahead of the game just wasn't her style.
He rose hurriedly, but Robert Addley stilled both of them, before
he could properly make his feet.

"No! No, please." His hand came down lightly on Karvin's
shoulder. "You're right, Miss Lane. You were invited here. And
Dale is only too happy to answer any questions you'd like to ask.
Isn't that right, Dale?"

Clark might have been mistaken, but he was sure that Addley's
hand tightened, just a touch, on the shoulder beneath it.
Certainly, Karvin's hesitation was only too plain. Then, the
preacher seemed to take stock.

"Yes. Yes, please, sit. Both of you. You're right, Bob. I'm
sorry," he offered the apology to them. "Sometimes, it's hard to
drop my guard. Bob tells me that you have an unparalleled
reputation for honesty, Miss Lane." He glanced up at the
dark-suited figure hovering by his shoulder. "And you too, Mr.
Kent. He tells me that if I'm straightforward with you, then
you'll play fair with me. I have to say that integrity's not
something I've often met when dealing with others of your
profession. In fact, just this morning, I had something of an
unpleasant run-in with a photographer from the Metropolis Star."
He paused. "But...I *am* willing to give it a try, I assure
you."

"We're not interested in publishing smear campaigns, Mr. Karvin,"
Clark said. There was an undertone of sympathy in his voice.

Karvin nodded. "Then," he looked at Lois and drew in a low
breath, "shall we begin again?"

She gave him a long, steady look, less inclined than her partner
was, it seemed, to give the preacher the benefit of the doubt.
"All right," she agreed at last, reseating herself and placing
the reactivated tape recorder back carefully to the table. "Why
don't you tell us what you hope to achieve with this tour?"

Karvin was true to his word. The rest of the interview progressed
congenially enough, even when they dropped the mediocre
questioning about Karvin's plans and got down to what really
interested them; Karvin's connection to the dead girls.

The preacher's manner was unperturbed as he admitted to having
met Karen at the Gerrord-Andrews offices. A pleasant enough girl,
he maintained, such a tragic loss to the Church. He claimed not
to recall Estelle Pinchenski at all.

It was only when Lois moved on from there to ask about Richard
that Karvin seemed to grow uneasy, and then Robert Addley
smoothly interceded. Aping idle curiosity, he enquired as to
where these questions were leading, since they appeared to have
no relevance to the subject matter and were not, in any case,
matters which the preacher could hold an opinion on, having no
connection to them.

For a moment, it seemed as though Lois might dispute the point,
then she gave it up. But, fielding Addley's quick glance, Thurst
smoothly interrupted Karvin's response to Clark's following
question and thereafter dominated the interview. He had a
publicity agent's natural knack of sliding sideways through a
question he didn't want to answer, responding to it without ever
getting to the core of what had actually been asked, though
deftly enough that he couldn't be challenged on evading it
either. A familiar sleight of hand that rapidly began to
irritate.

Clark caught Lois' eye and then eased himself back against the
sofa, opting out completely of what was proving to be a
monumental waste of their time. It would write up to a fair and
interesting portrait of an evangelist, he thought dryly, but it
wouldn't get them one step further to solving the deaths of Karen
and Estelle. His casual withdrawal was more than an indication of
his boredom, though. Taking the cue, Lois took over the session
completely, even going so far as to up the ante just a little
with a more provocative line of questioning. While she did the
distracting, Clark was free to use every enhanced sense he could
muster to furtively study their surroundings and the people in
the room - a gambit that had often worked for them in the past.

This time, however, he found nothing out of the ordinary. There
were no physiological signs in any of the men in the room that
would indicate that they were anything other than at ease,
nothing to indicate that they were being evasive or less than
truthful. Their pulse rates were steady and low, their
respiration even. In fact, he discovered to his surprise, there
was only one person in the room who was showing an unusually high
level of stress. Attuned as he was to his surroundings, much more
than he normally would have been, Clark was able to pick up on
his wife's growing unease as though it had been marked out for
him by a beacon.

Her pulse rate was up, markedly so, her temperature too.

Clark frowned. Strange as it might seem, Lois was pretty much
rattled about something.

It didn't take him long to figure out the cause.

Karvin's aide hadn't taken his eyes from her since the interview
had begun.

Clark was pretty much easy in the main with his wife attracting
casual attention from other men. Just so long as they didn't push
it any. She was, after all, a beautiful, confident woman. She was
bound to catch the eye. But there were some men who made
themselves hard to ignore or stay easy with and the attention
with which Addley was currently favoring Lois was much more than
a normal, natural male response to viewing a pretty woman. There
was something darker than appreciation in that unnerving,
unblinking stare - something predatory, proprietary - and
something more than Clark was prepared to let lie, unchallenged.

He settled his own eyes on the man, darkly, but Addley was paying
him about as much attention as a gnat crawling on his sleeve.
Clark glanced back at Lois, but, to the casual eye, she was
seemingly unaware of anyone but Karvin, every ounce of her
attention fixed on the preacher as she continued to question him
coolly. She took notes with professional deftness, but it was the
very rigidity of her attention on the preacher that enhanced
Clark's initial impressions of her mood. She was more than
nervous. She was...frightened, he thought, confused. He didn't
need his heightened perceptions to tell him that.

He was aware that she was sitting very close against him and,
almost without intent, had shifted closer still during the course
of the interview. Close enough that he could feel the steady
tightening in the long muscle of her thigh as it pressed lightly
against his own, that he could see the tremor in her fingers as
she wrote on the pad, could hear the hard beat of her heart
drumming taut against her ribs. She ducked her head as Karvin
answered her question on his healing gifts at length, her fingers
tucking her hair behind one ear, a nervous gesture he recognized
of old.

It was all more than enough as far as Clark was concerned. Lois
was upset by Addley's unwelcome attention and he had no intention
of allowing him to spook her any further.

He knew he trod a fine line with regard to looking out for his
wife - what Lois was apt to term his 'over-protectiveness'. He
also knew that she was more than capable of slamming to the mat
any man who stepped over the line - and him too, if he got in her
way. Well...figuratively, at least. Which, with Lois, was usually
worse than physically anyway. He didn't. Well, not often. But,
just sometimes, some things were simply beyond toleration.

Straightening abruptly to interrupt Karvin, interjecting himself
into the conversation all at once, he smoothly turned it to a
conclusion, brought it to a close, and then rose to his feet, one
firm hand at Lois' elbow drawing her with him. She looked
puzzled, and just a little annoyed, as he made their good-byes
cordially and then ushered her easily from Karvin's suite. The
entire operation had taken no more than fifty seconds, tops.

"What are you doing?" she hissed at him as he kept that hand on
her arm to steer her for the elevator.

"Getting you out of there, before I lose my temper," he told her
grimly, as he pushed the call button.

"What?"

"Lois, I couldn't just sit there letting that guy get to you like
that."

"What guy?"

"Lo-is -- "

Lois looked away, flushing slightly. But her jawline tightened
stubbornly all the same. She folded her arms and fixed hot eyes
on the elevator's indicator lights. "I don't know what you're
talking about."

"Okay, fine. Maybe it was time to get out of there anyway. Karvin
wasn't giving us anything." He stepped into the empty elevator as
it arrived and shook his head. "And you complain about us," he
muttered under his breath as he punched the lobby button.

"What?"

He lifted an exasperated hand. "Us. Me. Men. You're always
complaining - we don't show our inner feelings, we're always
trying to do the 'manly' thing, play the macho card, keep
everything inside..."

"Your point being?"

"My point being that it's all very well being the tough,
streetwise reporter, Lois, but you're just as bad at not
admitting to it when something upsets you, when some creep like
Addley unnerves you like that."

"Clark, creeps like Addley are two to a dime in this town. I've
met them more times than I've had pastrami for lunch. Most of
them -- *that's* where I've seen him before!" She changed tack
abruptly, clicking satisfied fingers in the air as the memory hit
her, all at once.

"What?"

"Addley! I knew he was familiar. Yesterday, when you didn't turn
up at the cafe. I was heading back to the Planet and I bumped
into him. Actually," she went on, musingly, "it was more a case
of him bumping into me. He knocked me over. But, anyway..." Her
thoughtful expression vanished. "*Anyway*," she changed direction
firmly, returning to her complaint of a moment before, now that
the small puzzle which had been tugging at her memory had been
solved, "I don't need your help in dealing with -- "

"I'm not saying you need my help," he denied. "I know you don't.
I'm just saying it wouldn't hurt you, just once in a while, to
admit to being upset by that kind of thing, that's all. And don't
tell me you weren't upset," he added as she opened her mouth to
do just that.

"Well, I wasn't."

"Lois, you were upset." He gave her a quick glance. "You still
are. Not admitting it doesn't change that, you know."

"There's nothing to admit!"

"So...you're *not* upset?"

"No!"

"And, if you *were* upset, you'd admit it?"

"Yes!"

He snorted. "Yeah, right!"

She turned her head to view him levelly. "What's that supposed to
mean?"

"Lois, clams can't close up quicker than you can when you're
upset over something."

Her lips tightened. "That's ridiculous."

He opened his mouth.

"Can we just drop this subject now?" she interrupted smartly.
"And get back to discussing what's important?"

"Maybe, I happen to think some guy upsetting my wife *is*
important."

"Clark -- "

"Sure," he said, laconically. "Whatever you want."

Lois gave him an exasperated look. "Why is it," she demanded,
"that every man I know can make an agreement sound like he just
won the argument?"

He shrugged. "Just talented, I guess."

Her eyes flashed heat.

"Or, maybe, they learned it from you," he went on, before she
could work up to an answering retort. He gave her a slow smile,
the sort that turned her heart over. "I know I did."

She couldn't hold on to her annoyance in the face of that smile.
Her lips quirked and then, with the quicksilver shifting of mood
which often left him bewildered and not a little lost in her
wake, she melted, putting a hand to his sleeve and chuckling
softly. "Well, in *that* case, you learned real well," she told
him. Then, changing the subject briskly as the elevator doors
slid aside, "So...where to now?"

He glanced at his watch as she slipped an arm through his.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "there's a brunette with a death
wish down in County General who should be awake by now, and
visiting starts in ten minutes."

"Okay. So, let's go visit."

***

The brunette turned out to be called Mary-Ann Moakes.
Twenty-three, worked in a diner, getting married in three weeks.
If she could persuade her fiance she hadn't gone nuts, she
confided. She was ashamed of the fuss she'd caused, embarrassed
by the publicity, and couldn't come up with a reason for her
behavior any more than they could. Except that, for a while
there, she'd been so scared she couldn't think *what* she was
doing any more.

So, what - exactly - had she been scared of?

She hadn't known that either.

Lois wasn't impressed.

"She didn't mean to!" she muttered, slamming her way through the
swing doors and out of the ward. "How can you not mean to climb
halfway up a twenty foot pylon?"

Clark sidestepped smartly, narrowly avoiding being hit in the
face by the rebounding doors. The bulky security guard, who'd
been positioned at the other end of the corridor to prevent the
reporters who'd been milling around since Mary-Ann's admittance
from entering the ward, eyed him narrowly. Clark smiled casually
at him. The guard looked unmoved. Clark quickened his step and
caught up with Lois as she stalked for the exit.

"Well, that's what she says. I guess she hasn't got any reason to
lie."

Lois grumbled something unintelligible, which even his enhanced
hearing couldn't catch. Which, he figured, was probably just as
well. She took time out from her blackening mood to lift a hand
in passing to a young orderly who was standing at the duty
station.

"Thanks, Jeff!"

He nodded, dropping her a sly wink as he half lifted a hand in
response.

Clark glanced across his shoulder at him as they passed the desk
and then turned that speculative look on Lois. "Is he how you got
us in there?"

She nodded. "Jeff Levitt. He was in my year at high school." She
smiled.

"What?" Clark asked.

She inclined her head closer to confide, "He thinks I'm a little
kooky. I was prepared to have to offer him some hot tickets for
the Tigers' next game if he forgot to notice us going in, but he
was so sure I was playing some practical joke on someone, he
couldn't wait to be in on it. Said it was just like old times."

"Oh," Clark said.

"I don't know where he gets that idea from."

"Yeah. I wonder."

She gave him a sideways glance and then frowned as the thought of
their visit to Mary-Ann Moakes brought back her irritation. "I
don't know whether she's lying or not," she told him. "But I do
know that you can't just climb over a six foot high fence, work
your way to the top of a pylon and try to fry yourself on a high
voltage wire and then say you can't think why! I mean, what's she
trying to tell us here? 'It just seemed like the thing to do'?!"

Clark stopped with a jolt in mid-stride as the echo on that hit
him and turned back to look at her.

Lois was way ahead of him. She shook her head smartly, eyes
widening. "No. No, it couldn't be."

"Not Tempus, no," he agreed. "But he *was* able to make that
security guard jump from that window and he almost killed you by
persuading you it was a good idea to drive the Jeep over a cliff.
If *he* could do it...?"

She stared at him. Then shook her head again. "No," she said
slowly. "No, Clark, that's crazy."

"Is it?" he shot back.

"Yes! Tempus was using future technology that hasn't even been
invented yet! How could anyone else get hold of something like
that?"

"Maybe they didn't have to. Come on, Lois, think it on through -
we've seen ways to change a person's opinions, their judgement,
their perceptions, before. Arianna Carlin did it with subliminal
messages. Tempus used the subliminator. And there was that sound
generator Lenny Stokes used too. It made people go to sleep, but
we know it could just as easily have sent them rushing off to do
whatever he wanted, with just a change in frequency. And there
are all kinds of drugs out there that alter perception; heighten
the emotions. Let's face it, when you get right down to it,
making people do what you want them to just isn't that hard. Dr.
Mendenhall managed to use that machine of his to brainwash you
and who knows how many others into acting as his assassins. If
he'd told you to jump off the Memorial Bridge instead, wouldn't
you have done it? You didn't balk at trying to kill Perry when he
told you to."

"Maybe I would have though, if he'd ordered me to kill myself,"
Lois disagreed. "Tempus' subliminator was one thing, it was
powerful enough to overwhelm an entire city. Perhaps even an
entire world. But as for the rest...I don't think they could have
done it, Clark. Getting someone to kill for you, persuading them
to take up against someone they admire - like Superman - that's
all very well. But the instinct for self-survival is a strong
one. I doubt the likes of Lenny Stokes or Mendenhall could have
gotten around it."

"Under the influence of Tyceon, Jimmy jumped from your apartment
window without a second's thought," Clark reminded her, grimly.
"And Bob Fences didn't have any trouble persuading you to put
yourself right in harm's way whenever he wanted you to, just to
make sure Superman stayed out of his plans."

Lois was silent, unable to dispute that.

"Maybe Mazetti wasn't that far off the mark, after all," Clark
went on, thoughtfully. "Maybe Karen *was* loaded when she jumped
off that balcony. Maybe, we've just been looking for the wrong
drug."

"Adrenaline can't make you suicidal, Clark."

"True...but what about adrenaline in conjunction with TDR?"

"The traces of TDR were negligible. Adams said so. At that level
it couldn't make any difference to the autopsy results."

"Yeah. But -- " Inspiration lit his eyes all at once. He glanced
across his shoulder to the bank of pay phones over in the corner
and then came back briefly to lay a light hand against her
shoulder. "Give me a minute."

Lois watched him amble off across the room and then glanced at
the duty station. Her eyes turned thoughtful. She set off
purposefully.

By the time Clark returned to her side, Lois was perched on one
of the high stools behind the desk, sipping at a mugful of
coffee, and she and Jeff had gotten down to talking over old
times. She glanced up with a smile as Clark put a hand to her
shoulder.

"Jeff, this is my husband, Clark. Clark, Jeff Levitt."

"Well, hey! Great to meet you!" Jeff offered him an easy smile as
he extended a hand.

"You too." Clark accepted it in the same friendly manner. He
glanced down at his wife. "Lois tells me you were friends in high
school?"

Jeff grimaced. "Oh, wow, no." He grinned. "Lois ran with the wild
set. Too way out for me."

Clark looked interested. "*Wild*, huh?"

"Oh, sure! The things they got up to." Jeff leaned
conspiratorially across the desk. "You know there was this one
time they -- "

"Uh, we really should get going," Lois leapt to her feet,
practically dragging Clark with her as she clutched at his arm.
She smiled brightly at Jeff. "Great to see you again. But -- "
she laughed airily, " - got deadlines to keep. You know how it
is!"

"Yeah. Sure." Jeff's grin widened. "Got a few bedpans to go
deliver myself."

"Right!" She snapped her fingers at him, in agreement, as she
backed off further.

"Hey, Clark, give me a call?" Jeff raised his voice after her.
"Lois says you play ball. We can have a coupla beers, huh? Shoot
a few hoops?"

"Sure!" Clark nodded with a grin, half lifting a farewell hand.

"You dare!" Lois warned as she hustled him for the exit.

"Well, he seems a likeable enough guy," Clark told her. He
slipped his hands into his pockets, adopting a laconic manner as
he added casually, "I'm sure we'd find lots in common to talk
about."

"Well, that's where you're wrong. He's mixing me up with Leanne
Holmes. I was *never* part of that set. And I certainly never --
" she stopped, tone scandalized.

Clark gave her a sideways glance. "What?" he prodded, curiously.

"Never mind."

Her color seemed to have heightened a touch. Clark hid a smile.

"So, you going to tell me who you were calling?" she said
sharply, noting it, despite his best efforts.

"Well, I called Pete Adams first. And guess what?" He pushed open
the exit door and ushered her ahead of him. "He's completed the
autopsy on Estelle Pinchenski and -- "

" - her blood is way high on adrenaline levels. Ah-ha!" Lois told
him, triumphantly, as they stopped in the parking bay.

"How'd you know that?" he asked and then, interestedly, "Ah-ha?"

"While you were on the phone I thought about asking Jeff if I
could have a look at Mary-Ann's medical chart."

"Ah." Clark allowed himself a self-congratulatory smile. "And her
adrenaline levels are?"

"Almost normal. *But* - " she went on as his smile began to fade,
"when she was *admitted*, they were right off the scale."

Clark nodded. "And...now she's not scared any more."

"But she was terrified, up on that pylon."

They shared a telling glance.

"TDR?" Clark asked.

"Right on cue, right on her chart. Estelle?"

"Trace residue. Just like in Karen."

"And half of Metropolis, if Adams is right," Lois pricked the
bubble slightly. "Taxi!" she added a yell, stepping forward with
a raised arm to hail the passing cab. It stopped with a jolt and
a screech of brakes, just a few yards away. "Who else?" she
turned her head to ask as they headed for it.

"Huh?"

"Who else did you talk to? You said you called Pete Adams
first."

"Oh. Dr. Klein. Well, his office, anyway."

She gave him a surprised look as she swung open the cab door and
hitched herself gracefully into the rear seat.

He shrugged as he followed her in and pulled the door to a close
behind him. "Who else is gonna tell us all about TDR contaminants
and adrenaline poisoning?" he said.

"So, we're heading for S.T.A.R. Labs?"

"Uh, no."

"No?"

"Well, I didn't actually get to speak to Dr. Klein. He was...out
of circulation. But I spoke to his assistant. I told him we'd fax
everything we had on the case, when we get back to the Planet. He
says Klein should be out okay by tomorrow. He can look it over
then and get back to us with anything he turns up."

"Out okay? Out okay from where?"

Clark cleared his throat. "Well...Klein locked himself into a
sealed environmental pod for twenty four hours to test the
differences in gravitational stresses on the skeleton and
exoskeleton? He was due out this morning."

"But?"

"But when the electricity went down earlier, after that stunt
Mary-Ann Moakes pulled, up on that pylon, S.T.A.R. Labs lost its
main power supply. They switched to backup - they have their own
emergency generators - but the interruption to supply triggered a
time lock on the pod, before they could. They can't get him out
and they can't break through. He's stuck in there till it
releases in, oh..." he checked his watch, "...about eight hours
from now."

"Gee," Lois said acidly. "Those guys have so much fun down
there."

"Yeah." He chuckled softly. "Anyway, it'll be tomorrow at least
before he'll be able to help."

She shook her head.

"Hey, buddy," the cabby hollered back at them, suddenly. "You
plannin' on goin' anywhere, anytime soon? Or we gonna just sit
here watching the pretty blue flashing lights all day?"

Clark shared an amused glance with Lois.

"Daily Planet," he told him.

"Oh, and one more thing," Lois said, half smugly, as the cab took
off. "Mary- Ann Moakes' medical chart? She lists her religion as
Christian; UCS, in parentheses."

"UCS?" Clark's eyes widened marginally. "United Church of
Salvation?"

"That'd be my guess."

The cabby swung a right at the intersection up ahead, just ahead
of the red panel truck coming from the opposite direction. The
driver of the truck leaned heavily on the horn. The cabby
hollered a laconic obscenity back at him and flipped him a
gesture through the cab's open window to match, before stepping
on the gas.

Clark's cellphone burred softly and he reached into his jacket to
retrieve it.

Up front, the cabby watched him suspiciously through the rear
view mirror and eased up marginally on his speed. In his vast and
world-weary experience, calls to passengers usually meant a
change in direction, nine times out of ten.

His intuition wasn't disappointed.

"The paper?" Lois asked as Clark murmured a last agreement into
the phone and then pressed the disconnect button.

He shook his head as he snapped the phone closed and replaced it
in his inside pocket. "Herrera," he said and, leaning forward to
redirect the driver for the 26th precinct, "Looks like Christmas
just arrived early."

***

"Lois. Clark," Herrera greeted them genially as he came down the
staircase and into the police reception area. "Sorry I kept you."
He glanced over his shoulder at the raucous crowd of young men in
studded leathers and matching bandannas and tattoos, who were
being herded through the reception area. "We had Operation
Nightshade go down earlier this morning. Major drug bust. D
Street Gang turf. It's a little...tense here right now."

"That's okay." Clark smiled at him. "Thanks for getting back to
us so quickly."

"Uh, yeah." The detective looked across his shoulder as a sudden
uproar flared in the corner of the room.

Two of the D Street gang members were trying to tear each other
apart. Since their hands were handcuffed behind their backs, they
were proving to be highly inventive with feet and teeth in the
process. One cop was bitten badly in the hand and another almost
lost an eye to a wildly waving elbow before the men were dragged
apart again, spitting curses and threats.

"Listen, let's get outta this and go somewhere where we can
talk," Herrera said.

Lois gave Clark an inquiring look. He shook his head slightly as
they followed the detective. Being mysterious wasn't Herrera's
usual play on things. Neither was being on edge. It was clear he
was being both now as he led them up the flight of stairs to the
interrogation rooms.

"Take a seat." He gestured at wooden chairs gathered haphazardly
around the scarred and battered table and then took his own
advice, settling himself on its opposite side to face them.

"What's going on, Dutch?" Clark said curiously, intrigued now.

Herrera looked between them and then sighed. "You're not going to
like this one. In fact, and this is strictly *off* the record,
Lois," he frowned disapprovingly at the tape recorder she'd just
fished out of her purse and planted on the table between them, "I
didn't call you over here because you asked for an interview,
Clark."

Lois traded a glance with her partner and then reluctantly picked
up the recorder and pushed it back into her purse.

"Okay," she said easily. "Why did you call us then?"

Instead of answering, Herrera raised an expectant brow at her.

Lois stared him out innocently for another moment and then, with
a heavy, put upon sigh, reached back into her purse and snapped
the recorder off.

"Thank you, Lois." Herrera said, sardonically.

She glared at him.

"Dutch - " Clark hesitated as the detective lifted a quick hand.

"Excuse me, just a minute," he said, getting to his feet and
heading for the door. Halfway there he deftly plucked Lois' purse
from her lap and, ignoring her protests, opened the door to yell,
"Hey, Boomer! Git over here! Give this to Tracy and tell her to
keep hold, will ya?" he told the detective who answered the
summons, handing him the purse. "Miss Lane can pick it up on her
way out."

Lois glowered at him a touch harder as he shut the door and made
his way back to his seat. She jammed petulant hands into her
jacket pockets. Clark settled himself back casually against his
chair and hid a smile behind a hand.

"Pays to be careful," said Herrera. "So, we're off the record,"
he reiterated firmly. "Right?"

"You got it. You know that. So," Clark leaned forward, setting
his elbows to the table as he studied the man. "If this isn't
about these suicide cases, why did you call us on over?"

"I didn't say it wasn't." Herrera hesitated and then said,
roughly, "Pete Adams says you've been investigating a couple of
deaths which might be related."

"Karen Culver and Estelle Pinchenski," Clark confirmed.

"Right. So, how did you get onto this in the first place?"

"Hold it!" a still seething Lois suddenly butted in. "Let's get
something straight here, Herrera, right off the bat. We're
reporters. You're a cop. Generally speaking, when someone agrees
to be interviewed, it's the reporters that ask the questions."

Herrera gave her a brittle look. "Lois, has it ever occurred to
you to wonder why they call this an interrogation room?" he
drawled.

Lois' eyes narrowed. She leaned back against her chair and folded
her arms. "We get one phone call, right?" she said, snippily.

Herrera sighed. "You're not under arrest, Lois."

"Good. Then I don't have to answer any questions, do I?" She set
her lips tight together and fixed him with a stubborn look.

"*I'll* answer your questions," said Clark.

Lois gave him a sidelong glance that had 'traitor' written all
over it. He lifted a half protesting hand. "Well, watching you
two sparring with each other is always a lot of fun, but at this
rate, we could be here all week!"

Lois' pique collapsed as she looked abruptly abashed. Herrera was
right behind her. The detective cleared his throat softly and
then spread his hands at them. "Okay. Look, bottom line is, there
are a lot of people spooked by this one. People with a lot of
pull, if you get my drift. There are questions being asked, in
corners these people would rather not have a flashlight shone on.
At least...and you understand this one isn't my opinion,
Lois...not by amateurs, who don't know what kind of can of worms
they might be opening up. Who might just be about to create a
panic among the Metropolis populace with a misplaced story or
two. And, just between you and me, some of these people...the
ones that sign my pay checks...suggested I call you two on over
and tell you to butt out on this one; leave it to the experts."

"Really?" Lois started heatedly. "Well, why don't you go tell
your cop buying friends -- "

Clark's hand on her arm stilled her. "So...are you?" he asked,
watching the detective shrewdly. "Warning us off?"

"Would it do any good?"

"No."

"That's about what I figured," said Herrera. He smiled suddenly.
"So...you wanna trade? I'm still interested in how you two fell
into this one. And I never was much one for letting desk-bound
pencil pushers shove me around."

"That's about what I figured." Clark smiled back at him. He
looked at Lois. She shrugged.

"Okay," Clark said. "We started looking into Karen Culver's death
as a favor to an old friend of Perry White's, that's all. He
didn't think her death was suicide. And Estelle
Pinchenski...well, she sort of brought herself to our
attention."

"Yeah, so I heard. Glad you got out of that one in one piece,"
Herrera told Lois, soberly.

"We were lucky Superman was on the scene." Her hand covered
Clark's for the briefest instant. "It could have been worse
without him."

Herrera nodded. "But, Culver's death *was* suicide. Right?"

"Well...we're working on that one."

"Really? You got doubts?"

"Let's just say that we've got no evidence to suggest they
weren't suicides. Yet. There were witnesses in both cases and, as
far as we know, no one pushed Karen off that balcony. Or forced
Estelle Pinchenski out into that traffic. You said you wanted to
trade. What've you got?"

Herrera lifted a tired hand. "Not that much to tell. With your
two, we got eight cases in the past two days. Not counting the
attempted that Superman pulled off that pylon this morning."

"We know that," Lois said. "Are you counting them as suicides?"

"Got no reason not to."

"Just how *did* they die?" Clark asked, curiously.

Herrera grunted. "Any way they could." He pushed at the file
papers in front of him with a dismissive hand. "Ginny Bolt took a
midnight high dive off the Memorial Bridge. Tracy Harrow used the
gas oven in her apartment. A concerned neighbor found Geraldine
Samansa after the mail piled up. In her bath; used a steak knife
on her wrists." He shrugged. "Just the usual round, really. Run
of the mill stuff. If they didn't jump, they slashed, mostly.
Whichever and whatever, the quicker the better, to get it done. I
can rustle up copies of the files for you; you want. Should have
them on your desk this evening, 'fore close of business at the
latest."

"Thanks. And you've no reason to think anyone else was
involved?"

"Plenty of witnesses to say otherwise. Autopsy reports bear that
out, where there aren't. Adams hasn't any reason to think they
were helped along the way."

"Run of the mill? I don't think so." Lois shook her head. "Run of
the mill doesn't get us warned off a story. You said people were
spooked. So, what's spooking them, Herrera?" She cast a small
glance at her partner. "I've been told that eight cases in one
week isn't that unusual a suicide rate for any city. You know
that, better than any of us would, right? You see the results
every day. These deaths must be hardly causing a blip in the
statistics."

"No, they aren't. But, Pete Adams says you'll know what I'm
talking about when I tell you that the autopsy reports on those
six cases show increased adrenaline levels. And trace amounts of
something called...TDR?"

His lip quirked as he watched the sudden leap of interest in
their eyes.

"It's in all of them?" said Clark.

"Actually...no." He paused, observing them for a moment over
steepled fingers. Then he said, slowly, "It seems that Adams
might have been just a little...premature, in making his original
diagnosis."

"Which means...what?" Clark frowned.

Lois eyed the detective suspiciously, as though half convinced he
was about to embark on some kind of diversionary tactic with
them.

"That TDR isn't the problem." Herrera seemed to be choosing his
words carefully now. "It never was."

"But there is a problem? Right?" insisted Lois. "So, if it's not
TDR...?"

Herrera shook his head. "Sorry. That's about as far as I take
it."

"Herrera - "

"Don't push me where I can't go, Lois. I'm sticking my neck out
way too far on this as it is. I've told you more than I should
have already."

"You haven't actually told us anything at all!"

Her protest produced a moment's silence, then the detective
sighed. "Okay. Let's just say," he said, reluctantly, "that
Bureau 39 still has long arms, it seems. Even now."

Shock flared in her eyes. "Bureau 39?!"

"We buried the Bureau," Clark said grimly, looking just as
disturbed as his partner was by the casual reference to their old
nemesis. "It's been dead and gone a long time, Dutch."

"True. But, the thing is, sometimes the dead still manage to mess
up the living. They leave little...legacies behind them. You
know?"

Clark lifted a brow, considering that. "There is no TDR," he
said, after a moment's thought. "But there is some kind of
chemical contaminant involved here. Are you telling us that
something the Bureau was developing before it was disbanded is at
the heart of this?" he asked, startled.

"Me? I'm not telling you anything. Except that those people I
mentioned earlier? Well, quite a few of 'em are running around
down at City Hall like chickens trapped in a coyote den. There's
talk of getting the EPA down here, handing this one over to
federal agencies. Metropolis Department of Public Health thinks
we could be looking at an epidemic any day now and the Mayor
doesn't want to be left holding the baby if that's the case."

"Eight deaths don't make an epidemic." Clark gave the cop an
astute and level look. "So, the DPH is sending a report to the
EPA saying, what? That these women were all poisoned, somehow,
with some kind of under wraps chemical contaminant? Something
that should never have been let out of its cage," he added, tone
turning thoughtful as he continued to muse aloud. "Something that
got out there by accident."

"Something that mimics the properties of a fairly harmless
weed-killer enough to temporarily fool the ME's Office into a
mistaken diagnosis, off the bat," Lois overtook him. "And which
promotes huge rises in adrenaline levels, leading to paranoia,
rage, terror...and, eventually, a self-destructive urge?"

Herrera watched them in silence. But then they didn't really need
an answer >from him.

"So, the real question is," Clark went on in a considering
murmur, "how did that contaminant get out? Where did it come
from?"

Lois nodded distantly. "And why these women in particular?"

"And why have we had so few cases? So far?"

"Not to mention, why are they all real pretty brunettes?" Herrera
added thoughtfully. "Well," he looked at the spread of photos
before him, "most of 'em anyway."

Brought rudely out of her reverie by what she considered the
inanity of that remark, Lois gave him a quick, withering glance.
Clark's own look held a great deal less feminine contempt, but it
still seemed to reprove the detective for letting his mind wander
onto irrelevancies.

Catching it, Herrera held up a defensive hand. "Hey, it might be
important! Who's to tell?"

"That they're not all young and pretty? Sure it is." Lois awarded
him a sweetly contemptuous smile as she got to her feet and
leaned across the table to suggest, "Tell you what, maybe you and
the rest of the boys could help us out just a little more and go
compare measurements down at the morgue too? See if they share
anything else. Just the pretty ones, of course. I wouldn't want
to spoil your lunch."

She looked down at him, imperiously, cutting him off as he began
to splutter a defense to that. "Save it, Herrera. Where can I
pick up my purse?"

***

"The thing is, it's just so frustrating not being able to talk to
Klein. He's the only one who can get us access to those
classified files of Bureau 39. Still, maybe those records of
Herrera's will show up something we can work with. They should
include the full pathology reports, at least."

Clark finished off his chicken sandwich and pushed his plate to
one side. He picked up his glass and took a sip of iced water,
then looked curiously across the cafe table at his wife. "Don't
you think?"

"Huh?" She looked up, startled, from where she'd been idly
pushing at the plate before her with a fork. "Oh." She nodded,
distractedly. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess."

"Found a bug in the salad?"

"Hmmmm...?" She looked up on him again and then frowned. "What?"

"The salad." He indicated her plate. "You've hardly touched it.
And you were the one who said if we didn't stop for something to
eat, you were simply just going to *die* of malnutrition right
there, outside the precinct. Remember?"

"Oh." She dropped her fork to the plate and nudged it aside.
"Well, I guess I'm not as hungry as I thought."

His slightly amused air faded. He reached across the table to
take her hand gently in his. "Honey, are you okay?" he asked,
concerned. "You've hardly said anything since we left Dutch. You
know, I'm sure he didn't mean anything with that brunette remark.
He was just trying to point out the obvious, that's all. He might
have phrased it just a little better, but -- "

"I know." She gave him a small smile as she squeezed reassurance
into his fingers. "I'm fine. I was just thinking, that's all."

He frowned slightly. "About the story?"

"No." She hesitated, looking just a little uncomfortable. She
drew her hand clear of his and picked up her fork again,
seemingly finding new interest in the salad, all at once. "About
Lucy, actually," she said, keeping her attention on the food as
she picked over it listlessly.

"Lucy?" he said, surprised. "Your sister, Lucy?"

"How many Lucys do we know?"

"Well - " About four he could count off the top of his head --

"Yes, *my* Lucy," Lois confirmed snippily as she watched him do
that mental arithmetic.

"What about her?"

"Oh, nothing really. I was just thinking about how long it's been
since I called her, that's all. You know, maybe we should invite
her over for dinner? Some evening?" She glanced up on him,
flushing slightly.

"Sure," he agreed easily. "It has been a while. I just thought
you were letting things cool down a little. After last time," he
added, half warily.

The last dinner invitation - which had ended in an explosive
argument over Lucy's latest career choices, his sister-in-law
storming out of the house, and Lois in tears of anger and
frustration - had been something of a touchy subject so far.
Neither of them had been receptive to his attempts to heal the
breach, though, naturally, neither of them would admit to being
as stubborn as the other, either. If Lois was proving willing now
to extend an olive branch and if he could persuade her not to go
trying to tell Lucy, again, that she was being stupid to throw
over her degree course, then they might just have a chance of
making up, he thought wryly.

Lois blushed a little deeper, as though aware of his thoughts.

"Why don't you give her a call tonight?" he suggested quickly.
"Ask her when she'll be back in town?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I might do that."

She settled into silence again. Clark's frown returned as he
continued to watch her. There hadn't been a whole lot of
agreement in that. But the subject appeared to be closed again.
He sipped thoughtfully at his glass as she finished off another
few mouthfuls of the salad, not about to push her any further on
it. He knew that it was something she had to sort out for herself
and in her own way and he had faith in her to work it out right.

She didn't disappoint him.

"How about next Thursday?" she said casually as she put down her
napkin and got to her feet.

"Next Thursday's fine," he agreed as he followed her lead.

"Tentative, of course," Lois went on offhandedly. "I'll have to
check with Lucy."

"Great." He put a hand against her shoulder. "Stay here. I'll go
pick up the check."

Silence settled between them again as they set out to walk the
few blocks between the cafe and the Planet offices. But this time
it seemed less fraught in nature, Lois more thoughtful than
brooding.

"Do you think they were murdered? Karen and Estelle? Those other
women?" she said suddenly as they waited on the sidewalk edge for
the lights to turn their way.

"Murdered?" Clark gave her a quick glance. "What makes you say
that?"

She shrugged. "Well, what Herrera said. He didn't say that that
contaminant got out there by accident."

"He didn't say it didn't either. Why would anyone want to release
something like this deliberately? It's so...random."

"Bureau 39 was never random. Besides, that's what crazy people
do, Clark. Crazy things. It's like a union requirement."

"Still..." He shook his head slightly. "It doesn't add up.
Besides, the Bureau isn't - really - involved. As far as we
know."

"Maybe. Perhaps it's not so random. You were the one who brought
up Tempus. Sometimes, you can hide a pattern in what looks like
chaos. If you're smart enough. Did you ever see that old TV
movie, 'The Alphabet Murders'? Now, *they* thought they were
tracking down a random serial killer. The first four victims'
names followed the alphabet: Askquith, Bascombe, Caldwell, De
Angelo ...they didn't have anything else in common. But, really,
the killer was after Bascombe. The rest were just camouflage. To
hide the motive; make the police think they had some crazy on
their hands."

"Our brunettes don't follow the alphabet," Clark noted,
pedantically. "And wouldn't 'Dee Angelo' come under 'A'?"

Lois gave him a faintly exasperated glance. "Clark, this is
Agatha Christie we're talking about here. No one said it had to
be logical! And, no, De Angelo wouldn't come under *'A'*! It'd
come under *'D'*, like I said and - "

"Those weren't the names of the victims. I saw that movie. They
were called - "

"What's it matter what they were called? Now, I'm supposed to
remember the names from some dumb TV movie I saw two years ago
when I wasn't paying attention anyway? The point is -- "

"Uh, I get the point, Lois," he told her with a smile. "Wheels
within wheels."

"Right. And one thing Trask was good at was sleight of hand."

"You're not seriously suggesting Trask's behind all this? Lois,
you saw Rachel Harris shoot him. You saw the man's body."

"I saw Luthor's body too," she reminded him. "What does that
prove?" But she shook her head. "No, I don't think Trask is who
we're looking for. I...oh, I don't know what I think! It just
seems too pat to be accidental. Like you said back there, if this
is a pollution problem, why just these women? It's too selective,
Clark. We should be seeing more cases."

"Well, that one I'll give you."

"You know, there was a story the Planet covered a few years
back...in Seattle, I think. Fenderbender on the Interstate
Bridge. Nothing major; nothing you couldn't swap insurance over.
But, the drivers began to argue over who was at fault; the
traffic was backed up; other drivers got impatient. Things got a
little heated, fast; a crowd gathered; tempers wore out; things
went from bad to worse. And in one moment, everything changed."
She snapped her fingers. "The crowd became a mob. One of the
drivers found himself being blamed for the entire incident. He
scuffled with the other driver, and that incited the mob even
more. Then he ran. And, when he did, they took after him. He
jumped from that bridge, Clark. He jumped because he was
absolutely convinced that, if he stayed, they'd kill him. He was
so driven by terror, he just couldn't see any other way out.
Witnesses said later that they just couldn't understand how
everything got bent out of shape so fast. But that man was still
dead."

"And, you think, maybe someone chased these women off their
particular bridges?"

"Maybe. And what *would* you call that driver's death? Suicide?
Or murder?

He considered it. "I guess it depends on how you term murder."

"Pushing someone who doesn't want to be pushed," Lois responded,
smartly. She sighed. "Anyway, Karen's not going to tell us either
way. Which is why we're going to have to find out all on our
own."

There was a note of grim determination in that which bothered
him. He studied her in silence for a moment. Then he said,
"Karen. Not Estelle. Not any of the others. Just Karen."

"What?" She slipped him a small, puzzled glance.

"It always comes back to Karen, for you. Why? Why are you so
fired up about this?"

She looked confused. "Why wouldn't I be? It's our story."

"No, it's beyond the story. It has been, right from the start.

His interest seemed to be making her uneasy now. She glanced away
from his questioning frown and brightened. "Oh, look. Our light."
She stepped briskly out onto the crossing.

Clark watched her go and then, sighing heavily, jogged after
her.

"Come on, Lois," he persisted as he caught up on the other side.
"I know the routine. This is more than just a take for you. It
always has been. You just weren't going to give it on up, even
when we had nothing more to go on. You never for one minute
wanted to believe that Karen was just another drug statistic; you
were determined to bring her out of this clean. What's the
connection?"

"No connection," she denied. "Don't you feel sorry for Karen?
Don't you want to find out what happened to her?"

"Well, sure, but...why just Karen? Why not Estelle Pinchenski? Or
Ginny Bolt? Any of the others?"

"Well, I feel sorry for them too! Of course I do. But they
don't...I was just using Karen as an example, that's all."

"But they don't what?" he said, ignoring that last. "Lois?"

She shook her head.

He took hold of her arm, pulling her to a halt. "Lois, please,"
he insisted. "Karen?"

For a moment, he thought she wouldn't answer, then she said
quietly, "She was...young, that's all. Bright; going places..."

Something in the way she said it sparked a memory; their earlier
conversation, her sudden concern over a younger, wayward sister,
and he made a small, impatient sound in his throat for not having
put it together sooner.

"Just like Lucy," he said, ruefully. "And the rest of them - they
don't remind you of her."

His mind brought up a memory of Karen Culver and he found himself
agreeing with Lois' assessment. She did have something of a look
of Lucy about her. Her hair, her eyes, in the hint of youthful
arrogance and buried mischief in her face... He put his hands to
his wife's shoulders.

"Lois, Lucy is just fine," he said, gently. "Nothing is going to
happen to her. You know I wouldn't let it."

Lois drew in a small breath. "I just can't help thinking how
easily it could have been Lucy. Every time I see Karen's
picture...she reminds me of Lucy so much. It isn't fair that she
had no one to fight for her. If something...if something did
happen to Lucy...if she had no one...if I wasn't there for
her...I'd want there to be *someone*. Do you understand? Someone
to fight for her, just like she was their own. And I want to be
that someone for Karen. It just seems...right. I want to find out
the truth, Clark. I want us to fight for her just as hard as we
can. Just like we would for Lucy."

His grip on her tightened a fraction, reassuring. "Then we will,"
he promised solemnly.

Lois looked up, into his eyes, measuring the strength of that
vow, and then she nodded. "Whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes," he agreed. He gave her a faint smile and
then put a soft hand to her cheek. "You okay?"

"Sure." She smiled back.

He nodded and then his smile faded as his expression turned to
something more intent. There were mere inches between them now as
he held on to her.

"Lois...?" he murmured.

"Yes...?"

"Your jacket is beeping."

"What?" She drew back from him with a quick frown. It hadn't been
what she was expecting him to say.

"Your jacket?" He pointed an intrigued finger at her left pocket.
"It's beeping."

The frown became startled realization. "Oh!" She delved into the
pocket to emerge with a tape recorder. "I forgot all about that!"
She took note of the blinking red light that was bleeping slowly
to itself, almost too low to be heard. "Battery's low." She
glanced up on him. "Remind me to put in fresh, will you?"

He stared at her. He could quite clearly hear the soft whirring
now as the tape recorder's spools spun slowly. "How did you - ?"
he blurted and then, "How many of those things are you carrying
with you these days?!"

"Just this one. And the one in my purse. Pays to be prepared,"
she misquoted Herrera in a mimicking of his own smug tones.

Clark took his eyes from the recorder and took note of her
expression, which matched that tone perfectly. "Wait a minute.
You're not thinking of using that. Are you?" he asked,
worriedly.

She shrugged.

"Lois -- "

"Well..."

"We promised Dutch it was off the record."

"Strictly speaking, Clark, *you* promised it was off the
record."

He raised a reproachful brow at her. "Lois..." he said again,
more dangerously this time.

She sighed. "Okay, okay, I know. Partners. Your word is *my*
bond." She snapped off the recorder and then rewound it, wiping
it clean. "I just hate being told what to do by cops," she said,
regretfully as she pushed the offending recorder into her purse,
beside its companion.

"But, you know what?" she went on, gripping Clark by the sleeve
and practically dragging him with her as she quickened pace, her
mood brightening in another instant to a familiar, driven
excitement he'd seen in her more times than he could count. "With
or without it - I think we just got ourselves a story!"

***

"Lois, you don't *have* a story."

"But, Perry - !" Lois protested and then lapsed into sullen
silence as the Planet's Editor-in-Chief shot her a bullish glance
from under his brows.

"Lois, how many times are we gonna have to have this conversation
before you take it on board? Sources don't make stories. If they
did, they'd all be reporters and you'd be out of a job! Sources -
if you haven't figured it by now - provide the little crumbs of
cheese for a reporter to follow. Now, where that trail of cheese
leads to is the job of a good reporter to figure out. But crumbs,
all on their own, just don't make Cheddar! What this trail leads
to, so far, is hearsay, rumor, with just a side-pinch of
speculation thrown in for good measure, and, until you bring me
something more solid to chew on, I ain't making a sandwich outta
it. Now, you got that?"

Lois resisted giving him an agreement until it was impossible to
avoid, then did it as sparingly as she could get away with. She
shrugged.

"Good. Then git. Go cheese hunting." He waved her out of his
office.

Lois mooched out and over to where Clark was just finishing up on
a call. He put down the receiver as she approached and grimaced
as he got a look at her face.

"Didn't buy it, huh?"

She threw down her notepad and perched on his desk. "No," she
agreed morosely. "But, I think he just solved the problem of what
to get him for his birthday this year," she added, darkly. "You
can put a mousetrap at the top of the list. Giant-sized."

"What?"

She sighed. "Never mind."

"Well," he reminded her sardonically, as he reached for a nearby
file, "I did - "

"Clark, if you're about to tell me you told me so, you can just
make that two traps."

He looked up at her with a faint, sympathetic smile and then put
the file back down.

"Okay," he said, encouragingly, instead. "Look, it's not that
bad. And, maybe Perry's right. We should get these adrenaline
levels checked out before we go around causing panic in the
streets. Talk to Klein first. We don't even have a name for this
contaminant yet. Never mind know just what it's capable of."

"I'm not causing a panic! If there's a problem out there, then
we've got a duty to let people know about it, Clark."

"Which problem?" he asked, pointedly. "Specifically?"

"Well...I don't know!"

"Exactly."

"I'm not a doctor, Clark. It's not my job to know."

"But it is our job to make sure we're not chasing shadows when
that evening edition hits the stands," he countered. "We can't
just go around crying wolf; throwing words like 'epidemic' and
'chemical pollution' around without knowing what it is we're
dealing with here. And just who it might affect."

She gave him a dark stare and then got to her feet.

"Where you going?"

"To write up the story on Karvin," she said tightly as she sat
down at her desk and switched on her computer. "That is, unless
you and Perry want to censor that one too!"

She began to hammer at the keyboard, with a deal more violence
than the task strictly warranted.

Clark sighed and gave up, shaking his head as he went back to his
own files.

"Did I hear someone mention that word?" a rough voice said from
behind him.

"What word, Chief?" he said absently, scanning another paragraph
before he glanced up on the editor.

"The word that doesn't get mentioned in a newsroom. The 'C'
word."

"Oh. *That* word. Well," Clark looked warily over his shoulder
and lowered his voice, "she's just a little upset about the
Culver story being pulled, Chief."

Perry grunted, watching Lois beat all kinds of hell out of her
keyboard. "So, what's your take on my decision?" he asked, after
a moment.

Clark shrugged as he opened a new file. "I dunno. Maybe you're
right, Chief."

Perry's gaze shifted onto him. "Maybe?"

"Uh, definitely right," Clark glanced up again and gave him a
wide, agreeable smile. "No doubt about it."

"The Chief's always right," a new voice put in cheerfully.
"Right, Chief?"

Perry gave Jimmy a steady, sidelong look. "Have I ever told you
how much I hate sucking up, Olsen?"

"All the time, Chief."

"Then take heed and quit," Perry warned, before he headed for the
coffee station.

"Quitting it right now, Chief," Jimmy agreed smoothly, unabashed.
"Uh, C.K., Carol said to tell you she took a message for you
while you were out. From Herrera's office? Says he should have
that information for you by six."

"Great. Thanks, Jimmy. Oh," Clark stopped him as he moved away.
"How's Leanore?"

Jimmy hitched his shoulders at him. "How would I know? She still
won't accept my calls."

"Oh."

"But, you know, I'm going over to visit this evening." He
shrugged again. "I figure I'm harder to ignore in person."

"Jimmy!"

"And, talking of hard to ignore," Jimmy added in a murmur, as he
loped off in response to that bellowed summons. "Right with you,
Chief!"

***

"Dale?"

Robert Addley hesitated on the threshold of Karvin's suite,
peering into the darkness. Then he stepped inside, closed the
door softly behind him and snapped on the light.

He started as he caught sight of Karvin seated on the sofa.

"Dale?" He frowned as he walked on over. "I thought you were out.
Didn't you hear me? Why you sitting in the dark?"

"I heard you." Karvin said quietly. "I was just...thinking."

"If you were trying to work up an apology, forget it," Addley
said blackly. He threw the evening edition of the Daily Planet
down on the table before the preacher. "Lois Lane doesn't seem to
have taken offense."

Karvin reached for the paper half-heartedly, scanning the
article.

"'Man with a Mission'" Addley quoted the headline with a sardonic
quirk to his lips. In his mouth, the words sounded mocking.
"Sounds good to me. It's not completely the unqualified
endorsement I was hoping for, of course, but, hey, you go with
what you get, right?"

Karvin nodded slowly, his manner still distracted.

"Better than Steve and I figured we'd get anyway, after that
performance of yours this afternoon. What the hell were you
playing, Dale? Trying to ruin everything we got?"

Karvin put down the paper and pinched tiredly at the bridge of
his nose. "I told you I wasn't in the mood to talk to them," he
said, sullenly.

He jumped as Addley stretched out a hand and twisted it into the
shoulder of his shirt, jerking him up slightly to within inches
of his furious face. "And I told *you*, you *get* in the mood!
And you *stay* in it! You hear me, Dale? I didn't invest time and
effort turning you around to lose it all now because you can't
keep your mind on what's important."

He let the preacher go with a shove and Karvin stared up at him
for a moment before Addley turned away with a contemptuous twist
of his lips and headed for the bar. Karvin watched him go. He
could almost understand his aide's rage. In all honesty, he
didn't understand himself what had prompted his rudeness earlier
that afternoon. He had his suspicions, of course. But they
weren't ideas he was comfortable with. Or proud of.

"I already said I was sorry," he said, defensively. "I don't
know. Maybe, just for a moment, I got sick and tired of having to
justify myself to a reporter. They've got no right to judge me."

"I didn't hear her making any judgements. I just saw her looking
surprised that you'd decided to savage her before she got the
chance to ask you more than a couple of questions! I mean, just
what *were* you trying to do, Dale? Really, I'd like to know.
Ruin the entire show? We've got the chance to make good here! And
you have to go trying to mess it all up because you happened to
be in a pretty lousy mood when Lane arrived!"

Karvin looked up on him. "You make it all sound just a little
petty, Bob."

"Wasn't it?" Addley cursed softly and sloshed half as much
whiskey again onto the counter as he managed to pour into the
glass. He was pretty much liquored up already, Karvin realized,
uneasily.

Maybe that was where Bob was getting his unusually sharp
perceptions from.

Because he was right. It had been petty. Petty and small. He had
spent much of the time since trying to convince himself that his
rudeness hadn't simply been because he knew how important it was
to Addley that Lois Lane and Clark Kent be kept sweet during that
interview. He didn't want to think that he could be that
mean-minded. But he rather suspected too that it was the truth.
He had done it to spite Robert and for no other reason. That
realization concerned him. It concerned him deeply.

"The only reporter to give us a halfway fair shake in this town
without having a handout first, and you have to go antagonizing
her without any rhyme or reason at all!" Addley went on sourly.
He swallowed down most of the whiskey in one rough gulp and then
held the glass aloft in a mocking salute at the preacher.

Karvin was only half listening.

Other things concerned him more though.

He glanced again at the newspaper that had lain, half forgotten,
on his lap for the past hour. The Metropolis Star had been less
circumspect than its rival. Grainy photos of the dead women
adorned its front page, below a thick banner headline. Karvin
looked up at Addley.

"I smoothed it over," he said, dismissively. "More than you did.
Maybe you ought to look to yourself first, Bob, before anyone
else. I'm not the one that had Kent terminating the interview
ahead of time."

Addley paused as he picked up the whiskey bottle a second time.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he turned back with a frown.

Karvin snorted derisively. "Oh, please. Don't play the innocent.
It hardly suits you. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Lois Lane. Remember her? I doubt you've forgotten. You couldn't
take your eyes off her the entire time she was here."

Addley took another swig from his replenished glass. "That's
ridiculous."

"Her husband didn't think so."

His aide stared back at him in stony silence. Then he put the
glass down carefully on the counter. "Anyway," he said quietly.
"It seems that Miss Lane will give us what we want."

"What we want? Or what you want?" Karvin sneered and was inwardly
appalled at his seeming desire to prick the man as cruelly as he
could manage. What in God's name was the matter with him lately?

This time Addley's silence was thunderous.

And, still, something in Karvin wouldn't let up. "I saw the way
you were looking at her."

There was a moment's pause. And then, suddenly, startlingly,
Addley flashed a sharp grin at him. "I *can* still look, Dale,"
he said, sounding amused now. "That's no crime."

Karvin didn't smile back. "You gave me your word, Bob."

"And I haven't broken it yet."

"Haven't you?" Inside his mind now a small, frightened voice was
screaming at Karvin to shut up, to give it up, babbling that he
was cracking open a barrel of questions he didn't really want to
know the answers to. But, somehow, he couldn't stop. He just
couldn't stop. "Where were you last night, Bob?" he asked
softly.

Addley regarded him levelly. "In my suite."

"Not in your suite. I called your suite. I wanted to go over the
new hymns Polly suggested we include. I didn't get an answer."

"Perhaps I was in the shower."

"Until two a.m.? I called several times."

"I couldn't sleep. I went for a walk."

"Where?"

"Around."

Karvin's eyes were troubled. "Bob - "

Addley smiled. "Dale, lighten up. You worry too much. I needed
some fresh air, that's all. I was safely tucked up in bed by
three." He held up a hand. "I swear."

"And the night before that? Every night this week?"

Addley shrugged, unfazed by the continuing interrogation. "A
little night insomnia. Not a crime either, Dale. Last I heard."

Karvin stared at him, miserably.

"Anyway," Addley filled the silence that fell between them,
briskly. "I only came by to make sure you were awake. You'd best
be getting ready. I'll pick you up at six thirty, as usual."

"Bob -- "

Addley paused, his hand tightening marginally around the door
handle as Karvin's low voice chased after him again.

"Don't push it, Dale," he said coldly, not turning back. "Don't
push *me*."

"But - "

"The deal was, we don't talk about the past. We don't talk about
the past, ever. Not mine. Not yours. It's not good for either of
us, Dale. Trust me on that. Now, I'll see you later. Be ready. We
can talk about those new hymns of Polly's on the way, okay?"

Karvin paused. Then, defeated, he muttered, "I'll be ready."

"Good."

But it was a long time after the door of his suite had closed
behind his aide, before Karvin stirred himself and began to
prepare for the evening's performance. For a time, he simply sat
there, in the empty, extravagant room, staring blindly at the
gray print faces of dead women, displayed on the front page of
the Metropolis Star, until they blurred together and ran into
others. Others he had never known, but whose faces had lately
begun to haunt his dreams. As these would haunt his dreams.

Blurred until he could no longer see the fear in their faces.

Or the pain in their eyes.

***

Clark took a brief taste of the basil and tomato sauce, already
simmering nicely in the pan, and then reached to turn the gas
burner down low. He lifted his head as he heard the key turn in
the front door. Putting down the spoon, and giving the water
level in the accompanying pan of pasta a quick check, he picked
up the nearby cloth, wiping at his hands as he pushed through the
kitchen doors and into the living room.

"Hi!" Lois looked surprised as she dumped her purse and shrugged
out of her coat. She hung it on the peg and crossed the room
quickly to meet him halfway as he came towards her with a
welcoming smile.

"False alarm?" she asked.

It had only taken her fifteen minutes, at most, to walk the
couple of blocks >from the subway station to their brownstone. It
had only been five minutes before that Clark had picked up the
faintly shrilling automated alarm and had left her at the station
exit to go investigate.

"No. Couple of would be art collectors trying to liberate some
rare prints >from the museum. They gave up almost right away."

Lois made a small sound in her throat, half in exasperation, half
blackly amused. "You think they'd have learned Metropolis is off
limits by now," she said, shaking her head before she reached up
to kiss him warmly in greeting.

As she drew back she held up a considering finger, tasting her
lips thoughtfully with the tip of her tongue. Her brow furrowed
lightly as she tapped the finger against his shoulder in absent
decision. "I think that pasta sauce needs just a touch more
salt," she advised, heading purposefully for the kitchen.

Still wrapped in the soft afterglow of her kiss, Clark looked
after her with a sloppy smile - that faded abruptly. "Salt?" He
followed hastily in her wake. "Not in *my* pasta sauce!"

He reached her in time to rescue his creation, deftly plucking
the carton she'd retrieved (from the darkest recesses of the
overhead cupboard, where he'd pushed it way back weeks before,
cheerfully certain it would never be discovered any time soon)
from her and substituting it for a smaller, curved glass bottle.
"Oregano," he admonished. "Much healthier. And not too much," he
added as she rolled her eyes at him and began to sprinkle the
herb into the slow bubbling pan.

The outraged chef in him satisfied, Clark moved up close behind
her, settling his hands against her shoulders briefly, before he
pressed light lips to the side of her neck and put his arms
around her waist, entwining his fingers against her ribs. He
rested his chin against her shoulder to watch as she sampled the
results of her interference.

"Mmmmmmm," she approved.

"Good?"

"Perfect."

She returned the spoon to the pan and stirred it another turn.
Enjoying the feel of her settled against his chest and not
inclined to move, Clark continued to watch her lazily. Her
softness and warmth, coupled with the sweet fragrance of her
perfume, settled a responding, indolent heat, deep in his belly.
He sighed slightly, a small sound of contentment as he gathered
her a little closer into his easy embrace.

"I called Lucy. This afternoon," Lois said, after a moment.

"Great." His arms tightened on her in an approving hug. "And she
said?"

"She'll be in town next week. We made it a date. Thursday, like I
said. Still okay for you?"

"Sure." He bent his head to nuzzle at the soft skin behind her
ear. "So long as the rest of Metropolis stays quiet for the
evening, of course."

She smiled. "Maybe we should take out an ad. Ask them to give
Superman the night off."

"Mmmm-hmmm. Oh!" He lifted his head, remembering. "Almost forgot.
Those background reports came in from Herrera just after we left.
Jimmy dropped them off."

"He did? Why didn't he just send a messenger with them?"

"Well, he was in the neighborhood."

"This isn't his neighborhood. He lives way on over on the other
side of town."

"Yeah, but he was on his way to visit Leanore."

"Leanore? I thought they were just keeping her in for
observation?"

"Well, she's still there. Maybe they have to observe her some
more."

"Oh. Well, it was sweet of him to bring them, anyway. Trust
Herrera to add an hour to his delivery time. You know, that man
probably couldn't make his own funeral without being late."

"He's not always late," Clark disagreed, feeling obliged to
defend the detective.

"Clark, he is *always* late."

"Well, okay. Sometimes, he's late. But, he didn't have to give
them to us at all," he reminded her. "He's sticking his neck out
for us on this one, remember?"

"If someone says they'll do you a favor, the least they can do is
do it on time," she told him, primly. "Otherwise, they might just
as well not bother doing it at all."

Clark's soft, sudden laughter tickled at the side of her throat.
"I don't know why you're always ragging on Herrera," he said, as
she shifted her head slightly to view him, surprised. "And he's
just as bad. You both know you adore one another."

"That's a lie," Lois sniffed, stirring the pot more briskly.

"Personally," he told her solemnly, "I think it's some kind of
reverse hero worship."

"Bite your tongue."

"Or should that be perverse hero worship? You know Dr. Friskin
would have a field day with you two. A classic, textbook case of
masking your true emotions with aggression."

She gave him a single, low burning glance across one shoulder
that warned him he was in trouble if he kept on with this one. He
grinned at her, disarmingly.

"Did you leave them with Adams' copy report on Estelle?" she
asked, pointedly changing the subject. "The reports?" She put the
spoon down on the counter.

"Whoa - hold it..." He tightened his grip marginally, enough to
hold her where she was, as she tried to move away.

"What?"

"The reports can wait." He jerked his chin at the stove. "My
pasta sauce won't."

"But, I could just -- "

"Lois. Dinner first. Okay? We can look them over later."

"But -- "

"Honey, it's been a real tough day," he pleaded, tightening his
grip on her and burrowing his face lightly into her hair,
inhaling its mild scent. "I just want to spend a quiet hour or
two having dinner with my wife. Relax. Wind down a little. Is
that so bad?"

"Well..."

It sounded reluctant, but he could tell she was weakening. He set
himself to further sabotage of her resolve, running a trail of
kisses across the side of her neck and rubbing the tip of his
nose gently against the lobe of one ear. Lois sighed softly,
closing her eyes, then squirmed, just a little, as his hands went
off on an exploratory path across her curves.

"Thought you were hungry?" she murmured a half-hearted protest.

"I am hungry. Just not for pasta." He kissed the nape of her neck
and then began to nuzzle softly at the soft, sensitive skin
behind her ear.

Lois smiled as she closed her eyes again and tilted her head back
against the strong curve of his shoulder. She put up a hand
behind her to pat softly at his cheek. "Yes, I know, sweetie,
but...oooh," she gasped, "...that...that feels so..."

"Good?" She felt his grin against her skin with the hot whisper
of breath at her ear and then sighed as he pulled lightly at the
lobe of her ear with his teeth. He intensified his caresses.

Lois sighed out an answer. "Perfect..."

"So, my talents aren't just confined to being a great cook then?"
he teased.

She turned in his arms. "You," she murmured, as her fingers
busied themselves seductively in the buttons of his shirt,
teasing the material aside with frustrating slowness to explore
the warm, muscular flesh beneath, "have many talents."

She drew a soft finger down his chest, studying its path
curiously and feeling the hard ridge of muscles across his
stomach contract delightfully in its wake, until it came to rest
on the edge of his jeans. She smiled, as she hooked a couple of
fingers into the waistband. "And, I expect you to employ all of
them...to the best of your ability...real...soon..."

Clark smiled, his hands running softly up and down her arms as he
shifted himself imperceptibly closer against her. He pressed his
mouth firmly against hers, savoring her salt taste, as he pushed
her back and up against the hard enamel behind her. His tongue
probed its way gently into the warmth of her mouth as her lips
parted obligingly beneath the faint pressure of his own and his
world contracted sharply, all of his senses focused on the woman
in his arms, leaving no room for other distractions.

Of course, he'd forgotten they were standing in front of the lit
stove.

A fact of which Lois became all too aware, all at once, as she
was distracted from the slow melting heat of his lips, the way
that his hands were roaming her body...as a soft, slow and
over-warm heat, which had nothing to do with any of that, spread
its way across the small of her back...

She yelped, jerking away from the stove and startling Clark, who
let her go, surprised.

"Oh, God - Lois! Are you okay? Did you get burned? Lois? Lois!"
He pulled her hastily clear as he realized what he'd done,
contrite and mortified as he babbled an apology, as he gathered
her up against him. She was clinging tight to him and trembling,
shaking almost. Oh God, if he'd hurt her, he'd never -

He grabbed hold of her, made short work of divesting her of her
blouse and worriedly examined her. There was a brightly scarlet
patch of skin at the lowest point of her spine, but nothing that
would be especially painful. Rather it was more in line with the
effect of sitting too close to a warm fire for too long a time.
It would fade in a couple of minutes or so and there was no sign
that she'd been scalded or seriously burned.

Yet, she was still shaking as he held her tight and --

His panic faded as it occurred to him all at once that she was
giggling helplessly from the depths of his shoulder.

"Lois?" He paused to pull her slightly clear of him, putting the
edge of his hand beneath her chin and hitching it upwards. "Are
you okay?"

She answered him with a weak nod through her laughter and then
buried her face in his shoulder again as her giggles overcame
her.

"Lo-is..."

More giggles.

Clark sighed. Looked like there was going to be only one way to
stop her. Which was okay. Which was very okay. He didn't mind
that in the slightest. He set the backs of his fingers beneath
her chin, tilting it firmly upward again and ducked his head to
capture her lips firmly beneath his, stopping her giggles cold
with another kiss.

After a surprised intake of breath, Lois melted into his arms,
savoring the kiss with every fiber of her body.

He was careful about it. There had been the odd moment, early in
their relationship, when, in the blazing heat of his own passion
and inspired by hers, he had all but forgotten that his wife was
less talented in holding her breath than he was. But Lois still
swayed slightly when he released her, looking up at him wide
eyed. She hiccuped faintly and then swallowed hard. "Wow..."

Clark smiled and lifted a hand to trace the contours of her lips
with an index finger before he bent to kiss her again.

A sudden sharp burr startled both of them into breaking the
moment's passion. Lois turned her head to view the little pasta
timer sitting on the counter and then came back to regard Clark
with a thoughtful expression. "Looks like the pasta's ready," she
informed him blandly.

Clark looked at her. "It's not all that's ready..." he murmured,
adjusting his stance to gather her up against him. He reached out
a blind, unerring hand to bop the timer sharply, stilling its
insistent alarm in an instant. "And willing..."

He let her go, cupping her face in his hands in prelude to a
heady kiss that held all the promise of pent up passion that had
been smoldering in him through the long day. His hands drifted to
her hips. He lifted her easily. Lois wrapped her arms loose
around his neck and darted tender, teasing kisses against his
lips as he carried her the few yards to the little breakfast
nook.

He paused beside the table, taking a moment to kiss her
restlessly. They explored each other lazily for a moment or two,
caressing and stroking...and then Lois tore her mouth free of
his, her head lifting sharply.

Disorientated, Clark emerged from the haze of heat and desire
that the soft feel of her curves pressed tight against him had
risen in him and looked down at her, puzzled. It didn't occur to
him, but he was experiencing something that Lois had had to
endure often - the sudden, sharp switch of attention from a
partner distracted by the outside world and no longer held in
thrall by the pleasurable caresses of their lover.

Her eyes, which had drifted closed, snapped wide. "Ohmigosh -
Clark! The pasta!"

His own eyes widened as his senses cut away from studying her and
caught a whiff of what she had just seconds before him. The acrid
billow of smoke filled the air. He dropped Lois unceremoniously -
though gently - to the padded bench beside the table and made a
super dash for the stove.

He snatched the pot from the flame and twisted the dial to off,
then stared down into the molten sludge bubbling sluggishly
within. He sighed.

The sound of Lois gulping for breath snapped his attention away
and onto his wife. His anxious glance turned to resignation as he
saw she was doubled over, arms wrapped tight around her ribs and
faint, whooping breaths hitching in her throat through
uncontrollable laughter.

"Lo-is..." he reproved with another sigh.

Lois shook her head, her eyes sparkling with a laughter all of
their own, and waved a hand at him helplessly, trying to explain
without much success.

Clark followed the wave of that hand downward and his own lips
twitched as he took note of his state of dishabille, clothing
disarranged, visibly aroused...and the pot of smoking one time
pasta in his hand.

Lois collapsed against the table, shoulders shaking as she buried
her head against folded arms.

"It's not funny," Clark said, trying not to laugh himself now and
attempting a stern expression.

If anything, his wife's giggles got wilder. Clark dumped the pot
to the far side of the stove, straightened his clothing and
buckled up, then strode for her determinedly.

Lois lifted her head as he pulled her back into his arms and
hefted her lightly against his chest. Her eyes, shining with
merriment, looked into his as she quivered delightfully in his
embrace.

"Gonna...gonna...use the...patented Clark Kent method...for
stopping a fit of...the giggles an'...kiss me...again?" she
challenged, breaking up between the words as they emerged in
gasps for breath.

"I'm gonna do more'n that! With a fit of the giggles as bad as
you got, looks like you need the patented method phase two,"
Clark promised, carrying her into the living room, and she
squealed, delighted, as he headed for the stairs.

***

Jimmy paused in the doorway of Room 221. In contrast to the
bright, sterile lighting of the corridor, it was draped in
shadows, with only the small, lambent pool of light from the lamp
on the nightstand, relieving the blackness.

"Relation?"

He jumped and turned towards the owner of the brisk voice.

"Uh..." He glanced into the room again. "No...no, just a...a
friend."

The dark-haired matronly figure of the station nurse smiled
wickedly at him. The oblong plastic pin on her breast announced
her as 'Marion Hollander, RN'. "Boyfriend, I suspect, huh?"

"Uh, well -- "

"Well now, isn't that just fine? You go on in, lad. She's asleep
right now, of course, but why don't you take a seat? What pretty
flowers!" she added, looking at the bouquet of carnations he was
carrying.

Jimmy blushed.

She bustled into the room, leaning over the bed to take a quick
look at the sleeping figure and then gave him another bright
smile as she pulled across one of the chairs set against the
wall. She patted its back in invitation and put a conspiratorial
finger to her lips in a shushing motion.

"Uh," Jimmy backed up a step or two. "You know, maybe I should
just -- "

"Nonsense!" She advanced on him and steered him relentlessly for
the chair with a firm grip on his arm. "Now, you just sit right
down there. I'm sure she'll wake up in just a few moments. And
she'll be ever so pleased to see you, I'm sure."

"Will she?" Jimmy ventured, doubtfully. He took a quick glance at
the bed. Leanore was all but invisible, burrowed into the covers,
with only the thick spill of her dark hair spread across them to
show there was anything human in there at all.

"Why don't I put these in some water for you?" Nurse Hollander
said, taking the bouquet from him. "Though, it's a shame to throw
these out," she went on, crossing to the nightstand and removing
the bunch of mixed flowers from the vase. "Did you give her these
too?" She set them aside and replaced them with the carnations,
arranging them briefly and then stepping back with a satisfied
nod.

"Uh, no. No." He shook his head, clutching the box of candy he'd
brought in nervous hands.

"Oh. Oh, well. I dare say she'll be pleased with these anyway.
Since they're from you."

Jimmy could almost have sworn she winked at him as she bustled
off. A suspicion that was confirmed as she cast a roughish glance
at him across her shoulder. "Now, don't you two be getting up to
nothing energetic in here on your own, you hear? She'll not be up
to that sort of thing for a while yet."

She closed the door behind her with this advice.

Jimmy closed his eyes with a small groan. He was feeling very
warm, all at once.

Despite Nurse Hollander's assertion, Leanore continued to sleep
peacefully for the next twenty minutes. Jimmy rapidly grew bored.
He shifted in the uncomfortable chair and jerked his head up with
a start as he found his chin had a tendency to gravitate towards
his chest. He yawned.

"Who the hell are you?"

He woke with a start as that annoyed voice startled him out of a
dream where he and Leanore had been enjoying a picnic on the
beach at her favorite nudist colony.

"Huh?" He blinked up myopically at the figure standing in the
doorway. "What?"

"I said, who the hell are you?" The figure resolved itself into a
rather burly young man, about a year or so older than him. The
guy had muscles on muscles, Jimmy saw with a sinking stomach as
he also caught the ferocious scowl that this newcomer was
currently favoring him with.

"Uh, I don't know - " Jimmy rose to his feet. He indicated the
bed. "I just came to visit - "

"Oh! You did?" The newcomer's eyes dropped to take in the box of
candy Jimmy was clutching at his lap and then drifted around the
room. A scowl formed. "Where's my flowers?"

"Um -- " Jimmy's gaze followed his to the vase. "Those are mine,"
he confessed.

"You brought her flowers? Okay, fella." He stepped forward,
belligerently. "You wanna tell me just what the hell you're doing
buying flowers an' candy an' *visiting* my fiancee?"

"Your - ?" Jimmy squeaked. He took another glance for the bed and
then raised defensive hands. "Now, wait a minute, she didn't say
nothing about having a fiance! I mean I'm not really involved
here. Uh, that is, we only went out a coupla - well we didn't
really go out at all, as a matter of fact - " he amended hastily
as the scowling face darkened still further. "Look, there's
obviously been a mistake here."

"Damn right. And it's gonna get sorted." The belligerent fiance
took another step for him, hands fisting at his sides.

"Now, lookÖ" Jimmy backed off rapidly, and almost fell over the
chair directly behind him. "Can't we just talk about -- "

"Wass goin' on?" a sleepy voice broke in. "Alan?"

They turned their heads towards the bed, whose occupant was now
sitting upright, clutching the covers to her and staring at them
blearily as she ran a hand through mussed brown hair.

Jimmy found himself staring at a stranger.

And then the lights went out.

***

Lois, dressed in loose peach satin lounging pajamas and matching
robe, paused as she reached the bottom of the stairs. She ran a
hand through her hair and smiled dreamily as she glanced at the
kitchen doors, then sighed softly, before she yawned and headed
for them.

She sniffed appreciatively of the warm, tantalizing scents as she
entered the room. Clark looked up from the pan he was stirring
and smiled at her. "Hey, honey. Have a good nap?"

Lois nodded. "Mmmmmmm."

Clark put an arm around her waist as she stretched up to kiss his
cheek and then went back to the stirring she'd interrupted as she
set her cheek against his shoulder and watched, lazily.

"You saved it," she said, surprised. "How'd you do that? Heat
vision? Or did you try cooling it a little first? How'd you stop
it drying out? Do you have some kind of super-power I haven't
figured out yet?"

Clark looked sheepish. "Actually," he said, "I started from
scratch and threw the last lot in the trash. It was pretty much
irredeemable."

Lois sighed. "Oh. Well, there go my illusions. I thought you'd
just been extra clever."

"Cooking pasta and special sauce twice in one evening in less
than five minutes isn't pretty smart?" Clark asked her, mock
offended.

"Well...I guess."

"Not to mention all the other...activities I managed in between
times," he added, somewhat smugly, his wife thought. "I thought I
was pretty smart in those areas too." He gave her a sideways grin
and then chuckled as a soft flush of color tinted her cheeks. He
took an appraising glance across her soft curves, shrouded in
peach satin, and smiled as he pulled her close against him. He
ran one long finger to follow the neckline of her pajamas.

"Have I ever told you how good this color looks on you?" he
murmured, his eyes contrasting the peach against the warm, honey
glow of her skin.

Lois smiled. "I think you might have mentioned it. Once or
twice."

He smiled too. His hand paused and then lifted to grasp the nape
of her neck lightly, tipping back her head to allow him access to
her lips.

Lois enjoyed the slow, languid kiss, but when his hands began to
wander softly she shook her head and pushed against his chest
until he released her.

"Hey, enough already!" She laughed, looking up into his abashed
eyes as he withdrew his hands. "I'm not missing out on dinner a
second time," she warned.

"Okay, okay." He held up surrendering hands and sighed, mock
devastated.

"Do you know how much our grocery bills have skyrocketed, since
we got married?" Lois complained lightly now with a smile as she
crossed to the other counter. She removed a stick of French bread
from the basket it found a home in. "The amount of food we've had
to throw in the trash because it burned while we were...otherwise
engaged...could feed an entire Third World nation."

She glanced across her shoulder and then, catching the look of
chagrined apology in his eyes, came back, cradling the bread
against her. She reached up to pat at his shoulder consolingly as
she put the bread on the counter and searched for a knife.

"Not that I'm complaining," she added, as she cut the bread into
rounds and dropped them in an oval wicker basket. She looked
around at him and smiled, reaching a hand to his cheek and
planting a kiss against his lips. "It's kind of nice how...eager
you are. It makes me feel...wanted. Secure."

"Really?" He was watching her curiously now and she nodded.

"Uh-huh." She directed a grin at him. "Makes me feel sexy too."

He gave her a sloppy grin back. "It does?"

"Mmmmmm-hmmmm." She bumped up against him slyly, nudging him with
her hip. "To know that I drive you insane with desire," she said,
in a dramatic, bodice- ripper sort of way. "Wild with passion. To
know that you just can't get enough of me. That you want me night
and day...and night and day...and - "

He grabbed her around the waist with a growl. "You got that
right!"

Lois shrieked, squirming to get free. He wrapped her tighter and
she stopped struggling in favor of hooking her arms around his
neck and kissing him.

"That's pretty heady stuff," she said after a moment, looking up
at him solemnly. "For any woman. I think the sauce is burning,"
she added calmly, as he looked down at her, a soft, tender glow
beginning to burn low in his eyes.

"Huh? Oh!" He went back to stirring, but he kept an arm hooked
loose around her waist, holding her against his side.

Lois took another taste of the sauce as he checked and then added
a little more water to the pasta. She gave the pan another brisk
stir. There was a small silence. Then, she said, wistfully, "Will
this be ready soon?"

Clark chuckled ruefully and let her go, giving her an
affectionate swat against the hip as he moved aside. "Go," he
ordered. "You can pour us out some wine, if you like. Give me
five seconds. I'll be right there. And don't touch those
reports!" he raised his voice as she vanished into the dining
room.

"You know I forgot to ask," she yelled back. "Did you get a
chance to phone the insurance people today?"

Clark paused in the act of draining the pasta. "Ah," he said.

There was a moment's silence. Then Lois came back through the
doors, carrying the opened bottle of wine and with a newly
suspicious look on her face. "Ah?"

"Yeah. Well, you see, the thing is..." He seemed suddenly
engrossed in what he was doing. Very engrossed. "They...uh, they
already delivered. This afternoon, actually."

"Already?" She turned around in the doorway, clutching the bottle
against her. "Really? I didn't see it when I came in..." She
walked across to the living room window and peered out into the
darkness. "Clark? I can't see it. In fact," she added dryly, "I
can't see anything. There's nothing out there. Well, except for
that tatty old Ford Taurus with the dented fender. You know I
noticed that when I came in. Have you seen it? Wonder who it
belongs to? Has to be someone lacking a few taste cells in the
brain. Burnt ochre? Who, in their right mind, would paint a car
burnt - "

She froze. Then she turned, wide-eyed, to where Clark was
watching her warily from the kitchen doorway.

"You've got to be kidding."

"Honey - "

"This is a gag. Right? Any moment now we're gonna be guesting on
'America's Funniest Home Videos'."

"Uh, well -- not as far as I know."

She stared at him. "That...heap of *tin* out there is *our*
rental car?" she hissed.

"Well..." Clark considered asking her to put down the bottle
before he answered that one. Then he drew in a hard breath and
gave her a sudden, wide and bright smile. The widest and
brightest he could muster. "Yeah!" he agreed.

It was his happy smile. The one that said, 'Yeah - it's ours!
Isn't that just great?! Aren't we lucky?!'

Lois fixed him with a grim stare until he stopped it. Then, she
glanced across her shoulder and back again. "Are you sure?" she
asked, half-hopefully

"They left the registration documents and the keys in an envelope
in the mailbox. I picked them up when I got in."

"Well...maybe they made a mistake. Maybe they delivered them to
the wrong address."

"They had our name on the envelope...and the papers...and the key
tab. I don't think it's a mistake."

Her eyes hardened. Then, without another word, she dumped the
wine bottle to the ledge of the window and marched across the
living room.

"No, Lois - !" He hurried after her and plucked the telephone
receiver smartly >from her as she began to dial. He raised a
soothing hand. "Now, honey, calm down..."

"Give me the phone, Clark."

"I already called them. I just got their message service." He put
down the receiver firmly.

"Did you *leave* a message?" she demanded, managing to insinuate
that, even if he had, it undoubtedly wasn't the message *she'd*
been about to give them.

"Yes. But I'll get back on to them first thing too." He took her
by the shoulders and steered her purposefully for the dining
room. "Okay?"

Lois narrowed her eyes on him. "First thing?"

"I swear."

She paused. "Well...okay then."

"Good. And we're not going to mention it for the rest of the
evening," he insisted. "Right?"

Lois sighed. "Fine."

"Okay. Good."

"*But*...if they *think* I'm going to drive around in that -- "

"Lo-is...!"

She gave him a mulish glance and then shimmied out of his grasp
and went to retrieve the wine.

***

"Well, if the answer's in here...I can't find it."

Clark finished skimming through the preliminary pathology report
on Ginny Bolt with that disgusted verdict and dropped it back to
the table among the untidy scatter of papers. He rubbed a hard
hand across the back of his neck and glanced sideways. "You?"

Lois shook her head, absorbed in paging through the bundle of
Xeroxed sheets on her lap.

"Great." A soft, frustrated sigh escaped him.

Lois echoed it. "Well, if there is an answer, it's in here.
Somewhere."

"You think?" he said dubiously.

"Definitely."

"Why?"

"Because it has to be?" She gave him a shrug and he sighed
again.

"How about some coffee?" he suggested tiredly.

"Sure."

She put down the sheets as he headed for the kitchen and rose to
her feet, kneading rough fingers at the small of her back and
stretching her spine slightly as she wandered to stand before the
living room window. Folding her arms, she stared out listlessly
into the darkness.

"Okay..." Clark returned with two mugs and offered one up as she
turned around. He reseated himself, having redesigned his mood
into cheerfully determined optimism between kitchen and living
room. He put down his mug and spread his hands across the table,
sorting the papers out in his own mind, thinking aloud. "So, we
know that all of the victims were members of Karvin's Church. And
we know from the checks which Herrera's task force carried out on
their movements in the past week that they *all* attended
Karvin's rally on Sunday evening. All of them, that is," he
corrected himself, ruefully, "except Karen Culver."

He began to sift through the files and reports littering the
table, seemingly in the hope that he might find something they
might just have overlooked the first time.

"You know, if it wasn't for that, I'd have said that the source
of contamination had to be at that rally. It's the only thing
that makes sense. But Karen wasn't there. How did she become
contaminated if she wasn't there?"

"According to Adams," Lois said thoughtfully over the rim of her
mug as she reseated herself beside him, "she'd have had to have
been infected with that contaminant at least forty eight hours
before her death. Maybe more than that." She stretched past him
to pick up the clutch of trace reports. "That's two clear days
before the rally. In fact, she didn't attend any of the rallies.
Maybe she was intending to go later in the week. I don't know.
It's unlikely she'd have missed seeing the Founding Father
himself. Isn't it?"

Clark tilted his head in a gesture of agreement. "About as likely
as Perry missing out on an Elvis revival," he concluded.

"She must have been intending to go. But, anyway," she replaced
the reports with a shake of her head, "it would seem to rule out
the rally as the source." She took another, considering sip of
coffee.

"Which," Clark said, darkly ironic, "is no bad thing. Because, if
it *was* a likely source, I, for one, would have to be getting
*pretty* worried right now."

"Worried? Worried about what? That we might see more cases?"

"No. About the fact that *my* favorite brunette was at that rally
too." He leaned over to kiss her lightly and then smiled, showing
her he wasn't really *that* concerned. Not now that they'd
eliminated the rally as a possibility anyway. "Remember?"

"Oh," Lois said. "Right."

"Right," he agreed, sobering slightly. "So, believe me, Lois, I'm
not that unhappy it's not panning out as a source."

"It has to mean something though. Doesn't it? The fact that all
of these women were there on the same evening?"

"I guess. I don't know. Maybe it is just coincidence." He gave
the littered table a disgusted glance. "This one sure does seem
to have its share."

"'Coincidence is a myth in the minds of the mundane'," Lois
quoted her second year journalism professor back at him, smartly.
"I don't believe in it."

He grimaced. "And, so were a lot of people. At the rally, I mean.
Around fourteen hundred or so, according to Karven's press
office, just on that one evening alone. If it was the source, why
wouldn't more of them have been infected by now? On that night or
on any of the others, for that matter? They must have kept more
or less to the same routine each evening. Anyway, it's about the
only connection we've come up with, so far. I can't see anything
else. Three of them did missionary work for the Church in the
past year. But none of them were based in the same country, or
worked for the same group. Ginny Bolt was in Sierra Leone, Susan
Tavener worked in Malaysia for a local based charity -- "

" - and nine months ago, Emily Riess was in Rwanda," Lois
finished. "Five of them were brown-eyed," she went on,
considering.

"And three of them weren't," Clark countered. "Six of them were
born right here in Metropolis, but none of their lives crossed in
any way that's significant, apart from their involvement in the
UCS. And, even then, there's nothing to suggest they even knew
each other or met arising out of that."

Lois sighed, heavily. "Well, one thing's for sure." She reached
to pick up Karvin's publicity photograph from the UCS file and
stared at it, musingly. "He's behind all of this. I'm sure of it.
Somehow, he is."

Clark had gone back to the Xeroxed sheets he was holding, lost in
his own, black study. Lois glanced up at him, after a moment,
drawn by his silence.

"Clark?"

"Huh?" He lifted his head, then took a look at the photo. "Oh.
Yeah. Well," he put aside the sheets and took it from her, "if he
is, he's not leaving a whole lot behind him for us to prove it
with," he murmured, studying the smiling face of Karvin himself.
"So...maybe we should go digging into his background some?" he
suggested. "Instead of his victims?"

Lois considered it. "I don't know, Clark. I think we know most
everything there is to know about Dale Karvin, Evangelist,
already."

"Dale Karvin, Evangelist, yes. Dale Karvin, the man? I don't
think so. We've got almost nothing on him before the point he
started making a local name for himself, preaching at the Unity
Church in Maine. Before then, he's been pretty elusive. Maybe, if
we search a little further back, we'll find something."

"What - you figure he started his career as a serial killer in
kindergarten?"

He chuckled. "No. At least, I guess not. But," he lifted a dogged
hand, "grasping at straws is always better than grasping at air,
right? And, you know - everyone's got their little secrets,
Lois."

She favored him with a wry look. "Tell me about it."

He grinned back at her and then lifted the photo again,
invitingly, raising an encouraging brow. "Come on," he coaxed, as
she stayed silent. "It's better than sitting here half the night,
trying to match up...toe tags." He waved a frustrated hand across
the table.

Lois sighed. "Okay..." She shrugged and leaned forward abruptly
to drag the computer towards her, enabling it to live up to its
name as she dumped it unceremoniously into his lap. "Let's go
digging!"

For the next few hours, he took her at her word, sending out
feelers via the laptop to every government agency they could
think of which might have crossed the path of Dale Karvin in his
home state, while she scoured the files for every possible source
she could find. Police Departments, Boards of Education, Colleges
and University Faculty Boards, to name but a few. All would have
heard from them by e-mail and fax by morning. They had no real
idea what they were looking for, but they were equally certain
that when it landed on their desks, they'd recognize it. And,
like he'd said, it beat sitting around, blowing smoke.

Finally, he keyed in the last of the faxed requests and pressed
down heavily on the send key. The laptop blinked a brief 'Please
wait' message at him, followed by a confirmation that the fax had
been dispatched. Clark grimaced, stretching slightly to ease
grumbling back muscles, and stifled a yawn as it tried to
overtake him.

"Well, that's about all we can do for now," he said, wearily.
"With the time lag, we probably won't hear anything back till
morning, at least. Why don't we call it a night and -- "

He stopped, becoming aware, all at once, of the unexpected weight
settled against his shoulder. He turned his head and smiled. It
seemed that Lois was way ahead of him; somewhere along the way,
as he'd become engrossed in working on the computer, the day had
taken its toll on her. She was snuggled up against his side, head
resting on his shoulder, fast asleep.

Clark closed down the laptop carefully and placed it cautiously
on the table before him, not of a mind to wake her. Slight as his
movements were though, they were enough to disturb her. She
murmured softly and then opened her eyes. She lifted her head,
yawning deeply.

"Hi," Clark said.

"Hi..." She looked around her, muzzily. "Oh..." She leaned
forward, elbows on knees, to knit her hands at the nape of her
neck, rubbing irritably at the taut muscles under her fingers.
"What time is it?" she mumbled.

"Just after two. Here..." He hitched himself around, displacing
her hands and substituting his own, thumbs digging out the knots
at the top of her spine. After a moment, he directed a low sweep
of heat vision across the taut muscles, warming the tension out
of her further with his heat rub as his hands continued their
soothing kneading at the nape of her neck.

Lois closed her eyes with a soft sigh of appreciation and leaned
back against his chest, resting her head to his shoulder again.
He set soft lips to her temple and then kissed her warmly as she
lifted her head slightly to touch her lips to his. He left off
his massaging of her neck and shoulders and put his arms around
her instead, settling back against the sofa and closing his own
eyes, contentedly.

After a moment or so of companionable silence, he tilted his head
to look down at her and then straightened. He rubbed his hands
encouragingly across her arms, rousing her again.

"Honey, you look beat," he said. "Why don't you turn in? I can
clear up here and -- "

"No. No, I'm okay." She straightened and reached out for the
nearest file. Her eyes had taken on a determined look above the
bluish shadows that darkened their sockets. "Where were we?"

"Lois, it's done." He took the file from her firmly and set it
back down on the table. "I sent off the last fax a couple of
minutes ago."

"Oh," she said.

He reached up to stroke the back of one hand against her cheek.
"Go on." He smiled. "I'll clear up; be right with you."

She seemed about to argue it further, but another yawn overtook
her, deciding the issue. She nodded instead and got to her feet.

"Maybe, I will. I've got a headache anyway."

Clark looked up as she wandered drowsily for the stairs.

"Want some aspirin?" he offered.

She shook her head. "No...just need some sleep," she mumbled.

Though it took Clark mere moments to clear up as he'd promised,
she was already deeply asleep when he came into the bedroom. She
didn't stir as he moved quietly around the room, readying himself
to join her, not even when he eased himself carefully beneath the
covers and leaned over to kiss her softly against one cheek,
before settling himself down beside her and snuggling close. He
wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her gently back
against his chest. He settled his chin into the warm hollow of
her shoulder, surrounded by the familiar scents of her.

He found sleep almost as quickly, letting the steady, familiar
tick of her pulse lull him as had become his habit. It had been a
long day for him too.

***

She was screaming. Screaming as the Jeep ploughed sideways into
the storefront. Glass plumed outwards in a spray, showering Jeep
and sidewalk in a glittering, jagged-edged wash.

Superman stood on the shattered frame of the empty window and
pushed the car clear. He ripped the door aside, hearing it
clatter onto the sidewalk behind him.

Lois was slumped across both seats and he already knew he was too
late as his fingers clenched in the red-smeared shoulder of the
white coat, dragging her upright. Her head lolled loose against
the headrest and her eyes, already filmed over, already dulling,
stared up on him through the bloody mask of her face.

Too late.

But, still, she screamed. She -

Clark jolted upright, dry mouthed, his heart drumming a hard beat
against his ribs, jerked abruptly out of his dream.

A dream in which she'd been slowly drowning as he tried
frantically to save her, her threshing limbs hampered by the
chains which bound her tightly, her mouth filling with dark, lake
water even as she screamed.

Screamed.

A dream in which she'd been falling through clouds, slipping
through his fingers every time he tried to catch hold of her,
until the ground came rushing up to meet them and he knew he was
too late and she screamed.

Screamed.

A dream in which she'd been dead in the twisted hulk of the Jeep,
because he'd put another life above hers. Dead. And screaming
into the dark.

Screaming.

She was still screaming.

With a shocked blink of his eyes that brought him fully awake, he
reached out hastily for the bedside lamp beside him and the room
flooded with light.

The bedclothes lay in a heap against the curved bedstead where
her threshing legs had kicked them. Her nightgown, rumpled around
her thighs, was drenched in sweat, peach satin clinging to the
curve of her breasts and the soft swell of her stomach. Her hair
clung limply to her cheeks and forehead, framing the chalky oval
of her face around eyes that were fixed wide and open, reflecting
stark horror back at him.

Her arms slashed at the air around her, fending off something or
someone unseen. One of those flailing hands struck against the
nightstand at the side of the bed and Clark winced. He leaned
over hastily to grip her wrists, stilling that frantic clawing at
air and pinning them with gentle force to the pillows before she
could hurt herself more seriously than a few bruised knuckles.

When he'd been thirteen and just becoming aware of his strength;
of how much stronger he was than those around him, of the
implications of that advantage and the responsibilities it set
upon him, Clark had made a point of poring over every book on
anatomy he could find. Studying the human body in minute detail,
learning its frailties, its weaknesses, schooling himself on how
fragile a collection of bone and flesh it was.

He knew exactly how much strength he could use on any part of
that body, how much pressure he could safely apply without
marring the skin with even the faintest of bruises, let alone
broken bones. But containing Lois' struggles now tested that
strength to the limit, pushed him to within the barest fraction
of the line he knew he couldn't cross before he managed to subdue
her. She fought him like something possessed.

Or terrified.

"Lois!"

He paused for a moment, straddling her, pinning her down, taking
a moment to gather himself and then shifted his grip, wrapping
his fingers around her upper arms and dragging her up against
him.

"Lois, wake up!"

He shook her once and she gasped, back arching, limbs rigid, like
someone who'd been drowning finally finding air, before she
shuddered, eyes opening to fix on him, blurry and confused.

"Lois? Lois, it's me. It's me, Clark!"

"Clark?"

She blinked and relief flooded into her eyes as panic died. She
threw her arms around his neck, burying her face deep against his
shoulder. Putting his arms around her, spreading a hand against
the damp spill of her hair, he pressed her closer.

"It's okay," he murmured, rocking her gently. "It was a dream.
That's all. Just a dream..."

She relaxed against him with a low sigh and then drew away from
him. He smiled

down at her, though his eyes were concerned. He pushed back hair
from her cheek with a light hand.

"You okay?"

"Fine." She shook her head irritably as she left the bed and
entered the bathroom. He heard her turn on the faucet. The sounds
of water running and vigorous splashing reached him before it was
turned off. There was a moment of silence. It was followed by a
piercing shriek.

"Lois!"

He was in the bathroom barely before that scream faded. He almost
collided with Lois as she barreled through the door in the
opposite direction. She clutched at him wildly, glancing back
across her shoulder as though she was being chased by all the
devils in Hell, and then ducked around him, clinging to his arm.

"Honey - " he protested as she dug a fist into the small of his
back, hitching him on a step.

"Get rid of it!" she hissed.

"What?" He glanced around the door into the bathroom. He didn't
know what he expected to see, but whatever it was, it wasn't
there. The room was entirely empty, but for the two of them.
"What?" he said again, mystified.

"There!" She threw out a quivering finger. He followed its route.
And saw nothing. The towel she'd been using to dry her face and
hands lay in a fluffy heap on the tiles beneath the sink. And
beside it...

He lifted a sharp brow. "That?" he said, glancing at her in
surprise before he looked back at the spider clinging to the side
of the bath: just a common or garden spider, barely the length of
his thumbnail.

Lois gave him a quick glare and squeaked as the spider began to
move in a slow crawl for the floor. "Get rid of it!" Her nails
dug at his arm. "Please, Clark!" There was a threat of tears in
that plea.

He gave her a dubious glance, certain, for a moment, that this
was some kind of joke she was playing on him. But the panic he
saw in her eyes was real. He freed himself from her and hunkered
down to scoop the offending creature into one palm, closing the
other over it to trap it as he straightened. As he passed her in
the doorway, Lois almost backed herself straight through the wall
behind her in an effort to get out of his way.

"Don't drop it!" she blurted as she followed at a safe distance.
Which seemed to be at least ten paces, no closer.

"I won't," he soothed her. "I got it," he added as she drew in a
ragged breath. "Stay here. I'll let it go on the terrace."

When he returned she was standing where he'd left her: rigid,
eyes hopeful and expectant.

"You didn't lose it?"

He shook his head.

"It's gone?"

"Yes. Okay? Hey..." He frowned, concerned, as he crossed the room
to put a reassuring hand to her shoulder and realized she was
shaking. "It really scared you," he said, utterly bemused by her
reaction.

She flushed. "It startled me, that's all," she denied. "It was in
the towel. I almost put my hand right on..." She shuddered and he
tightened his grip on her, kissed the top of her head lightly.

"Well, it's gone now. Come on." He guided her firmly for the bed.
"It's almost six thirty; we'll have to get up soon as it is.
Let's just relax. Calm down. I don't know about you, but two
scares per night is just about my limit."

Lois smiled at him, though distractedly, as she got into the bed
obediently and rearranged the displaced covers. Clark settled
himself back against the pillows beside her and gathered her
against his side. She pillowed her cheek on one hand spread
against his chest as he stroked a soft hand through her hair.

"Better?"

She murmured an agreement.

"I never knew they bothered you," he ventured after a moment or
two, still disquieted by the strength of her reaction.

"It caught me by surprise, that's all. I guess I was pretty
spooked anyway, before I even saw it."

He let that soak in. "Must have been some dream."

"Must have been." She shivered suddenly. "I...can't remember. I
remember...I was trying to get out of a dark place
and...someone...was pushing me back in, wouldn't let me out and I
was so...*afraid*. So -- "

Clark could feel her tensing under his hands again as she spoke
and he shifted, startling her into silence as he eased himself to
one elbow to loom over her. She raised her head to accommodate
him as he kissed her firmly. She slipped an arm around his neck
to hold him close, molding herself to the strong contours of his
body.

"Forget about it," he told her as he drew back slightly to look
into her eyes.

"Make me." She smiled a challenge and kissed him again.

His hands wandered her curves tenderly, heating her in a moment
as he rolled her beneath him, eager to oblige.

And, for a time, he succeeded.

And, for a time, it was.

But, later, staring at the ceiling as the dawn-light slowly
brightened the room, listening to her soft, even breathing beside
him, he thought about that 'someone' again. Someone, she'd said.
But there was that hesitation. And the way she hadn't looked at
him when she'd said it.

*Someone*.

But he was sure, though he couldn't say how, that it had been him
she'd meant.

*He'd* been hurting her.

He'd been blocking her escape.

She'd been afraid of *him*.

Beside him, Lois shifted restlessly, breaking his thoughts. Brows
drawn into a fretful line, she whimpered softly. He reached to
gather her back into his arms, settling her close against his
chest. In the midst of whatever dream had found her, Lois
burrowed closer, blindly seeking sanctuary in his embrace, her
small cries muffled against his chest. Clark smoothed slow
fingers across her cheek and murmured soothing nonsense until she
settled once more, before putting his cheek against her hair and
closing his eyes.

And, finally, he too found sleep.

***

The light in the room had shifted subtly when he opened his eyes
again. Clark rolled over onto his side and found himself alone,
the sheets beside him cool and holding no trace of warmth. He
pulled himself to rest on one elbow with a quick glance at the
clock on the nightstand. Habit, since his internal clock - more
accurate besides to a degree - was already informing him that it
was eight twenty three.

He turned over, expecting to hear that Lois was already well into
her usual morning routine and knowing that he'd have to use every
ounce of superspeed he possessed to catch up if they didn't want
to arrive at work late. But there was no sound of the shower
running and he paused as he caught sight of Lois standing before
the small window, lit by the early morning light streaming into
the room. Her eyes were distant and lost as she stared out
through the glass.

"Lois?"

When he got no response, he pushed aside the bedcovers and
climbed from the bed to pad across the floor.

"Honey?"

Lois started violently, a soft gasp escaping her as his hands
closed gently on her shoulders. He chuckled, running his hands
along her arms and then entwining them around her waist to pull
her back against him, as he bent his head to press warm lips to
the hollow of her shoulder.

"Sorry." He traced the line of her throat, the murmuring route of
her pulse, beating strong and fast. Very fast. And growing
faster. "I called you. You were miles away." It became a question
and she answered it with a slow shrug.

"I was thinking about Dale Karvin."

Clark paused in his ministrations. He lifted his head to give her
a sideways glance, before he laid his cheek to hers with a faint
smile. "Honey, it is kind of traditional for a wife to think
about her *husband* in the bedroom..."

She turned in his arms to stare up at him, her answering smile
teasing. Her hands against his chest, pressed flat between their
bodies, felt cold to him. Clearly, he thought with a flicker of
concern, she'd been up and staring through that window for some
time. So deep in thought, she hadn't noticed how chilled she'd
become.

"Jealous?" Lois asked him, innocently.

"Oh..." He schooled his face to solemnity. "Absolutely." He
kissed her.

"Completely." He kissed her again.

"Maddeningly." This time he forgot to pause, words forgotten,
teasing forgotten, as desire overcame him.

Lois gave herself over to the moment's pleasure as eagerly as he
did, clinging to him with soft murmurs.

"Good..." she said, breathlessly, when, at last, his lips left
hers. She ran a coy finger across his chest. "I mean we have been
married for...oh, months now. I wouldn't want you getting
bored."

"Uh-uh..." He shook his head, shifting his grip to settle her
companionably against his chest, fingers netted at the base of
her spine to cradle her close.

Lois regarded him, quizzically. "So...?"

"So..." he repeated, uncertain what she wanted an answer to.

She grinned, hitching herself closer. "*So*...you want to prove
to me you're not bored?"

"Oh..."

A sharp burr stopped his lips inches shy of hers.

Lois groaned and he gave her a commiserating glance before he
reached around her to pick up the phone.

"Hello? Oh, hey, Jimmy."

Lois snuggled up against his side, the better to eavesdrop. He
slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her closer as he
continued the conversation. Absent though his attention was,
distracted elsewhere as Jimmy continued to jabber in his ear, he
was never completely shut off from her. The scent of her skin,
the warmth of her body, continued to fill his senses as air
filled his lungs: as natural and as necessary. That unique
collection of breath and scent and pulsing heart that meant
everything to him.

"Okay, thanks, Jimmy, we'll get right on it."

Lois looked up on him enquiringly as he hung up, noting the new
grimness that had taken over his expression and feeling a dark,
unwelcome sense of premonition take hold of her. "Did Jimmy say
Herrera?"

"Yeah." He kissed her absently, before easing himself clear of
her and moving across the room to pull back the closet doors, his
mood newly purposeful. "He left a message at the paper. Looks
like there's been another one."

***

Morning rush hour at the junction of East and Third, downtown
Metropolis.

Usually, a gridlock of wall to wall traffic, commuters heading
for offices and factories, mothers on school runs, kids on their
way to class. A hustle of humanity, intent on getting where they
were going and getting there fast.

Now, it was the forlorn aftermath to one moment of madness.

Police cordons held back the curious and yellow tape blocked the
street, from either end, across a block-wide radius. Within that
rectangle of empty street, carnage lay in twisted ruins and blood
soaked pavements. More than half a dozen cars lay scattered like
the abandoned toys of a destructive child. Two had been burnt
out. The rest were barely recognizable remnants of torn metal and
shattered glass. Empty now, they stood like solemn grave markers
as figures in the bright plastic jackets of the accident
investigators wove their way between them. The immediacy of their
work over with, they now set about their own post-mortem, piecing
together evidence and clues, in much the same way as the Medical
Examiner would puzzle out the owners of those vehicles at a later
time.

The scene held an unwelcome familiarity for Clark as he surveyed
the mess of twisted vehicles. It instilled a coldness in him that
prompted him to glance around uneasily, searching for Lois. And
to feel an illogical wash of relief when he found her, safe, on
the other side of the street, notepad in hand as she jotted down
whatever the cop she was with was telling her.

As though aware of his attention, she lifted her head to glance
across at him and then wound up the conversation with a brief nod
of thanks at the man, before crossing back to his side.

"You okay?" she asked, watching him intently. "You look like you
saw a ghost."

"Yeah. I'm okay. It's just - " He lifted a helpless hand to cover
the street, shaking his head.

Lois nodded. "It's a mess, isn't it?" she said, looking around.
"Our traffic cop friend over there says it's the worst case of
road rage he's ever seen."

"Road rage?"

"Suzanne Hallier. He stopped her for a ticket, at the bus lane
there." She indicated the spot, a few hundred yards further along
the street, with her pen. "He'd been trailing her for a couple of
blocks; picked her up coming off the airport sub-route. She was
driving fairly erratically, which was what attracted his
attention at first. Then she jumped a stoplight at the
intersection. Said she was madder than a cat with its tail caught
in a door when he pulled her over. She gave him some abuse and
then took off. Drove down here at something just over 95 mph,
right in the middle of the morning rush. I guess it was a miracle
she didn't take out more of them before she hit that lamppost. As
it is -- "

"We've got three dead and another two who don't look likely to
make it past nightfall," said Clark, grimly.

He felt his wife's hand come down lightly against his arm. "This
wasn't your fault, Clark," she said softly.

Clark shook his head slightly, but he didn't answer. Although
neither had spoken it aloud, he knew her thoughts had been
precisely where his had in the moment they'd arrived on the scene
and saw the aftermath of this carnage.

It had happened at seven oh six.

At seven oh six, he had been making love to his wife.

At seven oh six, he'd been listening to her soft exhortations and
whispered cries of heat and passion.

And the cries of pain and terror, the pleas for help, the screams
of the people now dead, had gone unheard.

"I spoke to a couple of the other drivers too," Lois went on
huskily after a moment, the slight squeeze of her fingers against
his sleeve her only acknowledgement of his silence. "They all say
the same thing. That it looked like she was aiming to take out as
many of them as she could. If she hadn't clipped that last car in
passing and spun off, she might just have done it too."

Almost reflexively, with the words, her eyes rested on the bright
yellow school bus which was parked at a skewed angle on the edge
of the street, mercifully, unscathed. Clark's followed, then came
back to her.

"They take Suzanne to the Morgue?"

"No. They took her to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. She's alive,
Clark. Or, at least, she was half an hour ago, when they finally
cut her clear."

His gaze had returned to the burned out vehicles and she saw the
haunted look take over his face.

"Clark?" she said gently. She tugged lightly at his sleeve,
gaining his attention, pulling him back from where he'd
retreated, leaving her behind.

He turned his head and Lois felt a small, sharp quiver of pain
run through her heart in response to the bleak guilt in his
eyes.

"I should have - " he started and she shook her head, put up her
hand to place it against his lips before he could complete the
thought.

"No. You can't always be there for me and you can't always be
there for them," she told him firmly. She put her hands up,
taking hold of his face and preventing him >from turning away,
keeping his gaze locked on hers, pierced by the sudden fierceness
in her eyes. "Clark, you can't feel guilty for giving yourself a
life, for letting yourself be happy. You just can't. You do what
you can. For all of us, for everyone. Don't beat yourself up
whenever your life and what the rest of Metropolis needs you to
give them come into conflict. If you do, you'll tear yourself
apart." She paused then whispered, "You'll tear us apart."

"Lois - "

"Please, Clark," she pleaded softly. "Don't tell me that all you
remember about being with me this morning is guilt. Don't tell me
that you regret holding me in your arms and making love with me.
Don't. You think I could stand to know you think of me, of what
we have, of all the moments we have together, as just something
that gets in the way of you being...who you are? Something that
makes you feel guilt and regret? That you wish wasn't there to
prevent you saving those people and keeping them alive?"

He was silent a moment longer and then he shook his head slightly
and pulled her into his swift embrace, hugging her tight against
his chest as he buried his face in her hair and closed his eyes.

"How could I?" he whispered after a moment. "I could never regret
one moment spent with you, Lois. Not one. Don't ever think that I
would."

She held him tight, letting him soothe himself in her and then
gently drew herself away, before they could begin to attract too
much attention from the people around them. She knew he hadn't
truly taken her words to heart, but she also knew that he would.
He would fret on this, brood on it, obsess over it until her
heart bled tears for him...but eventually he would put it into
perspective and he would let it go. It was the only way he knew
how to survive. How to go on.

"Come on." She tapped him against the arm with the notepad and
then turned smartly on her heel. "We've got a story to track
down," she told him firmly over her shoulder. The only way *she*
knew how to survive.

And go on.

Clark hesitated, taking one more last glance around the
devastation of the street, and then followed as she ducked
beneath the line of police tape. He caught up with her as she
turned the corner at the end of the block. She stopped with a
jolt. He followed her gaze and was provoked into holding back a
small smile, despite his grim mood.

"You want me to drive?" he offered.

Lois stiffened her shoulders into a tight line. "No, I can drive
just fine," she said, carefully off-hand. Despite the casual
words though, she had an air about her of someone bracing
themselves for a distasteful task as she marched for the Taurus,
mumbling under her breath.

It sounded to Clark like an exhortation. The words 'car thief'
and 'never around when you want one' seemed to figure
prominently. She glanced up at him with a scowl as he walked
around to the Taurus' other side. He shrugged.

"You know, we could have left this back at the house and -- "

" -- spent the entire day riding around in cabs and subways
again." Lois opened the driver's door and slid behind the wheel.
She reached across the seats and unlocked the passenger door for
him. "Which is pretty dumb when we've got a...car of our own,"
she added as he got in. The hesitation was slight and her tone
soured only marginally on the designation.

She jammed the key into the ignition, twisting it sharply. She
might just have flinched as the Taurus' engine roared choppily
into life. She put her foot to the gas and eased her way into the
downtown traffic. Her fingers tightened, just a little, on the
wheel as that roar settled into a broken snarl, interrupted
occasionally by a faint cough. She turned right onto Central
Boulevard.

"Aren't we heading for the hospital?" Clark asked, looking across
his shoulder at the intersection not taken and left behind them.

She shook her head. "Suzanne Hallier isn't gonna give us any
better a story than Mary-Ann did. That's if she can talk to us at
all."

"So...where are we headed?" he asked a moment later, as it became
clear that she wasn't making for the Planet.

"S.T.A.R. Labs. I think it's about time we talked to Klein."

"You sure that's a good idea?" he said, dubiously. "We only faxed
that stuff through yesterday. He might not even have read through
it yet, never mind found out anything we can use. Besides, maybe
it'd be just a little more...polite...to wait for him to call us?
We're not all he has to think about, you know?" he chided her
lightly. "He does have other work to do."

"Polite doesn't get you stories, Clark. If he hasn't read the
file by now, we'll just have to stick around while he does." Lois
gave him a tight look. "I'm getting tired of fumbling around in
the dark. It's about time we knew what we were dealing with. And,
one way or another, Klein's going to tell us what we want to
know. Suzanne Hallier's going to be the last of them," she
promised him, grimly. "Or I'm hanging up my press pass."

***

"Actually, it turned out to be even more useful than the original
time lapse experiment." Klein waved down Clark's commiseration
over the previous day's upset with a dismissive hand. "The data
we generated! It'll take us months to calculate it all."

"Oh. Well, that's good," Clark ventured politely. "Thanks for
setting aside the research to help us out on this; we know how
busy you must be and -- "

"Oh, no trouble at all! I've passed that over to the lab. I was
just cross- breeding pollinated African mirk-seed pods to pass
the time." Klein lowered his voice. "Rampant little devils. But
they only get around to mating once a year and even then it takes
them about six months to get the mechanics right. Believe me, you
want thrills and excitement, you'd be better off renting a
video."

Lois nodded solemnly. "Uh-huh."

"Besides," he grinned up at them as he seated himself behind his
lab desk, "you two always bring me such interesting problems to
chew on. You and Superman, of course, that is." He spread his
hands. "Always delighted to help."

"And...you've been chewing on this one?" Clark asked, hopefully.

"Ah. Yes, indeed. *Extremely* interesting. I started with those
elevated adrenaline levels. Could mean anything of course, not
much help there. But..." he swung his chair around to face his
computer screen and began to tap vigorously at the keyboard,
"...if you'll bear with me just a moment...this virulent chemical
compound of yours took things in an intriguing direction..."

Lois tried to lean far enough forward to view the screen over his
shoulder. The angle was awkward though. Clark reached out
abruptly to snag her by one arm, steadying her just as she was in
danger of knocking over several of the test tubes arranged on the
table edge. She gave him an abashed glance and straightened up
again, disappointed and holding her impatience in check with an
obvious and not entirely successful effort.

"Well?" she demanded, after a moment.

"Hmmmm? Oh. Yes. Well, TDR, that's just a standard, common or
garden defoliant. It's used widely throughout the industrial
base. Not only here in the US, but in Europe and many parts of
Asia too."

"We know that," Lois told him, impatience growing.

"Didn't you get our fax updating you on that?" Clark asked. "It's
not TDR at all, it's -- "

"Compound 21. Yes, I know."

"Compound 21?"

"What's Compound 21?" Clark echoed his partner's suddenly
interested tone.

"Something much less clean than any weedkiller currently on the
market and much more interesting besides. TDR is a researched
'clean' third generation offshoot of the original C21 compound.
Which is why it was easy enough for the ME's office to
misdiagnose in the first place. Naturally, they share
characteristics. And with C21 supposedly out of circulation,
diagnosing it or an outbreak of SPS was ludicrous. Like putting
down bubonic plague or smallpox as the cause of death. Quite
impossible. Hasn't been seen once in over twenty years. Once I'd
gotten access to the classified files, though, I was able to
backtrack TDR's pedigree to C21 and Siang Pheung. Very nasty -
ah, here we are," he paused as the screen bleeped at him softly
and began to fill with scrolling information. "Now, would you
look at that? Incredible. Quite incredible." He shook his head
slowly, obviously impressed.

"Uh, Dr. Klein?" Clark said and, as Klein looked up on him,
startled out of his musing, "SPS?"

"What? Oh! Of course. Siang Pheung Syndrome. Now, *that* is
interesting! It's undoubtedly what these women of yours died
from, a by-product of C21 contamination. Of course, C21 is just
an affixed prefix code, given it by the military. Its true
scientific genealogy is -- "

"Uh, why don't we just stick to C21 for now?" Clark told him
hastily.

Klein looked disappointed. Then he sighed. "Right. Single
syllable explanation?"

Clark gave him a fixed smile. "If you don't mind."

Klein sighed again. "Okay," he said, twisting around in his chair
to face them. "C21 was originally developed for use in the
Vietnam conflict. Its efficiency, in that respect, was well
enough documented; it did the task reasonably well. It wasn't
until it had been used in the field for a time that the military
realized they had a problem with it. A rather nasty problem.
About six months after it had been introduced, a routine patrol
went missing in an area of forest close to a small village called
Siang Pheung. When rescue patrols finally discovered the bodies,
their first assumption was that the men had been caught in an
ambush. The bodies were pretty much torn up. But the evidence
didn't support the theory. Pathology on the bodies made it clear
that their wounds were, largely, self-inflicted. It was an
unusual enough incident to attract the attention of the military
scientists, of course. Or, at least, of one particular section of
the military in particular."

"Bureau 39," said Clark, softly.

"Yes. They had the bodies shipped back to the US for intensive
study."

"And they found?"

"That seepage of C21 was a commonality in all cases. Seepage
occurs with most defoliants, of course, but this was something
much more insidious. Their conclusion was that, in large enough
quantities and, in conjunction with certain, other factors, C21
residue promotes extraordinarily high levels of adrenaline in the
human body through emotional stimuli - fear, anger, paranoia -
some of the men in that lost patrol showed adrenaline levels
which were off the scale."

"But Adams told us that the traces of TDR - of C21 - weren't
enough to account for the adrenaline rise," Lois said, testily.

"And, normally, he'd have been right. Tap into the blood count of
any city resident and you'll find a whole cocktail of chemical
contaminants. Most of them are well within EPA safe limits. But,
in *this* instance, the presence of C21 changes everything. Those
trace results of C21 are entirely consistent with SPS
contamination. Large quantities of C21 produce increased
adrenaline production, as I've said. And in turn, the mix of C21
and adrenaline produces a chemical transformation, unique to SPS.
The adrenaline somehow changes the structure of C21 itself, in
ways that were never fully understood, or, at least, never fully
documented, by Trask's clinicians. It reduces it to harmless
blood oxygenates. Leaving behind nothing more than a trace in the
host body, after death."

"So, the fact that C21 is present at all," Clark said slowly,
"combined with the high adrenaline levels, would mean -- "

" - that C21 was originally present in these victims in massive
amounts, prior to death, yes."

"What other factors?" Clark asked thoughtfully. "You said, 'in
conjunction with other factors'," he reminded the scientist as
Klein looked blankly back at him.

"Oh, right. Yes, well, the truth is that the Bureau's data is
pretty ropy on the subject. Appallingly ill-conceived lab
results; little wonder they couldn't reach any satisfactory
conclusions. Typical military thinking, of course, flawed from
the outset and -- " Klein paused as he caught the spark of
exasperation blossoming in Lois' eyes, cleared his throat heavily
and continued, "Well, like I say, their work was inconclusive.
But, the truth is that C21 is nothing more than a catalyst.
Although a powerful one, I'll grant you."

"A catalyst? Working with what?"

"That," Klein told him solemnly, "is the six million dollar
question."

Clark raised a brow at him. "Can you find us a six million dollar
answer?"

"I can work on it. The small victim base is a problem, of course,
hard to establish a true pattern on such a small sample. The data
could be off by a substantial curve."

"Tell us about it," murmured Clark wryly.

"But we do have some basis to work from. I'll get on it. Of
course, I could do with a sample of C21 to compare forensics
with, but that's likely to take time. It was officially taken out
of circulation after Siang Pheung. Except for the limited stocks
retained in a few government licensed labs, of course."

"Why of course?" Lois said. "With something this unpredictable -
"

" - and useful, don't forget. You know these army types. Always
looking to kill something."

They let that soak in.

"You said the information on C21 was classified," Lois said,
after a moment. "Classified by who? Trask?"

"Well, it was from the outset. Siang Pheung was a major
embarrassment, of course, at a time when most everything was
under wraps, just on general principle. I had to go digging quite
some way to find any trace at all of C21 *or* SPS. The military
didn't want any lawsuits pending from the families of those
soldiers, you know? Besides, from what I've read, it seems that
there have been rumors among the military scientific communities
for a long time that the men in that patrol weren't C21's only
victims. Anecdotal evidence of shipments of bodies to the US for
study has been around for years - if you knew where to look. And
most of us didn't. That's a cover-up bigger than Roswell," he
added drolly. "Although I guess it was easy enough to hide even a
substantial number of victims among other fatalities. Just how
many victims there were is impossible to tell. The Bureau didn't
want any of that surfacing. And, after they were disbanded, I
suppose the NIA didn't see any reason why it should change things
either. Certainly, the F18 rating was never lifted. But then, you
know the military mind. Once a thing's classified you might as
well try shifting the moon than get its designation changed."

Lois nodded, well familiar with the obstructive nature of
governments.

Clark though had his mind elsewhere. "So many," he murmured and,
catching their inquisitive looks, "So many bodies. In Siang
Pheung. Male and female too, probably. But not here. We've had
just eight deaths in the past few days and all of them women. If
this is so corrosive a contaminant, why haven't we seen more? And
if it is the same contaminant why no variation in the victim
pattern? Herrera was right; we should be seeing an epidemic by
now. Right across the board."

Klein shrugged. "It's possible that C21 is working with more than
one chemical source. That's not unheard of in any catalyst. It
could even be that this version of C21 has mutated on a
generation or two from the original. It might not be the same
animal at all any more. As for your victim pool, there could be
many chemical substances routinely ingested by the female
population of Metropolis, not shared by their male counterparts.
In fact, if you wanted me to make an off the cuff assumption
right now, I'd say it's probably reacting with some form of birth
control prevention. All of your victims were young, unmarried
females: it's not improbable they shared the same source BCP."

"Estelle Pinchenski...?" Clark said, sounding doubtful. "She
didn't seem the type."

"The type?" Lois favored him with a level look as Klein watched
them, slightly befuddled. She folded her arms. "The type for
what? Exactly?"

"Well...you know. I'm just saying..." Clark added defensively as
her eyes narrowed on him.

"You'd probably be surprised," Lois told him snippily. "Besides,
she was harboring dark thoughts on Reverend Gipe, remember? She
may have decided now was the time. Or maybe she was taking BCP
under medical advisement."

He continued to look doubtful. "There wasn't a history of medical
problems on the preliminary path report." He glanced at Klein.
"How high a probability quotient would you put on this one?"

"Out on a limb? Righ