Metropolis - Blood (part 4C)
Congresswoman Lana Lang sat in the back of Dr. Irons’ observation room using the room for its stated purpose; observation. Awareness of your surroundings, both physically and socially, was one of the most important elements in achieving your goals. Awareness gave you knowledge and, as her time as Lex’s protégé had drilled into her, knowledge was power; power over those who did not have that knowledge.
She grinned to herself. As interesting as it was to watch Dr. Irons fret and agonize over whether or not to proceed with testing one of the Metallo weapons, it was not his moral dilemma that gave her pleasure. It was that she had a secret; one that even Lex didn’t know yet; the truth about the so-called Superman.
Lex was too closely involved in the events of two months ago… too egotistical to look past his own importance to see the connection to anyone other than himself. He couldn’t conceive that the Numan of Kawatche myth making its first public appearance in stopping the falling LexWing might not have been about him and was all too ready to believe that the alien had somehow stolen his latest love interest from him. But distanced from those events Lana could see the truth. This wasn’t about Lex Luthor at all.
It was about Clark Kent and his greatest secret.
Did her former friend Lois know? The proof of her newfound knowledge screamed at Lana from the front page article of the day’s Daily Planet. It’s so very convenient lack of timeframe for the alien’s arrival even as so much else had been filled in suggested her knowledge, but given Clark’s involvement in the article that did not confirm anything.
No, she decided. He didn’t even trust me with this secret and she trusted Clark far too much. Even as bright as Lois thinks she is, there’s no way she knows this truth. Lana reveled in her secret knowledge and the fact that she alone had deduced the secret Clark had been keeping.
It had never made sense to her until the alien had gone public, but in retrospect it was so clear. It was no accident that the alien just happened to be in Metropolis on the day the LexWing crashed, just a few days after Clark Kent had arrived in Metropolis. It was no accident because the alien had been here for far longer than anyone else realized. All those times Lex, Chloe or herself had been in danger and mysteriously saved; all the near disasters averted; they were the work of the alien.
The alien which Clark Kent had known about for years.
When had Clark first learned of its existence? He had been the first to discover the Kawatche caves and their paintings, but what else had he discovered down there? Regardless, it was clear once you looked that Clark Kent had clearly been in contact with the alien since at least that point in time. It was no accident that Clark had gotten the first interview with the alien. It was just the natural result of Clark having secretly known this Kal-El for years.
The true value of a secret though was how much power it allowed. Knowing the peccadilloes of various politicians and their staffers was extremely valuable so long as they were in office. What Lana was now calculating in her mind was the value of the secret she had now fathomed.
How much power did this give her? Over Clark? Over Lex? Over Superman himself? What would Clark be willing to sacrifice to keep this truth from being revealed? What would Lois do if she were told? What would Lex be willing to give to learn it? Would the threat of its revelation keep Superman out of DEO affairs?
No, she shook her head at the last one, probably not. The alien was clearly guided by the same sort of naïve morality and dreams of a better world that still drove Clark and Lois. Her two former friends should have woken up to the ways of the world by now; Lois most of all. If anyone had suffered hardships on par with those Lana had endured, it was Lois Lane. She, more than anyone, should have understood that the cold and capricious universe wanted nothing more than to kick you in the teeth at every opportunity and the only way to prevent that was to control as much as possible by any means necessary. The fact that she had not, that she still continued to see things in terms of right and wrong, marked Lois as the bigger of the two fools.
That Superman held to those simplistic beliefs was even more shocking to her. He was a god among men who could have controlled everything; brought humanity into a golden age beyond measure. How could the alien believe that these flawed dupes and rubes whom she could keep compliant just by throwing the barrels of federal slop at their feet would ever be capable of being anything more? Telling them they could be something more wasn’t just irresponsible; it was dangerous.
This was why they needed these weapons so badly. Why they needed to know Superman’s weaknesses. Because Lana knew to the core of her being that the alien’s way; watching over humanity like some shepherd while letting the ignorant masses bumble around as they will without the enlightened guidance of their betters; would lead to chaos and devastation.
Lois waited until they’d both stepped out of the Fortress and onto the landing of the Daily Planet’s roof access before actually speaking. “So what have you got?” Lois finally asked in response to Clark’s offer of getting her mind off this current mess. Now that she was back in familiar territory she hoped, futilely she knew, that maybe if she ignored it, it would all just go away.
“The story I mentioned before we were sidetracked,” Clark answered. “A serial child killer the police are calling the Toyman.”
“Toyman?”
“It’s his M.O.,” Clark said and he opened the door and stepped out into the open air beneath the Planet’s burnished globe. “He always leaves a toy behind with his victims. He’s taken another child and we’ve only got a few days to find him before we’ve got another victim.”
“Any leads?” Lois queried. She found herself to be simultaneously repulsed yet intrigued by the case.
“Not much,” Clark said. “If the child was nearby he wasn’t calling for help. Even with my super senses and speed there are still enough places to hide in this city that I’d never be able to cover them all in time. We need to narrow down the possibilities.”
“Which is where the Department of Family Services comes in?” Lois asked.
“It’s not much,” Clark admitted. “But the missing child was taken from a foster home. The Toyman butchered the child’s foster parents before taking him. I was trying to get some background on the child… Bobbie Granger.”
“What about the other victims?” Lois pondered as she tried to slip into her analytical and detached investigative mindset. It wasn’t working too well. It was probably Clark’s influence she decided; before he’d come back into her life she’d been able to detach herself from the feelings of others quite easily. Clark’s concern for everyone made that distance hard to maintain. It didn’t help that she now had a very specific child’s image in her mind as well. What sort of sicko would abduct and kill kids like Lucy?
“Captain Sawyer was supposed to e-mail me their names,” Clark replied. “I haven’t had a chance to check yet.”
“Well then let’s go check,” Lois stated. “Then we’ll need to do a background check on them as best we can. We need to find out if there are any real common factors that might give us something more to go on.”
Jim finally worked up the nerve to go check on Lois and Clark about thirty minutes later. Funny, it didn’t look like they’d had a fight or anything. If anything, Clark seemed to be hovering protectively over Lois and she seemed more than willing to let him.
So not a fight then; he’d have to go inform Jenny that she had not, in fact, won that particular office pool. But if it hadn’t been a fight what had it been? That was where his speculation hit a brick wall. As he’d mentioned before, Lois didn’t go out of her way to make friends. So she definitely didn’t feel the need to share every aspect of her life with her co-workers.
Seeing that they were both hard at work on something or the other Jim decided to break the ice by pretending the earlier incident had never even happened. If they wanted to let him in on it, they would.
“Jeez,” he remarked as he approached. “You two just turned in one of the biggest stories of the century. Don’t you ever take time off?”
“Only when forced,” Lois remarked casually. “Last time Perry tried to make me take a vacation I came back with the Glassman story and he pretty much gave up.” Either their discussion up on the landing really was nothing or Lois was tremendously good at hiding her feelings. Jim considered himself a decent judge of people and decided it had to be the former.
Jim also remembered the Glassman murder. It had made national news about three years ago. His sophomore journalism professor had even mentioned that it was mostly because of Lois Lane that the true motive behind the murder had come to light, which in turn had probably changed the outcome of that year’s mayoral race, and cited it as an example of how a single reporter could make a difference.
Jim shook off the memory and got back to the matter at hand. “So,” he asked carefully. “Do you need any help… with anything?” If there really had been something to Lois and Clark’s business on the roof he’d just given them an opening to share if they wanted to.
Lois looked up at him with a cocked eyebrow and Jim cringed in anticipation of some scathing comment, but instead she just pulled the top three or so pages from the stack of papers on her desk and handed them to him.
Okay, so a ‘no’ on the sharing of personal problems.
“What are these?” Jim asked.
“Obituaries,” Lois said simply.
“Alright,” Jim responded. “So what am I supposed to do with them?”
“Do a full background check on the victim and their family.”
“Victim?”
“Yeah, we’re trying to find a killer,” Lois said grimly as she turned back to her own stack. Clark hadn’t even looked up from his own stack. “Dig up everything you can find. If any patterns or connections stick out, make a note.”
Jim flipped through his stack and felt slightly sick.
“Lois, these are all…”
“Kids,” Lois finished for him. “I know.”
Jim looked at the pile on Lois’ desk… there had to be two dozen of them.
“How far back does this go?” Jim asked as he indicated the pile.
“Roughly ten years,” Lois replied; her face a mask.
“Right,” Jim replied hollowly. He would have been twelve back then… the same age as some of these kids.
“And Jim?” Lois added as he was starting to walk back to his desk.
He turned to face her and it wasn’t lost on him that she’d actually called him Jim for once instead of Jimmy.
“We’re on a deadline,” Lois said. “Work fast or the pile’s going to be one taller.”
“Got it,” Jim said; hoping as he did so that this would be another of those times that a reporter would make a difference.
“Oh, it’s you,” the middle-aged woman at the front desk remarked as she lifted her gaze from her now nearly completed crossword to look at Lois and Clark. “As I’m sure you were already told we won’t have any results back for five to six business days and we can’t do anything until then.”
“Actually, we’re here on another matter.” Lois replied, doing her best to keep her tone pleasant. They wanted cooperation not antagonism.
Clark’s instincts had been right. The link to the Metropolis Department of Family Services was the only thing they could possibly find in the list of names Captain Sawyer had supplied them with. It had probably already been checked out by the Police at some point, but it never hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes look at it again… especially when those eyes could see through solid walls.
Admittedly the link wasn’t terribly strong; while eight had clearly been in the DFS system, either in temporary or permanent foster care, four children could only be tied in because of child support disputes, seven others only because they had received Medicaid or other government assistance, and the remaining five because they had served time in juvenile correction facilities.
The latter set had been the hardest piece to crack since those records were highly confidential; there was no actual legal way to get those records. Hacking the Metropolis Courthouse’s computers was hardly Lois’ worst offense in that department though. Bribery, computer hacking, trespassing, breaking and entering, pick pocketing and petty theft were all on her list of sins committed in the effort to find the truth and see justice done. Lois was well aware of the slippery ethical slope she walked using such tactics. Still, she reasoned, the world was far from perfect and better a few crimes against property and privacy when needed than the crimes against people that would go forward or go unpunished otherwise.
The acknowledgement that this was probably not the best ethical standard to teach a little girl was a fact that simply refused to lay dormant in Lois’ mind, but she did her best to suppress it as she pulled out her press badge and got back to the matter at hand while Clark did the same. Not that press badges in and of themselves meant anything, but a lot of people just assumed you had the right to barge in, ask questions and get answers if you had one and Lois wasn’t going to dissuade anyone of that notion. “We just need a look at some of your records.”
“Our records are confidential, Miss Lane,” the woman replied as she squinted at the badges.
“Not the ones we’re after,” Lois insisted. “Confidentiality doesn’t apply when the subject is deceased; most of them for years.” Which wasn’t entirely true; the DFS was a public institution which meant that they could request the information under the Freedom of Information Act, but that could take weeks or longer. Time they really didn’t have; The Amber Alert for Bobbie Granger had gone out at noon.
“We don’t make it a policy of handing out information to reporters,” the woman replied as she turned back to her crossword.
“Okay, let’s try this another way,” Lois said as the exasperation filtered into her voice. “We’re writing a story about the two dozen children in the last decade to go missing and turn up strangled; all of whom were associated in one way or another with this office. Now you can either be in the article as the dedicated individual who aided our investigation or you can be the incompetent bureaucrat whose laziness let another child die... I can write my story either way.”
“She really will,” Clark pointed out from behind her; playing his part perfectly.
“I think I should talk to my supervisor,” the woman replied as her face paled.
“You go do that,” Lois agreed as she pulled out a notepad, glanced at the name placard on the desk, and scribbled the woman’s name into it as dramatically as possible. “The readers of the Daily Planet would love to hear his side of the story… or we could simply say that his spokesman, Rachel Clayhill, denied comment on the matter.”
Ms. Clayhill seemed to be doing the math in her head. “Why don’t you speak with my supervisor yourself,” she said finally, thereby clearly removing herself from the line of fire.
“That would be most helpful, thank you,” Lois replied with a wicked grin; noting again how the threat of a bureaucrat’s inaction making their superior look bad seemed to have the universal effect of ensuring cooperation.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Clark half-whispered once Ms. Clayhill was out of earshot.
“No,” Lois agreed, remembering her own recent thoughts. “But I can live with being considered a bitch. Bobbie Granger might not be so lucky if I play nice.”
The thought of this effectively put an end to the ethics debate in her head.
For now.
“Hey, I’m home!” Catherine Grant called out as she entered her downtown apartment. Normally she wouldn’t have announced her presence at this hour of the day but, unlike the suburbs, downtown Metropolis was still a mess traffic-wise and school was cancelled until tomorrow so she’d had to beg Carol Peterson from down the hall to baby sit while she went to work.
Needless to say, after spending the morning with Jack Rider and then hearing at noon about the missing boy, Cat wanted nothing more than to get home and have lunch with her son, Adam.
“Carol? Adam?”
She wouldn’t have taken Adam out to the park would she? If they had, she felt certain Carol would have left a note; probably by the phone she decided and started to walk in that direction.
“Where did you guys get off… to…?”
Mr. McNaulty across the way heard the wailing scream through the walls and came running. He found the door to Catherine Grant’s apartment wide open and a scream without end seemed to come from inside. The wail reminded McNaulty of his grandfather’s folk stories about the Banshee; a creature whose wail could suck out your soul.
Steeling himself, he entered the apartment and found Cat kneeling on the floor with her hands practically tearing at her mouth as she continued to scream.
“Catherine?” Mr. McNaulty called out as he approached cautiously. Then he saw the crimson pool on the floor and the lifeless eyes of Carol Peterson staring up at him from above her severed neck.
“Mary Mother of God!” McNaulty exclaimed as he crossed himself as a ward against evil. He reached down and took Catherine by the shoulders.
“Catherine! Catherine!” he yelled, trying to snap her out of it. “It’s going to be all right! It’s going to be…” His words died as he realized the full extent of why she was screaming… her son was supposed to be home today and he was nowhere in sight.