Disclaimer: I do not own any characters in Smallville.

Ch 3 continued.

Later that day Chloe was sitting in her office looking through the reports she had on each of Billy's friends and Jack. She looked up and saw him standing by the door. "Jack? Come in, have a seat"

He sat down on the chair across from her and didn't say anything for a while.

"Jack?"

"….Can you tell me how he died?" he asked, "Did he drown?"

"He didn't drown"

"Well, how then?"

Chloe looked over at him and inhaled deeply

"I want to know" he said, "I'm a lawyer, I need evidence."

Chloe looked at him

"You know I can't work this case Chloe. Detective" He paused "How do you know that he didn't drown?"

"Ok" Chloe said, turning her computer around so he could see the pictures on it "A drowning victim struggles to breathe and inhales water into the lungs, making the cells inside darker and twice as large. The cells we found in your brother's lungs were a light pink and very small"

"What does that mean?"

"That means he was put into the ocean after, he already had stopped breathing"

"So he was murdered," Jack said "What killed him then?"

"He received a blow to the back of the neck right at the top of his spine"

Jack turned his head away and closed his eyes.

"I'm sorry" Chloe began

"No, I wanted to know. I thank you for being honest" he said

"Can you tell me about Billy's friends?" Chloe asked

"I have to say, you have beautiful hair," Jamie said leading them into the house. "It's gorgeous"

"Thank you" Chloe said as her and Joe walked into the house of Jamie Dayton Billy's best friend. They walked past four aeron chairs all facing huge gilt mirrors.

"We can sit here. Or in the kitchen"

"Kitchen's fine" replied Joe

"Billy was my best friend" He paused "You could tell him anything… I was nine when I told him I was gay. He didn't judge me he accepted me, which is more then I could say about my parents…"

"Billy loved to have fun and didn't let life get him down," Jamie said covering eyes and sniffling.

"Was he involved in anything illegal?" Joe asked

"Why would you think that?"

"His brother went to Billy's bank recently and they told him that he was the sole beneficiary of one hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars. Jack has no idea where Billy would get that kind of money" Chloe replied

Jamie cleared his throat. "Ok, one way or another all of us here ends up servicing the rich, well Billy serviced them literally"

"Are you telling us that he got paid for sex?" Joe asked

"He didn't have an hourly rate or anything, but he was doing some of the richest women in Hollywood and rather well I might add"

Chloe and Joe walked back to their car. "Well that widens the suspect list" Joe said.

"I think that it's more then that." Chloe said

"What then?"

"I think it was Blackmail"

"Where would you get that conclusion?"

"It was too clean, made to look like an accidental drowning or suicide."

"So you think Billy was killed for blackmailing someone"

Nate was standing over a table slowly dusting the Kodak box with Latent powder. The powder adhered to the top of the box making a thumbprint visible. He took a piece of rubber-gelatin and used it lift the fingerprint of the box.

Nate walked to the computer lab to run the print thorough the database. Robbie was in there running a DNA match from the salvia from the cigarettes. They found a match.

Nate called Chloe as soon as the name popped up.

Chloe had gone to talk to Jack and tell him what they knew so far. They were talking in her car when her cell phone rang. Jack was about to leave then stopped when he saw Chloe's reaction. She hung up.

"What? Who was that?" he asked

"I have to go," she said

"I'm going wherever you are" Jack said and closed the door.

Chloe looked over at him and saw the same determination she had. He wanted to know the truth behind his brother's death.

"We have DNA proof that puts you at the crime scene" Chloe stated

She saw the nervousness in his eyes he started to back up.

Chloe drew her gun and held it to him. "Don't move. Because right now you're an accessory to murder"

"Ok, ok, wait" Jamie said throwing his hand in the air. "I was there"

"Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

"I…I saw what they were doing, Jack I wanted to stop them…. but they would've killed me too"

Jack ran at him and pinned to the wall. "So you sat there and took pictures," he screamed

"Jack!" Chloe said pulling him off.

"He…he wanted me too" Jamie sobbed.

"Who? Billy?" Chloe asked

"Yes…he told me that if anything happened to him…I had to be the one to show the proof."

"Proof of what?"

"This girl he was doing…her husband…. he killed people" Jamie said, "We were trying to find proof"

"Did you find any?" Chloe asked

"No, except now. And I know I should go to the cops…but no offense I don't know who to trust. Cops can be bought."

"I know" Chloe said

Jack and Jamie both looked at her.

"That's why you both tried on your own. That's dangerous, because the rich believe money makes them invincible."

"And in a way it does" Jack said

"That's why we need evidence, so they can't get out. Do you have the film?"

"Yes, I developed them…I would've showed you. But I thought they would come after me"

"I know, it's ok" Chloe said "show them to me"

Chloe and Jack followed Jamie down to his basement where he made a darkroom. Jamie got down on his knees in front of a wall covered with cheap paneling that had warped from moisture. Chloe could see that the edge on the left was badly worn and jagged. She got down on her knees too feeling the dampness of the floor soak through her jeans.

Jamie gave her a pair of scissors and she used that to pry open the paneling. She reached her gloved hands inside and pulled out a cardboard box. Chloe riffled through the photographs.

She found the one's she was looking for.

Back at the lab Chloe and Joe were looking at the pictures on a computer screen. The first one showed two blurry faces holding back Billy's arms while another face was swinging a metal bat at Billy's neck. Another showed him being kicked in the ribs.

The last picture showed Billy lying broken at the feet of his murderers. His face illuminated by the moonlight. The face of a young man that knew he was done to his last few seconds of life. No one was going to save him.

Chloe finished enlarging and clearing up the pixels on the pictures to see the three assailants better.

Jack went and filled his own mug and led Chloe out to the porch and sat down on the steps next to her. The sun made her hair gleam as it bounced of her sun-kissed skin. She looked so beautiful he had to shake his head to keep from gawking.

"So you found them?"

"Yes"

After making the pictures clear we arrested Thomas Brenan the owner of the Rolling Green Country club. He was trying to run an escort business with his country club. Which is not uncommon. But going thought tons of files and searches of unsolved case on our own database. I found out that two years ago one of his A-list escorts supposedly fell off a yacht during a moonlight sail with him and drowned. Also another one of his escorts threw herself of a balcony into the ocean at one his parties in the Bahamas. Too many drowning victims he should have changed his m.o. With Kira's help we proved that the three cases were connected, she helped mainly because she's the only one who believed my theories.

Jack sat there and listened intently while Chloe told him what happened. When she was finished he sat there for a while staring out into his yard.

"I remember you saying that you were from Metropolis, Kansas. I wanted to learn more about you." He said looking at her "I mean you're amazing"

"I didn't do this on my own" she said

"I know, but it just seemed like you understood this case more then the other's"

Chloe looked at him.

"I came across this." He said unfolding a piece a paper he pulled out from his back pocket.

"It says that seventeen year old Chloe Sullivan a key witness the Lionel Luthor trial, was killed in an explosion on Wednesday. Chloe and her Father Gabe were placed in a witness protection house, when it suddenly burst into flames, killing them instantly." He paused to look at her. "Funeral services for both of them will be held on Saturday by Lex Luthor" He handed Chloe the paper. "That's you?"

"Yes" Chloe said reading the article

"What happened?"

"It's a long story"

"Oh" He said, "You were blackmailing him?"

"I tried then, I decided to turn him in" Chloe said

"You did all this while you were in high school?" Jack asked, "How did you survive?"

"I was lucky…. I…had a…. friend that knew about the explosives before hand and he saved me" Chloe took a deep breathe remembering running through that tunnel while the explosion rocked the ground above her.

"The FBI was in on it"

"The one's hired to protect me were"

"And you became a cop?"

"Well I figured that there should be someone out there that people could trust." She said "I didn't have enough evidence, Lionel Luthor was released a few months later. So I guess I vowed to not that happen again"

Jack placed his hand on top of hers "Thank you"

Chloe was driving her rented SUV down the street, passing gothic towers of granite and glass she had just spent hours on a plane and was ready to crawl into her hotel bed and go to sleep. At least for two hours, she had to be at the station at seven and it was already three in the morning. Her new assignment was to help bring crime scene investigation into new cities.

All of sudden a flash of pale light streaked across the sky. She stepped on the brakes, stuck her head out the window, looked up in the sky and saw that the flash that cut through the darkness was an illuminated bat.

TBC….