Lois spotted her contact parking his car after twenty interminable minutes. As he got out, he scanned the lot and then hurried towards the entrance. His nerves didn't seem to be focusing his mind because he failed to notice her. She followed him into the bar after a decent interval. The Hideaway was appropriately dimly lit, and its patrons tended to ignore each other, which it made it just the right kind of place for a quiet meeting. Lois spotted her target quickly.
Tom Jordan was seating in a booth, one down from the door to the bathrooms. His back was to her but he was fidgeting in his seat in a way none of the other patron would be capable of, since they were all well-marinaded by now. In a couple of hours the workers would clock off and arrive for their consolation drinks but until then, Jordan was the most hyped-up guy in the place.
The nurse had always been nervous around her. A fact that had made him an attractive possibility as a source when she had first looked into Belle Reeve. She had been lead there when she and Clark been chasing Tess Mercer down, believing she was connected with the water poisoning plot. Someone had pointed the man out in the Talon for her as a good person to talk to. A little probing into his affairs had revealed Jordan had significant gambling debts. He was also known to fleece the inmates under his care for cash whenever he could.
Despite his morally dubious actions, he did draw some lines in relation to the vulnerable people he worked with. One of the things he couldn't swallow was people spiriting away the more interesting patients for days or weeks on end, and then returning them with gaps in their memory of a new battery of emotional problems.
And sometimes, they didn't come back at all.
He had slowly revealed that this was happening at the Sanitarium to her over the course of two weeks and under the pressure of some heavy-duty harassment. Though he resented her presence, she realised he also felt great relief over unburdening himself. Because although he had initially thought the government was behind the disappearances, he had learnt from a friend, Raul, that they were being arranged by LutherCorps, and had been going on for many years, in fits and starts.
Jordan had been one of the vital links in putting together her story exposing Tess. And though she had never been able to prove Mercer had direct knowledge that scientists were experimenting on prisoners and the mentally ill, without their consent, the court had found her guilty of authorising un-sanctioned experiments using meteor rock on humans. The feds also hadn't found enough evidence that she had knowingly provided the Metropolis poisoning plotters with the meteor rock they needed. But her methods of pressurising Smallville landowners into selling their property or allowing LutherCorps to mine the rock from their land were exposed, and hadn't she cut one too many corners in the rush to get her hands on the minerals?
She hadn't gone away forever but she had gone to prison. It had caused Oliver no end of problems with his business empire and for a while she suspected that she had managed to critically injure Queen Industries. But it had pulled through.
The story had also helped spring her and Clark into the big leagues. So when the F.B.I. had scoured Belle Reeve for rot, she had protected Jordan and Raul. Several doctors and other staff had lost their jobs, with a handful being successfully prosecuted but Jordan and his friend had been concealed behind her shield of anonymity. Which meant she had a reluctant friend for life, though sometimes he recalled that she was the one who had stirred up the whole hornets' nest in the first place.
Lois slipped past the bar and picked up a vodka and coke, hoping she wouldn't have to drink very much of it. She had already warded off one headache today, she didn't want another one. Unfortunately the beer tasted like it had been home-brewed in the urinals, which she hadn't warned Clark about the first time they had come here together. The look on his face had almost been payback enough for inviting the General and Lucy to the Kent farm for that Thanksgiving.
He'd got his revenge by kissing her after his drink. A revenge she'd been happy enough to indulge him in once.
She made her way over to Jordan and sat opposite him. His face up close was grey and covered in a sheen of sickly sweat. His eyes were bloodshot and he appeared to have been sleeping in his suit. He was in even worse shape than he'd sounded on the phone.
"God Tom, you look like hell. What have you been doing to yourself?"
"Yeah, well, you don't look too good yourself." Lois tried not to snarl back and instead opted for a neutral,
"Busy week. How you doing though? It's been a while."
"Wish it coulda been longer," he grumbled. Lois was surprised by his bitterness. Even at the height of the house-cleaning at Belle Reeve, with the eye of the federal government staring down at him, Tom had never been this openly aggressive with her. He was a bit of a softie really, underneath the self-serving actions of a compulsive gambler. He seemed to realise he was being uncharacteristically sour and took a guilty slug of his drink. He was quite far into it already but it didn't seem to have had any effect. He was as jittery as if he'd been mainlining espresso.
"Hey, whatever's going on, relax okay? I'm not here to get you in trouble."
"I'm already in trouble," he groaned.
"What's wrong?" She had a feeling they both knew what was wrong but she'd learnt a while ago, not to put words in a source's mouth. Sometimes they had quite different information they wanted to spill. Tom was chewing on his thumb nail now, something he looked like he'd been paying a lot of recent attention to.
"You have friends in high places right? Like judges and Superman and guys like that? You could pull in some favours for me if you had to?"
"I'd have to know what the trouble was first. But yeah, I know a few of the right ears to whisper in. No promises though. How bad are we talking?"
"You know how bad, that's why you called ain't it?" He finished off his drink and gestured to the barman for another. "People are saying he's dead. And if he is, and they find out about the guy in room 27 then I'm done for." He broke off as the barman delivered his drink. He glanced curiously at the two of them, Jordan's behaviour and her presence obviously piquing his interest. She ignored this and waited for him to return to his station before prompting Tom.
"It's Eric Summers, isn't it?" Jordan flinched.
"How many people know? Do the cops know yet?"
"I'm ahead of the cops but I don't know for how long." She said no more. She didn't want him to implode under the pressure but she wanted him to feel the heat. Right now, he needed to see her as his route out of this mess, even if that wasn't the case. That aspect of the job bothered her but not as much as it tortured Clark, the guy was the original bleeding heart, he seemed to want to take on a world's worth of human misery. She had a hard enough time of managing her own lately.
She wanted to ask him how he knew Summers was dead but she needed to wait for him to feed her the story. It was just a matter of patience. Not one of her strong suits unfortunately. As Jordan reviewed his options again, she realised there was one glaring exception. When it came to waiting on aliens to fall in love with her, she had limitless patience.
Jordan slumped a little in his seat, some of his burden already relieved by the knowledge he was going to tell her his secrets. He began to talk her through the problem he found himself implicated in.
The investigation into LutherCorp's experiments and the collusion of the senior staff at the institution had led to a great upheaval. Tom understood that several government 'bigshots' had become very interested in the place and had overseen the new hires. The disappearances had ended then and things had begun to return to normal, or as normal as they could at the place. But six months ago, while Tom hadn't been on duty, there had been a fight between two patients in the mess hall. One was Eric Summers. He had a habit of starting fights when sense said he shouldn't. He only received visits from his mother and she had been cutting her visits shorter and shorter as her son grew more taciturn and disturbed.
Summers had fought recent arrival Wayne Ingerson. Ingerson had died from a punctured lung, and Summers had suffered bleeding on the brain, leaving him comatose. Because of his vulnerable condition he had remained at the facility. Ingerson's family had received an urn of ashes.
Except Jordan had been assigned to check up on the patient in room 27, Summers' room, a few months ago, and he had found Wayne instead. It could hardly be much of a secret among the staff, the two men looked nothing alike, even allowing for prolonged illness. Jordan had initially suspected that Summers was the one whose ashes had been in that urn but the idea hadn't stood up to much examination. Summers' mother could visit at any time and uncover the deception, and where was the profit in it?
So he'd done a little asking around, and found out that Summers wasn't dead, he was free. And he was better off not thinking about it anymore. So now it looked like he had escaped and the facility had covered it up to avoid more unwelcome scrutiny. Summers might not have the awesome powers that had had him committed, but he was still a dangerous young man. Tom had decided he was better off keeping mouth shut, he had enough of his own troubles.
Lois suspected Jordan's interpretation of events wasn't quite the story. After all, Summers had ended up with a nice cover identity to work under, and he didn't escape Belle Reeve and do that, all by himself. Was it possible someone had instead arranged the fight, so Summers could leave his prison without the attention his 'death' would have, and then given him the considerable gift of a new identity? Except why would someone grant a guy like Summers a second chance like that? And was it connected to the people who had ultimately decided he wasn't deserving of a new life?
"Do you know who arranged the switch?" They'd have had to get a fake death certificate for Ingerson, and have closed down any investigation before it began. Tom was right to be nervous, whoever had done this had serious clout as well as cojones.
"I've forgotten names, names are a bad idea," Tom shook his head. Lois waited. Tom had something to bargain with, he hadn't agreed to this meeting without believing he could get more than an easier conscience out of it. Now he had her interest, he was prepared to pay it a little cooler, though his eyelid was twitching fast.
"Well, I can't print a story with no names, and without a story I'm just sitting here drinking with you. And that's a sorry picture." Jordan shrugged, his twitch still flickering like a moth batting at a window. She just needed patience, just a little more time and he would play his hand. Patience, patience, count to ten, count to a hundred even, just let him come to you.
She was rewarded when Tom said slyly,
"Might have made some photocopies." Lois tried to keep her face from lighting up. God she loved Xeroxes! A paper trail was gold. "But I don't know if I should show them to you."
"You have someone else you want to show them to?" She asked patiently. Had Tom decided to play her off against someone else? Surely not another reporter.
"Maybe. I've got other problems as well you know, and you're not big with the cash." Lois shrugged.
"Depends on the story, I'm interested in this one. But I might not be interested forever." They batted back the question of money for a few minutes more, Jordan growing cagier as they went on. Lois was beginning to suspect he had no other options and was merely trying to get as much out of her as he could. Unfortunately the expenses system at the Planet didn't allow for slipping sources fifty bucks, though she'd tried some creative rationalisations. She probably hadn't helped her own case by nearly topping the Planet's owners into financial oblivion with her Tess story. Accounts always shot her dark looks when she ventured into their domain with a scrunched-up ball of receipts, as if they knew she was toxic to shareholders.
But when the hand that feeds you was as rotten as Mercer's, you had to bite it.
She could see Jordan was going to give her nothing else, he wanted her to sweat for a while. But there was one question she needed an answer on straight away.
"You haven't explained how you know Summers is dead." Jordan shifted in his seat, chewing at that nail again. The confidence he'd regained as he toyed with her had evaporated. "Come on Tom, it's a serious hole in your story." He shook his head. "I need to know what's going on, or how can I help you?"
"This is one you can't help me with Lane, not even if you have the ear of Superman himself." She realised this was part of the reason Tom had been so agitated on her arrival.
"Come on, what can it hurt to tell me?" He dragged a hand across his face.
"You don't know what this town's like now. Things have gone bad here. Things have gone really bad."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's those meteor rocks you know! We all know they're not safe but we can't afford to leave!" He burst out.
"The EPA said…"
"Who cares what they said?!" He hissed. "They don't want to admit they made a mistake the first time, so they're just leaving us to rot here! The first kids born after the showers are starting to have their own kids now. You think we won't see more people end up in Belle Reeve?"
"They haven't found any birth abnormalities or anything in the water table. What are you saying is going on Tom?" She was confused as to where he was going. There had always been ugly mutterings about how the government had left the town to rot because the expense of clearing the meteor rock out and compensating the afflicted would be too big. Though the poisoning conspiracy had got media attention back on the potential affects and dangers of the substance, no federal agency was any closer to admitting it might be anything other than a scientific curiosity. If most of the country's top scientists hadn't been mixed up in work with LutherCorps, she knew there would have been more authoritative work on the meteors. As it was, too many of them had good reasons to keep their mouths shut about the substance.
"No. You won't understand it. You haven't been here these past months. Everyone knows what's going on, but they're too scared to admit it!"
"Admit what?"
"This whole place is haunted. And when the dead rise out of their graves, that's the first sign isn't it?"
"Sign?"
"Of the end of the world." And looking at his trembling hands on the table, she realised he was totally serious.
