East Side Slums, January 26, 2000. Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane had dubbed the substance capable of rendering Superman powerless 'Kryptonite', so named after his long dead home world. No one knew if there was more of it, least of all the Man of Steel, or even where to get it, which gave Uncle quite the advantage. He turned from the yellowing newspaper article to glance at the crates stacked behind him, before returning to the faded page, the ink smudged from being handled daily for the last three months.
Jacob stuck his head in the door after giving a slight knock."The man from Metropolis University that you wished to speak with is here, Sir."
Leroy looked up from the article, focused on his employee and tucked the article safely away in one of his desk drawers. "Send him in."
"Right away." With a quick nod of his head Jacob disappeared from view momentarily. Leroy took the opportunity to throw a dark blanket over the crates while leaving the crow bar on a nearby filing cabinet.
Jacob led a bewildered, middle-aged man into the office and yanked the black sack off his head. Dr. Henry Korngold was of short stature with thinning, soft brown hair and a rather large pair of spectacles that made his eyes look owlish; he nervously re-adjusted his glasses as he examined his surroundings. He was still wearing the white lab coat he had on when he'd been forcibly dragged from his laboratory on the campus.
"Please, Dr. Korngold, have a seat," Uncle said graciously, extending a hand towards a plush chair in front of his desk.
"Are you crazy?! Who are you!? You kidnapped me and now you want me to take a seat?! What next, are you going to try and offer me tea?!" he cried out backing away toward the door only to try the knob and find it locked from the outside.
"Dr. Korngold, please, I'd rather this didn't become unpleasant."
The Doctor's gray-blue gaze darted around the room once more and he gulped audibly. "Unpleasant?" His host simply nodded, and he hastily moved forward toward his seat.
"Thank you. Now, I have a proposition for you. I understand that you've run up quite a debt with your on-line gambling habits, have you not?"
"H-how did you know that?!" he squeaked nervously. The baffled man looked over at the desk as he spoke. "You d-don't even h-have a computer, how could you possibly know a-about my finances?!"
"I have my sources, Doctor; you have never heard of me before you entered this room and you never will again, but my influence extends far beyond these walls," Leroy answered him with a calm voice and cool demeanor; his attitude only served to agitate his guest more, and the man started to shake.
"W-what do you w-want with me?"
"Very simply? I want your expertise." Leroy stood up, and with a grand flourish, snapped back the blanket covering the crates. Dr. Korngold slowly got up from his chair, his curiosity getting the better of him, and pushed his glasses up his face so he could better make out the address stamped on the top: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A minute or so more was all it took for Leroy to work the top off the crate, and he reached inside for a large chunk of meteorite. Holding it aloft in his long fingers, he turned his attention once again to his guest, passing the piece across the top of the desk so the geologist could examine it.
He pulled a second pair of spectacles from his lab coat pocket, swapping out the ones already on his face, and eagerly took the mineral, studying it intensely. For several minutes he rotated it in his hands, pausing to peer at one or two of the greener points with keen interest, before replacing it on the desk. "Here's what I can tell you: it's not serpentinite, it's not fountain slate, and regardless of what it says on that crate there it is definitely NOT African in origin."
Leroy feigned a look of surprise. "What makes you say that?"
Dr. Korngold picked up the piece again, his nervousness dissipating as he quickly slipped into the lecturing mode he was most comfortable with. "See this outer layer here, covering the green? It is too dark and porous—definitely not the type of rock you'd find in such an arid country as Africa. Without having my equipment here or time to make a more formal study, I'd have to conclude that it was otherworldly in origin, that what you have here is a meteorite unlike any other." He peered around his host at the crates in the back of the office. "Are all six of those cases filled with samples like this?"
Ignoring the man's question, Leroy pressed on. "Would you be able to extract the green rock from the meteorite without damaging the material?"
The professor scoffed. "Yes, absolutely! It would take some time of course; I'd need the proper equipment, not to mention that I'd have to clear this with the University before I'd be able to proceed…"
"No."
"I'm sorry?"
"Our arrangement hinges on absolute secrecy, Doctor; if you wish to absolve yourself of your gambling debts then I'll require you to make the necessary excuses to your colleagues as well as your family and devote at least twenty hours a week to extracting the green rock from the meteorite; my associate will coordinate everything with you on your way out this evening. Now, as a gesture of goodwill, I will give you 125,000 dollars up front to be put toward erasing your 500,000 dollar debt. I will then give you another 34,000 dollars for each crate that you finish and once the task is complete, I will give you a final payment of 125,000 dollars. No one can know what we do here—not your wife, Iris, or your two lovely daughters Beth and Susan…not even your sweet, little old parents Lloyd and Monica down in Florida are to know. Do you understand?"
The scientist paled considerably at the veiled threat and a cold sweat dribbled down his forehead as he nodded mutely in compliance.
"Very good then. Please leave a list of equipment necessary for the project with my employee outside, as well as the times and locations for your pick-ups and drop-offs," Leroy reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a thick envelope, tossing it across to the startled professor who caught it clumsily before shoving it in his pocket. "That is all, Doctor. You're dismissed."
Daily Planet, September 14, 2009, 8:02 am. "Ok Olsen, you said over the phone that you'd figured it out, so why don't you show us what you got?" Perry asked grumpily from his seat opposite Lois and Clark at the conference table while Jim stood beside whiteboard at the head of the room.
"Sure thing. Ok, so you know how this photo's been bugging me for weeks?" he asked everybody, passing around smaller copies of the McGowan photo to the three people assembled around him. They each took a quick glance and nodded. "Well, the Chief here caught me scratching my head again on Friday after we found the other body so he suggested that I have it blown up. An old buddy of mine works at a copy shop here in the City and he helped me do it with my digital copy." Jim flipped around the single piece of foam board he'd brought with him so that they could better understand and clearly see what it displayed. "This is the section showing Francis McGowan's foot, as you can see here in the lower left hand section of the original photo." He pointed out the section in question using Lois' smaller copy before turning to address Perry. "My girlfriend, Chloe, was the first to notice it. It's a hair elastic, caught under the heel of the man's shoe."
"You mean to tell me that you roused me out of bed at an un-godly hour because of a hair band?! Olsen, I may be getting up there in years, but I'm still young enough to recognize that there are men out there nowadays that wear these silly things in their hair too, so why all the fuss?!"
"Because Chief, Francis McGowan didn't have long hair; in fact, his hair was shorter than mine," Clark interjected, his eyes widening a little at the theory he thought his friend was proposing. "And I think what Jim here is trying to tell us is that he thinks the killer is a woman and that she accidentally left this at the scene."
"That's exactly it!" Jim cried out, glad to see that someone had been paying attention. "And see this, right here? This little bit of pink? Chloe said it's a gem that's attached to the elastic, possibly part of a decorative flower or something like this picture here that I found online." He passed around the image he'd found of the accessory in question. "The position of the hair elastic in relation to the position of the body indicates that they were left there at the same time, meaning that the elastic belonged to the killer and that the killer is a woman!"
"Not bad, Olsen," Perry stated in a non-committal fashion. He squinted at the smaller print in his hands before turning his gaze upon the larger one at the head of the room. "But I'm still not buying it. Yes, the killer could be a woman, but we have no hard evidence to prove it—and you all know I won't go to print with anything that we can't prove. You need facts to back up this angle you're chasing." Jim's face fell in disappointment; here's the break we've been searching for and the Chief's just dismissing it.
Lois nodded emphatically with her Editor-in-Chief's assessment while Clark stared at the picture and pondered over it awhile longer. "If it is a woman, it could explain why the men all left the bars without putting up much of a fight," he said, more to himself than to the room at large. "It might also explain why the only thing these guys seemed to have in common was a love of womanizing."
"That was one of my first thoughts too!" the photographer cried out, joyful again.
Clark turned to Jim with keen blue eyes. "What did the police have to say about this?"
"Well, I got in touch with your friend, Henrickson, and he went back through the evidence logs when I told him of my suspicions. At first he didn't seem to think much of what I found in the photo either, but when he found that a hair elastic had been catalogued at the scene, he became a bit more receptive. He told me that he'd be sending it off to the lab for fingerprints and DNA analysis and that he'd get in touch in a couple of days."
"DNA?" Perry chimed in. "You mean to tell me they actually found some hair on that thing?"
"Yes Sir, right here, wrapped around the gem," Clark answered, pointing to the smaller photo. His friend and his boss stared at him in astonishment; they couldn't even see a hair on the blown-up photograph, let alone its five-inch by seven-inch counterpart. Lois simply rolled her eyes and frowned at her husband's particular brand of obtuseness, wondering how he was going to dig himself out of this one. "I, mean uh…at least that's where it p-probably is; you know, Lois' hair gets caught in stuff like that a-all the time. Doesn't it, Honey?"
"All the time," she admitted flatly, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Jim turned his attention back to the Chief. "Yes, the Lieutenant did find a few strands of hair on the band once he pulled it out of evidence, but we don't know anything yet. They've only had this information for a few hours."
Curious, Perry raised an eyebrow. "Interesting development, Olsen I'm not going to run with it yet, but keep me posted on what your friend in the precinct thinks. And you two," he said, getting up from the table and turning his attention to Lois and Clark, "I want you to look into this, see if there's any truth to it. If there is it'll make for one hell of a headline." The Chief quickly quit the room.
The two young men found themselves looking at Lois as she sat puzzling over the photograph in her hands, her perfectly manicured brows furrowed together. She had remained conspicuously silent on the subject during the entire meeting, and only now did she choose to speak up. "I'm not buying it."
"Not buying what?" Clark asked.
"That this serial killer is a woman; I'm not buying it. Nine out of ten serial killers are men, so what would make a woman go serial? And how come no one's found any other evidence linking the murders to a woman before now? It's all too circumspect for my liking."
The trio sat in silence a moment mulling over her words, before Jim perked up again. "Maybe it is a woman but she's not serial?"
Clark looked at him, intrigued. "How do you figure?"
"Ok, this'll prove I've been watching too many cop shows, but bear with me here. What if only one of the men was the intended victim and the others were all killed to cover it up? Or what if we're looking at a copycat killer—I mean, it's been how many months since the last victim and only now does another body pop up? It's all a bit fishy if you ask me."
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Clark aid.
"You may be onto something with that one," Lois added, staring hard at the photographer/research assistant as her cynical mind feverishly worked over the details. "It was an awfully long time between killings, which is highly unusual behavior for a serial killer. Usually they start coming down from their high and begin trolling for a fresh victim before they get too low; they don't go to ground for several months and then resurface like this. The possibility that it is a copycat is very likely."
"I don't know, Lois," her husband chimed in, "The crime scenes where all the victims were found did look awfully similar, not to mention that it's hard to get that level of accuracy without some prior knowledge."
"And yet you're willing to go out on a limb and say that the killer is a woman just because of one loose hair elastic?"
"Hey!" Jim chimed in indignantly. "Just because you're labeled as being the 'fairer sex' doesn't mean that you're incapable of murder; besides, you of all people should have heard the phrase 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' before! We could be dealing with one pissed-off female with a vendetta here!" Lois gave him a pointed look, reminding him just who exactly he was dealing with. "Oh. Right. Of course you've heard it before." Clark couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped his lips at his friend's embarrassment.
She swept the wisps of chestnut hair off her face, before wagging her finger at both of them. "I'll tell you what we're going to do. Jim, the Chief wants you to follow up on your lead, and since my husband seems so intent on agreeing with you and your angle, why don't you and Clark look into the possibility that the serial killer is a woman while I investigate the copycat angle? That way, when you find out that the hair elastic's placement was just some random coincidence, there won't be too much time lost."
Both men narrowed their eyes at her superior tone and hasty assumption that she alone was right. "Ok, you're on," Clark agreed, reaching out to shake her waving finger with his hand while accepting the challenge. "And when we discover that we're right, you'll see that no time was wasted at all because we worked together."
Lois laughed as she pushed her chair away from her table. With a toss of her head, she added, "I'm not too worried; after all, it would take the two of you to do the work of one of me." She had just left them behind in the room, mouths agape, when the Chief cut off her exit.
"There's been another body, in an alley off Crantz Avenue. Follow the story, and I want to see if the female serial killer angle pans out. Now get going!" The trio scrambled to collect their belongings—their disagreements over the killer's gender temporarily set aside in pursuit of the story—and fled the room.
Clark made his usual excuses and separated from Lois and Jim at the office, arriving at the scene of the crime in record time to find Al waiting for him, looking pensive and grave.
"I take it your photographer friend updated you on the most recent development?" the Lieutenant asked.
He nodded. "How much longer until you hear back from the lab?"
"I'm not sure," Al told him truthfully. "The science stuff is a bit over my head, but I think they might know sometime this afternoon if the suspect is already in our database."
"Will the tests also tell us if the owner of the hair is a man or a woman?"
The Lieutenant rolled his eyes and suppressed a smirk. "We've got a hair elastic with several long dark hairs twisted around a very pink gem, and you want us to tell you if it belongs to a man or a woman?"
Clark inclined his head ever so slightly at his friend. "Humor me, please."
"Ok," the older man said, begrudgingly, "But it'll just be a waste of company time and money."
The superhero took a few steps forward and looked over the scene. As hardened as he liked to think he was by sights like this, the scene unfolding before him served to shock even his sensibilities. He visibly struggled not to flinch and turn away, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the officers and technicians standing nearby; he felt their gazes upon him as he stood stock still examining the body, and he even heard one or two of them gasp as he struggled not to recoil. The man was younger then the last victim, with blond hair and blue eyes that the killer hadn't bothered to close after his death; but what startled the man most was the fact that the victim's nose and exposed chest were caked with blood, partially obscuring the X carved into the torso.
"Yeah, sorry I didn't get a chance to warn you about that, this one's obviously bloodier then the others. Whoever this guy is he must have put up one hell of a fight because he OR she had to break his nose at some point while they had him. Whoever it is also remembered to take the wallet this time, so we have no ID on the deceased just yet, but I'll be sure to get that info to you as soon as possible." Al looked upon the body once more. "And frankly, if I were twenty years younger and working in a corporate office I'd be quaking in my boots right about now. This killer has racked up seven bodies in seven months and even you haven't heard a peep; that's got to be some kind of record since you arrived here in Metropolis."
Clark's jaw clenched in resolve, his shaking hand clenching into a fist full of resolve as the Lieutenant set the facts before him. "Well if it is, it's one record I'd like to see broken, fast." He cocked his head to the side, catching the sound of Lois' voice as she and Jim pulled up in a taxi nearby.. "I'm going to take off if you don't need me for anything else."
Al shook his head. "No, this one's cold, so I doubt that the truck would be hanging around; but if you wouldn't mind taking a quick peek from up above to see if there's anything we've missed, I'd sure appreciate it."
"Not a problem," he replied, clasping his friend on the arm. Without another word Clark took off into the cloudy blue sky.
Daily Planet, September 14, 2009, 5:27 pm. "Kents!" the Chief bellowed from just inside his doorway. Two heads shot up in the middle of the bullpen where they were crowded around one computer monitor. "Where's my article?! And where are we on that new lead!?"
"Geez Perry, don't get your undies in a twist, we're double checking our facts here!" Lois retorted. "Wouldn't want the paper to have to print a retraction because of rushed research, now would we? Think of all the damage that would do to the reputation of your best investigative team, not to mention the paper!" The Chief huffed in indignation at the mention of his underwear before returning to the privacy of his office, leaving them to their work. Turning her attention to her husband, she added quietly, "Do you want to call the 'sitter' or should I?"
Clark looked up from the sentence he was editing, holding the red pen aloft. "I'll make the call—after all it is my mother who's watching the kids. I just hope she didn't have any plans with Ben tonight; when do you think we'll be done here?" he asked, putting down the pen and picking up the telephone, already dialing their home number.
"My guess is sometime around 8 or so, maybe a little later. I want to go over some things while the information is still fresh, see what I can come up with."
He nodded in agreement just as his mother picked up the other end of the line.
6:33 pm. "Knock, knock!" Chloe called out as she rapped on the open conference room door. "I heard there were a couple of hungry reporters working overtime tonight and I thought I'd do my part and feed them. Hope you guys don't mind but I decided on Chinese, given how last Monday's lunch was a bust and all," she said, plopping the two large bags of food down on the table.
"Oh thank God, this beats whatever I was about to grab from the vending machines!" Lois answered hungrily, all but lunging at the nearest container placed in front of her.
Jim passed her a pair of chopsticks before continuing to pull cartons of food from the greasy bags. "How can you eat that stuff, it's disgusting! Do you even know when's the last time the vendor re-stocked that thing?"
She shook her head and finished slurping the end of her bite of noodles, before pausing to glance at her friend, the chopsticks poised and ready for another bite. "Nope, can't say that I do, why?"
"My point exactly; those egg salad sandwiches in there could date back to Perry's days riding a desk back in the 70's, we have absolutely no way of knowing." Chloe sat down between her boyfriend and her friend, watching the exchange of playful banter and laughing.
"Oh eww, I ate one of those last week! I think I'm going to be sick…" She put the container down on the table and pushed it away dramatically.
"Lois, I wouldn't worry if I were you," Chloe added jokingly. "If the sandwich was bad you would've gotten sick long before now, not to mention that I think egg salad turns green after a decade or so." Her mirthful gaze darted around the conference room and back out into the bullpen before returning to Lois' face, searching for Clark.
"Hey Clo, when'd you get here?" her tall friend re-entered the room just then, as if in response to her un-asked question. Clark tugged at his tie, reassuring himself that it was on straight and inadvertently signaling to both women in the room that he had just returned from a rescue.
"Just a minute ago, thought I'd bring some food for the troops."
He took a deep whiff of the air around him. "Mmmm, Chinese, how ironic. Glad to see your sense of humor hasn't left you," he replied, snagging a random container and settling in to the seat beside Lois, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. They ate their dinners in thoughtful silence until Clark caught Jim looking at him queerly. "What is it?" He touched his glasses as he spoke for fear of having forgotten to put them back on his face.
"Did you step outside just now??"
"Uh, why do you ask?" he tried to ask noncommittally.
"Because your hair is wet. Is it raining?"
Clark shot the women an anxious look and Lois jumped in, knowing full well that it was much easier for her to lie than it was for her husband. "You must have taken my advice and splashed some cold water on your face to help you stay awake, isn't that right, Clark?" Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "He was up with Haley for a good portion of the night last night—she was being really fussy."
"Oh," Jim replied simply, before turning his attention back to his food with renewed vigor.
7:01 pm. Several half-empty containers of Chinese food littered the table interspersed amongst hand-written notes, internet searches and archived articles as the foursome continued trying to make headway on their case. Clark was the picture of concentration where he stood at the front of the room, hands jammed in his pockets and chin resting on his chest, staring unblinkingly over the tops of his glasses at the red and yellow-dotted map of Metropolis taped to the dry-erase board. Chloe sat next to Jim, reviewing his notes on the six known victims so far while Lois sat opposite them, chewing on the end of her pen and reading from the sheet before her.
"Ok, these are the locations where the victims were last seen alive, excluding the John Doe from this morning," he said, indicating the yellow dots which were all tightly concentrated within a six block radius in the heart of the city. "So far, the killer has frequented 'The Watering Hole', 'The Skellig', 'O'Malley's Pub' and 'The Mad Hatter'; in fact, three of the last six victims were from O'Malley's, which is located here," he informed them, pointing to the most Easterly yellow dot.
"Perhaps the killer and the copycat worked together at one of those pubs," Lois chimed in.
"Perhaps," Jim agreed. "Or maybe she works there now, or worked there in the past."
Chloe rolled her eyes at the pair. "Perhaps you're both missing the bigger picture here—why is O'Malley's a hotspot for the killer when he or she goes trolling for victims? Is it the type of men that frequent that bar that attract the killer? Is it the location? What is it about these places that make them stand out from all the other drinking establishments around here?"
"Excellent points, Clo," Clark said, writing them down on the dry erase board next to the map. "Tomorrow, why don't we see if we can't pull employee records for all these places for say…the last five years?" he glanced at his wife for confirmation "And see if there are any connections that way."
"Not a bad idea," Lois conceded, scribbling something on her notepad. She resumed chewing on her pen. "Say, what do we think of the red dots indicating where the bodies were left? We know they're near the victims' homes, but why? It doesn't exactly look like it's convenient for the killer, dragging bodies all over the place—not to mention he's upping the ante by doing so and leaving himself more open to getting caught."
The young blond woman nodded in agreement with her friend, adding, "I may not know much about serial killers, Lois, but I do know that someone so mentally disturbed that they go out and kill seven people isn't too terribly concerned about logic."
The foursome fell silent at that, and began studying the map again with renewed interest and brevity. Clark pushed his glasses back up to his eyes as they persisted in sliding down his nose. "I wonder…" he said in a barely audible voice.
"Wonder what?" Jim asked. His brown eyes went wide with speculation and he perked up like an eager school child.
"Take a look here; these are all upper-middle class or downright wealthy guys that are being targeted, right? And they live in neighborhoods with people who are demographically similar to them, correct? What if the killer—male or female—resents wealth and wealthy men in particular? The rich always assume that crimes like these can't happen to them, or that they can't happen in their homes or their neighborhoods, so what if the killer goes out of his or her way to dump the victims near their homes just to shock and offend?"
Lois got up from her seat and strode around to the other side of the board, staring at the red dots with him. "I think you just might be onto something here, Smallville." A telephone rang out in the bullpen, and everyone turned to see where it was originating from. "It's mine," she announced. "I'll take it outside." She strode briskly out of the conference room, leaving her husband and her friends to puzzle out this latest revelation without her.
"We're chasing after needles in haystacks here," the photographer lamented, his demeanor vacillating wildly for the umpteenth time that day. "We're never going to find her; there's too many 'what if's."
Chloe stepped forward and rubbed his shoulder, reassuring him with her touch. "Have a little faith, Jim; have a little faith."
"Yeah, after all, look how far we've come in the search today," Clark added just as Lois returned to the room.
"That was Al Henrickson on the line. They ID'd the body a short while ago. His name was Ivan Rutter, and he signed music groups for Apricot Records here in the City. Apparently he was one of their shining stars…"
"And let me guess, he just signed a big client for the record label either on Friday or sometime over the weekend?" her husband finished.
"You're right on the money. Not only did he call to tell us that, but he said that the crime lab got some preliminary results on the hair they pulled from the elastic this morning. Now don't get your hopes up, boys, but…" she began, sounding much less haughty then she had earlier in the day, "There were at least three different types of hair stuck in the gem of the band. Two of the three belonged to past victims Nathan Lee and Terrence Williams."
Jim's jaw fell open slightly. "And the third?"
She sighed, not ready to admit total defeat. "Early testing indicates that there is a sixty-four percent chance that the unknown hair belongs to a woman." Chloe beamed as her friend validated her boyfriend's hard work with the police's findings. "But like I said, this is a preliminary result; the Poly…Poly—"
"Polymerase Chain Reaction test," the young woman from Smallville finished for her, knowing how difficult it was for Lois to admit she was wrong, let alone attempt to pronounce the scientific name of the test while she was at it.
"Thank you. The Polymerase Chain Reaction test normally takes thirty days for an accurate result, but the MPD lab is one of a handful in the country trying out new methods of testing and that's how Al was able to get an answer to us earlier. They're still running the more accurate test, but with a sixty-four percent reading telling us the hair might be female…"
Clark smiled slyly and winked at his wife. "You're beginning to come around to our way of thinking?"
8:13 pm. "So what have you been able to find out so far, Clo?" Lois asked over the other young woman's shoulder as she plopped a fortune cookie in her mouth.
Chloe turned and glared at her friend for the loud crunching in her ear, then pointed to the screen. "I've been going through this guy's credit card reports, and I think this is the last one. How in the world does a thirty-six year old man get a hold of 12 different credit cards? Better yet, what did he do with all of them—carry them in a man purse?" She looked over at Lois for an answer and got a shrug of the shoulders. "Anyhow, he did a lot of wining and dining over this last week in particular, probably setting up his final deal and it looks like the last stop he made was at 'The Watering Hole' on Saturday night."
"And none of his friends reported him missing?" Jim piped up from his work at the other end of the table disconcertedly.
"He would appear to have been the type of person that had a lot of casual acquaintances, but only a very few close friends that he kept in contact with with any regularity, so it's not all that surprising that he should disappear for thirty-six hours without anyone saying anything," Clark answered, entering the room and flipping through Ivan Rutter's phone records that Chloe had printed off earlier. The two women caught his gaze as he spoke, knowing that he was speaking from personal experience, and both were proud to be in the latter category.
Chloe returned her attention to her computer screen. "There, that's the last of the credit card reports for you," she said triumphantly, hitting the print button and stepping away from the computer, grabbing her coat. "And now I'm ready to head home. Jim?"
He looked to Lois and Clark as if waiting for permission. "What are you looking at us for? You have a life; we're not your parents, so go on home! We'll probably be following you out in a couple minutes too." She looked to her husband for confirmation that he was as ready to end the workday as she was and she wasn't disappointed. "We'll meet back here in the morning and go over this with fresh eyes, okay?"
Jim nodded in agreement as he hastily threw on his jacket before holding out Chloe's as well so she could slip her arms in it. "Sounds good to me. Good night guys, see you tomorrow!"
"Good night!" The Kents called out in unison from opposite ends of the room.
8:25 pm. Clark was about to suggest that they head home too when he took a minute to study Lois, unobserved. She stood by the printer, pulling page after page of financial records off the tray as soon as the machine could spit them out, scanning them intently before placing them face down on the table beside her so she wouldn't mess up their order. The pins that had been holding up the bulk of her chestnut brown tresses had been relieved of their duty some hours before and her hair now hung loosely in waves, brushing over the shoulders of her dark pant suit jacket. There was something seductive in the way she swayed from the printer to the table, wholly concentrated on her work and almost oblivious to his presence, that caused Clark to rise up out of his chair with a primal need, even before he was aware of it himself. He sped behind her without a sound, wrapping his strong arms around her waist and bending over slightly so he could whisper huskily into her ear, "What do you say we call it a night too?"
Lois let out a yelp of surprise at the swiftness of her husband's movements before relaxing and allowing his warmth to spread over her. She spun around deftly and looked up into his eyes while a devilish smile played across her full lips; without warning, she leapt into his arms and snuggled into his safe embrace—a romantic motion that no member of the bullpen staff would have ever believed her capable of unless they had been there to witness it themselves. "Take me home, Farm Boy," she whispered back. Clark kissed her deeply before looking up and out into the bullpen, making sure that they were completely alone. He sped toward the stairwell and up onto the roof in the blink of an eye, neglecting to stop for their coats, purse or briefcase or even spin into the suit, and flew off into the night sky to deliver his bride back to their apartment and their waiting children.