html
Fiddling with the radio dial, Angela McKay was distressed to realize she had passed out of range of any of the Metropolis radio stations. All she could seem to pick up was country western and some sort of local news program. What was it about rural areas and poor music selection? She could probably graph the exact correlation between population and the availability of farmer's almanac readings and banjo music.
She had done the best she could to restore Dr. Roshenko's lab to proper working order. Now only the monitors remained behind until there was room in the dumpster, their shattered screens gaping like mouths full of teeth. She shuttered a bit just thinking about them. Angela had never been a fanciful kind of person, but lately she found herself jumping at shadows and small noises. She was starting to wonder if she'd ever really be able to work in the lab again. At least having gone through her hard copies of Roshenko's notes she knew there was still enough information to work into her doctoral dissertation when the time came. She'd been counting on the doc to walk her through that nightmare of paperwork; now she wasn't sure she could go it alone.
To make matters worse she'd gotten a call that afternoon from the county coroner—they were going to release Roshenko's body the next day, and what did she want done with it? Fortunately the Dean had been in the room and taken over the call, assuring the people on the other end that the university would handle all the arrangements and expenses.
Then he had gently patted her hand and asked her to leave it all to him. Angela had to admit she had never cared much for James Carroll—he of the expensive shirts and capped teeth, who had a reputation for caring far more about the University's bottom line than the welfare of its faculty and students. But he'd been nothing but helpful lately, even trying to get her to take a sabbatical until the lab could be restored. Of course she'd refused, but she was immensely relieved to not have to plan a funeral. She didn't have enough family to fill a phone booth, so her experience in dealing with situations like this was practically nil.
It was nice to just drive, though—she couldn't remember the last time she had gone anywhere, although it was probably her Christmas trip back to Central City to see her mother. And that was just trading one city for another. Smallville, however, was in the middle of nowhere. Housing developments periodically dotted either side of the highway. Personally she though someone would have to be nuts to commute that distance—it took three hours to get from Metropolis to Smallville if one was inclined to obey the speed limit. And, given the radio situation, a dull three-hour drive it was.
Angela did pass through the town itself, following the directions Lex Luthor had given her, but she didn't see much. It was well after dinnertime, and it looked like Smallville had rolled up its streets for the evening. She'd been a city kid all her life—she couldn't imagine what it must be like to grow up in a place like this. After town the road passed though acres of fields. Corn? Wheat? What did people grow in Kansas, anyway? Out here the houses were set so far off the road all that was immediately visible were the mailboxes, and maybe a few lighted windows gleaming in the distance.
She thought for a moment she'd missed the turnoff, but she finally saw it off to the right where Luthor had said it would be. A massive iron gate blocked the road, but before she could worry about how to open it, it opened for her. The road then passed through an alley of trees, the branches meeting overhead and making things seem even darker. As she stopped her vintage Mustang in what appeared to be a driveway (wider than her apartment), she leaned forward and peered up through the windshield at the house in front of her.
"You have got to be kidding," she murmured.
The house was huge; she wondered if in daylight it would be visible from the road. Doubtful. The trees must have been placed here intentionally, as a screen, because the rest of the farmland she had seen in the area was cleared. The people who lived in this house probably didn't do much farming. It looked more like the kind of place from which you'd ride forth to do battle. It even had a turret. Good god. Well, it certainly explained the Luthor Business Building; clearly when this family went in for architecture, it did so on a massive scale.
Not one to be daunted by anything, Angela grabbed her bag and went up to the front door, which was opened by an older woman in a rather dowdy sweater set. Lex's mom? Did these people actually open their own front doors?
"Good evening, Miss McKay. Please come in—Mr. Luthor is waiting for you in his study."
Ah ha. A housekeeper, or maybe a butler. Were there female butlers? If so, what would they be called? Butleresses? She thought of asking the woman as they walked down a series of hallways, but somehow she didn't think she would be amused by the question.
It seemed to be taking a long time to get wherever they were going; she sort of wished she had thought to bring some breadcrumbs to drop so she could find her way back to the front door. Then again, maybe Brunhilde here would be around to show her out.
Angela still didn't quite know why she had bothered to drive all the way out here on a weekday night. She hadn't bought Luthor's story about Hamilton, and she certainly didn't need any more aggravation at this point in her life.
Finally the woman opened a pair of double doors and let her into a large room. This one was open to the second floor, where there was some sort of gallery at one end. A fireplace big enough to heat a small third world country made it warm, and she had to admit the stained glass windows, in shades of red and purple, must be really pretty in daylight.
"Miss McKay to see you, Mr. Luthor." Angela didn't bother to try to explain to this woman the anti-feminist implications of using "Miss" instead of "Ms."; she just let it slide.
Luthor himself came around the desk to greet her. "Angela, thank you for coming on such short notice." Brunhilde closed the doors as she left the room, and Angela eyed him suspiciously.
"Let's just say I don't like getting cryptic messages that call for me driving three hours out of my way," she said stiffly. She still wasn't sure she liked this man. Maybe it was all the money, or maybe it was the way he had expected her to drop everything and come and see him when he'd called. But then she'd done exactly that, so whose fault was it, really?
"Of course," he said soothingly. "Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Or something stronger?"
"Nothing, thank you." She felt awkward as hell being here. She should have changed, worn a dress or something. And a tiara. Not that she owned either one.
"You don't mind if I indulge, do you?" He held up a crystal decanter.
"No."
For want of anything better to do Angela set down her bag as he poured himself a drink. It smelled like scotch to her. Very expensive scotch. She wished she wasn't driving home.
"You said on the phone you had something for me."
"I do." He took a sip of his drink and then went around to the other side of the enormous desk where an expensive laptop sat. With a small click the CD-ROM drive opened, and he pulled out a disk. He held it out to her with an enigmatic smile. She was reminded of the illustration of the Cheshire cat in one of her childhood picture books. Angela prided herself on being able to figure people out, but she couldn't figure this guy out at all. First he showed up out of the blue, asking for her help; then she hadn't heard from him for days; and then he called her insisting she meet him in a big house in the middle of nowhere.
Definitely suspicious. She cautiously took the disk in her hand. There was nothing written on its shiny surface.
"What is it?"
"Dr. Hamilton's latest research."
She sucked in a sharp breath, glancing up from the disk. "Where did you get it?"
He smiled again. Funny how his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Long story."
"Yeah, I'll bet it is." Still carefully holding the edges of the disk, she sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. "Ok, I'll bite—what's on it?"
"That is what I need your help figuring out, Angela."
She gave him back the disk and he slipped it into the computer. Then he turned the laptop to show her the long lists of numbers scrolling down the screen. She watched them roll by in silence for a few moments, trying to process what she was seeing.
"It looks like Dr. Hamilton has been compiling data he's collected in experiments on those meteor rocks he likes so much."
She looked up at him, surprised. There was no text in the file; only numbers. "How do you know that?"
"I've run numerous experiments of my own in the past. You'll notice that the numbers are grouped together, both horizontally and vertically, as if each is from a distinct event, and a distinct date."
O.k. he was right—that was exactly what it looked like to her, too.
"Give me a little credit, Angela," he chided.
"Sorry," she said, still watching the numbers roll by. "There's nothing else? No indicators as to what he's trying to do with all this data?"
"Afraid not. But Hamilton wouldn't have saved all of it without purpose. He's trying to lay something out here—I'm just not sure what that is."
"And you want me to try and figure it out."
"Well, I don't say this very often, but you do have more experience with this sort of thing than I do." He gestured for her to come around to his side of the desk, and he offered her the extremely comfortable leather office chair there. Lex then carefully placed the laptop back in front of her. As he did she caught a whiff of some sort of very expensive, very subtle cologne. He smelled fantastic. The thought caught her off-guard. Although she wouldn't exactly describe him as handsome, there was certainly something about him. An aura, her mother would call it.
Get a grip, Angela, she warned herself. No more complications, remember?
Lots of men had told her she was attractive, and she'd never hurt for male attention. Frankly, most of the time such attention was a nuisance, a distraction from her work. But Luthor struck her one of those guys who'd prefer party girls with big boobs and tiny brains. Women who wouldn't challenge his authority. Definitely not her.
She turned her attention to the numbers in front of her. Somehow she sensed it would be futile to waste any more time puzzling over the enigma that was Lex Luthor. Much better to work on a problem she actually had a shot at solving.
Actually, working with Hamilton's data was an education in itself—it told her a lot about the man. He'd apparently been building up layer after layer of data. She'd heard about his obsession with meteorites, specifically the meteorites that had fallen on Smallville some years before—it was still a punch line at every faculty cocktail party. Angela couldn't help feeling a little sorry for the guy: she, too, was obsessed with her work, but no one had ever openly mocked what she was doing. But then it was one thing to explore how mutations at the molecular level affected human disease; it was another to argue that simple exposure to a rock from space could dramatically alter human physiology.
While she worked she gave Lex copies of Dr. Roshenko's notes to read; she hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary in them, but at least reading them kept him quiet. And after all, he had shared Hamilton's data with her. She didn't even want to think about how he might have gotten that disk. Hopefully the ends would justify the means.
As the hours ticked by, however, she remained no closer to a solution. She ran the numbers backwards, forwards, randomly, searching for any sort of pattern. There just didn't seem to be one. But there had to be. After a while even Lex got bored, and offered her one of the guest rooms for the night, suggesting they start over in the morning. She just waved him off.
There had to be a pattern. If Dr. Hamilton was even half the scientist he had once been, there would be. She just had to find it.
Angela wasn't sure how long she sat there by herself, but the fire burned down and the numbers started to dance in front of her eyes. She did take a short nap on one of the couches, but her mind was racing so fast she couldn't sleep for long.
There was something missing, something that had yet to be nudged into her consciousness.
It wasn't until close to dawn, however, that the last piece of the puzzled jarred loose from her tired brain. She was staring at the screen, thinking about Dr. Roshenko: the white hair that would never stay combed; the bagels he sometimes brought her when they both came in early. She wasn't crying anymore, but her heart ached. She still half expected him to show up for work, admitting that it had all been a joke.
How much do you really know about Evgeny Roshenko? Detective Harris had asked.
Well, she knew he was a perfectionist with his work, if not his physical appearance. He was the kind of man who would run an experiment over and over, until even she was ready to scream with frustration, to eliminate every last possible variable. And he was methodical. Oh, absolutely methodical. He was the one who had taught her to always look for the pattern. Even mutations had a pattern, he had argued, if you just knew how to find it.
Maybe even meteorite mutations?That thought snapped her back to the present. After all, that was what had everyone stumped. Why, after all these years, would Hamilton return to his old teacher? What did Roshenko do better than anyone else?
Find patterns in what appeared to be random.
Angela went back to the notes she had brought for Luthor to read. As before, nothing leapt out at her. A lot of it was just musings, scribbled notes, rows of numbers, logarithms.
She tried three different logarithms without success before she stumbled on the right one. The one that made Hamilton's data take shape.
"Wow."
Lex found her still sitting there when he came downstairs.
"Angela, it's six a.m.—have you been up all night?"
"I took a nap," she responded defensively. "Look at this."
And this time she was the one who showed him the rows of numbers on the screen.
"There's a pattern."
"Yes." Angela hastily pointed out the placed where numbers consistently repeated themselves. "I think Hamilton suspected that, on the molecular level, there was a pattern to the mutations the meteor rocks produced. He just didn't know how to describe it mathematically, in a way another scientist could understand and repeat. Mineralogists aren't trained to do that."
Lex nodded. "That's why he needed Roshenko."
"Maybe Roshenko felt sorry for Hamilton, or maybe he recognized the pattern straight off—his notes don't say."
"But this…" Lex was thoughtful, pacing a bit until he reached the fireplace. "This is something the scientific community could take seriously."
"Well, at the very least it's highly suggestive. It's certainly not definitive, and I'll bet it would freak out a lot of people. I mean," Angela rubbed her tired eyes, "according to his data these rocks are potentially dangerous. A mutagen unlike anything seen before, and one that might produce radically different results on different subjects. It flies in the face of most of what we think we know about human biology." She rested her chin in her hand. "We need to call Detective Harris."
"Why?"
"Why?" Angela repeatedly blankly. He looked so casual, standing there stirring the ashes from last night's fire, as if he hadn't a care in the world. "Excuse me, but are you seeing the same thing I am? This kind of shoots down their case—Hamilton's hardly going to kill the guy who's given him what he's been searching for all these years." She looked at the computer screen again. The initial buzz of discovery was starting to wear off, and her head hurt. All those years. It was sad, really.
Lex brushed off his hands. "But you don't think it's conclusive."
"O.k., maybe not conclusive by my standards," she hedged. "But it still puts Hamilton several giant steps ahead of where he was."
"And you're going to tell Harris you withheld Roshenko's notes from him?" Lex said skeptically.
God, she could really strangle him! "Might I remind you, you were the one who called me. And I didn't withhold anything—Harris has got his own copies. Only without Hamilton's data it doesn't mean anything. You're the one that withheld that." She usually wasn't this slow on the uptake, but she'd been up all night. "Oh."
"Exactly."
Angela rubbed her eyes again.
"It seems we're at a bit of an impasse." Lex sat down in front of her again. "I can assure you I came by those notes legitimately, but I don't think Harris will believe that."
"I'm not sure I believe that," she grumbled.
"You're very cynical, aren't you?"
"I could say the same thing about you." Angela thought for a moment. "O.k., so what if I just casually suggest they cross-check Roshenko's work with some of Hamilton's? They've got the entire contents of Roshenko's office, his computer—they must be thinking along the same lines we were."
"You think more highly of the Metropolis police department than I do. Believe me, Angela, they aren't going to spend any more time thinking about this than they absolutely have to. Odds are they haven't bothered to examine anything the late doctor might have written."
"So you're saying we're back to square one."
"Not exactly. Let me speak to Hamilton again. He still needs to explain what you saw them arguing about, and why his prints were all over the lab."
They looked at each other in silence. Angela had that odd feeling again—the one that said he wasn't telling her everything he knew. The problem was, his face was perfectly composed. So he was either a very skilled liar, or he was telling the truth. She really had no way of knowing, but she was now convinced Hamilton was innocent. Which meant whoever had killed Dr. Roshenko was still out there. And she intended to do something about it.
"Fine." Angela saved the modified data in a new file, and turned off the computer. "But if you don't come up with something pretty soon I'm going to try to convince the police to give the files another look. Maybe they'll surprise us. You never know."
Lex smiled at her, and this time it appeared to be genuine; it actually reached his eyes. "No, I suppose you don't."
p
Lex watched from the window as Angela's car disappeared through the front gate. He had offered her breakfast, but she had refused, saying she needed to get back to Metropolis. Back to work, no doubt—he knew from the background check he'd ordered that there was no husband or current boyfriend who'd be expecting her home.
It was too bad, really—she would have been a diverting addition to the gloomy dining room. And she had good taste in cars. Lex smiled ruefully. He'd had her here all night, and he'd been a perfect gentleman. Maybe he really had turned over a new leaf.
After breakfast he went back to his library. Hamilton's disk he placed in a special compartment built into the side of his custom-made desk. If there was one thing at which Luthors excelled it was devising places to hide things. The house had so many hidden rooms and false panels Lex hadn't found them all yet.
But then Luthors possessed a myriad of unique skills. He sat down in his chair and pressed the speed dial button on his phone.
Lex put his feet up and opened a bottle of water.
"Senatori here."
"Good morning, Dominic."
The air on the line became frosty. Lex was surprised the speaker didn't freeze over.
"Lex."
"I have a job for you, Dominic," he smiled.
"I'm afraid this isn't a good time, Lex." Dominic's British accent grew even more pronounced. "I am taking a copy of the latest quarterly figures to your father this afternoon."
"I don't think that's a good idea," Lex cautioned. "You know what his doctors said—no work. I'd hate to think you were slowing my father's recovery."
Lex could almost hear Dominic's teeth grinding.
"Your father specifically requested…"
"You're not working for my father," Lex corrected. "You're working for me. Isn't that so?"
The other man remained silent. No doubt he was wondering how a man with an Oxford education and the bluest of blood had ended up in a subordinate position to Lionel Luthor's upstart brat. Lex knew perfectly well Dominic bided his time at LuthorCorp in the hopes that Lionel would acknowledge his talent and place him a position of real power. Which just demonstrated how little Senatori understood his employer—to Lionel, blood ties were everything. Dominic would never be anything but a pretender to the throne.
"Dominic, last year when we ran into trouble with the deal in Panama—what was the name of the state department official who smoothed things over for us?"
"Abermarle."
Lex nodded to himself. Jack Abermarle, that was it. Lex hadn't been directly involved, but from what he'd heard Abermarle had demanded quite a bit of company stock before he was willing to convince the State Department LuthorCorp's deal was in the nation's best interests. Panama City now had a pesticide factory spewing toxic chemicals over its downtown, thanks to Lionel Luthor.
"Might one inquire as to the matter at hand, Lex?" Dominic's tone had sweetened a bit. He was clearly salivating at the possibly of another scandal he could carry to Lionel's bedside.
"Sorry to disappoint you, but it's just a routine inquiry. Say hello to my father for me." Before Senatori could respond he terminated the call.
Lex swiveled his chair so he could look out the stained glass windows at the house's extensive gardens. It was too late in the year for anything to be in bloom, and the flowerbeds were now yellow and gold with fallen leaves, but it was still a picturesque sight. Maybe next spring he would open up the gardens to the public for a few days so other people could see it. Doing so would have the added benefit of making his father furious.
He tried not to spend a great deal of time deciphering the tangle of emotions he felt about his father, but he also knew that, when it came to dealing with people in the business world, Lionel's instincts weren't all that far off.
"'Know thy enemy,'" the older man was fond of quoting. Lex planned to take him up on the advice. Finding out all about Angela McKay's past had been easy; those of the late Dr. Roshenko and the Hamiltons, father and son, were proving more difficult. Abermarle would be the perfect person for the job.
p
Two more days had passed, and the investigation being run out of the Torch's office had hit a brick wall. The Daily Planet had provided a pretty thorough recap of Dr. Hamilton's arraignment. Aware for the first time of the real reason Hamilton had lost his job, the citizens of Smallville had already tried and convicted him in the court of public opinion.
"The guy had the means and the opportunity," Chloe recounted over coffee at the Talon. "Hamilton definitely could have strangled Roshenko; he was ancient." She ticked off her points on her fingers as she talked. "The Planet says the cops found Hamilton's prints all over the lab. The U had a restraining order against him, so there's no way they could have been there by accident. And Hamilton couldn't or wouldn't account for his whereabouts the evening of the crime." She took a big swig of her mocha. "Pretty open and shut, I'd say."
"You still don't have much of a motive," Clark interjected.
"The state's case is definitely weak on motive," Pete seconded. Sometimes having a judge for a mom did weird things to Pete's speech.
"Yeah, but I've figured out how we can fix that."
"Oh, man, I don't want to hear this," Clark groaned.
"How?" Pete said warily.
"We talk to the arresting officer."
"And how do we do that?"
"Tomorrow's Saturday, right? Well, I called Metropolis P.D. and they said Detective Bright works Tuesdays though Saturdays. So we go in, say we're from the Ledger, which we kind of are, and ask him about Hamilton's supposed motive."
"Uh uh, Chloe, count me out!" Pete stood up and grabbed his backpack. "I wasted last Saturday with you trying to get in to see Hamilton at the jail. Clark, man, it was pathetic—she did everything but beg. I'd love to help you, but a man's got to have some free time." With that, Pete departed, leaving Chloe looking at Clark expectantly.
"You know I always help my dad on Saturdays," he said, standing, ready to follow Pete's lead.
"So you help him in the morning and in the afternoon we'll go to Metropolis. I'll even buy you lunch first. C'mon, Clark, I really need you with me." The look in her eyes was so pleading that Clark crumbled. Like he always did.
"O.k. But no funny stuff, right?"
Chloe beamed. "Right."
"We go, we talk to the guy, we come back."
"Absolutely!"
"I mean it, Chloe."
His friend drank the rest of her coffee and jumped to her feet. "I totally understand." She paused for a moment, and then unexpectedly stood on her toes to give him a quick buzz on the cheek. "You're the best, Clark. I gotta go make some plans."
"What plans?" he called, but she was already out the door. Chloe Sullivan, the human tornado.
"We're not so bad off that you have to bus your own table, Clark," Lana teased when he brought the empty cups back to the bar.
He blushed. "My mom taught me to always pick up after myself." Oh, man, did he actually just say that? Maybe he'd get lucky and the earth would open up and swallow him now.
No such luck.
"That looked like a pretty top secret meeting you three were having. I heard Chloe's working on a story about Dr. Hamilton's case." Lana was sorting receipts into neat little piles. "The papers are making it sound pretty grim."
"Yeah." Clark never got tired of looking at Lana. Even though he knew Whitney was still right there between them, like a ghost.
Concern shaded her hazel eyes. "Do you think he did it, Clark?"
"Chloe does. I think Pete does, too." He brushed his hair out of his eyes. "But I'm not so sure."
"Why?"
When he didn't answer right away she smiled. "Really, Clark, I'd like to hear your opinion."
His throat suddenly felt tight. "Uh, well, it's not an opinion, more of a feeling that something's not right. A hunch, I guess you could call it."
"Well, you journalists are supposed to have hunches, right?"
Clark had never been called a journalist before. Wow. A journalist. He couldn't help but stand up a little straighter. "Yeah. Yeah, we are."
By the next day, however, he felt anything but journalistic. In fact, standing with Chloe in the lobby of police headquarters he felt kind of queasy.
"Just follow my lead, Clark, and you'll do fine," Chloe whispered to him as a heavyset man in a rumpled shirt approached them.
"Detective Bright?"
"That's right." The man was his father's age, sporting a crew cut and huge, beefy hands. Clark didn't even want to think about what would happen if the detective saw through Chloe's story.
"I'm Chloe Sullivan, and this is Clark Kent—we're with the Smallville Ledger. I called this morning?"
"Right, right." Bright eyed them suspiciously. "You're awfully young to be reporters."
Clark opened his mouth, but Chloe jumped in.
"We're interns."
The detective grunted. "Yeah? That's nice. I've got a daughter about your age and all she does is sit around all day and watch TV."
The two students smiled politely.
"How can I help you kids?"
"Well, we're just tying up some loose ends about the Hamilton arrest…"
"As interns," Clark babbled.
Chloe surreptitiously jabbed him in the ribs. "…And we were wondering if you could tell us any more about your theory of the motive."
Bright rubbed one of those huge hands across his head, and smiled indulgently. "Well, now, I'm sure you read the Planet's report—they did a pretty through job."
"Yes, but they failed to build a strong case for why Hamilton would kill someone he used to work with."
Looking a bit taken aback by Chloe's rapid-fire response, Bright shook his head. "Trust me, Miss Sullivan, we've got a motive, a damn good one actually."
"We're sure you do," Clark jumped in again. "We were just hoping you could tell us a little more about it."
"Well…" Bright squinted at the little notepad Chloe had whipped out of her bag. "Off the record?"
Clearly the man was no longer amused by two kids playing detective. He was taking them seriously now.
To Clark's surprise, Chloe nodded. "Off the record."
Bright glanced around him, but no one was paying them any mind. "You'll recall the Planet reported that Hamilton had been dismissed from the university for certain, ah, indiscretions."
"For sleeping with several underage students, you mean," Chloe corrected.
Clark couldn't believe it—the detective actually blushed. The man cleared his throat nosily.
"Ah, um, yes. Well, you're wrong about Hamilton and Roshenko. They may have been working together, but they sure as hell weren't friends."
Clark frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Dr. Roshenko was the one who turned Dr. Hamilton in to the university's conduct board. Cost him his job."
"Wow." Chloe scribbled frantically. "You're sure about that?"
"Chloe…" Clark whispered.
"We're sure, Miss Sullivan. Now if you don't mind I'd like to get home before my dinner gets cold. Good luck with your story." The big man brushed past them towards the elevator.
"Thank you for your time, Detective Bright," Clark said quickly.
Chloe kept scribbling. "Man, Clark, this is it! Talk about a motive for murder! Roshenko was the reason Hamilton was stuck in Smallville!"
"Do you want to say that a little louder, Chloe? I don't think Gotham City heard you."
"Sorry." Chloe hastily lowered her voice. "Bet the U asked the D.A. to downplay that part of their case. Can't have the good parents of Metropolis worrying that their daughters are being molested at college."
"So Hamilton really did it." Clark could feel his ego deflating by the minute. So much for his first great journalistic hunch.
"Of course." Chloe smacked him gently with her notes. "What did I tell you, Clark? Was this worth the drive or what?"
"Yeah, I guess it was."
"Don't look so glum—the day's not over yet."
Uh oh.
"Chloe, I meant what I said yesterday."
"Of course." She took hold of his arm. "C'mon, let's find someplace to get dinner—I'm starved. And I'll tell you what we're doing next."
"No, Chloe," he said over hamburgers and sodas at a dive not too far from the police station. They were waiting for the sun to go down. "Absolutely not."
"No," he said, as Chloe thumbed through a phone book outside a convenience store.
"No," he said, as they stood on the run down porch of the late Dr. Roshenko and she jimmied the front door lock with a nail file. Somewhere a dog barked, and the dampness of evening wrapped around them. "Chloe, this is breaking and entering. Do you think you'll ever get a job with the Planet if you have a criminal record?"
"Clark, relax," she said, as the door finally swung open with a creak. It sounded deafening in the silence. "Look at this neighborhood; no one's around. You'd think a professor would be able to afford a better place."
It was a lousy neighborhood: shabby bungalows surrounded by chain link fences. A vacant lot on the corner. The kind of neighborhood where you might come back to find the hubcaps missing from your car. Or your car missing from the driveway. Evidently molecular biology didn't pay as well as he'd thought.
Chloe was already inside, and Clark had to hiss at her to make himself heard. "I'm leaving, Chloe. I mean it." He could hear her fumbling around. Great—not only were they going to get arrested but she was going to break a leg. They were leaving if he had to carry her out.
It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but there was enough moonlight coming in through the windows to see that the place was a mess. The main area, a living room, was a virtual sea of books: books on shelves, books stacked on the floor, even books propping up the coffee table. The place smelled musty, unused. There was a dirty mug on a side table, and a stack of dirty dishes in the tiny kitchen.
Chloe was hastily rifling through the papers that seemed to be on every horizontal surface.
"Let's go," Clark whispered again.
"Just a second, Clark," she whispered back, loudly. "I just want to have a look around."
Clark surrendered. The quicker they looked around and found nothing the quicker they could leave.
"What are we looking for?"
"Threatening letters." Chloe held a paper up to the moonlight, and then put it back in a stack.
"You wouldn't leave evidence like that just lying around."
"You might if you didn't know you were about to be killed."
"Oh, great, I feel so much better now."
Chloe took one side of the room, and Clark the other, but they didn't find anything. Just that Roshenko clearly never threw anything away, right down to junk mail and the labels off soup cans.
"My mom would have a heart attack if she could see this place. Chloe, there's nothing here. I'm sure the police took away anything even remotely suspicious."
In the moonlight Chloe looked crestfallen.
"I was so sure we'd find something."
"Sometimes hunches don't work out," Clark told her with the wisdom of experience.
"Guess not…oohh!" Chloe stumbled in the darkness, and Clark caught her just before she hit the floor.
"Are you o.k?"
"Yeah, I think so." Chloe rubbed her ankle. "What did I trip over? A dead rat?"
Clark glanced around them. "I don't see anything."
Chloe knelt down and ran her hand over the floor. "Clark, one of the floorboards is loose!"
"So? It's an old house, Chloe. You're lucky it wasn't a nail."
Chloe was now working to get her fingernails down and around the edge of the board so she could lift it up.
"Breaking and entering isn't enough? You want to add destruction of private property?"
"Quit complaining and help me," Chloe ordered. Before he could refuse the board gave way.
"See?" Chloe cried gleefully. She held a piece of flooring about a foot long and a few inches wide in her hands. Before he could stop her she'd thrust a hand into the dark space beneath. "I can't feel anything," she complained, pulling her hand back and brushing it off on her jeans.
"There's probably a crawlspace under the house."
"Why didn't I bring a flashlight?" Chloe moaned. "My arm doesn't quite reach—Clark, you do it. Your arms are longer."
"Fine, but only to keep you from crawling down there yourself." He tried not to think about the kind of things that liked to live in dark, dirty crawlspaces as he lay on his stomach and reached down into the small hole. Sure enough he reached down into an open space, right through the floor joists. He groped around, inwardly cursing the day he'd met Chloe. Finally he resorted to using his x-ray vision.
"There's something down here," he said in surprise.
"Can you feel it?" Chloe cried excitedly.
"Uh, yeah. Feels like a metal box." He was able to catch hold of the ring on top of it with his fingers.
"Don't drop it!"
Carefully Clark lifted the box back through the floor and into the house. It looked like an ordinary metal box, the kind everyone had around to hold insurance papers and birth certificates. But why go to all the trouble to hide it under the house? Either Roshenko was really paranoid, or there was something in there he didn't want found.
Chloe took the box and moved closer to the kitchen window where the moonlight was strongest. "If someone was sending me threatening letters," she breathed, "this is exactly the kind of place I'd put them."
Clark's own heart was beating faster as Chloe struggled with the latch. When the lid popped open and they peered inside, they both sighed in disappointment.
Sure enough the box was full of papers. Newer ones on top, older papers, some of them crumbly around the edges, on the bottom.
"Looks like the deed to the house." Chloe examined the top one. "He bought it a few years ago. Is that what a dump like this goes for in Metropolis? Ouch."
"Letters," Clark looked at the next bundle. "These are pretty old; and look, the postmarks are European. Paris, Amsterdam…They're addressed to somebody named Janus Illyovitch."
"You don't think Hamilton would have mailed a letter from Europe, do you?" Chloe sighed.
"Sorry, no. Probably a relative."
"What's the other stuff?"
"Um, looks like his personal papers. Birth certificate, or maybe immigration? I can't read them, but it looks like Russian to me. And look, they have the hammer and sickle stamped on them."
"Pete said he left Russia during the Cold War, when it was still the Soviet Union."
Clark nodded. "I wonder how he managed that. I mean, in history class we read about all those people trying to defect, and never making it. This guy actually pulled it off."
"Yeah. Pretty amazing."
"Yeah. And look, this one has his picture on it."
Chloe squinted. "Hey, he wasn't a bad-looking guy when he was young."
Clark squinted too, but for a different reason. The edge of the photo was peeling up ever so slightly, and he used his x-ray vision to take a quick look under it. And then a longer look. Then he took the document away from Chloe and laid it on the counter.
"What are you doing? Clark, are you crazy?"
He worked at the loose corner with his thumbnail, trying to be as careful as he could.
"Clark, you'll tear it."
"Hang on a minute." Luckily the glue was old and brittle, and suddenly the photo popped off and fluttered to the floor.
Standing with their heads together, they stared down at where the photograph had been. There had been another one underneath. Of a different man.
"This guy's not as cute," Chloe observed at random.
The two had been so absorbed in their find that they didn't hear the key in the lock until it was too late. The overhead lights flipped on, and they were both momentarily blinded. The figure in the kitchen doorway spoke.
"O.k.," said Angela McKay. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't call the cops right now.
Chloe stood frozen. Before he could think, Clark blurted out the first thing that came into his head.
"Because Roshenko's not who you think he is."
/html