Chapter 9

Picnic

Saturday noon - Crater Lake

"Since they both left the barbeque before it started," Charisse said, "do you think either one will bother to come to the picnic, Pete?"

"Mmm…I'd bet all tea in China that Lana will be here," Pete replied. "Clark's another story. Knowing him, he probably panicked and ran when he saw he was supposed to sit next to her. She likely saw him leave and chased after him."

"Why would he run from Lana? She's the sweetest, most attractive woman I know."

Pete raised his beer to his lips and took a small sip to give himself time to think. How to tell my wife the essentials without turning this into a History Channel marathon?

"Back in high school, those two wanted each other bad, from freshman year on. Every time they got close, something got in the way and separated them again. Clark just recently filled me in on what happened after I moved away before senior year. Apparently, they finally started dating but something serious happened to break them up for good." Holding his hand up to stop the inevitable questions, Pete said, "Don't waste your time asking what happened, Charisse. That secret's not mine to tell."

"Well, if I can't get you to tell me, I'll just have to go to the source." Pointing over her husband's shoulder, Charisse said, "Look, here he…no, here they come."

Pete whipped around and saw Clark smiling from ear-to-ear as he walked up to the picnic pavilion where the Rosses were standing. Draped over him, and there was no other word for it in Pete's mind, was a squealing Lana Lang. The Rosses gave each other a look that conveyed as much thought as a short conversation. Each was thinking the same thing: maybe Lana and Clark had left the barbeque together.

Upon closer inspection, Clark appeared to be tickling Lana with one hand as he carried her over his shoulder with the other. With her arms wrapped tightly to her sides by the arm Clark was using to hold her in place, Lana's only possible response was to fail around helplessly with her legs as she breathlessly squealed her protests.

"Oh please stop…Clark…I can't…take any more…please?" Lana pleaded.

"Hmm…" Clark said, stroking his chin with his free hand as he pretended to consider her request, "Do you promise to quit tickling me?"

"Oh God, yes! Anything to get you to stop."

"Anything? Anything's an awfully big promise for such a little woman."

Lana shot him a look out of the corners of her eyes and said, "Well…not anything, but almost anything."

"Since you're already making dinner for me, I guess I can let you go for nothing more than your promise."

That last verbal exchange of took place right in front of the Rosses, so when Clark swung Lana down off of his shoulder and stood her in front of him, they were greeted by twin smiles from Pete and Charisse Ross.

The girls and guys paired off before heading down to the lakeshore where a competitive game of beach volleyball was already under way.

Over the next several hours, Clark became reacquainted with many of his former classmates. Lana even found some she had not seen since graduation. Clark took advantage of this first-ever chance to show off in front of his girlfriend. He hadn't been dating Lana when he was quarterbacking the football team in high school, so he used the tiniest portion of his abilities, and became the star of any game he played.

In basketball, he was deadly from way outside and if someone came out on him, he was by them in a flash, driving to the hoop. In the guys' volleyball game, no one wanted to be on the receiving end of one of Clark's spikes, and as for softball, they never found the ball he hit into the lake from 400 feet away.

Lana smiled to see Clark trying to impress her like he was a teenager again. She thought he should know nothing could top the way she felt about his work as Superman, but knowing in her heart that this display was just for her made it special nonetheless.

When Clark wasn't participating in the games, he was watching Lana play. She had never played sports in school, beyond running cross country, but that didn't mean she wasn't athletic. Lana had always been quick and graceful and, unlike many of her classmates, she had worked hard to keep herself in shape.

After everyone sat down for the mid-afternoon meal, more traditional games were played, like sack races, spoon-and-egg races, even a three-legged race that Clark and Lana won together.

As afternoon turned to evening, the picnic broke up and everyone went their separate ways. Clark and Lana headed for the parking lot, arm-in-arm. Both were dirty, with a lot of the dirt having been picked up during the last activity of the day, a giant game of tug-of-war. Not surprisingly, Clark's team had won, and, expecting that result, Lana had made sure she was on his team. The clouds of dust kicked up by the stamping feet of so many tuggers had coated everyone involved in a fine layer of dirt.

Lana looked at herself and then looked over at him and said, "I'm filthy. I need to shower and change clothes before we do anything else, and from the look of things, you need to do that just as bad as I do."

Clark had been too wrapped up in happy thoughts to have noticed, but when Lana mentioned it, he looked and decided they looked like a pair of chimney sweeps, the only difference being that they were covered in dirt instead of soot.

"I'll drop you off at your house and then go back to the hotel to get cleaned up," Clark said.

Thus it was, an hour later, that Clark was just easing his Audi to a stop in Lana's driveway. Remembering that she thought he was sexy in black, Clark had run back to Metropolis to get a black shirt out of his closet to wear this evening.

A quick knock on the back door was followed by Lana saying, "It's open, Clark. Come on in."

They had eaten steaks the night before, so tonight, Lana was making a rich tomato meat sauce to go with the pot of spaghetti she had just put on the stove to cook.

Clark had remembered Lana's last-minute request and had bought a loaf of fresh French bread from the local Breadsmith store on his way back to the farm. He set it down on the kitchen table and made sure to stay out of Lana's way. If there was one thing Clark remembered about his mom in the kitchen, it was that you risked her wrath if you got underfoot. Clark decided it would be safer for him to assume Lana was the same way.

Another half-hour later and they were enjoying a meal of salad, spaghetti and meat sauce, and warm, crusty French bread. More than that, though, they were enjoying each other's company.

After dinner, Clark did the dishes in no time at all, and they moved to the living room couch to sit down and relax over a cup of coffee. Once the coffee was finished, Lana moved on to what she'd been anticipating ever since dinner.

"You said yesterday," Lana said, "that there was something you needed to tell me about tonight…something 'deathly serious' you said."

"Yeah, I did. It has to do with the deaths of Chloe and Lex."

Clark stared at the wooden floorboards as he tried to organize the maelstrom of thoughts and emotions that were attached to this subject. He asked, "Lana, would you tell me what you already know about Chloe's death? It might be easier for me to go on from there."

"Well, okay," Lana replied. "It was sophomore year at Met U and Chloe and I were living together in that ratty apartment on Bleeker Street. She had gone back to Smallville for the weekend. Ostensibly, she was going home to spend time with her dad, but I thought she was working on a story. She had that special gleam in her eye that only came from being on the trail of something big.

"When she didn't come back on time Sunday night, I called her cell phone several times, but got no answer. That's when I really began to get worried. I called her dad and he said she had left hours ago and should've been back in Metropolis already. He called the Smallville police to report Chloe missing. They searched for hours before someone reported a missing guard rail on that sharp turn at Carleton Gorge.

"They found Chloe's car at the bottom of the gorge and she was still strapped inside, but there was nothing they could do, because she was already dead. Since it was a traffic fatality on a state highway, the Kansas State Police investigated and said they couldn't tell what caused the accident. Her car appeared to have been in perfect working condition before driving over the cliff. They found no evidence of foul play and her car hadn't been hit by anyone else because they didn't find any paint marks from another car.

"They concluded she fell asleep at the wheel, which was a bunch of crap because Chloe was always on some kind of caffeine drink, whether it was coffee or Red Bull, or MDX…she said was able to squeeze more hours out of a day that way." Lana sighed and said, "I just don't know what really did happen that day."

Clark got up and got them both a refill of coffee before he replied. "Tonight, you're going to know what happened, 'cause Lois and I did some investigating of our own. I was able to find out some stuff the state police couldn't by using my abilities. Plus, Chloe had left us a cache of information that led us back to her killer."

"Her…her killer?" Lana asked in disbelief.

"Yes, you heard me right…her killer." Clark replied quietly. "She was working on a story, one that would have made her reputation as a journalist, but the subject of the story found out and took steps to have her silenced...permanently.

"The problem the murderer had was that Chloe left a duplicate of her research and a couple of self-recorded DVDs in a secure location that only Lois knew about. It was a fail-safe in case anything happened to Chloe. One DVD was for me. In it, she told me if I was seeing this, then she was already dead and had likely been killed by the man she was investigating. She told me she had reached an understanding with that man, just after the second meteor shower, that he would quit researching me, and she would stay away from him.

"Chloe found out that man had continued trying to learn my secrets, so she kept her word. She went after that man, tooth and nail, in an attempt to being him down. Reading through her research, she had him, too. Dead to rights. All she was doing in Smallville that weekend was meeting a source one last time to tie up some loose ends.

"It turns out the meeting was a fake. Chloe was supposed to meet her source on her way back to Metropolis, out by Carleton Gorge. Only, she met a hit man instead. I won't go into the details, but she was put to sleep and her car was driven off the road into the gorge. Someone in the state police had been bought off to make sure nothing suspicious was found."

"But…who was it? Who wanted Chloe dead?" Lana asked, stunned to have learned her roommate had been murdered.

"That's the other part of my story. Her story target was Lex Luthor."

Lana's eyes shot open wide and she thought she was going to throw up. She'd known for a long time that Lex could be cold and callous and their friendship had ended soon after she and Clark broke up in college, but she would never have believed him capable of murder. Yet, here was Clark, looking at her with all the intensity of a prosecutor, telling her that Lex was responsible…and she believed him. Clark had never been able to lie to her successfully, she had always known. This time, there was no attempt to deceive. Oh, Lex, she thought, what did you do?

"If you want confirmation," Clark said, "I can call Lois. She should be back from her vacation by now and can confirm everything I've just told you."

Lana weakly waved off his offer, saying, "No, Clark, I believe you. I'm just…having trouble getting my mind around the idea that the man who was once my friend could have murdered my roommate."

After a minute or two of silence, Lana asked, "What happened next?"

"Lois and I confronted Lex at the Luthor Mansion. We didn't let him know we had Chloe's research, we just told him what we had found out about the murder. Lex stood there and laughed. He admitted, point blank, that he had been the one to have her killed. He was impressed we had figured it out, but he knew our evidence wouldn't stand up in court. After all, the things I had heard couldn't be put on a tape recorder, so there was no proof.

"Lois wanted to print Chloe's story and ruin Lex, but I was consumed with an unappeasable rage. I wanted Lex Luthor to pay the ultimate price. He had to die."

Lana's mouth hung wide open as she listened to Clark's tale. Even now, roughly eighteen years after Chloe's death, she could feel the rage flowing from him. "What did you do?" she asked.

"I talked Lois into waiting to go to the Planet with Chloe's article and then I stalked Lex, using my abilities. I found the perfect time and place to take my revenge. He liked to drive by the 'crash' site on Sunday evenings, right about the time Chloe was killed. The third weekend he drove out to that isolated spot, I flew down out of the sky in front of his car and stopped him with one hand on the hood of his Ferrari.

"'Well, well, if it isn't my old friend, Clark Kent,' Lex said as he climbed out of the car. 'I see you're not so shy about using your talents anymore.' Those were the last words Lex said. I sped around the car and closed one hand around his throat and began to squeeze."

Lana was riveted by Clark's confession. A bomb could have gone off in her driveway and she wouldn't have noticed.

"Then," Clark said, "I lifted him off the ground, making all of his body weight pull on his neck. Lex was failing around, desperate to break my chokehold, but he might as well have been asleep for all the good it was doing him. 'Lex,' I said, 'how many pounds of pressure do you think it takes to snap a human neck? Don't think too hard, old friend, 'cause you're about to find out!'

"While I was holding him, I told him everything he ever wanted to know about me, all of my abilities and even my origin and then I asked him, just before he died, 'Was it worth it, Lex? Was it worth Chloe's life and your life to learn my secrets? I hope so.'"

"I wonder what was going through his mind at the end?" Lana wondered, almost to herself.

Clark's face took on a wolfish aspect at that point. "Oh," he said, "I know exactly what the last thing was that went through Lex's mind."

"And that was…?"

"My fist!" Clark shouted.

He was breathing hard by now, his nostrils were flaring, and his adrenaline was flowing and Lana was becoming worried. She slid over toward him until their knees touched and placed one of her hands on his forearm. "Clark," she said, "Clark! Look at me! Come back to me. Take a deep breath and hold it…that's good, now, let it out slowly. Now, again. Deep breath…and let it out slowly."

When Clark finally released his rage, Lana said quietly, "So you killed Lex because he killed Chloe and the courts couldn't do anything about it."

Emotionally spent, Clark answered just as quietly, "Yeah. He had already taken the love of my life from me because he wouldn't let up about my secrets. Then, he had my best friend killed and my secrets were at the root of that, too. I felt indirectly responsible for Chloe's death and I was not going to let Lex walk free.

Clark paused a moment before going on, "I think killing Lex before I became Superman is a big reason why Superman has never killed anyone. I know what it is like to take the law into your own hands. There's a part of me, deep down inside, that wants nothing more than to deal out summary judgment and execute sentences right on the spot. I'm afraid of becoming someone like that, Lana, and so I hold on even harder to our system of justice."

And, finally, he whispered, "I had to tell you this now, before we went any further with this…reconciliation. After all, could you ever love a confessed murderer?"

Lana gently wrapped him in her arms and pulled him close with a warm hug. "I think I can, Clark," she said, "the question is, will you let me?"

Surprised, Clark looked down at Lana and said, "How can you…"

The rest of his sentence was stifled by a small, slender hand that was placed over his mouth. "Shh," Lana said, "I, too, know what it's like to kill someone. It's hard for someone who's always tried to do the right thing to come to terms with the fact that they've taken a life."

Clark's eyes were almost as wide as his mouth. Lana couldn't have stunned him anymore than she already had without announcing she was into girls.

"Who? When?" Clark asked, those being the only questions he could stammer at that moment.

"Well, it happened the day of the second meteor shower…"