Judge Page dismissed the jury for the rest of the day. The information about Mindy Church's past associations was more than enough to force the D.A.'s office into completely rethinking the charges against William Church Junior. It was distinctly possible he'd been telling the truth – he'd been framed by his step-mother.
La Inglesia Winery was twenty miles outside of the city. They'd found tickets for a wine tasting and lunch there on their first night at the B&B.
"How considerate of them to give us a free pass into the building," Lois commented with a laugh. "Little do they know their folly."
Clark chuckled, keeping his eyes on the road as he looked for the turn-off to the main building.
"There it is," Lois said, catching sight of the sign. Clark turned the rental car onto the winding gravel driveway.
"I'm still surprised that Mindy has been able to pull the dumb blonde thing off for so long," Clark said. "I gather that even her husband didn't know about her being related to David Mosby."
"Preconception and misdirection," Lois reminded him. "Aside from the handful of people in the know, who would think that Clark Kent was macho enough to pull off some of the stuff he does?"
"Granted," he admitted. "What have you got on the winery?"
Lois pulled out her notes. "Founded in 1969 by Paul Kirk, an engineer out of San Francisco."
"Please don't tell me he worked for LuthorCorp or STAR Labs," Clark commented.
"No, he worked for the city of San Francisco, took early retirement to make wine. Bought 25 acres of hillside and was up to 90 acres when he ran into financial trouble during the '90's. A phylloxera outbreak took out all his vines and they had to be replaced," Lois read off. "What is phylloxera?"
"It's a nasty little pest that attacks grapevine roots," Clark answered. "Did a major number to the French wine industry back in the 1880's. They ended up importing root stock from Missouri to save their vines. Then when the problem hit California, they ended up importing the Missouri rootstock from France."
"They make wine in Missouri?" Lois asked. "Next you're going to tell me Kansas has a wine industry."
"It does," Clark answered with a grin. "Before Prohibition Missouri and Kansas produced nearly ninety percent of the wine produced in the U.S."
"Why do I need to pester research when I have you around?" Lois asked.
"Because I'm still not completely up to speed on current events, remember?" Clark told her. "Plus Dee Dee and the other researchers are very good. How did Church Industries get hold of the winery anyway?"
"Apparently Bill Senior had started diversifying his personal investments at about that time and one of the companies he invested in happened to be this one," Lois went on. "Church bailed them out of trouble and when Kirk died five years ago, Church Industries bought out the rest of the family but retained Kirk's son, Luke, to run the company for them."
The car turned a corner and a large white stucco building that resembled a California mission came into sight. Clark parked the car in one of the spaces near the building. The parking lot was half full and several people were waiting outside the main doors, apparently waiting for the doors to open for the tour.
They joined the waiting group as the doors opened. Clark ushered Lois ahead of him, placing a hand on the small of her back, gently rubbing her back with his thumb. She didn't seem to object.
It was dim and cool inside the building. Clark's eyes adjusted immediately to the dim illumination and he looked around. A buffet was being set up along one wall. An old-west style bar stood along the adjacent wall with a barman standing behind it. Behind him were stacks of oak wine barrels.
A young woman in jeans walked into the room smiling at the little group. "I'm Gina Kirk and I'll be leading today's tour of La Inglesia. When we're finished, we'll end up back here for lunch and a tasting of our recent vintages."
The group assembled itself to follow the young woman into the inner sanctum of the winery. Lois and Clark stayed to the back of the group and Clark took the opportunity to scan the building with x-ray vision. He stopped walking as he concentrated on one near-by room.
"Anything?" Lois murmured.
"Yeah," Clark murmured back, taking her arm and moving around a corner, away from the group. "Their lab is a lot larger than the ones at the other wineries and they have a medical grade incinerator in the basement."
"Why didn't you catch that before?" Lois wondered softly.
"Lead paint," he answered. "Several coats of it. But they didn't paint the doors, or the floors." He nodded to the door they'd passed in the hallway. It had a hotel-style keycard reader instead of a standard lock. Lois stood lookout as Clark stood in front of the door, one hand on the handle as if testing it. After careful consideration, he simply sheared off the bolts that held the door shut with laser vision, and ushered Lois through. Closing the door behind them, he sealed it with a single, nearly microscopic weld – the door would still appear locked to casual observers.
For an agricultural laboratory, it was remarkably well equipped – too well equipped. A university biochemistry lab would be well served with the equipment in this room. It was set up almost identically to Friedman's lab at STAR Labs in Metropolis.
"Clark, can you think of a reason why a small winery that is barely running at break even would own a mass spectrometer?" Lois asked. "Or electrophoresis equipment?"
Clark felt the twinges of a headache coming on and absently rubbed his temple. "Or kryptonite?"
She gave him a worried look. "Where?"
He nodded toward a large safe sitting in the corner. "It's lead-lined, but there are gaps. I doubt they've been taking proper care to minimize exposure."
"Maybe they don't believe it's dangerous to normal people," Lois suggested.
"Maybe."
"Are you okay?"
He nodded, stepping away from the safe. He began carefully walking between the steel-topped counters, stepping around the two white five gallon tubs that sat on the floor at the ends of the counters. He stopped when he spotted shards of blue glass under the toe-kick of one of the cabinets, where the rubber wall base met the linoleum floor. He crouched down to get a better look. Lois hurried over to join him. "Cobalt blue lead glass," he told her.
"Anything else?"
He sniffed the air experimentally. "I can smell traces of the poison. I can also smell traces of blood, and something else."
"Maybe somebody cut themselves?"
"Maybe," he responded. He looked around the area between the cabinets once again. "Lois, how about you join the rest of the group and as soon as you get a chance, call Henderson and have him get the FBI out here."
"That's a round-about way to do it," she observed.
"But the most effective, I think," he replied.
"And what will you be doing?"
"Getting Superman to get the sheriff out here."
She gave him a quick kiss. "Be careful," she warned.
"Aren't I always?"
"Do you want an honest answer?"
"Uh, probably not," he admitted as he led the way out through the remaining door. He closed the door carefully behind them but he knew Lois hadn't missed the fact that both doors were now locked with quick blasts of heat vision. The room was now sealed - no one would be able to get in without a welding torch, or his help. But he had the unsettling feeling that he'd missed something. Something that had been right in front of him, yet he hadn't recognized it.
Lois rejoined the group as they were leaving the building to look at the grape vines in the fields nearest the winery. Clark had publicly begged off, claiming to be feeling ill.
The tour guide yammered on about the various theories concerning how the vines should be trellised and why they chose the one they were using. Clark may have been interested in the lecture, but she suspected he probably knew more about viniculture than Miss Kirk did.
It was something she'd noticed about Clark even before he'd left. He had an incredible breadth of knowledge – he could talk sports with the guys, farming with farmers, business with businessmen, museum science with curators. He would never monopolize the conversation, never show off what he knew. But his ability to get in under the radar to get people to talk to him, simply by his unassuming demeanor and his knowledge of their field, amazed her.
She dropped to the back of the group, pulling out her cell phone. She called Henderson and let him know that she and Clark had located Miller's lab. He in turn promised to notify the FBI for her.
He called her back five minutes later. "There should be someone out there shortly," Henderson told her. "Judge Page has postponed Church's trial for at least a week, so both sides can go over the new evidence concerning Mrs. Church. I suspect Griffin is looking of offer Church a deal if it means he can put Mindy away. By the way, the D.A. is wondering why you and Kent weren't covering the trial."
"Perry was told by Griffin's office that the D.A. wanted us out of town for safety reasons. That's why we gave our depositions instead," Lois told him. "Are you saying Griffin didn't want us safely tucked away somewhere?"
"Somebody wanted you out of town and as near as we can tell it wasn't the D.A.," Henderson told her. "Frankly, I'm astonished you even went along with it. Mad Dog Lane on a vacation?"
"Mad Dog Lane is in the middle of a conspiracy investigation while on her honeymoon," Lois reminded him.
Henderson laughed. "Tell Clark hi, and good luck."
"I'll do that," she promised as she heard the familiar whoosh that presaged Superman's appearance. She closed her phone and dropped in back in her pocket.
"Superman!" she called out. The others in the group turned to see what she was talking about. Their expressions were typical of people first seeing Superman in the 'flesh' – surprise, amazement, admiration. In spite of all the media coverage concerning him, most people still had a hard time believing a man could fly until they actually saw his red cape fluttering in the breeze while he came gently to earth.
But it was Miss Kirk's reaction that caught Lois's attention. The young woman's mouth had fallen open, but it wasn't pleased astonishment that was written on the woman's face. It was fear. She turned and ran for the door to the building only to find Superman was already standing in front of it, blocking her way, arms folded over his chest. He looked so self-assured, even intimidating.
"I believe the police would appreciate it if you remained outside until they were finished," Superman told her quietly.
There was the sound of tires on gravel and Lois looked back to the road to see several Napa sheriff's department cars drive up and stop. A black sedan stopped beside the marked cars, disgorging two men wearing jackets with FBI stenciled across the back.
"Ms. Lane?" one of the agents asked as he approached her. "I'm Agent Brown. This is agent Harrison."
"I'm Lois Lane," she identified herself, carefully pulling her press pass out of her purse. These men didn't know her and it was never smart to startle someone carrying a loaded gun.
"We had word that you think you found Miller's lab," Brown said quietly.
Lois nodded. "My partner and I got separated from the tour group," she told them.
"And where is your partner?" Brown asked.
"He's around here somewhere. He wasn't feeling well," Lois told him.
"How about you show us what you found," Harrison suggested, gesturing for her to lead the way into the building.
"You need a search warrant," Kirk yelled at them. "I want to see a search warrant!" As she spoke she pulled out her cell phone. She tapped in a number and waited impatiently until the other end picked up. One of the deputies handed Kirk a sheet of paper Lois watched her skim over it, speaking rapidly into her phone.
Superman's head came up, his eyes momentarily unfocused and Lois knew he'd heard something. "No one goes into the building!" he said. He didn't seem to speak loudly but Lois knew his voice had projected far enough for all the law enforcement people to have heard him. The ones closest to him seemed to freeze. One of the sergeants keyed his radio, ordering the men already heading inside to get out.
That's when they all heard it. The whoosh of air moving fast, the distant roar of fire. Superman moved, pushing everyone away from the building then grabbing the men who had gone in, bringing them out to safety. Several of the men were already badly burned. He looked at Lois. "It's HTA," he said before he disappeared again, this time straight up, over the building.
They were still too close. She could feel the searing heat coming off the concrete walls. Lois and the two FBI agents started moving further away from the building, herding the tour group ahead of them, away from the danger. Hopefully. "What did he mean, HTA?" Brown asked.
"High Temperature Accelerant," Lois told him, surprised that a man in his position didn't know that. "Let the fire department know it's not just arson."
"And how do you know that?" Harrison asked.
"I'm from Metropolis," she told them. "I've covered HTAs. They're bad, even when Superman gets there in time."
She turned to watch Superman hovering above the building. She knew there were only three ways of dealing with HTA fires. One was to simply let it burn out. The fire was so hot that even water simply fed it. Steel melted, concrete crumbled. The fire could be smothered by sand, but that destroyed the crime scene – the sand melted, coating everything in glass. And, if caught early enough, Superman could cool the air fast enough to put it out.
Lois knew that was what he was trying to do now as he hovered above the building. Cool the air without spreading the fire. From the look of concentration she could see on his face, she suspected he wasn't having much luck. Thick black smoke rose high in the air and orange flames seemed to be reaching for him. Explosions could be heard over the roar of the fire. The wine casks, Lois realized after a moment of thought. The casks were exploding, the hydrogen and oxygen from the water and alcohol adding fuel to the fire. Literally.
It seemed like an eternity before the fire crews appeared. By then, the flames had died down, finally succumbing to Superman's freezing breath. He landed near the deputies who had been watching, waiting. His face was drawn, his cape smoldering, his shoulders slumped as he caught his breath.
"Superman, are you okay?" Lois asked.
He gave a quick nod, straightening up to address the sheriff and the two FBI men. "You shouldn't have a problem proving arson. I counted seven dead in the building. Four in the kitchen, two in the offices, one in the storage area behind the tasting room."
"The two in the office would be Luke and his wife. I know Johnnie, Gina's brother, liked doing the wine tasting parties. The other four I'm not sure of. I assume it was smoke inhalation?" the sheriff said.
Superman shook his head, lips pulled thin in an anguished expression Lois was all too familiar with. He couldn't save everyone, and each one he lost scarred his soul. "An HTA fire can reach better than three thousand degrees in a few minutes. There isn't time to die of smoke," he told the sheriff quietly.
Miss Kirk made a shuddery, choking sound. Then she collapsed, shaking her head. "No… they promised me… they said nobody would get hurt…" she was mumbling, eyes wide in horror.
Lois crouched down beside the woman. "Who said nobody would get hurt?" Lois asked softly, wishing it was Clark that was standing there instead of Superman. It was Clark's gentle touch that was needed here, not Superman's might or Lois Lane's forthrightness. "Gina, who told you that nobody would get hurt?" Lois pitched her voice low, calm, as though speaking to a child.
"Doctor Miller and her friend. I think his name was Smith," Gina Kirk told her. "I think he was English. They were using the lab, making perfumes. They said they liked how quiet it was here."
"Who did you call just before the fire started?" Superman asked, crouching down on the woman's other side.
"Doctor Miller gave me a number to call in case the police showed up with a search warrant," she told him.
"May I have your phone, please?" Superman asked.
Lois had been working beside him for six months, knowing who he was and yet he still surprised her. His voice was still in the deep tones he used as Superman, but it was Clark's gentleness that came through as he spoke to the woman. He gave Kirk a gentle smile when she handed him her phone. He handed it to the sheriff.
"Thank you," Superman told her. He looked up at the sheriff. "I doubt you'll get anything from the number, except that it was to Metropolis," he said.
Kirk looked up at him, tears finally streaming down her face. "You couldn't save them?"
He sighed heavily as he shook his head. "There were accelerants planted all through the building, not just the lab. I'm fast, but even I can't be in two places at the same time. I'm sorry."
"Clark?" Lois asked, breaking into his reverie. He'd showered and changed into jeans and a t-shirt as soon as they got back to their room, and then he just sat. He knew Lois was worried about him. She'd gone out for a little while and had come back to discover he hadn't moved at all. He didn't want to move. He felt frozen in place, trapped in a miasma of failure.
The fact that he'd missed the clues bothered him more that he wanted to admit, even to her. He had failed the people in the winery. His and Lois's investigation had precipitated their deaths.
"Clark?" she repeated. After a moment he looked at her. She looked almost as disheartened as he felt. Seven people were dead because he hadn't caught the signs soon enough.
"You saved the people you could. You're Superman, not God," Lois told him.
"I could accept that argument if I'd simply come on the scene and found the fire," he told her. "The problem is I didn't just come into the situation blind. I saw the accelerants in the building and didn't recognize them for what they were. Neither of us did."
"I saw them and didn't recognize them?"
He nodded slowly. "Remember the last HTA fire in Metropolis? The fire marshals found white plastic discs on the concrete floor."
"Yeah, I remember," Lois said. "The guy I was talking to couldn't understand how they got there or what they were. Then his boss told him to shut his trap."
"Those white discs were the bottoms of white, food-grade five gallon containers. The rest of the container was burned away when the accelerant was triggered. The container, the trigger, every shred of evidence self-destructed except for the bottom," Clark told her. "Fire rises and the hotter the flame, the faster it rises, if it can."
"And there were containers like that in the lab," Lois said.
Clark nodded again. "I scanned them to make sure there weren't bombs or anything like that in the tubs. Made sure they weren't filled with binary explosive. I didn't see anything that resembled an ignition source. I still have no idea how it was ignited. But I looked right at them and didn't see them for what they were."
"Clark, do you think a MFD fire marshal would have recognized them for what they were?"
"I don't know," he told her. "I kind of doubt it. Who'd look twice at those tubs in a restaurant?"
"In that case, why are you torturing yourself?" she asked, coming over to him. She settled onto his lap. "If a professional wouldn't recognize them for what they were, why should any of us expect you to?"
"I might have been able to stop it sooner," Clark said.
"And you might not have," she told him, kissing him gently. "All we can do is our best." She kissed him on the tip of his nose. It tickled and he finally laughed a little.
"What did I do to deserve you?"
"The way I figure it, you were a mass murderer in a previous life, and I'm you're karmic punishment," she told him.
"I don't think that's how it works," Clark told her. He tried to keep his tone serious, but he knew there was a twitch in the corner of his mouth as he watched her.
"In that case, we probably deserve each other in some sort of perverse, cosmic way," she said chuckling. "It's Friday evening in Napa California. So what do you want to do? I assume you don't want to go see Chainsaw Massacre whatever number it is that's out now."
"Not really," Clark told her. "And it's not really the subject matter, although horror and slasher movies leave me cold. I see enough horrible things in real life that I don't find it entertaining. I have enough trouble suspending disbelief in the real world to do it in a theater. It's that I've never been able to enjoy movie films, even as a kid. Film is projected at twenty-four frames a second and I see faster than that. I don't see the movement on the screen. I see still pictures on the screen."
"You watch TV," she reminded him. "I mean, we have monitors all over the newsroom and you watch them all the time."
"But standard TV, even the LCD ones, runs at thirty frames per second and that's just at the limits of my persistence of vision. It still flickers and the motion is off, but it's tolerable. I can at least see what's going on on the screen."
"Maybe that's why Jason doesn't like going to movies unless they're at Cinetech in the digital theater,' Lois said, as if realizing how much her son, their son, took after his father. "It's a little frustrating trying to explain things like that to the soccer moms who I know are thinking Jason's a spoiled little brat for having all the problems he has. Like it's all my fault he has asthma and allergies and…"
"Well, guess what. Now there are two of us who can explain these things to the dreaded soccer moms," Clark said.
"I'm liking this better all the time," she announced. "So what shall we do then, eh?"
"Order in pizza?" Clark suggested. "After what happened today… I still feel like I should have been able to do more." He couldn't shake the guilt – if he had only moved a little faster, even though that would have hurt the injured people he was trying to help. There was nothing else I could have done.
"Hopefully there won't be any emergencies big enough to need you tonight," Lois told him.
"That would be nice. It would be nice if the world would just stay fixed for a while."
Lois finished off the last piece of veggie pizza, washing it down with a bottle of cream soda. "Now what?" she asked.
"We could go swimming," he suggested. "There's a nice pool out back."
"Didn't bring my swimsuit," she told him. In fact she had, but swimming wasn't what she had in mind during their last few days of 'vacation.' Too soon they'd be returning to Metropolis, where Clark would pack up his books, art, and music – he didn't own much else – and move in with her and Jason, into the house she had shared for five years with Richard. At some point she knew they would no doubt sell the house and buy a different one. But that was for the future.
Too soon they'd be worrying about juggling home and work, worrying about Jason and school, worrying about the logistics of making love when there was a little boy sleeping across the hall. The logistics of making a life together.
Money wouldn't be a major issue, so long as they didn't go overboard on their spending. They both had reasonably good salaries and Richard had been a very fiscally cautious man, aside from his seaplane. He'd made sure both he and Lois carried adequate life insurance although she knew he had honestly expected her to die first due to her recklessness. On his death, the mortgage had been paid off and there was enough left over for a trust to handle Jason's education. Selling the seaplane to one of Richard's air force buddies had helped too.
Lois wriggled off of Clark's lap and took his hand, pulling him to his feet. "So, what are we going to do?" he asked.
"Take off your clothes and lie down, and I'll show you," she told him. "I went shopping at that cute little place next to the jewelers." She watched him try to make sense of her statement, his expression moving from confusion to wide-eyed shock. He remembered the place she was talking about. He tried so hard to be open-minded, and as Superman he invariably succeeded, but sometimes as Clark his Midwest upbringing simply got the better of him.
"Uh, Lois, that cute little place next to the jewelers was a…" He shifted to curiosity, apparently deciding the discretion really was the better part of valor. "What did you buy?" He looked around for the sack she'd brought in with her.
"Lie down and I'll show you," she told him.
"You like ordering me around, don't you." It was a statement, not a question. He watched her, a bemused half-smile on his face.
"Clark, you knew that the day we met," she reminded him. "As I recall, I was yelling at Perry. And then you had that soda bottle explode all over you."
"Which you deliberately shook up. Actually, that wasn't the first time I saw you, you know," he said. "But you were yelling at Perry then, too. You were refusing to do the story on the demolition of the Sarah Bernhardt Theater."
"And you brought it in the next day," she said. Perry had told her about it sometime later – once he had determined Lois wouldn't actually murder Clark for bringing in a story she hadn't been able to. "He would have hired you that day if you'd handed him your best instead of your most recent writing samples," she added. "Now, stop stalling."
He did as he was told, stripping down as she pulled the top covers off the bed. She stripped down as well, lit the candles she'd placed on the bedside tables and the dresser then beckoned him to lie down as she knelt on the mattress. She opened the drawer in the bedside table and pulled out a small plastic bottle with a pour cap. She poured a little of the contents in her palm then rubbed her hands together to warm the sandalwood scented oil before starting to massage his chest and belly.
"Where did…?" he started to ask.
"Shh… No talking, just lay back and relax," she said. "Not long after Jason was born, I went undercover at a massage parlor. It was part of a chain that was suspected of being a front for more than just prostitution. Internal affairs was afraid there was department involvement and so I went in instead. I had to learn at least a little massage therapy to be convincing."
He shivered beneath her hands. It wasn't cold in the room and she was sure he wasn't feeling cold if she wasn't. "I'm the first person who's ever touched you like this," she realized.
"I'm not in the habit of hanging around massage parlors."
"Touch is one of the most important senses, and one of the most ignored," she told him. "And don't worry if you fall asleep. I will consider it a complement." She was sliding her hands down the sides of his chest, past his waist then up the center in a circular motion. "I used to do this for Richard when he had a really bad day."
He was called the Man of Steel, but she noted that so long as her motions were slow and even his skin and muscles were as pliable as a normal man's. She wasn't trained to do deep massage but she suspected she would run up against his invulnerability if she pressed hard enough to cause pain in a normal person.
He reached up to caress her face and she gently kissed his palm. "I love you," he said.
"I love you. Now close your eyes and relax."
"What about you?"
"The night is still young," she promised.