Chapter 4
Chloe swept the scene with a practised eye as the techs moved in to cordon off the area and start processing evidence, before crossing her arms over her chest and dealing with her far-from-repentant partner.
“Lucifer, what the hell were you thinking? It's bad enough that you go leaping into danger every time I turn my back, but now you're dragging other civilians along with you?!" she snapped out.
“Boot’s on the other foot actually; I came with her, not the other way round.”
Her eyes narrowed, unimpressed by his semantics. “You can’t tell me that you had nothing to do with this.”
“I may have given her a little encouragement.” He grinned.
Chloe gritted her teeth, knowing full well what form his ‘little encouragement’ had taken. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t bench you from this investigation,” she ground out.
“Oh come now, Detective. We did find another body, after all.”
“The pair of you almost got yourselves killed!”
Her name being called from behind her made Chloe fix her thoroughly un-chastised partner with a look. “I haven’t finished with you yet.”
“Is that a promise?” Lucifer called after her as she left the room, shaking her head.
Chloe conferred quickly with the tech that had wanted her opinion on how large a radius she wanted to be marked with the crime scene tape, then took the opportunity to grab Lois’s attention.
“Ms Lane. A word.” She pulled Lois aside, out of the way of the bustling techs.
“What do you think you were doing?” Chloe bit out. “You and Lucifer had no right to be here, you put yourselves in danger, and if that body hadn’t been here, me coming in to save your ass would’ve been on very shaky legal ground. I’m used to Lucifer and his approach to protocol. And I don’t care how things are done in Metropolis, or how you conduct yourself on one of your ‘investigations’. But while you are here, you will not compromise my case. Is that clear?”
The other woman glared at her for a moment, clearly sizing her up. Chloe stood her ground, refusing to be intimidated by someone who had obviously already decided she could be pushed around.
“If you cooperate, I’ll make sure that you and Mr Kent get access to the full file. Step out of line again, and I’ll bench both of you.”
She strode away, ducking under the police tape that had been strung around the scene.
***
Lois stared after the detective with narrowed eyes. It appeared as though she’d underestimated the former actress.
“She’s right, Lois.” came a disapproving voice from behind her.
“Don’t you start, Clark,” she snapped.
“Lois, you can’t go taking off like that! We don’t know the city, we don’t have any contacts here; that guy could have shot you!” Clark struggled to keep the exasperation out of his voice, and almost succeeded.
“It’s fine, Clark, really. Lucifer used whatever his 'look into my eyes' desire gizmo is to distract the guy. And what is that, by the way? Is he hypnotising these people somehow?”
Lois’s curiosity about Lucifer’s abilities had been well and truly piqued, now that she’d experienced his desire trick firsthand; all she’d heard was his voice and a ringing in her ears that had drowned out all extraneous sound. Unsettlingly for her, she’d been unable to resist the compulsion to follow her desire to check out the warehouse.
“I thought you didn’t believe in hypnotism.”
“I don’t, but he’s doing something to them.”
“Hypnotism?” Lucifer appeared in the doorway. “Like those idiots down in Las Vegas, getting people to act like chickens? Charlatans, the lot of them. I don’t hypnotise people, Ms Lane. I’m the Devil, or have you forgotten?”
“Right,” she replied sceptically.
***
“Lucifer.”
Chloe pulled her partner away from his conversation with the two reporters. Lois had a sceptical look on her face that Chloe recognised from her own expression when he started talking about the Devil. Clark, however, had looked merely uncomfortable. What was going on with those two?
“You seem to have made friends easily with Clark,” Chloe commented.
He fell into step with her as they walked towards the taped- off area. “And?”
“You just don’t usually get along well with the virtuous.”
“That’s not true; I get along with you.” Lucifer teased her playfully.
“Right.”
“Look, Clark and I have certain… similarities that make it easier to like him.”
She snorted in disbelief. “You two are nothing alike.”
“Not superficially, I’ll grant you. Oh come now Detective, you don’t believe me about my other side, I’m certainly not going to tell you about his.”
Ella lit up like Christmas morning as she caught the last part of their conversation. “Oh my god, are you guys talking about that reporter that’s been going over the Stephens case? He’s so cute, right?” Ella looked at Chloe expectantly, only slightly deterred by her quelling head tilt and Lucifer’s dirty look. “Too soon, right?”
“Yes, well, Miss Lopez, I have it on good authority that he’s taken.”
Momentarily distracted from the dead body, Chloe turned and looked at her partner. “Whose authority?”
“Why, his own, of course.” He gave her a wide-eyed look of affected surprise.
“Seriously, how do you know so much about him already?”
“I told you. He dropped by Lux last night.”
She shook her head, surprised by his sudden friendship with someone so different to himself, then focused her attention back on the corpse in front of her.
“So what have we got, Ella?”
“Well, dead bodies don’t usually freak me out, but this one is super gross.”
“What happened to his face?” Lucifer queried in disgust.
“Rats,” Ella replied.
“Look at his fingertips,” Chloe commented. “Did someone try to remove his prints?”
“Nope, that would be the rats again.” Ella lifted one of the corpse’s hands to show them the bite marks in the remaining flesh. “Looks like they went for the exposed tissue first.”
“And like this building has a serious rodent problem,” Lucifer put in, looking around distastefully. “That’s South Central LA for you.”
“Cause of death, Ella?”
“Hmm, hard to tell. No obvious cause of death, but that’s probably because the rats got to him.” She rolled the body over. “Wait. See this mark here?” She pointed to a small vertical puncture mark, around an inch and half wide, midway down the body’s side. “That’s a stab wound.”
“Hmm. Single thrust,” Chloe commented. “Probably not a crime of passion.”
“Yeah, they tend to go all stabby-stab. From the width of the blade, I’d say anything from a kitchen knife to a small hunting knife. I might be able to get an impression of the hilt from the surrounding tissue.”
“That’s a lot of possible murder weapons. And without fingerprints or facial recognition, it’s going to take a while to get an ID. Great. Any idea when he died?”
“From the rate of decomp, I’d say three, maybe four days.”
***
Pierce was waiting near the entrance to the bullpen when they returned to the station, a disapproving glower on his face. Mentally Chloe rolled her eyes. This had to be about Lucifer and Lois taking off without warning, but how had the lieutenant even heard about that?
“I expect you to keep the civilians in line,” Pierce barked, shooting a brief glare in Lucifer's direction, then swiftly returned his attention to scowling at Chloe. "Do I have to give this case to somebody else?!”
“I have it under control, sir,” she struggled not to snarl at him.
“Decker. My office,” Pierce snapped.
He was waiting behind his desk when she entered, a forbidding expression on his face.
“I hear Lucifer and one of your reporters ran off and almost got themselves killed today,” he said without preamble.
“That doesn’t sound like control to me. I expect you to keep the civilians in line. They’re your responsibility. If you can’t do that, I’ll have to find another detective who can. Understood?”
“Understood, Lieutenant.” She struggled to keep her tone even, but inside Chloe was seething. It wasn’t enough that Marcus was behaving like such an ass and Lucifer was still running off half-cocked and being all… Lucifer, now she got to be called on the carpet for Lane’s behavior too! This isn’t a daycare, she thought fiercely as she stomped out of his office, they’re freaking adults! They came here voluntarily and they can manage their own business!
***
Ella paused her music as the computer dinged, letting her know the DNA results she’d been waiting for had arrived.
“Yes!”
Glancing up, she saw Detective Decker leaving the lieutenant’s office with her arms crossed over her chest and bounced out of her lab to catch her.
“Hey, Chloe?”
The detective turned and Ella winced away a little from the hurt and angry expression on her face.
“Trouble with Pierce?”
“You could say that. I don’t know, it’s like he’s trying to punish me for breaking the engagement or something.” She shook her head.
Ella’s brow furrowed in guilt. She’d pushed Chloe towards Pierce again and again, and she’d been so happy when they’d started dating. She’d been so focused on them being together that she hadn’t even noticed how unhappy Chloe had been. Now that they’d split up, she couldn’t help but feel responsible.
“It’ll get better soon, I promise,” she assured Chloe.
Chloe waved away Pierce and his pettiness, “Yeah, well, I can’t think about that now. What did you want to show me?”
“What? Oh! Yeah. So I got an ID for our victim. His name is Joshua Cox. Gunrunner, murderer, all-around bad guy. I sent you the file.”
“Thanks, Ella.”
The detective strode purposefully down the hallway, detouring past her desk and scooping up her tablet on the way.
***
Chloe shot a glare at Lucifer as he fell into step with her down the hallway, still stinging a little from the dressing-down she’d received from Pierce.
“Something on your mind, Detective?”
"Yeah, you could say that. As if that shooting wasn't bad enough, now I'm getting heat from Pierce because of your little stunt with Lois, although how he even knew what happened is beyond me."
"Detective."
"I've got a lot of eyes on me with this case, and I need you, for once, to follow protocol-"
He cut her off. "Detective, I'm sorry."
"What?"
"I shouldn't have encouraged Ms Lane to go to the warehouse, I was wrong, and I apologise."
"Oh. Well. Thank you." She blinked, slightly taken aback by his unexpected apology.
“So what did Miss Lopez find?”
“What? Oh. Yeah.”
They rounded the corner to the interview room they’d been using, Lucifer stopping and allowing her to enter in front of him.
“Ella got a hit on the DNA.” She handed him the tablet as he came through the door, watching as he raised an eyebrow at the information on the screen.
“Well, he has been a naughty boy, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah. He’s been suspected of everything from racketeering to murder, but we’ve never been able to make it stick.”
“Looks like whoever murdered our bad guy did us a favour.”
“Lucifer. Just because the victim was a criminal doesn’t mean-“ Chloe started to speak in reflexive defense of the deceased.
“Yes, yes I know. It doesn’t mean that his murderer shouldn’t be punished.” He handed the tablet back to her. “Okay, so how do we find whoever killed this Joshua Cox?”
“Criminal or not, he’s still a human being, Lucifer-“ Clark put in.
“Yes, we’ve established that,” snapped Lucifer at his most biting. “Look, I understand the whole sanctity of human life bit, I just like to make sure that the guilty get punished.”
“Did you say Joshua Cox?” Lois interjected before the argument between Clark and Lucifer could escalate.
Chloe looked at Lois. “Yeah, why?”
“Well it could be a coincidence, but Carl Stephens was a known associate of a Joshua Cox.”
“It’s not in the file,” Chloe commented.
“It’s an old connection,” Clark explained. “Look, we’ve been digging into Stephens for months. Cox and Stephens were friends, back when Stephens operated out of Metropolis. They had some kind of falling out right around the time Cox disappeared from New Troy.”
“That was also right around the time his divorce went through,” Lois put in.
“We think his ex-wife, Beverly, has ties to The Boss.” Clark finished her thought.
“Your elusive criminal mastermind?” Lucifer queried.
“Do you think this Beverly Cox is The Boss?” Chloe questioned.
“Or she’s in the inner sanctum,” Clark agreed. “If we can get enough information to get her to flip, we could take down the whole empire.”
“My, aren’t we ambitious?”
Chloe shot Lucifer a quelling look, trying to chase down a thought.
“If this Joshua Cox is a known associate of Carl Stephens… Ella said that Stephens died shortly after Cox of a subdural haematoma. That kind of injury takes time to kill somebody.”
Lucifer gave her the grin he always did when he thought she was onto something. “You think that Eggs Over Dead had something to do with the death of Rat-boy here, don’t you?”
“We need to go back to the building where Cox was found.”
“We’re coming too,” Lois announced.
“I am not taking three civilians into the field,” Chloe stated flatly. “Not after the stunt you two pulled.” She gestured at Lois and Lucifer. “Lucifer is my partner, he goes with me. You two are staying here. End of story.” She left the room.
Lois exchanged glances with Clark.
“We’re coming too,” Lois repeated to Lucifer.
“The Detective won’t like it,” Lucifer observed.
“Wasn’t going to ask her,” Lois shot back.
Lucifer’s face creased into a wicked grin.
“My dear Ms Lane, I’d never dream that you would!”
***
Chloe flashed her badge and ducked under the police tape with Lucifer at her side, striding to the discoloured patch of concrete where Cox’s body had lain. Using the spot as a starting point, she began to sweep the area.
The warehouse was littered with debris; fragments of rusted iron sheeting from a small roof collapse, broken bricks from what looked like an interior half-wall that had been demolished, shelving in various stages of disrepair, plus discarded clothing and bedding that had been used by the homeless people who often sheltered here.
“Just what are we looking for?” Lucifer queried.
“Ella said the wound on the side of Stephens’s head came from something jagged and irregular, like a stone...” she trailed off, spotting two familiar figures at the edge of the police tape and shooting Lucifer an annoyed look.
“Lucifer!”
“What?” he replied innocently. “It wasn’t me. Though I do approve,” he continued with an infuriating grin. “Oh come on Detective, they do seem to know a lot about our victim. Perhaps they could be useful.”
She scowled as he gestured to the beat cop to let the reporters under the tape. Were Lois and Clark always like this? Rushing into potentially dangerous situations without a second thought, even when they’d been told to do the opposite? Shepherding them was like dealing with multiple Lucifers- although at least he’d apologised for taking off earlier.
Well. If they were going to tag along to crime scenes even when they’d been told to stay put at the station, she’d take advantage of their presence. Quickly she sized the two reporters up and decided that separating them was her best option.
“Ok, fine. As long as you’re here, you can help search. Clark, you go with Lucifer. Lois, you’re with me. We’re looking for anything that could’ve caused the wound on the back of Stephens’s head. Keep an eye out for anything that looks like it has dried blood on it, and do not touch anything.” She fixed Lucifer with a look. “Got it?”
***
Chloe watched Clark and Lucifer as they wandered around the edges of the crime scene, deftly avoiding the CSIs. She noticed that Clark kept pulling his glasses down to peer at things; was there something wrong with his prescription?
Lois interrupted her musings. “Why do you work with a civilian consultant?”
“I’m sorry?” Chloe turned her attention to Lois and dismissed her speculation about Kent’s eyesight.
“Well, you seem to have a problem with civilians in the field. So why are you partnered with one?” Lois asked again.
Chloe looked the other woman over. Lois seemed less confrontational than usual, and she decided there was no harm in answering basic questions as long as the reporter didn’t get too personal. “Off the record?” she smiled faintly as Lane nodded, “It’s a long story. But… despite all his weirdness, Lucifer’s actually a really good partner. He helps me look at things differently. He’s been responsible for breaks in cases more often than I can count; he’s always got my back; even when we argue I can always go to him with problems.” Chloe thought for a moment, “He even likes my daughter, and he doesn’t seem to have much use for children.”
“Oh.” Lois paused. “I didn’t think the LAPD allowed partners to date.”
“What? Ow!” Chloe straightened up abruptly, cracking her head on the tattered shelving above her. “Lucifer and I aren’t dating.” Seeing Lois’s disbelieving look, she sighed. “We’ve gotten close. A couple of times. But no, we’re not. Trust me. Dating coworkers never ends well.”
She knew that from experience. The failure of her marriage to Dan had been long and awkward, even if had been mostly amicable. Her breakup with Pierce was far worse. At least Dan hadn’t been in a position of authority over her- something which, right now, was making every interaction with Pierce more painful than it needed to be. She got that she’d hurt Marcus when she’d broken off their engagement so abruptly, but all she wanted was a little professionalism while they were at work. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask for?
“Oh, believe me, I’m the last person you have to tell.” Lois snorted. “Can I ask you something? Does Lucifer always call you ‘Detective’?”
“Ah… pretty much. But he’s formal with Ella too. I think it’s a respect thing. I don’t know, maybe it goes along with him being British. His brother’s much less formal.”
“He has a brother?”
Chloe nodded. “Amenadiel.”
“Lucifer and Amenadiel? Who calls their kids that?” Lois laughed. “Does he really believe he’s the Devil?”
“He’s certainly pretty adamant about it.”
Lois cocked her head. "Do you believe him?'
"No. I mean, I've seen him do some things I can't explain, but that they add up to him being the Devil? No. What about you?"
"I don't know." She surveyed the detective for a moment. "I used to be like you. Didn't believe anything unless I had solid proof."
"What happened?"
"I met a man who can fly. I'm just saying... sometimes the strangest explanation is the right one."
Chloe shot her a look. "Lucifer isn't evil."
***
Lois raised her eyebrows slightly at Chloe’s emphatic defense of her partner, wondering just how close they’d actually gotten to being more than work partners. The detective seemed awfully protective of Lucifer, especially for someone who’d just broken an engagement to another man.
After working with her for a few days and seeing how she interacted with her colleagues and handled herself in her job, Lois had been forced to reevaluate her initial opinion of Chloe. As much as Lois hated to be wrong - and especially to admit it - she also knew how much she hated it when people held her own past against her. Clearly, the woman she was working with now was no longer the same one who had made that… movie.
“So you and Clark aren’t…?” Chloe’s voice broke her train of thought.
“Me and Clark? No. No way! I mean…” Lois trailed off, then started again, “He’s my best friend and the only partner I’ve ever been able to tolerate, but no, we’re not… we’re just friends.”
She looked around at the mention of her partner. “Where is Clark, anyway?”
Chloe turned and surveyed the scene. “I have no idea. Lucifer’s gone too.” She looked back at Lois. “Does he do this often?”
Lois rolled her eyes. “All the time.”
“I guess I’m not the only one stuck with a disappearing partner,” Chloe observed.
The two women spent a few moments silently evaluating each other, then Lois smiled tentatively at Chloe.
"So… does yours make up lame excuses about checking his mail or returning videos?”
Chloe gave her an incredulous look. "Returning videos?? Are there still Blockbusters in Metropolis?!"
"No! It's infuriating!" Lois rolled her eyes and laughed.
"Well,” Chloe shrugged, “it could be worse. Mine just wanders off when he gets bored and doesn't even bother to make an excuse."
Lois grinned. “Don’t tell Clark, but I’ve learned to just carry on, he always turns up eventually.” She paused. “Can I ask you a question? Lucifer’s desire thing... is it some sort of parlor trick?”
“I don’t even begin to understand it. But it works.” Chloe shrugged. “As long as he’s getting results-“
“Detective?” Lucifer called from behind her.
***
“Speak of the devil,” Chloe muttered under her breath.
She broke away from Lois and turned towards the rear entrance of the building.
“You’re back, are you?”
He ignored her acerbic comment. “The wound on Rat-boy’s head, could it have come from a broken brick?”
“Yes, of course it could have-”
“Well, I can’t help but notice that this particular broken brick has what looks astonishingly like dried blood on one corner.” He pointed the toe of his shoe at the brick he was talking about.
Ella brushed past her, crouching beside the litter of bricks and broken planks of wood with the crime scene camera in hand.
“I’d have to make a mould to be certain, but yeah, that brick could’ve made the dent in Stephens’s skull.”
Chloe looked around, walking away from Ella and Lucifer to where Cox’s body had been found.
“It’s possible,” she observed.
“What’s possible?”
Lucifer walked closer to where Chloe stood.
“Stephens could’ve landed there.”
"Hang on. You're saying that Rat-boy managed to fling our first bad guy off him and into this pile of rubble, while he was being filleted from the inside?"
"Adrenaline can do tricky things," Ella responded with a shrug.
Chloe looked at Lucifer with narrowed eyes, considering if that's what accounted for the few times she'd seen him lift men many times his size like they weighed nothing. "Yes, it can," she commented slowly.
***
Clark walked further away from where Lucifer and the detective were conferring with the lab tech- Miss Lopez, Lucifer had called her- scanning the area surreptitiously with his glasses halfway down his nose, looking for anything suspicious or out of place.
A dull glint from beneath what looked like a tattered burlap bag caught his attention. He leant closer to the gleam, using his vision to look through the occluding material.
The knife was unexpectedly ornate; it looked like it belonged on display somewhere, rather than half-underneath a dirty piece of fabric in a close-to-derelict building in a rough area of the city.
“Hey, Detective?” He waved a hand to attract her attention. “I think I’ve got something over here.”
The detective walked over to where Clark stood and knelt carefully, using a pair of gloves to lift the sacking off the knife.
She looked up at him.
“Did you touch anything? Move anything at all?”
He shook his head. “I saw it and called you over.”
“Ok.” She walked back over to where Miss Lopez was examining the broken brick and said something to her before coming back over to Clark and lifting the sacking again.
“Looks like one of those fancy reproductions, the kind that people use as letter openers. What is that, Chinese?” Chloe wondered aloud.
“Looks like it,” Clark commented. In fact, to him, it looked eerily familiar. While he was no expert, he’d nearly swear he’d seen that same blade in Luthor’s penthouse, forming part of the billionaire’s ostentatiously displayed antique weapon collection. But was the detective right? Was it a replica? He couldn’t examine it to make sure, not now that it was about to be bagged and tagged as evidence.
***
Clark lifted the pot of coffee off the burner and sniffed it gingerly. The precinct break room was the only place he’d found that served worse coffee than the Planet newsroom, but this one smelled slightly less scorched than the ones he’d tried earlier. He poured two cups, adding the artificial sweetener that Lois preferred to one. It was after 8pm here on the west coast; with the time difference, he knew Lois was starting to flag. Briefly, he wondered if Detective Decker always pushed herself this hard. She was as driven as Lois.
He rejoined his partner, handing her the cup of coffee and returning her tired smile of thanks just as Lucifer approached out of the gloom of the darkened precinct.
“Miss Lopez won’t have anything on the mould or the knife you found until tomorrow, so there’s nothing we can do until the morning,” he informed them. “You two should…” his gaze wandered to a point over Clark’s shoulder. “Go and do whatever it is you do after a day like today. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
Without waiting for a response, he stepped around Lois and Clark and walked off purposefully.
Clark turned, curious to see what had attracted Lucifer’s attention, and smiled to himself when he saw the fallen angel seat himself on the edge of Detective Decker’s desk.
In spite of his open and matter of fact revelations of the night before, Clark still wasn’t sure what to make of Lucifer. Sunday school was admittedly a long time in his past, but wasn’t the Devil supposed to be evil?
Granted, Lucifer clearly happily embraced many vices. Clark blushed at the memory of the three women named Brittany he’d been introduced to the previous night. And yet…
And yet.
Lucifer had also saved Lois’s life; displayed a respect for human life at that horrific shooting that rivalled Clark’s own; and unless Clark had severely misread the chagrin and pain on Lucifer’s face when Clark had given him the bullet that had been destined for Chloe, he was deeply in love with his partner.
None of that added up to evil.
“Clark?” Lois waved a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Clark?” she asked, a note of amusement in her voice.
He pulled his attention back to her. “Sorry, Lois.”
“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” she suggested. “It’s been a long day and all I want to do is go back to the hotel and eat chocolate.”
He laughed softly at Lois’s cure-all as he placed one hand gently at her back, guiding her towards the elevator.
***
Lucifer half-sat on the edge of the Detective’s desk, observing her as she stared blankly at her tablet in the darkness. While the screen was displaying the file of their latest victim, he doubted she was absorbed in thoughts about their case.
“Detective?”
She blinked in surprise, looking up at him with pain in her eyes. He was right; she’d been thinking about that horrific drive-by scene from earlier today. Not for the first time, he marvelled at her strength. An event like that was hard to witness even for him; and yet she’d carried on working like nothing had happened.
“You alright?” he asked gently.
“I’m fine.”
He shook his head. “Come on.”
She stood obediently even while she questioned him. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to Lux.”
“No,” she protested. “The last thing I need right now is to be around people.”
“No, the last thing you need right now is to be alone. What you do need, Detective, is a drink and someone to talk to so you don’t go home and punish yourself for something that isn’t your fault.”
“What makes you think I’d do that?”
“Because, my dear Detective, I know you better than you think.”
“You really do, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He smiled tenderly at her before deflecting the emotional moment by reaching over and pressing the button to lock her tablet.
“Come along, Detective. Our dead guys will still be dead in the morning.”
