Set late Season 2. Thank you very much to Devi_the_Wynter_Wytch and HiroMyStory for the beta-read and story help!

"Oooh, I know him… did some work for me back in…" Lucifer's voice trailed off as he continued reading the cold case file.

"What?" Chloe looked up from the paperwork scattered across her desk, her attention caught by the tension in Lucifer's voice. "Who do you know?"

He tapped a finger against the cold-case file he was reading.

"You don't know who this is?" Lucifer held up the gray-scale post-mortem photo of a man's face, expression slack in death, and with a single bullet hole marring his forehead. The victim looked to be in his mid-forties with a receding hairline, bulbous nose, thin lips, and a dimple in his chin.

"Should I?"

Lucifer looked back at the photo, brows furrowing as he stared at the image.

"Lucifer? You said you knew him?"

"Yes." He placed the paper flat on her desk. "He was not a good person," he added.

"He's the victim."

"I'm aware of that," he answered, still frowning. "This is Gordon Bailey. I thought for sure he would be wanted by all sorts of law enforcement. He popped off his mortal coil in 1978, I suppose to your perspective, he died a long time ago, didn't he?"

"Have you seen his picture somewhere before? How do you know of him?" she asked again, as she typed the name into her computer.

"He was a broker of information." Lucifer thought for a moment, "and weapons and drugs, whatever his clients were willing to pay for. Sort of a pre-internet dark web. When I made my acquaintance with him, he was based out of New York."

"Okay." She didn't know exactly how old Lucifer was, but this case was from the seventies and certainly older than him. "So, did you read about Gordon Bailey in a true-crime novel?"

"No, Detective," Lucifer answered, voice long-suffering and patient. "I told you, I knew him. I spent some time in New York in 1976."

"You did business with him in 1976." She repeated, nonplussed as Lucifer dragged her into what seemed to be yet another string of metaphors.

Chloe took a deep breath. What kind of crazy connection was he going to string together between himself and the case this time? Every time. Every single time, he managed to make whatever they were working on all about him.

"How old are you?"

"Very, very old. Immortal, remember?"

Chloe felt another partner-induced headache beginning to bloom behind her eyes. "Lucifer, enough. I really don't need…" Chloe stopped herself from saying more.

"Don't need what?"

Where was the line between working within his metaphor and enabling delusional fantasies? By playing along, was she doing Lucifer more harm than good?

"Detective?"

If she wanted to hear what he had to say, she was going to have to go along with it. "How did you come into contact with the victim?"

He eyed her warily and released a tense breath. "The broker was recommended to me to assist in locating a special item."

"What kind of item?" she asked, plowing ahead.

"Something I needed."

This was the same kind of evasion she got from him when they'd been tracking his stolen shipping container. She wasn't about to forget he'd been hiding something that time, too, even though it only turned out to be cosplay wings.

"Lucifer, you have to give me more than that."

"An artifact." His voice sounded tight; he clearly didn't want to be telling her this part of his story. "It was stolen from me first," he explained. "Look up his name. Gordon Bailey. I'm telling you the truth."

Results for the name were already populating her screen. Lucifer wasn't wrong. This person had been the leader of an organized smuggling operation in New York.

Chloe tapped on the image icon to open the mug shot on file and scooted her chair to the side to give Lucifer room to slide in beside her. The mug shot showed a photo of a man with an uncanny resemblance to the John Doe in the cold case file. "You're right; it looks like him."

A glance at the on-line data verified everything Lucifer had said about the man's criminal history. The fact he got it right didn't feel nearly as surprising as it should have.

And, yes, Lucifer did look smug.

"Looks like he was working with the police near the end."

"As a civilian consultant?"

"No, Bailey was a criminal informant. There's a missing person report linked to his name… right around the time the body was discovered on the beach." How had the man remained unidentified after all this time? What about dental records? Fingerprints?

The next question Lucifer asked caught her completely off guard. "Does it say anything about an offspring?"

"He had a child?" Chloe scrolled down the search results. "Yes... a daughter. Ruth Bailey; she was placed in foster care after her father disappeared." She printed out the mug shot and clipped it to the file. "You're definitely onto something. That was excellent work, Lucifer."

His lips parted slightly as he was caught off guard by the praise. A moment later, his face lit up with a disarming smile. "Thank you, Detective. I'm glad I could be of assistance."

For all of Lucifer's seeming confidence and outright arrogance, how often did anyone genuinely compliment him?

It didn't take long for the moment to pass. The smile dropped from his face, and Lucifer broke eye contact with her first.

Lucifer stood up, his usual grace forgotten as his chair skidded out behind him. He straightened his jacket. "Snack?" he asked and then fled before she could tell him what she wanted.

Would she ever get used to his mood swings and weird metaphors? But, she reminded herself, they were just friends. Just co-workers. She utilized Lucifer's skills as a resource. Beyond how it affected work, Lucifer's past was none of her business.

And maybe if she kept telling herself that, eventually she'd start to believe it.

He came back a few minutes later with a bag of Cool Ranch Puffs. "Would you like some?" He held the bag out for her.

On impulse, she reached in and grabbed a handful.

The unexpected pilfering of his snack earned her a quizzical head tilt and an impressed smirk. Mission accomplished; mood lightened.

Chloe picked at the Cool Ranch Puffs from her cupped palm as he sat back down. "What you're going to have to do next is figure out why the victim wasn't identified at the time."

"Are we not working together?"

"Yes, of course, we are, but you found the lead, so this is your case. How about I'll be your consultant?" It was unorthodox, but, hell, that summed up their entire partnership.

He regarded her carefully before breaking into a grin. "Do I get a gun and a badge? Are you going to start calling me Detective now?"

She smiled back, relieved to see his usual level of exuberance re-emerging. "Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. What do you think we should do next?"

He tilted his head a bit to the side, thinking. "Find who killed Gordon Bailey, obviously."

"And…" Chloe prompted, resting her elbows on the desk. She knew he had good instincts when it came to detective work; he could do this.

Lucifer sighed. "We're going to have to prove who he is, aren't we?" And then encouraged by her approval and flipped through the file again. "Which means fingerprints and dental records. Nothing like that is in here, but it does indicate that the forensics were done." He passed her the paper.

Chloe frowned down at the photocopy of the handwritten evidence order. The paper had been copied dark, and the printing on it was nearly illegible. "I can't make this out, can you?"

Lucifer twisted the paper to look and shrugged. "Archaic scripts aren't my forte."

Chloe rolled her eyes.

"What now, Detective?" he asked, automatically deferring to her.

"You're choice. Any evidence about this case is bound to be in deep storage by now. We can put in an order for the records, but without proper filing numbers, it can take weeks or months to get a response on a non-priority case. Or, we can go to the records building tomorrow and see if there's anything we can dig up."

She hated to think they already reached a dead end just as Lucifer found something interesting.

"Deep storage it is then," Lucifer agreed.

…

1976, New York

Ruth Bailey watched from her bedroom window as Mike, her dad's driver, dropped a new client off at the front door. Clients rarely came to the house, but when they did, her dad met with them in his office in the front room.

A dark-haired man stepped out from the back seat of her dad's car. He stood for a moment, plucking at his sleeves and jacket, and then looked up. Ruth ducked out of sight, her curtain swinging back into place as she let it go. Her heart pounded at the thought of getting caught peeking. He didn't know she was there, did he? Her dad's job was dangerous, and she'd been warned not to interact with his clients.

My clients are not good people; her dad told her every time she begged to sit in on one of his meetings.

But Ruth knew a secret. She knew how to spy on her dad's meetings without being seen. Under the table in her dad's study, there was a vent. And if she crawled under the table and squished her face against the vent, she could see and hear everything in the other room.

She had just settled herself under the table when something extraordinary happened. The client stood up and walked out of her dad's office. This was odd for two reasons.

One, there was no one with the client to stop him from leaving, where had all her dad's men gone? Where was her dad?

And two, the door between the office and the rest of the house always stayed locked. Clients were not allowed outside her dad's office. How did this man open it?

Ruth darted out from her spot under the table in her dad's study and out the door to the entrance hall, peeking around the corner to see where the strange man had gotten off to. He was in the family room, staring at the piano. Her piano.

The client sat down at it and lifted the fallboard cover. How dare he!

And then he played.

The sudden rush of sound was startling in the silence. Ruth glanced back toward her father's office, expecting any second now to see her dad rush out to intercept his wayward client. Nothing happened, and the man continued to play.

Wow, he was good. He was way better than her piano teacher.

Not that it mattered. It didn't change the fact he shouldn't be in her family room.

Where was her dad? What would he think if he saw her standing in the doorway watching the stranger break the rules?

"That's my piano," she stated as she stepped into the family room, chest puffed up defiantly.

"Oh? Were you using it?"

"No."

The client didn't stop playing.

"Then I'm sure you don't mind me taking a turn."

"Go back where you belong," Ruth ordered, stepping closer.

The man laughed. "Can't say I haven't heard that before."

"Are you a client?" Maybe she was wrong; perhaps he wasn't a client.

"I'm going to pay a large sum of money for a specific purpose. I suppose so, yes."

"Why?"

"To retrieve a missing item. You seem young to be involved in the family business." As he spoke the melody from the piano became quieter, but he didn't stop.

She stood straight and squared her shoulders to look stern. "This is my house, and I can be wherever I want. What's your name?"

"Lucifer Morningstar."

She rolled her eyes. "That's lame."

"I beg your pardon?" He looked down his nose at her, frowning. "I'm the Devil. My name is not lame."

She rolled her eyes. "There's no such thing. The Devil has horns and goat legs and carries a pitchfork. It's just a story."

"You're right. That part is a story. But I am real." He smiled. His gleaming white teeth reminded her of the wolf in Red Riding Hood, but she wasn't afraid.

"Fairy tale characters aren't good fake names." Didn't this guy know anything?

"I assure you, I'm no fairy-tale."

Ruth laughed. He was weird, and, if he chose the name to make him seem scary, he wasn't convincing.

She watched him start a new melody; the tune was a popular song on the radio, and she felt jealous he could play it without needing sheet music.

"Satan is a bad guy, but you don't seem so bad."

"Do you play?"

"I take lessons."

Lucifer paused. "If you wish this little meeting to stay a secret, I suggest you run now. I hear your father returning."

Ruth saw no one, but she took his word for it and ran out of the room, Lucifer played louder to cover the sound of her steps as she ran up the stairs.