Chloe waited for Lucifer at the precinct. He messaged her after his therapy appointment to let her know he was on his way.

It was a relief to see Lucifer perfectly coiffed and composed when he walked in. Chloe held back from asking if he was okay, not wanting to seem overly concerned or smothering.

"Ready?" Chloe asked, waiting for Lucifer to demand the keys, but he made his way to the passenger seat of her car, not even offering to drive. She hoped this didn't mean he was withdrawing from the investigation, or her. It was probably nothing; she didn't want to read too much into it.

They got caught in a traffic jam on the interstate, the car's air conditioning barely able to counteract the oppressive heat outside as the traffic crawled forward without even a breeze to cool off.

Chloe leaned forward and stretched, grimacing at the feel of her shirt sticking to her back with sweat. The sun beat down on her side of the car, cooking her arm through the window.

Lucifer flicked the vents on the passenger side of the car to aim in her direction.

"Aren't you hot in all those layers?"

He raised his eyebrows. "I'm hot, am I?"

She couldn't help the snort that escaped her. "Let's try not to stroke that ego too much."

He grinned. "You're always welcome to stroke whatever you like."

"You never stop, do you?"

"I've got legendary stamina."

"I just bet you do." Chloe laughed. "There's a turnoff up ahead. How about we grab some lunch? Maybe the traffic will clear up by the time we're done."

Lucifer let out a sigh of relief, as fed up with the nearly standstill traffic as she was. "Wonderful idea."

She found a Smoking-Butts Food Truck beside a shopping center and pulled in there, happy to get out of the car and air out the feeling of her shirt and pants sticking to her skin.

Lucifer, as usual, seemed unbothered by the heat, even in his triple layered suit.

"Don't you ever sweat?"

"I've spent most of my life in much warmer temperatures than this," he said and then turned to her, eyes zeroing in on the beads of sweat on her forehead.

Chloe swiped a hand across her brow. Not sweating was a medical condition, wasn't it? "Do you ever get heat stroke?"

"No, but you do, don't you? Perhaps we should get out of the sun?"

They spent the next couple of minutes looking over the BBQ menu and ordering. The picnic benches in the parking lot had umbrellas, and she selected one where they could both be in the shade.

Their conversation turned to normal things after they got their meals, and Lucifer filled her in on some recent gossip around the precinct. Tristan, one of the uniformed officers, had left his wife and was dating Marla from narcotics, and Richard from evidence was recovering from his prostate surgery.

"Dean from the cold case unit wants an update on our progress with the Bailey case," Lucifer added nonchalantly.

"Oh?"

"Mm-hmm," Lucifer said and sucked the ketchup off a French fry before popping it into his mouth. "Imagine his surprise when the make-work project he handed you turned up an actual lead."

"He said that to you?"

"Well, I had to ask nicely." Lucifer leaned forward and took a bite of his burger.

Chloe put her burger down. "Lucifer-"

"Oh please, you've never asked me to go through cold cases before. I had my suspicions as soon as you plunked the box of files at my feet."

"Why didn't you say anything?" She was the one fidgeting this time, rolling up the corners of her burger wrapper.

He stared at her intently. "I assumed you had your reasons."

When he didn't elaborate, Chloe leaned forward, moving in closer. "Care to share some theories?"

"Not particularly."

"Why not?"

"Because it is generally a good idea not to ask questions you don't want to hear the answers to."

That didn't sound good at all.

"You're right. I gave you a make-work project."

He nodded. "As a distraction."

"No. That's not it. We don't have an active case right now; I wanted an excuse to keep asking you to come into work."

"Oh."

"And I'm sorry. I know you have Lux, and that takes up a lot of your time, and you've got things to do outside of working with me, but I didn't want to lose you-" Chloe coughed, and the words tumbled out in a rush. "I didn't want to lose your skills."

"My skills are at your service, as always." He smiled at her, almost shyly.

Chloe couldn't help but smile back.

The traffic jam from earlier cleared, as much as L.A. ever did at least, and when they got back on the interstate, it finally felt like they were getting somewhere.

They arrived at Detective Granger's house in the midafternoon. It was a nice neighborhood, firmly middle class, nothing overtly pretentious or run down in sight.

"Well, isn't this Stepford?"

Chloe glanced at Lucifer and frowned. "What?"

Lucifer scoffed. "Neat little houses with neat little lawns, everyone pretending to be perfect and proper."

"It's the suburbs."

He rolled his eyes. "They waste their lives doing things they don't want to do so people they don't care about won't think poorly of them. There's no character anywhere, no individuality. At least Ms. Bailey's house was interesting."

They walked together up to the door, and Chloe rang the bell.

"Detective Granger?" she asked as an older man opened the door.

He was stooped, his back hunched, and shoulders curled permanently forward, as he shuffled back from the door. "Officers?" he asked, rubbing his hand on his bald head.

"I'm Detective Decker, and this is my partner, Mr. Morningstar. I spoke to you this morning."

"Yes, yes, come in. What is this about?"

"We have questions pertaining to a cold case file we've been investigating," Chloe explained. As she entered the stale smell of years of cigarette smoke overtook her, and she coughed.

"Apparently only concerned about outer appearances then," Lucifer commented, and Chloe elbowed him. He wasn't wrong. Though the outside of the house was maintained; inside was a different matter. The walls were a dingy yellowish color stained from years of smoking, the furniture might have been new in the 1970s and hadn't weathered time well.

"Cold case? The city isn't giving you enough crime to keep you busy these days?"

Chloe ignored the comment. "Are you familiar with the name Gordon Bailey?"

"Should I be?" Granger pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Chloe took the chair beside him, and Lucifer remained standing.

"He was your consultant," Lucifer reminded him.

"Criminal informant." Chloe corrected.

Granger shrugged and lit a cigarette. "So, we had a bunch of scumbags inform for us over the years. What should I remember about this one in particular?"

"He was murdered," Lucifer informed him.

"And?" Granger blew smoke in their direction. Chloe suppressed a cough, not willing to give the man the satisfaction of seeing her react.

"And," Lucifer tensed, narrowing his eyes at the old man. "He was your case, and you didn't identify him."

"I don't appreciate what you're implying."

Before Lucifer could respond, Chloe interrupted and took over. "Sir, we aren't implying anything. We're only looking into some discrepancies in the paperwork."

"No doubt. That would have been my partner. Shawn hated paperwork and was never any good at it. What discrepancies?"

"Mislabeled forensic evidence, unsigned and incomplete reports."

"If it wasn't signed, how do you know it was ours?"

"The handwriting matched," Chloe informed him.

"Well, that was Shawn for you, always a fuck-up." The old man laughed, then braced an arm against the table as he was overcome with deep wet sounding coughs. He pulled a tissue out of his pocket and spit into it before tossing it into a bucket under the table.

Granger stubbed his cigarette butt out in the overfull ashtray on the table and tapped a new stick out of his box to light up.

"Didn't come as a surprise to me when he got shot; he was always reckless." Granger took a long drag on the fresh cigarette, blowing it out again in Chloe's direction.

Lucifer plucked the cigarette out from Granger's mouth and crumpled it in his hand, letting the broken pieces fall to the ashtray after. "He was your partner. Weren't you supposed to have his back?" Lucifer asked.

Granger leaned back, undisturbed by the loss of his cigarette, and eyed Lucifer carefully. "Partners are a resource, not a marriage. Wasn't my job to look after Fehr. He wasn't all bad when we first partnered up. The trick was pointing him in the right direction."

"You used him," Lucifer said.

"How so?" Chloe asked at the same time.

"He got the job done; that was the important thing. Good for my career," Granger answered.

"There's nothing wrong with using a resource," Lucifer agreed.

Chloe frowned and looked at him; his voice sounded off, and she didn't like where this line of thought was leading them. The last thing she wanted was for Lucifer to internalize Granger's messed up version of a partnership.

Granger laughed. "So long as they stay resourceful."

"Exactly."

"Not exactly," Chloe interjected. "You need to trust the person you're working with."

"Detective Granger," Lucifer cut in. "It sounds like Detective Fehr was a burden. It must have been difficult working with him closely for so long."

"I'm sure there were more than enough advantages to balance out the odd inconvenience," Chloe added pointedly. She placed the crime scene photo of Gordon Bailey on the table. "Do you recognize this man?"

With the interview refocusing on Bailey, Lucifer drifted away from the table and started exploring the room.

Granger picked up the photo and squinted at it, eventually taking a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and putting them on. "Yeah, so?"

"He was your CI." Chloe took back the photo. "Why didn't you identify him?"

"Why bother? He was a smuggler, got what was coming to him if you ask me."

Lucifer spun around from where he had been peeking at a set of mismatched and chipped china dishes. "Gordon Bailey may not have been deserving, but his daughter had a right to know what happened to her father."

"That's what criminals do; they drag their families down into the shit with them. None of that's on me."

Lucifer stalked closer, leaning in with his hands on the table. "You are responsible for the fear she lived with, the lack of closure—never knowing what happened to her parent, why he abandoned her and never came back...living every day with the dread of the unknown looming over her head like a thundercloud. Do you know what that's like? Waiting endlessly for the end to come, to know everything you've built and care about will be taken away?"

He wasn't talking about Ruth Bailey anymore. Chloe reached over and placed a hand on Lucifer's shoulder, hoping to pull him back. Her partner sat down, but he wasn't any less tense.

Granger didn't seem phased by the accusation. "They were criminals, they didn't deserve more than what we gave them."

"They?" Lucifer narrowed his eyes. "There was more than one, then?"

"Do you know how many lowlifes are out there who get off scot-free? They deserved to be punished. I only wanted…"

Lucifer smiled, eyes now focused only on Granger, his face intent. "What did you want?"

"To be a hero."

"A hero?" Lucifer leaned in and frowned.

"For getting rid of the criminals the system let go. You should have heard the guys in the precinct every time another one of those scumbags ended up in the morgue. They loved it."

"Oh! You killed them?" Lucifer grinned and slapped his knee in triumph.

Granger blinked as though waking up, but that didn't stop him from talking. "Gordon Bailey came to us, claiming he could help out. And he did; he knew everyone, even in LA he had connections I could never hope to have without him. But then, he figured out I was getting rid of them. He refused to work with me after that."

"He broke your deal," Chloe added quietly.

"And what about Detective Fehr?" Lucifer asked. "He was the one who wrote the reports."

"After we got rid of Bailey, I needed to tie up loose ends. Fehr didn't like how I handled the situation. He was erratic, I didn't know what he would do. So, I had to get rid of him too."

Lucifer stood up. "You used him, and when he was no longer useful, you disposed of him."

The tone of Lucifer's voice reminded Chloe that she needed to talk to him soon, but when she looked over to him, he had already backed off. This was neither the time nor the place for her to sort out his issues.

"Ryan Granger, you're under arrest for the murders of Shawn Fehr, and Gordon Bailey. You have the right to remain silent," Chloe said as she snapped the chrome-plated cuffs tightly around his wrists. "You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney..."