Chloe tucked her cellphone in her pocket with a sigh. "Dan is at the vic's house but no one is there. He's going to send a uniform to watch the house and he's headed back to the precinct to tag up with Ella."

"I wonder who he thinks will turn up since both the widow and her brother are slumped in the break room..." Lucifer commented, glancing through the open door at the two figures across the hall. "And speaking of the widow... quite the interesting reaction to my question, don't you think?"

"I think her brother's reaction was more interesting. I've asked Dan to touch base with Missing Persons to find out more about this Annalise person. In the meantime..." she glanced around the office with a frown. "Do you see any signs of a laptop?"

Lucifer glanced languidly at the desk. "I see where it should be" he said, waving a hand towards the empty docking station. "I'm assuming Ms. Lopez didn't find it at the hotel?"

"No. Didn't find much of anything. She said it didn't look like anyone had tossed the room but maybe they were careful." She reached across the desk and started to shuffle through the papers that had escaped the shredder. "Nothing pertaining to the company so whatever he was up to it wasn't about his job."

"Annalise" Lucifer mused, sitting on the edge of the desk. "A rather old-fashioned name, don't you think? I wonder…"

"Wonder what?" Chloe responded in a distracted manner as she sorted the pages on the desk into somewhat logical piles. One set for information on the Cecil hotel – most printed from Wikipedia or other such sites. One pile for emails sent to someone named "Hunter666" from various internet chat rooms, all discussing the various deaths at the hotel. But by far the largest pile were the missing person flyers – all with the same pretty face and old fashioned name. Annalise. "He was certainly fixated on her" Chloe mused. "Wonder why?"

"Perhaps if you find his laptop you'll find your answer" Lucifer said with a shrug. "But for now – I don't think you're likely to find anything more interesting in this room. I think we should talk to your suspects again and see what other interesting response we can pry loose from them."

Chloe sighed. "Dan will send a forensics team to properly search this office and bag up all these pages. And uniforms will escort Mrs. McIntyre and her brother to the station. I'm betting by the time they get there they will have lawyered up and won't have much to say at all. And we really have nothing to hold them on – nothing here points towards their having anything to do with McIntyre's murder or this missing girl."

Lucifer shrugged. "Never stopped people from talking to me before – why should it now?"

Chloe sighed.

Outside the office building

Amenadiel peered through the doors of the high-rise, looking for a familiar face. "Is there something I can do for you?" a young voice asked. Turning the angel looked down into the eyes of an earnest young man wearing a security uniform. "No" Amenadiel responded with a slight smile. "I'm just waiting for my brother. He and his partner are here to talk to someone at Bradley industries."

The security guard frowned. "Is your brother with the police?"

"Yes – in a way" Amenadiel confessed. Looking over the man's head he could just see Chloe and Lucifer exiting a distant elevator. "Oh – there they are. I'll just…"

The man reached out suddenly and grasped the taller man's arm. "Listen – tell your brother that McIntyre was snooping into things he shouldn't have. He should have just left things alone." The security officer backed away and started back to his post, waving a hand back at Amenadiel. "Have a nice day, sir" he called out, a fake smile plastered on his face.

"What are you doing here?" Lucifer asked peevishly. "Are you following me around?"

"No but I do have something to talk to Chloe about concerning her case."

Chloe's eyes watched the security guard nonchalantly move back to his desk and studiously avoid looking in their direction. "What do you have?" she asked. "And what was with the guard? He looked like he had something to say but not to us."

Amenadiel ushered them out of the building and back to Chloe's car, parked outside the high-rise. "It was strange. He asked me why I was there, which made sense but then when he realized I was waiting for you two he said to tell you your victim was snooping into things he shouldn't have been and that was probably what got him killed."

"News travels fast in these corporations – doesn't it?" Lucifer drawled. "Man's body was discovered only a few hours ago and now it seems EVERYONE knows he's dead – and probably has a theory about why he met his fate."

"About that…" Amenadiel replied. "I used Linda's computer to look up some information about the Cecil…"

"Why not just return to the Silver City and get all the scoop from Dear Old Dad himself?" Lucifer snarked.

Amenadiel and Chloe both glared at the devil then turned to ignore him. "What did you find?" Chloe asked.

"I don't know if you remember the last time the Cecil was in the papers but a whole lot of people that call themselves Web Sleuths started posting almost daily commentary about the investigation – and about the hotel itself. On a hunch I searched to find some of their blog postings and found a recent one from your victim. He posted that he thought the hotel may have claimed another victim – a young woman named Annalise Gibson. He wanted to put that out to the community to see if anyone else might have information about her."

"That tracks" Chloe responded slowly. "He seemed to be very fixated on her. Had quite a few missing person flyers with her name and picture on them in his office."

Amenadiel nodded. "He wasn't the only one. He received a message from one of the people following that particular blog hinting that she had gone to the Cecil because her family had tossed her out when they found out she was seeing someone they didn't approve of. Person posting that didn't explain how they knew that information but they seemed very sure it was correct."

"Internet bloggers often post things they can't always back up" Chloe replied thoughtfully. 'But in this case – let's go back to the precinct and take a look at that post. Maybe we can get the service provider or whoever is hosting the blog to help us identify who posted that information."

"Good luck with that" Lucifer responded. "Their lawyers have a special place in Hell for all the work they do to NOT be helpful in such matters. Of course – you could always let me talk to them. I'm sure, as they are practically one foot in my former domain, they would be HAPPY to tell me all about it." His eyes lit up with infernal glee at the thought.

Chloe gave the angel beside her a look and shook her head. "And I thought a dead body would be the worst thing I'd have to deal with today."

Across town and across the street from the Cecil a non-descript figure watched as life returned to normal around the hotel and its Skid Row neighbors. The police presence was still slightly higher than normal with uniformed officers still trying to make sense of the sometimes rambling information the homeless they rounded up would give them. The hotel's meager staff skittered out of the side doors when shift changed, staying in groups as they moved swiftly out of the hotel's shadow. Two maids from the establishment crossed the street in front of him and stopped on the sidewalk, watching the police in their futile attempts to talk to the residents of Skid Row.

"Have you heard from Annie today?" the young Hispanic woman asked her older, dark-skinned companion. "It's strange she hasn't checked in for her shift."

"Not for three days" the other woman responded with a worried tone. "The manager is trying to keep it on the down-low because of the hotel's reputation but now, with this guy getting himself killed out the back…"

"This place is cursed" the younger woman said furtively. "If I didn't need the job to pay the rent I'd be gone in a heartbeat. Too many weird things going on in that place."

"My granny said she thought someone must have put a curse on it" the darker woman replied somberly. "Or that the Devil had opened a gateway to Hell in the hotel itself and that's why people went crazy in there. Me – I think buildings just reflect all the good or bad done in them. Best thing the city could do is condemn the place and let it be torn down."

"Not going to happen" the young woman snorted. "Too much money paid for it – someone's going to keep it going no matter how much blood gets spilled in it." She watched as patrol cars slowly started to leave the area. "You know – Annie was in one of the upper rooms once. The one where that Canadian tourist that died a few years ago had been staying. She said she wanted to hold a séance and see if she could talk to the girl, see if she really did kill herself. I told her it was a crazy idea. Leave the dead alone and they will leave you alone."

"Good thing the manager didn't find her – she'd have been out on her ass before you could say boo." The older woman peered into the open doorway with a frown. "Maybe that's why Annie hasn't turned up for work. Maybe they fired her for being where she wasn't supposed to be."

The younger woman shook her head. "No – Annie would have told me." She looked down the street with a start. "There's our bus. We'd better get to the stop or they won't wait for us." They two women trotted down the road, unaware of the figure who had been listening to the conversation moving in the opposite direction. Back towards a lighter part of downtown. Back towards home.