Lucifer's phone call had been brief and cryptic. But one thing had been crystal clear. Something had upset him deeply. Chloe had barely managed to get him to tell her where he was.

Now she pulled up to Linda's office to find a police cordon already set up. Someone else must have called the authorities. From the way he'd acted in their call, it hadn't been Lucifer.

Chloe left Constantine in the car. She was admitted into the building after she showed her badge to the officer assigned to guard the cordon. An office near the door held most of the building's remaining occupants, who were being interviewed by uniformed officers. Neither Linda nor Lucifer were among them.

Chloe found Linda in her own waiting room, nursing a large and, from the smell of it, very Irish coffee. She'd already given a statement, but she repeated it to Chloe.

Her story was concise and matched with what the witnesses outside had been saying. It definitely explained why Linda was in shock. Not every day someone broke into your office and dropped dead, after all. But Linda's statement was a bit too pat for all the pauses she kept taking. She was leaving things out.

Also, the story as Chloe understood it so far wouldn't have upset Lucifer to that degree. Linda had been in the room with him. She had to have seen more than this. And Linda knew, right? She had to. She was Lucifer's therapist.

Chloe looked over her shoulder to check for potential eavesdroppers. The only people in the room were passing through to Linda's office — the crime scene. They weren't paying attention to this conversation, if they could hear it at all.

She looked at Linda again and nodded. "OK, that was the official version." She mimed putting away her notebook — she hadn't been taking notes anyway. She lowered her voice. "But off the record, what really happened?"

Linda blinked and pulled her head back. She went rigid for a second. Then she took a deep breath and her shoulders came down again. "Oh, right. Lucifer said you'd…"

"Fallen down the rabbit hole? Yeah." Chloe gave a single firm nod, but then shook her head. "This isn't about my induction into the world of the weird. This is about what happened here." She put her hand on the arm of the couch, closer to Linda. "I'm not officially on the case, but I'd like to find out what's going on anyway. If you feel up to it, of course."

Linda nodded and swallowed. She opened her mouth, stopped, and took a sip of her coffee. "I think…" Another swig of coffee, a larger one this time. "I think Reese came back. Somehow. Came back to warn Lucifer about something."

"Reese? Your ex-husband? Wow." Her dead ex-husband, at that. That had to rate high on the scale of shocks to the system. Remarkable that Linda was sitting there as calmly as she was, despite the boozy coffee. Even if she had been in the loop longer than Chloe had been. She put her hands around Linda's on the coffee mug. "Are you sure you're OK?"

Linda gave Chloe a weak smile. "I'll be fine. Nothing happened to me, after all."

Right. Linda had come out unscathed this time. That hadn't always been the case. She had ended up in hospital at some point for reasons Linda hadn't specified. But given her close confidential relationship with Lucifer, it wouldn't surprise Chloe if Linda's injury back then had also been related to supernatural shenanigans. What a situation to be in.

Chloe nodded. "Nothing physically happened, no, but that had to be a shock. You're being a consummate professional about all of this. You don't have to be. It's OK to be upset."

This time, Linda's smile was stronger, more genuine. She echoed Chloe's nod. "Oh, I plan to have a proper breakdown once I'm in private. But I can hold out for a while."

Someone spoke from the doorway. "Detective Decker?"

"Yeah, I'll be right there." Chloe turned back to Linda. "I have to go. But call me if you need a friend, OK?"

As Chloe got up to leave, Linda spoke up one more time. "Chloe." When Chloe turned to look at her, Linda peered at her over the rims of her glasses. "You do realize that what you just said to me applies to yourself, too?"

-x-

The person who had called Chloe's name was the lead detective on the case, Renee Salvatierre. She met Chloe by the door to Linda's office. "Look, Decker, you're working a similar case, so I don't mind you interviewing my witnesses. But keep your wacky consultant under control before I arrest him for interfering with my crime scene."

Chloe frowned. "Lucifer's one of your witnesses, and I'm not…"

The other detective shook her head. "I know the two of you haven't been working together, and Morningstar's been nice and cooperative. He's in the next office over, by the way, if you want to talk to him, too." She opened the door to Linda's office – the official crime scene. "I mean the guy pretending to be Columbo."

Constantine was standing next to the body, his hands in his pockets, looking like he'd been investigating suspicious deaths forever. He hadn't bothered to take off his trenchcoat this time. Ella crouched at his feet, doing her customary examination of the body and taking notes.

"I can't argue with results," the other detective told Chloe. "And Morningstar worked out well, cuckoo as he is. But did you have to trade tall, dark, and handsome for short, blond, and—" Her tone soured. "—scruffy?"

"He's only helping out on this case. He wasn't supposed to come to the scene." Chloe shook her head. "I'm sorry. I'll get him out of your hair."

She strode over to Constantine. "What are you doing here? You should have stayed in the car."

Constantine regarded her with an expression of bland innocence. "There's nothing useful to see in the car, Detective Decker."

Yeah, right. He knew he should have stayed, but came in anyway. What was it about her that attracted guys with authority issues? "How did you get in, anyway?"

"I asked nicely," was the answer, delivered with a smirk that reminded Chloe of nothing so much as Maze announcing that the police receptionist was no longer into men. Really. What was it about her life? And Constantine was human, by all accounts. Including Lucifer's.

Chloe sighed. Best to roll with it, then. That would get Constantine out of here fastest, at least. "So, what do you see?"

Constantine's shoulders slumped. "Nothing whatsoever," he said, having the grace to look sheepish. "Looks like he just dropped." He waited for a few seconds, then continued. "But there wasn't anything to see at the beach, either. Not afterward."

"Great." So Constantine inveigling his way into the crime scene didn't even give her any useful information. At least she had another source literally at her feet. "Ella, did you find anything?"

"Oh, hey, Chloe," Ella acknowledged without looking up. She shifted her position and reached for her camera. "Your buddy is right. Nothing to see here." She snapped the picture and then finally looked up. "And I'm serious about that. Just like your case. No signs of violence or resistance." She pointed at a discoloration on the sleeve. "One cigarette burn or similar on the upper arm, but that wouldn't have been enough to do damage. It doesn't look like the burn got through to the skin" She shrugged. "Not even any outward signs of a stroke or heart attack. This is another one where we'll have wait for the ME to figure out what happened."

"We know he's a security guard, at least," Chloe offered, pointing at the man's uniform. "I recognize the company." Two years ago, she'd observed a number of interviews with people wearing identical uniforms. They'd passed through the precinct as witnesses while her colleagues dealt with the aftermath of Trixie's kidnapping and Malcolm Graham's death.

"Pretending to be one to gain entry?" Constantine suggested.

Ella shook her head. "And dress up in the uniform of the wrong company? The companies providing security around here wear different uniforms." She pointed back down at the body. "These guys do security on industrial sites, not offices."

Chloe caught the eye of the detective in charge, who was still glaring at her from Linda's doorway. Right. She was supposed to get Constantine out of here. "Let's see what Lucifer has to say," she suggested to Constantine. "Before Renee arrests you for contaminating her crime scene."