Chapter Text
Chloe Decker hadn't always wanted to be a cop.
It would've made a good story: little girl grew up wanting to be just like her daddy, went into the Academy straight out of high school, wanted to protect and serve with the best of them. Wanted to help people.
But, no. The one thing Chloe wanted growing up was to be like neither of her parents. She didn't want to be a cop and she didn't want to be an actress no matter how much her mother pushed and pushed and pushed on that front. She wanted to be her own person.
Then her dad got killed.
"In the line of duty." That was what they called it. He was killed in the line of duty and that didn't make it any better. It wasn't while he was chasing a suspect; it wasn't while he was interviewing a witness. He was in uniform and getting a sandwich. A sandwich.
But that was enough to call it "in the line of duty." They caught who did it and that didn't make it any better either. The only thing Chloe could think of that would make it better — as if anything short of killing him in return ever could — was to become a cop herself and help people. To pay her dad's legacy forward.
Being a cop, though, it wasn't what she had pictured. It wasn't at all like what her dad had brought home. It was bribery and corruption and payoffs and she was drowning while she tried to stay above it all. Making detective hadn't made it better. If anything, it had been worse because she was in a position to lose more evidence, ignore more leads. There was more subtle pressure from above to turn a blind eye to some things, pressure she couldn't always ignore.
Refusing to bend under pressure didn't make her any friends and then, well. And then Palmetto happened. Malcolm was dead because she shot him. Malcolm had been dirty and when she caught him dead to rights, he'd raised his gun and she didn't even have time to think about her daughter growing up without a mother. She just reacted and shot him, center mass. He bled out before she finished talking to the dispatcher. She couldn't find it in herself to be sorry.
Maybe the rest of the precinct could feel that, because they certainly didn't cut her any slack. He was "a good cop," everyone said. "One of the good ones." And she had killed him.
It didn't matter that she was protecting herself. It was her word against the station rumor mill, and gossip was never kind. It destroyed her marriage, which was rocky to begin with. When she decided to stop trying to save it, she decided to stop trying to earn acceptance back at work. Both things were over and done with; she just had to let them die.
The divorce was finalized the same day she turned in her badge and gun.
Now she was- She was surviving. She had child support from Dan, she had help — although it came with strings; everything always came with strings — from her mother. She had her mind numbingly boring PI work — working for a guy that thought women weren't good investigators — catching cheating spouses. She was surviving.
She was.
"Trixie! Breakfast!"
Chloe plunked two plates down on the table — both eggs and toast — and sat, picking up her tablet and scanning the local news. The major story was about the acquittal of Chad Groner, a celebrity venture capitalist accused of multiple counts of sexual assault. Her news feed was full of opinion pieces about how much of a sham the trial was.
Everyone knew Groner was guilty. And maybe, maybe if it had been a different judge, the case may have gone somewhere. But instead, it was Judge Mackenzie — a name she recognized from her father's killer's trial — who was notoriously corrupt. If you wanted your client to get off a charge and they had enough money, Judge Mackenzie was the one to go to.
When her father's killer had gone to trial, she hadn't known anything about the criminal justice system's level of corruption. It wasn't something her dad talked about at home, and so she had assumed that one judge was just like any other: fair. In retrospect, it was lucky that her father's killer had been convicted at all.
Trixie came running into the room and jumped into her chair, drawing Chloe's attention away from the news for the moment.
"Hey monkey. Ready to go back to school?"
"How come I can't stay home with you?" Trixie asked, her mouth full of toast. "Becky's mommy lets her stay home now."
"Don't talk with your mouth full. Becky is going to school, it's just her mommy is her teacher," Chloe explained. "Anyway, wouldn't you miss your friends?"
Trixie appeared to consider that while she swallowed her toast. "Maybe we could all go have school with Becky."
Chloe had to smother a laugh. "It doesn't work like that, monkey. Do you remember what we talked about last night?"
With a huge sigh, Trixie said, "I can't kick people in their no-no touch-touch square, even if they deserve it."
"Right," Chloe said. "What do we do about bullies instead?"
"Get an adult," Trixie grumbled, scowling down at her food.
Chloe braced herself for argument again, but none came. Maybe what she was saying was getting through to her seven-year-old. This was the third time she'd been sent home for trying to beat up kids bigger and meaner than she was. Chloe wanted to beat the little shits soundly until they stopped bullying her baby, but that would undermine the non-violence message she was trying to get Trixie to understand.
"Good," Chloe said as Trixie, breakfast already finished, slipped off her chair. "Go brush your teeth," she called after her.
She knew she should put down her tablet and go get ready for the day too, but a name caught her eye. A quick skim told her it was the lead detective on the case. The one who had testified to there being no evidence that Groner was at one of the victim's houses. It was he-said-she-said at that point, since no evidence had been filed even though the victim had gone to the media to say that police had collected the evidence.
The detective had been the rookie on her dad's case. It had been pretty open-and-shut; witnesses identified the killer, backsplatter was found on his clothing, gunshot residue was on his hands, the gun was in his possession. It was open-and-shut.
It was.
She did a quick search and the detective's name showed up with Judge Mackenzie's more often than not. She could feel the heat of anger crawling up the back of her neck as she dug a little further. She was pretty sure he was dirty, and she knew Mackenzie was dirty. The women involved in the Groner case deserved justice and would never get it, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She tried not to think about how if they were both dirty and both involved in putting her dad's killer away then the odds of him actually being the man who murdered her father were slim. She tried not to think about how he could still be out there, living his life free while her dad was six feet under.
She couldn't do anything about it, but God, did she want to. She couldn't get justice for Groner's victims, either. She was persona non grata at the station, and even if she wasn't, what could she have done? She was just one person. It wasn't like she could have transformed the entire police force all by herself.
"Ready, Mommy!"
She looked up, startled. Trixie was standing by the door with her backpack, impatient to get to school, her earlier sulkiness forgotten. Shit. It was time to leave, and she hadn't even finished her own breakfast.
"Be right there," she said and put down her tablet.
The idea came in fits and starts.
It started as a niggling doubt in the back of her mind as she took Trixie to school, ran her errands, sat in a park taking clandestine pictures of the latest asshole cheating on his wife. What if... what if Fields wasn't her father's killer? What if he'd been the fall guy? What if the man who murdered her dad was still out there somewhere and she didn't know? What if, what if, what if.
It went around and around in her head until it was all she could think about. She needed to know. She couldn't just live her life forever wondering, forever not knowing if her father had actually gotten justice.
Back at the tiny office she shared with her boss, she started poking around the edges of her father's case. There wasn't much available online. Grimacing, she sent out a request to have a look at the case files, not expecting it to bear fruit. She'd be lucky if anyone even replied, never mind agreed to get her the files.
If she hadn't had so many years as a good detective under her belt, she might start to think that her boss was right about her being a shitty investigator. But the deck was stacked against her when it came to dealing with her former colleagues.
It wouldn't be the first time she saw the file, if she actually got it, but it for once she'd be looking for corruption instead of closure.
At the same time she put in a request to see Fields up at the prison. She doubted he'd tell her anything she didn't already know, but it was worth a try.
And she was right. And when she asked, point blank, if he had killed her father, he only said, "What do you think?"
That wasn't an answer, and yet, it was, because she thought no. On the drive home, she kept turning it over and over, trying to decide if she was being crazy, or if Fields really wasn't her father's killer. And if he wasn't... what did she want to do about it? No one at the station would believe her even if she could get someone to listen. There was no way her boss would let her investigate using his resources.
But if he wasn't... if he wasn't, she could track down the real killer... She wasn't an officer of the law anymore. She could-
She jerked her brain away from the thought. That was being crazy. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't kill someone in cold blood. Could she?
If she could, if she really thought she could, then why not do some investigating? Surely her boss couldn't complain if she did this mostly after hours and didn't use company equipment. She could talk to a couple of her old informants, maybe. She didn't need to be working for the police to get results.
Two months (and one murder trial that found the defendant not guilty even though she remembered that case and remembered how clearly everything had pointed to him and she wanted to do something about it but-) later she had confirmation that it wasn't possible for Fields to have murdered her father. But she didn't have a name for the man who did. No one seemed willing to give him up, if they even had a name at all.
And that murder trial...
As a cop, she couldn't condone vigilante justice. As a regular citizen? Some of these people deserved to die. That was all there was to it. Her father's killer deserved to die. If they weren't going to convict Groner, he deserved to die. That murderer deserved to die. The justice system wasn't going to do it. But she-
She still kept a gun in her home. She didn't know a single cop who didn't. It was locked up and she hadn't touched it since before she quit, but it was there. And she could-
No. She had her daughter to think about. She had a life to think about (but did she? Did she really? Was taking pictures of cheaters and perverts and coming home to do not much else really a life?) and she couldn't risk either of those things.
And vigilante justice was wrong. There was that too.
Plus, she knew how hard it as in this day and age to get away with murder — literally — especially if the cops on the case didn't like the suspect. She knew how to get around most of the common forensics, sure, but she couldn't risk it.
She really couldn't. Even though, forgetting everything else, she could use the money. As nice as it sounded, it wasn't possible.
Unless... If she could find someone to learn under...
She shook her head with a laugh and turned back to dinner. Being a hitman wasn't like going into a trade. There weren't apprenticeships. She needed to let it go.
In the end, though, she just couldn't.
There was a case, a while back. A grisly murder where it had been clear the victims had been tortured beforehand. There was a guy she had her eye on — some rich fuck who waltzed into the station like he owned the place — for a second look. But her partner at the time steered the case in a different direction and she had been too new to be willing to question him. Especially not when they found the real killer.
Something about the guy stuck with her, though. Maybe it was the way his eyes seemed to pierce right through her when he sat at her desk to "have a chat." Maybe it was the serendipity of having found the murderer less than a week after bringing him in for casual questioning. Maybe it was just the way her cop radar pinged whenever he smiled.
Regardless, she put some feelers out, making inquiries. It took some time (two rapists got off even though they had confessed to the crimes they were charged with; what about their futures? people had asked and the judge had been sympathetic) but one of her contacts came back having found that the man she was looking for owned a club, Lux, that was fairly trendy.
Once she felt she had enough confirmation — two of her other old informants and most of her meager savings account later — she had all the information she needed.
This man, this club owner, was Lucifer Morningstar, aka The Devil, aka one of the most notorious hitmen in the business.
The Devil was famous on the streets and in the darkweb channels she had dipped her toes into. He was into punishment — an eye for an eye type of things — and making sure people got their due. There wasn't a file on him at the precinct when she was a cop, but there were rumors that the FBI had a file on him two inches thick, and still not enough to find out his real identity.
And yet, she had. Maybe.
She waited until Trixie had one of her rare weekends with Dan. She couldn't do this without knowing that Trixie would be with someone for a couple days, long enough for her body to be found if this went wrong. And she was pretty sure it was going to go wrong, but the anger running through her veins, the frustration and rage at the universe, gave her strength and bravery that she didn't know she had before.
She avoided street parking and took a cab to Lux. She had it stop a bit down the street, even though she was dressed for clubbing and thus wearing impracticable shoes, and she took her time walking toward it. It was bright out, even though it was nighttime, and the sidewalks were as busy as she would have expected a Friday night to be. She didn't know how she was going to get into Lux, much less how she was going to find Lucifer Morningstar, but she was going to give it a go.
As she was waiting in the line, nervously smoothing down her dress and fidgeting with her purse, the girls around her gave her the up-and-down look of partiers everywhere and dismissed her. She hoped she was dressed up enough — pretty enough — to get past the bouncers anyway.
A door opened around the side of the building, letting out a dark shape that coalesced into a dark-haired man in a suit briefly before he faded into the shadows at the back of the alley. A light flared and then she could see the red glow of the cherry of a cigarette lighting up the bottom half of his face. He had the jaw and cheekbones of the man she was looking for, so she slid out of line — no one noticed her go — and made her way to the alley.
As her shadow stretched down it, briefly falling over the man, he looked up. Her eyes had adjusted to the dimness as she left the bright of the main boulevard, and she could see his gaze pass over her appraisingly before dismissing her entirely. He pulled out his phone and started to scroll through something as she came to lean against the wall next to him.
"Lucifer Morningstar?" she asked in a low voice.
He turned his head slowly and his gaze slid over her again, eyes narrowed. His thumb was flashing over the screen as he texted something without looking, and she tried to keep her eyes away from the movement. Instead, she studied the dark stubble on his face, the drape of fabric over his shoulders that was fit perfectly, and then the wall across from them.
"Who's asking?" he finally asked, his thumb stilling over a button on the screen. She assumed it was the send button.
"Chloe Decker," she said, steeling her nerves and turning just enough that she could take him in fully again. She ran her eyes up and down his body — that suit must have been expensive — and finally met his hard gaze. His eyes were dark and empty, black like an ocean and so... still. Like there was nothing behind them. "I need to ask you a favor."
He raised an impeccably groomed eyebrow at her, the rest of his expression not changing. "Sure you're in the right place, darling? The police station is on the other side of town."
She set her jaw. He hadn't told her that she was mistaken, he hadn't brushed her off completely, and he hadn't hit send on that text message. "I'm sure. The police can't help me with this."
He smirked at her, a mocking smirk that she wanted to punch off his face.
"I would think you'd be more comfortable on the other side of the badge. Not that I'm opposed to a little cops and robbers roleplay, but I don't think I'm who you're looking for, detective." He cocked his head. "Or is it... ex-detective, now?"
His tone — so dismissive, like he found her lacking already — had her clenching her fists at her sides, fingernails biting into her skin. She wanted to punch him, to yell at him that she wasn't nothing, that she may have ruined her life but she was still someone.
"I need," she said, enunciating. "To ask you. A favor."
He waved his hand lazily as he took another drag on the cigarette, inviting her to go on. She took a deep breath and turned to face him fully, to meet his dark eyes and stand strong in the face of that empty look. She let out her breath slowly and, putting as much seriousness into her voice as possible, said:
"Teach me to clean."
