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Joan Watson had to squint as she walked into the nightclub. Blinking lights simulated motion across the ceiling and halfway down to the floor. Neon picked out the name of the club in multiple signs, prominent on three of the four walls, while screens like animated wall scrolls showed shadows dancing to music. The music wasn't as loud as most nightclubs; you could hear yourself talk here, and there were little pockets of conversation scattered through the room. The dance floor was crowded with attractive, fit young people in styles that showed off their looks, as flashy and skimpy as the walls of the club itself. To her right, a stairway wound up the only wall without a neon LUX sign, opulent with a thick patterned gold carpet and ornate wrought iron railings. The club should have looked trashy, objectively it was tacky as hell, but something about the energy of the place filled in the gaps and it was, despite its best efforts, beautiful.
Threading her way through the crowd of people to the bar, in the hope that a bartender would be more forthcoming than the bouncers at the door had been, Joan was jostled by a clubgoer in a leather jacket and tight black jeans. The drink in his hand sloshed some of its contents onto her bare arm. "Fuck you very much," he muttered under his breath, and she wondered if a New Yorker would have brushed it off or been apologetic. It'd depend how their day had gone, she supposed.
"What can I get for you?" the bartender asked. She was blonde, tall, short hair curling over her ears, model-skinny in the metallic sleeveless dress that matched in material if not cut the shirts the guys at the door had been wearing.
"I'd really appreciate," Joan began. She paused, considering the best way to phrase her request.
The bartender nodded sympathetically. "A drink and a friendly ear?"
Joan smiled at her. "I'm looking for the owner, to talk to him privately. Can you tell me if he's around, where I might find him?"
The sympathy faded from the blonde bartender's face, her eyes narrowing in what might be curiosity, or more likely abrupt dismissal. She went blank and efficient. "What can I get you to drink?" she said, turning away. Then she pursed her lips and turned back to give Joan a shrewd, penetrating look, lips curling up like the arc of a tensed bow. "What sort of, eh, liquor do you fancy? Special today on the Buttery Nipple shot." The bartender’s head tilted, left eyebrow raised.
“I beg your pardon?” Was she making fun of Joan or coming on to her? Was that a thing with LA bartenders? “No, I just have a few questions for him," Joan said, not wanting to further alienate the bartender who still might give her the information she needed.
"Mr. Morningstar's generally very busy. But you might be in luck." The bartender pointed with the hand holding a cloth she’d been using to wipe down the bartop. It waved with the gesture like a white flag of surrender.
Joan looked over her right shoulder. A darkly handsome man in an expensive navy silk suit, black shirt unbuttoned at the neck, stood at the top of the wrought iron stair. He paused periodically as he descended, posing like a model on a catwalk, clearly expecting an audience. And he had one. From the balcony that extended from the staircase, several women approached him, and he pulled one close, an arm around her waist, as he continued down to the ground level.
The group of people surrounding the club owner were telling him all sorts of things, more crowding in to get his attention. Joan tried to ask him a question, to introduce herself, but he was distracted, shaking a hand to her left, giving a compliment to her right, his arm still around the lovely young woman he'd picked up at the balcony. She curved against his side in every evidence of pleasure.
Finally Joan used her hardest New York attention-getting tone. "Mr. Morningstar!"
He turned to her, this time clearly having heard, looked at her again but saw her for the first time, she thought, taking her in with a first, second, third up and down gaze that should have been uncomfortable, but somehow wasn't. "Hello. Who do we have here?" Around them, the people who'd been talking seemed to go quiet, as if a bubble of silence had fallen around just the two of them. He let go of the woman he'd been holding and reached the hand out to Joan. "What can I do for you this evening?" he asked. The full focus of his attention was strangely intense.
"Can I speak to you alone?”
“Ohhh, this sounds promising! A clandestine meeting,” Mr. Morningstar purred, and Joan took a step back, mostly to distance herself from the awkwardness of his response.
“My name is Joan Watson. I'm an investigator from," and it was at this point in her speech that she lost his interest, she could feel it fade away, that intent gaze going vague again, and though she finished what she'd been going to say she could tell he was no longer listening. Oh, he kept his eyes on her face and gave every superficial impression of listening, but he wasn't.
"Isn't that fascinating," he said, "or quite boring, I can't tell which." He took Joan's hand in both of his, which felt inappropriate, but she did not pull away. "You are charming. I'm sure whatever you have to say is important, to you, but I have my own business to attend to. Your questions will have to wait." He began to walk toward the dance floor, the group of people closing around him as he told them his plans for the evening.
Somehow he disappeared into the group, which was odd, Joan thought, because she was a trained observer and he was not the sort of person to blend into a crowd, not even this crowd. In lieu of talking to the owner, she considered, maybe she could investigate his private area of the club? It must be up the staircase he'd come down. She was halfway up the stairs when she noticed the gold fronted elevator and the bouncer standing guard in front of it. And he'd said something in those plans for the evening that sounded like he was friends with the local police. Better not, then.
Joan thought about leaving. It had been a long day. But, she decided, she'd get a drink first. Just one, because she was driving.
The blonde bartender from before was no longer there. Instead, there was a brown-skinned woman, just as pretty and far more beautiful, with long wavy hair and dark lipstick on her full lips. Sitting down on the only unoccupied stool at the bar, Joan ordered a glass of wine.
The bartender took down a half-empty bottle of wine from the rack, touched the cork, then replaced it. She chose a different one to pour into a glass. "No luck, huh?" Done pouring, she put the glass of wine on a napkin in front of Joan.
One sip of the wine was all it took for Joan to realize this was a much more expensive vintage than any club like this would ever serve as house wine. It was good, but she hadn't budgeted for expensive drinks for this trip.
As if the bartender sensed the thought, she winked as she walked past Joan to her next customer. "On the house." To the blonde woman on the barstool next to Joan's, the bartender said, "You having a tough night, too?"
"I just had the worst day. Two patients were no shows. One of them had called me last night in a panic, and I spent hours reviewing her case before her emergency appointment. Feels like my day was completely wasted." Her burnt-sugar voice was familiar. Joan tried to place it.
"Now you can spend your night wasted," the bartender said. "It'll be more fun."
Laughing, the blonde woman continued. "It's not like I didn't have things to do. I had so many errands to run today. I could have picked up my suit at the cleaners. I could have gone to the grocery store and bought things to make for my dinner party this weekend. Maybe get my nails done --"
The bartender smirked, then interrupted the torrent of words. "Shut up, I've stopped listening."
The woman laughed again. Joan knew she'd heard that same laugh before, suddenly remembering where. She thought about leaving, pretending she hadn't recognized her, but she didn't want to go back to her hotel and go to sleep just yet. She could use company, and there might not be anyone else in LA who she knew. "Linda, right? Joan. We met at the ICPS a couple years ago, remember? At that symposium? Workplace Mental Health." Joan had been considering her career change to sober companion at the time.
"I remember the conference," Linda admitted. It was clear she didn't remember Joan. "Was that the boring one where they didn't seem to say anything useful at all? Corporate ass-covering, mostly?" It probably had been. "But let's not talk about such a boring thing. And I'd rather not go on anymore about my awful day. What brings you to LA, Joan?"
Usually Joan wouldn't start talking to a randomly-met-years-ago acquaintance about a case, especially over drinks in a nightclub. But Linda was remarkably comfortable company, and that first bartender hadn't exactly been wrong -- Joan really could use a drink and a listening ear.
So she told Linda all about how frustrating and useless today's attempt at investigation had been. Going from one occult bookshop to the next -- there weren't that many, but it still had taken hours -- looking for the candles the killer had left at the crime scenes, asking the proprietors who had been buying those, and getting nothing useful at all. She told Linda about the case she'd been working on.
At the first crime scene, in London, there'd been five candles, one of them black, around the body. The white ones had all been lit and put out, the black one at the victim's feet hadn't.
The second, in New York, had salt scattered on the floor in the shape of a pentagram. The candles hadn't been left behind, that time, but Joan had spotted drops of wax in three separate places. The connection was clear.
The third one happened in Chicago. There, witnesses had heard some kind of shouting. None of them knew what language it was, but from the bits they remembered, Joan had put together that it'd been Latin.
None of the victims had yet woken from their comas. Medical tests had yet to determine the cause. Had the attacks been intended as some kind of satanic ritual? Was it theater? She dismissed the idea of a cult, because all the evidence pointed to a single suspect, since the same man's DNA -- not yet identified -- had been found at all three scenes. But the point of theatrics could have been showing off for the victim.
It was way too on the nose that the matchbook she found outside the Chicago crime scene, along the route the perpetrator had taken in his escape, was for an LA nightclub owned by a man who'd apparently legally changed his name to "Lucifer Morningstar."
"When you tried to talk to Lucifer about all this," Linda said, "I bet he didn't want to listen."
Joan would have told her how exactly right she was, but she heard her phone chirp. Checking it, there was a text message from Sherlock. Another incident had happened matching the ones she was investigating, this one in LA where she already was. He'd sent the address.
Spur of the moment. Linda knew LA and she knew Lucifer, and Joan was used to investigating as part of a team. Having a partner along, someone to verbalize her ideas to, helped her think things through, and Linda had already proved an excellent listener. "You want to come with me to check out a crime scene?"
“Another one?” Linda and the bartender asked together. The pair paused, glancing at one another, and then the bartender shrugged and returned to drawing a beer.
“I’d be delighted,” Linda replied, smiling, leaving Joan to wonder.
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The latest attack had taken place at a branch of Weston Fitness, one of the popular local workout chains, in the larger of their two dance class rooms. It looked much like the gyms in New York, though Joan noticed more floor space between the Nautilus machines and treadmills as she and Linda walked through.
Linda proved very helpful. She turned out to be good friends with one of the police detectives at the scene, convincing her to let them take a look around, as long as they wore the right protective gear and didn't touch anything. The detective explained that the room had been closed for cleaning and was soundproofed so the loud dance music wouldn't distract patrons in the rest of the gym.
Joan knew right away she was looking at another in the series, but there was something different here, more care taken setting everything up. The unconscious victim, the five candles, the pentagram of salt, all neater versions of the previous cases. Less so were the Latin phrases on slips of paper next to each candle, spattered with wax that held them to the floor of the gymnasium.
Joan carefully stepped over the salt-drawn lines as she went to take a closer look at the unconscious man. He lay prone on a half-folded mat, his hands dangling to either side. The victim was tall, well built, wearing nothing but the bottom half of a dark green track suit. If he'd been overpowered, she thought, and looked closer. A burn mark typical of a prod-style taser clear on the skin of his back, just under his shoulder blade. That was new. At least this one had a reason to be unconscious.
"Looks like he was taken down with a taser." Linda pointed to the red mark. “I wonder if the attacker was a woman? Or maybe they were shorter, or didn’t have access to drugs, or some other method of rendering the man unconscious?” She glanced at Joan for clues.
"The voice the witnesses heard on the last one sounded male to them, and the DNA we found had a Y chromosome, but it's possible. They never found drugs in any of the victims' blood. But this is the first one with a taser mark."
Linda exhaled audibly. “This all seems so staged. So over the top, like a scene from a movie, you know what I mean? I wonder if it was being filmed. Do you think it was?”
There were a lot of wannabe film directors in the local population. "If you were filming it, where would you set up the camera?" Joan looked around, trying to guess what vantage point would be used. "Maybe just on a hand-held camera or a phone? But why? The victims have been so random, nothing in common I've been able to find. And I've looked, thoroughly."
“Most likely a phone,” Linda speculated, motioning to the nearly endless windows framing the front of the gym. “Anything else would be so conspicuous. Not that this isn’t conspicuous; so elaborate. Latin, candles, pentagram. Ticks all the boxes for an internet search for ‘dark ritual’.”
Joan nodded agreement, mentally running through possibilities. "The question is why."
Linda slowly circled the paramedics trying to revive the victim. “As for why, proof maybe? Surely this can’t all be for the entertainment of the attacker? Well, I mean, I suppose it could be, but the care taken -- these look like the lines of salt were drawn with a ruler they’re so precise -- it would be an enormous risk. Proving what to whom though? I wonder.”
“I had thought the rituals might be for the entertainment of the one performing them, or to scare his victims. But if they were being done for someone else, and a record made to show to that person...that puts a whole new set of motives in play.”
Linda nodded, a far away expression on her face. “And if they were for someone else, well, this is LA. So, a twisted sort of resumé to some local indie film company? I suppose. Or,” Linda stopped, a sudden furtive caginess tightening the lines around her eyes, her mouth. “Oh.”
“What,” Joan prompted, both excited and impatient. She was eager to put this particular puzzle back in the box.
“Well, it just occurred to me. There’s a superstition about pictures, and cameras, and catching spirits.” Linda laughed nervously. “But that’s just silly.”
"People believe it, and do things based on that belief. That might be silly, but we both know it happens." Joan stared at the paramedic who was taking the unconscious man's pulse. "Maybe the ritual is to convince the victim. Maybe that's somehow keeping them from waking up."
The paramedic let out a quick sound of surprise as the man pulled his hand out of her grasp.
"None of them have woken up before," Joan told Linda. She noted the crease on Linda's forehead had intensified.
"I hope that's a good sign," Linda said doubtfully.
The victim gave his name as Douglas Ramie, but his pockets seemed to be empty; he couldn't produce any identification. He seemed alert enough. Joan and Linda listened as the police took his statement.
"Who is your next of kin?" asked the police detective who had let Linda and Joan in. "We can make a call now, to come pick you up at the station."
"My brother. Miles Ramie. Maybe he can bring some of my clothes." The man tried to stand, seemed clumsy and unsteady. Joan thought it had been too long for that to be the after-effect of the taser, unless there was something else wrong with the man, something that seemed unlikely if he had been, as he just told the police, jogging on the treadmill and lifting weights the last he remembered. "I don't remember these sweatpants. I thought I had on gray ones," he said, seemingly to himself.
A little disorientation was to be expected, but that was an odd detail.
Joan texted the man's name with a picture of him to Sherlock in hopes he could gather information about Ramie, adding his brother's name as an afterthought. "I think we're just about done here," she told Linda as they left the gymnasium. "I wish I could have talked to the owner of that club we were at, though. I still think he might know something important."
Linda laughed nervously. "Is Lucifer a suspect?"
Joan shook her head. "I thought he might be before I flew out here, but he was photographed in LA on the day of the one in New York. Airtight alibi."
"I think you might be right about talking to him. Even if he doesn't know anything, he has helped solve a lot of mysteries, can you believe it? I can get you in to talk to him. Probably." Linda licked her lips. "Let's go back to Lux."
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When they arrived back at Lux, hours later, Linda said a couple of words to the bouncer outside the gold doored elevator and took Joan up to Lucifer's private area above the club.
He wasn't in there alone. They heard two voices, the club owner's and another man's.
"They're for you. They're all for you. My brother didn't keep his bargain, but now I've kept it for him. Bring him back."
"I'm afraid I have no idea who you are, who your brother is, or where he might have taken himself off to," Lucifer said.
"You have to! Here, souls, that's what you're paid in. Here." The man shoved his phone at Lucifer.
Joan looked at Linda. "Looks like you got that part right."
"I'd really rather not have."
Joan's phone chimed. She didn't want to check it right now. It chimed again. She glanced at the screen -- texts from Sherlock.
The man was lying. His name is not Douglas Ramie. He may have stolen a dead man's identity. Douglas Ramie died at that gym three months ago. That was the first text. The second was a photograph of Douglas Ramie with his arm around his brother, Miles.
"Miles Ramie!" Joan said, in the same tone that had got Lucifer's attention earlier. This time it got both men to turn and look at her.
"Who are you?" the man demanded. "How do you know my name?"
"I guessed because you're alive, and the other man in this picture is your brother Douglas, who's dead." Joan held up the phone, showing him the picture.
"Where did you get that?"
"What is going on here?" Lucifer demanded. "Dr. Linda. What have you brought into my apartment? Is this man another patient of yours?"
"I have never seen him before." Linda put her hands up in front of her.
"Linda, I'm going to call the police," Joan said, fingers busy on her phone. "I've figured out what this man's scheme was." Should she call 911, she mused, or would it be better for Linda to call her friend the detective?
"My scheme? It was his scheme. The devil's scheme. And here are your souls, now give me my brother's!" Miles Ramie threw his phone at Lucifer.
Who dodged neatly. The phone went clattering across the floor and slid under a sofa.
"What sort of thing have you figured out, Joan?" Linda looked cautiously between Lucifer and Joan, making placatory hand gestures at Miles. "I think we should let Mr. Ramie explain himself before you say. Just in case he has new information for us?"
Joan nodded. Linda was right -- better not to show her hand in front of one of the culprits. It might help him come up with a more convincing lie if he knew exactly what she'd uncovered.
It was obvious to Joan what had happened. The staging and recording of the earlier crimes, and their dramatic and odd nature, was all a way of setting up the impersonation of Miles's brother Douglas by his confederate, the man they'd thought was the fourth victim. He'd pretend to be Douglas, some people might even be convinced by the occultism that he really was Douglas somehow possessing another man's body, since the last ritual was done in the same place Douglas had died. It was a very creative plan, Joan had to give him that.
"Whoever told you that I deal in souls, they were very mistaken. I'm not sure where you people got that idea. Your brother knew better, having made a deal with me, for a favor to be determined later, not for his soul or any such nonsense." Lucifer glowered at the man who'd invaded his apartment uninvited. "Honestly, the audacity of you people, thinking I need some sort of lackey to go reaping souls for me. As if I weren't perfectly capable of doing it on my own."
The man looked shaken. "No," he said. "That's not possible."
Lucifer turned to Linda. "Do you see what I have to put up with? This is my life."
Linda rolled her eyes. "Yes, you have such a terribly difficult time."
"I'm glad you agree with me." Lucifer smiled. He seemed to have forgotten about Miles entirely.
"What is he --" Joan asked, confused now by all this devil and souls talk. She wondered if the man would be convicted, or if he would be committed instead. "This is all fascinating," she said, not meaning it at all, "but what are we going to do with the man in your living room?"
"Linda. Be sure to call Detective Douche and have him sort the whole thing out."
"You know he doesn't like being called that," Linda said.
Lucifer ignored that. "The detective and I have dinner arrangements. I don't want her being distracted by this nonsense."
Linda sighed. Joan touched her shoulder. "Who is this I'm calling to have things sorted out? Someone with the local authorities, I hope." Joan's finger was poised over the dial pad ready to make the call.
"I'll call," Linda said. She took out her own phone, dialed, waited. "I need to speak with Detective Dan Espinoza, please."
While Linda was explaining the situation to the authorities, Joan texted Sherlock about what she'd figured out was going on.
Joan had just sent the text when Linda hung up.
"Dan's on his way. And strange as it may be, I think whatever this man did, worked," she said to Lucifer. "Because the man in the circle of salt woke up and said his name was Douglas Ramie."
Miles's mouth opened in astonishment. "Thank you," he said to Lucifer and Linda, ignoring Joan. He made a break for the exit.
Joan caught his wrist. "Not so fast." To Linda, she added, "The attack here might not have been real, but the other three people he assaulted are still unconscious."
Miles wrenched his wrist out of Joan's hold and bolted, going over the railing. She darted over and saw him fall. He landed fairly well, but when he got to his feet, he was limping.
Two of Lux's bouncers had come to see what just happened. "Keep that man there," Joan called down.
Linda and Lucifer were having a conversation. Joan was half-listening to it, committing it to short term memory using a technique Sherlock had taught her that came in handy when she had to divide her attention.
Once she was sure the bouncers had Miles Ramie well in hand, she turned back from her view of the club floor and went back to Lucifer's living room.
Linda met her at the doorway. "We should go before Dan and the police get here," she said. "Unless you want to be at the station answering awkward questions until morning. I know I don't."
Joan would have, but she already had a text from Sherlock. Have sent the malefactor's name to the Chicago and New York police as well as the London inspector's office. Have a new case for you, come home soonest. "I suppose I had better go with you," Joan told her.
"It was lovely to see you again," Linda said as they rode down the elevator.
"Not the usual sort of reunion I have with old colleagues," Joan said.
"It was a unique experience." Linda laughed. "And all I meant to do was get drunk and forget my bad day."
"It ended up a good day for me. Caught my man, and caught up with you. Neither of which I expected to happen." Joan smiled. It really had been a much better night than anything she'd expected when she first had walked into Lux.
"Come back and visit again some time," Linda suggested.
"I just might do that."
It wasn't until she was on the flight back that Joan realized how deeply strange that brief conversation between Linda and Lucifer had been.
Linda, in the same tone that she'd used for saying Dan Espinoza didn't like being called "Detective Douche," had asked Lucifer, "What are you going to do about the souls?"
"Nothing. It's not any of my concern." Lucifer had sounded entirely disinterested.
"Lucifer. Souls are your only concern. Aren't they?" In a tone Joan had only heard from practicing counselors.
"Oh, all right." There had been a long pause, with sounds in it, a creak like a sofa being pushed aside, an extended crunch of cheap plastic shattering. "There. See? All better."
"Thank you." Sincere gratitude.
Strange. Normally Joan's mind grabbed onto anything mysterious and didn't let it go until she understood, but she felt oddly reluctant to think too hard about this memory. Joan fell asleep. When she woke, refreshed and ready to get a meal while she changed planes, she vaguely remembered Linda and Lucifer had been talking about the man's scheme to "steal souls," but she no longer could remember the words or details.
When she found out, after arriving back home, that the various victims had all awakened, Joan decided to put the whole subject out of her mind. She really was done with it now, she thought with a sense of relief, though one good thing had come out of it all: reconnecting with Linda, who she definitely planned to stay in touch with. Joan opened the file for her new case, ready to see what it had in store for her.