Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Did you hear?” Nyla asked, breezing over to Angela’s desk and sitting on the corner.

“About what?” Angela replied.

“Monica Stevens.”

“Oh. Yeah, obviously I heard about that.”

“She’s… what? The fifth?”

“Sixth.”

“The sixth?”

Lucy, who had been poring over a rather run-of-the-mill case file on her own desk, finally tuned into Nyla and Angela’s conversation enough to look up at them. Their desks, across the room from hers, were too far for her to eavesdrop effectively unless she actively wanted to do so. Usually she didn’t. This time, however, she found herself curious, so she rested her chin in the palm of her hand, elbow on the desktop and eyes trained to Angela as she elaborated.

“The sixth,” she said wryly. “If I didn’t know better, Harper, I’d suspect myself.” She pointed around to the other detectives. “I can guarantee some of those vultures have already started. I bet Pearson’s working out how he can make it his career-defining case. Finally get himself into the Ivory Tower off it.”

Lucy furrowed her brow. “Suspect yourself of what?” she interjected.

Nyla and Angela looked over to her, exchanged a glance with one another, and, eventually, waved her over together. Lucy obliged, dragging her chair with her and situating herself between the two of them.

“A lot of my failed convictions from the last two or three years—we all have plenty of them, you know? I can list a few of mine for you. Edward Cunningham. Junie Talbert. Daniel McKew. The Nikah brothers. Now Monica Stevens. I’ve gone after every single one of them unsuccessfully recently. And they’ve all turned up dead. One after the other. Just within the past couple of months.”

“Seriously?” Lucy said, leaning back in her chair.

“Yes. Seriously.”

“Awfully suspicious.”

“You think?”

“That’s why she said she’d suspect herself at this point,” Nyla chuckled. “Seems almost too good to be true. Only her cases?”

“Not that I’m upset to see any of those people off the street,” Angela remarked. “Killers. Rapists. Scum of the earth sorts of people. Some of the worst I’ve gone after. But an acquittal is an acquittal, so they would be walking free right now if not for some… avenging angel or whoever this person thinks they are.”

“How did they die?” Lucy questioned.

“Mostly gunshots,” Angela informed. “Point blank.”

“Executioner style,” Nyla added.

“Exactly. Not Talbert, though. She was sniped. Long-range.”

“It’s… like someone’s doing her dirty work for her. You know, taking care of the ones who fall through the cracks.” Nyla shook her head, facing Angela directly now. “I’m telling you, Lopez. Your case files aren’t secure. Clearly someone’s hacked into your computer or something.”

“I don’t know…”

“How else do you explain why it’s only your cases? Doesn’t really add up otherwise. Unless someone really wants to make you look suspicious.”

“Well, they might be succeeding if that’s the case,” Angela lamented. “Caradine had a stern conversation with me when they found McKew last week. Can’t imagine he’ll be thrilled to hear about Monica. God, he might even consider an admin leave at this point. Not that I could really blame him. I mean—it does look weird. And it’s driving me nuts because… what in hell am I supposed to do about that? Some vigilante out there specifically working my cases? Of course the brass think I have something to do with it.”

Lucy shrugged. “Why don’t I look into it for you?”

“What?”

“You said it yourself, right? Every detective in this place is probably looking to make a case off this. It just looks worse if you take it yourself. Might as well do the next best thing and let someone you trust handle it. Unless you’d rather it go to Pearson.”

Angela sighed. “What the hell?” she replied, throwing her hands in the air. “Can’t get any worse than it already is, right?”

“It can now,” Nyla and Lucy said in unison.

“Well… With the way it’s been going, as long as I don’t wind up in an interrogation room over this bullshit, I’m calling it a win.”

“No promises,” Lucy teased.

“You’re not funny.”

“I think I am.”

“I think she is,” Nyla said in tandem. She and Lucy gave each other proud smiles that quickly disappeared when Angela reacted tersely.

“Look, can you stop playing around and just… figure out who this is before someone else turns up dead?”

“Maybe we should put police protective detail on Elijah Stone,” Nyla quipped.

“Yeah. Alright. Good luck with that one.”

●

They’d been calling him The Reaper.

Lucy always found serial killer monikers a little tacky—perhaps even a touch… indecorous. But they all got them, and, as much as she tried not to use them, she always ended up doing it. Just like everyone else. Once something caught on, it was settled. They needed to call the case something, right? At least this one wasn’t the worst she’d heard. Though she did think it was cliché.

She couldn’t come down on it too hard, though. It was fitting. What was the man doing if not… exactly what the name suggested?

It started with a thorough run-through of the previous cases, barring Monica’s which was fresh and rather familiar already. And Angela hadn’t lied. They were hard to read. Lucy had a strong stomach, but she was struggling to get through some of them.

“To his own brother?” she said allowed, reading over the McKew file on the couch in her apartment with a mug of tea in hand. “No wonder Angela said—”

Something caught her attention.

Lucy sat bolt upright, moving her tea to the coffee table and rereading the lines again and again. Promptly, she tossed that file aside, swapping it out for the Nikah one. Until she found something strikingly similar in it. And then she exchanged that file for the Cunningham file, where, for a third time, she found the same thing. She already knew it had happened with Monica Stevens. Finally, she checked the Talbert file. Sure enough…

She had a corkboard she’d been working on, a shrunken down replica of the sort of thing higher ups would present in the briefing room. “Every single one of these people threatened Lopez’s life,” she said to herself, the words coming out as an awestricken whisper.

It was true.

Edward Cunningham had taken a shot during the arrest. He’d missed spectacularly, but he’d intended to fire at her.

If he’d been a better marksman, he’d have fared like Junie Talbert. She’d also shot at Angela, but her bullet caught the vest.

Daniel McKew. He was more creative. Not a gun that time, but a knife. He’d actually managed to draw blood. There were hospital records.

The Nikahs had gassed out a hallway. It was enough to incapacitate some officers pursuing them—Angela included. Per the file, the takedown had actually gone to Nyla as a result, though Angela still considered it her case.

And Monica Stevens… had done a lot. To just about anyone in her orbit. Though the list of ways she’d threatened Angela specifically seemed a bit longer than most.

Lucy herself started feeling an odd sense of righteousness as she looked through the reports. Line after line detailing the ways her friend’s life had been jeopardized. Hell, if she weren’t a cop, maybe she’d have considered becoming a Reaper too. A part of her almost felt guilty for trying to stop him.

●

It wasn’t that Tim Bradford actually liked Angela Lopez. Obviously. A detective was a detective at the end of the day. He had his limits.

Working as an informant for her was largely just a way to earn an income, and it was by no means his first choice. But, nonetheless, he’d taken her up on the offer when she’d approached him because he simply didn’t have many options. As it turned out, Retired Army Veteran wasn’t a title that paid the bills. The resumé he was working with, complicated by a criminal record that may have had some misdemeanor charges in it and a psychiatric history including PTSD (no matter how hard he might have argued with the therapist), wasn’t one that was altogether… hirable. Not if he was seeking anything long-term, and certainly not if he was seeking anything “skilled.”

Transitioning back to civilian life was much more difficult for some than for others. Medics could always become paramedics. Some veterans found work as police officers. Ones who took better advantage of the military tuition benefits could land themselves a white-collar position in law or finance. Tim, however, had an associate’s degree in nothing all that “employable,” and he had a lot of skills in nothing all that “transferable.”

Why train killers if you don’t want killers?

Realistically, it wasn’t as if helping Angela Lopez was covering the cost of living in LA either, but it was better than nothing. She was rather generous. They got along well. She reminded him of his sister sometimes. So maybe, to an extent, the extracurricular activities he’d taken up did come from a place of fondness. He wouldn’t have said as much if asked, but there wasn’t really another explanation for why, that night, he’d decided to expand his target demographic to include cases from Angela’s friends as well—not another explanation that felt good, anyway.

That said, he wasn’t a monster. He knew better than to kill innocents. The people he went after were ones he saw as a threat, plain and simple. If he didn’t think they’d try to harm Angela, they wouldn’t be in his sights. Anyone who did wind up in his crosshairs, however, wasn’t making it very far after that. He knew what he was doing. He knew how not to get caught. And he was a hell of a lot more dangerous than any of his victims—though, personally, he preferred to think of them as “bounties” instead—ever were.

Much like Lucy, Tim had a corkboard in front of him with the names and pictures of various persons of interest from cases gone by. Initially, it had only included ones that Angela had worked, informed by files he may have swiped from her computer. However, knowing he planned to branch out, the last time he’d been at the station he’d taken the liberty of pulling some of her coworkers’ cases as well, and so the board was now divided into three parts. One for Angela Lopez, one for Nyla Harper, and one for Lucy Chen. Each time he took someone out of play, he’d remove their photo from the board and burn it. Angela’s third, therefore, was sparsely populated. Nyla’s and Lucy’s were rather full.

Contemplatively, he stepped back from the corkboard wall, crossing his arms and looking it over as if he were a museum patron. Once he decided he was satisfied with it, he reached out to pull one of the pictures off Angela’s third of the table.

The nametag underneath it read Monica Stevens. It tore in half when he’d tried ripping it down, and, after taking the other piece down, he crumpled the strips of paper in his hands and threw them, along with her photograph into the little fire pit on the floor beside him. They evaporated into a puff of smoke that promptly dissipated.

Onto the next.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Lopez,” Lucy said hastily, catching Angela’s attention as she headed by Lucy’s desk on the way to her own.

Angela stopped in her tracks, having to take a few steps back to replace herself in front of Lucy. “You startled me,” she said, catching her breath still. Almost immediately after she’d said that, Angela settled back into her typical demeanor as if nothing had happened, standing tall yet approachable and giving Lucy a casual, “What’s up?”

Lucy held up the file she’d been working on.

“Is that what I think it is?” Angela asked, something like awe in the back of her question as her eyes scanned the… rather nondescript folder. If Angela wasn’t already aware of the cases Lucy had on her docket lately, the only noteworthy thing about that file in particular would have been how thin it was. Lucy’s were always, always filled to the brim. She ran her investigations thoroughly. Any tiny detail was documented—it never meant anything good if Lucy Chen, of all people, couldn’t fill out a folder on someone.

Lucy nodded. “The LA Reaper,” she confirmed. “Sparse, I know.”

“You think?”

“Well, it’s not like I have much to go on,” Lucy retorted. “There’s pretty much just the one lead, which is… well.” She motioned forward.

Angela pursed her lips. “Me?”

“You.”

“Fantastic.”

Lucy didn’t have to say anything. The pleading look in her eyes as she placed the sad, emaciated file back on the desk was more than enough.

“How can I help?” Angela offered. Begrudgingly.

Lucy instantaneously perked up. “Would it offend you if I started digging into your CIs?” she wondered.

“Why would that offend me?”

“Didn’t want you to feel like I was doubting your judgment,” Lucy replied. “You know—suggesting you’d work with shady people. That’s all.”

Angela raised her brows. “Chen.”

“What?”

“They are criminal informants,” Angela reminded. “Most of them are shady. Probably all of them, actually.”

Lucy froze for a second, staring straight ahead, before eventually nodding and looking back up to Angela. “Fair point,” she acknowledged. “In that case, could you possibly make me a list or something? So I know where to start?”

“Sure,” Angela replied with a shrug. “Current? Former?”

“All of them. Any of them. Current. Former. Incarcerated. Dead. Doesn’t matter. I just need options. I’m… not feeling very picky right now.”

“On it.”

●

Tim wasn’t precisely sure what he had in mind when Angela told him one of her fellow detectives would be stopping by with a few questions. But he was well aware that most police officers weren’t Angela Lopez, so perhaps he’d expected the polar opposite. A man? A bit abrasive? Someone too tall to fit in the doorway? There had to be at least a few dozen of those in the LAPD. Or, given Angela didn’t strike him as the sort to put up with someone like that, perhaps he’d been expecting her exact carbon copy instead. It was a mystery.

In either case, what he definitely had not anticipated was an extremely attractive woman. He almost couldn’t believe his eyes when he gazed through the peephole on his front door and the LAPD badge being displayed for him was eventually lowered to reveal… Her.

“Any day now, sir,” Lucy called. “I know you’re in there. This won’t take long. You’re not in any trouble. I just have some questions. Angela Lopez should have said something already?”

Finally, he opened up the door. And she somehow managed to look even better once he had a proper view.

He couldn’t tell whether her obliviousness was real or whether she was faking it, but, regardless, Lucy seemed fully unaware of the way Tim was admiring her as she fixed her badge back on her person before extending him a cordial hand to shake. “Detective Lucy Chen,” she introduced.

Lucy Chen. She had her own section on his corkboard. He hadn’t been able to put a face to the name until then. “You know Detective Lopez,” he replied dryly, trying his damnedest to cover up his attraction by matching her professionalism. “Figure you know who I am too.”

Lucy nodded. “I… brushed up,” she admitted. “Tim Bradford… Ex-military… Couple misdemeanors, but nothing too noteworthy. Yet Lopez tells me you’ve helped her solve more cases than anyone else—CI or LAPD. So what gives? Just good connections?”

He shrugged.

“Right,” Lucy said under her breath. “Well, in that case, I might have some use for them. If you’d be willing to help me out with a case.”

“What? Lopez can just trade me over to you whenever she wants?” he scoffed, crossing his arms. “That’s a thing?”

“Sort of,” Lucy replied with a shrug. “Obviously, you’d have to agree to it. And you’d have to be useful.”

“Oh, I would, huh?”

“No real point to it otherwise.”

“Fine,” he said shortly. There was a briefcase in her hand, and he motioned for her to give it to him. “What do you have?”

Lucy hesitated, but, eventually, she gestured towards the door. “It might be easier to go through all this if we have a table or something. Lots of loose photographs in here,” she said. “Would you mind if I came in?”

“Not at all,” Tim replied, stepping to the side so she could pass. “As long as you don’t go in the basement.”

She stopped, creasing her brow as she turned over her shoulder to look at him. “Why not?” she probed.

“It’s where I keep all the bodies.”

Tim couldn’t quite manage to hold in his laughter. In response, Lucy’s affect flattened, and she rolled her eyes. “Cute,” she said.

“I’m just remodeling down there,” he assured. Pointing forwards, he said, “There’s a table in the dining room we can use—straight ahead.”

Lucy didn’t answer; instead, she simply followed his direction, heading towards the dining room with him right behind her, admiring the way her hair ponytail fell down her back and between her shoulder blades.

Reaching the table, Lucy swung the briefcase up and opened the latches, letting it fall open between them as they each took seats across from one another. Tim skeptically raised a brow as his eyes skimmed over what he could see immediately. Looking up to Lucy, he said, “‘The Los Angeles Reaper’? This is… what? A serial killer or something?”

She just nodded and began pulling out documents to organize them.

“Lopez didn’t tell you I don’t work homicides?”

Lucy’s gaze shot up to him, and her hands, which had been straightening a pile of loose papers, slowly lowered to the tabletop. “What?”

“Not really my area,” he said coolly. “I’m… more useful—” Lucy pursed her lips, hearing her own word repeated back to her. “—on things like… break-ins. Robberies. Maybe occasionally an assault here and there. But homicide isn’t my wheelhouse. I tend to stay away from that type of thing. Not really into violence.”

Lucy simply laughed, amazed. “You’re an Army veteran,” she said. “A damn good marksman, too, if my intel was accurate. You really expect me to believe—”

“Well, I’m not in the Army anymore, am I? And Los Angeles isn’t a warzone,” Tim rebutted. “So maybe you can understand why I’d avoid that kind of thing now.”

Lucy froze once the realization hit her. “Of course,” she breathed, finally moving to repack the documents into the briefcase. “I… didn’t mean to bring up bad memories or… anything like that. I can show myself out if—”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t work a homicide,” he said, putting a hand on top of the briefcase. Lucy, slowly, reassumed her seat. “I just don’t want you getting your hopes up. Not sure how helpful I can really be on this one.”

“Alright,” she said, still uncomfortable though trying very hard to mask it. “Not a problem. We’ll, uh—we’ll start from the top. If you don’t have anything, then you don’t have anything. Not a big deal. I’ll find this guy another way.”

“I have no doubt.”

●

They’d been calling him The Reaper.

Tim thought that was… a bit lame. Though not the worst moniker he’d ever heard. And it wasn’t unfitting, so he figured he’d take it.

He had to admit—he hadn’t seen Lucy coming. He knew eventually his activities would end up on the LAPD radar; he wasn’t that naïve. But he thought he had a little more time than he apparently did, and the fact that Lucy was the detective on the case did throw off his plans a little. After all, his next target was going to come from her repertoire. Her paying him a visit made that too risky a move. So, instead, he’d decided to shuffle around his timeline a bit.

The change in plans meant he was pulling from Nyla’s backlog instead. Not that it really mattered all that much anyway. Whoever he went with had it coming, didn’t they? It didn’t seem all that important which of them got the extra week or so to live so long as, well, they both stopped eventually. Which they would.

The unfortunate person he’d settled on was now a body on the floor in front of him with a clean bullet wound through the head—not something entirely unusual. The part that was strange was how he had to read the name off the back of his hand (a reminder he’d written for himself knowing that would happen) to remember who the guy even was. A lowlife, really. Unimportant. A much smaller target than Monica Stevens had been. But… there was an officer on his case now. He’d made waves. He had to start being a bit more cautious with his activities. Or, if not that, then at least a bit more entertaining. This was a two-player game now, after all.

With that in mind, he tossed a little note next to a pool of blood before slinking out of the house through a back window.

●

“You’re kidding,” Angela said over the phone. “Another one? Already?”

Lucy had called her from the crime scene, figuring anything she felt might be connected to The Reaper was… something Angela had at least a tangential claim to. Getting to her feet and frowning at the body in front of her (and standing exactly where Tim had been the night before, oddly enough), Lucy sighed and shook her head, saying, “Another one.”

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“Same M.O.,” Lucy assured. “Can’t imagine who else it would be…”

“Well, that hardly makes sense,” Angela scoffed. “Harvey Wakefield? That’s not one of mine. That’s—”

“That’s one of Harper’s. I know. I just—” It was then that Lucy’s eyes caught the note. By the time the body had been found, the blood had reached it, staining it on the corner.

“Hello? Chen?” Angela beckoned once the abrupt silence had gone on too long for her liking. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Lucy replied, slightly distant. Her eyes were still examining the note. She hadn’t even opened the thing yet.

“Are you sure? Because—”

“I’m sure,” she insisted. “There’s just… this weird note here on the ground. You know anything about that?”

“Pardon?” Angela asked. “A note?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, finally opening it. Before she could read anything else, she caught the name addressed at the top and the moniker signed at the bottom. The former was Detective Chen. The latter was Reaper. “And it has my name on it.”

“Well, that’s weird,” Angela said with a nervous laugh. “This… doesn’t even sound like The Reaper at all. I mean—first, it’s not one of my cases. And now—”

“It’s him,” Lucy said firmly.

“How do you know.”

“He says it’s him.”

“… Go on.”

Lucy read the note. It was… flirty. Provocative. And short. And she noticed immediately that, whoever The Reaper may have been, he didn’t seem to find her intimidating. He addressed her more like a friend than a threat. She didn’t know what to make of it.

◌

Detective Chen,

We have got to stop meeting like this.

Find out who I am… then maybe I’ll take you to dinner?

-Reaper

◌

“Lucy…?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lucy said. “Sorry—I was reading the note. It’s… I think this guy knows me or something.”

“Oh?”

“I did spend all day yesterday talking with your CIs, didn’t I? Maybe…”

“You think maybe this ‘Reaper’ person is one of them?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? Whoever this is knows who I am, and he knows I’m the lead investigator. Any one of the people I spoke to yesterday could be our guy. Plus, I mean—he was only targeting your caseload. Which means he’s got to know something about you. Sure, this one’s Harper’s, but… you two have some CIs in common, right?”

“Yeah… But—”

“Get me a list.”

“I don’t like this, Lucy.”

Lucy creased her brow, reading the note again. Realistically, she knew Angela was right. Were either Harper or Lopez on it instead of herself, Lucy would feel the exact same way about it. But it wasn’t them on the case. It was her. And for her it was… perhaps a bit recklessly intriguing. So all she could respond with was, “I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”