It was Saturday, April 24th.

Technically David didn't have to go to the precinct and work, but after his talk with Lauren last night and that movie they both watched he had decided to take a closer look at the evidence so far. However, he had waited for Angela to come home from her friend, just to see that she was okay. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. Angela stormed through the back door in the kitchen when he and Lauren were still drinking their coffee, and she could hardly wait to show off her glittering finger nails and tell about what a great night she had spent with Gina and her big sister. Lauren noticed with an amused smirk how relieved he was when Angela finally ran upstairs to put her things away.

As he left home and drove downtown to the precinct, he realized that Lauren and he had barely spoken a word to each other this morning. In his head he was completely absorbed by his case, and it seemed like Lauren had her own work troubling her. Sometimes he wondered if that determination of hers was healthy at all, or if dealing with all those nutcases would consume her one day. This new patient of hers, if one could call him that, seemed to affect her a great deal, and David worried if his wife was really up to this kind of pressure. But then he reminded himself that Lauren was a very strong and capable woman, and most of his worries just came from his old-fashioned belief that he had to protect her from everything.

He reached the large building of the Malthorn City Police Department, 6th Precinct, and drove his car into the underground parking lot. Right there in its usual spot stood the car of Lt. Wilks. David let out a sigh of relief. Good to know that nothing happened to the lieutenant. He parked his car right next to Wilks' and went to the elevator.

The precinct was pretty quiet. Only a handful of cops were on weekend duty. The few of them not on patrol used the time to deal with some overdue paperwork or killing time in some other way. The logo of the 6th precinct hang on the largest wall in the back of the squad room, shining in gold and silver. A few words were written all over the giant badge that made up most of it, they reminded David as well as anyone else of their duties. "Crimen Non Dormit." But from the looks of it, as David noticed and remembered, those words weren't exactly true. As big as Malthorn City was, it wasn't New York, and the crime rate was astonishingly low. Saturdays were usually slow shifts. Crime did seem to sleep after all.

But as he had taken just a few steps out of the elevator, he was immediately called upon: "David! The captain wants to see you in his office ASAP." Sharon Darwin, a young officer who had graduated from the academy the same time as David had, told him this with a nod to the glass door at the far end of the room.

David looked at her puzzled. "The captain is in today?"

"Yeah, and you better hurry. He's not in the best mood," Sharon added with an empathetic look on her face.

David sighed. As if he ever was... He knew perfectly well that those movies he liked to watch hardly reflected real life, but sometimes he wondered if his captain had taken inspiration from those movies in being the loud and ill-tempered boss portraied in them. Ah well, better to get it over with. Afterwards he could ask Wilks where the hell he had been.

He went over to the captain's office and knocked gently on the glass. Captain Faulkner sat behind his desk, a tall and intimidating man with already a hint of grey in his moustache and his top hair. His eyebrows who gave him a look of an almost constant frown went up a notch as David knocked. Still, the eyes of the captain rested firmly on the documents on his desk, and only after what seemed to be an eternity, he called: "Come in!"

David entered and stepped forward to the desk. "You wanted to see me, Captain?"

A very quick glance hit his face before Captain Faulkner looked down on his papers again. "Ah, David Miller! Yeah, sit down." His voice had an uncomfortable ring to it, like repressed anger and frustration. Sharon was quite right about his mood. David sat down like he was told. Still, the captain hardly took notice of him.

After a few more seconds of uncomfortable silence David dare to speak up. "Is something wrong, sir?"

Faulkner didn't look up. "You tell me, Seargeant. Anything going on between you and Wilks here that I should know of?"

"Eh... no, sir," David responded confused. "I mean, we just started working on this case, so..."

Finally Faulkner raised his head, his eyes staring straight into David's. "Then where the hell is he?"

David stared back at him, now totally baffled. "Excuse me? I thought he was here. I saw his car downstairs."

"Yeah, where he parked it two days ago. Before he vanished without a trace." He raised an eyebrow so that it nearly touched his hairline. "Do I need to worry?"

"I..." David hesitated. "I really don't know, sir. I am as surprised as you are. I haven't heard from the lieutenant either since... he turned the case over to me."

The other eyebrow went up even higher. "To you, Seargeant?"

David shrugged. "He told me that he felt I was ready for it, that I had learned enough from him. I honestly didn't expect him to do so. Since then I'm trying to wrap my head around this case."

"And you feel up to it?" Faulkner asked with a hint of mistrust in his voice.

"Honestly, sir, I don't see much of a choice here. If Wilks has vanished like that."

For a brief moment Faulkner considered David's words. But he seemed to agree to that. "What case are you working on right now?"

David gave a brief summary: "Laurence Keller, murdered in an alley by running him over with a car and then driving a wooden pole through him. He seemed to still have all his valuables with him, so I guess this was not a robbery. So far we have no suspects, but it may be possible that..." He hesitated again. This was not something to put out lightly. "It may be possible that... this is the work of a serial killer."

Faulkner let out a surpressed curse through his clenched teeth. "And this idiot left you alone with it... Listen, Miller, this is not something you should work on solo. Since your partner is absent, you may team up with any available officer you see fit."

"Thanks, Captain, but I think I already have someone to assist me in this," David responded. "Stella Ortega."

"I'm talking about a cop, Miller, not a coroner," Faulkner snapped back. "If you go in this without proper backup, you might end up needing a coroner yourself, and I don't want that to happen. So you either pick yourself a new partner, or I'm gonna assign you one."

Both choices felt wrong for David. "You give me some time to think about that?"

Faulkner's head turned sideways as he looked at the calender on his right wall. "Yeah... you got till Monday. You aren't even supposed to be here today. Now, get lost!"

Wilks and David shared an office that was separated from the rest of the squad room. As David stepped through the door, he found everything on Wilks' desk untouched, as it had been two days ago when he had last seen him. He had barely worked on the case, all the testimonies and documents were lying at David's workplace. Even the lieutenant's coffee mug stood on the desk, one quarter full with cold, stale coffee. It was an unsettling sight.

David sat down on his own desk, browsed through all the material he had gathered so far. It wasn't much. Then he picked up the phone. Hopefully she was here today. As he punched in the number, a few seconds later a female voice came from the other end: "Ortega."

"Stella, this is David. Listen, do you still have those reports from the two other cases we talked about? The ones Hartman and Sanders worked on?"

"Yeah, probably. If I don't, then I know how to get them."

David nodded satisfied. "Great! Get everything you can gather and bring it upstairs to my office. I need your help."

"Right away, boss." Stella's answer sounded eager and excited. She must have been as bored as the rest of the people today. David hang up, but only to make a few more phone calls. He wanted to be thorough.

Stella arrived about ten minutes after the call, but she was the last one to arrive. Right before her the desk clerk had brought David a stack of files concerning the two murders that the other officers had been investigating. Stella dropped a couple of large folders onto the desk and by doing so raised the amount of papers opposite David to an almost scary height. "Thanks, Stella!" David said to her with a thin smile.

Stella looked a bit disappointed. Maybe she mistook his reaction as a goodbye? "Well... if that is all..." she then gloomily said and turned around to leave.

"Where are you going?" David's question made her turn back immediately. "I wasn't kidding when I said that I need your help. Grab a seat!"

Joyfully Stella obliged. She really seemed to be into this investigation. David looked at her. She was one of the people in the building that didn't voluntarily work on a Saturday, so on this day she hadn't taken the usual dresscode to heart. Where he had seen several holes in her skin before, the coroner now sported an impressive number of piercings in various shapes and sizes. Some of them looked like they were made of pure silver. Also under the lab coat she wore a black t-shirt with the logo of a band he had never even heard of - if it was a band at all. On top of that, her black jeans were held together by a broad belt with dozens of rivets attached to it that bore a strange resemblance to some of the piercings in her face.

This whole appearance was such a stark contrast to the innocent angelic nature of David's daughter that David decided in this moment to never bring those two together. It could have the same effect as bringing matter in contact with anti-matter, destroying the world and blowing a hole in the universe. Or worse... they could become best of friends.

He opened the first file on top of the large stack. It looked pretty familiar, but he was eyeing for the details that he might have been missing. So far they hadn't been able to find any connection between the three victims, if there was any. Different parts of town, different circles in which the victims had moved, even different murder weapons. After a short while he closed the file again and saw that Stella had been watching him attentively.

"Maybe we should break it down to the most basic facts that we have," he then suggested. "Apart from the symbols on the murder weapons - what else is the same or similar in those three cases?"

Quietly Stella fumbled on her lower lip while she thought about it. "Those murders were pretty bloody. Pretty violent, if you ask me."

"Yes... And all those murders were committed with blunt, primitive means up close and personal. The killer had to walk up on his victims and strike them down or stab them." David grabbed another file. "Remind me, how did the other two die?"

"Well, Hartman worked on the case of Felix Damasco, a factory worker. The killer used a knife to stab him multiple times in the chest and stomach. He died of bloodloss. Then there was Viola Crete. As far as the autopsy report goes, she suffered blunt trauma from getting hit in the head with a baseball bat. Multiple times." Stella shivered.

David looked at her. "And all murder weapons were found near the victims. He doesn't keep them. Not even the knife."

Stella shrugged. "The knife was a common kitchen knife, you can get those in any store. And it is not easy to run around with a bloody knife and not draw attention. I would wonder more about the baseball bat, but it seemed like a boy in the neighborhood was missing his and identified the murder weapon as his missing bat."

"And he also ran our victim Mr. Keller over with a car..." David browsed through the file without actually looking at it. His mind raced around someplace else. "Why would he still put this pole through him? Running him over a few times would do the trick."

"Why didn't he do this in all cases?" Stella countered. "If this is really the work of one single person. Maybe all those cases aren't connected."

"I'd be happy to believe that, if those symbols weren't in it." David pointed at a photo from the crime scene, where the pole was clearly visible with the strange markings carved into it. "And with all the care the killer took to make those markings, they must have some meaning. At least to him. And if he just picked those weapons up for one single purpose, but took the time to carve the symbols in first..."

Suddenly a thought came to his mind. He took a closer look at the coroner. "Stella, I'd like to ask you something: Do you know anything about demons?"

At first she looked at him blandly, but then she started rolling her eyes in annoyance. "This is so typical, really! People look at me and assume that I worship the devil just because I dress like that. But hey, maybe I like the way I dress, just for the aesthetics."

"I don't assume anything, Stella," David calmed her down. "But you are the only one here familiar with the case, except for me, and... well, I have this theory." Besides, he really thought that her... kind of people had at least some connection to the occult. He felt a little embarrassed that she had called him out on his prejudices like that.

"OK, boss, then first of all: I know all those things people like you say about people like me, and if anything, we rather deal with the dead than with the damned. Second, and more important: This has absolutely zilch to do with my job! I'm just wearing this to work today because I have plans for afterwords which are none of your business." After this rather heated exclamation she reluctantly added: "With all due respect, sir."

David sat back, let this thunderstorm just pass him. "Are you finished?"

Stella took a deep breath before answering. "Yeah... for now."

"Good. Cause I need your opinion on this. It might even seem crazy, at least it does to me. But maybe this is fitting - the person responsible for all of this must be missing a few marbles. And if we want to crack this case, we should try and understand the motivation behind it, how absurd it might be. Are you in?"

This time Stella didn't even blink. "I'm in."