Luckily David had been right about one thing: Captain Faulkner hadn't had found the time to inquire about his new partner yet.

But for now it was probably better not to go into David's office right now with a convicted murderer at his side. So to conduct further investigations, David contacted Stella and asked if they could office-chair-crash at her place for a while. Stella didn't mind at all, she even seemed happy about this. As long as the two men wouldn't mind the smell of formaldehyde and other chemicals.

The coroner's office was in the basement of the police department, and hardly anyone came down here unless they had to. It was kind of understandable. David and Simon came down from the underground parking garage through the staircase - it was the quickest way, and the elevators would have been to public for Simon. The corridor they arrived in had barely any lighting in it. Half of the lamps had broken bulbs, and nobody had bothered to change them or request a change. Certainly Stella didn't mind. She preferred darkness anyway.

The young woman was in uniform again. Her white lab coat covered a shirt and trousers that seemed more everyday-ish, and all her piercings, armbands and other accessories were missing. She had her black hair tied into a ponytail and wore some protective glasses when she greeted Simon and David. "Make yourself at home!" she invited them into her office. "I cleaned the place up, just for you."

Simon who apparently never had been in the office of a coroner looked around sceptically. "So that's what it looks like when it's cleaned up?" he mumbled, and David could only agree. If that was Stella's idea of a tidy place, he wouldn't want to know the usual state this office was in. Not that it was filthy or anything. Just chaos. Papers, tools and empty soda cans were just everywhere. But there was some strange pattern visible with those. They were huddled together in large groups in strategic places around the office. And at least there were empty chairs and a table on which they could work.

Stella took off a latex glove from her right hand and offered it Simon to shake it. "Hi! I'm Stella Ortega, coroner and part-time detective for the seargeant here."

Simon shook it without hesitation. "Simon Weisa. I... work with him, too." As Stella let go of his hand after the handshake, he rubbed his fingers a bit, as if he had some sort of substance on it. Stella looked him in the face, curiously. She had to look a bit upwards to do that. David thought that the difference in height made this a very weird pairing.

"You work in this division, Simon? Or where are you from?" she then inquired.

That caused Simon to give David a meaningful look. "You haven't told her?"

And suddenly the eyes of both people in this room rested on David. With Simon showing obvious disapproval, and Stella looking confused with a hint of distrust. "Let's just say that he's our resident expert in that demon matter," he hurriedly explained. "Now, we got some work to do."

Moving to the basement section and Stella's office had another huge advantage: Unlike David's workplace upstairs, this one had a functioning computer with access to the police database. For some strange reason, this police department had not yet arrived in the 21st century, and most of the cops here weren't that familiar with modern technology, so they preferred to go through paper files anyway. A while ago there had been some attempt to modernize it all and offer some schooling for the technologically impaired policemen, but due to unknown circumstances that never happened.

This was surely the deed of their former commissioner who lived in the incorruptable faith that this kind of technology weakened the mind and made his police officers lazy and incompetent. He had only allowed computer terminals in areas where they were deemed absolutely necessary. Lucky for Stella, her area qualified for that. The official reason was that she had to make any information available to all the other precincts, to coordinate the effort of all coroners in the city. The unofficial version however... was that nobody liked to come down here to bring her the hardcopies of the files, and she didn't care much to go upstairs and fetch them.

After settling in on two cheap and not too comfortable chairs in front of the computer terminal, David and Simon began their work. "So what's the plan?" Simon asked after a while. He commandeered the keyboard since David himself had not so much experience with computers and databases, while Simon as a former technical advisor was much more proficient with them.

David had him open up all known records of their three victims: Lawrence Keller, Felix Damasco, Viola Crete. They appeared on the screen in several different windows, as their records with all the information were spread out to several forms, depending on what kind of database or department they were coming from. Driver's licenses, credit card information, educational history... For a police precinct that was basically stuck in the last century, the terminal in Stella's office was extraordinary fast. Even Simon commented on that with professional appreciation.

It was so much information that it took the two a while to find what they were looking for. They found it with Felix Damasco first: his police record. It was brief. "Shoplifting, assault, drunken disorderly. Has never been incarcerated, apart from one night in the drunk tank. There was also a complaint filed - domestic abuse. But that was never followed up on," David summarized the file.

Simon looked at the few facts from Felix' life. "He came here as a child of immigrants, ended up as a factory worker on minimum wage and gained barely enough money to support himself, let alone a family. His wife had to work as a maid for some rich folks on the Upper East Side, so that they could hold that little flat of theirs." He shrugged. "It's your call, but getting drunk or shoplifting because you can't afford something decent for yourself doesn't seem pretty demonic to me."

"What about the assault charge?" David then asked. Simon helped him look it up. The result was disappointing. "Got into a fistfight with another man at a bar. Both were drunk and claimed that the other one hit first. It seems like the other man just had a better lawyer."

So that was a dead end. Nothing of what they had found out would help them in this case. "OK then," David decided with a sigh. "Let's get to Keller."

Laurence Keller's police record was even thinner than that. There had been one single entry, someone accusing him of committing fraud. The file on that was even shorter: Apparently a disgruntled customer of Keller felt that he was tricked out of some of his money and had gone to the police. After one quick look at the accusations, the lieutenant in charge had dismissed it and send the accusing party back home, stating that "just because it didn't go as you would like, it doesn't mean that it's illegal." That customer had then tried to reach out to the press to warn the public about Keller and his practices, but even then he couldn't come up with evidence for any wrongdoing.

"If you ask me, this seems like a good motive to kill somebody," Simon stated. "Looking for vengeance when everything else has failed. I bet this customer of his must have felt pretty alone and helpless, and he would loved to have done something about it."

It was as good a theory as anything else, but David couldn't see a connection with the other two killings. Even if that customer had killed the other two victims just to hide that he had only been after Keller, the method of killing was too extreme. Plus those strange symbols that Simon had identified as demon names didn't fit into this picture at all. Nontheless, there was no evidence on record that Keller had ever acted out of senseless cruelty. Nothing that would show that his demon had driven him to it.

"Simon, I must ask you something," David spoke as they waited for the last file to finish loading. "Those demons... you mentioned something about them starting to work together. To use mass media to coordinate their efforts. Do you think that they may conspire against us humans?"

A shadow seemed to darken Simon's face. He just stared forward - although he was facing the computer screen, for this one moment he didn't even seem to see it. "They already have," he then answered, his voice a gloomy low growl.

"I mean: Could this be a plot by them to just throw us off?" David inquired. "Like: They just want us to go nuts on that case?"

Simon shook his head. "No. This has nothing to do with us. The biggest advantage demons have over us is the fact that nobody knows about them. If people know that this tiny little voice inside them that tries to tempt them into hurting others or being selfish in other ways is that of a demon - then they could learn to surpress it, counter it. Making the demon powerless. They can't afford that to happen. So they would never go out into the open like this."

Viola Crete's files finally came up on the screen. But not everything. They searched for five minutes, clicked through each window, checked if they had overlooked anything. Still, there was no police record on this woman. David used all his knowledge on police procedure and had Simon do the typing. The fingers of the convict flew over the keyboard, hammering in the letters with such a speed that David couldn't even follow with his eyes. The man knew what he was doing. But still, all efforts were in vain. And David took a while to understand that the reason they couldn't find her police record was simply because it didn't exist.

Simon took a closer look at her general file. "She was an elementary school teacher. She was beloved by all her students, according to those obituaries. No trouble with the law at any point in time. For all we know, she was a good person."

David looked at the screen and felt hopeless. He was absolutely right. This whole search had been a bust. "I guess this would have only worked out if they had done anything that was brought to the attention of the police. People can commit crimes without us actually hearing about them."

"Well, this isn't about crime, this is about senseless acts of cruelty and violence. And unless the victim of that died from it, I would suppose that they would have told anybody about this, especially the police, telling them that a crazy person was running around," Simon clarified. "I think the problem we have here is an entirely different one."

"Really?" David raised an eyebrow. "Which one?"

"What if the killer has been wrong? What if he killed the wrong people?" Simon pointed at the screen and the three victims displayed on it. "What if those people really were innocent?"

David stared at him in terror. It couldn't be! "But... weren't those symbols the specific names of the demons in those victims? The killer had picked them out, prepared for the kills, prepared the murder weapons. Why would he do this with random people?"

"Yeah, right, it doesn't make sense." Simon shook his head in frustration. "But still, it doesn't add up. You said that this Viola person was a teacher. She was killed by a young boy's baseball bat. Somehow fitting for someone dealing with children regularly. And this factory worker, this Felix... he was killed with a kitchen knife. A common household item which even the poorest should be able to afford. Poor like himself."

"You're getting at something," David suspected. "You got any ideas, spit them out!"

"Well, it's just... I wonder if those demons not only influence our behavior, but can also be influenced by us. And so that they have certain soft spots, are more sensitive to things that fit their host." He shrugged again, didn't seem to be willing to follow through with this train of thought. "Or it might just be that the killer thought it somewhat more effective."

"The killer must have observed the victims before the kill," David concluded. "He knew who they were. He knew how to get to them without anyone around to witness it. And he knew how to get away without leaving a trace, safe for the murder weapon."

"And once he used that weapon, he had no reason to keep it," Simon added. "If the name of the demon is on a weapon, you cannot change it anymore or put a new one on it. The name is imprinted on it. And you can't kill another demon with it."

"How do you know?" David asked distrustful. Simon pointed over his shoulder at the thin air. "My dad," he mumbled, quietly enough so that Stella couldn't hear him.

Stella wouldn't have paid attention anyway. She had just gotten away from her phone and walked over to them. She looked rather serious. "Have you made any progress?"

"No." David felt depressed and sank back on his chair. "We went through all the info, but we didn't find anything on those three."

"Well, maybe your luck is about to change, boss." But somehow Stella didn't sound happy or motivating when she said this. "Because I just got a call from the Captain. They found victim number four in a parking structure behind Central Gym. We better get down there to look at it."