The Demon Hunter

21: "Our resident expert in that demon matter"

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.