He flipped through the button cams he’d left in strategic points throughoutthe underground levels. He saw the Templar they’d left on guard behind, butnothing else.
Only a few cells yet remained to be searched. The horror story of what had happened to the sanitarium’s “patients” continued. Simon felt the heaviness ofLeah’s doubts and concerns. Despite whatever training she’d received and thefour years she’d experienced, she hadn’t been prepared for the war against thedemons.
He wished he had words to say to her, but Nathan had told her as much as anyone could. From this point on, choosing what to fight for was a personal matter.
The next room Simon investigated had suffered a fire that had killed the person within. The skeleton lay curled up in a fetal ball in one corner of the room.
“When did the room burn?” Nathan asked.
“When this person was alive.” Simon knelt beside the skeleton and picked upthe tin locket that had corroded from moisture. Black carbon covered the locket’s exterior.
“How do you know that?”
“The body’s curled into a fetal position,” Simon said. “Fire victims areusually found like that.”
“Because they’re trying to hide from the fire?”
“The fire burns the fluids out of the cartilage and tightens the victims uptill it pulls them into that position.” Simon gently brushed the corrosion andcarbon from the locket. He wondered what would be inside: a picture of a loved one? A child? Parents? A lover or husband? The face of someone who had lost her or someone who had betrayed her? He knew the victim had been female because of the width of her pelvic bones.
When he opened the rusted-out locket, only ash spilled out. Whatever had been inside was gone. Tenderly, Simon placed the locket back on the corpse’s chest.
“What started the fire?” Danielle asked.
“I don’t know.” Simon straightened and studied the scorch marks on theceiling, floor, and wall.
“It started around the corner.” Leah reached up and touched the low ceiling.
“How do you know that?” Nathan challenged.
“Part of the training I had.” Leah walked out of the cell and back into thepassage way. “You know demons. I know mayhem. My visual enhancements come with afluoroscopy subset. I can see the burn patterns. The fire started in this cell.”
The door was locked at the next cell. A burned skeleton lay at the foot of the bars. The entire interior of the cell was covered in soot.
“It was a chemical fire of some kind,” Leah said. “Probably coal oil-basedfrom the signature I’m reading.”
“Then it was deliberate,” Simon said. The thought chilled him as he looked atthe small skeleton curled up at his feet.
“No doubts about that,” Leah replied. “Whoever put the coal oil into thiscell put plenty of it. Probably splashed some of it onto the bedding in the cell next to this one.”
Simon glanced at the bronze plaque above the cell.
313
“Coincidence, mate?” Nathan asked. “Or is this cell directly below the otherone?”
“Don’t know.” Simon called up a schematic on the HUD. The AI immediatelycalculated the distance they’d traveled since entering the sanitarium. Thecross-sectional view of all four underground floors placed the new cell more or less beneath the one that had the walls covered with strange symbols. “Yes.”
“Then I’d say that isn’t a coincidence.”
Simon silently agreed. Then he broke the padlock on the door and entered.
The interior of the cell was filled with black soot and ash. It hung thickly on the ceiling and walls and was thick as a carpet on the stone floor. Simon would have been reluctant about walking into the room without a filtration mask of some kind.
A skeleton lay curled at the back of the cell. This one was male, but almost child-small. There was no doubt about what had killed the victim: half of the head had been caved in. Soot caked the ivory bone.
When Simon knelt, a puff of black soot leaped into the air and temporarily obscured his vision. He wiped the soot from the broken skull.
“Looks like someone clubbed him to death, mate,” Nathan said from hisposition at the doorway. “Maybe set the fire afterward to cover it up.”
“Probably.” Simon checked the rest of the body looking for clues about thevictim’s identity. “But why?”
“These people, the jailers and the patients, weren’t the best of people,mate. We may never find out.”
“And where did the extra ash come from?” Simon drew a forefinger through itand found it almost a half-inch thick.
Danielle knelt down and picked something up that was under the bars and partially in the passageway. She held up her prize. “Looks like part of a sheet.Whoever burned this person might have shoved laundry in here.”
Leah joined Simon. “Let me see the skull,” she said.
Simon slid back to allow her better access to the skeleton. When Leah tried to turn the skull, the spine snapped and it came off in her hands.
“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to do that.”
“I don’t think he’s going to mind,” Nathan said.
Leah held the skull in front of her.
“What are you doing?” Simon asked.
“Capturing images of the skull. We have programs capable of rebuilding facesfrom the bone up. Do the Templar have anything similar?”
“No.” Simon knew the Templar would never need anything like that. But itraised several questions about Leah’s “we” and what “we” did with informationlike that.
“How are you going to match that face?” Nathan asked.
“Through a database search.” Leah gently returned the skull to the smallskeleton.
“You people have everybody in your database?”
“I can check to see if there’s a match here.” Leah stood and gazed around theroom. “There has to be a reason why he was killed. When did you say this part of the sanitarium was shutdown?”
“I didn’t. It was in the 1920s.”
“No one’s been here for a hundred years. Seems like someone would have wantedto bury these people.”
“These people were put here to be forgotten,” Leah said. “The fire just gavethem a good
