Cold Burn

'And the hair was wet, you said?'

'Yeah-damp.'

'Does it seem reasonable to you that someone might have been swimming in the lake on a night that cold?'

'No…but we run into people doing a lot of things that don't seem reasonable, Doc.'

'That's true. That much is true. No pile of clothing found?'

'Not a scrap.'

'Interesting.'

And with this, he fired up the bone saw and got ready to start the more in-depth procedures.

Frustrated, Catherine wandered off to find Nick. She checked the AFIS computer room-no sign of him. Wandering the aquamarine halls of the facility, a glass-and-wood world of soothing institutional sterility, she passed a couple of labs and Grissom's office before she finally tracked Nick down in the break room. He sipped his coffee and took a bite of doughnut as Catherine walked in.

'Hey, Nick,' she said, trying to sound more nonchalant than she felt. Solving Jane Doe's murder would be a lot easier if they could ID her quickly.

Using the Styrofoam cup, Nick gave her a little salute as he finished chewing his doughnut.

Catherine dropped into a chair across the table from him and waited, knowing the doughnut just might be Nick's dinner. The break room always seemed to be undergoing some sort of massive cleanup, but no matter what either they themselves or the janitorial staff attempted, the room still smelled like one of Grissom's experiments gone awry. The refrigerator against the far wall held items that looked more like mutant life-forms than food, and the coffeepot was home to a sludgy mass that reminded Catherine too much of things she'd seen on the job.

She asked, 'Any luck with AFIS?'

'Nope,' he said, then took another bite of doughnut.

'So we don't know any more about her now than we did this morning?'

He shook his head. 'I put her into the Missing Persons database, but…' He made a sound that was half snort, half laugh. '…you know how long that can take.'

Catherine nodded glumly.

Warrick came in, wearing a brown turtleneck, brown jeans, and his usual sneakers. 'Hey,' he said.

'Hey,' said Catherine.

Nick nodded and finished chewing the last of his doughnut. 'I'm on the Jane Doe with you guys, now.'

'More the merrier,' Warrick said. 'Anything new?'

Catherine said, 'Robbins thinks asphyxia-but not strangulation, and not a sex crime. How about you?'

'Nothing on the tire mark so far, but the computer's still working.'

A familiar voice squawked on the intercom. 'Catherine, you in there?'

She spoke up. 'Yes, Doc-with Nick and Warrick.'

'Well,' the voice said, 'I have something to show you.'

They exchanged looks, already getting to their feet, Catherine calling, 'We're on our way!'

Nick slugged down the last of his coffee and the three of them moved silently but quickly to the morgue. When they walked in, in scrubs, they found Robbins bent not over the corpse-opened like a grotesque flower on the slab nearby-but a microscope. Immune from Sheriff Mobley's overtime edict, the doc regularly put in punishing hours, a habit that was helpful to the CSIs in this current Scrooge-like climate.

'Notice anything odd about this body?' he asked, directing the question to Catherine, senior member of the group.

'Nothing we haven't talked about already,' she said, with a glance over at the autopsy-in-progress. 'For some reason her hair was wet, and she was cold, but why not? It was chilly out last night.'

Robbins nodded and gestured with an open palm for her to take his place at the microscope. 'Yes, but was it this cold?'

Sitting down, Catherine gave Robbins a look, then pressed her eye to the eyepiece of the microscope. On the slide he'd prepared, she saw what appeared to be a flesh sample with several notable oddities-specifically, distortions in the nuclei of some cells, vacuoles and spaces around the nuclei of others.

Catherine looked up at Robbins. 'Is this what I think it is?'

He nodded. 'Your Jane Doe was a corpse-sickle.'

Warrick and Nick exchanged glances.

'Say again?' Warrick prompted.

'A frozen treat,' Robbins said again, in his flat, low-key way. 'What Catherine is looking at under the microscope is a tissue sample from Jane Doe's heart.'

'She froze to death?' Warrick asked, his usually unflappable demeanor seeming sorely tested.

Robbins shrugged one shoulder. 'Still working that one out. Suffocation is cause of death, but I don't know the circumstances for sure.'

First Nick, then Warrick took turns gazing into the microscope.

Robbins said, 'Notice those discolorations, vacuoles and spaces?'

Warrick nodded, eyes glued to the slide.

The doctor continued: 'Ice crystal artifacts.'

'So she was frozen,' Nick said, trying to process this information. 'But maybe after she was dead.'

'Frozen God knows when…and rather carefully frozen, at that.'

Warrick's eyes were wide and his upper lip curled. 'And then what?'

'And then,' Robbins said, 'thawed…which is why her hair was damp. Catherine, the ground beneath the body was damp, I believe?'

She nodded. 'Wet underneath and in a small area downhill from where she lay.'

'Suffocated,' Warrick said. 'Then frozen.'

Robbins did not answer immediately. But, finally, he said, 'Yes.'

Catherine's mind was racing. She expressed some of her thoughts: 'And because Jane Doe was frozen, we can't pinpoint when she died.'

Robbins grunted a small laugh. 'Pinpoint isn't an issue. It could've been a week ago, it could've been six months, or even longer, for that matter.'

Nick was shaking his head. 'Well, hell-how did we not notice she'd been frozen?'

The doctor raised a finger. 'As I said…she was 'carefully frozen.' Someone took precautions to avoid freezer burn. Wetted her down-a spray bottle would be enough. Kept wetting her down, all over, as the freezing process continued. And that is what kept her from getting freezer burn.'

'So,' Catherine said. 'Our killer knew what he was doing.'

'Or she,' Nick put in.

Robbins sighed, nodded and then explained his theory.

Jane Doe has probably been either sedated or restrained or both. She's still clothed at this point, then something clean cuts off her breathing, plastic over her nose and mouth maybe, and she's out within five minutes…. Dead in not much more than that.

The killer strips her, then seats her inside a chest-style freezer. Could be an upright, but a chest freezer would be easier; then he…or she…cranks the freezer up to its highest setting…but is careful to use a pitcher or a squirt bottle, maybe even a hose, to wet down the corpse. The killer checks on her at least once a day, and wets the body every time he checks the progress of the freezing. After some unspecified time, the killer pulls her out and allows her to defrost naturally…then dumps her body in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Warrick's eyes were tight with thought. 'If he…or she…thought we'd be fooled into thinking we had a fresh body, then-'

'Then on that effort, our killer failed,' Catherine said. 'But even so, we've still had the time of death stolen from us, here.'

'Exactly,' Robbins said.

'So…' Catherine lifted her eyebrows, smiled at her colleagues. '…if we can't determine when she died, let's start with who she was.'