Mac Taylor was on his way to a crime scene in an alley behind a bar. The bar was the Ice Cube. Mac had never been to this bar but if the name was not an indication, the look of the place almost made Mac shiver. The building was painted in a way that made it look like an ice cube.

"Morning, Mac," Don Flack said.

"Morning," Mac replied. "What have we got?"

"Female victim, Anna Clausman, age twenty-four. She's from Florida, a student at NYU."

Mac looked toward the body. "Who found the body?" he asked.

"One of the dancers of this bar. She came out here for a smoke and found the body. She didn't see anyone else in the alley and she doesn't know the victim."

"So she didn't work here?"

"No. The owner has never seen her either."

Mac walked over to the body and shined his flashlight on her as he squatted. Just then, Danny arrived. "Morning, Mac," he said as he was getting his camera ready.

"Morning," Mac said. He stood up while Danny took pictures. "It's possible she was thrown out here because there's not much blood."

"Apparently no one around here sees anything," Don remarked.

Mac looked up at the building across the alley, which was an old apartment building. "Maybe somebody over there saw something," he said as he saw someone closing their curtains.

Don frowned. "You mean I've gotta go door to door?" he asked.

"Your favorite part of being a cop."

Don sighed and shook his head as he turned. "Why is it always me?"

Mac had to smile. He knew Don hated going door to door but someone had to do it. Mac looked at the body. Danny finished the pictures and Mac squatted. "It looks like she's been…chewed," Mac said.

Danny looked at the small marks all over the woman's face. In some places it looked like the skin and flesh had been torn away in chunks. "These marks are all over her," Danny pointed out as he pulled the woman's sweater up to reveal her midriff.

"Cause of death is not evident," Mac said as he examined the woman's legs. He turned the victim on her side but did not see anything that looked like a gunshot wound or a knife wound but the back of her shirt was bloody. "I guess Sid is going to have to tell us what happened to her."

They took a few samples from the ground around the body and on the body. They had her purse which did not have much in it. Mac turned the body over to the ME and then they searched around the alley. "Impossible to tell whether she was taken out of a car," Danny said.

"Yeah," Mac agreed. "Or whether she was killed around here somewhere."

"Obviously she was killed somewhere with a lot of rats. That's what it looks like."

"I agree but we have to have facts." Mac looked around them. "Actually, I don't even see any rats right now."

"Maybe they're full."

When they were done in the alley, Mac went into the bar to talk to the manager and the woman who had found the body. When he walked in, he was surprised at how cold it was in there. The bar itself looked transparent and like it was made of ice, and so did the tables. Mac assumed it was plastic because even though it was cold, he did not believe it was cold enough to keep things frozen. But then he saw that there were icicles hanging around the edge of the bar. He wondered if they were real. Not only that but the bar had those frozen bottles of liquor in a freezer. He had seen those before when an ice princess was killed. Everyone in the bar was wearing coats and there was even fake snow around the place.

Mac walked over to the bar. The bartender came over to him. "I didn't know that girl out there," he said.

"She's never been in here?" Mac asked.

"No. I see a lot of people but I usually remember faces."

"Anyone new came in tonight?"

"Lots of people but I wouldn't know if any of them killed her." The man gestured to the refrigerator. "Have a drink? It's on the house."

"No thanks. I'm working." Mac looked around the bar. "No one heard anything in the alley?"

"I didn't."

Mac nodded. "Thanks." He walked out of the bar and hoped Don would find something on his door to door search."

Don had gone to only the apartments that had a view of the alley. He knocked on the first door and waited. The door finally opened and there was a woman there with rollers in her hair and she had on a pink robe. Don showed her his badge. "Did you happen to see anything going on in the alley out there last night or this morning?" he asked.

"No," the woman replied. "I was busy doing my hair."

"You didn't hear anything? Like a car?"

"No. I was using the hair dryer and last night, I was asleep."

"Sorry to have bothered you."

Don went on to the next door. By the time he was done, he had not found anything that would help the case. Apparently, everyone kept their windows closed. Don wished there was a little old lady in that building who watched everything but there was not.

Mac arrived back at the lab and went to his office. He wrote out his report about the crime scene. He thought it was odd that the woman was lying somewhere long enough to be eaten by rats and no one saw her. He did not think it occurred in that alley. He had to wait for Sid's autopsy before he could figure that out.

Lindsay was working on the evidence in the lab along with Sheldon. "Don't you think it's odd that a woman could lie there in that alley long enough to be chewed like that and no one sees it?" Lindsay asked.

Sheldon considered that. "Well, if there were enough rats they might do it pretty quickly," he said. "But it seems to me that they would have been there when she was found, and with food and stuff around there in the alley, it looks like they would go for that instead of that body."

"You're right. But if she was killed somewhere else, was she deliberately thrown to rats?"

"Sounds sadistic."

Mac went to the lounge to get some coffee. He was thinking the same thing Sheldon was thinking. He did not think that woman could have lain there that long without anyone seeing her. He thought it would take a while for rats to do all that. When his coffee was fixed, he went back to his office and then Jo walked in.

"Morning," Jo said. "I hope that coffee's not your breakfast."

"It's not," Mac replied.

"So, what's our case about?"

"A young woman in an alley. Looks like she's been chewed by rats."

"Rats?"

"Yes." Mac looked at Jo as he leaned back in his chair. "It seems odd to me that she could be that chewed up and no one saw her out there."

"So you think she was somewhere else? And with rats?"

Mac nodded. "I do. I'm still waiting for the autopsy."

"You think someone tortured that woman?"

"We're going to find out."