"Doc, how're you doing?" Korsak couldn't help the smile that played on his features.

"I'm fine, Vince. Thank you for asking, and," she hesitated for just the briefest of moments, "thank you for inviting me to the Halloween party."

"No thanks needed on that one." His smile grew broader. "Next year, try to drag Rizzoli into the pool with you, okay?"

"Hey! I'm sitting right here." Jane shot the older man a hard look. "And stop being a dirty old man, Korsak."

"What? Hey, a guy's allowed to think what he wants." He shrugged. "Anyway, are those the reports to the Yansey case?"

"Yes, the means of death is very puzzling, but the evidence is conclusive regarding his cause of death." Maura handed the folder to the sergeant. "He was drained of his blood."

"What do you mean drained? Like someone stuck a needle in his arm and let him bleed out somewhere? That's a lot of blood, and we didn't find any at the crime scene." Jane took the report from Korsak. "He didn't have any cuts on him, did he?"

"No," Maura shook her head. "The only thing I found were two puncture wounds on his inner thigh, but they did line up above a major artery."

"His thigh?" Jane raised an eyebrow. "Really? How big of a puncture wound are we talking here?"

"Punctures, plural," the medical examiner corrected. "There were set approximately two inches apart and roughly the size of the end of a ballpoint pen."

"That small? No way he bled out from those, and where's the blood? This doesn't make any sense," the lanky brunette shook her head, eyebrows drawing together in thought. "He couldn't have died in the warehouse. If he had, there'd be traces of blood somewhere. That amount of blood doesn't just disappear, but," she shut the folder with a snap, "how the hell did they drain him? Why didn't he scream out? No one heard a thing, but he wasn't bound, right?"

"There's no evidence to suggest he was, no," Maura agreed. "I'll go back and re-examine the body. Maybe there's something I missed."

"I'm going to go back to the warehouse and see if there's anything there we might have overlooked. Korsak, you coming with?"

"Nah, take Frost. He's downstairs in the café grabbing a bite. I'll stay here and dig around in this guy's bank statements and credit card records, see if we missed something there," Korsak turned back to his screen, frowning as he started to search.

"Man, this sucks. Three days before Halloween, and we're going to be stuck on a case," Jane mumbled as she followed Maura out of the squad room.


"The puncture wounds don't appear to be self-inflicted," Maura muttered to herself as she again went over the victim's body. "The angle isn't right for a self-inflicted wound. There must be something I'm missing, but I simply don't see any other explanation for how his blood was removed other than here at these puncture points." She leaned in to get a closer look.

A day had passed with no significant leads. At 10PM on a Friday night, the doctor normally liked to find herself at the Robber with the homicide unit, but tonight they were upstairs trying to find some kind of lead that would work out, and she was, once again, going back over the body. She'd taken pity on her staff and had sent them home, but she had decided to stay and work. She wanted to be able to give the detectives something to work with.

"No lesions, no abrasions, no other puncture wounds," she shook her head, "not even a bruise." She stood up again. "How were you bled dry with no absolute indications of the process? It just doesn't make sense."

Much to her horror, the cadaver responded, "She was hungry," before sitting up quickly, covering her mouth to muffle her screams, and moving them both out of the morgue through the loading dock doors.