Relieved that the long shower in the locker room downstairs had made him stop shaking for the first time in a couple of hours, Steve returned to the empty bullpen with a renewed sense of accomplishment.

With the towel draped loosely around his shoulders, hoping to catch the last of the water running off his wavy hair, he took a moment to unbutton his cufflinks and curl up the sleeves of his royal blue dress shirt, secretly hoping that a leisurely worn outfit would somehow help ease his anxiety as another puzzle piece was added to their bizarre case.

As he'd expected, Mike was already back at his desk, the file on the lost limb having made it into his office by now as he studied what little initial information was available intently. Even though the thick reading glasses concealed his blue eyes, he could see the Lieutenant's head gently move back and forth with each line of factual data he sucked off the page to store in that incredibly active mind of his.

"Thawed out yet?"

The flippant question made Steve smile as he strolled into his partner's office, dropping heavily into the guest chair and overcrossing a leg.

"Getting there. You?"

"Oh, I am fine…", Mike countered automatically, not ready to glance up quite yet and still entirely aware of his partner's presence, "Grab yourself some coffee, you're going to need it…"

"Oh?"

With his eyebrows raised, Steve got back up for a much-needed hot cup of black goodness, temporarily considering adding cream and sugar but eventually settling on black for now.

"Bernie find something interesting on our latest limb?"

"He sure did."

Despite his warm smile, there was a distinctive change in Mike's expression. It was the same change Steve always witnessed when his partner sensed that there was a lot more to a seemingly benign case than what the initial findings let on.

"Turns out our victim had some unprotected cold storage exposure."

Steve's frown only deepened upon his partner's words and he set the steaming cup of coffee down on the Lieutenant's desk before dropping back into the guest chair.

"I beg your pardon?"

With a wily smile, Mike leaned back before resting his hands behind his head.

"It's got signs of freezer burn on top of the signs of decomp."

"Somebody kept that leg in their freezer for a while? Is that what you are trying to tell me here?"

"Mhm hm. And not well protected. Bernie said the frost ate away pretty good on the edges of the muscle tissue where it was separated from the hip, but some of it got eaten away or denigrated by decomp."

Taking a hasty sip of coffee, Steve let the information sink in, the implication thereof making him freeze in his spot.

"Cold storage for bodies…but not sophisticated enough to prevent frost bite. What does somebody do with a bunch of severed legs?"

Shrugging, Mike let his eyes drift over the barren bullpen for a moment, before settling them back on his partner.

"Bernie seems to think that the exposed bone wasn't part of the decomp process. Now it could have happened while whoever is dumping these parts threw them into the water or transported them there, but he did reiterate that some more forensic research would be needed to rule out another concern of his. He says that the leg looked like somebody was operating on it, perhaps to remove a tumor or fix some tendons and ligaments. Unfortunately, in that case, all the tissue in the area is gone."

"Wait a minute…wait just a minute…you're telling me somebody was operating on these people? Perhaps amputating limbs?"

"Easy now, don't let that busy mind of yours go off the deep end too quickly…", Mike cautioned with a slight shake of the head, "It's far more possible that these body parts came from a morgue, maybe even a funeral home. It could just be a sick joke played by some immature kids or there might a weirdo out there experimenting around on dead bodies…you've met enough funeral directors, there's a whole new level of strange. And they would have the access too. We might be looking for owners of these body parts who have died of natural causes and have long been buried. Would make sense why we're hitting road blocks on the ID. The next of kin would never know if their dearly departed is missing an appendage. This might not be a murder case after all."

"Damnit."

Drawing in a deep breath, Steve tried not to let his disappointment boil to the surface, and yet his partner read him like a book.

"Come on, Smiley, let's call it a day. This isn't the end of the world and there's nothing more for us to do today. I'm going to send Sekulovich home in a couple of minutes and they have our phone numbers down at the switchboards. How about you join Jeannie and me for a delicious Christmas Day dinner? You do know you owe me after dragging me to the beach of all places on a freezing cold day."

"It did wonders for your complexion though, didn't it?", Steve joked with a cheeky grin and got up to stretch his stiff back, then symbolically rubbed his stomach.

"Well, my tummy is growling. I guess if you're bending my arm I could come along for a free meal."