"It's gone."

A pause.

"Yeah, the whole liver is gone."

Another pause.

"I don't fucking know why, Frost, it's just gone."

Maura stared down into the spot where the liver in question should have been and listened absently as Jane continued to deliver the unsettling news over her cellphone. Maura was nearly finished with the autopsy, all the organs the deceased had actually arrived with had been replaced. All that remained was stitching up the Y incision and re-suturing the site of the hepatectomy, but she wasn't quite ready to close. Carefully examining the liver resection incision, she removed her gloves, reached for the pad and paper on the tray next to her, and began to write a list of the surgical tools that would have been required for the killer to complete the procedure.

Even putting aside that this was quite clearly a murder, it was not exactly perfect surgical work she was looking at. Far be it, in fact. It looked more like the kind of trauma surgery she was familiar with from her time in Médecins Sans Frontières , done with rudimentary tools in poor conditions but by people with considerable skill.

Yes, despite the fact that the deceased had serious post-surgical bleeding and despite the fact that the procedure had killed him, the hepatectomy was almost certainly done by a doctor and it unsettled Maura greatly that someone who practiced medicine had used their skill for such malevolent purposes.

She wasn't quite sure what she was going to put down for the cause of death. Technically, the victim died of the symptoms associated with fulminant hepatic failure, but something about writing down liver failure when the liver wasn't around to fail didn't feel quite right. It also implied a natural death, and it certainly wasn't that either. Someone had operated on the deceased, confirmed by ID as the missing hematologist from Mass General, while he was still alive. They removed his entire liver and allowed that to kill him. He had been alive when he was stitched back up, and then approximately sixteen to twenty-four hours later, he was dead. She'd put down cerebral edema, she supposed, accelerated by blood loss, and just specify it as a homicide.

"So can donor blood really show up in the DNA testing?"

Maura blinked and looked up. She hadn't realized that Jane had gotten off the phone. Curious brown eyes stared at her and Maura nodded her head slightly.

"Yes, especially if you know what you're looking for."

Without explicitly admitting that she thought there might be something to Jane's hypothesis that the two murders were linked, the discovery that both victims shared the same blood type prompted Maura to send the more recent victim's blood for genetic testing despite the fact that they already had a positive identification. The needle mark on his forearm was almost certainly left from a blood transfusion, and the possibility that one victim's blood had been transfused into the next victim's body was Jane's current pet theory. Given that it was now abundantly clear that the surgical incision over the liver was not from a proper hospital procedure, Maura had to accept the possibility that Jane was right.

"You okay?" Jane asked, lowering her head in order to catch Maura's eyes, which was how Maura realized she was once again staring into the liver void. She mentally shook herself out of her trance and looked back at Jane with clear eyes.

"I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

Jane's lips curled into a rather humourless smile, but her gaze was soft. "You had an opportunity to explain something medical that I really didn't need to know to do my job and you didn't."

"Oh, they just use a technique called polymerase chain reaction—"

"No, no," Jane interrupted quickly. "I'm good. But what's up?"

"It's silly," Maura sighed. "I know there are bad people lurking in every profession, I just can't help but take it a little personally when it's medicine."

"Yeah, I get it." Jane folded her hands overtop of her belt buckle. "It eats me up inside when it's a cop, and lucky for me, that one happens even more often." Jane grimaced. Maura nodded somberly. She jotted a few more things down before she tore out the sheet of paper from her notepad and offered it to Jane. "That's everything the killer would have required. I've organized it into 'need to have' and 'nice to have'. I've starred the things I'm absolutely certain were used. You're going to send Frankie?"

Jane took the sheet of paper and glanced over it before tucking it into the inside breast pocket of her suit jacket. "Yeah, I'm going to have him hit every medical supply store in the greater Boston area to see if anyone's made a purchase of all these items recently."

Maura leaned her head to the side as she pulled on a pair of gloves to finish the autopsy. "Pretty standard surgical supplies, Jane. A lot of those things get purchased every day."

"But in bulk probably, yeah? Like who goes and just buys a couple scalpels? So maybe if someone bought a small quantity of all these things, we might be able to trace the purchase." Jane shrugged. "We don't have a ton to go on right now."

"No, you're right. Buying a small quantity of medical supplies is certainly less common. There might still be a fair bit of purchases to go through but not so many that Frankie couldn't look into them. it could produce a lead." Maura leaned over the body and began closing the Y incision with a continuous suture. She spoke to Jane without looking up from her work. "Frost and Korsak went to deliver the bad news about Doctor Pearson?"

"Frost is making calls and trying to figure out if any hospital in the city has had the necessary drugs stolen from their pharmacies. Korsak went to do the fun job and yeah, the wife was a mess, it sounds like, so we'll definitely need to wait a few days before we can ask her any questions," Jane said, leaning back against the wall next to the examination table. "When Frost went digging around last week thinking this guy might be the perp, he showed the first victim's photo to some doctors and administrators at Mass Gen. No one recognized him there. If we find John Doe's blood in this guy, we'll show it to the wife, too."

"You really are confident that these two men are connected, aren't you?" Maura looked up from her work for a moment before continuing. Several years into their working relationship she was still trying to get the hang of Jane's hunches. Jane shook her head.

"No, I'm hoping these two men are connected. I'm confident the two murders are connected, but it's possible that the two of them never met in their lives. I just hope they have because if there's some kind of connection, maybe this is the end of it."

Maura tied off her suture and, as she often did, permitted herself a brief moment to admire her own work. She took special care in making sure that her stitches were tight and uniform. Even the dead deserved a doctor's best effort.

"You're worried it might be a serial killer," she said, without looking up at Jane.

"The thought has occurred to me," Jane said and continued quickly to prevent Maura an opportunity to interject. "And I know you're going to say it's way too early to think about that, but part of my job is considering every angle."

Maura shook her head and this time she sought out Jane's eyes before speaking. "No, I understand why you would consider it." She stood straight, removed her gloves, and watched Jane carefully. "But I do think that concern has more to do with what you've been through than with the facts of the case so far. Serial killers are very rare, Jane, and you've already encountered two, with Hoyt and Leahy."

Jane fell silent and dropped her gaze. Maura followed her line of vision to a spot near the other exam table. It took her a moment before she realized Jane was staring exactly where Maura had been held at gunpoint by Leahy. Jane shrugged and turned back to Maura.

"Meh." Jane scrunched up her face skeptically. "Does Leahy even count?"

"I mean, he wasn't a textbook serial killer, but yes, I'd say he counts." Maura held Jane's gaze a moment longer, challengingly. She was going to let Jane avoid the more serious conversation about how much Hoyt still haunts her, but she needed Jane to know that it was happening with Maura's permission. She needed it to be absolutely clear that Jane wasn't fooling anyone with her deflections, least of all Maura. Jane inclined her head just slightly, in acknowledgement and perhaps in thanks.

"What time are you done?" Jane was changing the subject, which was fine, but Maura arched a brow at the question.

"I have to write up my notes and speak with the crime lab about the tests I want done on his clothes, and then I'll be ready to go at five. You'd better be as well," Maura gave Jane a pointed look and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "We're due at the boutique at five-thirty."

Jane made a face at the reminder of her booking for suit shopping.

"Oh, was that today?" Jane said unconvincingly.

Maura dismissed Jane's question with a wave of her hand. She herself was inordinately excited for their appointment. She'd called ahead on Monday and had them put aside suits by some of her favourite designers, in both women's and men's cuts, and even had the salesperson express ship a few to ensure they'd arrive in time. It was certain to be the highlight of her week and the thought of Jane modeling clothes for her was the only thing that had gotten her through conducting Doctor Pike's performance review the day before. Thinking about it again was already washing away much of her discomfort from earlier.

"That's a nice try, Jane. You know very well it's today and if you stopped being obstinate for one second I think you could have a good time at it. There's champagne involved, after all."

Jane gave her a long look but then relented, her shoulders softening into a capitulating shrug. Maura rolled her eyes. She knew Jane was going to have a good time, the begrudging detective was simply not yet privy to the effects of putting on a fine suit. Maura knew that by the end of the day Jane was going to feel ten feet tall and very powerful and Maura could only hope that she'd get to reap the benefits of that.

"Do you remember the rules?" Maura asked sweetly. She watched as Jane's eyes flashed with irritation.

"Don't push it, Maura," Jane said grouchily. "I'm not even sure why I have to do this, I thought I was dressing better."

"You are," Maura soothed, taking a step forward and reaching out to run her hand up and down Jane's bicep. "You've done well. But all your suits are polyester and half of them need mending from you tackling some suspect or another. You need a nice one, something made out of natural fibers." She rubbed the material of Jane's current suit jacket between thumb and finger. "And anyway, you know the rules aren't about your fashion sense, they're about your hang-ups about money."

"I don't have hang-ups about money!"

Maura didn't respond with words, but rather gave Jane the flattest expression she could muster along with one slow blink of her eyes. Jane grunted.

"Fine, alright." Jane exhaled noisily. "The rules are: I'm not allowed to look at the prices. If I see a price I'm not allowed to say anything about it."

"And why is that?"

Maura watched as Jane grit her teeth. It was an expression of deep annoyance, but the way that Jane's masseter muscle popped when she clenched her jaw like that drove Maura absolutely crazy. Lately she'd found herself trying to rile Jane up just to see it happen. She felt only a little guilty about it or any of her other tricks meant to draw out Jane's wildness and she just hoped that Jane didn't figure out her game anytime soon.

"Because it's a gift," Jane muttered.

"Excellent." Maura smiled. She took another step forward, moving towards Jane until she was pressing her stomach lightly against Jane's right hip. They'd signed and submitted their Consensual Relationship Agreement papers on Monday and thus were technically forbidden from any such displays of affection, but in the sanctuary of her morgue Maura was willing to take the occasional risk. She leaned up, nuzzling in against Jane's jaw. "I promise it'll be worth your while," Maura murmured before depositing one single wetter-than-necessary kiss just below Jane's ear. Jane made a noise deep in her chest and Maura gave her arm another squeeze before stepping back with a smile.

"You'll come up and get me at five?" Jane said, in what amounted to capitulation.

"I will." Maura nodded. Jane smiled ruefully and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then left. She watched as Jane's long stride quickly carried her out to the elevators before making her way into the morgue's changing room. Maura stripped quickly, shimmied back into the dress she'd worn that day, and made her way into her office. Despite her intention to attend to her notes and other paperwork, her eyes instead fell upon the opened piece of mail on her desk.

Maura had another reason for wanting to put Jane in a nice suit, one that she wasn't quite yet prepared to share with Jane. She picked the invitation up off her desk, sent to her in her capacity as both the chief medical examiner and a well-known philanthropist in Boston. It was an invitation to a charity banquet, one of the many she was expected to attend every year, to which she would bring one of the many cheques she signed every year.

But despite the fact that this invitation was one of many, it also was just a tiny bit different. Maura flipped over the invitation and, for perhaps the hundredth time, re-read the message printed in a gilded, flowing script.

The Medical Emergency Network of Doctors cordially invites you and a guest to attend its inaugural fundraiser to benefit Boston's first M.E.N.D. clinic. Please join us for an evening of cocktails, a silent auction, and a keynote address from our founder, Dr. Hope Martin.

Friday, October 12th, 2012
7:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
The Fairmont Copley Plaza
138 St. James Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts