Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
The Las Vegas night shift opens with investigations at a Cirque du Soleil show and a party hosted by Sam Braun. Catherine is drugged, and her daughter is subsequently kidnapped; Braun’s dealings place his family in danger, and Catherine loses her father. The team also takes on a run of unsettling investigations: a gang’s apparently random attacks leave Greg injured, two murdered women turn out to be identical twins separated by adoption, and cases involving a crucified singer and a string of miniature crime scenes test the team’s usual methods. Grissom steps away for a sabbatical, with Catherine acting as supervisor, while Baltimore transfer Mike Keppler temporarily fills in. His time with Catherine grows complicated when a case brings his past and a former colleague’s murder into the lab.
The miniatures keep returning: the killer recreates victims’ rooms in painstaking detail, and Hodges, Archie and other lab technicians eventually find a common material clue in the models. Grissom’s team traces the killer’s connection to foster father Ernie Dell and learns the suspect is Natalie Davis, a woman whose history is tied to Dell’s foster children. As the investigation closes in, Natalie turns her attention to Grissom’s relationship with Sara. The finale ends with Grissom receiving a miniature of a desert car wreck showing Sara beneath it; her fate is left unresolved at the season break, before the next season’s rescue story begins.