A retired judge has been found brutally murdered on the outskirts of Las Vegas, complete with a macabre yet masterfully intricate tattoo on his face . . . the third seemingly random victim of the mysterious kidnapper dubbed by law enforcement as the “Tattoo Man.” The judge wasn’t the first person to have been abducted, drugged, and permanently altered with tattoos and body modification . . . but he was the first to wind up dead. At the same time, several other deceased are turning up all over Sin City with their body art mercilessly removed—and the timing would seem to suggest to those in authority that all of these crimes are somehow related. But Las Vegas’s top crime scene investigators—Catherine Willows, Ray Langston, Nick Stokes, Sara Sidle, and Greg Sanders—aren’t jumping to any conclusions, as they attempt to connect the dots by entering the secretive and tight-knit body art community—one that is intensely wary of outsiders. . . .

What happens when a reality TV series gets a true dose of reality? A staged prank for a hit scare show has gone horribly wrong with an actor now dead and production halted indefinitely. As the graveyard shift of Sin City’s best crime scene investigators—including Catherine Willows, Ray Langston, Nick Stokes, Sara Sidle, and Greg Sanders— digs deeper behind the scenes, more questions than answers pile up: Was the botched prank’s set-up simply a case of carelessness on the producers’ part resulting in a tragic accident, or did someone really orchestrate an elaborate scheme for revenge and murder?

Meet the little known and even less understood heroes of police work in Las Vegas -- the forensic investigators. Led by veteran Gil Grissom, the remarkable team assigned to the Criminalistics Bureau's graveyard shift -- including Catherine Willows, Warrick Brown, Nick Stokes, and Sara Sidle -- must combine cutting-edge scientific methods and old-fashioned savvy as they work to untangle the evidence behind the yellow police tape. While Nick and Catherine investigate a newly discovered fifteen-year-old murder, Grissom and the rest of the team must uncover the indentity of a cold-blooded killer -- one whose execution-style, "double-tap" signature has provoked the interest of FBI agent Rick Culpepper.

A TV tie-in.

Early one quiet Monday morning, in an empty executive office, assistant Janice Denard begins to prepare for another ordinary day - but instead discovers evidence of horrific crimes, shocking photographs left abandoned in a printer. Now, with the help of the LVPD's computer forensics experts, the CSI team must track through hardware and software, deception and deceit to find the perpetrators. But while Willows and Stokes investigate the once well-hidden secrets now revealed in print, Grissom, Brown, and Sidle uncover new and disturbing evidence in a high-profile media case...the brutal murder of the Mayor's long-missing secretary.