Catherine and Grissom struggle to stay only peripherally involved in two different murder investigations in the episodes "Weeping Willows" and "Iced".

Only a few minutes after the start of "Weeping Willows", Catherine meets the episode's main guest character - defense attorney Adam Harris, played by Alan Rosenberg, the real-life husband of Marg Helgenberger. Like Catherine, Adam is looking for love in Vegas's Highball Bar, and the two quickly hit it off. They start to kiss, but when Adam wants too much, too fast, Catherine doesn't seem to be that interested after all, and heads back home.

A short while later, Catherine has to investigate the murder of a young woman named Alice, found outside her apartment building with a bullet hole in her head. At first, it seems like an easy case: Alice had been telling friends she was worried about her ex-boyfriend Jeff stalking her, and had even obtained a restraining order against him. The CSIs go to pick up Jeff, and while he admits he still had an unhealthy interesting in Alice, this may have enabled him to see her killer. Last night, he was watching Alice coming out of a local bar - the Highball Bar. She got into a car belonging to none other than Catherine's friend Adam Harris.

Department rules require Catherine to immediately remove herself from the investigation, but she doesn't, and even when interrogating suspects in the Highball Bar she conceals from the other CSIs that she was in there only a few hours ago. Catherine embarks on an investigation in which she tries as hard as possible to find evidence that will exculpate Adam, while at the same time she is plagued with worries about her own progressing age and regressing attractiveness. And all this only gets worse when Grissom finds out about Catherine's conflict of interest, and he assigns Sara to question Catherine...

Following "Weeping Willows" is the penultimate episode of the season, "Iced". In this episode, Conrad Ecklie asks Grissom to witness the trial of a murder that occurred last year. On November 15th, Joanna Klein's body was found in the woods with fly larvae inside of her and Dr. Mark Thayer, an entomologist and expert witness for the defense, claims he can prove the accused is innocent with simple science and math. The Black Blow Fly has a life-cycle of 15 days, meaning Joanna was murdered on November 1st - while the defendant didn't come back into the country until the 3rd of November. Grissom is surprised to learn Dr. Thayer video documented the life-cycle of the fly in great detail for the jury, but soon begins to debate whether he should take the stand when he realizes science doesn't lie, but it can be manipulated.

While Grissom spends a day in court, Catherine, Sara and Greg investigate the death of two college students. Trip Wilmont, one of the basketball team's stars, tends not to have sex before a game, or at least that is what everyone believes. But when he's found dead in his dorm room with Stephanie Levine next to him, the CSIs begin to wonder what other secrets Wilmont was protecting. Stephanie's parents are certain Trip sexually assaulted their daughter while Trip's parents insist Stephanie seduced Trip. When the sexual assault kit comes back negative and the cause of death is determined as poisoning, the CSIs are forced to approach the case from another angle. Meanwhile, tensions flare in the morgue when a body is stolen and later returned, but not in its original condition.

Please note that the above plot details have not been confirmed by CBS, Alliance Atlantis or Bruckheimer Films, and until such time you should treat this information as you would any other rumour. The above information comes from early script drafts and the details and the airing order of the episodes are liable to change before the episodes are shown.

"Weeping Willows" and "Iced" will air in May, 2005.

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