A dead man with a slit throat and a partially burned face is discovered on a Miami beach, along with an unconscious young girl who was beaten and thrown into the ocean. The investigation leads Horatio to a prominent Florida family and its steely patriarch, who was once involved in a mysterious case that has plagued Horatio for years.

Horatio and his team must uncover the evidence in the brutal murder of an entire family in their own home. The only survivors are a blood-soaked toddler, and the father who's in surgery. The immediate assumption is that the mother is responsible – post-partum depression – but the evidence discloses a different outcome.

Horatio and Speedle investigate the slaying of a hooker who is found dead under a bed in a plush beachside cottage, her naked body having been stabbed 23 times. But the crime scene yields few traces of blood because the killer bathed the victim in the cottage's tub with cardamom soap. Across town at an urban gas station, Calleigh and Delko attempt to uncover why a German tourist was gunned down in an apparent carjacking. They learn that a masked assailant approached a vacationing couple's rental car, shot and killed the husband, but left the wife unharmed and then fled the scene.