Commander Luke Nelson and Lieutenant Jessica Hart are in New York City to promote an upcoming shuttle launch, when Hart winds up murdered in their hotel. Detectives Goren and Eames question an ex-boyfriend and jealous colleagues of Hart, who was set to be the youngest astronaut ever to go up in space. When Detectives learn that the married Commander Nelson was having an affair with Lieutenant Hart, they realize many people were involved in covering up the dirty secret.

As death row prisoner Mark Ford Brady nears his end, he asks to see Detective Goren in hopes to extend his sentence and leads him to hidden scrapbooks which chronicle unsolved cases and victims. When Detectives Eames and Goren uncover the identities of the women and victims in Brady's scrapbooks, they come across a familiar picture -- Goren's mother, Frances. Through the help of his brother, Frank, Goren learns a troubling secret about his mother and deals with her numbered days.