12E01 - The Crimson King

The eighth of thirteen serial killers that recently escaped from prison has just been apprehended. The latest capture and many of the others were led by Agent Luke Alvez, who sees his role in the FBI solely as a manhunter. He accepts the invitation to join the BAU in the search for number nine, Daniel Cullen aka the Crimson King, who seems to have surfaced in the Tempe, Arizona area. Alvez's interest in Cullen is a personal one. Cullen's latest victim, a young man named Brian Phillips, emerges from the desert with all the hallmarks of Cullen's victims: his arms bound behind his head to an arm stretcher, and a word carved into his abdomen, in this case the letters "BAU". Hotch and Tara quickly notice that the abdominal wounds are not hallmark to Cullen, being much more shallow than Cullen would have inflicted. In interviewing Brian and gleaning from him what little he remembers of his abduction, the team comes to the conclusion that the perpetrator of this crime is not Cullen but the mastermind of the prison break, Peter Lewis aka Mr. Scratch. Being a math genius, Lewis would have mapped out to the highest probability of success his plan, meaning that Brian's discovery may not have been by accident. Tara also discovers that Brian suffered from dissociative identity disorder, which is the reason he was chosen by Lewis for whatever his long game. Reid figures that Lewis chose the Tempe area to emerge in because there was a highly regarded institution in the area that treated young people suffering from DID, it where Brian himself was treated when he was younger. The team believes that people who attended the institution may be Lewis' next targets if he did not achieve with Brian what he was after.