Plot

Three victims are found tied to stakes in the Arizona desert.

Even with the prison on lock-down due to Reid's actions which the prison officials don't yet know were his doing, Prentiss is able to get one of the team to visit with him. Lewis is chosen for a very specific reason, she who is to do another cognitive interview. The hope is that Reid will now be able to remember that Scratch was in the motel room when the murder happened, which if he is able to do, Walker and Prentiss may be able to get Scratch placed on the terrorist watch list if only because he was recently spotted in Latin America, making him now an international fugitive. While Lewis has prison duty and Prentiss is off to London to speak to her Interpol colleagues, the rest of the team head off on their next case, which takes them to the Saguaro Desert east of Tuscon, Arizona, where three dead bodies were found side-by-side, all three perched on poles. The team is able to determine that small boulders were purposefully moved to strategic locations within sight of the victims. The victims are also posed facing true north, as opposed to the "compass" reading of magnetic north. All three victims were wearing shock collars around their neck. The M.E. is able to determine that all three died at different times as the bodies were in different stages of decomposition. All three died from exposure/dehydration, and three half empty water bottles were also found near the site, the initial assumption being the unsub torturing the victims by drinking himself but not giving them any. All three victims are eventually identified, each a recent college graduate in his/her early twenties, all Tuscon natives who had recently returned to give back to the community, and all three who were featured in different media stories about their accomplishments. A fourth victim is eventually discovered, with the same M.O., However, he, Joey Fletcher, does not match the victimology in that he was generally regarded as a slacker who, while attending college, flunked out. Alvez is able to determine the reason for moving the boulders, in that the unsub is counting down his victims. They have to find the tie between Joey and the other three to determine the identity of the unsub and who the ultimate person of his rage is, that person meant to be his fifth and final victim.—Huggo