- The relatively new Highway Serial Killer Database reveals an interstate serial killer who abducts then strangles women without sexually assaulting them.
- The Highway Serial Killer Database exists so that information can be collated for serial murders that would not otherwise be connected due to different police jurisdictions. In reviewing the database, the BAU determine that a serial killer has killed five women thus far, the bodies found hundreds of miles apart. Reid, however, determines that there is a geographical focus on Edgewood, New Mexico. Each woman was strangled, the bodies laid in a fetal position found in a public location such as a ditch, and there is no sexual assault. The BAU determines that the unsub is a trucker. The case takes a turn when a woman named Nancy Campbell is abducted in front of her teen-aged daughter, Courtenay, at a highway rest stop in Edgewood. Nancy does not fit the victimology, but her abduction clarifies to the BAU what the unsub is looking for in the abducted women and ultimately the reason for the abductions and eventual murders.—Huggo
- A truck driver is kidnapping women and disposing of them in random locations and the BAU must find out his motive in order to catch him.—CBS Publicity
- A truck driver traverses the highways before scoping out a suburban home. Eventually, he slips through an open window into the room of a little girl. Just as we're sure he is about to do something terrible, the girl wakes up. "Daddy!" she happily exclaims. Dad then tells his girl a bedtime story about a "king" searching for his "queen." In flashback, we see Dad in a bar watching a waitress banter with her customers. She demands the keys from one man and tells the bartender to call him a cab. It's raining when she leaves the bar and her car won't start. Dad offers to check under the hood for her. He gets the car started but
Cut to Jennifer telling the team that five female bodies have been found in just one month. Rossi wonders why it took so long to be called in. Hotch says that the team found the case on the HSK (highway serial killer) database. The victims were abducted and dumped across multiple jurisdictional lines. Spencer theorizes that, based on the direction the killer was traveling when the bodies were dumped, the killer was heading towards a town called Edgewood, New Mexico.
Meanwhile, the "king" is picking up another potential "queen" at a truck stop. This time, it's a hitchhiker. Time for the BAU to get busy.
On the plane ride to New Mexico, Emily notes that some women died 12 hours after being kidnapped while others were found after 24 hours. Also, one of the bodies had missing fingernails, indicating the deceased tried to claw her way out of someplace nasty.
Later, Spencer and Rossi visit the last dumping ground. The former notes that all the bodies had been "staged" in a similar manner -- as if they were sleeping. Hmm. Back at police HQ, Jennifer notes that the victims all had table sugar on their bodies. Sugar, of course, dissolves diesel fuel. "It's a trucker trick," the local top cop says. Bingo.
Garcia does more research and discovers 5 more victims.
Cut to a creepy lair with walls scratched by long-dead women. The most recent kidnapping victim meets the "king" himself. The diabolical trucker asks the woman a series of bizarre questions ("Do you believe in God?" "Do you want children?"). Apparently, she waffles too long on the last query -- making the unsub mighty upset.
Later, we watch as the trucker scopes out his next "candidate," a middle-aged woman named Nancy Campbell who drives to a rest stop. She is soon taken. Emily interview Nancy's daughter, who heard a truck stop before her mom was taken.
"He didn't wait a minute between victims and he left the daughter as a witness," Emily notes. Derek wonders why the unsub changed his hunting grounds. He has the sheriff search the area. Sure enough, they find a body. Nancy's daughter says that if it's her mom, she wants to see her. It isn't. It's the hitchhiker. There's the answer to both Derek's and Emily's questions. The unsub was dumping the body when he saw Nancy and decided to take her.
Derek wonders why the unsub has also changed the victim type. He theorizes that the unsub isn't looking for a companion. He's looking for a mother. Sure enough, we cut to a diner where the unsub once again meets his daughter. "You can't take care of her," her foster parent says. "Without a wife or a home, you can't do it. You got to let her go." Apparently, the killer's beloved daughter is being adopted.
Cut to the creepy lair (which appears to be a trucking cab). The unsub asks Nancy a series of questions. She answers -- and appears to "pass" -- before begging for her life. "Family is everything," the trucker says.
Rossi and Derek go to a trucking depot, where the manager agrees to hand over his manifest. Garcia, in the meantime, searches the list for independent contractors (the theory being that the unsub has too much time to hunt and kill to work for a company with tight scheduling). Hotch then asks Baby Girl to narrow the list even further to men who have recently been divorced or gone through a custody battle. Garcia comes up with 28 names, but narrows it down to one after looking for truckers whose wives recently died. Wade Hatchett was deemed "unfit" as a father due to his profession and mental state -- and his daughter was put into foster care. Unfortunately, Rossi is called to the scene of another dumping -- and discovers that the victim is none other than the foster parent viewers met earlier at the diner. Indeed, all signs point to Wade Hatchett. "He's going after his daughter," Rossi says. "Where's Jody Hatchett right now?!"
Jodi is getting off the school bus. The team is already at her foster parents' home. Emily approaches the girl. "We're trying to find your dad," Hotch says. "Do you know where he is?" The girl does not, but Derek calls with news: a semi is pulling up right outside. The truck slows to a stop -- and Wade spots a police sniper in the bushes (oops). Wade then pulls Nancy from the back of the cab and uses her as a human shield! "He might kill Nancy to get to his daughter," Derek says. Emily hatches a plan: she puts Jody on the truck radio with her father. "You need to tell me the end of the story," the little girl says. "Will you let the queen talk to them?" Inside the cab, Wade begins to cry. On his daughter's suggestion, he lets Nancy go.
And then he asks his daughter to close her eyes before blowing his own brains out. The king of the road is dead.
On the jet ride home, Emily is thinking about Jodi. She says that Jodi lost her mother, then her father, then the couple who were going to adopt her backed out. She says that Jodi's situation sucks. Derek tells her that an aunt of Jodi's has been found. She lost touch with her sister (Jodi's mother) years ago but with Wade being national news, she's come forward to claim her niece.
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