Soul Mates (Season 4, Episode 12)
Premise: When a jailed suspect’s alleged victim turns up freshly killed, the BAU hunts the secret partner he has been writing to online.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 12
- Unsub
- William Harris (Michael Boatman), Stephen Baleman (George Newbern)
- Location
- Sarasota, Florida
- Starring
- David Rossi (Joe Mantegna), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), Jordan Todd (Meta Golding)
- Opening quote
- “No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” (Sigmund Freud, read by Reid)
- Closing quote
- “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.” (C. Northcote Parkinson, read by Morgan)
- Guest stars
- Dana Davis as Andrea Harris, Valarie Pettiford as Sharon Harris, Steve Rankin as Detective Linden, Tay Blessey as Connie Mayers
- Director
- John Gallagher
- Writers
- Debra J. Fisher & Erica Messer
Summary
The Case
“Soul Mates” opens in Sarasota, Florida, where lawyer and soccer coach William Harris promises his teenage daughter, Andrea, a car of her own just before police arrest him for three rape-murders and the abduction of 18-year-old Missy Dewald. The local detective has moved sooner than the BAU wanted, and the evidence is thin: a witness at the mall and rape charges in Atlanta that were dropped when the victims would not testify. Rossi and Morgan question William while agents press his wife, Sharon, until the interview is cut off. Garcia uncovers a hidden blog on his computer, and Reid spots two voices in it: one uses an expression from central Ohio, where William grew up, the other Florida phrasing. Then Missy is found dead, killed hours earlier while William was in custody.
The team concludes William has a partner who murdered Missy to clear him, and bite marks on her body lead Garcia to an earlier rape in Manatee County. The survivor, Connie Mayers, describes a masked, controlling white man. Seeing two dominant men bound to each other, the agents post their own entry on the blog saying William is cooperating, hoping to shake the partner’s faith. Morgan needles William about the bond, and William answers with a racial jab that Morgan throws back at him. The blog entries describe meeting at a gathering, and the team realizes the lines are song lyrics: a song played from a car is the signal to meet. The partner is next-door neighbor Stephen Baleman, who has been suspiciously kind to the Harrises.
Andrea, who distrusted Stephen, goes missing along with him. Sharon tells William she never put up the house for his bail and lashes out at him, and Morgan demands that he act like a father. William goes straight to where Stephen holds Andrea and frees her, and the two men turn on each other over who betrayed whom while Andrea hears enough to understand. When the talk turns to Missy’s murder, agents burst in and arrest them both.
The ending
Spoiler: Andrea, unhurt, clings to her mother and asks to go away. On the way out, the agents reflect that the partners had planned everything except how it would end.
Why it stands out
- George Newbern and Michael Boatman guest-star as the killing team, with Dana Davis as William’s daughter, Andrea; Davis was 31 when she played the teenager.
- Newbern’s character has a wife named Annie, the same name as his on-screen wife in the films Father of the Bride (1991) and Father of the Bride Part II (1995).