Haunted (Season 5, Episode 2)
Premise: A Louisville man who stopped his medication to recover lost memories kills three people, and the BAU traces his violence to a decades-old child murder case.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 2
- Unsub
- Darrin Call (Sean Patrick Flanery), Bill Jarvis, “The Hollow Creek Killer” (Don Creech)
- Location
- Louisville, Kentucky
- Starring
- David Rossi (Joe Mantegna), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness)
- Opening quote
- “One need not be a chamber to be haunted. One need not be a house. The brain has corridors surpassing material places.” (Emily Dickinson, read by Hotch)
- Closing quote
- “There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible, as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.” (Polybius, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- Glenn Morshower as Lt. Kevin Mitchell, Michael Bowen as Tommy Anderson, Bjorn Johnson as Dr. Charles Cipolla, Zayne Emory as Ryan, Benjamin Stockham as Young Call
- Director
- Jon Cassar
- Writers
- Erica Messer
Summary
The Case
“Haunted” opens in a Louisville, Kentucky pharmacy, where Darrin Call, who has just lost his factory job, is refused a refill and handed the wrong bag. When a stock boy touches him, he lashes out with a knife, and by the time he walks away three people are dead and he has a guard’s gun. With Lieutenant Kevin Mitchell, the team notes that Call strikes only after being touched. The pharmacist reveals he was once on an antipsychotic and has been off it for a month, and Garcia is rebuked for missing it. Call goes to his psychiatrist, Dr. Charles Cipolla, who weaned him off the pills so he could recover his memories, and attacks him; Hotch and Morgan arrive too late, and Call’s file is gone.
Garcia finds that Call has no records before May 1975, when he turned up wandering alone at about six and did not speak for a year. The timing matches the unsolved Hollow Creek murders, in which boys vanished and were found dismembered; the lone survivor, 12-year-old Tommy Phillips, described a man with a red pickup. Call returns to the place where he was first taken in, sees a boy named Ryan, calls him Tommy and drives off with him in a stolen minivan. Mitchell wants roadblocks; the team insists on understanding Call first, citing what ignoring Foyet’s early crimes cost them.
Tommy, now James Thomas Anderson, admits a younger boy helped him escape by fetching keys and urging him to run. The boy had ridden in the truck’s cab: Call was the killer’s son. Records lead to Bill Jarvis, whose wife died giving birth to a boy and who still lives in his old house, watching children from the porch. Call holds Jarvis at gunpoint there. Hotch goes in alone, gets Call to release Ryan, and confronts Jarvis with the cages and the burials his son was made to help with. Call shoots his father dead. As he is taken away, Tommy apologizes for running, and Call credits him with saving his life.
The Team
Hotch comes back after 34 days of leave. Morgan questions whether he is ready, while Rossi argues that Hotch needs to know the team has his back. Over cookies meant for Hotch, the others wonder whether he ever blinks, even facing Foyet, and Reid complains that being shot earned him none. When Hotch walks into Jarvis’s house alone, Rossi insists on letting him go.
The ending
Spoiler: Later Morgan and Rossi argue over Hotch’s risk: one notes that it saved a boy, the other fears Hotch will get himself killed while Foyet is free. That night Hotch and a colleague agree that Call, at least, is no longer alone.
Why it stands out
- Sean Patrick Flanery guest-stars as Darrin Call, with Glenn Morshower as Lieutenant Kevin Mitchell and Don Creech as Bill Jarvis.
- The Hollow Creek Killer’s name blends two killers from the 2006 film The Last Word, the Mill Creek Killer and the Hollow Man.
- Episode 5x02 is set in Louisville, whose telephone area code is 502.