Criminal Minds Season 4 Episode 19: House on Fire

The BAU is called out to a small town in Indiana after 31 people were killed in two separate fires set by an arsonist. The profile starts out with an insistence the unsub is a male, which is basically a red flag that a woman will be involved in some way. The team gets to town and start their investigation, with help from the fire chief, town doctor, and EMTs.

Meanwhile, Garcia is tasked with digging into all the residents’ dirty little secrets. In a small town, everyone knows everyone and anyone could be their unsub. The BAU is unhappy they have to conduct a witch hunt but there’s no getting around it. Garcia doesn’t like her assignment, because she prefers to deal with data, not people. She complains to Hotch that she’s not a profiler but he’s like, “Suck it up.”

While most of the townspeople are at the memorial service for those who died in the recent fire, another fire is set across town at a local bar. Five people die but one hangs on long enough to tell Hotch and Rossi that an unfamiliar man came in and moved around to several different seats. This gives the team a clue that the unsub was unfamiliar with the bar, which was built only a few years ago. It indicates he left town several years ago. Morgan also notes that the door was chained, which is new, and he tells the frustrated fire chief that the change in the unsub’s MO will help them catch him.