[Character Name] Linda Weston Summary Linda is a poisoner. She is physically underwhelming, and has never made any real effort to be more than basically fit enough to occasionally flee the scenes of her crimes. In fact, she tends to think herself superior to the "stabby" kind of assassins - she relies on brain instead of brawn, and is very proud of that. She thinks of her work as solving puzzles, and is strongly motivated by the thrill of out-thinking both her victims and law enforcement. She trained as a medical doctor, but has never practised medicine officially. Although she's morally bankrupt, she clings to a series of standards of behaviour that she believes set her apart from "common thugs" - including being courteous and polite, avoiding collateral damage with her work, and scrupulously maintaining her "respectable" appearance. - - - - - - - - - - Appearance [A description of your appearance.] Linda's pretty average in appearance - which is a good trait for an assassin, as she tends not to stick out in a crowd. She's slightly below average height, about 5'5" or 5'6" and slightly overweight. Her hair is almost but not quite black, she has hazel eyes and a medium-light skin tone that probably indicates Mediterranean descent. She rarely wears cosmetics, especially during the day, and tends to wear her hair in loose curls that take far more effort to maintain than their appearance would seem to indicate. She dresses very neatly, heavily favouring button-down shirts with pointed lapels. She also has something of weakness for shoes, though in an unusual way. Her footwear ranges from bespoke leather with moderate louis heels to classic canvas topped sneakers, but what they have in common is that all of her shoes are immaculate. She polishes the leather ones herself, and bleaches or replaces the white laces of her sneakers on a weekly basis to keep them from dulling. - - - - - - - - - - 1. How old are you? I'm 34. 2. Tell me about your family life. Are you parents still alive? Who raised you? Siblings? What do they do? My parents are both alive. I grew up around Seattle, but they're retired in Arizona. I also have little brothers. Alphonse has some kind of business ... person... job in Washington. Travis teaches high school. None of them know what I actually do with my life, I've been telling them that I work for a pharmaceutical firm. I talk to them at Christmas, birthdays, mothers day, that sort of thing. They seem content. 3. Explain your closest relationships, especially those that you've dated or courted, or those who you never want to see again. (We all have 'em.) LI don't really have a lot of close relationships. I date a normal amount, but my relationships always seem to end up with him being way more into me than I am into him. They want things like "commitment" and "emotional intimacy." I only have one really close friend, Andrea. I've know Andre since middle school. We communicate through phone calls, mail and internet, but rarely see each other in person on account of living on opposite coasts. As for people I never want to see again, well, generally I'm not going to. The only person I think I ever really hated was an ex-boyfriend from medical school named Michael, and since I poisoned him, there is no issue. Mike... well, I think I might have really loved Mike, at the time. Unfortunately for me, he turned out to be a jealous douchenozzle. Some of his best moments included following me to my classes instead of attending his own to make sure I wasn't getting too friendly with my classmates, then becoming irate when his grades suffered and throwing away papers I was really proud of because he couldn't stand to see me do better than him; abandoning me at the ER that time I had meningitis and claiming that he was involved in a traffic accident to cover his absence (I later figured out he'd been at the mall); and impersonating me on the internet to attempt to determine not only if I had ever cheated on him, but also if I harboured feelings for any previous boyfriends or even non-romantic male friends. But hey, Mike did teach me that I could get away with murder, so there's a silver lining. 4. What social class are you from? How has that shaped who you are? Upper-middle class, I suppose? Dad was a lawyer before he retired, mom had a hobby business selling whatever crafty thing she was into at the time. I don't think it really has shaped me. I mean... it's just they way I grew up? It's not like I turned to killing because I was poor or something. 5. How did you get started doing what you do now? I went to medical school - did I tell you that, yet? I'm not licensed to practise medicine in New York, but I am entitled to call myself Doctor. Well, I went to medical school because that's what girls with brains and money do, but I never wanted to spend my best years pulling 100 hour work weeks as a resident. I figured I knew a lot about how to fix or break a human, seemed like this career was a better use of my time. 6. Who is your greatest hero or inspiration? Leonardo Da Vinci. He contributed a great deal to what we know about anatomy thanks to his detailed studies. Also he was a genius. 7. What precious personal items do you carry with you always? I have been wearing this ring on my left index finger since I was a little kid. I got it on a family trip to New Mexico - it's more of a habit than anything, though. I also almost always have my fountain pen with me, the one my parents gave me when I graduated from medical school. I don't like to write with ballpoint pens if I can avoid it, they're gross. 8. How do religion and prophesy play into your life? They don't, really. Mom and Dad never made us go to church. I don't think that there's some universal code of right and wrong up there. It's all relative - what's right depends on who you are talking to. And I'm pretty sure there's no heaven or hell. I don't think what we do when we are alive had any impact on where we end up when we're dead. 9. What do you feel about myth and legend? Do you mean as in the greek epics, or like people who think ghosts are haunting their cats? Because I guess the ancient myths are kind of entertaining, but I haven't studied them in depth. People who believe in ghosts are, at best, gullible. 10. Tell me about your dealings with the military. None. No-one in my family is in the military. 11. Tell me about your run-ins with the law. I haven't had many. I briefly came under suspicion in Mike's death, but the autopsy results ruled natural causes so nothing came of it. Since then, my particular method of assassination has meant that I generally avoid suspicion. Frankly, I look much more like I would be the victim of crime than the cause of it. The few times I have found herself in suspicious situations, I cried my way out of trouble. Crying on command is a very useful skill. 12. Who is your greatest confidant? Andrea. Well, that's kind of complicated. Andrea doesn't know that I'm a hired killer - we mostly talk about harmless subjects like pop culture and make up ridiculous stories that involve them going on disaster=wrought road trips. But I already told you about Andrea. I'm not going repeat myself. 13. Tell me about someone in your past you'd prefer to avoid. Who, and why? I would prefer to avoid any member of my immediate family. Lies work better at a distance, and despite everything would really rather not have her family find out that I am essentially a classy serial killer. The same goes for Andrea, for the same reasons. 14. When you finally leave this life (hopefully a long time from now), what do you want to have been known for? I want to be known for my brilliance, and the flawless execution of my tasks. I would love to be famous for mystifying other professionals - for an assassination that other assassins couldn't figure out. I want future generations to argue over exactly what method I used to poison some great unkillable masterpiece. 15. You see a large bar of gold sitting in the street, and no one else seems to notice it. You think you have a moment before anyone else sees. What do you do? Gold is really heavy. How large is this bar? I'm not exactly strapped for cash. I'd probably only take the bar if there was an excellent chance that I could take and transport it without being spotted or caught. Was I supposed to say something about reporting it to the authorities or finding its rightful owner? 16. Which side of the bed do you roll out of? How come? Right. The left side of my bed faces a wall. That is to say, if I lie on my back, the side to my left is against a wall and the right side faces out into the room. I like to sleep looking at the door, and I prefer to sleep on my right side, and the geometry of my bedroom required that my bed be in a corner in order to accomplish this. It's a three quarter bed, if that's relevant? 17. Of the following choices, choose one at the expense of the rest: WEALTH. POWER. RESPECT. WISDOM. STRENGTH. LOYALTY. FAME. Respect. 18. Tell me about your recent history. My cover story about working for a pharmaceutical company isn't entirely fabricated - in the early days of murder-for-hire, I actually did have a day job working for a drug company. There are quite a few jobs for a person in my position - that is to say, medically trained but not licensed and practising medicine. I enjoyed the work, which involved clinical trials. It was fairly stimulating, and I enjoyed being able to dictate a whole day's routine to a group of people and then watch what happened. However, it wasn't interesting enough to be an end in itself, so once I felt she was able to support myself indefinitely via my "night job" I quit my position with the drug company. This leaves me a lot more time for planning jobs, which is good because my methods require extremely meticulous planning. So, that's what I spend most of my time working on. My most recent hit was a middle aged diplomat with ties to black market organ trafficking. I was able to discover that he was an insulin-dependant diabetic, which made my task way easier. Normally I try not to inject my victims with anything, as needle marks tend to look really suspicious to coroners. In this case, I felt confident that an extra one would not be noticed. So, after trailing the man to a lavish hotel and sneaking my way into his room (I can pick locks. It's really my only classically criminal skill.) and injected a fatal overdose of potassium through his subclavian vein. Given the man's age and medical history, the death wasn't even considered suspicious. It was, after all, hardly the first time a middle aged man died of a heart attack after a night of drunken indulgence. And watching him spasm his way though a massive heart attack was actually pretty entertaining. - - - - - - - - - - Miscellaneous Notes - Linda is romantically attracted to her best friend, Andrea. However, she hasn't admitted this to herself and probably isn't going to any time soon. - Linda has really nice handwriting, and is very proud of it.