Name: Heather Laine, PhD
Age: 34, born January 30 1985
Gender: Female
Appearance: 5’8’’, an attractive woman with an hourglass build, fit but not quite athletic; black hair that is short and straight, cut in a bob with bangs. She only wears black or gray, generally fitted knee length skirts and high heels when in the office, slacks and flats when in the field, she carries a pair of Doc Martens in her car just in case she is needed in an actual field. Her green eyes behind her black framed cat eye glasses gleam with intelligence and subtle wit. Naturally pale, she avoids the sun like she owes it money.
A few tattoos including a bat in black ink on her right upper chest/shoulder and a death's head moth on the upper left. A few others on her shoulders to be listed as I think of them but always covered in professional settings.
Agency/Organization:FBI, former special agent, now a profiler with the Behavioral Analysis Unit and works as a consultant to both private and other law enforcement teams.
Education:PhD in forensic psychology earned at University of California, Irvine; minor in social anthropology 2003-2010; currently working towards a Bachelors in Biological Behavior with a plan to get a Masters from Johns Hopkins
Training at Quantico, FBI academy 2010-2011, 2011-2013 as a field agent in Los Angeles before transferring to research and then the Behavioral Analysis department in 2016
Background: Heather always had an interest in people, not so much to know them but to know how they worked. She was not a gregarious girl but affable enough to be able to make and forget friends quickly. She was the weird kid dressed in black and that never really left her. Instead it has matured into a quick, sharp intelligence that picks up nuances in behavior and body language. There is an air of detachment, both from her childhood as a loner in a crowd and her profession.
The interest in people and her parents dragging her to Mass every other Sunday left her with a deep interest in religion of all kinds. And if it was true, if it has any existence other than what the human mind created and wrote down. Growing up in California she was exposed to all sorts of communities and religions, from Catholic and Judaism to trendy vegan buddhism to satanic self help groups. School work was easy, boring and the intelligent girl made her second home in the library and begged for a home computer which her parents hesitated in getting for her until late highschool.
Her mother was a failed actress and worked part time substituting as a drama teacher. She was generally narcissistic and relied on a lot of prescriptions to get her through life of broken dreams. Her breakdowns would follow her not getting her way, either from her husband or a situation in her social/professional life. She tried to push Heather into acting and modeling by putting her in dance and acting classes as a child but she showed no interest, much to her mother’s disappointment.
Her father was a construction engineer, a kind and encouraging man but often absent while working on projects. They moved a few times but never far from Los Angeles. Her birth and first years were in Van Nuys but grew up in Torrance, a home of surfers and beach culture but her interest and social life in highschool lay in the concrete ditches and shabby punk clubs that sprung up in the grimy borderlands between the crime ridden gang filled neighborhoods and the well off middle class. She maneuvered the social scene as an outsider and ended up hanging out with punks and skinheads, ska kids and goths, the other outsiders. Her first love and first broken heart came from a boy with a blue mohawk. Her best friend and the group drifted away after highschool but she treasures the memories.
College It was only during college and her psychology training did she understand why she was like this, her attachment issues and fear of rejection. She had built walls made of emotional scars from her neglectful parents and she has worked to bring them down with the right people. She has few that she would call close friends, those now distant since they are married and starting families while she is still single. All except her best friend, her sister from another mister, Mariana Jones. They both majored in forensic psychology, they competed against and supported each other through college and the rigours of the UC PhD program.
A Brush with the Void At 14 years old, she was at a beach party at night and went for a walk under the pier, listening to the tide and only had a small penlight to guide herself over rocks when she tripped and found herself face first on the corpse of a missing girl. She screamed but the crash of incoming waves covered it and she saw what haunts her still. A tear in the darkness where no stars or distant city lights could penetrate and a hideous growling laugh, from the throat of Hell itself. She got up and ran back, screaming for help and could not shake the feeling of being followed. To this day she still suffers nightmares of the voice and the unfathomable darkness. When talking to the police, she was told she must have imagined it, that it was the shock that caused the strange vision, and outwardly she agreed but the image never left her. The horror on the dead girl’s face, frozen in a rictus of insanity. What had she seen when she died?
Over the years, Heather convinced herself it must have been a human killer, someone sadistic and evil but human. Since the 1960s California was no stranger to serial killers and this must be one of them. She kept tabs on the case, it went unsolved but a few other crimes similar occurred in a decade span in the popular beach area and the unnamed killer was dubbed the Redondo Beach Butcher though only two of the five murder victims were found on Redondo Beach. Others were near enough that in the late 90s there was a fever of fear not unlike NYC during the Summer of Sam when women feared to go to the beach alone. Then the victims stopped being found and the fear faded into memory. Heather did not forget and kept a secret scrapbook of the crimes, her mother flipping out the first time she caught her clipping articles.
This event was a catalyst for her driving passion to understand the human mind and in particular what makes a criminal. Recruited straight out of her PhD program, she made the cross country trip to visit FBI headquarters and never looked back. This was her home, among the best and brightest investigative minds.
Career Before graduation, she was head hunted by the FBI for her interest and skill in deduction and understanding of aberrant behavior. She had a choice to join the FBI or continue her education, her interest at the time pulling towards biological behavior after doing research for her PhD which took her down the path of the entwined results of nature and nurture. She was interested in continuing towards another degree involving the biology of behavior and the FBI offered a continuing education program to assist in tuition. So she joined, making it through the academics of training swiftly but struggled with the rigors of the physical. A fellow female student who had been a track star in college coached her in working out and she managed to get into the best shape of her life. Firearm training she passed but it held no real interest for her, only maintaining her training for job requirements.
Dr Laine made the choice to become an agent to work cases before going directly into research, feeling the need for street experience. She went back to Los Angeles, joining the field office there. She had involvement in federal investigations over organized crime murders with street gangs and Mexican Cartel associations in drugs, to biker gangs andRussian mob human involved in human trafficking. A city full of crime and she was always busy.
After two years, she was ready to go back to school and moved to Baltimore to attend Johns Hopkins for the Masters program but kept her position as an agent. Now working closer to Quantico, she made visits to the training academy and met supervising pathologist Alex Bakker, a handsome middle aged man who now ran training courses in forensics and consulted in important autopsies.. They dated and became lovers until she decided to accept the position as researcher in the BSU. The fact he would be in a management position even if not directly over her meant they had to break off their budding relationship. Now she works as a profiler, doing consulting with local PDs and her own research as she goes to her Masters classes in behavioral biology on her days off, making the hour and a half drive twice a week.
Currently she is involved with a case of a missing college student, Sofie Childress, who disappeared one evening, leaving her car unlocked in the parking lot of coffee shop. Local police got involved and it became clear she had been abducted. Blood stains on the ground told of a struggle and when the call came in about a body found in Olympia National Park, the FBI were called. She was there when the body was discovered and she joined Special Agent Michael Chan and Ranger Tim Blaine investigating the site. The eeiry place was oppressive with a strange menace that unnerved everyone, in particularly Agent Chan who spent the most time with the body and the strange black stone. He shot himself two days later.
Personality: Professional, pleasant, warm and friendly but not overly so, a subtle wit and genuineness make her affable and most would say that she is a good team member, if stubborn. When she is focused, the world falls away, definitely needs someone watching her six in the field. Habit of pushing up her glasses when she has to tell someone something unpleasant, her subconscious way of mentally squaring up.
Family, Friends, and Associates: Parents are Lila and Henry Laine, still living. A brother who is a computer engineer, Roy, who is now married and has two kids with his wife Jeanne.
Bonds - Her father, Henry, quiet and reserved he is a hard worker and despite his absence from the household he made time for his children. There was a time when Heather thought he would be better off divorced but he told her ‘you don’t give up on those you love.’ For better or worse. Despite the obvious hardship, that stuck with the normally aloof teen and the few friends she did make she held onto. Her niece and nephew are also close as she doesn't have children of her own.
Dr Mariana Jones, PhD - Her best friend from University who is a psychiatrist with a private practice in San Francisco, they FaceTime from opposite sides of the continent and still go on a shared vacation once a year. This year the plan is a week in the French countryside.
Dr Alex Bakker, MD - A very close friend and ex boyfriend, recently broken up over the unreconcilable differences about starting a family but she values his honest criticism and support as both friend and colleague as well as his skill in the autopsy room.
Likes: Clove cigarettes, red wine, cats, card games, YouTube tutorials, travel, reading, music (from punk to classical), skateboarding (not too much since hitting her thirties), pool
Dislikes: Her first name. Management who are only there to stamp their cards and kiss ass. Narrow minded thinking that can stifle an investigation and those that cannot admit when they are wrong.
Fears: Failure. To fail means a killer goes unpunished, a victim unavenged, and potential other victims are created. To be like her mother, inconsistent, selfish, vain, and manipulative.
Skills:Gifted (+5): Psychology, Forensics, Marksmanship handguns (+ training)
Adept(+4): Interrogation Criminology, Persuade
Average(+3): Awareness, Anthropology
Novice(+2): Biology, First Aid, Computer Science, Hand-to-Hand
Languages English, fluent; Spanish, good; Russian, fair; Latin, some
STRENGTH: 1
DEXTERITY: 3
STAMINA: 3
BUREAUCRACY: 4
INTELLIGENCE: 5
WILLPOWER:
4 3
Weaknesses: Physical: Not as strong as most in the group, she has a more sedentary job and lifestyle, she only works out to be able to wear her favorite dresses. While trained in hand to hand combat, she would rather avoid it.
Nonphysical: Vanity, imperfect perfectionism, indecisive, detachment, contrary and sometimes unpredictable
Off-Duty Clothing/Equipment: Band t-shirts. Whatever it is, it’s black. Except a good pair of blue jeans and a pair of Converse sneakers.
Clothing: Black. Work is tailored business suits/dresses with a vintage flare.
Weapons: 9mm Glock, standard issue FBI firearm, can of mace, switchblade decorated with a skeleton
Tools/Equipment: She has a Samsung Galaxy S10, Surface Laptop, Kindle full of useful texts on psychology, criminology, biology; A pack of Djarum Black clove cigarettes, illegally obtained; a jar of Vicks, a small journal for personal notes, micro recorder, Panasonic Lumix digital camera, Zippo lighter with the Misfit's logo
Operational Clothing/Equipment: Clothing: FBI windbreaker, hideous; standard issue BDUs, tactical vest, flashlight, communication device
Weapons: 9mm Glock, standard issue FBI firearm
Member
Dion
