FIC: "Certain People", Sofia Curtis
Title: Certain People
Author: hawkeyecat
Fandom and Pairing: CSI; Sofia Curtis gen.
Rating: Very firmly R
Claim and Prompt: Pain; 017. Horror; table here
Warnings: Character death; character as a sociopath; homicide
Word Count: 1,861
Notes: I scared myself while I was writing this. It fits pretty firmly into the horror category. It’s not ghosts-and-goblins scary; it’s could-actually-happen scary, which I’ve always found far more terrifying. It should be noted that I’m a massive fan of the true-crime genre, and various details here are pulled from cases I’ve read. For anyone else interested in that genre, Ann Rule is an excellent author. Many thanks to sarcasticsra for the beta. Note that it scared her, as well as me-and I, for one, adore James Patterson and Stephen King. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Summary: There are some people in life others should not anger. Sofia Curtis happens to be one of them.
There are certain people in life others don’t want to get on the wrong side of. The president, for instance. Mafia overlords. But of all the people one should avoid pissing off, ones who know how to kill without leaving a trace-and are cool enough under pressure to get away with it-should top the list. Sociopaths, in simple terms, but not just any sociopaths. These particular sociopaths are rare. They’ve had the patience to get through college and land a job investigating crime scenes, but they’re still cold enough to kill. Even worse is when the sociopath has also managed to become a cop.
Sofia Curtis may well be one of a kind.
Unlike most sociopaths, she doesn’t anger easily. She doesn’t have the typical childhood background of torturing small animals for the fun of it. No, the one dog she killed attacked her a week before it disappeared. No one put it together, of course. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed, ten-year-old angel couldn’t have possibly done anything to a Rottweiler. Suspicion landed on a teenage boy who lived down the street, an angry kid known to speed off while screaming obscenities at his parents.
She’s intelligent, of course; many sociopaths are. But Sofia had the drive to excel in high school and get into a college of her choice, where she continued to do well. The average sociopath doesn’t care enough to try. She killed a man in college. It wasn’t planned, not like the dog. No, she’d been jogging alone one night along a dark trail, and the man had come out at her. She acted on instinct, driving her fingers into his throat and knee into his groin. As it turned out, she managed to collapse his trachea, and he died before help arrived. Sofia put on a show of being shaken, even managed tears. She was exonerated, of course; the man was connected to a string of rapes that occurred along that trail. And she learned from it.
If interviewed by a psychiatrist, it’s quite possible Sofia would come across as completely normal, even pleasant. It’s characteristic of sociopaths to appear nothing other than average, should they so choose. Most don’t, and that gives them away. The average person diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder is male. He can be any age over eighteen; children are not diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Generally, he is proud of his crimes, whatever they may be. He does not exhibit typical emotions, unless dissembling. He has no sense of guilt, and does not fear punishment. Other than her sex and the fact that she hides her deeds, Sofia is a classic sociopath in these respects, with the likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. Unlike them, however, she knows how to avoid getting caught.
She hasn’t killed since the man in college. No one has had the misfortune of getting on the wrong side of her to the point that she could be bothered to take a life. She’s spent the years honing her skills, learning the most common mistakes murderers make, as well as the less common slipups. Sofia was good at her job when she was a crime scene investigator, one of the best who wasn’t on Grissom’s team. She should have gotten the promotion that Ecklie gave to Catherine. More than that, she wanted it. And between wanting it and deserving it, not giving her the promotion was a deadly mistake.
When the average person doesn’t get a promotion he or she feels he or she has earned, the person gets angry. He or she may complain to a spouse or significant other, possibly resent the one who did get the promotion. In some cases, the person may leave his or her job. Generally speaking, however, the average person doesn’t plan revenge.
Sofia Curtis is not the average person.
She didn’t complain when she didn’t get the promotion. Yes, she ensured that Ecklie, Grissom, and Catherine knew she was angry about it, but she made every pretense of moving on. She took another job, became a detective. And then someone made the mistake of letting her become a homicide detective in Las Vegas.
She’s learned from interviewing homicide suspects. She knows what slips they make when being interviewed, what they accidentally say to people they know, how they leave bodies in places they’ve been before. And there have been others, ones she has learned from because they did it so well. With these suspects, Sofia knows they’ve killed. She can almost taste it. They’re like her. But she can’t prove a thing, except motive.
Sofia doesn’t want even that much attached to her. So she waits. Bides her time doing a job that scarcely challenges her any more. Ecklie has angered plenty of people. No one’s going to connect a former CSI and current detective with his murder. After all, it was a promotion a long time ago, and she’s obviously moved on. Besides, she didn’t seem very angry at the time.
She’s been planning this for a long time. Several times, she’s tailed Ecklie back to his house, learning his routine. On five different occasions, while he was working, she broke into his home, learning its layout. The third time, she set up a wiretap that she left for nearly a month. He hasn’t reported a single break-in, and never noticed the tap. It makes it even simpler that he’s not living with anyone. If he had been, it wouldn’t have stopped her; it just would have been an unnecessary death, and left more chances for slipping up. Not, of course, that she’s going to slip up.
One thing that trips up most murderers, Sofia knows, is taking a prize, something to remember the kill by. Even one-time murderers do this. It’s usually something small, but tied to the victim. She’s going to take a prize, too, but it won’t be anything anyone will notice is gone.
After all, once his carotid is cut, he’ll lose most of his blood.
It’s an easy way to kill, true, but it’s also effective. The main thing is making sure none of the blood gets on her, and that she leaves no trace behind. She’s planned this extensively. A modified plastic rain poncho, along with a pair of plastic pants, will fit easily over her clothes, and neither makes as much noise as would be expected. Long plastic gloves fit loosely over her hands and cover her arms. She can still use her hands well. The knife isn’t from her home, and she isn’t using one of his, either. It’s an old hunting knife, one she’s cleaned almost lovingly. It’s served before, on the dog. Her father never noticed it was missing. The blade is wickedly sharp, despite its age. She should dispose of it after this, but hasn’t decided if she will.
The problem with simply severing his carotid is he’ll hardly feel a thing. He’ll pass out fast, from the lack of oxygen to his brain, and Sofia wants him to suffer. She’s not exactly a sadist; she’ll derive pleasure from him suffering, but it won’t be sexual. In her mind, it’s simple revenge. Another option she’s considering is cutting deep enough to open his trachea, so he can still breathe but not make a sound. He’ll feel that.
It’s a Tuesday that Sofia has off, thanks to the odd schedules detectives work, that she decides he should finally die. She’s waited long enough. At two forty-eight, she breaks in through his back door, leaving a shoulder bag just inside the door. Ecklie, of all people, should know to have an alarm. It would slow her down. But since he doesn’t, it’s easy. In through the back door, then silently into his bedroom. He doesn’t wake until her blade has sunk into his throat, below his vocal cords. She knows it hurts from the way he looks; it’s not just terror in his eyes. She’s glad it hurts. Losing that promotion hurt. It was hers and he took it away. So really, it’s only fair she take something important from him.
“Justice,” she whispers, and she sees confusion under the fear and pain, before the knife sinks easily through his jugular vein, then the carotid artery. There hadn’t been blood before, but now it’s everywhere. She expected that; arteries spray like nothing else. All the CSIs will get from where she blocked the spray, though, is an idea of her height. She deliberately made the poncho bulky enough to obscure everything else.
It takes longer than she thought it would for the blood to stop flowing, but it’s not as though she has anywhere to be after this. It’s the middle of her night off. She can wait as long as she needs. Once it’s done, before it starts to congeal, she draws a small amount of blood into a syringe, then injects it into a glass vial that’s sealed with wax. It reminds her of the vials of blood Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton supposedly had as symbols of their marriage. This is a much more final symbol, though. After a moment, holding her gloved thumb over the wax, it’s malleable enough to seal off the puncture, and she caps the syringe, pocketing it. She’ll dispose of that when she gets rid of everything else.
The rest is easy. She steps into his tiled bathroom and strips the plastic garb off, folding it so all the blood is contained inside. Her hair is tied back tightly, a scarf over it so she won’t leave any evidence that way. She snaps on latex gloves before wiping up what dripped onto the tile with tissues, and drops those inside the folds of plastic. Her shoes are brand-new, cheap tennis shoes; she’ll get rid of them along with everything else. She’s not euphoric or overjoyed, just satisfied. To her, it was a fair transaction, her promotion for his life.
It’s mid-afternoon, before Sofia goes on duty, when her cell phone wakes her. It’s Brass, informing her Ecklie has been found, murdered, in his home. She says all the right things, sounds appropriately stunned, and tells him she’ll be in soon. Eleven hours earlier, Ecklie died. Nine and a half hours earlier, she finished burning everything in the middle of the desert. Eight and a half hours earlier, she stopped for breakfast at a cheap diner and made small talk with her waitress, a single mother of two. Seven hours earlier, she went to bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
As she leaves her home, Sofia doesn’t even glance twice at the jewelry box with the false bottom. She knows the vial is there. She also knows that, as a detective working the case, she won’t ever come under suspicion. There’s absolutely nothing for her to worry about.
There are certain people in life others shouldn’t get on the wrong side of. Sofia Curtis epitomizes that category. Unfortunately for Conrad Ecklie, he made the wrong choice when he gave what should have been a simple promotion, and would have been had he not chosen against a sociopath.
Author: hawkeyecat
Fandom and Pairing: CSI; Sofia Curtis gen.
Rating: Very firmly R
Claim and Prompt: Pain; 017. Horror; table here
Warnings: Character death; character as a sociopath; homicide
Word Count: 1,861
Notes: I scared myself while I was writing this. It fits pretty firmly into the horror category. It’s not ghosts-and-goblins scary; it’s could-actually-happen scary, which I’ve always found far more terrifying. It should be noted that I’m a massive fan of the true-crime genre, and various details here are pulled from cases I’ve read. For anyone else interested in that genre, Ann Rule is an excellent author. Many thanks to sarcasticsra for the beta. Note that it scared her, as well as me-and I, for one, adore James Patterson and Stephen King. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Summary: There are some people in life others should not anger. Sofia Curtis happens to be one of them.
There are certain people in life others don’t want to get on the wrong side of. The president, for instance. Mafia overlords. But of all the people one should avoid pissing off, ones who know how to kill without leaving a trace-and are cool enough under pressure to get away with it-should top the list. Sociopaths, in simple terms, but not just any sociopaths. These particular sociopaths are rare. They’ve had the patience to get through college and land a job investigating crime scenes, but they’re still cold enough to kill. Even worse is when the sociopath has also managed to become a cop.
Sofia Curtis may well be one of a kind.
Unlike most sociopaths, she doesn’t anger easily. She doesn’t have the typical childhood background of torturing small animals for the fun of it. No, the one dog she killed attacked her a week before it disappeared. No one put it together, of course. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed, ten-year-old angel couldn’t have possibly done anything to a Rottweiler. Suspicion landed on a teenage boy who lived down the street, an angry kid known to speed off while screaming obscenities at his parents.
She’s intelligent, of course; many sociopaths are. But Sofia had the drive to excel in high school and get into a college of her choice, where she continued to do well. The average sociopath doesn’t care enough to try. She killed a man in college. It wasn’t planned, not like the dog. No, she’d been jogging alone one night along a dark trail, and the man had come out at her. She acted on instinct, driving her fingers into his throat and knee into his groin. As it turned out, she managed to collapse his trachea, and he died before help arrived. Sofia put on a show of being shaken, even managed tears. She was exonerated, of course; the man was connected to a string of rapes that occurred along that trail. And she learned from it.
If interviewed by a psychiatrist, it’s quite possible Sofia would come across as completely normal, even pleasant. It’s characteristic of sociopaths to appear nothing other than average, should they so choose. Most don’t, and that gives them away. The average person diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder is male. He can be any age over eighteen; children are not diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Generally, he is proud of his crimes, whatever they may be. He does not exhibit typical emotions, unless dissembling. He has no sense of guilt, and does not fear punishment. Other than her sex and the fact that she hides her deeds, Sofia is a classic sociopath in these respects, with the likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. Unlike them, however, she knows how to avoid getting caught.
She hasn’t killed since the man in college. No one has had the misfortune of getting on the wrong side of her to the point that she could be bothered to take a life. She’s spent the years honing her skills, learning the most common mistakes murderers make, as well as the less common slipups. Sofia was good at her job when she was a crime scene investigator, one of the best who wasn’t on Grissom’s team. She should have gotten the promotion that Ecklie gave to Catherine. More than that, she wanted it. And between wanting it and deserving it, not giving her the promotion was a deadly mistake.
When the average person doesn’t get a promotion he or she feels he or she has earned, the person gets angry. He or she may complain to a spouse or significant other, possibly resent the one who did get the promotion. In some cases, the person may leave his or her job. Generally speaking, however, the average person doesn’t plan revenge.
Sofia Curtis is not the average person.
She didn’t complain when she didn’t get the promotion. Yes, she ensured that Ecklie, Grissom, and Catherine knew she was angry about it, but she made every pretense of moving on. She took another job, became a detective. And then someone made the mistake of letting her become a homicide detective in Las Vegas.
She’s learned from interviewing homicide suspects. She knows what slips they make when being interviewed, what they accidentally say to people they know, how they leave bodies in places they’ve been before. And there have been others, ones she has learned from because they did it so well. With these suspects, Sofia knows they’ve killed. She can almost taste it. They’re like her. But she can’t prove a thing, except motive.
Sofia doesn’t want even that much attached to her. So she waits. Bides her time doing a job that scarcely challenges her any more. Ecklie has angered plenty of people. No one’s going to connect a former CSI and current detective with his murder. After all, it was a promotion a long time ago, and she’s obviously moved on. Besides, she didn’t seem very angry at the time.
She’s been planning this for a long time. Several times, she’s tailed Ecklie back to his house, learning his routine. On five different occasions, while he was working, she broke into his home, learning its layout. The third time, she set up a wiretap that she left for nearly a month. He hasn’t reported a single break-in, and never noticed the tap. It makes it even simpler that he’s not living with anyone. If he had been, it wouldn’t have stopped her; it just would have been an unnecessary death, and left more chances for slipping up. Not, of course, that she’s going to slip up.
One thing that trips up most murderers, Sofia knows, is taking a prize, something to remember the kill by. Even one-time murderers do this. It’s usually something small, but tied to the victim. She’s going to take a prize, too, but it won’t be anything anyone will notice is gone.
After all, once his carotid is cut, he’ll lose most of his blood.
It’s an easy way to kill, true, but it’s also effective. The main thing is making sure none of the blood gets on her, and that she leaves no trace behind. She’s planned this extensively. A modified plastic rain poncho, along with a pair of plastic pants, will fit easily over her clothes, and neither makes as much noise as would be expected. Long plastic gloves fit loosely over her hands and cover her arms. She can still use her hands well. The knife isn’t from her home, and she isn’t using one of his, either. It’s an old hunting knife, one she’s cleaned almost lovingly. It’s served before, on the dog. Her father never noticed it was missing. The blade is wickedly sharp, despite its age. She should dispose of it after this, but hasn’t decided if she will.
The problem with simply severing his carotid is he’ll hardly feel a thing. He’ll pass out fast, from the lack of oxygen to his brain, and Sofia wants him to suffer. She’s not exactly a sadist; she’ll derive pleasure from him suffering, but it won’t be sexual. In her mind, it’s simple revenge. Another option she’s considering is cutting deep enough to open his trachea, so he can still breathe but not make a sound. He’ll feel that.
It’s a Tuesday that Sofia has off, thanks to the odd schedules detectives work, that she decides he should finally die. She’s waited long enough. At two forty-eight, she breaks in through his back door, leaving a shoulder bag just inside the door. Ecklie, of all people, should know to have an alarm. It would slow her down. But since he doesn’t, it’s easy. In through the back door, then silently into his bedroom. He doesn’t wake until her blade has sunk into his throat, below his vocal cords. She knows it hurts from the way he looks; it’s not just terror in his eyes. She’s glad it hurts. Losing that promotion hurt. It was hers and he took it away. So really, it’s only fair she take something important from him.
“Justice,” she whispers, and she sees confusion under the fear and pain, before the knife sinks easily through his jugular vein, then the carotid artery. There hadn’t been blood before, but now it’s everywhere. She expected that; arteries spray like nothing else. All the CSIs will get from where she blocked the spray, though, is an idea of her height. She deliberately made the poncho bulky enough to obscure everything else.
It takes longer than she thought it would for the blood to stop flowing, but it’s not as though she has anywhere to be after this. It’s the middle of her night off. She can wait as long as she needs. Once it’s done, before it starts to congeal, she draws a small amount of blood into a syringe, then injects it into a glass vial that’s sealed with wax. It reminds her of the vials of blood Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton supposedly had as symbols of their marriage. This is a much more final symbol, though. After a moment, holding her gloved thumb over the wax, it’s malleable enough to seal off the puncture, and she caps the syringe, pocketing it. She’ll dispose of that when she gets rid of everything else.
The rest is easy. She steps into his tiled bathroom and strips the plastic garb off, folding it so all the blood is contained inside. Her hair is tied back tightly, a scarf over it so she won’t leave any evidence that way. She snaps on latex gloves before wiping up what dripped onto the tile with tissues, and drops those inside the folds of plastic. Her shoes are brand-new, cheap tennis shoes; she’ll get rid of them along with everything else. She’s not euphoric or overjoyed, just satisfied. To her, it was a fair transaction, her promotion for his life.
It’s mid-afternoon, before Sofia goes on duty, when her cell phone wakes her. It’s Brass, informing her Ecklie has been found, murdered, in his home. She says all the right things, sounds appropriately stunned, and tells him she’ll be in soon. Eleven hours earlier, Ecklie died. Nine and a half hours earlier, she finished burning everything in the middle of the desert. Eight and a half hours earlier, she stopped for breakfast at a cheap diner and made small talk with her waitress, a single mother of two. Seven hours earlier, she went to bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
As she leaves her home, Sofia doesn’t even glance twice at the jewelry box with the false bottom. She knows the vial is there. She also knows that, as a detective working the case, she won’t ever come under suspicion. There’s absolutely nothing for her to worry about.
There are certain people in life others shouldn’t get on the wrong side of. Sofia Curtis epitomizes that category. Unfortunately for Conrad Ecklie, he made the wrong choice when he gave what should have been a simple promotion, and would have been had he not chosen against a sociopath.