An Officer and a Crook: Chapter Four

This is a really a five chapter long book, so the plot had better either pick up or do some massive summary.

...  It's all just crammed into the last two chapters, isn't it?

This chapter is mostly Rachel and Mrs. Brown, but we have a couple new players:  Lorrie and Sonal.

John has a flashback to his dead wife.

"She had never been one to submit to her husband's wishes and, in the end, that had cost her her life."

Fuck you, right?

How about people are grown-ass fucking adults and make their own fucking decisions rather than submit to someone else's will like a good little slave Christian?  This is what's so god damned awful about this mentality--this garbage is being written by, allegedly, a bunch of women.  Don't you want to make your own decisions?  Why the fuck do you want someone else to run your life for you?  Why would anyone want that?  The fuck is wrong with you?

Oh, I get that the appeal to it is:  "All my life, someone else has made all the decisions for me and trying to break free of that is scary and it's so much easier just to not have any control over it so nothing is ever my fault" but that is no way to live.  Grow the fuck up--previous generations have worked damn hard to give you rights, fucking stand up and use them, you little twats.

In the flashback  It's not a flashback.  It tries to be, says it is, but it's just a summary.  In the summary, Julie was four months pregnant, was for some reason involved in a sting operation, and McCartney killed her.  The language here paints John as a piece of shit:

"She had lost her life... and his baby."

It goes on to say that he blamed her for the death of his child.

Possessive piece of shit--your wife fucking died and you get mad at her for dying?  Oh, maybe she should just apologize for dying, you filthy little diarrhea stain.  You can impregnate some other chick and have a kid--you won't even know the goddamn difference--but you'll never have another Julia.

So, back in the police station, alarms go off and John intuitively realizes that the station is... under siege.

If you play this scene backwards, it will be better written and make more sense.

I don't know what it is about Christians that think that bikers are scary, but the "evil biker trope" is a common "bad guy" in Christian movies, so it makes sense that it's a biker gang with sawn off shutguns holding the police hostage.

The biker gang demand Deanna in exchange for the building.  To prove her innocence, she declares that she's not clever enough to think of this--she is a woman after all--and that she will march down there herself and say she refuses to go and they had better release the captive officers, you big meanies.

Apparently, her speech stuns the officers and she marches out of the room, I assume by phasing through the "several" officers near the door.

John stops her, because no one else could possibly lay a hand on her--he did claim her by pissing on her and all that or whatever Christians do to mark territory.

Anyway, that hook Deanna up with a wire and do the exchange.  The bikers call her "Dee Babe".  There is nothing I can make fun of about that that is not worse than it already is.

"Cut out the unmeant terms of endearment."

Says Deanna to the biker gang.  I don't think Rachel has ever had a real conversation with another human.

She whines a bit more and one of the bikers replies, "Com'on baby what are you thinking?  Don't behave like a baby.  Com'om let's go."

Translation:  "Now there, darling, what is on your mind?  It would be best to not behave in a childish manner.  Come now, let us be off."

Am I the only one that thinks it's a bit ironic that he calls her "baby" and then tells her not to be a "baby".  We all know you'd say "bitch" if you weren't so Christian you couldn't swear, but Mumsy dearest would wash your mouth with soap, you dirty little slut, so better not swear, Sonal.

"Her voice was shaking."

How does your voice shake?  Does your voice take on a more physical form and become wracked with tremors?

Deeana thinks their bikes are "big and scary" and asks them to let her go back for her briefcase.

Elizabeth Personality again seizes control and loses her fucking mind.

Elizabeth has decided that Deana's new backstory is as a private investigator and her boss sent her out to investigate Earl's Diner, to find out "what had kept him open this long".  The diner is a in a seedy part of town that, for some unexplained reason, rich people frequent "for the food".  Drugs.  It's drugs.

Hilarious, considering some of the other Personalities authors wrote her as a young girl (implied, teenager) or as a homeless youth.

If she's a private investigator, she should have told the cops long ago and been willing to cooperate from the get-go.  Is some internal consistency too much to ask for?

Inside the station, John rifles through her briefcase.  Through the speaker, the bikers grab her, she screams, blah blah.

"You've got what we want... and we're gonna get it."

Sounds like biker gang rape!  Which is her fault of course; rape is mostly the woman's fault. #sarcasm

That's why the Bible says to kill rape victims along with the rapist.  Deuteronomy, look that shit up.