Leftover Soup




	In any adventure story that takes place in a civilized environment, a writer needs to insert some sort of explanation as to why the protagonists don't simply dump their troubles in the police's laps. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this. In Terminator, for example, the cops simply don't believe Sarah Connor's outlandish story, preferring to attribute her experiences to street gangs on PCP. In most variations of Batman, the cops are either incompetent, unprepared, or corrupt. In many TV dramas (such as The Mentalist or The Dead Zone), the protagonist has a special talent that the police cannot duplicate. In almost all cases, the protagonist can't simply leave things with the police and walk away because this time, it's personal. For Leftover Soup, of course, I have elected to combine parts of all of these.

0605------------------------------------- (Monday afternoon, INT: ChA's dining room) ChA: This. Is not. Your job. JH: I can't go to the police with a wild story and no evidence but my own three-week-old memory. Even with that one-seven-one-P-five code, collecting money I was entitled to, I barely got out of there in one piece. -------------- ChA: The police will have records of your suspect, they can compare them to pictures of Richard Knight. JH: So if a minor is the victim of an assault, you photograph and fingerprint them? -------------- ChA: Well... no. JH: If you have a cadaver in two pieces, do you run a tox screen on both the head and the body? -------------- ChA: Get the hell out of my apartment. JH: Thanks for the help. I'll keep you posted.