Chapter Six Page 26
Police rep: Top marks at the Academy, ten years on the force, and now I’m interrogating a rabbit.
Cohen: Don’t underestimate her. Cute or not, she’s at least a few thousand years old.
Police rep: And pathologically attached to a human who, judging by the pattern of the destruction, is emotionally about twelve. You put a spell on it for long enough to drag it here. Can’t you just zap it into saying its controller’s name?
Cohen: I’ve already done two spells tonight. You know how exhausting these things are? Besides, it’s obvious that she’s been directly ordered to keep that secret. We couldn’t force it out of her. It would only make her unreasonably upset if we tried.
Police rep: Hm. Convenient.
Cohen: . . .
Police rep: We’ll have a couple of officers rotating along with your
usual security people, and get some more experts here by morning. And . . . did you give it a pillow?
Cohen: Is that a problem? Just because we’re not legally required to make them comfortable doesn’t mean we can’t.
Police rep: . . . Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Cohen.
Cohen: Hey. You.
Cybele: Who, me?
Cohen: That’s right. Do you know how much trouble your Master could get in for this?
“My husband could go to jail for this!”
I agree with the detective, questioning a rabbit as a cop does seem VERY ridiculous.
The pillow makes the man seem a lot nicer now.
Not sure if Cohen is actually a good guy contrary to my previous expectations or if he’s just playing ‘good cop’.
Seems likely to me that he’s genuine about the pillow being there for her comfort. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are sliding scales rather than absolutes; making the effort costs him nothing, is a relatively humane thing to do, and hey, if it also makes her more inclined to cooperate? Score.
And if he is Jewish and observant, it fits in with religious beliefs too (under several separate headings). I sort of wonder if his study of magic is kabalistic, or however the heck it’s spelled…
This all seems super suspicious. Why is he being to nice to her?
Like QoC said, it could be a “Good Cop” approach; appeal to the being’s love of it’s master, and it’ll break like a dam, giving him all the information he could ever want. But I agree, VERY suspicious. If he decides to withhold information from the BPD, that’ll set him firmly into “untrustworthy” territory in my book.
I dunno. If her Master gave her a direct order to keep his name a secret, I don’t think that’s something he can get her to give up just by appealing to her love for her Master. And since they don’t know who her Master is, it would seem that saying he’d be in a lot of trouble would give an even greater incentive to not break the order even if she were capable of doing so.
Hi. Where are you guys getting the idea that Cohen might be a bad guy?
I’m not sure what he’s doing that’s making y’all think he’s being evil. Giving her a pillow doesn’t strike me as being ‘so’ nice to her; it’s maybe not required by law, but for most folks it’s pretty much the bare minimum of being civilized.
Beings may not be human and may be bound by various unknowable rules, but it’s a talking creature capable of self-expression and of feeling comfort and discomfort. Even prisoners who have actually been convicted have certain minimum legal requirements, and while those requirements may not in fact have been legally provided for in this case, his doing so doesn’t scream ‘ulterior motives’ to me. It could even just be an automatic decision, not requiring much thought. Animal-like sentient being; cold floor; pillow.
As for withholding info from the BPD, I’d need to wait and see more than that. The BPD rep isn’t exactly ringing my bell as being one of the good guys. Withholding info from her might be a better idea than not, depending – but right now, we just plain don’t know enough. :) Here’s to Erin for keeping us guessing!
Okay, there is Sparrow’s comment from 6 pages back, about the “evil twin from two seasons ago”. Who was she talking about, and to?
Sparrow, Bianca, Reseda, and Patrick were watching TV, blissfully oblivious to the Plot Developments happening elsewhere.