Well, did you ask?

Inhaling a little too deep of the old Eau de Buchanan in Intermediate Writing again, are we?

The Lord couldn't save Courtney Rainey from the law's attention.

Did we ask? Or did we just get His answering machine again and give up?

Rainey, 23, had just left Sunday church services in Oak Tower with his girlfriend and her infant daughter, Oak Tower resident Jesse E. Thomas said. It was a beautiful November afternoon, a little warm, the ground covered with leaves.

At 1:45 p.m., things were peaceful.

At 1:46 p.m., Officer Tim Giger pulled up behind Rainey's car at the intersection of Sexton Road and Garth Avenue just outside Oak Tower.

OK, to save you the suspense, he ran away and the cops didn't catch him -- suggesting that perhaps the Lord woke up and got His head back in the game before halftime. Or not, because frankly the whole thing raises some questions about just what you're supposed to do as a responsible deity in a case like this. Do you trip the guy and hold him down until the cops get there, or do you go down to the cops and confuse their language so they will not understand each other and he gets away in the commotion? Or, loose again after untold eons and ravening for delight, do you squeeze your bulk through the church door and ...

OK, maybe not. But all that said, if you're going to stretch the old narrative muscles out for 20-plus grafs,* you might not want to leave the audience back at the starting line arguing about what the lede has to do with the rest of the text.

* Short, some of them.**
** Three, four words.