In the original outline for this scene, Rachel was a lot more direct and aggressive with the police, confronting them for their role in both the current crisis and Eli’s death. Her intent, then as it is now, was to create a diversion, but I ended up thinking, “Even if she’s doing this to create a scene, wouldn’t it be risky for her to confront the police head-on like that? Wouldn’t she know better?” 

The fix came from my writer’s group, who suggested that the scene would work better if Rachel confronted the police in a way that was uniquely her. This note follows the classic advice of “make each character’s reaction specific to them”—a piece of advice I’ve always struggled with, especially in highly dramatic scenes—but in this case, it had the added benefit of injecting new meaning into a part of Rachel she was deeply ashamed of.