Bottomless Perdition

2.3K

“Like in eternal damnation, like in ‘Paradise Lost’!”

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The two occupants in the rear of the unmarked police van never saw the dog that ran into the road in front of the vehicle. They never knew why the van suddenly swerved to the side, throwing them both off balance, but even if they had known it would not have made a difference. The man in uniform had turned to shout an inquiry through the heavy steel mesh that separated him and his charge from the driver, when the van flipped sending him ricocheting around the back of the vehicle. His companion was more fortunate. Heavy shackles kept him anchored to the bolt in the floor.

When the van came to a rest, the guard was semi-conscious. The man in restraints had suffered only a shallow head wound. He reacted quickly. He grasped the guard by the hair, and dragged him against his knees. The guard began to rouse, trying to struggle free. His companion wrapped arms and restraints around the guard’s neck and applied quick sharp pressure. There was a sickening, liquid snap. The guard went limp. The prisoner swiftly searched the body for the keys to his shackles. Once freed, he appropriated the guard’s weapon and crawled over twisted metal to check on the driver. The van had smashed into a tree. The engine had been forced backward, pinning the driver in what was left in his seat. He was very dead. The former prisoner considered the situation, absently wiping blood from the cut on his forearm. He had to get out. The rear door would be padlocked. He tucked the police pistol inside his jumpsuit, and crawled over the cooling body of the driver to get to the one door that looked like it might still work. Blood and other body fluids soaked into the fabric of his clothing, but he didn’t let himself dwell on it. He’d seen too many horrors in his life to react. He was already thinking ahead. He didn’t have much time. They would be looking for him. He needed to get of town quickly. But first he had a couple old friends to whom he wanted to pay a visit, and a promise he intended to keep.

*****

Police Sergeant Dave Starsky carefully tucked his extra large root beer in the crook of his left elbow, picked up his deluxe chili dog with his left hand and reached for a fistful of paper napkins with his right. “Hutch!” he called as he began to negotiate his way towards one of the picnic tables set up beside the outdoor hot dog stand, “Grab some mustard, would ya? An’ ketchup. An’ some of that hot sauce. An’ relish! I forgot the relish!”

Ken Hutchinson, the tall blond still standing at the counter to Hotdog Haven glanced over his shoulder as he retrieved his own soft drink and chili dog. With an apologetic smile at the sour faced man behind the counter he gathered the requested condiments under one arm, and trailed in the wake of his partner.

“Starsk,” he called. “How about giving me a hand here?” The ketchup squeeze-bottle was starting to slip, inexorably inching its way down between his arm and abdomen. “Starsky?”

But Starsky seemed intent on situating himself for a meal, carefully spreading out a placemat of napkins for his chili dog and soda. A mischievous breeze tugged one of the napkins out of his hands, sending it tumbling away across the sun baked asphalt to add to the scattered debris of another day in Bay City.

The hot sauce slid a fraction of an inch. Hutchinson leaned to one side, trying to get gravity on his side. “Starsky! Come on! I’m going to drop something.”

Starsky tucked a napkin into his shirt collar and settled onto the bench. Over his head a patio umbrella flapped like a wounded bird, its faded logo advertising the sidewalk café that used to inhabit the corner building three franchises ago.

Hutch pulled up alongside the wooden table, balancing precarious condiments more by luck than skill at this point. “Take this stuff, will’ya?”

Starsky ripped open one end of the paper cover on his straw, and blew through the straw, sending the wrapper flying.

“You’re going to pick that up, you know,” Hutch admonished, wondering, not for the first time, if his partner deliberately pulled that adolescent stunt only because he knew it annoyed him. “Come on! If you want this junk, take it!” The mustard made a break for freedom and Hutch clenched his arm tight against his chest and bent over to try and catch the bottle. The move jostled his cold drink which splashed onto his sleeve. Jerking in reaction, Hutch unbalanced his chili dog and watched helplessly as it slid out of its container, falling to the ground with a soggy plop.

Starsky stood and magnanimously took the bottles of condiments from Hutch’s arms. “Here. Let me get that for you.” His gaze fell on the chili dog at his feet. “Oh! Look. You dropped your hot dog.” The eyes flicked up again, filled with a guileless amusement Hutch didn’t trust for a moment. “Gotta be more careful, partner.”

“Starsk! So help me…” Hutch didn’t have time to complete the threat either mentally or verbally as a woman’s scream sounded from across the street.

“My purse! He took my purse! Help! Someone!”

Starsky glanced over Hutch’s left shoulder, eyes going wide, then narrowing in anger.

“Here!” He dumped the assorted bottles back into Hutch’s arms as he brushed past.

Hutch made a valiant attempt to catch the condiments, but as his ice cold cola splashed down the front of his shirt, he gave up with a curse. Tossing the whole mess into the nearest trash receptacle, he dashed after his partner.

Starsky was already dodging cars as he sprinted across the wide boulevard. Hutch heard the squeal of brakes and watched Starsky ricochet from one car to the next like a pin-ball gone wild, drivers screaming their outrage in his wake. One wood-panel station wagon swerved, barely avoiding the dark haired officer. Hutch flinched as Starsky struck the front end, curled and rolled across the hood and hit the street still running. Damn, the man was good.

Hutch himself lost time evading the cars. His longer legs and higher center of gravity didn’t allow him to shift direction as quickly or a smoothly as his more compact partner. When he reached the far sidewalk, Hutch was a good half a block behind Starsky. He could see his partner ahead of him, the familiar blue Adidas tearing up the sidewalk as Starsky tried to close the distance between himself and the purse snatcher, some young punk in an olive green army jacket and apple-jack cap.

On the straight sidewalk, already swept clean of pedestrians by the chase, Hutch was able to pick up some speed. Starsky stayed ahead of him, but at least Hutchinson didn’t lose any more ground.

Starsky was gaining on the perp. A few more feet and…

Someone swung open the door of the sleek, Mustang convertible right across Starsky’s path. There was no time to stop. No time even to swerve. Starsk ran full speed into the car door and Hutch watched as his partner did a spectacular midair flip over the door, landing hard on his back on the sidewalk.

“Oh my God! Did I do that?”

Dodging around the leggy blonde who was just sliding out of the open door to the convertible, Hutch dropped to the ground beside his partner.

“Starsk?”

Starsky stirred feebly on the ground, his mouth opening and closing without breath. His face was pale and sweaty.

“Starsk?” Hutch brushed the dark curls back from his partner’s forehead. “Can you hear me?”

Starsky nodded, wetness leaking from the corners of eyes as he squinted against the overhead glare of the midday sun. Short, strangled gasps rasped from the back of his throat as he tried to catch his breath. His lips moved and Hutch read his own name there, though no sound emerged.

Grasping Hutch’s wrist with his left hand, Starsky made a shooing motion with his right and pointed in the direction the purse snatcher had run.

Hutch glanced up the street. He could just make out a tattered army jacket disappearing into a narrow side street between two buildings. He shot a quick look at his partner. “You sure?”

Starsky nodded again, eyes fierce, and Hutch scrambled to his feet. “Okay. But don’t go anywhere.” He dropped a quick pat on Starsky’s shoulder before dashing off in pursuit of the suspect.

Starsky fell back, allowing himself to relax under the gentle medical ministrations of the Farrah Fawcett blonde and her equally gorgeous brunette companion, both of whom bent over him cooing words of comfort.

Hutch slowed to a trot as he approached the corner, then slid the last few feet along the wall of the building to peer into down the side-street. The kid was nowhere in sight, and Hutch ducked around the corner, sliding his Magnum from its holster as he moved into the cool shadows between the buildings. The purse snatcher hadn’t been carrying that Hutch could see, but better to play it safe.

It would make perfect sense to assume the perp had already disappeared around the next corner up ahead — was even now making his getaway down the next street. However a quiet, inner voice whispered that this wasn’t the case, and during his years on the street, Hutch had learned to trust the little tingle his sixth sense sent up and down his spine — the itch he couldn’t scratch. Right now it was telling him the kid was still somewhere nearby.

He moved warily down the narrow street, half crouched, one hand out to steady his advance. Beneath tense brows, his icy blue eyes cased the shadowed doorways and piles of garbage cans, alert for movement. Every gloom drenched corner hid a predator. Every angular shadow, a crouching beast. The stench of urban decay; a malodorous perfume of rotting trash, cheap alcohol and bodily fluids, assaulted him in the closed space. He grimaced and held a hand half over his nose and mouth. Here be dragons.

Something shuffled to his right, a bare breath of sound, like a tennis shoe shifting against loose gravel.

Hutch spun and leveled his gun at the dim shadows behind a stack of trash cans. “Police!” he snapped, feeling the barely leashed tension quivering through his lean frame. “Come on out! And keep your hands where I can see them!”

There was a pause, then a nervous looking teenager in patched up jeans and a worn army jacket stepped out from behind the garbage cans, face white in the gloom, hands held at half mast. ‘See me‘ his posture begged. ‘See how harmless I am?‘ But his darting, street-wise eyes spoke in another tongue, ‘Yeah, until I stick a shiv under your ribs.‘

Even kittens have claws.

“Hey,” the kid shrugged, trying to sound casual despite the slight tremor in his voice. “What’s going down? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Move!” Hutch barked, waving the kid away from the shadows with his gun. “Against the wall!”

“Take it easy,” protested the youth, as Hutch grabbed him by the jacket and shoved him hard against the brick wall, knocking the teen’s cap awry in the process “You ain’t got nothin’ on me.”

“Oh yeah?” Hutch paused in searching the youth for weapons long enough to gesture at the macramé handbag and its contents scattered behind the garbage pails. “And I suppose you just happened to find that purse.”

“Yeah!” The young man risked a quick glance over his shoulder. “How’d ya know? It was just lying there. Come to think of it, there was this kid. He ran off just before you got here. Maybe he…”

Hutch placed a palm in the center of the teenager’s back and thrusting him sharply into the wall. “Look,” he growled, voice low and dangerous in the youth’s ear. “My partner’s flat on his back on the street ’cause of you. Now, I am not in the mood for cute. You have the right to remain silent. I suggest you use it.” Completing the body search, he pulled out his cuffs. “You have the right to an attorney…”

By the time Hutch cuffed the suspect, read him his rights, retrieved the purse and dragged the reluctant youth back down the street, he found Starsky on his feet, supported on either side by the blow-dried blonde, and her svelte, brunette companion. All three lounged against the side of the convertible. In their platform clogs, both girls nearly matched Starsky’s height, and he had his arms comfortable resting around their shoulders. He straightened as Hutch approached.

With a less than genial hand placed between the teenagers shoulder blades, Hutch urged his prisoner into a squat beside the car. “And stay there!” he snapped before turning to Starsky.

“See you got him,” noted the curly haired detective.

Hutch’s voice gentled, and one hand reached to touch Starsky lightly on the shoulder. “Yeah. You okay, buddy?”

Starsky gave a nonchalant shrug. “Sure. Got the wind knocked outta me, but I’m okay.”

Hutch’s gaze narrowed, noting the fine lines etched around his partner’s mouth and eyes, the pale sheen to Starsky’s face — signs of strain only he would see. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Starsky managed a sheepish lopsided grin, shaky but genuine. “Don’t be a mother hen, Hutch. I’m fine.” His indigo eyes pleaded with Hutch not to embarrass the two of them in front of the women.

“Okay.” Hutch made a show of relaxing into a smile, but he remained very much aware of his partner.

Gracing the blonde woman to his right with one of his most charming smiles, Starsky announced to Hutch, “I would like to introduce you to Sissie.” He then turned to flash his teeth at the brunette. “And Candy. Two lovely ladies who just moved to Bay City from Kansas.”

“Kentucky,” corrected Candy, brushing a loose strand of chestnut hair out of her face.

“Right,” amended Starsky. “Kentucky.”

Sissie and Candy. Of course. Hutch struggled not to laugh. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah.” Sissie tossed her mane of feathered ash blonde hair. “We just got into town last week.”

“And they don’t know anyone.” Starsky added, with a not so subtle glance at his partner.

“We were just telling Dave we could really use someone to show us around. Help us get to know the city.” Candy smiled, perfect teeth in a cover girl face.

“Oh. I see.”

“Yeah.” Starsky’s eyes were dancing playful, asking Hutch if he could believe their luck. “I was tellin’ ’em that a couple cops would really know their way around, you know?”

“That’s true. That’s true,” Hutch was quick to second. “We know just about every alley in this city.”

“Every nook an’ cranny,” agreed Starsky.

“Every little street.”

“Every telephone pole.”

‘Telephone pole?’ Hutch mouthed, giving Starsky an incredulous look.

“Well, I guess we were lucky to run into you guys.” Candy bubbled with enthusiasm.

“More like I ran into you,” Starsky pointed out, grinning widely.

“You sure you don’t mind? Showing us around, I mean… ” Sissie’s large blue eyes swept back and forth between the two detectives. “We don’t want to be a bother.”

“Oh no.” Hutch was quick to assure the women. “Not at all.”

“No. No,” echoed his partner. “Our pleasure.”

The four of them exchanged broad smiles.

“What is it you two girls do, anyway?” Hutch inquired.

“We’re models.” The girls chorused, leaning into Starsky like a pair of shapely bookends.

“Models?” Hutch echoed.

“Models?” repeated Starsky, shooting raised eyebrows at his partner.

“Well,” Candy qualified with a light laugh. “Really, we’re nurses, but we’re trying to be models. That’s why we moved to Bay City.”

“Oh. You’ll do great.” Starsky was quick to assure them, giving both women an appreciative once over. “Won’t they, Hutch?”

“Oh, yeah. No problem.”

“You think so?” Sissie looked concerned, but in Starsky’s opinion, the little pucker above her brows did nothing to mar her perfection.

“Absolutely,” Hutch reassured, bright smile full of charm. “Who could resist?”

“Certainly not me!” added Starsky.

More broad smiles all around.

Hutch and Starsky shared a look, urgently searching for further topics of conversation.

“So, you’re nurses.” Hutch finally supplied, earning himself a disdainful, ‘Can’t you do better than that?,’ glare from his partner.

Candy and Sissie giggled, exchanging secret glances.

“They already told us that.” Starsky muttered under his breath, nudging Hutch sharply in the ribs. Obviously it was up to him to salvage the situation. Much more of that brand of witty Hutchinson repartee and they’d both be spending the evening alone. Still, Hutch had given him a possible opening.

“Well, you know.” Starsky’s face pulled down in a frown of discomfort as he rubbed a flat hand across his abdomen. “I hit that door pretty hard. It’s kinda painful. Hey, you think maybe I hurt something?” His eyes flicked up to Candy, wide and worried as though he’d just realized the possibility of bodily damage.

“I don’t know.” Candy’s troubled gaze reflected his concern. “Where does it hurt?”

Hutch rolled his eyes as his partner began to recite a list of suddenly developing ailments, accompanied by expressive grimaces and groans.

“Maybe we should get you to a hospital?” Candy suggested, and her friend nodded agreement, nibbling at her lower lip with even white teeth.

“A hospital?” Something like real distress passed over Starsky’s face. “Oh no. That’s okay. I’m sure it’s not that bad. I mean, you girls are nurses right? Couldn’t you just take a look, and see what you think?” He caught Hutch’s disgusted look, knowing his partner saw right through his little act. But at least Hutch had the decency to keep quiet.

“Well…” Candy glanced at Sissie doubtfully. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing.” Hutch eased leisurely into the conversation, capturing the young women’s attention with a smile. “He just bruises easily. Right, partner?” He gave Starsky a friendly pat on the shoulder, silent laughter alight in his clear, blue eyes.

“But, you know,” he stepped closed to Sissie, his expression sobering. “It wasn’t easy chasing down that suspect. He put up quite a fight.”

“That so?” drawled Starsky, knowing what was coming.

“Yeah. Things got pretty hairy there. And I think…” Eyes and voice dropped as Hutch seemed suddenly overcome with an attack of modesty. “I think maybe I pulled something.”

“Oh really?” Starsky’s voice dripped something, and it wasn’t sympathy.

Hutch rubbed one hand rather self-consciously down the inside on one thigh. “Down here.” A veil of blond lashes fell to hide his apparent embarrassment and a faint flush tinged the golden cheeks.

Both girls melted, the ‘shy little boy’ act turning them to putty.

Starsky felt a corner of his mouth curling in amusement. He had to hand it to Hutch, the technique was flawless, and the blush, a brilliant touch.

“Sounds painful,” he quipped, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice.

Hutch shot him a ‘keep your mouth shut’ warning from beneath lowered lashes.

“You probably pulled a muscle,” noted Sissie with a sympathetic pout. “A hot bath and massage will probably clear it right up.”

“Massage?” Hutch’s low voice held a note of wonder.

This time, Starsky couldn’t completely stifle the amusement and a garbled snort escaped.

“Sure,” Candy simpered. “We’re pretty good with our hands.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are.” Hutch’s face lit like the rising sun.

“What’dya say we grab some lunch. Talk a little bit.” Starsky included both women in his winsome appraisal. “Then maybe we could show you girls around the city.”

“And later,” added Hutch, “we could… uh… discuss that massage.”

The pair of attractive young women shared a moment of private communication, then turned inviting smiles on the two detectives. “Sure! Sounds great!”

Hutch didn’t think his partner’s grin could get any wider. He was wrong.

“Do you like Chinese?” Starsky asked.

“Love it!” the girls chorused.

Hutch caught sight of the purse snatcher huddled beside the car, and his elation began to wane. “Starsk.”

“I know this great Chinese place. The Red Dragon. You’re gonna love it…”

“Starsk.” A little louder this time.

“What?” Starsky turned to him, eyes and smile bright with enthusiasm.

“What about him?” Hutch nodded towards the youth.

“What about him?” Starsky repeated.

“Well, we’ve got to book him. And there are statements to take. We’ve got to find the lady whose purse was taken and get a positive ID on this kid.”

Starsky shrugged. “He’s your collar.”

“What?” Hutch’s brow drew into a frown.

“You caught him,” Starsky clarified.

“But…”

“Look,” Starsky explained in a reasonable tone. “You get the statement, take the kid in, book him and write up the report. You can even use my car,” he concluded magnanimously.

Hutch’s eyes narrowed. “And what about you?”

“I’ll take the girls to lunch.” One hand rested briefly on Hutch’s shoulder as Starsky graced his partner with his most disarming smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll call you.”

“Oh no.” Hutch reached out and snagged Starsky before he could pull away. “We’re both on duty, buddy.”

“But…” Starsky stared at his partner as though he knew Hutch couldn’t really be saying what he thought he was saying. “What about the girls?”

“I’m sure the ladies will understand.” He turned his smile on the two women. “I’m sure they wouldn’t want us to allow this dangerous criminal to continue prowling the streets.”

Expression wilting, Starsky addressed the gorgeous brunette and blonde. “Sorry girls. Duty calls.”

The pair looked disappointed, but as Hutch predicted, proved very forgiving. “It’s okay. Maybe we can meet later?”

“Sure!” Starsky brightened immediately. “There’s this terrific club! Lenny’s. Great food. Do you like to dance?”

Hutch had retrieved the purse snatching suspect and reached out to grab Starsky as he passed.

“It’s on Sunset!” continued the dark haired detective, walking backwards as Hutch ushered him down the street. “We’ll meet you at 8:30. That okay?” Batting Hutch’s hand away, he fished for his wallet. “Here. You can reach us at this number.” He handed Candy their card. “Just ask for Starsky and Hutch. They’ll know.”

He finally succumbed to Hutch’s persistent tugging, turning to accompany his partner towards the parked Torino.

“Starsk,” Hutch inquired as they made their way down the street. “You sure you don’t want to drop by the emergency room and get checked out? You hit that door pretty hard and then you hit the concrete.”

“I’m fine,” Starsky grumbled, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “‘Course I’d be a lot better if we were taking those two lovelies out to lunch ‘stead of spendin’ time with this scumbag.”

“Hey, pal. Don’t make me out to be the heavy,” Hutch replied flatly. “That massage sounded like a real sweet deal to me too, you know.”

Starsky’s dirty look took in his partner and the suspect. “You could’da let him get away,” he muttered sotto voce.

“What?” Hutch snapped.

But Starsky had nothing more to say.

*****

Later that afternoon, Metro’s Dynamic Duo barreled out of the squad room, side by side, heads bowed, shoulders hunched forward, intent on the getting from point A to B in as little time as possible. Statements had been taken. Reports had been written and turned in on time, for once. They had even managed to locate the owner of the stolen purse. For the moment, all was right with the world. But given the nature of their jobs, neither one of them expected that to last long.

As they strode down the precinct hallway, Starsky slowed to a stroll, allowing his partner’s longer legs to carry him ahead.

Gradually Starsky came to a halt. Standing with one hip slightly cocked, arms loose at his sides the curly haired detective watched in appreciative silence as his partner stalked the length of the corridor.

The hustling, bustling crowds parted before the tall blond, moving aside, as though from an inexorable force of nature. A short distance past the snack machine, it seemed to occur to Hutchinson that Starsky was no longer at his side. His own footsteps moved into slow motion, and he allowed the last to carry him a 180, around to face his partner at the far end of the hallway.

For a moment the two merely regarded each other, two gunfighters contemplating a showdown. Then Hutch’s mouth tightened as he adopted his most effective, ‘And just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ expression.

Starsky grinned and drew himself to his full height, always happy to be the center of Hutchinson’s attention, no matter what the occasion.

Strutting swiftly down the corridor, Starsky rejoined his partner. “I was watchin’ you move,” he explained, before Hutch could even voice the inevitable question.

“What?”

“Watchin’ you move…” Starsky repeated with a helpful gesture of his hands.

Hutch took a quick look around. Long association with David Starsky gave him an inkling that whatever Starsky was going to say, it would probably be better if no one else overheard.

“What’s wrong with the way I move.” He took a step closer to his partner, glaring down at the smaller man, but Starsky refused to be intimidated.

“Nothin’!” he replied with exuberance. “I love the way you move! You’re like a lion…” Starsky undulated his shoulders, as though imagining himself roaming the Serengeti. “Like a lion on the prowl.”

Hutch flinched and checked again to see if anyone was nearby. “A lion, huh?”

“Yeah!” Starsky nodded eagerly.

“Yeah?” he leaned closer. “Well, you know what you move like?”

Starsky’s smile froze, then began to melt into a worried grimace. “What?”

“Like an alley cat on the make.”

Starsky’s mouth popped open in protest, but before he could formulate a suitably devastating comeback, a window-rattling bellow was heard from the office of Captain Harold Dobey.

“HUTCHINSON! STARSKY!” The office door flung wide, the threshold dwarfed by the formidable bulk of the detective’s superior. “You two! In here! Now!” A manila file folder flapped in their direction, ushering them into the office.

Their reprieve was apparently as short lived as expected.

“Afternoon Cap’n!” Starsky adopted his most disarming grin, while surreptitiously nudging his partner in the ribs. “What’dya do?” he muttered under his breath.

“Nothing!” Hutchinson hissed in his ear. “What did you do?”

“Sometime today!” prompted the heavy set captain, scowling at the two detectives.

“Sorry, Captain.”

“Sure thing.”

The two were heralded into the office, both still grinning their innocence to whatever crime they expected to be accused of committing.

While his two detectives fidgeted, Dobey took his seat behind a battered wooden desk that had seen years of heavy use. Opening the file in his hands, he glanced up at the two younger men across the desk.

Light and dark. Sunlight and shadow. College whiz-kid and street urchin. In some ways as different as two people could be, but not where it counted. Soul deep they were near reflections of each other. Two halves of the same whole. Sometimes they seemed less two separate men, than a single entity — a Starskinson, or Husky. Reckless, incorrigible, and occasionally defiant, but still the two of the best detectives he had ever had the pleasure of working with, and the best partnership he’d ever seen.

But what would happen to such a symbiosis should one half be lost? Could one survive without the other? It was a question which ran through Harold Dobey’s mind sometimes late at night as he lay staring at the ceiling of his bedroom and unable to sleep. He hoped he would never have to find out the answer.

He let them know without preamble. “John Colby’s escaped.”

Both detectives had been shuffling in agitation. Now they froze, two pairs of intent blue eyes riveted on Dobey.

It was Starsky who spoke first, his voice a soft rush of breath. “What?”

“When?” came the harder tones of Hutchinson.

“Yesterday afternoon.” Dobey pushed the file across the desk and watched as Hutchinson picked it up to flip through the pages. He carefully scanned the enclosed information even though Dobey was fairly certain the blond had memorized all the pertinent facts long ago. Both detectives had a very personal interest in John Colby, an old friend from their Academy days. At least they had thought him a friend until he turned assassin and deceived the two of them into leading him to his intended target, a witness in a Grand Jury case.

“Someone made another attempt on his life,” Dobey elaborated. “Probably another hired hit. Nate Garvin seems to be doing his best to make sure he never gets a chance to testify.” Colby had been Garvin’s hired gun, but when Starsky and Hutch foiled the hit, Colby had become a dangerous witness against the man.

“Colby’s lawyer demanded he be moved to a more secure location. They were transporting him in an unmarked van.”

Starsky glanced up from reading over Hutch’s shoulder. “I thought they already moved him a last month, after that first guy went after him in the showers.”

Hutch shook his head. “No. They just upped security in his section.” Icy blue eyes held Dobey’s. “What happened?”

“We’re not sure. The van went off the road. Smashed through a guard rail. Whether that was before or after Colby escaped, we don’t know. The Feds are keeping a pretty tight lid on things. They only let us know this much because of your involvement in Colby’s initial arrest and trial.” The captain gazed at them with steady import. “They found the guard with his neck snapped…”

“Just like the guy in the shower,” supplied Starsky in a murmur.

“The driver was dead too, but the ME says he was probably killed in the accident.”

Hutch made a small sound of irony. “John said, he never killed anyone he didn’t get paid to kill.”

“He killed the guard,” Dobey pointed out. “And that guy in the shower.”

Hutch acknowledged the correction with a shrug.

“What about Colby?” Although Hutch seemed resigned, his partner’s tone was uneasy.

Dobey scratched at his tight curls. “Some blood on a window. A few footprints in the mud around the van. Nothing much to go on. He could be hurt. We just don’t know.” His dark eyed gaze took in the two of them. “We do know he’s out there and he’s running free. They found the restraints in the van. He must have taken the keys off the guard.”

“You want us to look into it?” Hutch offered, tapping the edge of the file folder against the desk.

“No.” Dobey reached out and reclaimed the file. “The Feds are handling it. It’s their case. I just thought you two should know.”

“Yeah,” Starsky’s expression remained pensive. “Thanks, Cap’n.”

The two of them turned towards the door, Starsky reaching out with a brief touch of reassurance for his partner.

“Hutchinson.”

The detectives glanced back at their captain.

“We all heard what Colby said to you in that courtroom.” Dobey shook his finger at the blond Sergeant, masking his worry with gruffness. “Be careful out there.”

Hutch smiled his appreciation for the words of caution. “Cap, if John Colby’s on the run, he probably has more pressing matters to worry about than getting back at me, but if it will make you feel any better, I’ll look both ways and cross at the corner.” He stepped through the doorway.

Starsky paused on the threshold for a moment. Hutch’s nonchalance had done nothing to lessen the apprehension that clouded his eyes. “Uh… let us know if ya hear anythin’. ‘Kay, Cap’n?”

Dobey nodded, hearing behind Starsky’s request the underlying concern for his partner.

“I will, son.”

* * * * *

“So? What’dya think?”

“About what?” Hutch stopped beside the water fountain.

“This Colby thing.”

Leaning over to take a drink, Hutch paused, expression puzzled. “Colby?”

“Yeah. Colby.” Starsky repeated. The thought of their recent encounters with John Colby still churned up sour curds in his stomach. The anger. The betrayal. The hurt. It all festered in his gut like something spoiled, and he was uncertain whether to be hurt or annoyed by Hutch’s failure to show much interest in the subject.

Hutch took a sip from the fountain and straightened. Running a hand across his lips to wipe away the excess moisture, he gave Starsky a sharp look. “You want to know what I think? I think the Feds underestimated John and two people died, that’s what I think.” He turned and stalked down the hall. “Come on. Let’s hit the streets. Finish our shift and then meet those two lovelies at Lenny’s. You do remember the two lovelies, don’t you?”

“That’s it?” Starsky came scurrying in his wake.

Hutch threw a frown over his shoulder. “A night of dancing and a couple beautiful ladies? What more do you want?”

“What about what John said in the courtroom.”

Hutch shrugged. “Grandstanding, Starsk. John was just trying to save face.”

Starsky reached out and snagged his partner by the arm.

Hutch jerked his arm but didn’t quite pull away.

“He said if he ever got the chance he would come after you and this time he would kill you. ” Starsky face twisted with a quiet sort of pain too familiar to both of them. “It didn’t sound like grandstanding to me, Hutch. It sounded like a promise, like that time Colby told Alfred Needermyer he’d get him for laughing at him on the obstacle course. You remember what happened to Needermyer, Hutch?”

Hutch rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. “Starsky. Nobody ever proved…”

“No. You’re right.” Starsky voice was low and level, but it crackled with an potency that would not be denied. “Nobody ever proved a thing, but you and I both know that thing with the climbing rope wasn’t an accident.”

Hutch was getting angry. Cold, blue eyes glared at Starsky. “No, we don’t know that! John said he didn’t do it!”

“Oh yeah!” Starsky countered Hutch’s irritation with his own rising heat. “‘John said,’ huh? John also said he was looking for his ex-wife and son! John said he’s been a prisoner of war! John said Carpelle was out to get him! John nearly broke your head in that alley! Hutch,” Starsky softened his tone, trying to make his partner see reason. How could Hutch still defend the man who had turned Judas on them? Who had betrayed their trust and nearly made them unwitting accomplices to a hired hit? “Alfred Needermyer ended up with a busted leg. All he did was laugh when John tripped over a tire. You sent the guy to prison…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

“We sent him to prison,” Hutch corrected.

“Maybe, but it was your testimony that put the nail in the coffin. Colby knows that. He said as much.”

Hutch spun away in disgust. “You’re being paranoid.”

Starsky huffed in frustrated agitation. “Maybe. But if I am, it’s your fault.”

Incredulous blond eyebrows shot towards the ceiling. “How’d you manage to come to that brilliant conclusion?”

Starsky glowered at him. “If you were even a little worried, I wouldn’t have t’be so paranoid. I’m doin’ all the work here!”

For a moment, Hutch studied his partner in open mouthed amazement, then he shook his head. “You know something. You are really weird sometimes.”

“Yeah?” Starsky grumbled. “Well, you’re really weird all’a time!”

Turning, Hutch strode down the hall, muttering under his breath. “Have to be to put up with you.”

Oblivious, Starsky tagged behind, determined to keep the blonde in sight. He wouldn’t rest easy till Colby was back behind bars.

* * * *

Candy and Sissie had proved delightful company. The fact that the girls apparently harbored some old-fashioned ideas concerning what was proper on a first date was actually rather refreshing, or so Hutch told himself. Starsky, of course, had loudly and vehemently disagreed with that particular point of view, and had not responded well to Hutch’s attempts to temper his frustration with the reminder that the two of them were due to meet with assistant district attorney Bob Jefferson at 8:30 the next morning to discuss a current case, and a night of unbridled passion would not be conducive to either a prompt arrival in the DA’s office or to a coherent presentation. As it was, Starsky didn’t pull up in front of Hutch’s canal side home till well after midnight. At that point, foot sore and just a bit buzzed on beer, all Hutch really wanted was a warm shower and bed.

As the Torino came to a halt he let out a grateful sigh, closing his eyes for a moment to listen to the sounds of the crickets through the open windows.

“Thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime. Want me to pick you up in the mornin’?”

Hutch considered, then replied in the negative. “Don’t worry about it. I need to get some groceries tomorrow, so I’ll just bring my car.”

With a groan, he opened the door and started to slip out of the passenger seat.

“Hey…”

Starsky’s voice caught him up short. “Yeah?”

Starsky was watching him as though unsure of what to say next. “You want some company, maybe?”

Hutch’s pained expression was making it plain he really wasn’t in the mood for further socializing. “Starsk. It’s late. I’m really whipped. I just want to get some sleep.”

Starsky shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. “That’s okay. You sleep. I’ll just crash on the couch.”

“On the…?” Hutch’s head came up suddenly, gaze sharp with realization. “Starsk!”

“What?” Starsky tried for innocent. “So I crash on the couch? What’s the big deal?”

“You know exactly what the big deal is!”

“But…”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Starsky.”

“Who said anything about…?”

“Don’t…” Hutch raised one finger in warning. “No more.”

Starsky subsided into frustrated silence, staring at his hands where they clenched the steering wheel.

Strange, thought Hutch, to know someone so well that you can carry on an entire argument without either of you every coming out and saying what you are arguing about. And yet, you know. You both know.

Colby.

Though unspoken, the awareness was there between them.

Hutch let his breath out slowly, feeling the tension loosen in his chest. He understood Starsky’s need to protect, had felt it himself on hundreds of occasions, but there was a fine line between being protected and being smothered.

“Starsky,” he said softly, trying to soothe some of the hurt. “It’s okay. I just… I’ll be all right.”

“Yeah.” Starsky nodded, unhappy but resigned. “Okay.”

“Besides,” Hutch added, seeking to lighten the mood. “We’re due in court in the morning, in case you forgot.”

“How can I? You keep remindin’ me every five minutes,” Starsky’s tone, low and stubborn, made it clear he wasn’t above indulging in a momentary sulk.

“So are the Devereaux files,” Hutch prodded, trying not to sound patronizing and not quite succeeding.

“So?”

“So I’m willing to lay odds you haven’t even started getting them in order.” Eyebrows rose knowingly. “Have you?”

“I’ve been working on them!” Starsky bluffed, using indignation to mask his culpability. “Besides, I still say that game wasn’t kosher!”

“Sorry, Starsk.” Hutch smiled, knowing perfectly well Starsky hadn’t opened the files since he took them home. “A deal’s a deal.”

“She goosed me, Hutch! That ain’t fair!”

“You never complained before.”

“I wasn’t playin’ pool before!”

Hutch shook his head, his expression one of false sympathy. “Being a sore loser about isn’t going to get you off taking care of the Devereaux files.”

The wager had actually been Starsky’s idea, proposed after a few lucky shots at the pool table had him feeling invincible. When he had wanted to lay a bet, Hutch had claimed poverty, and Starsky had suggested the bet the files instead of money. “Whoever loses is in charge of gettin’ the files ready for the DA. Deal?”

Starsky had lost, and over the past few days had continued to argue the legality of the game, claiming as his defense that Huggy’s new bar maid had grabbed his ass in passing just as he was making the crucial shot. The charge had never been substantiated.

Starsky glowered at his partner waiting beside the car. “They’ll be ready!”

“They’d better be, buddy.” Hutch warned, shutting the door to the Torino. “Or you’ll be the one to explaining it all to Jefferson ’cause I guarantee I’ll be indisposed.” He started towards the cottage.

Starsky leaned across the seat to shout through the passenger window. “Hey, Hutch!”
Hutch paused and glanced back.

“Watch yourself.”

Hutch’s smile was one of tender exasperation. I hear ya.

“See you in the morning,” he called and bounded up the steps. A final wave and he disappeared through the door.

Starsky sighed and started the car. Best be heading home. He had some files to sort.

*****

Hutch’s feet pounded the pavement in a steady rhythm as he completed his circuit of the small, neighborhood park and headed back towards his canal-side cottage. He was glad he was on the final leg of his jogging route. Despite the early hour, the air was starting to warm up fast. One of the joys of the Bay City springtime. Hutch had worked up a pretty good sweat, and his jogging suit was starting to cling uncomfortably to his damp skin.

The sky was lightening from hazy gray to lavender as the city began to come to life. Shopkeepers were unlocking doors and rolling back shutters and the early-bird vendors were on the street setting up their wares.

A passing paper boy pitched the morning edition of the Bay City Times onto a porch, then swerved his bike out of Hutch’s path with a wave. The detective returned the greeting, and glanced at his watch and grimaced. It was getting late. He’d had trouble rolling out of bed that morning. A night spent with the two lovely Kentucky ladies he and Starsky had met the day before had not been conducive to an early start. Although the evening’s festivities had never progressed beyond plenty of good food, sharing some getting-to-know-you chatter and braving the dance floor perhaps a mite more often than Hutch would have liked, he still hadn’t managed to crawl into bed till after 2:00 AM.

Hutch’s thoughts skipped along in counterpoint to the rhythm of his feet against the pavement. Wiping a wrist band across his sweaty forehead, he reminded himself to call Starsky when he got home. Make sure he had the Devereaux files in order. After all, if Starsky hadn’t organized the files, it was going to be both their asses hanging in a sling either of Dobey’s or Jefferson’s fashioning.

Engrossed in speculation about the upcoming meeting, his ears filled with the harsh panting of his own breath, Hutch didn’t hear the approaching chocolate brown sedan, didn’t see it swerve off the road and onto the sidewalk behind him. Some instinct warned him in the instant before impact, and he turned, face reflecting sudden horror as the car’s front fender slammed into his legs, sending his body cart wheeling over the hood and into the windshield. The windshield fractured under the blow, but remained intact, marked by a fine web of lines radiated outward. Tires screeching, the car jerked to a halt, and Hutch was flung free to land in a sprawled heap on the pavement. Torn from his foot, a green running shoe tumbled end over end into the street.

The driver side door of the sedan was thrown open, and a worried looking man with a handsome, square-jawed face and thick, brown hair scrambled out and hurried towards the prone detective.

From across the street sounded a ragged scream, and a plump, young woman in a brightly colored muumuu came rushing out the door of a small, convenience store. As she hustled across the wide street she threw aside the bag of groceries she was carrying and raised her arms to wave them frantically over her head. The bag hit the street and burst, oranges and apples springing free to roll gaily into the gutter.

Shrieking with panic, the woman bore down on the driver of the sedan and unconscious detective. Reaching them, she jerked to a halt and began hopping from one foot to another, losing one Dr. Scholl sandal in the process. As she wailed and flapped her arms in a macabre dance of hysteria, her long brunette tresses escaped from their colorful combs and began to tumble free in disheveled tangles, writhing around her head like Medusas snakes.
The woman’s continuous screeching was about as melodious as fingernails caressing a chalkboard, and the driver looked up in annoyance, strands of brown hair falling rakishly over one eye.

“Will you shut up!”

His sharp words silenced her as effectively as a slap across the face.

The young man glanced furtively up and down the street as though searching for something. Leaning forward, he slid two fingers down the side of Hutch’s jaw, seeking a pulse.

“Oh my God! Is he dead? Is he dead?” the young woman babbled, on the verge of hyperventilating.

The man looked up, as though surprised to find her still there.

“No. Just unconscious.” As if on cue, Hutch groaned and weakly stirred on the ground.

“Oh God, Kenneth!” The woman threw herself down rather awkwardly next to Hutch.

“You know him?” the driver of the sedan asked, his eyes narrowing warily.

“Yes! Yes!” The woman rocked back and forth on her knees, fingers tugging fitfully at her puka bead choker. “Kenneth Hutchinson. He’s a friend. A police officer…” Sobbing, she pointed down the street. “He lives… just across the bridge… down there.”

The driver glanced up and down the quiet street with an expression of consternation. “Great,” he muttered, the tone heavy with sarcasm.

The woman leaned forward peering into Hutch’s face. “Kenneth? Can you hear me? Oh, he’s bleeding!” She flapped her hands helplessly. “He’s dying! Oh, Lord!”

The young man shot her a look of raw disgust which she never saw. Careful of the torn jogging suit and raw skinned abrasions on arms and legs, he began straightening Hutch’s limbs. “No he’s not. He’ll be okay, but I think I’d better get him to a hospital.” He reached to grasp Hutch under the shoulders.

“What?” The woman sat back scrubbing at the wetness on her cheeks. “Don’t you think… we should call an ambulance? I think we should call an ambulance!”

“No. This will be faster.” The driver lifted Hutch by the shoulders with a grunt and began to tug him towards the sedan. “Just get his feet.”

“No. No. I couldn’t,” she moaned, clenching fists of floral fabric tightly to her body. “Oh, God, There so much blood. He’s dying! I know he’s dying! He’s going to die right here on the street!”

“Then get the car door!” the man barked. The woman shut her mouth with a snap. Giving the driver a startled look, she scurried to the car, yanking open the front passenger door.
“The back door!”

“Oh…” Almost fearfully she hurried to obey.

Ignoring the woman, who seemed capable of little else than getting in the way and delivering dire prophesies, the driver finally managed to get Hutch situated across the back seat. “There,” he panted scrambling out of the back seat and slamming to door.

The woman was peering at him thoughtfully. “Don’t I know you?”

“What?” The man froze, one hand on the handle to the driver’s door.

“Fifi Dearbourne.” She patted herself just above her buxom bosom. “I think we’ve met.” Studying him closely, her brow wrinkled in concentration. “I never forget a face.”

Blues eyes narrowing, he took a step closer to her. “Is that right?” The sound of a barking dog drew him to a halt. He glanced up and down the street, noticing the swift approach of a man walking his dog. A cafe waiter carrying patio chairs onto the sidewalk paused and glanced in their direction. A clerk had appeared from the small grocery across the street and was hurrying towards them.

Giving the woman a dark look, he yanked open the door and slid into the driver’s seat. “Talent like that could get you killed.”

With a lurch and a shriek the car sped away, leaving Fifi standing dumfounded in its wake.

* * * * *

Pain. For Hutch, the world was composed of pain. Dull, throbbing pain seemed to swell and recede like a pulsing tide, and a sharp, abrading pain defined the edges of his existence. For a time, he was pain, and pain was all there was. Then something else began to filter into his foggy awareness. Something different. A voice. He tried to concentrate on the voice — concentrate on it because it was the only thing that was not a part of the pain — but concentration was difficult. His mind seemed wrapped in cotton and the edges of his thoughts were blunt. Understanding came sluggishly if at all.

“I hope you’re not dead back there. I don’t want you dead… not quite yet. I want him to know you’re still alive. I want him to know you’re alive and he can’t find you. I want you both to know I beat you. And some day, when they do find you, I want him to know that you waited for him to come and that he didn’t get to you in time. I want him to know he failed you. But I guess it doesn’t really matter. Where you’re going, it won’t matter if you’re dead or alive.”

He thought maybe the voice was talking to him, and he tried to answer, tried to explain that he was hurt. He knew he was hurt. The pain told him he was hurt, but he didn’t know how. And when he tried to ask the voice for help, he couldn’t form the words, and when he tried to move, his body wouldn’t answer.

Blackness ate away the edges of his world and for a while he went away…

* * * * *

Starsky was convinced that the fates were conspiring to ruin his day. He was running late, and it wasn’t fair because he had made every effort to be on time that morning so that he and Hutch could make their early meeting with assistant district attorney Jefferson to go over a few points on the Devereaux case. Losing a pool bet with his partner had put Starsky in charge of making sure all the Devereaux files were properly organized before turning them over to the assistant DA, and despite getting home late the night before, Starsky had stayed up for another two hours insuring that all the i’s were dotted and all the t’s crossed. He was determined to make Hutchinson pay for the smug confidence with which he had ventured his guess that Starsky had done nothing to get the records prepared. The files were in perfect order. Unfortunately, Starsky was a mere three blocks from Parker Center when he realized they were also still sitting in the middle of his kitchen table back at his apartment. Flipping a U-turn in heavy traffic, he raced back to retrieve the files. Red lights blossomed at every intersection, an overturned fruit truck slowed traffic to a trickle as people drove by gawking at the sight, and a malfunctioning signal light turned a major intersection into a four way stop. Starsky sat and swore, repeatedly slamming his hand against the steering wheel.

By the time he finally pulled into the Metro parking lot, he was late for work and precariously close to being late for their appointment. Had the Devereaux records been at the office, he would have assumed Hutch had taken them and gone on ahead to the DA’s, but most of the files were scattered beside him on the car seat.

Gathering up the files, Starsky dashed up the steps, trying to formulate some sort of plausible excuse to counter his partner’s inevitable explosion.

However, it wasn’t Hutchinson who barked at him the moment he crossed the threshold into the squad room.

“Starsky!” Captain Dobey stood glowering in the doorway to his office. “Aren’t you supposed to be meeting with Jefferson? You’re late!”

Starsky glanced at his watch. “Not for another 15 minutes, Cap’n.” He tried a sheepish grin. “There was an accident. A truck load of cantaloupe, all over the road. Had traffic tied up f’miles…”

But Dobey wasn’t listening. “And where’s your partner?”

Starsky blinked. “Hutch? Ain’t he here?”

“If he was here,” roared the Captain, “would I be asking you where he is?”

Starsky glanced around the squad room, as though certain Hutch was around somewhere and Dobey had simply overlooked him, not that the tall blond was particularly easy to overlook. Hutch’s absence was as much a puzzle as a relief. If Hutch were late, then Starsky wouldn’t have to endure his partner’s griping about his own tardiness. However, Starsky could think of no reason his punctual partner should be absent at this time of the morning, unless he himself had gotten caught in the same traffic snarl as Starsky.

With a shrug, he turned a guileless look on his superior. “Dunno, Cap’n. Maybe he got stuck in traffic.”

“You’re both going to be stuck in something a whole lot worse if you don’t get over the DA’s with those reports!”

“Right, Cap’n.” Starsky began gathering up a few additional papers from his desk. Most of the captain’s bellowing was for effect only, but Starsky and his partner had found themselves temporarily assigned to traffic detail enough times to learn that the man did have limits. “I’m on my way.” He hurried towards the door. “When Hutch comes in, tell him I went on ahead.” He smiled, anticipating the sheepish look on Hutch’s face when it was he who showed up late at the DA’s office and found Starsky already waiting with a stack of perfectly ordered files.
He just reached the swinging double doors when Minnie Kaplan, a fellow officer and friend, pushed into the room. Starsky stood aside to let her pass, but instead the slender, black woman reached out and snagged him by the arm.

“Starsky, where you been? Someone’s been trying to reach you all morning.”

“Not now, Minnie.” Starsky shot a pointed glance towards Captain Dobey who still stood sentry in the doorway to his office. “I gotta get to a meeting.”

He started to pull away, but Minnie’s slim strength didn’t let him go. “Honey. I think you better listen to this.”

“Minnie…”

Minnie’s liquid, brown eyes were somber, her small mouth pulled tight in tension.

Starsky stopped pulling against her, a sudden chill of trepidation creeping up the nape of his neck. “What?”

“I got four calls from someone named Fifi Dearbourne wanting to talk to you.”

“Fifi?” Starsky shook his head, expression clouding in confusion.

Minnie’s voice was uncharacteristically serious, containing none of the easy teasing he’d come to expect from her. “This time she left a message. She wanted to know if Hutch was okay.”

The confusion didn’t lift. “Hutch?”

Minnie’s grip tensed on his arm, a small grimace tightening her features. “She said he’d been hit by a car.”

* * * * *

By a slow process of elimination Hutch was able to differentiate which of the numerous aches that assaulted him was solely related to his head. Once he located his head, or what was left of it, he was able to concentrate on a simple task. Opening his eyes. Only it wasn’t that simple, and when he finally did manage to crack them, they opened on a disappointing world of fuzzy grays and browns, a nauseating soup without definition. He had to blink several times to clear his vision, so when he finally realized there was someone leaning over him, Hutch didn’t know if they’d just appeared or if they’d been watching him for a while.

A blurry face was looking down, and Hutch thought he should know that face, but he couldn’t find a name anywhere in the scrambled circuitry of his mind.

“Hello,” said the face. “Waking up?” The face leaned closer. “Not going to give me any trouble are you? You’re already pretty messed up, golden boy. I’d hate to have to damage anything else.”

Hutch squinted at the face. A name began to form somewhere in the confusion of his thoughts.

“J… John?” He was surprised when the word actually slipped from his lips.

The face seemed surprised too. “I guess you are in there. I thought maybe you’d checked out permanently.” The face loomed close, and for a moment the features puddled and swam together like a abstract watercolor. “Happy as I am to have the satisfaction of knowing that you know who did this to you, I’m not exactly prepared for a confrontation at this time, so I’ll have to ask you to refrain from any resistance for a while.”

Hutch struggled to focus on the face, trying to reconstruct it into some semblance of order. “J… John? What…?” He made an effort to sit up.

The face looked disappointed. “Now, I was afraid of something like that. Why can’t you ever just do what you’re told?”

A fist twisted in the fabric of Hutch’s jogging suit, yanking him forward slightly. Hutch gasped as the world lurched and spun like a crazed kaleidoscope. He considered throwing-up.

“Night-night,” said the face.

Hutch saw the fist drawback, but could do nothing to avoid it. It smashed into his chin, and he went away again.

* * * * *

Hutch? Hit by a car?

Starsky hadn’t been able to get much in the way of useful information out of Fifi over the phone. The woman had a penchant for hysteria and exaggeration that made it difficult to interpret her story. Hutch’s injuries might be serious, or he could be suffering from something as simple as a sprained knee. However, calls to all the local hospitals had turned up no patient named Kenneth Hutchinson. Nor had there been any reports of a blond John Doe brought in for injuries consistent with being stuck by a car.

Something was wrong. Starsky felt it. He knew it, just like he always knew when Hutch was in trouble. He couldn’t explain it. Didn’t really even understand it, but he and Hutch had been in enough tight spots for him to know that the vague uneasy, jittery sensation in the pit of his stomach meant that somewhere, somehow his partner was in danger, and that whatever threatened him, it was something more perilous than a sprained knee.

He hoped that talking to Fifi face to face would provide him with something more substantial than the ambiguous rambling he’d had to endure over the phone. Hutch was in trouble. That much he knew, but he couldn’t help till he understood what that trouble was.

So here he was, sitting on Fifi Dearbourne’s yellow and lime green flower print sofa, waiting for her to return with a glass of lemonade.

He didn’t really want lemonade. In fact, the thought of drinking anything at the moment made him feel slightly queasy, but he had accepted the offer of lemonade in hopes it would keep her from suggesting anything else. Since he’d walked in the door she had seemed determined to ply him with food.

An offer of home-baked chocolate chip cookies and tea had been the second sentence out of her mouth when she answered the door. The first had been, “Here. You should have this,” as she had shoved the green Nike into his hands.

At first he hadn’t recognized what it was or what it meant. He stood there holding the shoe in complete bewilderment. Then he realized he knew the shoe. It was Hutch’s shoe. Hutch’s running shoe, and suddenly Starsky had needed very badly to sit down.

He sat now, turning the shoe over and over, holding it, idly tracing the blue swoosh without really being aware that it was in his hands.

“Here we go.” Fifi came bustling out of the kitchen, two of her several cats scampering in her wake. Fifi Dearbourne’s apartment wasn’t large, but it was cheerily decorated in yellow and green embroidered gingham curtains and throw pillows and was home to a colorful collection of cats. Starsky wasn’t sure how many. They seemed to be everywhere.

Fifi set a tray on the coffee table and Starsky noted in some dismay that it not only held two glasses and a pitcher of lemonade, but a plateful of cookies and an entire assortment of finger foods and small sandwiches, all of which he had repeatedly turned down when offered.

“You should eat something,” she said, offering egg salad on rye. “I always eat when I get upset. It helps calm me down.” She giggled, her laughter sounding strained. “I’ve been eating all morning. Probably gained a hundred pounds. Baked a whole batch of cookies. Fifteen of them. I know, because I counted when I took them out of the oven. Know how many are left? Five. Only five. I ate all the rest. That’s how upset I’ve been…” She was babbling, talking to try and keep the anxiety at bay.

“Fifi,” Starsky broke in gently, patting the couch next to him. “Sit down. Please. I’m really not hungry. I just wanna know what happened t’Hutch.”

“I told you.” Fifi settled next to him and picked up one of the cats at her feet. Plopping it into her lap, she began to stroke the soft fur as she talked. “This man just ran him down in this big, brown car. A Plymouth.” She considered for a moment, consulting a mental image. “A Fury. That was it. A Plymouth Fury.”

“And you talked to this guy?”

She nodded. “He said he was taking Kenneth to the hospital.”

“But he didn’t.”

“I don’t know. He said he was.” Her round face puckered in distress “I’m sorry, Dave. I never should have let him put Kenneth in his car. I should have called an ambulance, but…” Her chin began to tremble and she glanced down at the cat in her lap. “He seemed to know what he was doing. I thought it was all right.”

“Fifi.” Starsky reached out to pat one plump knee. “It wasn’t your fault. You did what you thought was right. But you can help me now.”

She glanced up, meeting his earnest gaze with eyes glistening with tears.

“Now, I want you to start at the beginning. Tell me everything you remember.” He took a sip of the lemonade. It tasted bitter in his mouth.

He knew she would. Fifi had a “thing” for Hutch — a crush — whatever you wanted to call it — Fifi Dearbourne was attracted to Ken Hutchinson, and Starsky knew she would do everything she could to help in hopes that, in return, the blond detective would grant her the kind of attention she craved.

It wasn’t likely. Hutch’s tastes tended towards slender, leggy blondes, not plump, matronly brunettes. Even if Fifi’s physical appearance had won Hutch’s approval, it was unlikely they would ever be more than casual friends. Fifi was a caretaker, almost overbearing in her need to “do” for others, to fix them a meal, bake them a cake, clean their house. Subjecting Hutch to that kind of attention would probably drive him away faster than announcing some sort of nasty social disease. Hutch was too independent to respond well to “mothering”. In fact, Starsky doubted his introspective partner had even been mothered much, even as a child.
But being the center of Ken Hutchinson’s world was Fifi’s dream, and Starsky wasn’t about to dissuade her, especially if he could use that infatuation to push her just a little harder, to make her dig just a little deeper into her memories in hopes of finding some clue, some detail that might help him find his partner.

So he pushed, nudged, cajoled, and she told him everything she could recall.

Her physical description of the driver of the car, a handsome, young man of a medium height, with brown hair and blue eyes, could fit thousands in the Bay City area, but other things she told him might prove vital.
For one, she was able to give him a partial license number.

“Five… something…THP. There was a five, but I can’t remember the rest of the numbers. I was trying to pay attention, you know? For the accident report.” Her face crumpled a bit. “But I was just so upset!”

Smiling in encouragement he patted her on the knee. “You did real good. Brown Plymouth Fury, license 5…something…THP. That’s great. We should make you a detective.”

“The strangest thing,” murmured Fifi, her fingers carding through the cat’s fur, “is that I know I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

Starsky sat forward in surprise. “Seen him?”

“Yeah. I told him I thought I knew him and it seemed to make him angry.” She looked at Starsky worriedly. “He scared me.”

“Fifi.” Starsky leaned closer to her, gripping her by both shoulders. “I want you to think. Think real hard. Where did you see him before?”

Her shoulders slumped under his hands. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I keep seeing him with blood on his face.”

“Blood?”

She nodded.

“The accident? Was he bleeding? Maybe he bumped his head.”

“No, he wasn’t bleeding this morning, but I feel like when I saw him before he was.”

Starsky tried to imagine where she might have seen someone wounded in some way. “A news report maybe? On the T.V.? In the newspaper?”

“No…” Fifi mumbled tentatively. Then more firmly, “No. I know I met him in person. At a party I think. And he had blood on his face. Dripping down his face.” She traced one finger absently down the side of her round cheek.

“Fifi. You gotta remember.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Hutch is in trouble.”

Fifi Dearbourne scrunched her face into a knot, seeming to concentrate so hard she might very well burst.

“A Halloween Party maybe?” offered Starsky, trying to help her recall. “Maybe he was made up as a monster or something.”

“No… I… Oh!” She sat up straight with a jolt. “I remember now! I saw him at your party!”

“My party?” Starsky echoed in astonishment, hands dropping to his lap. “What? When?”

“You remember!” Fifi flapped one hand in excitement. “You guys had a party, at Kenneth’s place! I brought cold cuts! Remember?”

Starsky was shaking his head, a look of complete befuddlement hanging on his features.

“Geena was there, and that nice guy, Mark, from the gym. You introduced us.”

“I introduced you to the guy who hit Hutch with the car?”

“No…” Fifi sighed in exasperation. “To Mark. You introduced me to Mark. The guy in the car came later. He came to the door. I don’t know if he was invited, or what, but he came to the door and he was all bloody. He’d been in a fight. He was a friend of yours, in the Navy or the Air Force or something. I got him a towel for his head. For the blood.” She grabbed Starsky by one arm, giving him a little shake. “He was looking for his ex-wife, I think. And his kid…”

“His…” Starsky’s face blanched as confusion congealed into icy dread. Suddenly he knew what kind of trouble Hutch was up against. “My God. Colby!”

John Colby had Hutch!

*****

“Hutch. Come on, Hutch. Wake up now. Come on.”

Somebody was shaking him — not gently. Rough hands on his shoulders, shaking, jarring his fragile hold on consciousness. The back of his head thumped against something hard and he groaned at the sudden flare of nauseating pain.

“Hutch!” Angry now. A slap that left a burning echo across one cheek.

He blinked, eyes shuttering open on a shadowy silhouette limned by a backdrop of too bright grayish white. Sky, he realized, squinting against the light. He was lying on his back, looking up at sky.

“There you are. Feeling a little under the weather, ol’ buddy?”

The silhouette resolved into a familiar figure. Tousled brown hair. Boyish, handsome face. Crinkled blue eyes and easy smile. A mask of innocence worn by a monster.

Hutch licked his lips, searching for his voice. “Colby?” he croaked.

John Colby grinned, looking pleased. “Give the boy a cigar.”

Hutch wriggled, trying to sit up.

Colby planted a firm foot in the center of Hutch’s chest and thrust him back. “Leaving so soon? Now, that would be rude.”

Hutch made a grab for the ankle, and cried out as sudden pain shot up his right arm. Something wasn’t right with that arm. And his hands were tied, secured with heavy twine.

Colby snatched his foot away and jammed it beneath Hutch’s jaw, his boot pressing on his throat with just enough pressure to serve as a warning. “I wouldn’t,” Colby hissed. “You can die right now.”

Hutch lay still, breath and clotted saliva rasping in his throat.

“That’s it,” Colby grinned, the smile a mockery. “Just take it easy. I’ve gone through a lot of trouble to set this up, and I’d be real shame if I had to crush your windpipe before we had a chance to talk. Wouldn’t it?”

Easing off just slightly, he allowed Hutch a few unimpeded gulps of air.

“Now, seeing as you got a pretty good knock on the head, you better pay close attention because I’m only going to say this once. You can listen or not. Your choice.” Colby waved his arms in a magnanimous gesture. “Either way, you’re going to die, but if you listen, you might live a little longer. And there’s always the chance Starsky might find you, right?” Colby’s laughter sounded cold, and it ceased abruptly as if it had been strangled.

“I’m going to bury you, Hutchinson. Send you on a one way trip to bottomless perdition. Not six feet under. Not yet. But close enough. Twelve inches between you and salvation. One foot from freedom. Just twelve inches of dirt between you and life. Think of it!”

The threat of Colby’s foot against his throat kept Hutch quiescent, but his eyes roved, taking in his surroundings. From what he could see, he appeared to be confined inside a rectangular, wooden crate with a hinged lid. The crate was long enough to lie down in without having to bend his body, but once the lid was closed it would be too shallow to allow him to sit up. Not unlike a large trunk, or… A shudder of understanding turned Hutch’s skin to gooseflesh. He was lying in a coffin! Colby wasn’t speaking figuratively — he really meant to bury Hutch alive.

“No!” The shout of protest was instinctive, the denial of an almost primal fear. The fear of dark places, of silence and dying and death. The fear of the grave.

“There’s a couple pipes for air.” Colby continued as though Hutch hadn’t spoken a word. “It’ll be stuffy, but as long as you don’t knock around too much and clog up the pipe with dirt, you won’t suffocate. You can try shouting, but I assure you, there’s no one to hear. You’ll just wear yourself out.”

“You can’t! John…” The panic in Hutch’s voice shamed him, but he couldn’t seem to control it. Buried alive…!

“Oh, but I can,” Colby corrected in a mild tone. “That’s the beauty of it. I already have. I owe you this one, Hutchinson. You signed my death warrant when you arrested me. Garvin would never let me live to testify. You knew that when you took me in, but it didn’t stop you. Your ideals at the price of my life? Well, I’m sorry ol’ buddy, but I’ve got other plans, for both of us.” He bent close, looming over Hutch, blocking out the light, an avenging specter of darkness. “Do you remember in the Academy? When we were always the three on top? Starsky, Hutchinson and Colby. Crème de la crème. But it was always Starsky at the top on the firing range and maneuvers, and you on the top in academics and in the gym. You remember? I was always second fiddle to one of you. Never first. Well, this time I beat both of you. This time John Colby comes out on top. How’s that feel? How’s it feel to know you’ve been bested, Hutchinson?”

Hutch tried to roll to the side, shifting away from the heavy foot pressing on his throat, bringing his legs up to strike. The boot jammed down hard, cutting off his air, and his legs thrashed uselessly against the sides of the crate. Bruised, battered and tied at the ankles, Hutch’s legs were too fatigued to respond to his mental commands.

“Ah, ah, ah!” scolded Colby, his sad smile seeming almost genuine. “That’s a no-no. Though, I suppose I would have been disappointed if you didn’t try something.”

Choking on saliva and trapped air, Hutch tried to claw at the foot pressing down on his windpipe, but he couldn’t get his right arm to bend correctly. Tied to his left, it flopped uselessly against the sides of the crate.

“You know the strange thing, Hutch. Back at the Academy? You and Starsky… I really did think of you guys as my friends. Or as close to friends as I’ve ever had.”

The edges of Hutch’s vision began to dissolve into pinpricks of darkness.

“Know something else? Killing strangers was just a job. But killing a friend… It’s a rush. Doing this to you and Starsky, is a real kick. Best ever. I just wish we had more time to play. I thought about cutting you up bit by bit and mailing you back to Starsky one piece at a time, all done up nice like Christmas.” Colby’s face split into a parody of a grin. “Pretty sick, huh? Unfortunately, I can’t hang around, not with Garvin out for blood, so gotta wrap this up quick.” He leaned closer, grabbing Hutch’s jaw, crushing his cheeks in a tight grip and forcing the dulling eyes to gaze into his own. “Maybe you were right, Hutch. Maybe I should have killed you in that alley, but this is so much more satisfying. Don’t you think?”

The foot withdrew, and Hutch had time to draw one ragged breath before the lid of the crate slammed down. Darkness closed in on Hutch like the jaws of death.

“No!” Shoving his bound hands against the heavy wooden lid he tried to thrust upward. The pain exploding in his right arm cut his efforts short with a cry. He lay panting for a moment, then smashed his knees into the lid, trying to force it open. The lid lifted a fraction before slamming back down. “John! No!”

There was the snick of a padlock as the lid was latched shut.

“No!” Hutch kicked out with his feet against the wooden wall, and banged his head against the underside of the lid. “John! For Christ’s sake! Let me out!” His voice was threaded with panic.

“Ever hear those stories about people who got sick in the past and woke up to find they’d been buried alive?” Colby’s words were thin, muffled by the thick, wooden sides of the trunk. “Ever wonder what they thought? How they felt, lying there in the dark, knowing they were just a few feet from freedom? From life? Knowing they’d been given a second chance, but that it didn’t matter because they were going to die all over again? Shall you die a living death? How gladly will you meet Mortality, your sentence, and be earth? But say that death be not one stroke, as I supposed, bereaving sense, but endless misery… What do you think of that Hutch? Was Milton right?”

Hutch battered against the sides of the crate, feeling splinters tearing into his skin, not caring. “John! Please! Don’t do this!”

“You’ll have a lot of time to wonder about it, Hutch. Lots of time. The rest of your life.”

There was a rattling sound as the first clump of earth was tossed onto the top of the crate.

“Johnny!”

* * * * *

“Calm down? What’dya mean, ‘calm down’?” Starsky stalked from one end of Captain Dobey’s cramped office to the other, shoulders hunched, body quivering with coiled tension.

If Dobey believed in such things as transcendental meditation, est and psychic auras, he suspected Starsky would be throwing off more blue sparks than a faulty transformer — but Dobey didn’t believe in such things, and he didn’t need a Mood Ring to know this particular detective was close to blowing a gasket.

“John Colby has my partner! He ran Hutch down with a car and now he’s holding him somewhere and we haven’t got a clue, and you want me to calm down?”

“Starsky!” Dobey snapped, his own patience eroding in the face of the smaller man’s frantic desperation. “We have an APB out on Hutch, Colby and the car. The Feds are after the man. It’s only a matter of time…”

“Time!” Starsky froze, his blue eyes looking almost feral beneath anxious brows. “How much time do you think Hutch has? We don’t even know how bad he’s been hurt! He was hit by a fuckin’ car, f’Christ’s sake!”

“Starsky! I’d appreciate it if you would watch your language!” Under the circumstances, Dobey expected a certain amount of unruly behavior from the volatile plainclothes detective, but he wasn’t willing to allow for vulgarity or blasphemy in his office.

“Son,” he tried for a soothing tone. “I know you’re upset, but you can’t do Hutch any good if you’re not thinking straight, and you can’t start thinking straight till you calm down.”

“I know, Cap’n.” Starsky’s expression was anguished, pleading for understanding. “It’s just I don’t know where t’start. I got nothin’ t’go on!”

Dobey waved a sheet of paper under Starsky’s nose. “We have a description of the car and a partial ID on the plate. That’s something.”

Starsky subsided a bit, but looked less than convinced. “Maybe.”

“You realize the car was probably stolen.”

“Yeah.” Starsky sighed, running a hand through curls already rumpled by a morning of similar gestures. “I already checked. Auto Theft has two reports of brown Fury sedans stolen in the last week. Neither one of them has plates matching Fifi’s description.”

Dobey frowned. “Think she might be mistaken?”

Starsky rubbed a hand across his upper lip. “No. She seemed pretty sure, and Hutch was in that car. Fifi Dearbourne is very observant when it comes to matters involving Hutch.” He thrust a finger at his captain. “You wanna know what I think? I think John switched plates. He’s not stupid, Cap’n. He set this whole thing up to get back and me an’ Hutch, an’ he ain’t gonna make it easy. He never did like it when one of us came out on top, even back at the Academy.”

“So you think he’s trying to prove something?”

“I know he is.”

“Starsky…” Dobey’s voice was soft with compassion. “You remember what Colby said to Hutch in that courtroom. He said if he ever got the chance again…”

“He’s not dead, Cap’n!”

“Dave…”

“That’s too easy. Too quick. He wouldn’t just kill Hutch. That’s not Colby’s style.” Starsky leaned over the desk, punctuating his argument with a waving hand. “He likes to play games, Cap’n. Always did. In the Academy he’d pick a mark and string ’em along for days, weeks sometimes, before playing his hand. Maybe Hutch and I were the ultimate game with him. Maybe we were his two biggest dupes, I don’t know. But I do know Hutch is alive. He has to be!”

Starsky eyes were wide and dark. Trapped in torment, they beseeched Dobey for some kind of release — begged him to have faith, to trust, to lend his strength to the reality of the words.

He has to be!

Starsky’s stricken plea hung in the office, summons to whatever powers might hear and take note.

* * * * *

“I have nothing to fear but fear itself. I have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Hutch told himself that. Told himself several times, because in the dark confines of his crate, his own voice was a measure of comfort, and because he needed to believe it. Believing it might keep the terror from swallowing him up.

The terror was alive, coiled in his chest, turning his guts to liquid nausea. Hutch could feel it twisting inside him, struggling to break free. He was afraid of what might happen if it did. He focused on his breathing, using meditative techniques to calm his nerves.

John was gone. The sound of the shovel throwing clods of dirt atop his crate had ceased long ago. Hutch had tried shouting for help, but he suspected Colby had been telling the truth when he said there was no one to hear. No one had answered his cries. No one had come.

Hutch had begun testing the confines of his trunk almost immediately. Being careful not to bend his right arm, he probed the corners and seams as far as his limited reach would allow. His feet kicked out against the walls. A gentle rain of dirt sifted through the slats of the lid. But no boards loosened, no weak joints gave way under his assault. The crate was solidly constructed. Colby had made sure of it. Finally Hutch had subsided, willing, for the moment, to admit to an impasse.

He hurt. His head still throbbed. His arm was burning more with each passing moment, and there was a new, bone-deep ache in his legs and thighs where he’d been struck by the car’s grill and fender.

Exploring tentatively with his fingers, he made an inventory of the more immediate pains, finding wet, tacky patches of torn fabric and abraded skin as well as soft, painful lumps that meant bruising. There was a chance he was seriously injured. That somewhere inside he was slowly bleeding to death. But he tried not to dwell on that. Instead he concentrated on being alive and the things that might keep him that way.

He had air. A pair of narrow pipes had been shoved through the lid of the trunk, and by shifting to one side, Hutch had been able to look up the length of the conduit of the one nearest his head. A small glimmer of light told him that the pipe extended above ground — allowing a meager breath of life. Although the air in the crate was stuffy and pressed down like a heavy blanket, he wouldn’t suffocate. Not unless something blocked the pipe, but that was one of those things he was trying not to think about.

Starsky would come. That was the strongest weapon he had to fight the creeping fear, the belief that Starsky would come, that his partner would find him. Hadn’t Johnny said that was a possibility? Hadn’t he himself offered that frayed thread of hope?

The alternative — that Colby had kidnapped Starsky too and was even now carrying out a vengeful vendetta against the dark haired detective — was a possibility Hutch dared not consider. To imagine Starsky trapped in the dark, hurt and suffering as he was, was the one thing guaranteed to strip away the last vestiges of Hutch’s control, something he couldn’t afford. Lying in a womb of darkness, surrounded by the smothering earth, with only his own breathing for companionship, madness was too close to risk playing tag.

* * * * *

Starsky was on the streets, cruising the neighborhoods and shaking down snitches in pursuit of information on Hutch, when a patch through from Captain Dobey let him know the BCPD had found the car. Chocolate-brown, Plymouth Fury. License number 542 THP. It was apparently abandoned in a derelict Shell Station. The Shell station was outside his usual patrol, but Starsky was there in ten minutes. Somehow, the Feds still managed to beat him.

Switching off the siren, Starsky slid out of the driver’s seat. The feeling brushed against his mind as he emerged from the car. A soft, tentative touch. A sense of presence as familiar to him as his own heartbeat — the sense of Hutch.

“Hutch?” Disoriented for a moment, Starsky blinked in the bright sunlight, the whisper of his partner’s name slipping from his lips without volition. Then it was gone, leaving an aching emptiness. Starsky shook his head, trying to dispel his sudden confusion. For a moment he could have sworn Hutch was with him, but now there was nothing — nothing but blinding sunlight and cracked concrete. An empty plastic bag whispered in the breeze, rolling across the ground at his feet, drifting like a featureless gray jellyfish.

The door of the Torino slammed loudly in his wake as he hurried across the parking lot. The Shell lot held three cars in addition to the Torino, a black and white police unit, the empty, brown Plymouth and a nondescript gray sedan.

Two suits were hovering around the Plymouth. FBI.

Starsky swerved towards the black and white, figuring he’d get stand a better chance of milking his fellow officers than the federal agents.

“What’cha got?”

A uniformed officer leaning in the open window of the police car, straightened and turned to Starsky. Sunlight flared off the young cop’s platinum hair and Starsky swallowed a sudden lump of emotion.

“Who wants to know?”

“Detective Starsky.” Starsky pulled his badge and flashed it at the young police officer. He gestured towards the brown sedan. “I think this car may have been used in the kidnapping of my partner.”

The second uniformed officer opened the door of the squad car and stood. He was older, with a compact, stocky build that seemed as stolid as a brick wall.

“Sergeant Starsky?” He held out a meaty hand. “Paul McCaffery. This is my partner Jerimiah Pickens.”

The blond winced, then flashed a weak grin at Starsky. “J. T. Pickens.”

“We heard about your partner, Hutchinson,” continued McCaffery. “Real sorry about that.”

“Yeah.” Starsky’s reply was clipped. He didn’t have the time or the emotional control necessary to deal with their sympathy. “We’ll get him back. Just tell me what you know.”

Pickens checked the notes scribbled on his note pad. “Not much. People around here are either real unobservant or just uncooperative. No one seems to remember whether the car has been here or if it just showed up.”

“Yeah, temporary amnesia,” Starsky grunted. It was a syndrome with which he and Hutch were quite familiar

“Hey!” A voice caught their attention. As one they turned to watch the tall, lanky man in the navy suit striding towards them.

“You David Starsky?”

Starsky’s blue eyes raked the agent from receding hair line to shiny leather oxfords. “Sergeant Starsky. That’s right.”

The fed held out a perfunctory hand for a shake. “Agent Fred Dahlgrin. We heard about your theory that John Colby has kidnapped your partner.”

Starsky’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “It ain’t a theory. Colby has Hutch.”

Dahlgrin smiled as though humoring the detective. “Well, we’ll know that as soon as our lab boys go over the car.”

“The license is registered to a Mrs. Belinda Kulpatrick,” noted McCaffery. “We’re sending a unit over there now.”

“Doubt it’s hers,” noted Starsky. “I think the plates were switched.”

“Nobody touches this car,” Dahlgrin warned. “Not till we go over it with a fine toothed comb.”

Starsky gave him a look that promised trouble if he were thwarted. “I’m not ‘nobody’.” He headed towards the abandoned brown sedan.

Dahlgrin fell in step beside him. “Okay, but try not to get fingerprints all over everything. Make my job easier.”

“You check out the car yet?

“Yes. Not much to go on. A couple cigarette butts. An old coffee cup. A black Marks-A-Lot.” He shot Starsky a measuring look. “Front bumpers dented, windshield looks like it took a hard hit from something, and there are blood stains in the back seat.”

Starsky paused, his hand stretching towards the car door handle. Turning, he searched Dahlgrin’s face, almost afraid of the knowledge he might find there. But there was only an appropriate expression of bland, professional sympathy that told him nothing.

He yanked open the car door.

“Wait a minute! What are you doing?” The second suit hurried over. “Get away from there!”

“Easy Bill,” interjected Dahlgrin, smoothly intercepting his fellow agent, a short, wiry man with narrow, dark eyes and thinning hair. “This is Sergeant Starsky. He and his partner Hutchinson are the two detectives that nailed Colby.”

“They’re also the ones that lead him straight to Carpelle!”

Face impassive, Starsky studied the small man in the powder blue, polyester suit. “An’ you are?” His voice was level, almost bored, but anyone who knew the detective would have recognized the perilous look behind the hooded, indigo eyes. When his partner was threatened, David Starsky could be a very dangerous man to anyone who got in his way.

“This is agent Bill Akers.” Dahlgrin kept one hand on Akers shoulder and sent Starsky a reassuring smile.

“How’dya do?” muttered Starsky, sounding not at all like he cared one way or another. He slid into the front seat of the Fury. The feeling was stronger inside the car.

Hutch is here.

Hutch was here, Starsky amended as he began to search the interior.

“Hey!” objected Akers.

“Sergeant Starsky.” Dahlgrin leaned in the open door, his smile slightly strained. “It’ll be a lot easier for our lab boys to do their job if you’d refrain from touching anything.”

“I’m sure it would.”

Visually he scanned the dash and floor, then fished under both front seats, finding nothing. Leaning across the seats, he popped the glove compartment.

“Get him out of there,” came Akers’ aggrieved voice.

“Now, Bill. Sergeant Starsky is naturally concerned about his partner. I think we should let him search the car. Maybe he’ll come up with something.”

Starsky twisted in the seat and glanced into the back. His breath caught at the sight of the rusty patches on the upholstery of the rear seat. Blood.

Hutch’s blood?

Starsky sought reassurance from his observations that the smeared bloodstains seemed too sparse be evidence of major hemorrhaging.

Crawling out of the car, he turned his attention to the two agents. “You turn anything on this car, you call Captain Dobey at Metropolitan headquarters. Anything. Fingerprints. Gum wrapper. Dead cockroach. I wanna know about it.”

“Who do you think you are, ordering us around? We don’t work for you,” protested Akers, freckles standing out on his round, pale face.

Starsky fixed the wiry federal agent with a savage look. “Now you listen, an’ you listen good. Colby’s out there, and he has my partner, ’cause of you. We gave you Colby, and you let him loose on Hutch. I ain’t gonna forget that, an’ if I find out you knew something an’ you didn’t tell me, I’ll take you apart.”

Akers’ snorted incredulously. “Are you threatening a Federal Agent?”

Starsky’s expression didn’t waver. “I don’t make threats.” Turning his back on Akers, he dismissed the agent from his thoughts and concentrated on Dahlgrin. “What about the buildings around here? You search ’em?”

“We’ve got a team out and some local officers.”

Starsky squinted in the bright sun and glanced up and down the near deserted street. The neighborhood was mainly derelict buildings and weed covered lots. Starsky peered at the buildings, hunkered beneath the sky, somnolent monsters of brick and mortar, crouched amid abandoned dreams. Their empty brick facades stared back at him through broken panes, their mouths boarded shut and silent. He couldn’t shake the impression that his partner was somewhere nearby, maybe just inside a doorway or behind a fence, possibly hidden behind one of those crumbling walls.

“I’m gonna take a look. Hutch might be in one of those buildings.” He started across the parking lot.

“This is a federal matter!” Akers tried one last time.

Starsky kept jogging towards the empty building on the corner.

“That guy is a total asshole.”

“Yep,” agreed Dahlgrin. “And maybe someday, if you’re lucky, Bill, you’ll have some asshole who cares that much about what happens to you.” He gave his fellow agent a teasing glance. “But I doubt it.”

*****

Hutch figured he could have untied his bonds with his teeth, but his right elbow remained stiff and swollen, unwilling to bend; thus he couldn’t reach the ropes. He tried twisting free, but only succeeded in abrading the skin on his wrists, adding to a growing catalog of aches and pains. Desperate, he then tried investigate his surroundings once again, but aside from ripping his thumb open on a exposed nail and bringing a few more handfuls of dirt sifting down on his head, his secondary exploration added nothing to the first. He was trapped, and it looked like he would stay that way unless someone found him.

Until someone found him, he corrected himself firmly. Starsky was looking for him, and Starsky would find him.

I know you’re out there, buddy. Be careful. Watch out for Colby. He’s crazy, Starsk. He wants to hurt us. He wants to separate us, but I know you won’t let him. I know you’ll find me. Come on, buddy. I’m here. I’m waiting. I know you won’t let me down.

Starsky would find him.

Starsky had to find him.

Starsky had better find him.

But what if Starsky didn’t find him?

* * * * *

The clock had slipped from the PM to AM hours before Starsky finally convinced himself to stop cruising long enough to grab a bite. He hadn’t had anything substantial to eat since that quick slice of cold pizza before running off to join Hutch for their morning DA meet. He’d managed to down a few bites of a candy bar while talking to Dobey earlier that evening, but that and a handful of peanuts stuffed in his pockets while fishing for info at some bar was all he’d had to eat in nearly twenty four hours. Lately he’d been consisting mainly on drive-thru coffee. Hutch would be appalled.

Starsky wasn’t really hungry. In fact, his stomach was clenched like a fist, but he was starting to feel the effects of too little food and too many cups of coffee. He couldn’t afford to rattle to pieces. Hutch couldn’t afford it.

This was too close to the same frustration he’d felt when Forest had nabbed Hutch. Bay City never seemed so large as when Hutch was missing somewhere in the midst of it. “You gotta stop doing this, Hutch,” he admonished his missing partner. “You’re makin’ me crazy!”

He pulled up in front of Huggy Bear’s bar and grill and dragged his weary carcass out of the car. Pulling his windbreaker tightly around his body he ducked into the dingy, smoke filled establishment.

It was late. Even late for the late crowd, and there were few people still left in the place, most slumped over the bar, nursing glasses of heavy liquor and even heavier hearts. Starsky gave a fleeting thought to joining them.

Can’t. No time. Gotta find Hutch.

And if he didn’t find Hutch, then he would come back. Then he would come back and drink until the whole world just disappeared.

“Hey, my man. What’s shakin’?”

Startled out of his morose musings, Starsky turned to the dark skinned bean-pole who had suddenly appeared at his elbow.

“Hey, Huggy.” His voice seemed to catch, scratchy from disuse.

Dark eyes took stock from over the bridge of a pronounced hawk nose. “If you don’t mind my sayin’, you look wiped, bro.”

Starsky rubbed at his bleary eyes, then ran a hand down his face, feeling the emerging bristles beneath his fingers. “Yeah. Well, it’s been a long day. You hear anything?”

“If I’d a’heard something, you think we’d be standing here passin’ the time a’day?” Huggy’s voice grew soft. “What about you? Any word on Hutch?”

Starsky turned away, unable to face the depth of understanding and sympathy in the liquid brown eyes of his friend. “No.”

Oh, there had been news. Prints lifted from the interior of the car matched those of convicted criminal, John Colby. The cigarette butts were Marlboro, Colby’s favorite brand. Forensic tests had determined the blood stains on the back seats were of the same blood type listed in Kenneth Hutchinson’s file. Hair samples also taken from the back seat were from a blond, male Caucasian, age twenty-five to thirty-five. Tests on the grill of the car had found traces of skin and blood, the blood type matched that of the samples from the car’s interior.

Lots of information. None of it would help him find Hutch. A search of the neighborhood buildings had turned up nothing.

A hand closed on his shoulder, steering him gently towards a chair. “When was the last time you ate?”

Starsky shook his head. “I dunno. Earlier. Had a candy bar…”

“Sit down,” instructed Huggy. “The kitchen staff’s gone home. I was gettin’ ready to close up, but I can whip you up something.” He leaned over the table, expression full of compassion. “How ’bout one of my Starsky Specials?”

Starsky grimaced. The idea of a greasy hamburger topped with chili, cheese, onions, hot sauce and jalapenos brought an almost immediate lurch of rebellion from his stomach.
“No thanks, Hug. Something simple. Maybe some soup, huh?”

Huggy smiled and patted him on the arm. “Sure thing. One bowl of soup, coming up.”

Starsky eyes dropped to the table top. His gaze focused on an empty point in space, he sat, one finger absently tracing letters in a puddle of wetness on the table. H-U-T-C-H. Over and over. He remained lost in welcome blankness till Huggy returned, sitting a steaming bowl of soup under his nose.

“There we go,” proffered his friend. “One bowl of chicken and dumpling soup. On the house.”

Starsky picked up his spoon and started stirring the yellowish broth as Huggy slipped into the opposite chair.

Crossing his arms on the table, Huggy leaned forward and watched as Starsky took his first tentative spoonful of soup.

They passed a few minutes in silence.

“Huggy,” Starsky finally muttered past the spoon. “I don’t need a nursemaid.”

Taking in Starsky’s disheveled appearance and trembling hands, Huggy raised a pair of skeptical eyebrows. “Could have fooled me.”

Starsky gave him a dark look over the top of the spoon.

“Hey.” Huggy shrugged with a lift of his shoulders. “I’m just sitting in. I figure when your usual blond baby-sitter shows up, he won’t be too happy if he finds out I let you run and play in traffic.”

Starsky paused with the spoon half way to his mouth. “I gotta find him, Hug. He’s out there, and he’s hurt.” The blue eyes were dark with pain. He dropped the spoon back into the half finished bowl of soup and stood, pushing the chair back. “I gotta find him.”

Huggy nodded, and watched in silence as the slender, unkempt man in faded jeans and navy windbreaker stalked across the bar and out the door.

* * * * *

Hutch didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have because he was aware of waking up. He’d been dreaming of snow. Of being lost in the Minnesota snow. He could hear Starsky calling his name, but the snow was falling in a blizzard of blinding white and he couldn’t find his partner. He awoke shivering, unshed tears drying on his lashes. Earlier, the cramped confines of his crate had been stuffy and close, but now he was cold and his torn jogging suit offered little protection from the falling temperatures. He tried to curl up into a tighter ball of warmth, but only succeeded in scraping his knees against the unfinished wood.

Hutch was hungry. And his mouth was dry. His tongue felt swollen. He wanted water. He needed water. But there was no water to be had.

He sighed and stared into the darkness. His world was black on black. An infinite pitch void. There was no light from the end of the pipes, and rather think them blocked, Hutch chose a less terrifying possibility. It must be night above. His hands fluttered around, touching, testing, finding the same confines. Nothing had changed. Trapped.

“Starsk…?” He said the name aloud, whispering it into the blackness like a prayer, and it gave him some comfort.

Where was Starsky? What was he doing? In his mind, he pictured his partner behind the wheel of the Torino, prowling the streets in his obnoxious, red car.

“Candy -apple red…”

“Oh, Starsk.” Squeezing his eyes shut, he tucked his hand between his knees and hunched his body, trying to curl in on himself, seeking comfort. “Miss you.”

After a time, he fell asleep again.

* * * * *

Captain Dobey caught up with David Starsky shortly after 10:00 AM. The detective was in the process of draining the last residual sludge from the bottom of the coffee pot.

“Starsky?”

Starsky took a cautious sip of the bitter brew and greeted his captain over the lip of the mug. “Mor’n, Cap’n.”

Dobey frowned, his glance traveling meaningfully over Starsky shadowed features, bleary eyes, bewhiskered jaw, and rumpled clothing. “When was the last time you got any sleep? And aren’t those the same clothes you were wearing yesterday?”

“I’ll sleep when I find Hutch, and no, this is a new T-shirt. I got it outta my locker.”
Dobey eyed the grubby shirt with distaste. “It looks as dirty as everything else you’re wearing.”

Starsky shrugged. “I said I got it outta my locker. I didn’t say it was clean.”

“Starsky.” Dobey glanced around the squad room and lowered his voice a notch, treading carefully with his volatile Sergeant. “Look. I know you’re worried about your partner. But you’re not doing Hutch or the department any good dead on your feet.” He tried a soothing smile and bit of fatherly advice. “Why don’t you go home. Get some rest. Clean up, then hit the streets fresh. You know I’ll call you the minute anything turns.”

“Can’t. Hutch is out there. He needs me. Don’t have time for a bubble bath.”

“Starsky.” A slight edge crept into Dobey’s tone. “The longer you stay on the street without any rest, the more dangerous you become, to yourself and to the people around you. Now, if I have to, I’ll make it an order.”

Blue eyes locked with dark, and Starsky carefully set down his mug. “You can try.”

Shouldering his way past the captain, Starsky headed for the doors to the squad room.

“Starsky!” There was no longer anything restrained about Dobey’s voice. “I’ll pull you off this case!”

Starsky paused in the doorway, his own volume more than a match for Dobey’s. “Go ahead. But I’ll give up my badge before I give up this case! Hutch is my partner, and I’ll find him!”

He slammed out of the squad room, leaving the double doors swinging wildly in his wake.

* * * * *

Starsky and Hutch had once answered a report of a dead body. They’d found a vagrant behind a dumpster. The man had been dead several days and the body was already decomposing. The smell was almost a physical thing, pressing down upon them. Holding one hand over his nose, Hutch had bent over the body, gingerly searching the pockets for ID. At first he thought someone had spilled rice over the man’s face. Perhaps some take-out that been tossed in the dumpster. But the rice had quivered and Hutch had realized what he was seeing were maggots eating their way under the skin.

For an instant he had remained transfixed, watching the white, wriggling larvae creeping across the man’s shrunken lips, inching in and out of his nostrils, writhing in mass inside the cavities of his sunken eyeballs.

Then Hutch’s guts lurched into his throat and he spun away. Starsky knelt at his side, rubbing his back as he was violently sick in the gutter, retching until there was nothing left but bitter, watery bile.

Hutch was thinking about maggots now. Wondering if Starsky would find him like they’d found that old wino, hatching ground for a wriggling multitude, fodder for a new generation of flies. Wondering if they were already crawling on him, creeping across his skin, burrowing though his hair in the dark. Sometimes he thought he could feel them, and he brushed frantically at his skin in the dark, trying to shake them off.

It was not a good thing to be thinking about. Certainly it was not helping him maintain a positive attitude, but at least it kept his mind off another slight problem. Hutch very badly needed to urinate, and under the circumstances, an act that was usually carried out with a minimum of fuss, was proving quite complicated. There weren’t exactly any facilities available. Hell, he didn’t even have a bedpan.

Dirt and air, sure. But no bedpan. No television. No radio. No telephone. None of the modern conveniences. Colby had certainly gone low budget on furnishing this condo.
Hutch shifted, stifling a groan at the swelling ache of his kidneys. Obviously, this problem was not going to simply go away, and the more he tried not to think about needing to piss, the more insistently his body pressed the issue.

It seemed a shame to void the water when his body needed rehydration so badly, but without electrolytes, the urine would do him no good anyway. “Ah, hell!” Rolling on his side, Hutch awkwardly tugged down his jogging pants and surrendered to the inevitable.

* * * * *

“See the man, Huggy Bear.”

The call came in over the police radio, and Starsky grabbed the microphone to acknowledge, using his free hand to spin the wheel sharply. The Torino spun in a sloppy U-turn, hitting a curb and sideswiping a postbox before bumping back onto the street. Starsky never noticed. If Huggy was calling, it meant Huggy had something and that something had to be about Hutch.

Bearing down on the pedal, he tore across the city towards Huggy Bear’s bar.

Huggy was waiting when Starsky came slamming through the door to the bar and grill.

“What?” Starsky jiggled impatiently as Huggy guided him towards a quiet corner. “You hear somethin’?”

Huggy leaned close, pitching his voice for privacy. “Guess who just gave me a call?”

“Huggy!” Starsky hissed. “I don’t have time for games! You got somethin’, spill it!”

Momentarily taken aback, Huggy pursed his lips in disapproval, but decide to forgive Starsky his sharp outburst when a critical eye noted the detective’s agitated state. Desperation clung to Starsky like a second skin, and Huggy’s expression melted into soft sympathy as he continued. “Here’s the skinny. I just took a call from a mutual friend, one John Colby, as in, all around bad news dude.”

Starsky’s eyes went wide. “Colby? Colby called you? Here?”

“That’s right.” Huggy’s voice shifted to his no nonsense business tones. “Says he’s got something you want, and if you want it back you’re gonna have to play things his way.”

Something I want.

A flicker of pain tightened Starsky’s features. “Anything else.”

“He said details to come. There’s a phone booth on 7th and Olive. He said be there at 1:00. You get one call. He didn’t say what would happen if you don’t show, but I gathered things would not go well for a certain blue-eyed, blond.”

Starsky glanced at his watch — 11:15. An hour and 45 minutes to go.

“And Starsky…”

Starsky glanced back at the serious, dark face. “He said this is a private deal between you and him. Bring anyone else into it, and you’ll never hear from him or Hutch again.”

Starsky grimaced, the strain of the past two days showing clearly as he considered a plan of action. “Okay. Yah, okay.” He rubbed a hand over weary features. “You hear anything else, you let me know.”

“Word.”

Starsky turned and headed for the door.

“Starsky.”

The detective paused.

“Keep it real, bro.”

Starsky clenched a fist of solidarity, then dodged through the crowd of patrons and out the door.

* * * * *

Hutch didn’t know how long he’d been lying in darkness, listening to the rasp of his breathing and the throb of his heartbeat. Sometimes in the still of the dark, it seemed he could even hear the hiss of his blood pulsing through his veins. It seemed to him his heart rate was increasing, even though he was at rest, and he was coughing more often, trying to clear fluid from his lungs. That worried him. It didn’t seem right. His stomach kept cramping. Hunger? Or something more insidious, like internal bleeding? No way to know. Time was passing. He knew that, but how quickly or slowly eluded him. He could have been trapped in this womb of darkness for hours or days. He simply didn’t know. However, he was less concerned with losing track of time than with losing track of himself.

The gloom, the near perfect silence, the uncertainly were all slowly eroding away at his control. At first he used various meditative techniques as a panacea for his growing unease, but the breathing exercises, self hypnosis, and bio-feedback were beginning to lose their effectiveness as the hours dragged by and nothing was resolved.

Hutch was afraid, and as time wore on, the fear was growing, stretching, gaining strength. For now, Hutch controlled the fear, but that control was slipping. Soon, very soon the power would shift and the fear would come to control him.

*****

As Starsky prowled the sidewalk beside the phone booth, like a restless animal on a very short leash, a pretty brunette in a short skirt approached and fished a dime from her purse. At any other time, Starsky might have been inclined to admire her long legs and generous curves, but now he stepped possessively in front of the door to the phone booth and fixed her with a heated glare.

“I’m waitin’ on a call,” he growled.

The woman started to argue, but taking a closer look at the unkempt wild man confronting her, decided her phone call wasn’t nearly as important as she’d first thought. Gingerly stepping around Starsky she hurried down the street.

She was the fourth person Starsky had chased away from the phone booth over the past hour. All but one had retreated without question in the face of his determination, but the overweight man in the leisure suit had resisted. A five minute shouting match had ensued and Starsky had been frightened by the level of anger he’d felt towards the obstinate stranger. At one point he’d even caught himself reaching towards his holster. Eventually the stranger moved on, but the incident stayed with Starsky. Maybe Dobey was right. Maybe he was unraveling at the seams like a cheap sweater, but it was too late to worry about it now. Colby would be calling any moment.

Starsky glanced at his watch, absently running a thumb over the crystal to wipe away smudges. It was now two minutes later than the last time he had checked. He remembered buying the watch. Hutch had been with him, and Starsky had dragged his partner to five different jewelry stores before finding a watch that suited his tastes. Asked for his opinion, Hutch had said he thought it was a “terrific watch.” Of course that was the same thing he had said about all the watches Starsky had considered, including the Mickey Mouse timepiece Starsky tried on as a joke. Starsky suspected his friend had simply been tired of driving around the city and was willing to endorse anything in hopes they could call it a day.

Starsky sighed and let his arm drop to his side. It shook him to realize how much of his life was defined in terms of his partner. The watch on his wrist that Hutch had helped pick out. The T-shirt he was wearing which he’d dug out of his locker, one of the varied items of clothing he had at one time or another borrowed from Hutch and failed to return. The empty passenger seat of the Torino where Hutch was supposed to sit. The taco stand down the street where he’d first introduced Hutch to the Burrito Machismo then sat watching as his partner turned red in the face and upended an entire pitcher of ice water down his throat.

Even when there were no shared memories, there was still the echo of Hutch’s presence — the thought that the two of them should check out that new movie advertised on a billboard, that Hutch would have liked that slender blonde woman on the bicycle, that the juicer he’d seen in the window of an appliance store would make a good Christmas present for his health conscious friend.

Everywhere he went. Everything he saw. All seemed somehow connected to Hutch, and all made him that much more aware of his partner’s absence. Was it possible, he wondered, to be too close to someone? To need them too much? It was not something he thought about very often. Having Hutch by his side just seemed so natural — so right. But now that Hutch wasn’t there, Starsky was becoming acutely aware of just how much he depended upon his friend. Without him, Starsky felt lopsided, like he had misplace half his soul — that somehow he’d lost a significant part of himself and he would never be whole unless he found it again.

What would he do, he wondered, if his partner never returned? Could a person live when their soul had been torn it two? Would Dave Starsky ever be free, or would he spend the remainder of his life haunted by the ghost of Kenneth Hutchinson?

The sound of a car horn pulled Starsky back from the morose realm of his thoughts, and he checked his watch again, noting less than a minute had passed. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans, fighting the inclination to stand and watch the minute hand trace its way around the circular face of his timepiece.

For over an hour, Starsky had been trying to decide what he was going to say to Colby when he called, how he was going to convince the man it was in his best interests to release Hutch, swiftly and without further injury. He still hadn’t settled on an approach when the phone rang.

Starsky snatched the receiver off the hook before it could ring a second time.

“Yeah!”

“Good work, Starsky,” said a familiar, smooth voice. “Nice of you to be so prompt.”

Starsky cupped a hand around the receiver and pulled it close. “Where’s Hutch? What have you done with him?”

“Not even a ‘Hello’? Seems like an old friend is at least entitled to a ‘Hello’. ‘Hello, John. How’ve you been?’ ‘Just fine, Starsky. And you?'”

“Look you son of a bitch, you wanted to talk and I’m here, so cut the crap. I wanna talk to Hutch.”

“Don’t get too impatient, ‘old friend’ or I might just hang up on you, and if I do that you can kiss your precious Hutch good-bye.”

Starsky took a deep breath, putting a rein on his anger. “Okay. What’dya want?”

“I want a meet. And I want enough money to get out of the country in some style.”

“Ransom?” Starsky turned his back to the open door of the booth and lowered his voice, as though afraid federal agents were listening in. “The Feds won’t go f’that.”

“Who said anything about Feds? This is between you and me Starsky. You come alone or Hutch is dead. Understand?”

Starsky shut his eyes briefly. “Yeah. I got it.”

“So, how much can you come up with?”

“I got about three grand in my savings…”

“Then that’ll have to do, won’t it? I’ll call again in three hours and tell you where to go.”

Starsky nibbled on his lower lip. “How do I know Hutch is okay? How do I know you haven’t…?” He couldn’t complete the thought, couldn’t say the words.

“You don’t,” came the unfeeling reply. “But you’ll take the shot, ’cause it’s the only one you’ve got.”

Starsky squeezed his eyes shut, preparing to do something he never thought he would, preparing to beg. “John. Please, don’t hurt him. We were friends once, all of us. We had some good times together. That’s gotta mean something.” Unshed tears burned behind his lids as he cradled the receiver to his ear.

“You’re breaking my heart,” came the sarcastic rejoinder.

In the momentary silence that followed Starsky struggled to maintain his tenuous control, blinking the watery film from his eyes and deliberately focusing on the obscene graffiti scrawled in black ink across the glass of the phone booth.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“I mean it Starsky,” Colby warned. “Anyone else show up, anyone tries to take me in, and no more Hutch. I’ll bury him.” Staccato laughter bubbled across the line. “Better hurry though. Your precious partner doesn’t have much time left.”

Starsky pinched the bridge on his nose, hard, forcing concentration. “Okay. Okay. I’ll get the money, just don’t hurt him, ’cause I swear, you hurt him and Garvin won’t have to hire another hit. I’ll take you out myself.”

“Just get the money. Three hours. Don’t be late.”

Starsky stood holding the receiver for nearly a full minute after the dial tone signaled Colby had disengaged. Somehow, putting down the phone seemed like cutting his last link with Hutch.

“Hang on partner,” he finally whispered before hanging up the receiver. His blurry vision took final note of the graffiti.

Fuck.

“Yeah,” he muttered and exited the phone booth.

* * * * *

Fear was real. Fear had substance. Fear was a living thing, a dark, malevolent presence, and it had crawled into the box to wrap its cold arms around Hutch. Fear surrounded him. When he breathed, he breathed in fear. When he moved, fear ran cold fingers down his spine. When he petitioned for deliverance, fear heard him and laughed. Fear was waiting, and when he broke, fear would carry him away.

Hutch clenched his teeth and slammed his cheek against the wooden side of his prison. The muffled sound. The solidity of the hard wood pressing against his face. The prick of the splinters into his flesh. All helped focus his mind and force back the fear. He remembered reading an article once, about people undergoing sensory deprivation and how after a time they began to hallucinate. Well, he wasn’t seeing white rabbits or Cheshire cats yet, but he knew he was on the edge of something — something unpleasant.

The reality of his situation was becoming more and more difficult to deflect with wishes and positive thinking.

It was possible, even probable that was going to die here. As a street cop, forced daily to confront his own mortality, Hutch had long ago accepted the fact that everybody dies eventually, and that he was no exception. But the idea of dying here, alone, stripped of dignity, surrounded with dirt and filth, left to rot in a grave that might never to be found, was psychologically devastating. No hero’s death this. No one to say good-bye. No one to chase away the fears. No one to share his last moments. No one to care.

Not true, he told himself. Lots of people would care. Friends would care. Dobey would care. Huggy would care. Even his parents would care, if only because it would finally put to rest their hopes he would ever do something “meaningful” with his life.

But most of all, Starsky would care.

Dear Starsky. Hutch knew wherever his partner was, his thoughts were with Hutch. That helped — made him feel a little less lonely. And as much as he feared dying without companionship in this wooden coffin, he knew he would choose to make this final excursion alone rather than have Starsky share his fate. He tried to take comfort in the knowledge that even if he was gone, Starsky would still live. Would still feel the sun on his face. Would still hear the sound of birds in the morning. Would still be able to sit and watch the waves roll in to shore under rosy evening skies. In the end, death was a solitary journey anyway. He hoped that that resolution would be enough to sustain him through the dark hours ahead.

*****

The meet would take place in one of the seedier vacant buildings on the South Side. Colby gave specific instructions over the phone and repeated his warning about bringing anyone else into the situation. That was okay. Starsky planned on coming alone. He could handle John Colby by himself. In fact he was looking forward to it. There would be no one to interfere, whatever went down.

Starsky knew he had a dangerous side, one that didn’t bear close inspection, and that there had been times he had treaded a very fine line between duty and vigilantism. The fact that he’d managed to stay on the right side of the law so far had less to do with personal convictions than with a certain blue-eyed, blond. In a way Hutch functioned as his conscience. Starsky didn’t give a damn about IA, or what people would say, or whether Dobey might be disappointed in him, but did give a damn what Hutch thought of him. Even though he knew that Hutch would back him one hundred percent should he ever stray across that line, Starsky also knew he never would, not with Hutch at his side. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing that brand of disillusion on his partner’s face. However, Hutch wasn’t with him now, which meant Colby had better be very, very careful.

Starsky pulled the Torino into the alley and parked beside the abandoned warehouse. Reaching across the seat, he snagged a nylon duffel bag. The bag held nearly thirty-two hundred in cash. Starsky’s entire life savings.

On the drive over, he had tried to decide what his moves were going to be. Was he going to hand over the cash and let Colby walk, or was he going to try and bring him in? He still hadn’t come to any firm conclusions. The only thing he was certain of was that, whatever he did, his choices would be dictated by his concern for Hutch and nothing else. He wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize his partner’s life, whatever the personal or professional consequences. His money. His job. His self-respect. Hutch was worth it all.

“Hang on, Hutch,” he murmured under his breath. “I’m comin’.” He stepped out of the car and approached a door in the side of the building. The padlock had been cut, just as Colby had promised. Starsky fished his Beretta out of his holster, holding it easily in his hand as he slipped cautiously through the door. The building was large, and felt empty. Despite his stealth, his footsteps sounded loud in the vastness. Moving away from the doorway and the light that would make him an easy target, Starsky let his eyes adjust to the dim interior. Grey stretches of concrete floor. A glassed in office at the far end, empty as far as he could see. Open doorways to other storage rooms, and a set of stairs leading upward to a second story landing. Starsky placed his back against the security of a concrete pillar and shouted.

“Colby!”

A moment of silence, then an answering call from the floor above. “Come on up, Starsky. But keep your hands where I can see them.”

Starsky approached the stairs and began a careful ascent, keeping his arms loose at his sides. Colby might be waiting in the shadows at the top of the stairs, crouched in darkness with a shot-gun ready to blow Starsky’s head off, but he doubted it. He figured Colby would want to gloat, to point out how clever he’d been. Starsky was literally betting his life on John Colby’s ego.

He reached the top of the stairs without incident. The light was even more subdued here, the dingy, wooden floor and brick walls painted in pale shafts from the small skylight windows overhead. A shadow detached itself from amongst others and a deceptively harmless looking young man in grungy clothing stepped forward, hands held at half-mast.

Starsky lifted his Beretta and trained on his former classmate, gritting his teeth against the desire the backhand the man over the stair railing.

“I’m not armed,” assured Colby.

“Where’s Hutch?” Starsky’s voice sounded wrong to his ears, guttural and deadly, the voice of a stranger.

Colby shook his head, smiling that familiar, easy smile, but Starsky could read the razor sharp hint of contempt behind the grin. “It’s not that easy, Starsky. You think I’d just give him to you?”

Starsky’s finger tightened on the trigger of the Beretta. “Don’t fuck with me, John.”

“Hey!” Colby waved his empty hands to emphasize his vulnerability. “I’m not fucking with you. You’ve got the gun. You’ve got the badge. I’ve got Hutch. Way I see it, that makes us about even. I hand him over now, and I got nothing to guarantee your continued cooperation, right?” The hands dropped just slightly. “Don’t underestimate me, Starsky. You did that once before. Remember?”

Silence stretched, then slowly Starsky lowered the gun. “Okay. How do ya wanna play it?”

Colby nodded towards the duffel bag. “That the money?”

Starsky hefted the bag in one hand. “Three grand. Yeah.”

“Put it down and step back.”

The gun lifted slightly as Starsky shook his head. “Not ’til I got Hutch.”

Colby snorted. “You’re not really in a position to dictate.”

“Well, I’m dictatin’. No Hutch, no money.”

A thin sliver of pink appeared between Colby’s lips as he ran his tongue across his upper lip, then with exaggerated nonchalance he shrugged and spread his hands. “No money, no Hutch.” His grin was wicked. “I’m a quick learner.”

Starsky said nothing, but his gaze never strayed from Colby’s face, and his eyes glittered darkly.

“Come on, Starsky. Be reasonable. Where am I going to go? You’ve got the gun.”

“Where’s Hutch?” A soft-spoken demand in the dim light.

“I’d forgotten what a stubborn ass you are.”

“Where’s my partner?” No change in inflection, but Colby took a step backwards, hearing the promise of mayhem hidden behind the words.

“We’re wasting time.”

Starsky shifted his weight, his stance casual but emphasizing the weapon in his left hand. “I got nowhere t’go.”

“Yeah!” Colby snapped with false bravado. “Well maybe you’ve got time to spare, but Hutch doesn’t.”

Colby would never know what it took for Starsky to remain impassive in the face of those words. “Oh yeah? Wanna tell me about it?”

A sudden flush of anger suffused Colby’s features. “You want to know? You really want to know, Starsky?” He backed away a few paces, as though physical distance would give him emotional distance as well. “Do you remember the Academy? What it was like? The three of us?”

Starsky nodded once, quick and clean. “I remember.”

“You guys were always the best. The best at everything. Always on top.”

Starsky’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. He was not sure where this conversation was headed. “You were good too, John. You got high marks.”

Colby shook his head. “Not as good as you two. That’s why I hung out with you. Cause I knew I had to be near the best. You had what I needed. I could learn from you, and when I learned all your secrets, then I could beat you, both of you. But I never did.” Again the flash of an unholy grin. “Not ’til now.”

Starsky felt the need to protest this version of their days together at the Police Academy. “John. C’mon, man. We were your friends. It wasn’t about who was best…”

“Not for you. You were always so sure of yourself. If you messed up, it was because the instructor didn’t like you, or the course wasn’t fair, or the question was stupid and you’d never have to know the answer anyway.”

Starsky flinched at the words. Was that how Colby had seen it? His words held an element of truth. The Academy had been tough for Starsky, and sometimes when the pressures got too great, he’d hidden his insecurities behind a surface cockiness. On the other hand, he’d also worked his ass off to stay on top. His determination had seen him through, along with the support of friends like Hutchinson and Colby. Hadn’t Colby felt that same support? Hadn’t they all been there for each other?

“And Hutchinson,” Colby continued with a sneer, giving Starsky a glimpse of the depth of hatred the man apparently felt towards his partner. “He was just so used to being perfect. The golden college boy. God’s gift to police work. Always so damn magnanimous when he came out on top. Always ready with that pat speech about how the grades weren’t really important. What was important was just doing your best. You never hear guys at the bottom giving that speech, do you?”

Words were pouring out of Colby, a flood of words held back too long. These damning words, this unexpected resentment — this was not the John Colby Starsky had thought he’d known in their days at the Academy, not the rakish friend and good natured trickster. But Starsky had come to realize John Colby was a man of a thousand faces. This expression of long held animosity might be the closest Starsky had ever gotten to the real John Colby — the man behind the masks.

“The two of you just about drove me crazy,” Colby lamented, taking a step closer to Starsky. “If it hadn’t been for me, we never would have had any fun. I introduced you two, do you remember? You and I were friends and Hutch and I were friends. I got you guys together. The prince and the pauper. You probably never even would have talked to each other if it hadn’t been for me.” Colby’s eyes were bright with a kind of frenetic energy that was almost frightening in its intensity. He held Starsky captive with his gaze, as though he demanding some kind of acknowledgement of his role in bringing the two detectives together. “And then you just shut me out. Like once you had each other, you didn’t need me anymore. You didn’t need anyone.”

What?

Starsky blinked, taken aback by the hurt in Colby’s voice. Good God, was that what it was all about? Jealousy? Resentment of the closeness he and Hutch shared? After all this time… “John, that’s not true,” he stuttered, trying to put things back in perspective. “We were the Three Corsican Brothers. The Three Musketeers. Even the Three Stooges sometimes, but always all three of us.”

“No.” Colby held up a hand in denial. “I was there, sure. But when you two were around each other, no one else mattered. Not even me. For a while I even thought maybe you two were lovers, but I knew you couldn’t be. I would have found you out.”

“John…”

The hard edge was back, the vulnerability once again protected by walls of callous indifference. “I don’t like being ignored, Starsky. You guys were my best friends at the Academy. You weren’t supposed to dump me.”

Starsky tried a placating gesture. “Man, you’re not makin’ any sense.” But he was. Finally Starsky understood. The fiasco with Garvin and Carpelle was just a convenient excuse. This vendetta went back years — a grievance held in check too long, a grudge allowed to fester and grow, poisoning whatever good memories Colby might have held of his days in the Academy. When Starsky had first learned what Colby had become, a hired assassin willing to use his connections with Starsky and Hutch for personal gain, he had wondered if Colby had ever really cared. Now he realized he had cared too much, and he understood clearly why Colby had quit the Academy. At the time, he and Hutch had spent days trying to figure it out, tossing theories back and forth, and they’d never even come close to the truth. While they were thinking Colby should have stayed because he was one of them, he had left precisely because he wasn’t.

“Can’t ignore me now though, can you, Starsky.” Colby boasted, voice was deadly and dangerous. “Cause I’ve got your precious Hutch and if you want him back, you’ll do exactly what I say. Now put down the money and back off, or you can kiss that beautiful, blond partner of yours adios.”

Starsky knew they had come to a turning point. Colby had said what he had to say, and there was no more reason for him to delay. Starsky could threaten him with the Beretta, but Colby knew as well as Starsky that the detective was not going to risk shooting Colby without knowing Hutch’s whereabouts. Colby had also made it quite clear that should Starsky take him in, he would never learn of Hutchinson’s fate. Impasse.

Starsky did the one thing he could, he dropped the duffel bag on the floor and stepped back. There was only one thing he was certain of at that moment — that he wasn’t going to let Colby walk away, not without knowing Hutch was okay.

Colby bent to pick up the bag. There was a sudden motion behind and above him and Starsky’s attention shifted to the overhead skylight. A crouching figure was limned in the milky light of the windows, frozen in a familiar stance. Starsky’s warning shout was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. Colby started to rise, twisting to follow Starsky’s line of sight as the sharp report of a firing weapon echoed through the warehouse. Colby jerked and fell, collapsing atop the duffel bag of money.

“No!” Starsky threw himself forward, noting the spreading crimson stain darkening the back of the gray sweat shirt. “John! Goddammit!” Grasping Colby by the arms, Starsky backpedaled, getting them both to relative safety behind some heavy packing crates. He dropped to his knees and placed one hand over the sodden hole in Colby’s back. With care, he rolled Colby over, gently cradling the wounded man’s head on his thighs. The exiting bullet had torn open Colby’s chest, and Starsky swore as he tried to dampen the flow of blood with his other hand. “John?”

The blue eyes shuttered open, roving wildly. “S… Starsky?”

Starsky steeled his expression and tried to meet the eyes with steady reassurance. “Easy man. Take it easy. It’s okay.”

“Shit!” Colby gasped, struggling a bit against the pressure of Starsky’s hands. “I’ve been shot. Who shot me?” He coughed and a thin stain of scarlet trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Starsky winced and bit down hard on his lower lip.

“I’m gonna die.” Colby sounded surprised but not frightened.

“John? John listen to me.” Starsky leaned forward, bending closer to Colby. “Where’s Hutch? John, you gotta tell me where Hutch is. Please.”

Colby coughed again. Beneath Starsky’s hands the bright scarlet stains continued to spread, draining all the color from Colby, fading his skin to waxen pale, and his blue eyes to dull gray.

“John. C’mon man.” Starsky’s words were thick with anguish. “Tell me where he is. I gotta know.”

Colby blinked slowly. “Hutch?” he mumbled, his voice growing frail.

“Yeah. Where is he, John?”

Colby tried to smile, but only one side of his mouth lifted. “I sent him away.”

“Away? Away where?” Starsky nearly cried in frustration. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“To bottomless perdition,” Colby murmured, his eyes drifting shut, his words growing distant. “There to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire…”

“What? John what do you mean? What are you talking about?” Starsky gave the man a shake. “Where is he? John!”

The unfocused eyes fluttered open. “Wanted to take him away from you. Wanted you to be alone… like me… On me, me only as the source and spring of all corruption, all the blame lights due… Both death and I am found eternal…”

“John! John talk to me!” Starsky no longer cared or even noticed that tears were trickling freely down his face. “Where is Hutch? What did you do to him?”

“Purgatory, Starsky…” came the feathery reply. “Sent him to eternal damnation…”

Starsky’s plea was a choked whisper. “John?”

“Why comes not Death… to end me? Shall Truth fail to keep her word, Justice divine… not hasten… to be just?” The eyes began to slide shut one final time. “Your turn to be alone now, Starsky… left alone…”

“John!” Starsky shifted his grip, sliding from beneath Colby. Letting go of the wounds, he took hold of John’s shoulders and shook the man almost violently. “Don’t you die on me! Don’t you dare die on me! You tell me where Hutch is! You tell me! Goddamn you!”

Colby’s head lolled lifelessly on his neck.

“Sergeant Starsky,” the smooth voice cautioned. “Perhaps you’d better let someone else see to Colby. You seem somewhat overwrought.”

Colby’s head thumped against the floor as Starsky let him go and spun to face FBI agent Dahlgrin.

“You…” he breathed, rising to his feet. “You killed him.” He took a step closer to Dahlgrin, moving slowly, cautiously, feeling like unsteady dynamite — a single jolt could trigger an explosion. “Why?” Eyes dark with distress searched Dahlgrin’s face for answers. “He knew where Hutch was. He could have told me.” The fists clenched, gloved in crimson blood. The shoulders tightened and the voice rose, taking on a sharp edge. “Why? Tell me why!”

Dahlgrin apparently either didn’t recognize or chose to ignore the rage simmering just beneath Starsky’s surface control. He took a moment to crouch beside Colby, checking for vitals, then rose and stood gazing at the blood soaked corpse with indifference.

“He was a felon. A fugitive from justice. Possibly armed and dangerous.” He met Starsky’s hard look easily and the hint of warning might have been real or imagined. “Seems like you ought to be thanking me. I might just have saved your life.”

Starsky’s expression twisted into a collision of fury, disbelief and grief. “He wasn’t armed! You shot an unarmed man!”

Dahlgrin shrugged and re-holstered his weapon. “How was I to know that? From my vantage point it looked like he must have had a gun on you. Otherwise why wouldn’t you be making an arrest, Sergeant. The man is a wanted criminal, isn’t he?” This time the warning was quite clear.

“You didn’t identify yourself!” Starsky hissed, refusing to be dissuaded.

“Didn’t I?” Dahlgrin remained unperturbed. “Oh no, I think your mistaken about that, detective. I clearly remember identifying myself as a federal agent. Maybe you were momentarily distracted? No one could blame you. With your partner missing, you must be under a lot of pressure.” One corner of the agent’s mouth quirked in a parody of compassion. “When was the last time you slept, Sergeant? We all know what can happen when the body gets overtaxed.”

Starsky’s tenuous control nearly snapped. Oddly, a single fleeting thought that kept him from slugging Dahlgrin in the jaw — the knowledge that if he did so, he would be facing charges of assault, and if that happened he wouldn’t be able to look for Hutch. But although he managed to keep his fists to himself, he couldn’t still his tongue. Taking a menacing step closer to the agent he snarled into the man’s face. “You shot him down in cold blood! He’s the only one who knew where Hutch was and you murdered him, you son-of-a-bitch!”

Something ugly flickered behind Dahlgrin’s expression. “That’s enough, Starsky. Or maybe you’d like me to start asking some questions of my own, like what exactly were you doing here? This is supposed to be a federal case. You’re supposed to keep us informed of any developments. I’m sure your Captain and Commissioner would be interested in hearing about your little private tête-à-tête with Colby.” His gaze slid meaningfully to the blood stained duffel bag on the floor. “What’s in the bag, Sergeant?”

“That’s mine,” Starsky growled.

“Is it?” Dahlgrin took a few step closer to the bag. “It also happens to be evidence in a federal case. I wonder what would happen if I were to confiscate it.” His smile was razor sharp and deadly as a shark’s. “I’d say you’re in a rather compromising position. Wouldn’t you, Sergeant?”

Starsky’s voice dropped back to a near whisper, but was no less lethal for its deceptive quiet. “I don’t know what your game is, Dahlgrin, an’ I’d be willing t’bet you’re not following team rules. Where’s your partner? Where’s Akers? An’ why were you tailin’ me?”

“Don’t get too curious, Starsky,” Dahlgrin warned. “Things could get very messy for you. Just do us both a favor and let it go. No one even has to know you were here. Colby was slime. He’s not worth messing up your life.” He picked up the duffel and held it out to Starsky. “Do we have an understanding?”

Starsky took the bag, and glanced back at John Colby’s body. For an instant sorrow blunted his features. “We were friends once.” The eyes slid back to Dahlgrin, nearly black in the dim light, and unblinking. Eyes of a mako shark. “An’ you shot him in the back. I don’t ‘understand’ things like that, but you can try and ‘understand’ this. Somewhere out there is my missin’ partner. John Colby was the only one who knew where. Now Colby’s dead, ’cause a’you. If I don’t find Hutch someone’s gonna pay. Seems like that someone’s gonna have t’be you.”

Dahlgrin’s face tightened in anger. “Don’t threaten me, Sergeant. The consequences could be very unpleasant.”

“I told you once,” Starsky reminded. “I don’t make threats.” Back stiff, he turned, stalked across the floor and pounded down the stairs.

“Neither do I, Starsky!” came Dahlgrin’s answering shout.

Outside the warehouse, Starsky’s fortitude fled and he slumped heavily against the side of the Torino. Dropping the duffel bag into the dirt, he absently he wiped his blood drenched hands down the front of his T-shirt. John Colby was dead and Hutch was still missing. And what was the last thing Colby had said to him, something about sending Hutch to purgatory? Wasn’t purgatory where you went when you died?

Starsky retrieved the duffel bag and tossed it through the open window of the Torino. Then, yanking open the driver-side door, he slipped in behind the wheel. Pulling out of the alley with a squeal of tortured rubber, he drove for several minutes, turning without volition down one street or another, mind a blank. When he finally took note of his surroundings, he found he was heading out of town on the Santa Monica freeway.

Running?

He took the next exit and drove till he found a fairly empty lot in front of a convenience store. Pulling in, he parked and sat silently staring through the windshield at the cloudless, blue sky overhead. If Colby had sent Hutch to purgatory, that meant Hutch was dead, and finding him wasn’t going to make everything okay. Hutch would still be dead. Starsky was seeking a corpse. Hutch, his best friend, his partner, his other half, was gone forever, all that would be left would be a body, an empty shell. But Starsky still had to find him. He owed Hutch that much.

Starsky let his head drop forward into the cradle of his folded arms and sobbed.

*****

Hutch lost it for a while. He knew that. When he came back from wherever he had been, he was curled on his side with his shoulders hunched, his hands twisting in their bonds, and a keening cry echoing in his ears. The thin thread of sound made him feel lost and fragile — made him ashamed. He drew a deep breath and choked back the soft whimpers. The air was heavy and close. Too much carbon dioxide. Not enough oxygen. For a long time he lay listening to his breathing trying to bring it under control, concentrating on the rise and fall of his lungs as he gathered the brittle shards of his remaining sanity. When he felt steadier, he started talking to himself inside his head. Speaking aloud was becoming too difficult. His mouth seemed coated with something vile, and his lips had dried up like preserved fruit. When he ran his tongue over them, the sharp sting let him know they had split and bled in several places. Using his no nonsense street voice, Hutch lectured himself, letting himself know on no uncertain terms, that flaking out was not an option.

‘Gotta hold it together, Hutchinson,’ he told himself. ‘Another slip like that and the only thing you’ll be good for when they do find you is a one way trip to Cabrillo State.’

Slowly his tense muscles relaxed and he was able to focus inward, finding a center of calm. Letting his mind roam the limitless vistas of his inner universe, he let his exhaustion drag him down into sleep.

* * * * *

“Shouldn’t be here,” Starsky told himself, staring glumly into the nearly empty glass of scotch. Hadn’t he just filled it? He should be out looking for Hutch, not sitting, slumped over the bar of Huggy’s place, trying to get drunk.

“Why not?” argued another part of himself. “What’s the hurry? Hutch is dead. Time don’t matter anymore. Tomorrow. Next week. Next year. He’ll still be dead. Why be in a hurry to find a body? It’s not going anywhere.”

Starsky took another sip of the golden liquid, letting it slide down his throat, noting that his tongue seemed to be going numb. Wasn’t fair. The liquor was finally affecting his body, but his mind seemed as painfully alert as ever. Try as he might, he could seem to drown the images in his head, the laughing, golden haired vision with the wide, open grin and the clear, blue eyes brimming with mirth.

“Hey buddy,” he slurred into his drink. “Ge’ out m’head, would ya? I’m sorry I le’ya down. I’m sorry, Hutch… I can’t… Oh, God… Please. Jush leave me ‘lone.”

“Where did Colby dump ya?” the morbid little voice wanted to know. “Are you face down in a ditch somewhere? Are you in some city dumpster, buried under a pile of greasy, fast food wrappers? Is that pretty blond hair all tangled with leaves and dirt? Is it drifting in ocean currents like golden seaweed while you feed the fish? Did he set you on fire? Is everything gone but a charred husk that I won’t even recognize? Or did he lock you in the trunk of some car somewhere and leave you alone, broken and bloody, to die curled up like a frightened child?”

“Ah, Hutch.” Starsky closed his eyes, unshed tears burning behind his lids. “Where are you?”

“Hey, amigo.” The voice was gentle with concern, a lifeline tossed into his churning waters. “You look about ready to fall off that stool.”

Starsky peeled open both eyes, lifting a hand to wipe away the watery blur. “Hey, Hug.”

“Hey yourself.” The familiar, angular face softened with a smile. “How ’bout you let me put you t’bed? You can crash at my crib.” Huggy gestured magnanimously towards the upstairs apartment. “Free o’charge an’ I’ll even throw in room service.”

Starsky shook his head, and blanched as the room continued to spin. “No. No. Hug. I can’t put’cha out y’bed.”

“Who said anything ’bout givin’ up my bed. I figured I’d just dump you in the tub. That way, all I’ll have to do to sober you up come morning is turn on the cold water.”

Starsky shook his head again, more carefully this time. “Nah. I’ll b’fine.” He cautiously eased off the bar stool. “Can’t seem t’get drunk anyway.”

Huggy snorted. “Well, if that’s the case, I’d say you’re doin’ a mighty fine impression.” He steadied Starsky as the detective turned in a wavering circle, searching for the exit.

“Jus’ wish he’d get outta m’head, y’know? I’d be okay if I could jus’ ge’m out m’head.”

Huggy winced in sympathy. “Yeah, I know.”

“I keep wonderin’ if it hurt. Was it bad? D’John hurt ‘im bad?”

“Starsky, don’t think about it, man. Ain’t nothin’ you can do now.”

“D’ya think he was scared, Hug?” Starsky’s bleary gaze tried to fasten on Huggy’s face. “Hutch gets scared, y’know? We both get scared som’times. On d’streets, but iss okay ’cause we understan’, y’know what ‘m sayin’?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I hear ya.” Huggy voice was soft as he guided the precariously balancing Starsky towards his upstairs apartment.

“Never like Nam though. Never been so scared as Nam. Hutch wasn’t there f’ me. Not like here.”

“Be still, bro.” Huggy wrapped one arm around Starsky’s waist as they stumbled up the stairs.

“Hug!” Starsky halted, swaying, his expression stricken. “I wasn’ there f’ him… He needed me, an’ I wasn’ there.” His breath hitched.

Huggy Bear tightened his hold around his friend’s waist. “Naw man. Whatever went down, you were there. You an’ Hutch are solid on down, you dig? You two ain’t never apart, even when you ain’t together.”

Starsky was gazing at him, eyes red and damp, his brows tangled in concentration. Nothing Huggy had said seemed able to penetrate his benumbed brain.

Huggy smiled indulgently. “It’s okay, my friend. I know you know what I’m sayin’. Ain’t something that needs words.” Gently he guided his inebriated companion up the stairs towards the sanctuary of his apartment.

* * * * *

Under the ground, in a womb of darkness, Hutch sang to himself. In a voice that was no more than a thin, unraveling thread of sound, he sang. Sang to keep himself company. Sang to drive back the night. Sang, because he feared he would never sing again. Sang till he grew parched and hoarse and could sing no more.

And then he prayed.

Hutch was not a deeply religious man. Religion was generally something he didn’t give much thought to. He had a belief system he guessed, a sort of spirituality, but organized religion was something he shied away from, perhaps because his parents had stressed it so strongly. But now he found himself praying, and oddly, he did not pray for Kenneth Hutchinson. Rather he prayed for his friend, Dave Starsky, the one who would be left behind when Hutch’s own journey came to an end.

Many times he had wondered what it would be like to lose Starsky. To lose a friend who was more than friend. A companion who was more than companion. Their job made such loss a definite possibility and such thoughts inevitable. Nightmare thoughts, and ones he tried to slam the door on as swiftly as he recognized them for what they were. Still, many times they had crept up on him, alone late at night, or sometimes it the car beside Starsky when he would turn and they would share a grin, always after another close call and the sound of gun fire sent his heart into his throat.

Yes, many times he had wondered what it would be like to lose Starsky. But now, he found himself looking at the question from a new perspective. What would it be like for Starsky when he lost Hutch? What was his curly top, exuberant, fun loving, street-smart partner going to do when he lost Hutch? Who was he going to turn to? Who else would recognize the aching vulnerability beneath the false bravado? Who else would he allow to comfort him? Who would be there to pick up the pieces?

“Please God,” he murmured, cracked lips barely moving in the empty darkness. “Take care of him. Help him. Ease his pain. Don’t let him give up. Let him live. Help him. Please, help him.”

* * * * *

For Starsky, the act of rolling out of bed the next day was hardly routine. First he had to determine if his head was actually still attached. And when some blind groping finally determined it was, the throbbing pounding pain blossoming behind his eyeballs caused him to wish it weren’t. Carefully, Starsky struggled into a sitting position, gingerly holding his head between his hands. He figured that if he held the shattered remnants of his skull together, maybe his brains wouldn’t leak out through his ears. Next came the task of trying to determine just exactly where he was. It certainly wasn’t his apartment. Even in his state of foggy perception, he knew there was no way in hell he’d ever have a black velvet painting of naked woman riding a white horse hanging on his wall. That pretty much ruled out Hutch’s place as well.

Hutch…

The pain of memory was like a open handed slap across the face. He gasped and felt the edges of his world tremble, crumbling around him just a little more, but he couldn’t fall apart completely. Not yet. He still had a job to do.

Where was his shirt? His shoes? Had he gone home with some girl? He doubted that. The farthest thing from his mind the night before had been a casual roll in the sack.
Despite the nagging impression that he’d been in the small apartment before, it wasn’t till Huggy sauntered out of the kitchen alcove that Starsky recalled exactly where he was and why.

“So, my man has decided to rejoin the living.”

A bare-chested Starsky tracked his friend through eyes narrowed against an onslaught of light and sound. “Hug? What…?”

“Pardon my observations,” quipped Huggy, drawing up alongside the bed, “but for a man who claims he wasn’t drunk last night, you sure look a little rough around the edges.”

Starsky frowned at the sour taste in his mouth and ran a hand through his unruly mop of walnut curls. “I feel awful,” he groaned.

Huggy nodded speculatively. “Hmmm. Thought you might. That’s why I whipped this up, special.” He held out a juice glass of thick creamy liquid. “An’ ol’ family recipe, handed down from my great, great grandmother. A sure cure-all for even the worst hangovers.” The corner of the side mouth quirked. “Not that you have a hangover, seein’ as you weren’t drunk, but it might help whatever’s ailing you.”

Starsky eyed the glass warily, before taking it from Huggy’s hand. “Wha’zin it?”

“Fraid I can’t tell you that. Great, Great Granny made the family swear to keep the recipe a secret, but it’s guaranteed to make you feel better in five minutes flat, or my name ain’t the Bear.”

Starsky peered closely as the viscous liquid, dipped one finger and gave a tentative taste, then with a shrug tilted his head back and drained the glass.

Huggy watched him closely.

Starsky burped and set the glass down on the night table. “S’not too bad. Must be one of those vitamin things, like Hutch…” He broke off with a stricken look.

Huggy reached out and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Your Captain Dobey’s been callin’ around, trying to track you down.”

“Yeah?” A twitch of the shoulder and the hand fell away. Starsky turned his face to the wall, staring at the blank surface. The flood of memories was back, threatening to carry him away in a deluge of anguished regrets. And this time he couldn’t hold them off.

He remembered this room. This bed. Remembered holding Hutch in his arms, the two of them writhing together on the bed, entwined into one being as they fought to wrest Hutch free of the drug that had enslaved his body and mind. The heroin and Starsky, both struggling for possession of Hutch during that long siege. Starsky had eventually won, but the memories would always burn.

The stench of Hutch’s unwashed body, the tang of his sweat and vomit. The salty taste of his tears as he curled in Starsky’s arms, body shuddering with the sobs of a heartbroken child. The feel of Hutch’s hair under Starsky’s petting hands, hair that had always been so soft and golden fair in the sunlight, now tangled and limp, dulled with sweat and gritty with dirt. The wild look in Hutch’s eyes. The hopeless plea. The naked need. The strong hands shaking as they clawed at his shirt. “Please! Please! Help me!”

“Help me!”

‘Oh, Hutch.’ He closed his eyes, fighting for control. Yes, the memories burned, their flame blackening the edges of his soul. ‘I tried buddy. I tried. I’m sorry.’

God, how was he supposed to live with this?

“What time is it?” he croaked past the sudden tightness in his throat.

“Just past one,” came Huggy’s soft reply.

Dobey must be having fits. Briefly Starsky wondered how Huggy had managed to keep the man at bay, but he didn’t bother to ask. His interest flared and died, as had everything else around him. His world had become a gray and empty place.

Head pounding, he slid to the edge of the bed and reached for his shoes. Picking up the battered, blue Adidas made him think of Hutch’s lone Nike, sitting at home on Starsky’s dresser, optimistically awaiting a reunion with its partner.

Starsky bent his head and tightened his jaw, swallowing the sob that rose in his chest. Maybe he couldn’t live with this.
Squinting past the moisture gathering behind his lashes, he wrestled the shoes on and tied them savagely, using anger to counter the nearly overwhelming despair.

“Here.” Something fell softly onto the bed beside him. Starsky recognized his shirt, neatly folded. As he reached to pick it up, he caught the scent of laundry detergent.

“I had Dixie wash it up for you. I know you’ve never been exactly a fashion aficionado, but I thought the blood soaked look was a bit squalid even for you. Sorry, some of the stains wouldn’t come out.”

Starsky held the shirt in his hands, seeing the dark wine colored stains against the faded, cotton material. Blood. Colby’s blood.

“An’ if you don’t mind my askin'” continued Huggy. “What happened to you anyway?”

“What?” Starsky finally glanced up. “Didn’t I…? Colby… He…”

“Not that.” Huggy held up a silencing hand. “I pieced most of that together last night. You may have staggered in, but you were still sober when you walked in the door. I’m talkin’ about that…” He pointed a finger in the direction of Starsky’s lower abdomen. “Who did a number on you?”

Starsky peered down at the purplish bruising that marred his lower body, disappearing into his jeans. “Oh that… I…” He sighed ruefully. “I ran into a door.”

“Hey man, if you don’t want to tell me…” Huggy spread his hands as if the answer was of no consequence. “It’s cool.”

“No… really. There was this car…” Starsky was suddenly weary of the whole thing. Thinking about the car meant thinking about the girls and thinking about the girls meant thinking about the last time he’d seen Hutch, and he couldn’t think about that — wouldn’t think about that.

“Never mind.” He shrugged into the shirt and stood. As he rose to his feet, Starsky’s stomach gave a violent lurch and the bitter taste of nausea rose in the back of his throat. Expression registering alarm, he made a dash for the bathroom. Huggy watched him go with a gratified look.

Face a trifle pale, Starsky reemerged a few minutes later, wiping sweat from his brow with a wet washcloth.

“Yep,” noted Huggy Bear. “Ol’ great, great Grandma’s recipe works every time.”

“Huggy,” Starsky accused. “That stuff made me sick!”

Huggy pursed his lips and shrugged. “So? You feel better now. Am I right?”

Starsky’s eyes went wide, then narrowed dangerously. He nailed his friend with a finger. “Huggy. Your great, great grandma was a…”

“My great, great grandmother was a saint, an’ don’t you forget it.”

“That’d be news to the Pope.”

Huggy chose to ignore Starsky’s caustic comment and instead handed him a glass of orange juice and four aspirin. “Here’s the chaser.”

Starsky accepted the glass with a grunt and downed the aspirin. Perching himself on the edge of the bed, he snagging the phone off the night stand and began to dial. He listened to the ring on the other end, his jaw firming as he steeled himself for a difficult conversation.

“This is Sergeant Starsky. Get me Cap’n Dobey’s office.”

Huggy caught his eye with a sympathetic nod, then quietly slipped out the door, leaving the man to his privacy.

* * * * *

The world was closing in, pressing down upon Hutch like a great, heavy blanket of blindness and suffocation. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. His ears were filled with an ocean of noise. He was molten at the core and glacial on the surface. One moment his limbs would feel numb, dead, then the stings of a million angry ants would jar his muscles back to life sending cramps washing through him in a high tide of agony. He felt sick, and rolled but had nothing to vomit. Dry heave left him gasping. His head was flying, then so heavy it dragged him toward the center of the earth.

He was dying.

In fear he called out to those he knew, to his friends and companions who brought with them the breath of life. Life to counter the specter of death. Love to conquer the darkness of the void. And sometimes they answered. Like gray ghosts they drifted in and out of his mind, speaking words which made no sense, or words he couldn’t hear. Sometimes they cried with him. Sometimes they touched him, but their touch was barren and gave him no comfort. And sometimes they turned away, leaving him alone with his fear.

But one would never leave him alone. One would never turn away. And sometimes that one was nothing to him but a presence he could feel but could not name, because the name was lost in the fires in his mind and he could not find it. But still they presence was there, and the presence was a comfort. And when the name did come to him, he said it over and over, perhaps to trying to atone for the times he forgot, perhaps because it was the only hope he had left.

Buried beneath the dirt of his shallow grave, Hutch’s mind and body thrashed in the grip of a growing fever. Dehydrated, his open wounds weeping and crusted with dirt, his blood slowly being poisoned by infection, Hutch slipped into semi consciousness. His time was running out.

* * * * *

Huggy glanced up from his seat at one of the small corner tables as Starsky made his way quietly down the stairs. It was too early for the bar to open for business and the place was nearly empty but for Huggy and his latest bar maid, busy polishing glasses behind the counter. Huggy frowned. In the dim lighting, Starsky seemed a figure cut from shadows edged in darkness, and he moved like a stranger. Missing was the lively bounce to his step, the playful swagger that told the world here was someone you had to take on his own terms. Gone was the innate spark that had always made David Starsky seem one of the most alive people Huggy had ever known. The man crossing the bar was unfamiliar and more than a little frightening. A grayness seemed to hover about him, a cloak of shadow that bled the light from his surroundings. This was a hollow man.

Huggy swallowed down a sudden flare of pain as he realized, grieving for Hutch meant grieving for Starsky as well — that losing one of the police partners might well mean losing both.

Starsky slipped into the chair opposite Huggy and planted his head in cupped hands.

“Dobey wants me to come in.”

Huggy took in the wan face, the fevered, frantic eyes and lost expression and ventured an opinion. “Maybe you should.”

Starsky sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know anymore. Can’t think.” One hand dropped to the table top and a finger began tracing vague circles. “I told him ’bout yesterday. About meeting with Colby.”

Huggy nodded, but remained silent, knowing Starsky wasn’t looking for a conversation, just someone to listen.

“Seems my version doesn’t quite match Dahlgrin’s report of what went down. There’s somethin’ fishy there. Dobey smells it too.”

“You tol’ him ’bout the money?”

Starsky shrugged. “Yah. Maybe he’s disappointed. I don’t know. Don’t really care. He wants to talk to me.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Starsky’s gaze slid to a wall, seeing not the bricks and neon beer sign, but something else, something for his eyes only. Slowly he shook his head. “I don’t know, Hug.”

Somehow, Huggy knew he wasn’t just talking about facing Dobey’s questions. Gently he reached out and placed a slim, brown hand atop his friend’s clenched fist.

Starsky’s eyes dropped to the hand covering his own, and a troubled frown drew his brows together. Huggy hastily withdrew his hand. Perhaps the touch had been too presumptive. Perhaps Hutch was the only man Starsky would ever allow that kind of familiarity, the only one to whom he would ever admit his vulnerability.

Huggy understood too well to be offended. He glanced towards a back booth of the bar, recalling occasions when the two partners had huddled there, draped in the shadows as they bent their heads together to converse in whispers. Huggy recalled the occasional touch — Hutch reaching out to lay a hand on Starsky’s shoulder or wrist, sometimes even reaching to tug on the silken, walnut curls. Then would sound that familiar low, golden laughter, that cut through the raucous clatter of the bar crowd like sunlight through breaking clouds. And Starsky would smile, his lopsided grin coaxed from hiding. The two of them in a world of their own making.

Huggy’s eyes shifted to the hollow man across from him and the grief drove a fist into his stomach. Would he ever hear that sunlit chuckle again? Would he ever see Starsky’s answering smile?

“Look man…” He didn’t know what to say, but he had to say something, if only to keep from crying.

“I told him about all that crazy stuff John was saying,” Starsky continued, his voice burned out and empty. “About ‘bottomless perdition’ and ‘penal fires and ‘death eternal’ and stuff. He said it was from a book by some guy named Milton. Paradise Lost.” A sickly smile curled one corner of the pale mouth. “Funny thing is, Hutch would have known. Hutch knows…” A flinch and Starsky very deliberately rephrased himself, “… knew things like that.”

Huggy ached for his friend. “Starsky. Come on man, don’t…”

“It’s all about Heaven and Hell,” Starsky elaborated. “And Satan getting tossed outta Heaven and exiled t’Hell, and Adam and Eve getting thrown outta Paradise, and what it’s like to lose something precious and not know how much y’gonna miss it till it’s gone…” Again the pale imitation of a smile touched his lips. “Think John was tryin’ t’send me a message?” His eyes lowered as he stared unseeing at the table top.

Silence stretched.

“Hutch is dead, Hug. I got nothin’ left.”

“Starsky…” Huggy floundered, unsure of what to say, what words he could offer his friend to help ease the pain.

“Do you think that’s what paradise is,” Starsky wondered aloud, his voice growing distant and introspective. “Havin’ something? Something or someone no one can take away, ever?”

Huggy shook his head. “I don’t know, man. If it is, it ain’t nothin’ you’re gonna find in this life.”

“Yeah,” Starsky noted with more than a little bitterness. “You can touch it, but ya can’t keep it.”

Huggy leaned forward with a hesitant expression. “Starsky are you sure about Hutch? Did Colby tell you he was dead, or did he just lay on a bunch of static about paradise and such?”

Huggy was not sure if he was asking because he wanted to believe there was still a chance, or just because he needed to say something to silence Starsky’s destructive words.

“Not paradise,” Starsky absently murmured, thoughts still elsewhere. “Perdition… bottomless perdition.”

“What’zat mean?”

Starsky’s eyes were glittering and hard as gemstones as they rose to meet Huggy’s over the table top. “Means my partner is dead. Hutch is dead.” The candor was purposely raw and brutal, meant to draw blood, his own and Huggy’s.

Huggy didn’t flinch. “How do you know Hutch is dead?”

Starsky’s jaw clenched, and he hissed through clamped teeth. “‘Cause Colby sent him to purgatory. That’s what he said.”

Huggy frowned thoughtfully. “Purgatory? Like in the place where you make absolution for your sins?”

“Like in Hell, yeah! Like in eternal damnation, like in Paradise Lost!” The eyes flashed, pain and bitter anger lashing out at the nearest target. “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve been sayin’?”

“Sure I’m hearin’ ya.” Huggy kept his own tone calm and reasonable. “I’m jus’ not clear on one thing. Did Colby actually say he killed Hutch?”

“He didn’t hafta. What else could he mean?”

Huggy spread his hands. “I don’ know, man, but seems like we ought to consider the alternatives.”

“What alternatives?” Starsky spat, his expression dark and dangerous.

“How am I supposed to know? You’re the detective.”

Starsky surged halfway out of his seat, fury written across his face, and Huggy stiffened, expecting a blow. For a moment Starsky simply glared at him, hands gripping the edge of the table in white-knuckled tension. Huggy figured his friend was trying to decide whether to punch him out or simply walk. In the end he did neither, but slowly lowered himself back into the chair, some of the strain leaving his frame. “You think maybe he wasn’t sayin’ he killed Hutch? You think maybe it meant somethin’ else?” The voice was soft, almost afraid to believe.

Huggy didn’t want to offer false hopes. Nor did he want Starsky blaming himself sometime in the future when he began thinking maybe he should have tried harder. “I think we owe it to our blond brother to check out all the angles.”

Starsky shook his head, looking bewildered and lost all over again. “But what could he mean?

“Maybe just what he said. He sent Hutch to bottomless perdition. We just gotta find it.”
Starsky’s expression was incredulous. “Find Hell somewhere inside the limits of Bay City? Aside from the art museum and botanical gardens that description could cover ’bout anythin’!”

Huggy agreed with a shrug. “You ain’t jivin’, my friend. Looks like we got some work to do. That is, if you’re up to it?”

The hard glitter was back, but this time it was tempered by determination not destruction. “Try me.”

* * * * *

Out of the swirling clouds of confusion came a vision — a certainly in a universe of chaos.

“Hutch?”

It was his partner.

It was Starsky.

“Hutch? Can you hear me?”

The familiar face swam before him, and Hutch felt like weeping in relief. Starsky was here. Starsky had come. He was safe. “Starsky?”

“Yeah. It’s me, babe. I’m here. You’re safe now. I’ve come to take you home.”

He could hear the voice, throbbing and receding, a heartbeat of sound. So close. So close now. He reached out, trying to make contact. His fingers brushed Starsky’s wrist. He could almost feel the warmth of the bare skin, could almost smell the scent of sweat and sandalwood as his partner leaned close.

Almost.

“Starsky?”

Something was wrong. He tried to tighten his grip on the wrist, but it slid thought his fingers like smoke. His partner’s words growing faint, his skin bleaching to translucence.

No! No! Hutch grabbed desperately, trying to hold to the vision.

“Starsky! Don’t leave me!”

The lips moved, saying something Hutch couldn’t hear.

“STARSKY!”

His hands, reaching for his partner, slammed painfully into the sides of the crate.

The voice. The vision. All faded, and he was alone. Alone in his prison beneath the earth.

“No…” Hutch moaned, thrashing in fevered delirium. “Come back! Come back…”

He broke off, shuddering with exhaustion and tearful frustration. “Please…” he hiccupped in the dark, words a broken breath of sound. “Please, come back…”

* * * * *

They headed for the abandoned Shell station first, not because they really expected to find anything, but because it was one of the only places that they knew for certain Colby had visited. Starsky figured the site of Hutch’s initial kidnapping wasn’t likely to turn up any more clues, and he was leery of showing up at the warehouse, figuring the Feds and Dobey might be in the vicinity. He knew that once Dobey got a hold of him, he’d probably be grounded for the rest of his natural lifetime, and he didn’t even want to think about what the Feds might do. Being charged with conspiracy didn’t fit in with his plans. He was going to search this city foot by stinking foot if he had to, alley by alley, sewer by sewer — he would find Hutch, one way or another.

It wasn’t till they were nearly to the gas station that the thought came to Starsky, suddenly exploding in his head with the impact of an atom bomb.

“Oh my God, Huggy!” Eyes flying wide in horror he turned to the man beside him. “The tar pits!”

Huggy blinked, then his own face began to shift to a look of dismay as he realized what Starsky was saying.

“What if…?” Starsky trailed off, reduced to shaking his head in silent denial.

“Could he? I mean…” Huggy’s frowned, his expression dubious. “Man, is that even possible?”

“How the hell should I know?” Starsky reached out and snagged the mike, placing a call through to Captain Dobey.

* * * * *

“You want to do what?” Dobey leaned closer to his phone, as though hoping that closer proximity that would make the request he’d heard more reasonable. “Starsky, I don’t think it’s even possible to drag tar pits! What makes you think Hutch is in The La Brea Tar Pits?”

“Bottomless perdition, Cap’n,” came the reply. “That’s what Colby said. He sent Hutch to bottomless perdition and eternal damnation. The tar pits seem pretty eternal to me.”

There was a pause. The open line hissed as Dobey rubbed at tired eyes. Damn. It sounded right. It sounded ghastly.

“I’ll look into it,” he promised, wishing he could offer more. Sitting back in his chair, he reached out to tweak aside a Venetian blind, letting a ray of sunshine poke a golden finger into the room. “I thought you were coming in.” His soft tone spoke openly of his compassion and the paternal concern with which Dobey regarded his two favorite, wayward detectives. No pretense this time. No stern words of warning or irritable grumbling to disguise his worry.

“I can’t, Cap’n.” The voice which came back over the line was equally naked, stripped of all the cocky self-assurance. “Not yet. I.. I gotta find him.”

Dobey nodded, though there was no one to see. “I know, son. Are you heading for the tar pits?”

“No. We’re checkin’ out the old Shell station first. Let us know what you find out, huh?”

“I will. Keep in touch.” Gently Dobey set down the receiver into its cradle. He didn’t immediately try contacting the necessary people to look into Starsky’s request, but rather let his eyes drift shut and bent his head in silent prayer.

* * * * *

Again and again came the tantalizing visions of freedom. Over and over rose the dark, curly haired messiah, offering salvation. One time in whispers. Once in shouts. Once covered in blood and crying. Once laughing in sunlight. The same drama, played out repeatedly within Hutch’s fevered mind.

I’m here.

You’re safe.

I love you.

And every time Hutch reached out, joy and dread leaping in his heart, wanting to believe, willing it to be real. This time it would be real.

Don’t leave me.

A need so fierce it scorched.

Please…

And every time the vision faded. He was abandoned. Left alone and bereft in darkness, once again.

* * * * *

The Torino pulled into the abandoned Shell station and rumbled to a stop. For a moment, the two men inside merely sat, staring out at the dreary neighborhood.

“Not exactly one of your ritzier locales,” noted Huggy, taking in the derelict building and eerily silent streets.

“No,” agreed Starsky. “Not exactly.” He, too, scanned the streets, realizing that the quiet, gray desolation was somehow almost inviting, an empty wasteland reaching out to welcome an empty waste of a man. He shut his eyes and firmly pushed such thoughts to the back of his mind. He had work to do. He had to find his partner, and he couldn’t afford to allow self-pity or defeatism to intrude.

“So what are we looking for?” Huggy inquired.

Starsky turned in his seat. The presence of the slim, black man beside him in the car was a forceful reminder that Hutch was not the only one who called him pal. Somewhere along the way, Huggy Bear the snitch had become Huggy Bear the friend. When or why, Starsky couldn’t say, but he felt a momentary twinge of guilt when he thought about all the people in his life who lived on the fringes of his relationship with Hutch. All of them good people, willing to be there if needed, and all of them generally kept at a distance. “Me and thee,” forsaking all others. Dangerous, and undoubtedly unfair to those other who counted themselves friends. But Hutch was his other half, brother of his soul. With him, Starsky was complete, needing no one else, and losing him would leave a void no one and no amount of friendship could fill.

Gazing squarely into those narrow brown eyes, Starsky shook his head. “I don’t know. We searched every building within four square blocks and didn’t find a thing. Maybe there’s nothing to find.”

Huggy attempted a smile. “Never fear, the Bear is here. If something is here, we’ll turn it.”

Starsky tried Huggy’s optimism on for size, and found he preferred it to his own bleak outlook. “Yeah.”

Together they slid from the car and began to scan their surroundings.

“You want I should confab with few of the locals?” asked Huggy, jerking a thumb down the street. “Maybe ask around? The folks round here might be more inclined to talk to a brother.” Dark eyes twinkled at Starsky. “I mean, you an’ me, we know you’re a brother, Starsky, but most folks get confused by the packaging, you know?”

Starsky actually found he had an answering smile. “Yeah, you do that. I’m gonna poke around a bit.”

Huggy nodded, “Check you later…” then sauntered down the street.

He watched Huggy saunter away, then turned his attention to his grim surroundings. That feeling was back. That little inner whisper that said Hutch was somewhere not far away. He couldn’t explain the feeling, but it was familiar — the sense of Hutch, of his presence — that personal vibe that was unique to his partner. It was a “knowing” that made Starsky turn when Hutch entered the busy squad room in the mornings, that lead him to answer the phone with a grumbled, “Hutch. Where are ya? You said you’d be here at eight?” without even waiting for the caller to identify himself, that lent him the certainly that Hutch was waiting behind that trash dumpster to leap out to help corral a fleeing suspect. Now it was telling him that his partner was near at hand, or he imagined it was, and perhaps that was all it was, wishful imagination. He thrust his hands in his pockets and crossed the street, heading for one of the silent buildings.

For forty-five minutes Huggy and Starsky cased the neighborhood before meeting up at the Torino.

When Starsky arrived he found Huggy already waiting, lounging against the hood of the brightly painted car as he chatted with some slender, black youths. They melted away as Starsky approached.

“Turns out the skinny one is the younger brother of the chick who married my second cousin, Snoopy Lou.”

Starsky watched the departing kids with an speculative eye, wondering which of the slender boys Huggy considered skinny. “Hug, you got relations all over the place.”

“We are a very prolific family,” Huggy noted with pride.

“They know anything?”

Huggy’s smile evaporated. “No man. I’m sorry. Nobody’s seen nothin’.”

Starsky nodded. He hadn’t really expected anything else. “Yeah. Let’s get outta here, huh?” Where they’d head next, he didn’t know. But the dreary, dying neighborhood was becoming claustrophobic, the urge to escape almost a pain. He circled the hood of the Torino, heading for the driver’s side.

“Hey, Starsky,” called Huggy. “Get a load of the coincidence.”

“Huh?” Starsky glanced across at his friend, then upward in the direction indicated by a slim, dark finger.

Set against the blue Bay City sky, a towering sign stretched overhead, advertising the gas station. Five spaces. Four letters. Like the hollow gap left by a lost tooth, empty girders marked the space of the missing first letter. In bright red and yellow, the remaining four letters spelled out, H-E-L-L.

“Oh my God…” Starsky’s voice was a bare whisper of discovery.

Bottomless Perdition.

Huggy was reaching for the door handle with a shrug. “Funny the difference one letter can make. I knew this guy from the neighborhood. Guy named Jack Bass. Seems they sent him this credit card once, only they left the B off his name, you dig?”

But Starsky wasn’t listening. His gaze had traveled from the sign to some of the graffiti sprayed across the cream colored walls of the Shell station. There too, the company logo had been altered, the initial S obliterated by layers of spray paint. And there were messages.

“WELCOME TO HELL,” read one splash of bright red. “NO ESCAPE,” warned another spray of black painted letters.

And in the smaller, neater print left by a black, permanent marker, “GOD SPARED NOT THE ANGELS THAT SINNED, BUT CAST THEM DOWN INTO HELL AND DELIVERED THEM INTO CHAINS OF DARKNESS, TO BE RESERVED UNTO JUDGMENT. JOHN: THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS.”

Starsky approached the wall as though mesmerized, one hand reaching out to run along the carefully printed words. Huggy closed in behind, attention shifting from Starsky to the words in puzzlement.

As he read the passage on the wall, his frown deepened. “Now that ain’t right,” he noted, shaking his head in annoyance. “Don’t the grandma’s ’round here teach these kids nothin’? That ain’t from Revelations. Don’t think it’s even from John, but I ain’t sure. I gotta admit, it’s been a while since I spent a Sunday sitting round Grandma’s kitchen listenin’ to her recite from the Good Book.”

“Hug…” Starsky’s voice sounded as distant as his unfocused gaze. “He’s here.”

“Say what?”

“John wrote this.”

Huggy shook his head. “No man. Like I was tellin’ you. That ain’t from John…”

“John Colby!” Starsky turned on Huggy, expression fierce. “John Colby wrote this. He left it for me to find.” He glanced back at the wall with a grimace of distress. “It was here before, an’ I missed it!”

Huggy was watching him carefully. “Hey, man. What makes you so sure it was Colby? Maybe it was just some kid who got his apostles scrambled.”

Starsky’s eyes were hard, unflinching blue. “It was Colby. I know.”

Huggy wasn’t about to argue with that kind of certainly. “Okay. So what’s it mean?”

“It’s another message. Like Paradise Lost and bottomless perdition…” Starsky ran a finger over the words. God spared not the angels… “Hutch is the angel. And John has cast him down into hell… into chains and darkness.” He peered up at the damaged Shell sign. “This is hell. Hell is here. Hutch is here. Somewhere.” He glanced around. “In chains and darkness.”

“Down… in darkness…” Huggy too scanned their surroundings. “Down into hell…”

“Hell…” Starsky echoed, running both hands through his curls, pressing on his skull as though the pressure would force meaning out of his brain. “Bottomless perdition. The underworld… adamantine chains and penal fire” In his head, resounded the warning words of John Colby. “I mean it Starsky. Anyone else show up, anyone tries to take me in, and no more Hutch. I’ll bury him.”

“I’ll bury him…”

Starsky’s gaze fell on the empty lot behind the gas station, and suddenly he knew. “Oh shit… Hug!” He began sprinting towards the barren field. “He buried him! That son-of-a-bitch buried Hutch!” He pulled to a stop at the edge of the vacant lot, eyes raking helplessly over the dusty ground strewn with trash and sparsely scattered patches of scraggly weeds.

Huggy jogged to a halt beside him.

“He’s out there!” Starsky waved a hand, indicating the stark land.

“Man, are you crazy?”

But Starsky paid no attention to his friend’s sputter of disbelief. “We gotta find him!” he cried, and breaking left, he plunged into the field.

Huggy threw up his hands and loped right, both of them scanning the ground as they dodged old mattresses and rusting oil drums.

“HUUUTCH!” Calling out to his friend, Starsky jogged through the field, twisting in one direction then another, driven by a desperation that was nearly madness. Snarled bits of metal caught at his clothes. Bits of roots and broken branches lay in ambush, waiting to trip him. A rock rolled from beneath his foot and he went down, sprawling face first. Spitting out dirt, he sat up slowly and glanced up at the open sky. “Where is he?” he begged of the cloudless blue. “Where is he?”

He could hear Huggy calling from the far end of the lot, his cries sounding as frantic as Starsky’s own.

“Hutch.” He closed his eyes, stretching his inner perceptions outward, searching for that familiar chord. “Where are you babe? Tell me.”

A faint glimmer of something… maybe… called to him. He opened his eyes, squinting in the sudden light of afternoon sunshine and rose to his feet. Within twenty paces, he found what he was looking for, but for nearly a minute he could do nothing, paralyzed by the overwhelming surge of panic and dread.

At his feet the sod had been disturbed, churned up and replaced, leaving a tell-tale area of bare, clotted dirt approximately seven feet long and two feet wide. Protruding from both ends of the newly turned patch of earth were narrow metal pipes, and wrapped around one pipe was a length of bright, orange yarn, tied in an elaborate bow. To anyone else it would have meant nothing. To Starsky, it meant everything. On the day John Colby had quit the Police Academy to join the Air Force, Starsky and Hutch had jokingly given him a skein of orange yarn wrapped in tissue paper. “You’re supposed to tie a bit around your finger,” Starsky had explained, “so you won’t forget your two best buddies in Bay City.”

The orange yarn fluttered silently in the breeze.

“Huggy.” The call for help was barely a whisper, it left Starsky’s lips like the last breath of life. Then, his whole face contorting in anguish, Starsky threw back his head and bellowed for his friend, the cords of his neck bulging in protest at the force of his shout.

The summons brought Huggy Bear on the run. He found Starsky on his knees, clawing at the earth with his hands.

“Hey man! Ease up!” he called, bending over Starsky with concern. What’cha doin’?”

“He’s here, Huggy. Here!” Starsky frantically flung aside handfuls of dirt and rock. “We gotta get him out! Help me!”

“Okay. Okay.” Huggy dropped to his knees beside Starsky. “But hold on. You’re gonna hurt yourself.” He made a grab for Starsky’s arms trying to still his friends frantic digging, but the dark haired detective shook him off with a growl. Teeth bared in a grimace, Starsky continued to rake at the dirt with bare fingers.

“Right. Gotcha.” Huggy sat back, lifting his hands in a gesture to show he was backing off. “But I’m gonna get some help, okay?” He rose to his feet. “Okay, Starsky?”

There was no reply, and it was doubtful Starsky even noticed as Huggy left, so intent was he on the pit growing beneath his flying fingers.

“It’s okay, Hutch,” he panted as he clawed up handfuls of gravel and earth. “I’m comin’. I’m comin’. Hang on, buddy. I’m comin’.”

Sharp rocks sliced his fingers and abraded the skin on his knuckles. Slivers of wood and gravel tore the tender flesh beneath his nails. Hot tears ran unchecked down his cheeks. He noticed none of it. For him, all that existed was the dirt beneath his hands, and the knowledge that that dirt was an obstruction that must be removed — a barrier between himself and Hutch. He did not allow himself to think beyond the moment or consider what he would find. To do so would render him helpless.

His hands met something hard and he brushed aside the dry earth to reveal a patch of rough, wooden planking just as Huggy returned, trailed by the youths he’d been speaking with earlier. Each slender boy carried a digging implement of some kind, and under Huggy’s direction, they quickly set to work uncovering the wooden trunk Starsky had discovered.

Starsky made a grab for one of the shovels, but Huggy pulled him back. “Come on, man. Let them finish it up. You’ve done enough. Look at your hands.” Grabbing Starsky by the wrists he held him still, forcing the detective to assess the damage he’d done. Ruefully, Starsky eyed his torn hands, then wiped them down the front of his shirt, wincing at the pain and leaving behind rusty streaks of blood.

“Hug…” It was all he could manage before his voice froze in his throat, but Huggy seemed to understand.

“It’s okay, man. I put out the word. They’re sending an ambulance and some of your fuzzy friends ought to be makin’ an appearance anytime now.”

He didn’t mention that he’d called the ambulance with Starsky in mind. If Hutch were buried out here, it was doubtful he would have any use of emergency services. Starsky, however, might be another matter.

The efforts of the youths had uncovered most of what appeared to be the lid of a large, wooden crate. One of the slipped the edge of a pick under the lid and started to pry up the boards, but Starsky stepped forward and took the tool from his hands.

“Hey, Starsky.” Huggy reached out and grasped him gently by the arm. Starsky turned to look into familiar brown eyes, soft with compassion. A silent exchange of hopes, fears and unspoken understanding passed between them. “Maybe you should let Lerone do that, man…”

A sad hint of a smile touched the corner of Starsky’s mouth, acknowledgement of his friend’s offer. “No, Hug. This, I gotta do.”

With a nod, Huggy let go of his arm and stepped back.

Bracing his feet, Starsky jammed the pick under the padlock that fastened the crate shut and used his weight to pry the lock free of the wood. It gave with a sudden snap.

Hang on, Hutch. I’m comin’. I’m here, babe.

Starsky tossed the pick aside and bent to slip his fingers under the lid. For a moment he paused, eyes sliding closed, breath trapped in his lungs — frozen in an instant of time that seemed to last forever.

That Hutch was here, he no longer had any doubt. It was his partner in the crate. That knowledge was a certainty in his soul. But was his partner still alive? Would he lift the lid to find the warmth, the caring, the vital, living essence that was Kenneth Hutchinson? Or would he find yet another empty carcass, no different from all the bloated remains he’d seen rotting in the tropical jungles of Nam — no different from all the brutalized corpses he’d found abandoned in the alleyways and dustbins of the urban jungles of California — just another empty husk left behind when the spark of life had fled.

One last prayer. No real words. Just a petition, throbbing in his soul like the beating of a heart.

Please. Please. Please. Please.

Letting his breath escape, Starsky raised the lid of the crate. It was, perhaps, the hardest thing he’d ever done.

As certain as he had been that Hutch was in the trunk and that he would find him there, Starsky found he wasn’t prepared for the reality of discovering the still form of his friend, tied hand and foot, twisted awkwardly within the cramped confines of the crate. Gazing down the athletic body marred by indigo bruises and wounds that burned angry red with infection, at the tangled blond hair, dark with dirt and sweat, and at the slack, hollowed out, lifeless face, pinched with fever, Starsky found he could not stand. His legs went from beneath him without warning and he sat down hard, teeth snapping together and catching the tip of his tongue. He noticed neither the pain nor the blood in his mouth.

“Hutch…” he hissed, sight suddenly blurred by tears. “Oh, babe. I’m sorry…”

In the distance, the approaching wail of sirens moaned like a dirge.

“Shit, man,” commented one of the youths leaning over the open crate. “Is he dead?”

As if on cue, Hutch stirred slightly, a feeble groan escaping his torn, blood-caked lips.

The effect on Starsky was immediate. He sat up as though electrified. “Hutch!” Scrambling over the edge of the pit, he half slid, half fell into the crate beside his partner. “Hutch! Hutch!” Gently, he took his friend’s head between his hands, softly brushing blond hair back from his Hutch’s forehead. Hutch’s skin felt dry and scaly under his hands. His nose and lips rimmed with blood from where his dehydrated skin had split and bled. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay now. Take it easy. Just be easy.” One hand slid downward, to press just above Hutch’s breastbone, to feel the reassuring rise and fall of his chest and the thumping of his heartbeat. The respirations were labored; the heartbeat tripping too fast. But Hutch was alive and Starsky found himself laughing and crying in the same breath. “You’re okay. Oh God. You’re alive. We did it, babe. We did it.”

The sirens drew closer.

Starsky leaned over. The crate smelled of blood, sweat, urine and pain. Starsky ignored it all, placing his mouth next to his partner’s ear. “Love ya, Hutch. Love ya, babe,” he whispered in a voice too low to carry.

A touch on his shoulder and Starsky looked up to find Huggy gazing back at him with a quiet smile and suspiciously bright, brown eyes. Starsky raised a hand to enfold the slim brown fingers in his own. “Thanks, man.”

Huggy nodded, the smile widening just a fraction. “Any time.”

* * * * *

Light and sound spun and collided, receded and surged, catching Hutch up in a whirlwind of sensation. Meaningless voices rattled inside his skull and he groaned, tried to flee the tormenting phantoms, tried to find refuge in darkness, but the voices pursued.

One caught him and held him, a screaming urgency that shattered into a million shards within his skull and flayed his wounded mind. He flinched, tried to turn away, but the voice remained, desperate, full of need, demanding attention and acquiescence. Slowly the babble focused, shifted, coalesced into words that reached him through the tempest, and he turned to greet the voice, turned to embrace the angel come to deliver him, come to soothe his torn mind and wrap him in comfort as he slid into gentle darkness. Softly came the breath of tender promise in the dark.

“Love ya, Hutch. Love ya, babe.”

No! No! Hutch tore free the beguiling vision, rejected the false pledge of love. He would not believe this time. He would not be lead astray and hurt again. There were no angels, only demons of deceit. There was no one to save him. There was no redemption. There was nothing.

He gave himself back to the gray emptiness.

* * * * *

“Hey! Easy there. Easy.”

Starsky, hovered as the emergency workers prepared to lift his partner out of the crate. Despite the confining space, the paramedics had managed to fasten a C-collar around Hutchinson’s neck and to slip a back board beneath the injured detective in order to stabilize his spine and prevent further damage. As much as Starsky wanted to be down in that hole with his partner, there simply was not enough room. He’d been gently steered aside and left to watch anxiously from the sidelines while the medics worked over Hutchinson. As one, the paramedics lifted the detective from the box and placed him carefully on the ground, taking a moment to assess his wounds one last time before transport.

Starsky was beside his partner instantly, reaching to take one of Hutch’s hands in his own. Gently he cradled the too warm fingers, wincing over the abraded wrists, the deeply buried splinters, torn flesh, and broken nails rimmed with blood. The damage was far worse than that inflicted upon his own hands while he’d clawed at the soil trying to get to his buried partner.

“Ah, babe…” he caressed the injured hand. “Look what ya did to yourself.”

Too vivid images filled his mind, images of Hutch tearing frantically at the rough wood of the crate, desperately trying to dig his way out.

“Dammit, Hutch…” The tears were back, gathering in the corners of his eyes.

Hutch groaned, struggling feebly against the restraining straps and neck brace. Blue eyes shuttered open and wandered unseeing.

“Hutch. Hutch. I’m here, buddy.” Swiftly Starsky shifted his position to the head of the backboard. He gently cradled his partner’s face between his hands and leaned close, trying to catch the roving eyes with his own.

“Hey. C’mon, Hutch. I know you’re in there. C’mon back, buddy. C’mon,” he urged.

Hutch squinted and blinked as he struggled to focus, his gaze finally steadying on Starsky’s face.

Starsky watched as lines of concentration formed across the broad brow. The glassy look faded as recognition lit the eyes. Dry lips parted, struggling to form a name.

“Sssstt…”

“Hey!” Despite the broad grin that broke across his face, Starsky’s voice still quavered on the edge of tears. “Hey there, sleeping beauty! Welcome back.”

Tenderly he brushed his thumbs against the sides of Hutch’s jaw. “Take it easy now. You’re gonna be okay.”

Hutch’s eyes flickered over Starsky’s face, then widened with something akin to panic. A low moaning started in his throat, growing into a raw wail of terror as he thrashed against his bonds.

“Hutch? Hutch!” Starsky tightened his grip on the sides of Hutch’s head. “Hey? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nooo….” One word. Whisper thin, but clear. Then Starsky watched his partner’s eyes glaze and slide to the side, deliberately disengaging from the world.

“Hutch!” Starsky leaned forward till he was nose to nose with his partner. Mindful of possible spine injuries, he didn’t dare shake Hutch, but he did slap him lightly on the cheek. “Hey! Where you goin’? Hutch?”

“Sergeant?”

A hand closed on his shoulder and Starsky glanced up into the concerned face of a paramedic. “We’ve got to move him now.”

“Something’s wrong!” Starsky reached out and grabbed the medic tightly by the wrist. “Something’s wrong with him. He was here. He was here with me and he just… shut down. Why’d he do that?”

“I don’t know.” The paramedic’s expression was compassionate, but his professional manner never faltered. “But the sooner we get him to a hospital the sooner we can find out. Please…” He slipped a hand under Starsky’s arm and lifted him to his feet.

“Yeah. Okay.” Starsky stepped aside, stumbling slightly as stress and anxiety left him light headed.

Carefully, the emergency workers lifted the back board and began carrying it towards the waiting ambulance.

Starsky paused for one glance back into the now empty crate that had nearly served as his partner’s permanent grave. His eyes widened as he noted the amount of blood that stained the crude, wooden slats of the bottom.

“Oh God, Hutch… Oh God, babe.”

Turning, he sprinted after the paramedics and their priceless burden.

* * * * *

The ride to the hospital was a nightmare, a blur of tense voices and swift motions that swirled around Starsky like a river around a rock as he sat slumped in the corner of the ambulance, trying to stay out of the way of the medics tending his partner. His bone weary exhaustion left him no reserves, and he swayed and bumped against the walls with the motion of the vehicle as it wove its way through traffic. His whole world seemed to have collapsed in upon itself — his awareness limited to the fuzzy edged vision of Hutch’s pallid face framed by the C-collar — blue eyes staring blankly at the roof of the ambulance. On the periphery, voices chattered in an incomprehensible patois of medical jargon accompanied by the tragic aria of the siren reverberating through the city streets and inside Starsky’s head. The frantic search of the past few days was over, bringing as measure of relief, but also awakening new anxieties, new worries. They’d found Hutch, and he was alive, but would he stay that way? How badly was he hurt? And why had he turned away from Starsky?

‘What is it, buddy? Why won’t you let me help? Why’d you shut me out?’

Starsky knew enough to understand that Hutch’s lack of response had the medics worried too, but they would learn more at the hospital. He would have to wait, and count on the luck that had always seen them through to hold once more.

They were nearing the hospital when Hutch went into convulsions. Starsky could only watch in horror as his friend’s eyes rolled back in his head and he began to thrash and twitch upon the emergency cot. The smell of voided bowels filled the ambulance, and Starsky fisted his fingers into his tangled curls and pulled hard to keep from giving in to hysterics. It wasn’t fair, to come this far and lose Hutch now? He couldn’t fight anymore. He simply didn’t have the energy. He closed his eyes and shook, letting the wail of the siren drown out every thought, every awareness, everything. Bent over Hutch’s jerking form, the paramedics worked feverishly to try and stabilize their patient, unaware that they likely held Starsky’s sanity as well as Hutch’s life in their hands.

* * * * *

Starsky hated hospitals. It seemed the only reason you went to a hospital was because something bad had happened to you or someone you knew, though he’d heard rumors that occasionally healthy people went to hospitals for annual checkups. Starsky wouldn’t know. He doubted he’d ever managed a full year without some sort of mishap.

How many times had he replayed this scene? How many times had he sat, trembling inside and trying not to show it, waiting to hear if Hutch was going to be all right — if they were going to beat the odds one more time?

Too many.

And here he was again, slumped upon yet another vinyl covered settee of indefinable color, next to a generic artificial plant set on an end table stacked with yet another pile of outdated magazines that nobody ever seemed to read, contemplating yet another clock with hands frozen in place…

…waiting.

And it never mattered that he’d done this before, made no difference how familiar the scenario, the fear was always just as sharp, just as brittle. The worry twisting his gut into knots just as nauseating.

He had decided long ago it was easier to be the one receiving medical attention than the one left wrestling with nebulous fears in the waiting room. This last hour had done nothing to change that opinion.

He glanced down at his bandaged fingers. That detail, at least, was different. Shortly after they had whisked Hutch into the depths of the hospital to perform whatever invasive techniques they felt were necessary to save his life, a nurse had insisted on tending to Starsky’s damaged hands. He had tried to protest. They hadn’t hurt. The cuts and torn skin had seemed unreal, distant, as though the pain had been shut off with all other feeling. However, her drive to heal would not be denied and she had cleansed his cuts, bandaging the worst of the injuries. It seemed her gentle touch had awakened his nerves for now his hands throbbed, a steady thrumming beat. He welcomed the pulse in his fingertips; the sensation seemed to help tether him to reality, keeping him from drifting too far into the netherworld of exhaustion.

“Mr. Starsky?”

Starsky jumped in his seat, head coming up suddenly to face the doctor standing before him. Raising a hand to rub at weary eyes Starsky admitted that he was be further gone than he thought. He hadn’t even realized the physician was there until he spoke.

The doctor, a narrow shouldered, steel haired man in heavy rimmed glasses, peered owlishly at Starsky. “I’m Doctor Ellis. I am one of the team that’s been called in to consult on your partner.”

“Yeah? How is he?”

Dr. Ellis ran a disapproving gaze over Starsky’s pale face, red rimmed eyes and gaunt, shadowed cheeks. “I wish you would reconsider getting some rest. We could arrange for a cot if you don’t wish to leave the hospital, but you are risking collapse if you continue to push yourself like this.”

Starsky waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry about me,” he rasped, trying to ignore how haggard his voice sounded even to his own ears. “How’s Hutch?”

“Your partner suffered a series of physical and mental traumas, Sergeant Starsky. Being stuck by a car. Being buried alive. Dehydration. Each one presents its own unique complications.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got all that. But how is he?”

“Well, the dehydration was severe. He would not have lasted more than a few hours longer. We have started rehydration procedures. And we have assessed him for blunt force trauma…” The doctor’s voice droned on discussing contusions and lacerations and abrasions and sutures and x-rays and something about a radial head fracture and a question of hemorrhaging and possibility of sepsis.

Starsky felt sick. He dropped his head down and took deep breaths, fighting back the black spots dancing jigs across his vision. He was pretty sure some of what the doctor was telling him was good news. But he could manage to get it all sorted out in his mind. We was simply too wiped to process much of anything.

“Hey, doc…” he finally beseeched, waving one hand like a white flag of surrender. “I can’t do this right now…” He looked up, face raw with emotion. “Just tell me if he’s gonna make it.”

Dr. Ellis studied him for a moment, lips pursed thoughtfully. “I can’t answer that, you understand. There could be complications…”

Starsky gritted his teeth. Dammit! What good were doctors anyway? They could recite a horror list of medical woes, but they couldn’t answer one simple question. The most important question.

“Best guess?” he implored, feeling as though he was on the edge of imploding. “Please. I gotta know…”

The doctor sighed. “Well, based upon his response to treatment so far and the fact that he’s hung on this long, I think he has a good chance of pulling through.”

Starsky closed his eyes and felt a shudder run through him as the axis of his world righted itself. Yes. When he opened his eyes again, he felt as though he’d just shed a lead cloak. “Thanks, doc. That’s all I need to hear.” He rose and swayed as the waiting room suddenly tilted like a ship on the high seas.

With a frown, Dr. Ellis reached out and took him by the elbow, steadying him momentarily. “Are you okay, Mr. Starsky?”

Starsky started to nod, then froze as the motion threatened to unsettle his already tenuous balance. “I’m fine.” Just fine for a guy who been living on adrenaline and no sleep for three days... “Can I see him?”

The doctor harrumphed. “I sincerely doubt you are “fine” but if you’re made of the same stubborn stuff as your partner, I doubt I’m going to be able to convince you to get some rest. Generally only family is allowed in ICU, but Captain Dobey has spoken to me. You can look in on him. He’s still sedated.”

“Just show me the way.”

* * * * *

Hutch lay still against the sheets, features washed of color, and Starsky felt a pang of fear squeeze his chest ’til he noted the slow rise and fall of his partner’s chest. Forcing himself to relax, Starsky pulled up a chair beside the bed, wincing as the metal legs scuffed across the tile floor. The sound reverberated in the cool darkness of the room, too loud.

For a moment, Starsky did nothing but sit and look, drinking in the sight of his partner. Hutch looked terrible — eyes sunken, skin dried and wrinkled, lips pale and shriveled, cheeks hollowed. The skull beneath his pale skin was far too visible, a mocking reminder of his fragile mortality. He was bruised and battered, his wrists wrapped in gauze and one arm in a splint. And clustered around the bed was the usual paraphernalia that cluttered their all too frequent hospital stays; the IV drip, the catheter bag and the monitors.

But he was alive. Here and now. Though Starsky knew it was foolish, he hesitated to touch, unable to shake the impression that doing so would somehow break a spell and Hutch would vanish once again.

Taking a deep breath, he forced himself past such nonsense and reached to place a hand atop Hutch own where it rested on the light hospital blanket. Despite his mummified appearance, Hutch’s flesh was warm and living beneath his touch and Starsky tightened his grip in relief. Some of Hutch’s fingertips were swathed in bandages, and Starsky carefully avoided squeezing those fingers too hard. The sight of their joined hands, both wrapped in gauze brought a chuckle, one that didn’t sound quite sane to Starsky’s ears. He swallowed it quickly.

“Hey, Hutch,” he whispered, knowing his partner couldn’t hear and not caring. The words weren’t really important. Only the feeling. The love.

“How ya doin’, buddy? Doc says you’re gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. So you just rest and get better, an’ I’ll be right here. Hear me? Colby’s gone. You’re safe, so just rest. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” He patted the hand in reassurance, then settled back in the chair, finally allowing his own eyes to drift shut.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

* * * * *

Starsky snatched the empty cup out of the drink dispenser and gave the machine a swift kick. “Chinga tu madre!” he snarled. Damn thing was as unpredictable as Dobey’s temperament. As if in response to his curses a stream of coffee suddenly came shooting out of the dispensing spout, and having no cup to catch it, swirled down the catch basin.

Starsky watched it drain away with a suddenly overwhelming sense of despair that had little to do with the loss of a cup of tepid, watery coffee.

Nothing was going as it should. He’d thought the nightmare was over once they found Hutch and the doctors determined he was going to recover. But it seemed that, like a fitful sleeper, they had clawed their way out of one nightmare only to tumble into the jaws of another.

Physically, Hutch was convalescing nicely, the antibiotics had apparently beaten back the beginnings of a systemic infection, and he’d responded well to the rehydration treatment. Bumps, bruises, and one simple fracture of his elbow joint aside, he was well on the road to recovery…physically.

But mentally… Something was wrong and none of the doctors seemed to be able to tell him exactly what it was.

Oh, they had lots of theories. A defensive mechanism in response to psychological trauma. A case of dysfunctional thinking patterns triggered by stress. A form of psychopathological denial. A dissociate fugue state which allowed Hutch to psychologically withdraw from the overwhelming impact of his ordeal. Meaningless terms and phrases tossed around by various members of Hutch’s consulting team. Someone even suggested that the experience of being buried alive had been so shocking it may have unsettled Hutchinson’s mind, causing permanent psychological impairment.

“You mean turned him into a fruit cake?” a horrified Starsky had asked, restating the doctor’s words in terms he could get a handle on. Hutch? Cabrillo State material? No way. Hutch was stronger than that.

Wasn’t he?

Four days later, Starsky was beginning to wonder.

It really made no difference what name the doctors ultimately decided to plaster on Hutch’s condition. The definition wasn’t important. All Starsky cared about was the fact that Hutch remained unreachable, locked away from him in some sort of self-imposed exile that shut Starsky out as effectively as a bolted door of steel.

And no one seemed to know how to pry the door open. Clinical hypnosis. Anti-anxiety medication. Drug facilitated psychotherapy. All had been suggested as possibilities.

Starsky braced one arm against the drink machine and absently crushed the paper cup in a tight grip.

It had seemed so simple. Hutch would wake up, and everything would be okay. Me and thee, together again, as always.

Hutch had woken up, but nothing was okay.

Starsky had been there, holding vigil at the bedside, when Hutch came around. The sight of those familiar blue eyes flickering open had filled Starsky with such joy he had had cried his happiness aloud, grasping Hutch by the shoulders and leaning close to look into his face. Hutch’s confused gaze had settled on him and begun to clear. Then had come a sudden wash of wide-eyed panic, the same anguished look that had suffused Hutch’s features just before they had loaded him into the ambulance. Whimpering, Hutch had struggled briefly in Starsky grip before going limp. Starsky had watched helplessly as the light bled from his partner’s eyes, leaving them empty and remote. Ken Hutchinson had retreated inside a mental fortress so secure that no one had been able to so much loosen a single brick over the last four days.

So much for simple.

“Dumb, Hutch. Really dumb,” Starsky grumbled, heading back towards Hutch’s private hospital room. His anger had run the full gamut, from the doctors with their vague answers, to Colby who started it all, to Dahlgren who’d cost him time, to Dobey who didn’t seem to be able to help, and finally back to Hutch, whom Starsky knew wasn’t really to blame, but after four days, the frustration was beginning to wear.

And Starsky was starting to get the uneasy feeling that he might never get his partner back.

He pushed open the door to Hutch’s room, pausing in the doorway, trying to sense if there was any change.

All was quiet, the figure in the bed as inanimate as the rest of the furnishings in the room.

Starsky sighed and stepped the rest of the way into the room.

Hutch lay slightly elevated against the pillows, silent and still — as he had lain an hour before, as he had lain the night before, as he had lain the day before…

His vacant eyes were open now, staring at nothing, soul-less and blind. They chilled Starsky.

It was getting too easy to envision this room as a cramped cell at Cabrillo State.

“Hey, buddy?” he chattered, trying for a lightness he didn’t feel. “You know that cup of coffee I was tellin’ you about? Seems the machine had other ideas, so I guess I’ll have to pop down the cafeteria after all.”

The doctors had assured Starsky that there was no physical reason for Hutch’s unresponsive state. His ears were working perfectly, which meant he might very well be able to hear what was going on around him. It was best, the doctors suggested, not to upset him.

“Just keep it soft and friendly,” they recommended.

So far Starsky had followed their advice, but as black bands of tension wound ever tighter inside him, he was beginning to harbor visions of grabbing Hutch by the shoulders and shaking him until his teeth rattled.

“Sure you don’t wanna cup?” He sidled close to the bed, lowered himself to perch on the very edge of the chair. He didn’t want to sit. Didn’t want to stay. It was getting harder and harder to spend time in this room, carrying on a running, lop-sided conversation with someone, who for all the response he got, might as well be a corpse.

,em>No! Starsky chided himself. Not a corpse. He’s not dead. He’s alive.

He forced himself to watch the slow rise and fall of Hutch’s chest — to reach out and take one of those warm living hands in his own.

He’s alive! And he will be okay. He will come around. You just gotta keep at him.

“No, huh?” He gave the hand a quick squeeze. “That’s okay. Hospital coffee’s probably as bad as the stuff we got to drink down at Metro anyway.”

Nothing. Just the slow, even breathing.

Five days ago Starsky had thought all he ever wanted was to see his partner again, alive and breathing.

Well, here he was, alive and breathing, and Starsky was beginning to realize that there was a lot more to living than just breathing. He wondered if it would be in bad taste to try and clarify.

Look Lord, when I said I wanted him back alive and breathing, I really meant I wanted him back alive and breathing and talking and laughing and shouting and swearing and teasing me about what I eat and bad mouthing my car and licking yogurt off his fingers and griping about my driving and kicking me under the table and snoring in the back seat on a stake-out and stealing my food and covering me in a dark alley and putting ice cubes down my back and stopping to pet every cat he sees and then sneezing ’cause of his allergies and helping me fix my clogged toilet and splashing me with the hose and buying me lousy presents for Christmas and tickling me till I say uncle and all that stuff, so if I didn’t make it clear I’m sorry…

“C’mon Hutch!” he snapped in sudden irritation, grasping Hutch by the upper arms. “I know you’re in there, so cut the crap! Wake up, damn you!” He gave Hutch a shake. “This isn’t fair! I found you! I found you, dammit… We won. Colby’s dead, and we won, so you come back to me! You hear?”

In dismay, he realized his grip on Hutch’s arms was so tight his fingers were outlined in white, strained flesh. With a half gasp, he released his hold and pulled back. Shame rose as he watched the white marks shade to red, leaving blushing imprints of his brutal fingers.

“Hutch?” His voice was a bare thread of misery. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, babe. You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”

But he had.

His guilty hands trembled in his lap, clinging together as though seeking comfort.

And what was to be his penitence?

To sit here, without complaint, without weariness, and keep watch.

He bit down on his lower lip, feeling the tell tale burning behind his eyes, knowing his control was slipping.

“Ah, Hutch. C’mon back, huh?” He lifted one hand, brought it halfway to Hutch’s shoulder, then let it drop back limply.

No. No touching. He had forfeited that right.

A single tear escaped, rolling silently down his cheek.

* * * * *

It wasn’t precisely like waking up, nor was it really very similar to regaining consciousness. It was more like finding the correct resolution in a microscope — everything going from blurry and indistinct to clearly focused in a matter of moments. Hutch blinked and drew a quick breath of surprise, trying to sort the sudden influx of sensations and awareness.

Aches. Cold. Softness. Walls. Light. Muffled sounds.

He was lying in bed, in a small, quiet room he didn’t recognize. However, he’d been in similar rooms often enough to identify it as a hospital room almost immediately.

Hospital?

The last memory he could trust with any certainly was of being trapped in a buried crate, left to die by John Colby…after that everything became muddled and elusive.

He glanced around the room, seeking answers, an anchor he could use to start restructuring his world into a semblance of order.

His gaze settled on Starsky.

This time the breath of shock was closer to a hiss. Hutch flinched, fingers tightening involuntarily on his coverlet as a cascade of images blossomed in his head.

Starsky reaching towards him

smiling…

yelling…

crying…

Over and over.

I’m here.

You’re safe.

I love you.

And Hutch reaching back.

Over and over.

Don’t leave me.

Please…

Only to be left alone.

Over and over.

If Starsky had moved or spoken in those first vulnerable moments, if he had made any sudden gestures, Hutch could easily have slipped back into his safe cocoon of unknowing. But Starsky did not move or speak. He slumped bonelessly in the chair beside the bed, head hanging on a limp neck, dark lashes fanning his cheeks, breath whistling through parted lips — asleep.

His inactivity gave Hutch the time he needed to gain a sense of control.

‘This is real,’ he told himself, fighting the fluttering panic in his chest. ‘This is real. Not a hallucination. Not a fever dream. You are real. He is real. Real. Real.’

Silently he gazed at Starsky, afraid to reach out yet afraid to look away. Afraid to do anything that might cause this precious vision to dissolve into nothingness, proving that he finally had slipped over the edge into insanity.

* * * * *

Starsky wasn’t sure what had awoken him. Perhaps it was the painful crick in his neck or the fact that his right foot had fallen asleep and he couldn’t feel it anymore. He twisted his head with a groan, listening to the crackle of his spine. Then he shook out the foot, grimacing as the prickling of pins and needles signaled the return of sensation. Yawning, he glanced over at Hutch and froze…

The eyes were open and looking straight at him.

They’d been open before.

They had even turned in his direction before.

But this time they were seeing…

Starsky was sure of it.

“Hutch?” He straightened slowly, managing to keep his voice very soft and calm, despite the excitement thrumming along his nerves like lightning. “It’s okay, babe. I’m here.”

The blue eyes were round with alarm. They never left his face.

“What is it, buddy?” He slid a little closer to the bed. “What are you scared of, huh?”

Hutch said nothing, just continued to watch him, expression that of a rabbit, ready to bolt.

“Hutch?” Starsky risked reaching carefully across the blanket to take Hutch’s hand in his own.

Hutch tensed at the touch, gaze flickering down to their joined hands, then back to Starsky’s face.

After a moment he appeared to relax a fraction, and something like hope kindled behind those wide eyes.

“St…” The name caught, sounding painful in his dry throat. Hutch swallowed and tried again. “Star…..?”

The fragile voice was far from the smooth, mellow tones Starsky was used to, but it filled him with elation all the same.

“The one an’ only.” His grin stretched so wide he felt his face would crack. He quickly poured a glass of water from the bedside pitcher and held it out to Hutch. “How ya doin’, buddy?”

Ignoring the water, Hutch continued to stare hungrily at his friend. “Stars…?” he repeated, breaking off with a sort of aborted gulp that was part happiness, part tears and part disbelief. His eyes shown bright with overwhelming emotion, and an uncertain smile, achingly sweet and open, flickered across his features.

“Here,” Starsky thrust the water under Hutch’s nose insistently. “Your voice sounds like ground glass. Drink.”

Hutch let Starsky tip the glass to his lips and took a slow sip. But after only one swallow, he shoved the glass away, sloshing water down his front. He seemed more interested in drinking in Starsky than water.

“It’s… it’s …real…you?”

“‘Course it’s me.” Starsky replied, his own emotional balance less than certain. “Who the hell else you gonna find babysittin’ you at four o’clock in the morning?”

A little bubble of sound escaped Hutch’s lips, as though he were unsure whether he should be laughing or crying.

“I thought you were an.. another dream,” he murmured, reaching out to touch, to confirm the reality of his vision. Moving cautiously he brushed fingertips up Starsky’s arm, then down the side of his face. “I kept…seeing you. I kept… thinking it was real. That I was sss…safe. But I kept waking up and it was…was just another dream and you were g…g…gone… over and over…” The words fragmented in distress. “I just g..got so tired… I couldn’t… keep losing you, Starsk…”

“Hey. Hey.” Starsky rubbed Hutch’s shoulders in soothing motions. “Take it easy. It’s okay.”

Beneath his hands, Hutch trembled in agitation, still struggling to explain. “I didn’t know… wha.. what was real anymore… I didn’t know…didn’t know… what to trust…”

“Me…” Starsky soothed, bending to look into his partner’s eyes. “You can trust me. You know that, huh?”

Hutch nodded and leaned into Starsky, who shifted one hip to the edge of the bed, enfolding his partner in his arms.

Hutch gave a slight gasp as his damaged ribs objected to the embrace.

Stammering an apology, Starsky started to pull away, but Hutch’s own arms locked around his waist, holding him close.

“No,” came a soft protest from the bent head nestled against his chest. “Don’t… don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

“Okay. Okay. Take it easy, boyo.” Starsky settled closer, petting the flaxen hair. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Two days later Ken Hutchinson was released from the hospital.

* * * * *

Someone softly cleared their throat and Starsky glanced up from his book. Wrapped in his yellow, terry cloth robe, Hutch stood in the doorway to his bedroom. His right arm nestled in a sling, he leaned into the support of a crutch tucked under his left side.

“You’re awake!”

Hutch’s mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Good one, Starsk. You’ll make detective yet.” Using the crutch as a third leg, he limped across the room, his bare feet almost silent against the floorboards. “You really didn’t have to stay, you know? The doctors said I’d be fine on my own.”

Starsky glowered. “Oh yeah? What do they know? Last time I left you alone you disappeared for three days! I’m keepin’ you where I can see you.”

Hutch chuckled. “You’re going to have to go home sometime.”

“Says who? You kickin’ me out?”

Hutch shook his head. “No partner. You want to sleep on my couch that bad, you go right ahead.”

For a moment their gazes locked, Starsky’s eyes holding Hutch’s own, reading the fear and unspoken gratitude in their pale, blue depths. Then Hutch’s cheeks colored and he looked away, gaze dropping to the floor. Neither one mentioned the nightmares that had plagued Hutch for the last few nights, awakening them both with his raw shouts of terror.

Whatever nightmares Starsky himself might have been struggling with remained unspoken. Hutch had enough on his mind without having to fight his partner’s demons as well.

Starsky cast around quickly for a safe subject that would dispel the moment of awkwardness. “Guess who I talked to today?”

Hutch embraced the change of topic, as eager as Starsky to try and forget. “Who?”

“You remember Candy and Sissie?”

Hutch grinned. “They were hard to forget, Starsk.”

“Yeah, well I talked to Candy and told her what had happened see…Come on, sit down before you fall on your ass.”

Hutch frowned. “You told her?”

“Of course I told her. You wouldn’t want them to think we didn’t call cause we didn’t like ’em, would you?” He took the crutch from Hutch, and reached out to him to help him ease down onto the couch.

Hutch sighed. “No, I guess not.”

Starsky was busy propping some pillows around Hutch, creating a comfortable nest.
“I’m fine, Starsk.”

“Yeah, sure ya are, that’s just why you look like an extra from some disaster movie.”

“Would you stop fussing,” Hutch complained, slapping good naturedly at Starsky’s hands as they tucked the robe in around his thighs.

“Anyway, I told her all about how you were gonna be recuperatin’ for a while, and she said maybe she and Sissie could drop by and do a little ‘nursing’ number on you…”

“Nursing…?”

“Yeah, you know. A little TLC. Fluff your pillows. A sponge bath. One of those massages you hoped for? Maybe if you’re real good, they’ll even help you with a bed pan.”

Hutch colored. “Starsky… I don’t need a bed pan. I don’t need a sponge bath. I’m fine!”

“Ah come on Hutch. A little pampering would be good for you. An’ I know you ain’t gonna let me give you a sponge bath.”

Hutch let his head drop back on the couch, giving in to the inevitable. Actually, it didn’t sound all that bad, two gorgeous ladies tending his every need…and a good deep massage might be just what he needed to work out the kinks that remained from being stuffed in a crate for three days. “Okay,” he capitulated, “but only if you stick around and help me fix them a nice meal.”

Starsky snorted. “Are you kidding? If they want a nice meal, I’d better stick around. Who knows what you’d try to feed them. Probably something like a celery log or mackerel pudding.”

Hutch’s mouth pursed as he seemed to consider a suitable retort, but before he could decide on a comeback, he caught sight of the book in Starsky’s lap and his pale eyes darkened with concern. “You’re not still reading Paradise Lost, are you? Do you really think that’s healthy?”

Starsky shrugged. “Not really reading. Kinda skimmin’. The language is really beautiful, Hutch. Besides I figured I should. Just seemed right somehow. Like I owe it to him. ”

Hutch’s mouth tightened and Starsky continued before his partner could voice the protest. “He was lonely Hutch. He never really fit it, not even with us. Sometimes I think what it would be like if I didn’t have a friend like you, and maybe I understand him a little.”

If anything, the sour look grew more pronounced. “You almost didn’t have me, thanks to him, or have you forgotten that?”

For a moment, it seemed Starsky would answer Hutch’s annoyance with his own, but then he closed his eyes and dropped his head, staring at the floor. His voice softened. “Course I haven’t forgotten.”

“But you don’t blame him.”

Starsky shook his head. “I didn’t say that, either. When I found out what he’d done to you, I could’a killed him.” He looked up, blue eyes troubled, asking for understanding. “But I didn’t want him dead. You know?”

Hutch looked over at the window into the darkness, watching the shifting play of streetlights dancing on the black waters of the canal. “Yeah. I know.” His own voice grew thoughtful. He turned to glance back at Starsky. “You know sometimes, I think your nature is too forgiving. Someone’s going to take advantage of that someday.”

“Too forgivin’?” Starsky shot him a teasing look. “Considerin’ your personality, seems like my forgiving nature might be to your advantage.”

But Hutch didn’t smile at the pale joke and Starsky’s own expression grew sober. “I didn’t say I forgave him, Hutch. I don’t think I could. Not yet at least. I’m just sayin’ maybe I got an idea where he was comin’ from. I mean, a lotta people spend their whole lives tryin’ to find someone they can talk to… really talk to. You and I are lucky, ya know?”

Hutch’s eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. “Wait. Let me get this straight. You’re saying I’m lucky because I’ve got you to talk to? A man who thinks discussing the merits of putting mustard on your hamburger before the pickles as opposed to after is a suitable topic of conversation? Something’s wrong with your logic there, buddy.”

Starsky slid lower on the couch and once more buried his nose in the book. “Fine. Be that way.”

An affectionate smile tugged at the corners of Hutch’s wide mouth. “You’re a nut.”

“Takes one to know one,” Starsky muttered in retaliation.

Hutch heaved a long suffering sigh. “I think this conversation is rapidly deteriorating.” He stretched out his legs under the coffee table and tugged on the tie to his robe. “I heard the phone earlier. Was that Candy?”

Starsky glanced up. “No, Dobey. Did it wake you? Sorry.”

Hutch shook his head, pale hair catching the light from the lamp beside the couch. “It’s okay. I wasn’t really sleeping anyway. What did he have to say?” He leaned forward, using his left hand to pick through the bowl of party mix Starsky had placed on the coffee table.

“He said I was right about Dahlgrin. He was rotten. The Feds followed up some of the leads I thought might link him to Colby. Turns out agent Dahlgrin was on Garvin’s payroll.”

Hutch had just settled on a pretzel. His fingers froze half way to his mouth as he turned to Starsky with a sharp look. “You mean Colby’s death was a paid hit?

Starsky nodded.

“Yeah. Garvin couldn’t afford to let Colby testify against him, so he contacted Dahlgrin and apparently offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse. Two hundred grand to find Colby and take him out. Dahlgrin could set it up to look like a Colby resisted arrest, shot first, whatever. No one would suspect. ‘Cept things didn’t quite go according to plan.”

“You got in the way.”

“Yeah.”

“Starsk,” Hutch said softly, sitting forward. “That should have been your collar. You’re the one who made the connection. You should have asked Dobey to let you follow it up.”

Starsky shrugged. “Don’t matter. I figure I got what I wanted.”

Hutch paused for a beat, the pretzel still poised half way to his mouth. “Which was?”

Starsky tugged the pretzel out of his partner’s fingers and popped it into Hutch’s mouth. “I got you back, ya big dope. An’ I ain’t reading Paradise Lost no more.” With a lop-sided smile, he lifted the book on his lap and turned it so Hutch could read the cover.

Hutch crunched down on the pretzel in his mouth and scanned the title. Paradise Regained, by John Milton.

Their eyes met over the top of the book.

“Hey.” Hutch spoke softly. “Have I told you lately that I love you, partner?”

Starsky grinned, eyes alight with mischief and happiness. “Yeah? Well, I’m kinda fond of you, too.” Starsky reached out and pulled Hutch into a warm embrace, his voice soft in Hutch’s ear. “Partner…”