Table of Contents
After being kidnapped and addicted to heroin, Hutch struggles against his personal demons. Starsky fights to be there for his partner. But they may need more than just each other.
Originally published by April Valentine in 2001.
Editor: April Valentine
Author’s Dedication: To Bob, for understanding even when we weren’t 850 miles apart, I owe you more than dinner.
To my beta readers, who are much, much more:
To Paula, the pucest goose goin’. For email, inspiration, and instant messages, for annotations and encouragement, and for friendship that embodies “me and thee.” I think it says something when we can’t even remember how we got started… and I am eternally grateful that we did.
To Keri T., who helped make Starsky real (thank heavens, for Hutch’s sake) and who managed to strike me speechless on more than one occasion. For more than pagers and “you” vs. “ya,” I am deeply grateful. I think this could be the start of a wonderful friendship.
From the Editor:
I’d like to welcome Hutchrules3 to her first In Person Press publication. It’s been a pleasure to work with a new author and to publish this story. It’s based on the episode “The Fix,” and though this episode has been written about extensively in Starsky & Hutch fanfiction, I don’t think it’s ever been explored to this extent so you’re in for an interesting read.
In Person Press has always welcomed both slash and non-slash material and though it is known to publish mostly slash, the long-running anthology, The Fix, has always encouraged gen writers to submit stories. There haven’t been that many submissions that aren’t slash to The Fix recently; perhaps this will make up for that, as well as open the door to future non-slash stories being submitted.
All facets of the Starsky & Hutch relationship are interesting to me and valid, whether the story involves a slash relationship or explores the friendship between the characters or a hurt/comfort scenario, or all three.
I hope you enjoy this story.
Yours in SH,
April
The cottage was dark and silent. There was the sound of the water lapping gently outside, the occasional swish of a car passing by, but inside…nothing.
Silhouetted at the window, looking out over the canal, stood a man’s figure. The face was expressionless, the eyes hooded in the dark but somehow empty.
A phone rang.
The shadow did not move.
Miles away, another man hung up his phone and sat motionless in the light of a single lamp, trying to decide what to do.
INTAKE REPORT
Clinician: Donald Greene, Ph.D.
Client: Kenneth J. Hutchinson
Session: 1
IDENTIFYING INFORMATION: The client is a 30-year-old divorced white male, who presently lives alone in a Venice apartment. He is currently employed as a detective in a local police department.
CHIEF COMPLAINT: Mr. Hutchinson was referred to this office by a mutual acquaintance, Dr. Henry Wachman. He is seeking treatment for changes in his emotional state, which recently have begun to interfere with his job and his relationships. At this initial interview, he was somewhat reluctant to discuss specific symptoms, though he did endorse difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, reduced energy, and loss of interest in typical activities. He also noted that he has grown increasingly depressed, as the symptoms appear to be worsening rather than remitting.
The client denied current suicidal ideation. As a police officer, however, he does have ready access to guns. He is not in a position to surrender either his personal weapon or others that are at his disposal in the department. He does contract for safety, agreeing to contact this clinician if he believes he is in imminent danger of doing harm to himself.
HISTORY OF PRESENTING PROBLEM: Mr. Hutchinson reported that the difficulties began approximately three months ago, after he experienced an unspecified trauma. He refused to discuss the details of this event; however, the implication was that there was considerable threat to his life.
Mr. Hutchinson has not sought psychological treatment in the past, and denies past history of clinically significant depressive symptoms.
Mr. Hutchinson denied a history of street drug use. He does admit to fairly regular use of alcoholic beverages, typically one to two beers per day with “a few more” during the weekends. He denied any legal or disciplinary actions as a result of his alcohol consumption.
PSYCHOSOCIAL HISTORY: The client reported that he was born, and grew up, in and around the area of Duluth, Minnesota. His parents still reside in the area, as does his sister. He stated he is “not particularly close” to his family and does not have frequent contact with them. He was married for two years to a college classmate from the University of Minnesota, but is now divorced. He described the reason for their divorce as “a disagreement over my career path.” He has a number of acquaintances in the local area, and notes that he has a “fairly active dating life.”
After graduating as valedictorian from high school, Mr. Hutchinson stated, he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Minnesota. He was then admitted to a doctoral program in criminal justice, but left this program after his first year to enter the police academy here in California.
He has been with the police department for several years and reported that his career there has been “reasonably successful.” He has been partners with Mr. David Starsky for the last five years, and described him as his closest friend.
Mr. Hutchinson noted that his work is very time-consuming, and that he and Mr. Starsky are frequently “on the streets” between 10-12 hours per day. They also socialize frequently. Mr. Hutchinson reported enjoying a number of hobbies, including playing guitar and piano, composing music, camping, fine arts, and literature.
BEHAVIORAL OBSERVATIONS: Mr. Hutchinson arrived on time for his scheduled appointment. He was well-groomed and dressed casually but neatly and appropriately. He generally exhibited adequate eye contact, though it was noted that in discussing certain subjects (most notably, when asked about the trauma and/or his symptoms) he had difficulty maintaining this. Voice tone was normal though somewhat subdued; pace was normal and unpressured. Thought processes were linear and coherent and there was no evidence of psychotic symptoms. Though a formal mental status exam was not administered, the client’s history, thought content, and vocabulary suggest a superior level of cognitive functioning.
The client was clearly uncomfortable during the initial interview. When asked why he was seeking treatment at this time, he paused for several seconds, then stated only that he recently had been experiencing difficulties at work, related to the incident of three months ago. As previously noted, he was reluctant to discuss details regarding his symptoms or the nature of the event. He tended to provide broad and vague answers to specific questions about these topics. When such questions were asked, he became more restless, shifting in his chair, clasping and unclasping his hands, and avoiding eye contact.
When an observation was made regarding this behavior, Mr. Hutchinson initially attempted to deflect the issue through humorous or dismissive statements. When these were noted to him, he did become somewhat serious, and at one point even slightly tearful, but appeared to make an effort to restrain and mask any emotional display.
He asked the clinician about confidentiality, and admitted he was concerned about who might have access to the fact that he was seeking treatment, and to what was discussed in these sessions. Though he seemed to acknowledge that his confidentiality would be broken only if he were imminently suicidal or homicidal, he appeared to remain anxious around this issue.
Other behaviors of note: when asked about his substance abuse history, client clearly paused before responding to the question and avoided eye contact with the clinician. A similar response was observed when client was asked if he had ever considering doing harm to himself.
THERAPIST’S IMPRESSIONS: It appears that the client has experienced a severe trauma, probably related to his job, with which he has been coping through the use of a variety of defense mechanisms. His demeanor in the current session certainly suggests a considerable amount of minimization, both of the severity of his symptoms and their impact on his functioning.
It is fairly evident that Mr. Hutchinson has processed neither the event itself nor the meaning of it to him and his personal integrity. There appears to be significant fear, and possibly guilt, around the acknowledgment and expression of the related effect. However, it is undeniable that the event has had an impact on him, and he is running out of strength with which to manage his symptoms.
Prognosis at this point appears guarded. The client’s level of cognitive functioning provides him with considerable resources to continue intellectualizing the event and its impact on him. He is clearly fairly practiced at emotional containment and does not appear eager to set this aside. (Ditto here)
INITIAL TREATMENT PLAN:
Monitor suicidality, as client may not be forthcoming in expressing thoughts or feelings around self-harm.
Continue to develop rapport and encourage client to provide additional information, as he feels comfortable, around the incident, the related emotional content, and his use of drugs/alcohol.
Provide verbal and written education around current findings and information related to post traumatic stress symptoms. Given client‘s propensity toward intellectualization, bibliotherapy may be an excellent avenue to reduce his avoidance.
Discuss pharmaceutical intervention as appropriate.
Consider speaking with client’s partner, Mr. David Starsky, regarding client’s status.
Donald Greene, Ph.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
_________________________________
Chapter 1
Hutch had been missing for days. With each sunrise and sunset, Starsky’s anxiety level rose, along with his fierce determination to find his partner, whatever the cost.
He couldn’t describe the physical rush of relief that had washed over him when the call came over the radio.
“All units… Missing officer sighted… Detective Hutchinson… corner of Elm and Second. We are in pursuit.”
From that moment, everything had seemed to rush past in a vortex, and yet move in syrupy slow motion. He threw the protesting Torino into a wrenchingly sharp turn and sped toward the location at as fast a speed as he could ever remember driving in his life.
He spied the black and while and whipped the Torino toward it, his badge extended out the window. Guided to the alley, he gunned the engine and threw the big, powerful car into the narrow space.
Some part of his mind registered puzzlement that Hutch was huddled on the ground… but this initial observation was lost in his overriding sense of relief mixed with anger, like a parent who’s glad his child is alive but annoyed about the disappearing game. He flung the door open and was by his partner’s side in a second, grabbing Hutch’s arm and lifting his head to face him.
“Hutch, are you cra—”
The words dying in his throat, he froze at what he saw. Hutch’s hair was matted and unwashed. His clothes—the same ones he’d been wearing when he left last week—were filthy, drenched in sweat, dried and drenched again, with a smell that Starsky knew was familiar but couldn’t quite place. Pale patches of his face stood out in sharp contrast to a dozen bruises and scarcely-healed cuts. And his eyes—
Darting back and forth. Unseeing… or at least uncomprehending. Sunk into deep hollows.
Pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
Then Starsky recognized the smell. It was a stench they’d found in a hundred flophouses and hype joints.
Never taking his eyes from Hutch’s face, Starsky dropped his hand from his partner’s jaw to his arm. He yanked back the sleeve, knowing he was probably hurting Hutch but suspecting he was beyond caring… and then, only then, did he permit his gaze to drop to Hutch’s arm, hoping, praying he was wrong.
What he saw there hit him like a punch in the gut: a dozen needle marks peppered the bruised flesh.
Hutch’s labored breathing changed pace and tone with a wrenching heave that Starsky fell shudder through his own body. Instantly, Starsky pulled his partner close against his leg and clutched him tightly. Despite his delirium, something in Hutch knew Starsky was there, and an answering set of hands gripped the blue denim as if they would never let go.
“My God,” Starsky heard as if from the end of a tunnel. “He’s a junkie.”
Starsky’s eyes shot up to the patrolman who was kneeling beside them. Quick as a snake, his hand shot out and grabbed the man’s shirt. “Shut up,” he said, his eyes deadly. “I’ll handle this.”
Bravely—for only the very brave or the very stupid would challenge Dave Starsky under these conditions—the patrolman said, “I gotta make a report.”
“No,” Starsky declared in a tone that forbade argument. “No report. This didn’t happen, Bernie, do you understand?”
Their eyes met and held for several seconds. Subtly, Starsky’s expression shifted, to include pleading for understanding, for secrecy, for his partner. Finally, the patrolman’s eyes dropped, and he nodded, once.
“I’ll take responsibility,” Starsky said, clapping the man’s arm. “Now, give me a hand, will ya?”
Based on his appearance, Starsky suspected Hutch had dropped several pounds, but it still took both him and the patrolman to hoist the shivering, seizing detective to his feet. His knees wouldn’t hold his weight, and Starsky and Bernie supported him between them as they made their way to the Torino.
And then there had been forty-eight hours of sheer hell. Hell for Hutch as excruciating muscle and stomach cramps attacked, accompanied by nausea and vicious, bone-rattling chills. Hell for Starsky as he watched his best friend go through an anguish he had never seen before and never wanted to see again. Further hell for both as Hutch alternately raged at his partner and begged him to stop the pain with “some help.”
It wasn’t until the third morning dawned that the pain, rage, and delirium, gave way to complete enervation.
But they weren’t done yet.
The confrontation with Forest, and his farewell to Jeannie, had sapped what little strength Hutch had left. Starsky called a black and white to come and transport Forest to the station. With Hutch so depleted, he didn’t want to take the chance of Forest trying something funny on the way to being booked.
Besides, he wanted to take Hutch home.
Hutch was silent during the ride back to his cottage. He got out of the car slowly, as if sleepwalking, and followed Starsky up the path to his door, shuddering as if he remembered all that had happened since the last time he’d been here.
Starsky unlocked the door and held it open. Obediently, Hutch went inside.
Another shudder hit him as he walked into the large front room that served as both living room and bedroom. Without a word, Starsky looked in the bathroom, then moved into the kitchen to make sure all was clear. When he returned, Hutch had sunk down onto the bed, eyes staring ahead, unseeing.
Hey,” Starsky said from the kitchen entrance.
Hutch’s eyes met his. They were flat, drained, exhausted.
“Want me to hang around?”
Hutch shook his head slightly. “No,” he said. “You better go book him.”
“I can get Dobey or someone to do that with a phone call,” Starsky began, but Hutch was shaking his head.
“No,” he repeated, and something in Starsky’s gut twisted at the deadness of his tone. “No offense, Starsk, but I think I need to be alone for a while.”
Starsky held his friend’s gaze for a long moment in the unspoken communication that had existed between them virtually from the beginning. Some absurdly protective part of him wanted to insist on staying here with his clearly wrecked partner… but another part knew that Hutch needed time alone to begin healing.
“Please,” Hutch added, somewhat hoarsely, and Starsky relented. Dropping Hutch’s spare key on the bedside table, he headed for the door, opened it… and then turned back.
“Hey,” he said, his voice husky with compassion.
“Yeah?” Hutch’s eyebrow, swollen, bruised, and scabbed, rose in a grotesque caricature of his characteristic gesture.
“You need me, you call.” It was not a question.
Hutch’s mouth twitched slightly.
“Yeah,” he said again.
Reluctantly then, Starsky went out the door and closed it behind him.
He lingered on the front porch until he heard the lock slide home, then went down the steps and back toward his car. At the door, he paused and looked back toward the cottage. He hesitated, almost changing his mind, then sighed and got behind the wheel.
The Torino roared to life and pulled away.
***
It was after eleven, and Starsky couldn’t sleep.
Forest had been successfully booked. Starsky had interrogated him himself, to minimize the number of people who learned the details of Hutch’s ordeal, but this had proved unnecessary. Forest had kept his mouth firmly shut, and the high-priced lawyer who sauntered in within minutes of Starsky’s arrival coolly informed Starsky that his client would not be making statements anytime soon. Starsky restrained the impulse to beat the answers out of the smooth gangster. He wanted an airtight case. He wanted this man behind bars.
He had heard nothing from Hutch, and he was worried.
He picked up the phone and dialed. As it had the last three times he’d called, it rang… and rang… and rang.
He replaced the receiver with a frown.
Hutch shouldn’t be alone.
That’s what he wants.
That’s what he says he wants.
Wanna respect that, but…
What to do?
He sighed.
Okay, buddy. Just this once, I’ll go against my better judgment and leave it be.
For now.
Reluctantly, somewhat apprehensively, he turned out the light and went to bed.
***
After Starsky left, Hutch dropped back onto his bed, fully clothed, and before he knew it or could stop it, slept for four hours straight. It was a deep sleep that was mercifully free of nightmares.
He awoke to the darkness, feeling heavy and hung over.
Hung over. Oh, yeah, Hutchinson, from the worst drunk you’ve ever had.
Muscles aching from the hours of cramping, he got up, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and went into the bathroom, thinking he might take a shower.
A noise outside startled him and he jumped, the bottle dropping from his suddenly trembling hand and shattering on the tile floor.
“Damn!” he swore violently, with far more force than the incident required. He wasn’t upset by the accident; he was angry, furious at his traitor hands and his own fear. He clenched his hands tightly to stop the shaking and took in a deep, shuddering breath. The noise was nothing, he told himself as he cleaned up the mess. A cat, or a duck, or that stupid dog who keeps raiding your garbage can.
I gotta get out of here.
He snatched his jacket from the bed and started for the door… then stopped short. He had no keys. He had no car. Forest’s goons had taken it when they had taken him.
He stood frozen in the middle of the room. The moonlight shone on his hair in a tender benediction, as if it wanted to reach out and soothe his tormented soul… but all he could see, glaring before his eyes, was the piercing beam of the flashlight. All he could hear was the sound of Forest’s voice
you think you’re bad now sucker in a couple of hours you’re gonna be banging your head against the wall
and his own, begging, pleading,
give me something give me some help you got help don’t go
He moaned and whirled away, as if to physically escape the memory, but it followed him, the taunting persisting. Shaking his head once, again, trying desperately to clear his thoughts, he then stumbled over to the chair beside his window. He dropped into it and made himself take another deep breath.
His insides were shaking and tight, and he didn’t think there was an inch of him that didn’t hurt, including his heart.
He dropped his face into his trembling hands, ignoring the pain the movement caused… and wept.
Chapter 2
Eventually, he ran out of emotional steam; as if emerging from a trance, he lifted his head from his hands and leaned back in the chair. He gazed up at the ceiling for a moment and breathed another sigh, feeling it rattle raggedly through his chest.
Well. You’ve cried your eyes out, now what?
You got two days, Hutchinson. Two days before you have to walk into that precinct and act as if nothing happened. You’d better get on it, right now.
The internal voice was feeble and unconvincing.
Guess I should go to bed.
NO.
The thought was unacceptable. He couldn’t imagine his eyes closing under his own volition, couldn’t believe he would feel safe here tonight—and maybe never again.
GODDAMMIT!
His fist clenched and he struck the arm of the chair once. Then his face tightened as his throat worked and he pulled himself in, tighter than he ever had before, determined not to lose it again.
Desperate for respite, he yanked the curtains open just enough so he could see outside. The lapping waters of the canal, especially in the moonlight, had always been a source of comfort and tranquility for him… but not tonight. Tonight, all he could do was scan the expanse of beach anxiously, to assure himself that no one was there.
The phone rang.
He shied away from it like a horse from a snake, heart pounding, palms instantly slick with sweat.
Starsk.
He reached for the phone with one hand… in the moonlight, he saw it shaking again… and dropped it back to his lap.
Can’t. Can’t let him hear me like this.
He let it ring.
And ring again, an hour later… and again, around eleven.
Then he got up, and yanked it out of the wall.
***
The next morning, Starsky found himself jolted awake at an uncharacteristically early hour. He lay there for a moment, blinking, trying to determine what had woken him.
Hutch.
He looked at the clock, then dialed the phone again, figuring Hutch had probably been up for a while. He let it ring a dozen times, figuring his partner would answer out of annoyance if nothing else.
Nothing.
Sighing, he replaced the receiver and threw back the covers. Might as well get up and go try to get some breakfast.
He wandered aimlessly for a number of hours. Did some grocery shopping. Put gas in the Torino and got it washed. Stopped by Huggy’s for lunch and a little pinball.
Called Hutch a dozen more times.
Always, the phone rang without being answered. Always, he hung up with that sense of unease gnawing at his gut.
Eventually night fell, and he made up his mind. Enough was enough.
He parked the Torino next to Hutch’s and strode purposefully through the gate and up the path to the door.
There was no response to his knock.
“Hutch,” he called through the door. “Hutch, c’mon. Let me in.”
He knew he meant that in more ways than one.
Still no answer. He pulled out his set of Hutch’s keys, and unlocked the door.
The cottage was pitch black. Fumbling for the switch beside the door, he flipped on the lights, to find his partner sitting next to the living room window, staring out at the canal.
Hutch half-turned toward the door, squinting at the sudden light, then returned his gaze to the window without acknowledging Starsky’s presence.
“Hey,” Starsky said, noting Hutch was wearing the clothes he’d had on the night before. “What’re you doin’?”
“Thinking,” Hutch said, his voice still flat and devoid of emotion.
“All night and all day?”
“Until about five seconds ago, yeah.”
Starsky sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
He noticed the phone lying where Hutch had thrown it across the bed, and picked it up, raising his eyebrows when he saw the bare wires sticking out of the end.
“Y know,” he began dryly, “if you didn’t wanna talk to me, all you had to do was say so. No need to take it out on a defenseless phone.”
Hutch didn’t respond.
“Hutch… c’mon. You’re startin’ to scare me.”
Hutch looked up at him again, and Starsky was struck by the pain in his eyes. “Join the club,” he said.
Starsky came over and propped himself on the arm of the chair where his partner sat. “Look, I know you gotta lot to deal with here…”
Only by the longest stretch of the imagination could the noise Hutch made in response be called a laugh, and Starsky felt a physical ache somewhere in the region of his chest. They had known each other for years, they had been through a hundred crises together, and they had always known how to cheer each other up, comfort each other, take care of the problem,
But this was different. Nothing could erase what had happened to Hutch. They both knew it, and they sat there with the knowledge yawning between them, an unaccustomed cavern of discomfort and uncertainty about how to behave.
Hutch took in a breath; let it out slowly. “Look, Starsk, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t think you can help me out this time.”
“Bullshit,” Starsky declared. “Since when do you have troubles big enough I can’t be there for you?”
Something sparked in the blue eyes as Hutch’s brows raced together in a fierce frown. “Since now,” he snapped. “Look.” He got up from the chair, strode away several paces, then wheeled and started to cross back toward his partner. “I…” He stopped in the middle of the room and looked up toward the ceiling, moisture pooling in his eyes. Starsky could only imagine what was racing through his mind.
He watched as Hutch drew in another breath, saw the thin shoulders square as he gathered himself enough to speak with some semblance of control. “I can’t even tell you what’s wrong,” he said shakily. “How’re you supposed to help?”
“We need words to help each other?” Starsky asked gently. “C’mon. Let me—”
Hutch shook his head. “I can’t, Starsk. You’ve just gotta give me some time.”
He attempted a smile.
It was a death’s head grin that wouldn’t have fooled a total stranger, let alone Starsky.
Starsky didn’t like it, but they were clearly at a stalemate. And he knew how stubborn Hutch was; if he tried to push it, the other man’s resolve was apt to strengthen rather than yield. He shrugged, rose from the arm of the chair, and walked over to stand toe-to-toe to his friend.
“Okay,” he conceded. “But tell me one thing.”
Somehow, Hutch managed to meet his partner’s eyes. “What?”
“If you need somethin’, will you call me?”
Hutch couldn’t hold his eyes. “Sure,” he said, his gaze dropping.
“Don’t lie to me, man,” Starsky requested, firmly but without rancor. “We got more history than that.”
Hutch raised his eyes again. “All right, no,” he admitted. “Probably not. Not tonight.”
“How ’bout tomorrow?”
“I’ll—have to see.”
“Well, at least that’s the truth.” Starsky held Hutch’s gaze for a few more seconds, then turned away and headed toward the door. “You change your mind, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks.” Hutch said it sincerely.
“Yeah.” Starsky tugged open the door, paused for a beat at the threshold… then continued out.
Hutch started toward the door, then stopped himself. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly and deliberately, then took two swift strides to the door and threw the bolt.
Forcing himself to leave the lights on, he squared his shoulders and walked into his bathroom—and couldn’t help flinching at what he saw. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked deliberately down at the sink, the faucets, his hands… anything but the reflection of his bruised, battered and wasted face. Anywhere but at that haunted look in his eyes, that hunger buried deep in the back.
He stripped quickly, continuing to avert his gaze from the mirror, and turned on the shower—then turned it off, every sense in his body alive.
What was that?
Nothing, again nothing, he told himself firmly. You have to get past this, Hutchinson; you can’t spend the rest of your life afraid to get in the shower.
But he paused. Then, slowly, ignoring how stupid he felt doing it, he wrapped a robe around his naked form and made the rounds of the small dwelling, checking every lock on every window and door. He turned out all the lights again and peered out at the surrounding area, just to be sure there were no suspicious figures lurking behind the bushes or standing in the street. For the first time, he wished his home weren’t in such an isolated place.
Then, before he would allow himself to turn on the shower and step inside, he went around again—just to double-check, he told himself.
The shower felt surprisingly good, though somewhat painful on the bruises on his chest and his abdomen. He began to relax, felt taut and straining muscles finally let loose their stranglehold on his back and shoulders. Though he had showered at Huggy’s, he still soaped his body twice before he felt clean again. Part of him wanted to stay in the warm, misty haven… but eventually he turned off the taps and got out to towel himself dry.
He did not intend to sleep… but to his dismay, the shower had depleted the energy he had left. He could barely keep his eyes open.
But before he went to bed, he checked every window and every door, to be sure they were locked.
Not once.
Not twice.
Three times.
Only then did he allow himself to slide underneath the covers… and despite himself, he slept.
***
You tell us where she is and you wake up in your own bed tomorrow morning like nothing happened.
Nothing. Happene….
NOTHING HAPPENED…
“HUH!”
Hutch sat boll upright in bed, heart pounding, sweat drenching, breath coming in shallow, rapid gasps. He lunged for the bedside table and snatched up his gun, then reached up to hit the light, which promptly fell to the floor from his violently shaking hands. He couldn’t calm down, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even orient himself. He leapt out of the bed and spun a circle around the room, searching for the man whose voice had been the soundtrack for his past and present nightmare, his own shadow whirling crazily in the light of the fallen lamp.
After agonizing seconds, his breathing slowed. The trembling eased, and he was able to uncurl his fingers from the gun’s grip and drop his arm by his side. He sat down on the edge of the bed and swallowed, then looked at the luminous dial of the clock,
4:00 a.m.
Wonder if it’s too early to call Starsky? he found himself thinking with some amusement. Guess what, pal? I just had the most bizarre, the most realistic dream I think I’ve ever had in my…
Then he looked down. Saw his wrists, chafed and bruised from the ropes… and those red marks on his arms. He looked at them… then his hands folded into fists, his elbows closed, and he clenched his arms tight to his body.
Gotta go on, gotta go on, gotta go ON.
You got just over twenty-four hours, Hutchinson.
Amazed that his legs actually held him up, he went to the bathroom and pried the lid off a bottle of aspirin. Downing three without water as he crossed the living room to the kitchen, he grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge and returned to his bed. His body was tired, his limbs felt simultaneously leaden and sodden, but his brain was too wide awake to permit him any more sleep.
He tried to play his guitar, but his fingers were too weak to even depress the strings properly.
Goddamn you, Forest.
Trying the piano worked a little better. It didn’t matter so much how hard he pressed the keys; he kept it so well-maintained that it responded to his slightest touch.
For an hour or so, his music gave him respite.
Eventually, the sun began to rise and he felt himself relax, as if he were safer in the light of day. Leaving the piano, he toyed with the idea of lacing up his sneakers and trying his usual morning run.
Yeah, right. You wouldn’t get a hundred yards.
He wandered aimlessly around the cottage for a few minutes, checking the plants, removing a dead leaf here and there… and then decided to at least go for a walk. He pulled on a pair of shorts and a light sweatshirt, hesitated over his shoes, then decided to forego them. He’d always loved the feeling of the sand under his bare feet, and he deserved a little indulgence today.
He went out onto the porch, locked the front door, and turned to replace the spare key under the flowerpot—then froze. It occurred to him that perhaps he should find a better place to hide it, at least—maybe—for a little while. He tucked it into his pocket for the time being, and started down the beach.
But the weight in his chest grew heavier and more ominous with each step, and he couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder and all around. There was never anyone there, but to his heightened senses there was always some noise that might be, could be…
He gave up and returned to the cottage, where he sank into the chair by the window and looked out at the world in which he no longer felt safe.
Chapter 3
Exhausted himself from the long days of searching for Hutch, the withdrawal, and his early rising the day before, Starsky’s body clock was completely out of whack, and he slept much later than usual. When he finally did open his eyes, he felt slightly dopey as he shook his head and squinted at the clock on his night stand.
Holy cow.
He got up, quickly showered and shaved, and started to call Hutch—then remembered the stunt his partner had pulled with the phone the night before. He pulled on one of his dozen pairs of blue jeans, threw a t-shirt over his head, and stuffed his feet into his blue sneakers. Shrugging into his battered leather jacket, he started for the door, snagging his keys along the way, then stopped short.
What to do?
He knew Hutch wanted time alone, and he could understand that. It wasn’t his way; he preferred to talk things through, see how they sounded out in the real air instead of that area between his ears. Hutch was more closed in, had been for as long as Starsky had known him, but Starsky knew for certain that Hutch opened up to him more than anyone. Being shut out, shut down without the slightest hesitation, hurt.
So was he going back to his partner’s for Hutch’s sake, or his own?
Nuts, he said to himself at length. Who gives a damn who it’s for, anyway? What difference does it make? Long as we both come through.
He reached the door in two rapid strides and slammed out.
***
Hutch had just gotten out of the shower when he heard the knock on the door. Before he could think… before he could even blink, it seemed… he was beside the bed, gun in his hand. He wrapped both hands around the grip of the Magnum and aimed it at the door.
The knock came again.
“Hutch?”
Hutch let his breath out in a whoosh, and let the gun drop as he went over to the door and opened it. “Dammit, Starsky,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I almost blew your damn head off.”
Starsky took in the gun in his partner’s hand… then reached out and gently but firmly took it out of his partner’s hand. He laid it on the table by the door, worried that Hutch was answering the door with his cannon loaded and ready to rumble, but also relieved that he was out of that damned chair.
“What’re you doing here?” Hutch asked, not seeming to notice that he was now unarmed. “I seem to recall asking you to leave me alone.”
Starsky turned, and dropped onto a nearby chair. “Compromise,” he proposed, showing no sign of leaving. “How ’bout I just stick around? You don’t have to say nothin’. I promise I won’t ask you any questions. I’ll just—be here.”
He watched as Hutch struggled with that for a good two minutes. Then his shoulders dropped, his throat worked, and he nodded. Once.
“Good,” Starsky said softly. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. He had a foot in the door.
Hutch stood there for another moment, then abruptly went back into the bathroom and closed the door. Turning on the water full force, he stood, hands resting on the counter, staring at himself in the mirror.
Who is that?
In the space of two weeks—god, has it just been two weeks—his sense of himself, his entire identity had been turned completely inside out.
Somewhere, deep inside, was that essential Ken Hutchinson. Good cop. Intelligent man. Someone who cared deeply, with fierce compassion and loyalty, for little children, women in trouble, and a certain dark-haired detective. Someone with a powerfully built sense of right and wrong and an idealism that made him willing to lay it on the line for someone else, every day of the week and a lot of weekends.
He knew what some of the other officers called him. The White Knight. While still in uniform, he’d had a tendency to give his time, his money, his ear to the juvie junkie, the discouraged bum digging in garbage cans, and the occasional sweet-faced prostitute. His partner at the precinct, a cynical cop with more years on the force than Hutch had on his face, had rolled his eyes and sighed impatiently at the young cop’s generosity—and never missed an “I told you so” when Hutch came up short three days before payday and had to borrow money for lunch or gas for his car.
How could he reconcile that with that other part of him—the part that knew all about the evils of heroin, knew what it did to people and those they loved and yet…
had found it not entirely unpleasant.
He winced, shuddered at the very thought. Somewhere, in the foggy place that held his memories of the kidnaping and the involuntary addiction, was an uneasy vision of himself welcoming the needle after the first four or five shots… sinking into that warm, deep oblivion that was infinitely preferable to the reality at that point in time… crawling on his hands and knees to hoods, thugs he’d have thrown against a wall and busted on any other day, begging them for a fix… betraying a woman he said he loved in order to get that “one, beautiful pop.”
tarnished knight
His vision blurred as he blinked back tears of shame and frustration, and it was as if he could see the two parts of himself in his reflection in the mirror.
Godammit, Starsky, why did you have to come back? I need this time alone; to fall apart and put myself back together again… and I can’t do that with you here.
***
Starsky glanced at his watch, and saw that Hutch had been in the bathroom nearly twenty minutes.
He was getting a little concerned. Hutch had never struck him as the suicidal type, but sitting in the bathroom beating his brains out over—whatever—couldn’t be good for him. He dropped his feet to the floor, hoisted himself up, and went over to knock on the door.
There was a moment of silence, then the door opened. Hutch came out, eyes suspiciously damp, and lips pressed tightly together. “Thought you weren’t going to do that,” he said.
Starsky shrugged. “So I lied. Figured you need better sleep than you’re gonna get in there.” He forced a smile. “Besides, what if I hafta go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?”
Hutch managed a half smile; it was mostly mirthless but again, it was something. Starsky began to feel a little more hopeful, like maybe there was something he could do after all.
“Wanna play Monopoly or something?” he offered.
Hutch shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said.
What… No comment about my pathetic abilities? How it would be too easy?
Starsky felt like he was in the room with the man he knew better and who knew him better than anyone on the planet… and with a total stranger. He reached out to touch Hutch’s arm, but he pulled away. No, shied away, Starsky realized. Like a spooked horse… or a dog who d been beaten one too many times.
He watched as Hutch attempted to cover the withdrawal by moving into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator. “Hey,” he said, and Starsky heard the strain in his voice as he struggled to sound normal. “You eat already? Want something?”
“Uh…sure,” Starsky said, crossing into the kitchen “What ya got?”
Over Hutch’s shoulder, Starsky stared into his refrigerator. The compartment was full of rotting and expired things and six beers. Hutch popped the freezer. Ice cubes. Very filling.
“Beer,” Hutch said, again in that normal voice. “Ice. And… compost.”
“Pass,” Starsky said. “Hey, why don’t I go pick us up some breakfast? Eggs, bacon, toast?”
“Sure.” Hutch didn’t turn from the fridge. “Uh… let me grab some cash…”
“Gotcha covered,” Starsky said, moving toward the door as he checked his wallet just to be sure. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
***
It was a very strange day.
Starsky actually cooked them breakfast, and Hutch actually ate it. Then they both sat and read various sections of the Sunday paper, passing them back and forth between each other without a word.
It was how they’d spent a hundred Sundays together.
Usually they were companionable and comfortable; after so many years and so many hours together, they were as easy with each other’s silences as with teasing banter and the most serious conversation. But today, the quiet seemed taut with things unspoken and feelings unexpressed. They watched some television and talked about the game and mundane, ordinary things, while the dead elephant of Hutch’s ordeal lay in the middle of the room, both of them stepping carefully around it and ignoring the growing stench.
As the sky began to darken, Hutch grew increasingly tense, pacing around the room and going to the windows to peer at the beach or the street outside. Finally, he turned to Starsky and spoke, the first words he had said in the last hour.
“You probably want to get home and get to bed, huh? Back to work tomorrow.”
Starsky nodded toward the duffle bag he had dropped beside Hutch’s door when he first came in. “Brought some stuff with me. Hope you don’t mind if I just crash here for the night.”
“Starsk…” Hutch began, then stopped, running his hands through his hair. “Look, this is ridiculous,” he went on. “I’m not a child who needs a human night light. Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Starsky shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving his partner’s face. “Nice try, Hutch, but I told you… I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
Hutch made a resigned half gesture with his hands, then let them drop. “Fine.” He went to the hall closet and dragged down a set of sheets, a blanket, and a spare pillow, all of which he dropped on the couch in the small alcove off the living room.
“Thanks,” Starsky said, grabbing the duffle bag and going into the bathroom.
When he emerged, the front room was dark, though Hutch had considerately turned on the alcove lamp so he could find his way to his temporary bed. The couch was made up with the sheets and blanket; the pillow was covered with a crisp, clean case. In the living room, Hutch lay in his bed, covers pulled halfway up his bare chest, staring at the ceiling. Starsky turned out the light, traded his jeans for pajama bottoms, and crawled under the sheets.
After a few moments, he spoke. “Feel like talking?”
There was a sigh, then Hutch said, softly, “No.”
“Okay.” Starsky paused, then said, “If you change your mind…”
“You’ll be the first to know, Starsk.”
They both fell silent, and eventually, despite his concern, Starsky slept.
He wasn’t sure what time he woke. It was still pitch-black outside and the street was dead quiet, so it fell like the deep hours of the morning. He lay there for a moment, trying to figure out what had woken him up.
He saw a dark figure then, moving toward the door. There was a slight rattle, then the figure moved to the bathroom. Another rattle, then it moved to the alcove entranceway and hesitated. Starsky saw Hutch in the moonlight, and thought perhaps his friend had changed his mind about talking. But he moved on past the alcove and into the kitchen.
Rattle, rattle.
What the hell is he doing? Starsky thought. He raised his watch in front of his eyes; it was three-thirty.
Hutch’s shadow passed through the kitchen to the windows on the side of the cottage. Rotely, like a man who had performed the movements a thousand times, his hands moved first to the middle of the sill, touching the locks. Then he reached down and tugged at the sash, to ensure it wouldn’t give. He repeated the movement with each of the three windows, then went back, to the front door.
Only then did he return to the bed and lie back down.
Starsky was wide awake now, his mouth dry and his forehead puckered with worry. He lay absolutely still and watched as Hutch seemed to doze for a while, then woke with a quiet start and went through the whole routine again. Once. Twice. Three times in the space of two hours.
Then weariness overcame Starsky. His eyelids drooped, and he slipped back into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He awoke to the sound of whistling and the sense that he was not at home in his own bed,
He opened one eye and peered around. Yep, he was right… he wasn’t home, though the surroundings were as familiar as his own.
Oh, yeah. He’d spent the night at Hutch’s, because Hutch was—
Hutch was—
Hutch was whistling in the kitchen as he tossed ingredients into a grayish-white liquid in his blender. Starsky sat up and shook his head, then gave a tremendous—and noisy—yawn.
At the sound, Hutch turned around. “Hey!” he said brightly. ‘”Bout time you got up… it’s almost time to go to work.”
Starsky stared at his partner as if weeks instead of hours had passed since he had last seen him. Hutch still looked terrible, with the bruises and healing cuts, eyes still somewhat sunken and surrounded by dark smudges, but his mouth was doing something Starsky hadn’t seen for a while.
Smiling.
“Come on, come on,” Hutch urged, shaking one last item into the blender, slapping on the lid, and punching a button. The small machine whirred and the mixture inside turned an even more unappetizing color. As usual this didn’t faze Hutch in the least, as he popped off the lid and poured the elixir into a waiting glass.
Starsky could never stand to see Hutch drink that stuff. He turned away and made his way into the bathroom for his own shower.
Chapter 4
It was Friday, a week later.
Starsky had spent every night at Hutch’s and, unbeknownst and unmentioned to his friend, watched him go through the bizarre ritual every night. Sleep. Wake. Door. Windows. Back to bed. And again. On the rare nights when he did sleep more than an hour or two at a stretch, he awoke to drenching nightmares, Starsky watching as he sat bolt upright in bed, mouth open as if to scream. And each morning, Hutch got up before his partner and put on the performance of a lifetime, apparently thinking Starsky wouldn’t notice that he no longer went for his mile run.
Starsky wondered just which one of them Hutch was trying to fool.
On this day, they had been at work for about three hours when Hutch lost it. Abruptly, after erasing numerous mistakes on the report he was typing, he yanked the paper from the typewriter, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it viciously into the wastebasket beside him. Deliberately, he pushed his chair back and walked with studied casualness out of the squad room.
Starsky looked after him, a concerned frown creasing his brow. All week, Hutch had been cheerful and alert, tackling a stack of paperwork without complaint and actually getting quite a lot of it done. Most of the other cops hadn’t looked twice at his battered appearance; it was far from the first time one of the “dynamic duo” had waded into a fray and ended up on the wrong side of a flurry of fists. Those nearest him and Starsky had jibed the blond detective about “what the other guy looked like,” and Hutch had bantered back with them in his usual fashion.
There had been a few, just a few, people who had come to Hutch with concern, asking what had happened and was he all right. With them, Hutch flashed his brightest, most “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me, doc,” smile and turned on the charm full force. Within minutes, they forgot why they had come and were laughing and joking with him as usual. Every time. Hutch smoothly managed to deflect anyone who showed the slightest bit of worry or curiosity.
But Starsky knew better. Hutch’s smile was a watt too bright; his laugh a note too sharp and a beat too late. And at unguarded moments, Starsky would catch him just sitting slumped in his chair, as if the charade had taken all his energy and he was refueling from some secret tank only he knew about. Once, he had folded his arms across his abdomen and clenched them tight, as if determined to hide the needle marks with every resource at his command. And when he got up and left the squad room, Starsky knew he was a heartbeat away from running like the devil was snapping at his heels.
He started to get up, then sank back down in indecision. He could go after Hutch, and probably no one in the squad room would think twice about it. They were constantly teased that they went to the bathroom in pairs like women. But it wasn’t the reaction of the other officers, most of whom hadn’t even looked up when Hutch had gone out, that he was worried about.
It was Hutch, and it was himself.
***
Safe inside the bathroom, Hutch ran cool water over his wrists, then cupped a bit in his hands and splashed it over his face and his burning eyes. As he patted his skin dry, he looked again at his battered countenance and those eyes that were ages older than they had been three weeks ago. He wanted nothing so much as to just break down right there, let out the poison that was knotting his stomach, admit the hunger, the temptation, the disappointment, the fear… all of it. But he couldn’t; he just couldn’t. He had to stay strong, let everyone know that he was recovering just fine. Nothing wrong with me, boys, all in a day’s work.
He had been prepared for the questions and the teasing comments and had deflected them easily, with the gallows humor that kept cops sane. But the sympathetic looks… those were the ones that nearly undid him, as he read into them condescension and… pity. Because bruises, broken bones, and the occasional bullet were actually a routine part of the job, battle scars that some cops bragged about in a drunken bravado at the annual picnic—but you could count on one hand the number of detectives who’d been kidnaped since he’d been on the force. It happened to cops who were old and tired and careless… yet here he was, top of his class at the academy, among the “best and brightest,” and he hadn’t been able to stop it.
Hell, he’d been so out of it he hadn’t even known exactly whom he should have stopped until Starsky told him after his little meeting with Mickey (and by the way, that was another winner, Hutchinson). He’d known Jeannie was scared of someone, of course—someone powerful and vindictive and willing to do just about anything to get what he wanted. But he had thought he had figured things out, playing it safe by sending Jeannie to that remote beach house and not telling anyone where they were going that weekend.
He’d screwed up. He’d been… well, he’d been stupid, and that was not the way Ken Hutchinson was accustomed to viewing himself.
And there was that other thing…
There was a knock on the door and Hutch jerked himself back to the present. He glanced at his watch and realized he’d been in the bathroom for nearly fifteen minutes. Shaking his head, he threw a little more water on his face and blotted the dampness with a paper towel, then drew himself up with a deep breath, ready to face the world again.
The tap on the door came again, accompanied this time by a low… and familiar… voice. “Hutch.” There was a pause then, “Hutch… lemme in.”
Hutch sighed, sagged against the sink, then leaned over and threw the bolt on the door. He crossed his arms over his chest as Starsky came in, and raised an eyebrow at his partner.
“What?” they asked each other simultaneously.
Hutch made a wearily exasperated noise and waved a hand at Starsky. “Go ahead,” he said, and Starsky did, never one to beat around the bush.
“Hutch, what’re you doin’ in here?” he asked, leaning back against the door. “What’s going on?”
“How many times do I have to answer that question?”‘ Hutch retorted, his eyes flashing; then he caught himself. “Look, Starsk, I’m trying to work through this as best I know how. It’s just—hard sometimes, that’s all.”
“I know that,” Starsky said, frustrated himself. “But this… this isn’t like you, to just go run off like this.”
As he said it, however, Hutch knew what he was thinking: that this was exactly like Hutch. Given a choice, he would retreat somewhere only he knew, and hiss and fret until the problem was solved. Only then, would he emerge and give someone the post-game highlights. In some ways, working with Starsky had broken him of the habit. But it didn’t come naturally to Hutch… so here he was, reverting to form.
Starsky rubbed a hand across his forehead, as if to ease away a burgeoning headache.
Hutch saw the gesture, and felt a pang of sadness and guilt. Over the last week, Starsky had invited his disclosure, verbally nudged him with gentle wisecracks and “cheer up”-isms. Refusing to be put off by Hutch’s intense desire to withdraw into a shell and stay there until he could make some kind of pearl out of this hideous mess, he had stuck close to Hutch’s side like the curly-headed burr he was, despite Hutch’s increasing irritation and defensiveness.
He felt the need to give something, but it was hard, so hard. It meant admitting to fear; something he had never been good at. Admitting weakness to those whose love you craved meant you were courting rejection; in the Hutchinson household, you had to be strong and stoic to be acceptable. Buck up, son, it’s not that bad, his father’s voice echoed in his head. So you got hurt. That’s part of playing the game.
This isn’t your father, he reminded himself sternly. This was Starsky, who had a thousand times shown Hutch that he didn’t have to be perfect or strong or even graceful in order to be his friend. All that Starsky had ever asked, and expected, was that Hutch be himself, and be honest. And that Hutch give the same acceptance and expectation in return.
Until now.
He took a deep breath, staring down at his arms, encased in long sleeves to cover the incriminating marks on his arms. He opened his mouth, found the words caught in his throat, and swallowed the lump that had suddenly risen there.
“Hey,” Starsky said, his voice again husky with compassion. “It’s me, remember?”
Despite himself, Hutch chuckled deep in his throat. How many times in their friendship had one of them been lost in his thoughts, miles away on some distant subject, only to learn that the other knew precisely what he was thinking?
Countless.
He closed his eyes, unfolded his arms, and rested his hands on the sink behind him. Then he looked up at the ceiling, blinking back the damned moisture that wouldn’t leave him alone these days. He swallowed again, and forced himself to look into his friend’s eyes.
“I’m scared, Starsk.” He half chuckled again. All that preparation for three little words. “I’m—scared.”
“Oh, is that all,” Starsky said with a twist of one side of his mouth. “Boy, Hutch, I don’t know what you’ve got to be afraid of, after what happened out there—”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about.” Hutch shook his head, though he knew darned well he was scared of what happened out there too. “It’s—I’m—” His throat closed until he could barely get the next words out. “I—just keep waiting for the shoe to drop.”
“Wha—?” Starsky mulled that over for about a half-second, then his expression cleared. “Are you talking about the department finding out what happened?”
Hutch nodded. His nighttime vigils were centered around keeping the doors locked and the goons out. By day, he kept his eyes on the squad room door. Waiting.
Waiting for the sword of Damocles to twist loose of the final, fragile thread.
Waiting for the call from Internal Affairs. For the summons, the command to tell the dirty details of the kidnaping, and how he had spent the last three weeks. Hutch knew the regulation book like a well-worn piece of favorite music, and he knew what it said about chemical dependence, voluntary or not. In no uncertain terms, probably without even the chance to negotiate, he would lose his shield.
Every time the door had opened, he had been sure this was it. His ears, already alert to the slightest sound, could hear Dobey’s phone, and every time it rang his body had tensed, sure that the captain’s door was about to open and he would see that broad, black face with its expression just tinged with compassion, and that voice, revealing nothing:
Hutchinson, I need to see you in my office.
The one time Dobey had spoken those words, Hutch had literally felt dizzy. It had taken him several seconds to collect his wits, stop the spots from whirling in front of his eyes, and push himself to his feet and walk the few, interminably long, steps to the captain’s desk.
And he had felt equally dizzy with relief moments later, when it turned out Dobey only wanted to clarify some detail on a report he had written three weeks earlier.
Starsky watched all of these thoughts flicker across his friend’s expressive face, and then looked away, engaging in his own internal struggle. To tell or not to tell, he thought to himself, knowing there were pros and cons to both sides of the issue.
So far, Dobey, Starsky, Hutch, Huggy, and one patrolman were the only ones who knew about Hutch’s addiction. That morning, Starsky had paid a visit to Bernie to make sure it remained that way.
It had been tough. Bernie was a good cop; he’d been on the streets a lot of years and he’d seen a lot of things, including dirty cops and junkie ones. He’d heard of Hutch, and he knew Hutch’s reputation. But he’d also watched a lot of apparently good cops go bad in a hurry, and he knew what he had seen in that alley. Starsky was reasonable, charming, cajoling, and threatening; finally, desperate, he pleaded.
“Look, Bernie, Hutch didn’t have a choice in this matter,” he said tightly. “If IA finds out about this, they will kick his ass out of the department, and he doesn’t deserve that.”
“Starsky, look, I sympathize with you,” Bernie said uneasily. He knew Starsky’s reputation too; he could be tough on a person when he didn’t like the answers he got. “But I have my duty to consider. Look, I know Hutch is a good cop, and I know this wasn’t his fault, but who knows if this’ll be the start of something? I’ve seen guys go down after just one taste, and never make it back.”
“We’re not talkin’ about a lotta guys,” Starsky pointed out tersely. A muscle in his jaw jumped. If he couldn’t get through to this man, Hutch’s career was over, and that was all he needed after what he had been through. “We’re talkin’ about Hutch. I’ve known him for years, and I’m telling you, he’s not goin’ back there again. I’d stake my life on it.”
“Would you?” Bernie shot back, his demeanor as heated as Starsky’s. “You better think before you say that, Starsky, because you might be doing just that. You’re his partner… it’s your neck on the line if he ends up not fit for duty.”
Part of Starsky itched to take the patrolman apart limb by limb; another part admired the man’s guts and his principles. He knew how tough it was to say “no” to him… even Hutch had to work at it sometimes. He leaned back and closed his eyes, then forced himself to speak very slowly and very calmly. “I’ll take that chance, Bernie.”
Bernie still didn’t look convinced.
Starsky sighed, opened his eyes, and turned his eyes toward the patrolman. As it had in the alley, his gaze softened and changed to a mute plea. “Look, Bernie, how about this,” he said at last. “I swear to you that if there is ever a hint—even a breath—that Hutch is tempted to go back on this stuff, I will go to IA myself and tell them what happened. But for now, I’m askin’ you to give him a chance. Please.”
He hoped the man knew what that cost him. He trusted Hutch, and he knew that once Hutch had made it through withdrawal, he had turned his back on heroin and wanted nothing more to do with it. But if, by some across the universe chance, Hutch ever changed his mind, Starsky had just agreed to turn in the man who was closer to him than his own brother.
Bernie met his gaze stoutly. He searched Starsky’s eyes as if probing his brain, then his expression, too, softened. He knew Starsky meant it, and this was a compromise he could live with.
For now.
A part of Starsky wanted to tell Hutch about the conversation, to reassure him that Bernie understood and would hold his silence. Partially because Starsky had asked him to. Partly because Starsky had given his word, which he never gave lightly but which you could take to the bank when he did. But also because he knew and respected Hutch.
But another part of Starsky knew how Hutch would probably react to this news. He wasn’t even sure Hutch remembered Bernie being there, given his state of mind when he had dropped in that alley. But even if he did remember, he would skip right over the good part and see only that he had lost just that much more power, that there was someone else out there who had seen him with every possible guard down… shattered, delirious, rolling in dirt and dust.
Helpless.
It was a state Hutch abhorred and refused to give in to. Starsky knew it. Sometimes he blessed Hutch’s stubbornness; it had saved his butt any number of times. Sometimes, like now, he cursed it… and that part of him suspected that knowing about Bernie would do nothing more than increase Hutch’s anxiety and self-condemnation.
Helpless. With a wry grin, Starsky realized that he wasn’t too fond of that state himself.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” he said finally.
Hutch, who had been lost in his own thoughts, started slightly, then frowned at Starsky. “What are you talking about?” His eyes narrowed as he read Starsky’s expression. “How do you know?”
“I’ll tell you if you want,” Starsky told him frankly. “But I don’t know if it’ll help or make you feel worse.”
Hutch eyed him intently for several seconds.
Starsky met his gaze evenly. He was willing to take the heat if Hutch didn’t like the truth he had to tell.
Starsky saw Hutch wince, despite his attempts to hide it.
“Or you can just trust me,” he said. Then we’ll both have our little secret.
Hutch closed his eyes briefly, took another deep breath, then met Starsky’s eyes again. “Look,” he said, in response to the unspoken words. “You and I both know there’s something bothering me besides this crap with IA.”
Starsky nodded, slightly, once.
“Part of me wants to tell you,” Hutch said slowly, with no trace of irony at virtually repeating his partner’s words, and now his blue eyes were inexpressibly sad, “And I swear to you, I will. Sometime. But not now.”
There was a moment of silence as the two men measured each other. A dozen times a week, they put their lives in each other’s hands, and that meant having few stones unturned between them. Their relationship depended on that openness, and their eerie prescience had as much to do with having no secrets as anything supernatural. Now, here it was. Something—two things—hid in the shadows and could not yet be named.
It was a risk; were they willing to take it?
“Okay,” Starsky said at last. “For now.” He cracked a half smile again. “But I reserve the right to change my mind and demand full disclosure.”
Surprisingly, Hutch laughed. “You got it.” He reached a hand out; Starsky took it and they clasped each other’s arms for a brief second, eyes sealing the bargain and the amendment. Then they left the bathroom to return to the business of the day.
No one had noticed their absence. It wasn’t unusual for the two of them to hole up in a corner somewhere and discuss things. In fact, it was common for them to somehow create such a corner even in the middle of the squad room; as if some invisible force field surrounded them that everyone automatically respected until they themselves broke it.
Hutchinson was back, and it was business as usual at Metro.
Chapter 5
The bruises and cuts on Hutch’s face gradually lightened, turned interesting shades of green, and finally disappeared. His mood lightened somewhat as the days passed with no command performance to Internal Affairs. He began to hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d be permitted to keep his badge after all.
Only Starsky noted that the circles under his friend’s eyes not only didn’t disappear but seemed to grow deeper and darker. Only Starsky observed that Hutch’s food choices seemed narrower than ever, and he never did pick up the weight he had lost.
What Starsky didn’t realize was that he wasn’t looking much better than Hutch. He was weary and lethargic, a drastic change from his usual optimism and upbeat demeanor, and he now left food on his plate that he would have demolished in seconds.
To the casual observer, their respective declines hadn’t seemed to affect their work. They answered calls. They patrolled their beat. They made arrests and wrote up reports. Somehow, their wordless communication was still intact. Occasionally, they went out for their usual dinner or beer after work. But the elephant still dragged at both their necks, and raised a helluva stench.
Even pulling together, they were growing weary of its weight, and the tether was beginning to fray.
Something had to give, and it did, one Friday night.
They’d been working this stakeout for four nights in a row. Starsky had memorized the bark on the tree next to the Torino, and he was anxious about Hutch. Usually the more patient of the two when it came to stakeouts, Hutch was restless and fidgety, shifting in his seat to look out the window and the rearview mirror, tapping his fingers on the dash, and generally not sitting still for a second.
Finally, around midnight and after some persuasive strong-arming by his partner, he drifted off to sleep. He was leaning against the door, his face looking somewhat relaxed for the first time in days, when one of the other officers showed up. Starsky glanced up; recognizing the Narcotics detective, he raised a hand over the roof in acknowledgment. Jim Blake returned the gesture, then flicked on his flashlight as he approached the car, intending to show Starsky and Hutch something interesting he had found.
He never got the chance.
When the light flared on, Hutch was upright in an instant. In one fluid, desperate motion, he threw open the door, knocking Blake to the ground. Then he flung himself out of the car and stood beside it, turning and turning, searching his surroundings for somewhere safe to run, then fled several dozen yards away, long legs flying into the night.
Starsky leapt out of the car and followed, startled and alarmed. He didn’t know how he caught up with Hutch, but when he did, he grabbed him by the shoulders, as they each had done a dozen times when one of them was on the verge of losing control. It was a gesture that had never failed to halt his partner, even in his most headlong moments.
Not this time. Starsky was immediately hurled to the ground with a force that knocked the breath out of him.
“Get away from me,” Hutch growled in a low, dangerous voice. “Get away from me… and leave me alone…”
Regaining his breath, Starsky bounced back to his feet and approached his partner again, more warily this time, keeping his eyes on Hutch’s face. Hutch had lowered himself in a fighter’s crouch, his breath coming in quick, shallow gasps, sweat pouring down his face, hands clenched into fists so tight his knuckles were bloodless. His eyes were wide open, but they were darting back and forth like a caged animal, uncomprehending, unseeing—
No. They were seeing something. Just not the current something.
Starsky tackled him. Hutch struggled furiously and nearly threw him again, for though he was weaker than usual, terror put considerable strength into thrashing limbs and desperate fists. Starsky couldn’t pat his face to bring him around gently; he didn’t dare release Hutch’s arms. He hated himself for doing it, but he pinned his friend to the ground and planted his own face less than an inch away from Hutch’s.
“Hutch,” he said loudly. “Hutch!”
There was no discernible lessening in Hutch’s frantic movements.
Starsky changed tactics. “C’mon, buddy,” he coaxed. “It’s me… come back to me, pal. Look at me. Look right at me.”
Hutch continued to fight, but now his breath was sobbing, scared.
Starsky kept crooning. “It’s okay, pal… you’re safe. It’s me, Starsk. You’re not with those goons anymore. C’mon, Hutch… c’mon back to me.”
Eventually, Hutch’s breathing slowed, his body relaxed, and his eyes cleared enough to see Starsky and recognize him. “Starsk?” he said hoarsely. “What the hell—?”
Starsky kept his grip on him for a few moments longer, searching his face to make sure he was back in the present. “You okay now?” he asked tightly.
“Yeah, sure,” Hutch said, blinking bewilderedly. “How’d I get out here?” He raised an eyebrow at Starsky’s face above him. “What’re you doing on top of me?”
Starsky relaxed his hold and sat back on his heels, but his eyes remained fixed to his partner’s face. “You tell me, pal.”
Shrugging, Hutch sat up, instantly clasping his head as if in pain. “What’re you talking about?” He coughed a few times, then slowly heaved himself to his feet. “Jesus. My head feels like it’s gonna explode.” He made his way stiffly to the car, where he found Blake waiting, massaging a knee scraped by Hutch’s maneuver with the car door. “Hey, Jim, what’s goin’ on? Thought you guys were covering the other side of the park.”
Blake threw a startled glance at Hutch. Starsky, following behind and still watching his partner intently, realized Hutch had no idea what he had just done. Blake looked at Starsky, who shook his head slightly.
Blake shrugged and picked up the piece of evidence he had been coming to show them earlier. In his other hand, he took the flashlight, and prepared to turn it on again.
Starsky surged forward to grab the Narcotics detective’s hand. “Don’t do that,” he said in a low voice that he strained to keep casual. “I don’t think we need it.”
It was just a hunch that the flashlight had set Hutch off, but Starsky figured it was a pretty good guess. His partner had told him how Monk and the others had shone a light straight into his eyes to disorient him and ensure he could not identify his captors. In an official way, it had been Hutch’s salvation—because he had not seen anyone, his testimony at a trial would have been vague at best. He had been spared having to tell a court—and by default, the department—all that had happened to him.
And Starsky was damned if he was going to let this—whatever it was—change that.
Curiosity flickered briefly across Blake’s face as he returned the flashlight to his pocket but Starsky chose to only shrug in response to the man’s look. If he didn’t make a big deal out of it, perhaps Jim would chalk Hutch’s weird behavior up to the kidnaping, which most of the detectives knew about. Ignored long enough, or treated casually enough, the question about what the hell was wrong with Hutchinson would get buried, shoved out of consciousness by more important matters and the never-ending sea of paperwork. Hoping that his business-like demeanor would be contagious, Starsky gestured toward the piece of evidence that had started the ruckus.
“Whatcha got, Jim?” he asked.
To his relief, Blake picked up the cue.
Hutch listened with interest and no apparent comprehension of what had just transpired.
After Jim had finished his narrative, he slid off Starsky’s car and began to limp away. He stopped for a moment and turned back, looking at Hutch. Starsky followed his gaze.
In the moonlight, Hutch looked perfectly normal. His eyes were clear and alert, scanning the area, keeping the radar going as every good cop does. His stance was ostensibly relaxed, but he was clearly ready for any threat that might present itself. There was no resemblance whatsoever to the wild man who had hurtled out of the car just moments before.
As Starsky watched, Jim shook his head, and disappeared into the shadows at the other end of the park. When he was out of sight, Starsky turned to his partner. “Y’mind tellin’ me what the hell that was about?”
“What?” Hutch said with genuine bewilderment.
“That—I don’t know what,” Starsky said, words failing him as he waved his hand toward the car door, which was still standing open.
“Starsk, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“Look, Hutch,” Starsky said intently, “Jim came up to the car, turned the flashlight on, and you—went nuts. Knocked him over, threw me down, and didn’t know who I was for a good two or three minutes. You wanna tell me where you went?”
Hutch’s face froze. His chest began to rise and fall rapidly, as he blinked several times, then closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. “Shit,” he muttered, his voice miserable. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
“What?” Starsky moved toward him and put one hand on his arm, his eyes intent on Hutch’s face. “Cmon, buddy, tell me… what the hell happened?”
“I—don’t know what to call it,” Hutch said, his chin tucked into his chest. “All I know is that… for the last week… that—” he echoed Starsky’s wave toward the car door—”has happened four or five times.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Starsky said, startled. “You’ve freaked out like this before and you haven’t told me? What kinda bullshit is that?”
“It’s never happened…” Hutch closed his eyes and gave a short, mirthless laugh. “No, of course it’s never happened at work, you would have noticed it.”
“Yeah, kinda hard not to,” Starsky said, unable to help feeling annoyed. “When? How?”
“I don’t know how,” Hutch admitted. “It just—happens. Feels like somebody just picks me up and dumps me right back in there with Forest and those other goons. Usually only lasts a few minutes, but I always know it. This time—” He looked up at Starsky, and his eyes held something Starsky was not used to seeing in his friend’s gaze.
Fear. Raw, naked fear.
“Hey,” he said, his own irritation fading, concern taking its place. “Take it easy.”
Hutch snorted.
“Easy,” he echoed. “No way, Starsk. No fucking way.” He wheeled and headed toward his side of the car. “Come on. I’m logging myself out. I’ll take a cab back to my place.'”
“What?” Starsky said, truly astonished by this completely unprecedented request. “What the hell’re you doin’?”
Hutch spun on him, with a ferocious determination that not even Starsky could check now. “I can’t stay here,” he spat. “I’m putting this operation at risk, and—” He shook his head, fiercely. “I’m not gonna do it, Starsk. I’m not putting you in danger because my head keeps falling apart.”
Starsky’s mind worked rapidly, flipping through possible responses. His head may be falling apart, but Hutch’s cop instincts were still working, and he had a legitimate point. If he couldn’t control when and where these weird episodes occurred, he had no business being there. He was right; he could blow the stakeout, and he could endanger Starsky’s life if he weren’t one hundred percent present at the crucial moment.
On the other hand, how would they explain pulling Hutch off the roster without the issue of his psychological state raising its ugly head?
“I don’t care how we do it, Starsk,” Hutch was ranting, following his partner’s thought processes as usual. “I don’t care if we tell the whole fucking world that Hutchinson is a goddamned heroin junkie who can’t keep his shit together after the sun goes down. I’m not staying here another minute. So give me the fucking mike, and you go talk to Jim about how to restructure the stakeout.”
“Hey,” Starsky interrupted the torrent of words. “This is a partnership, pal. We decide how this’ll be handled.”
“Fine,” Hutch shot back, his voice a whiplash. “Go ahead, genius, figure it out.” He turned his back, and Starsky could see he was trembling viciously, shudders that rattled him from head to foot, and his breath was coming in shallow, hoarse rasps. He ignored the words, knowing Hutch didn’t mean them and would regret them in ten seconds. He just leaned against his side of the car, stared into the park’s dense darkness, and waited.
As before, Hutch’s breathing eventually slowed and the tremors subsided. He dropped his lightly folded arms and turned back to his partner. “Look—”
“You’re sick,” Starsky interrupted in an expressionless voice, not moving a muscle.
“What?” Hutch seemed taken aback for a moment—then it dawned on him what Starsky meant. “Oh. Yeah.” He snorted. “Oughta be easy enough to convince everybody of that, huh?”
Starsky leaned into the open window of the Torino, and lifted the mike.
***
An hour later, Hutch was at home, pacing around the tiny cottage, thoughts racing ahead of his aimless footsteps.
Other than vacations, he hadn’t chosen to miss a day of work since joining the force.
Chalk up another first for Mr. Benjamin Forest.
His harsh laugh echoed throughout the room.
How many more things are you going to take from me, Forest? How many more parts of my soul am I gonna let you steal?
His eyes dropped down to his arms. He had stripped off the long-sleeved camouflage he still wore to work. The needle marks, though invisible to anyone else, jumped easily to his fretful gaze. For a moment, he paused, and his face grew tight, his eyes forlorn, lost, and completely uncertain.
What if…?
He shook his head. NO.
Dreamland, pally, dreamland. I got the ticket for you right here.
He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes, as if he could drive the voice out of his head by sheer physical force. This agony. This anguish. He thought once he’d lived through the withdrawal that everything else would be a cakewalk by comparison. Not for a second had he dreamed it would keep following him around, tapping on his shoulder when he least expected it. He’d thought he could contain it, only let the demons out at night, but now they had begun to interfere with his job… and that was the ultimate betrayal.
He dropped his hands and sighed a deep, ragged sigh that held all the tears he couldn’t seem to get rid of. They lay somewhere deep in his belly, and occasionally he felt them begin to rise, but he was still afraid that if he began, he would never stop… and they would end up locking him up in some funny farm in the country.
Yep, he used to be a good cop. But now he’s just ole crazy Kenny.
He glanced at his watch. It was after three a.m., and part of him knew he needed to get some sleep. But as usual he could not convince himself to close his eyes until the sky began to lighten… and for some reason the hours from three to four a.m. were the worst.
It had not yet occurred to him that that was about the hour he had been forcibly introduced to a new and terrifying reality. His body knew; his mind had yet to acknowledge it.
He sank down into the chair by his window, the one that had replaced his bed for nighttime repose, and picked up his guitar, Now that he’d gotten a little stronger, he was able to play again, something for which he was deeply grateful. He picked out some favorite tunes, and lost himself for a while in one he had been writing, then his fingers began to fatigue, and he had to stop. He propped the guitar against the wall and rested his head on the back of the chair, watching the night slowly transform into dawn.
His eyelids grew heavy… and finally fell over the exhausted blue eyes.
What was that?
He awoke, he knew he was awake, but he could neither move nor see. Something was strapped around his chest, and a blindfold covered his eyes. A hand buried itself in his hair and yanked his head back; warm breath whispered against his cheek as a mocking voice said,
“Like candy to a baby… you don’t really think you’re going to forget what this felt like, do you, Hutchinson?”
His sleeve was thrust upward and there was the taut feel of the rubber hosing below his biceps. He felt his pulse beat painfully through his arm as someone flicked the skin inside his elbow. Once, twice…
“Nice veins you got here, Hutchinson… pretty soon you won’t be able to use ’em at all… Ah, there we go…”
Then he felt the needle, the wasp sting of the needle sinking into his arm, followed by the spreading, easing warmth of the opiate. For the first time in weeks, he felt relaxed. His troubles… the stakeout… Starsky… the inability to sleep… all faded away to a pinprick at the end of a tunnel, which gave way to a wide-open field full of sunshine and warm, sweet smells. He wasn’t tired. He wasn’t heartsick. He was striding through the meadow with his old strength, his old confidence, enjoying his life again.
Then the blindfold was ripped away, and the sunshine gave way to a harsh, hurting light that shone directly into his eyes and drew from him a gasp of pain. The hand in his hair was back, and Hutch’s gaze was forced upward to a face bending over him.
“Told you… you got a taste of it now, and your life will never be the same until you get some more,” the apparition mocked with a smug, satisfied smile. “Hey, cop… why should you live like this, anyway? Why keep fighting it? Aren’t you ready to feel better for once?”
Hutch blinked rapidly, his mouth working. NO, part of his brain, the old part, the White Knight cried. NO. But the other part, the part that was tired and wretched and could only see the dark, interminable tunnel, turned away from the old part and reached out for the apparition.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes.”
The field fell away as the apparition erupted into a hideously triumphant laugh. And suddenly, he was surrounded… by other cops, by Dobey, by Internal Affairs, by Starsky… and they all were pointing at him and talking in hushed, accusatory tones. He turned away, turned to the apparition, fell to his knees and clutched it.
“They can see me,” he whimpered. “Take me away from here.”
“Oh, no, Hutchinson,” the voice hissed. “It doesn’t work that way… there’s only one way you get off this horse.”
He looked up straight into the barrel of his own Magnum. The figure held it there, inches from his forehead, for a moment, then flipped it around and handed it to him.
“Kind of brings a whole new meaning to ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ doesn’t it, Hutchinson?” The words wafted around him like an evil, rank fog as he felt the gun’s weight in his hands. He turned it over and over, rubbing the familiar metal as if he had touched it a thousand times and yet never before. It had always been his protector… would it play that role for him now?
He raised it, his hands trembling, and tucked the barrel under his chin, calculating the angle at which he would have to shoot to thoroughly blow his brains out. Faces swarmed in front of him, and he closed his eyes deliberately to shut them out, only to be assaulted by a thousand colors, whirling all around, painfully brilliant in the darkness. He hurled the gun aside and fell to the ground, reaching for anyone, anything around him that could give him something… give him some help… as someone yanked him up by the shoulders and thrust the gun into his midsection. He looked up. The face melted, merged, parted, and reformed itself… it was Monk… it was Starsky …it was his father… it was Forest.
“No!” he cried, fighting to free himself, his voice pathetic and his struggles feeble and futile. “NO!”
“One beautiful pop,” the face said. “And all your troubles will be over.”
It was the dozenth time he’d had this dream in as many days. Nevertheless, he awoke with a start that tossed him out of the chair and against the table that stood beside it. The table fell over with a crash, and the heavy piece of art it held thudded onto his forehead, leaving a nasty gash and wringing out of him a cry of pain. He brought his hands to his head and lay on the floor for several long seconds, afraid to move, half afraid to breathe for fear of further pain or the return of the nightmare.
Crazy Kenny, he thought bitterly, wearily. Yep, I gotta be just about a heartbeat away.
He glanced at his watch. It was nearly six. Starsky would be logging off the stakeout and heading home for some well-deserved rest. If he could shower and get to Metro in the next ninety minutes, he could catch Dobey and get himself removed from street duty before his partner made it back to the station.
Slowly, painfully, he rolled over and got to his feet, one hand pressed to the cut on his forehead. It was oozing blood and he could feel a lump beginning to rise under his fingers. He moved toward the bathroom and turned on the shower.
About thirty minutes later, he had showered, shaved, was half-dressed, and had taped a bandage over the cut. Great, he thought, as he examined himself in the mirror. I just get everything else healed up, start looking less like a prize fighter, and then I go and do this…
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. Hutch frowned at himself in the mirror then shook his head with a wry half smile.
Three guesses who that is. And the first two don’t count.
Sure enough, Starsky was at the door when he opened it, a tired looking Starsky who shoved a cup of coffee into his partner’s hand as he charged through the door and plunked himself into the living room chair.
“Good morning to you, too,” Hutch said, managing to sound fairly pleasant as he set the cup on his end table, closed the door, and went to his closet. He pulled a t-shirt over his head, then thrust his arms into a long-sleeved light flannel shirt that he buttoned halfway up.
“What’re you doing here? I thought you’d be home and in bed by now,” he continued conversationally as he closed the closet door, then went over to the bed to pull on his boots.
Getting no answer from his partner, he glanced up. Starsky’s eyes were hard on him, his gaze level and his expression determined.
Uh-oh. Starsky had something on his mind, and Hutch knew he wasn’t going anywhere until he had listened to it.
Starsky nodded toward Hutch’s jacket and the keys that lay beside it, his eyes never leaving Hutch’s face.
“Goin’ somewhere?” he asked quietly.
“Uh…yeah,” Hutch said evasively, with his most innocent expression.
Starsky’s gaze didn’t waver as his brows rose.
“Where?” he persisted.
“Uh…” Hutch groped for something plausible. The dark blue eyes remained fixed on him, and suddenly Hutch knew how suspects felt across the table from Starsky. Like any other guilty man, the unblinking gaze made him uncomfortable… and right behind discomfort came defensiveness. “Starsky, what do you want, huh? I was just about to go…”
“Yeah, so you said,” Starsky said, his voice again very soft. “You’re goin’ to see Dobey, aren’t you?”
“How did you…?” Hutch’s voice trailed off. His shoulders drooped as he sank onto the bed with an exasperated sigh. Dammit, sometimes this chemistry between them was a pain in the ass. “Yeah… so what if I am?”
“What are you going to tell him?”
Hutch made another exasperated sound, accompanied by a hand that waved his inability to articulately express his thoughts. “I—don’t know,” he admitted. “But I do know I can’t go back out on the streets. Not like this.”
Starsky leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Impossibly, his gaze became even more intense, and Hutch grew even more uncomfortable.
“Starsk…” he began, but Starsky cut him off.
“When’s the last time you ate somethin’?”
Hutch shook his head again, unable to find words, wanting to reassure his partner but unable to be untruthful. “I don’t know—yesterday morning maybe…”
“Get any sleep after you came home?”
“I…”
“Nightmares back?”
Hutch said nothing at all to that. Admitting to the nightmares meant admitting to their content, and he wasn’t about to do that, not with Starsky, not yet. The image of his friend’s face from the dream flashed in front of him, that awful disappointment and rejection. He wouldn’t have that happen in reality; he’d resign from the force and this partnership first.
Starsky sighed, and moved to his partner’s side on the bed. For a moment, neither moved.
Starsky knew Hutch was still in pain. And his capacity for caring about Hutch was enormous but, he had to admit, he was growing weary of dragging the troubles out of his friend like impacted wisdom teeth. He had never seen Hutch so persistently reluctant to tell him what was in his head. The strained silence between them was so unaccustomed that it was taking its toll on both of them, like it always does when you can’t tell your best friend what’s bothering you because it’s all about them.
Starsky felt somehow bereft, and that both frightened and angered him. At first Hutch had been hanging in there, fighting with everything he had… but in the last few weeks, he’d slowed, then stopped, and now he seemed to be slipping away without a murmur. As if everything they’d built together, both on and off the force, wasn’t worth the effort anymore.
Irrational as it may be, that pissed Starsky off.
He decided to play dirty.
“Hutch,” he said quietly, his voice husky with emotion. “Lookit. Look at me, will ya?”
His eyes fluid and his face pinched and pale with pain, Hutch did… and what he saw made his throat tighten.
Starsky looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot and had circles underneath them that matched Hutch’s own. The carefree carelessness of his appearance was now weighed down by a weariness that said he didn’t care what he put on in the morning or what he put in his mouth. Clearly, Starsky hadn’t been sleeping much either, and Hutch couldn’t recall the last time he had seen Starsky wolf down a meal… or even eat half of what was on his plate.
Over and over, he had managed to turn away from the fact that his pain was causing his partner pain. And now Starsky was forcing him to look it dead in the face.
“That’s not fair, Starsk,” he whispered. “You know I don’t—that I would never—”
“Then talk to me,” Starsky ordered, his voice narrowed. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I can’t,” Hutch said in a voice equally tight from a throat equally constricted. He started to get up from the bed, but Starsky’s hand shot out and yanked him back down onto the bed.
“You have to,” Starsky said. “Or else I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” Hutch said, wresting his arm from Starsky’s grasp. “Go to Dobey or Internal Affairs and tell them I’ve lost it completely? Go ahead, Starsk, go ahead… it’s the same whether you do it now or after I tell you what’s been on my mind.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
Now, finally, the waterworks began. Exhausted anyway from the lack of sleep and food, the brief struggle and Starsky’s relentless questioning had sapped the last of Hutch’s psychological resources. He had no defenses left, no energy remaining to contain the tears. He didn’t cover his face, no part of his body moved, they just streamed down his face like hot, painful rivers from the very center of his soul. For several seconds, he could do nothing but sit there, letting them fall, letting them drench his face, his collar, and eventually, his hands. From time to time, his chest hitched as he drew in a gulp of air.
Starsky wanted to reach out; tried at one point, but his hands fell back at the terrible silence of Hutch’s grief. Somehow he sensed Hutch needed this. The touch would remind him Starsky was there and then, somehow, he would find the strength to dam the flow, and they’d be right back where they started. They’d hauled the dead elephant around long enough; it was time to acknowledge and dissect it, no matter how much the thought repulsed them both.
Finally, the tears tapered off and stopped. Hutch shook his head, passed one hand across his face, and turned around, looking for a tissue.
Starsky pressed a box of Kleenex into his hand. He’d made the trip to the bathroom and back at the beginning without Hutch even knowing it.
“Thanks,” Hutch murmured, putting the tissues to good use on his soaked face and streaming nose.
“Okay,” Starsky said. “You got that out. Now, ya wanna tell me what you’ve been holdin’ onto all this time?”
Hutch sighed, crumpled the tissues he held into a ball, and yanked another one out of the box as he stood up and walked a few paces away, too abruptly for Starsky to stop him this time.
“How can I, Starsk?” he said, so softly that Starsky had to strain to hear him. “How can I tell you that I… that I dream about…”
“About what?”
“About…” he ducked his head and turned away, and said to the floor, “about… the heroin.”
“What about it?” Starsky said in a rush, his heart beginning to pound and his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Hutch? What about it?”
“Starsk, I…” Hutch looked up at the ceiling, and Starsky could see him fighting back the tears that were rushing to his eyes again. He crossed his arms across his chest and pushed, as if he could physically press the moisture back where it belonged. “I’m… miserable. I can’t escape… not the dreams, or the memories. I can’t sleep if it isn’t light out. I can’t stand the thought of food, can’t do anything I used to be able to do… and last night, for the first time, I had to leave a stakeout because I cracked under the stress. And it just seems like it’s never going to end.”
He spoke to the leaf-shaped water stain directly over his head, and the words tumbled out rapidly now, as if he had to get it over with. “In the dream, someone… shoots me up again, and all that goes away in this weird haze… and I’m me again… well, not me, but I’m strong again, I’m not afraid anymore. And then you’re there and Dobey’s there, and everyone knows, and I can’t think of anything else to do but kill myself or give myself back to the goddamned heroin! What else is there left for me to do?”
Starsky closed his eyes.
“I swear to you that if there is ever a hint—even a breath—that Hutch is tempted to go back on this stuff I will go to IA myself and tell them what happened.”
His words to Bernie assaulted him. Pain, agonizing and physical in its intensity, bloomed inside and threatened to overwhelm him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but work at the enormous lump that had sprung into his throat.
Oh shit oh shit oh SHIT.
Hutch’s head snapped to him as if he had spoken out loud. His eyes narrowing, he was at Starsky’s side in two long strides, his hand going to Starsky’s arm as he sank down beside him. Ducked his head and tried to read the expression on his partner’s face. “Starsk?” he said, and Starsky could hear the concern in his voice. “What?”
Starsky couldn’t speak. He didn’t trust his voice. In a finger snap, their roles had reversed, and he was the one who wanted to pull away, to run away, to hide from Hutch’s inquisitiveness and solicitous questions. When he had spoken those words to Bernie, he honestly had believed this situation would never come up. And now here it was, not three months later, and his promise—his word—was whirling back to assail him.
He rubbed his forehead against the sudden, throbbing ache that clutched there with vicious strength. Then he shook his head, and abruptly got to his feet.
“I gotta go,” he blurted, heading toward the door.
He hadn’t gone three steps when Hutch caught his arm. Starsky spun, and it was his turn to face determined blue eyes, the gaze so intense he couldn’t hold it with his own.
“Hey, that’s no good, buddy,” Hutch insisted tightly, trying again to catch his partner’s eye. “You can’t just run out of here, anymore than you’d let me do the same thing.”
“You managed pretty well, over the last two months,” Starsky said evenly before he could stop himself. Hutch drew back as if Starsky had slapped him, but didn’t release his grip on the other man’s arm. He simply stood there, his eyes still searching Starsky’s face.
“There’s something you didn’t tell me,” he realized at length, as if remembering the conversation in the bathroom on his first day back at work. “And that’s got something to do with this. What is it?”
Starsky continued trying to avoid Hutch’s scrutiny, but it was useless. Hutch was persistent as hell when he wanted to be; and if he got hold of an idea he did not let go until he had shaken its contents out. It was a trait Starsky had relied on in a hundred interrogations, but right now he wished Hutch weren’t so goddamned bull-headed.
Hutch’s eyes had never left Starsky’s face, and something, some tiny shift in Starsky’s expression must have triggered something in his own memory. His own face reflected the dawning understanding, and his eyes closed. He dropped his hand from Starsky’s arm and rubbed his own eyes, half-turning away from the other man.
“The patrol cop,” he murmured. “The one in the alley. He knows, doesn’t he?” His brows rose and fell with his words, and he gave a short, ironic laugh. “Figures.”
It was now Starsky’s turn to recognize that, try as he might, he could not lie to his partner.
“Yeah,” he said, with a rush of breath. “He does.”
Hutch took in a deep breath, blew it out, and sank down onto his bed. “You’d better tell me,” he said tonelessly.
“He knows,” Starsky repeated the obvious, turning toward Hutch, but not yet able to face him. “But he wasn’t going to tell,” he said to the floor.
Hutch tilled his head, his expression resigned. “Wasn’t,” he echoed.
“Yeah.” Starsky looked down at the keys he had taken from his pocket, ran them through his fingers.
Hutch bent his head again, resting his chin on his clasped hands. “How’d you manage that?” he asked at last, his voice bizarrely idle, as if inquiring where Starsky had purchased his shoes.
Starsky’s chest rose and fell, once. His throat worked. Finally, he lifted his head and looked at his partner. Once again, the blue eyes were on him, waiting expectantly, but without judgment.
Hutch saw the pain in his friend’s face and felt an answering ache in his own chest.
“I told him if I ever thought you were going to try that junk again, I’d talk to IA myself.” Starsky’s voice was level, but his eyes were swimming, bright with restrained tears.
Hutch’s eyes widened slightly as the full meaning of Starsky’s words struck him. He swallowed.
“Hutch, if I had thought this was what you were thinkin’, I never would have…”
“Why not?” Hutch said, with a helpless little gesture. “It’s just what you should have done.” He gave a characteristic half-laugh, half-snort deep in his throat. “In fact, it’s just what you still should do.”
“Hutch…” Starsky took a step toward him, not sure what to say, not sure how to manage this situation. If the kidnaping and heroin addiction had put a temporary gulf between them, this was the Grand Canyon of unknown territory.
Hutch put up a hand to stop him from approaching. “Starsk…” His voice faltered, and Starsky knew what he was thinking. He wanted to ask Starsky to please not do this, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Hutch knew how Starsky valued his word, knew he’d rather strangle himself than go back on a promise he’d made.
He saw Hutch’s shoulders rise and fall, and knew the decision had been made. If someone was going to ask him to forego that principle for his partner’s career, it wasn’t going to be Hutch.
For several minutes neither of them moved. Starsky’s mind swung back and forth like an insane pendulum, between two alternatives that were equally horrifying.
His best friend.
His word… and the brutal fact that a psychologically addicted Hutch would legitimately be considered unfit for duty.
Starsky was a maverick on a lot of fronts, but he believed fiercely in the responsibilities of his job, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave his partner on the streets if he thought Hutch would jeopardize any innocent life including Hutch’s own.
He didn’t think Hutch would… but then again, he had never thought that Hutch would utter the words he had this morning.
Jesus Christ, he thought, with a deep sigh of indescribable fatigue. And it’s only seven-thirty.
He looked up from his study of the floor. Hutch was very carefully not looking at him.
“What’re you gonna do?” Hutch asked, again tunelessly. Starsky saw him bracing himself for the answer.
Starsky opened his mouth, closed it, looked back down at his keys. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “I need to be alone for a while, think about it.” Whether it was a reprieve or just a prolonging of the inevitable, he wasn’t sure.
Hutch nodded, eyes closing.
“Sure,” he said, nodding again. “Sure.”
Starsky took a step toward the door. Turned back to Hutch, whose gaze had gone out the window. Took a step back.
Hutch half-shook his head. Don’t, the gesture said, and Starsky understood both the message and the meaning.
He strode back toward the door, pulled it open, and went out before he could stop himself again. The door closed firmly between them.
Hutch was alone.
Starsky was alone.
It was a place neither of them had been in years.
Chapter 6
It was nearing evening. In the Starsky household, the setting sun cast its long, warm colors into the kitchen, lighting the tiles and bouncing off the mirror on the opposite wall, to throw shadows and prisms around the room. On a good day, Starsky enjoyed sitting at his kitchen table with a beer or his dinner, a girl or Hutch or his Aunt Rosie across from him, feeling the light and warmth that surrounded him at the end of a long, tiring day, relishing the company of those who meant the most to him, and thinking life was pretty good.
Clearly, this wasn’t one of those days.
He sat with his back to the window, feet propped on the opposite chair, scowling at the wall. He’d been here most of the day. After being up for more than thirty-six hours, he was exhausted, but he knew sleep was impossible. In his mind, the debate raged as it had for the last twelve hours. He hadn’t eaten. He hadn’t even changed his clothes. He had walked in the door, locked it, then dropped onto this chair, and he had gotten up for precisely two reasons: to get a beer from the refrigerator, and to go to the bathroom. Countless times he reached for the phone to call Hutch and tell him I’m not going to do it, buddy… your secret’s safe with me. Countless times, his hand stilled and returned to his lap, as he forced himself to consider what the consequences of that could be.
C’mon, Starsky, one side argued. Just because he’s thinking about it, doesn’t mean he’ll do it, right? Big difference between thought and action.
True enough. So far, Hutch had done nothing about these dreams that had been nagging at him.
But you never thought Hutch would be thinkin’ about it, either… didja? Thought you were such a good judge of his character, thought y’knew him inside out, up, down, and sideways… and you had no clue this was going on. So, you think you can predict where he’s goin’ with it next?
Hutch hadn’t wanted him to know. And, probably unconsciously, he had called upon their friendship so Starsky would respect that desire.
And I looked the other way.
Well, who was he to decide? Did he have the right to judge Hutch for his logic or his feelings?
But what if something did happen, and Hutch tried to score… or God forbid, succeeded? What if one day, Starsky went to pick him up and saw that telltale look in his eyes? Or what if he didn’t see it… and somebody got hurt or killed because Starsky had decided to keep this new secret?
How many times do I move the line in the sand?
Starsky sighed and tilted his chair back, blinking at ceiling, eyes burning, chest tight with indecision and his own restrained emotions. He stared at the soft glow of the light fixture over the table, and tried to imagine what would happen if he, or Dobey, or anyone, told Internal Affairs about Hutch’s addiction, and what he was experiencing now.
Hutch would lose his badge. There was some slim chance they’d do something different, given the nature of his dependency, but Starsky would never lay money on that. Nope, the odds were that Hutch would be out, and probably before Starsky could get back to the squad room to tell him.
So then what? He’d get a new partner. He’d show another guy the streets, the ropes, the snitches. They’d talk, they’d have lunch, they’d get to know each other, and maybe they’d become friends. Maybe even as close as him and Hutch.
Starsky held that idea in his brain for a moment and then rejected it, spitting it out as a child does a bitter medicine. No. There was no way anyone, any other person who existed, could be as close to him as Hutch was. He had never met anyone with whom he was so in tune, and who was so in tune with him. Sure, they fought… with that much chemistry flowing, an occasional explosion was inevitable. But more often than not, more times than Starsky could count or even bring to his memory, they had been in sync, on the same wavelength, each knowing where the other was without even looking, finishing each other’s sentences, understanding each other’s thoughts…
After that, could he even work with someone else?
Aw…. SHIT.
He dropped his feet to the floor and dragged himself up from the chair.
I can‘t do it.
He couldn’t turn Hutch in and then stay on the force with someone else; that was inconceivable. He’d tell IA what had happened, and when they fired Hutch, he’d quit too. They’d figure something out.
He moved into the living room, grabbing his jacket along the way. Shoving his arms into the sleeves and pulling the ancient leather over his shoulders, he snatched his keys from the table beside his door… and then stopped short.
Waitaminute.
His mind worked for a second or two as he stared unseeingly at his door, eyes darting back and forth as he considered the idea.
It might work, he thought at length. If Hutch’ll go for it, it just might work.
***
Hutch, at that moment, was smothered in a towel, vigorously drying his hair.
He’d spent the last thirty minutes in the shower, not out of any great desire to be clean, but because it was how he’d spent much of the day. Doing first this little chore and then that, focusing on stupid activities that would keep him busy but wouldn’t task his already-overwhelmed brain. Doing anything that required just enough attention to keep his mind off what Starsky might be thinking at that particular moment.
Stop. You can’t think about that right now. If you do, you’ll go nuts.
This he knew for a fact. Every time he had stopped, his mind had begun to play the movie of what would happen over the next few days.
Dobey would call him, demand he come in immediately but not tell him why, though the captain had to realize that Starsky would never do anything like this without telling Hutch first. He would be sympathetic but firm and professional, as he informed Hutch that Internal Affairs had been advised of his heroin addiction—and it would finally be spoken aloud—and wanted to see him right away. He would refuse to tell Hutch what the nature of the conversation might be; would only repeat the instructions and try to remain impartial, try to keep the compassion in his face from becoming too evident.
Up the stairs Hutch would trudge, because the elevator would just seem too fast. There would be the inevitable walk down the hall… sort of like the one Death Row inmates must dream about before they take the real thing. Everything would be somehow off-kilter and fuzzy, as if he were looking at it through old glass. Both he and everything around him would appear to be moving in a bit of slow motion. But inexorably, he would arrive at the IA office.
The secretary, who had clearly found Hutch attractive and had flirted playfully with him on a number of occasions, would suddenly be formal and reticent. She would alert the IA officials to his presence… who? Would Davis, the chief of Internal Affairs, be involved in this, or would some new underling who didn’t even know him be assigned to drop the ax?
He would sit there for several minutes, with time to argue with himself. Should he fight it, or should he just acquiesce? He knew he had a right to speak out in his own defense. The addiction had not been his fault; given a choice, he never would have touched the stuff. He hated needles, and with his compulsion for control, he had hated oblivion even more.
But not lately, eh, Hutchinson?
However, he knew something else: even without the cravings, he was what the regulations book called “an impaired officer.” He couldn’t control the weird disoriented episodes or his response to them, and he had no idea when they would hit, though he had a pretty good idea of what triggered them. Unfortunately, the list was far from reassuring: sudden noises, flashes of light in the night, people coming up behind him without warning… a very bad assembly of things for a street detective to be afraid of. And once the damned thing started, that was it. He was gone, and anyone who depended on him was on their own.
He couldn’t stand having his back to a room; just sitting in the squad room had become an exercise in tension and eventual exhaustion. Without sleep or food, he couldn’t think and function with the sharp intelligence he and the department had come to depend on. He was spending so much of his energy holding his emotions at bay that he had little to spare for anything else. He had closed himself off from everyone except Starsky, had become short and sharp and withdrawn.
He’d become less than. Less than alert, less than stable, less than attentive to his job and the others who did it with him. Too much was at stake. At the very least, they would have to pull him off the streets. He was a potential liability, and anyone who rode with or by him could be in danger.
And once off, he might never get back.
Hutch realized with a start that he had somehow gotten dressed and dropped back into that chair in his living room, with the stupid, useless, crazy-making thoughts spinning through his head for the thousandth time that day. Worse, having finished phase one, his overactive imagination had elected to go down the “on the other hand…” path.
Suppose IA disproved popular opinion and showed they did have some heart. He could pull desk duly until he was considered “recovered” from this weird stress reaction that wouldn’t loosen its grip on him.
But even then…
Even after the nightmares and the weird visions faded, there was still that “other” thing.
Hearings with IA were supposed to be closed and confidential. But things had a way of slipping through, and Hutch would bet the word about his addiction would be out within the month. Once released, it would spread around the station in no time at all, and a whole new set of looks and hesitations would begin. People would think twice before putting him on any kind of Narcotics assignment. He would not be permitted near any evidence locker that had even a dusting of heroin. And if any portion, even a milligram, of any drug seizure disappeared, his would be the first butt parked in the departmental hot seat. Always under observation… that would be the next twenty years of the Hutchinson law enforcement career.
Twenty years. After being a star of the Academy with Starsky, after rising rapidly through the ranks to become a detective, after developing a reputation as a damned good cop, he would suddenly become “an issue.” A disciplinary case.
And he didn’t know himself if he could remain above suspicion.
And what about Starsky?
They’d pull them apart, certainly. There was no way they’d waste a good, experienced detective like Starsky on desk duty. He’d stay on the streets… only someone else would be riding shotgun.
The thought hit Hutch like a double punch, one to the chest and one to his solar plexus. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, and he doubled over in the chair, trying to wrestle the pain into something manageable. The tears shot to his eyes, and suddenly, he was blindly, hotly, whitely furious. One hand lashed out, and the table beside the chair fell over with a crash. The piece of art it held, which had already undergone its share of rough treatment, finally succumbed and collapsed into itself on the floor.
Hutch took a deep breath and tried to regain control, running his hands through his hair and rocking ever so slightly back and forth in the chair.
Hold onto it, Hutchinson… just hold onto it.
But that was just the problem. He couldn’t anymore.
He sat there for several minutes amidst the remnants of his artwork, then slowly, painfully, closed his eyes and straightened. Suddenly, the tears that had been a constant threat were gone, and he was completely dry-eyed. Drawing in a breath of both resignation and determination, he leaned forward and picked up the phone.
Moments after he completed his conversation, he heard the familiar growl of the Torino pulling up outside the cottage. The engine cut out and a few seconds later, there was a tap on the door.
He let Starsky in. Starsky walked straight into the middle of the room as if he had an earth-shattering announcement to make, then suddenly slumped, as if he couldn’t quite manage the words.
Hutch decided to spare him the necessity.
“It’s okay, partner,” he said, closing the door and going to the bedside table, where his wallet, watch, and keys lay. He slipped the wallet into his pocket and strapped the watch to his wrist, giving these two-minute tasks his complete focus to avoid looking Starsky in the eye. “I just got off the phone with Dobey. He’s meeting me at the station in an hour.”
“On a Saturday night?” Starsky blurted, temporarily distracted from his momentous news. “What’re you thinkin’? If you and the Cap’n go in there now, people’re gonna know somethin’s wrong.”
“Doesn’t really matter.” Hutch shrugged as he pulled on his jacket and picked up the keys. He stopped and finally met his partner’s gaze. “I’m going down there to resign, Starsk. I can’t ask you to choose between me and your word. And if you chose to cover this up… I’d never forgive myself.”
“Hey,” Starsky said, taking a step toward him. “First of all, there’s nothin’ for you to forgive. I’m a big boy, I make up my own mind about things. And second of all… you don’t have to resign.”
Hutch’s eyes narrowed. “What’re you talking about?” he said suspiciously.
“Plan B,” Starsky declared. He gestured toward the bed. “Cmon. Take off your coat, put the keys down, and let’s have this out.”
Still wary, Hutch nevertheless slipped out of his jacket and tossed the keys on top of it. Starsky dropped onto the living room chair and drew it close to the bed, propping his feet up on the mattress. Hutch sank down a short distance from his partner’s blue tennis shoes. “All right… shoot.”
“The thing is…”‘ Starsky began, then trailed off as if pondering how to articulate his idea. “Look, Hutch, if you quit, I quit. It’s just that simple.”
“Oh, no, Starsk,” Hutch said adamantly. “Huh-uh. There’s no way I’m letting you do that.”
“There you go again,” Starsky sighed. “How many times do I gotta tell ya, Hutch… I’m a grown up. I make my own decisions, and you don’t ‘let’ me do squat. Besides, I’m not,” he added cryptically. “And neither’re you.”
“Will you quit talking in riddles?” Hutch requested wearily, rubbing his eyes with one not-quite- steady hand. “I’m not in the best shape to fill in the blanks… just give it to me straight.”
“Okay,” Starsky said. “You go see somebody, I don’t go to IA.”
“Somebody?” Hutch echoed, clearly still not tracking. “Who, somebody?” Then it dawned on him and his brows raced together in a disbelieving frown. “You mean like a shrink-somebody?”
Starsky nodded.
Hutch sat back and blinked at his partner in dismay. “Oh, now I know you’ve lost your mind. No way, Starsk, no way.”
Starsky only looked at him and there they were, caught between bad choices and unimaginable ones. Hutch struggled to absorb the meaning of Starsky’s words. The idea of seeing a therapist had never occurred to him, and the very concept twisted his stomach into a knot. If his parents found out he would never hear the end of it. A Hutchinson seeing someone for psychological treatment. Good lord, what would the country club say if they knew?
And then there was the act itself. The idea of walking into an office for the express purpose of talking about this thing, of thinking about it, when he had spent the last three months trying to avoid doing just that. It was repellant… no, it was more than that, it was repulsive… no…
It was terrifying.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said at last, his voice carrying panic he never would have revealed to anyone but Starsky. “I can’t even talk to you about this unless you twist my arm… and you want me to go and talk to a total stranger?”
“I hear it’s easier to tell a stranger,” Starsky responded blandly.
Hutch felt himself nudged, ever so gently but firmly, further into the proverbial corner. Under other circumstances, this was when the Hutchinson temper would break loose and he’d have all kinds of cutting things to say to the person who put him there, no end of sarcasm and clever diversions, while he carefully and purposefully wriggled his way back out into the open.
But this was Starsky, his primary ally in this mess, and if he let fly now, he’d only say things he didn’t mean and would regret later.
He blinked. The stupid moisture was back. Hating himself, he raised wretched blue eyes to his partner. “Godammit, Starsk,” he said, half-angrily, half-pleadingly. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“I’m not makin’ you, buddy,” Starsky said quietly but with steel in his voice and his eyes. “You got a choice. Either you go, or I quit.”
“That is ridiculously unfair…” Hutch began heatedly, then stopped at the look on Starsky’s face. His shoulders dropped, and he half-turned from his partner. Suddenly, he felt like a small boy who realizes the discussion is over and he has lost. “All right,” he agreed, his voice barely audible. “All right, dammit. I’ll go.”
“When?” Starsky pressed.
Hutch glared at him, wishing he could tell Starsky to stop, that he was hurting enough and didn’t need to be pushed. He opened his mouth to retort sharply, then again stopped himself. Though it seemed impossible, his shoulders drooped even further.
“I’ll call Hank,” he said simply, referring to a friend who practiced psychiatry in the city. “He can probably give me a name.”
Starsky got up, walked to the coffee table, picked up Hutch’s telephone and returned to where his friend was sitting. Wordlessly, he extended the receiver.
Hutch didn’t even attempt a protest this time. He just took the phone and dialed a number.
“Hank? Evening.” His voice sounded so normal, it surprised him. “It’s Ken Hutchinson. Listen, I need some…”
His throat closed around the word help. He swallowed, and tried to cover with a small cough, “Some—information, ” he said, recovering and very deliberately not looking at Starsky. “Yeah. Let me tell you what I’m looking for…”
***
With Starsky doing what he called making sure and Hutch called looming, Hutch called the name Hank had given him. As luck would have it, psychologist Donald Greene had an opening the following Friday and was more than glad to schedule Hutch an appointment. Hutch was relieved for the week’s reprieve, ridiculously hopeful that he could pull himself together before then and prove the whole thing was unnecessary.
They met with Captain Dobey as Hutch had originally planned, but the subject was now how to pull Hutch off the street without attracting too much attention. Most of the officers would be so busy with their own cases that they wouldn’t notice Hutch’s actual absence, but those who would be asked to cover his workload naturally would be curious about what was going on. Fortunately, Dobey had long ago set a precedent of respecting his officers’ privacy. Sometimes detectives needed time alone to recover from issues such as divorces or problems with children, and Dobey gave them the freedom to decide when and to whom they wanted to divulge such details. If he told the other detectives that Hutch needed time for “personal business,” they generally would recognize and understand the meaning of that, though it would not stop some speculation. The three of them could only hope that Hutch would be ready to return to the street before anyone got very annoyed or very suspicious.
“Three weeks,” Dobey pronounced at last. “That’s all I can offer at first. The first week, I don’t want to see you anywhere near the station. The other two, you come back and work desk duty. Then we’ll see where you are.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hutch assured him, with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “I just need to work through some things, that’s all. It probably won’t even take that long.”
Both Starsky and Dobey looked extremely dubious.
“You listen to me, Hutchinson,” the Captain said sternly, but not unkindly. “The worst thing you can do is try to come back to duty before you’ve dealt with all this. Now I’m as anxious as anyone to get you back to work so I can stop rearranging my roster… but I’d like it to be permanent. Hear me?”
Hutch started to speak, but he knew that look in the captain’s eyes. He half-smiled and merely nodded.
Dobey’s eyes shifted to Starsky, who looked as exhausted as Hutch. “And you,” he went on crisply. “I want you to take a few days off, too. You got sick leave… take it and take care of yourself. You look like hell.”
“Me?” Starsky said with a startled expression. Hutch leaned back in his chair, enjoying the first bit of amusement he’d had in days. Let Starsky see how it felt to be shepherded into that corner for a change. About time he saw some turnabout being fair play.
“…no more good than he is at this point,” Dobey was saying gruffly, waving a hand at Hutch. “Now, I mean it. Both of you get out of here. The story is, Starsky’s sick until Thursday… and you’re off on personal business. I suggest you say as little else as possible.” He stood up. “Now go on, get outta here and let me enjoy the rest of my weekend.”
Hutch was out the door almost before the captain had finished speaking. He had no desire to invite any more suspicion than they had already, coming in on a Saturday. Starsky lingered for a moment, uncharacteristically hesitant to say what was on his mind. He searched for the proper words for several seconds, then shrugged, gave the captain one of his lopsided smiles, and simply said, “Thanks, Cap’n.”
“Don’t thank me,” Dobey shot back, his harsh tone almost, but not quite, hiding the concern he had for both his detectives. “Just go on, get this taken care of, and get back to work.”
Starsky nodded and followed his partner out the door.
***
Hutch had gone home, certain that a week away from work was all he needed to process what was happening and get back on top of it. He stocked his refrigerator with the most nourishing and healing items his local health food guru could recommend, planned an exercise schedule to help him get back in shape and shake the restlessness he had been experiencing, and browsed his favorite bookstore for appropriately soothing and enlightening literature.
All of which proved to be an exercise in futility.
By Friday, Hutch estimated he had slept precisely ten hours the entire week. Far from improving, his symptoms appeared to be getting worse. Every sound inside or outside the cottage seemed like a gunshot. He found himself prowling half the night, checking locks he had examined just moments before. He couldn’t get more than fifty yards down the beach, not even with Starsky, who had stubbornly insisted on spending the nights with his friend.
“I’m not gonna argue with you about this, Hutch,” he declared when Hutch protested again that he needed neither a baby sitter nor a drinking buddy. “If I’m at home, I’ll just be worrying anyway. Maybe this way I’ll get some sleep.”
And Starsky did, but not much more than Hutch. Near the end of the week, he fell asleep twice at the squad room table. He was sure that his presence and Hutch’s own sense of right and wrong would prevent him from doing more than thinking about the heroin; that wasn’t what kept him awake. It was Hutch’s constant cycles around his house, the nightmares, the startled noises when something fell outside or a car was a little louder than usual. It was watching his best friend continue to relive an ordeal that was supposed to be over.
On Friday, Starsky pulled up outside the psychologist’s office. Hutch looked up at the building and didn’t move.
“This is surreal,” he muttered. “I cannot believe I’m actually doing this.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Come on, Starsk…”
“You gonna go?” Starsky asked him bluntly. He knew Hutch, and he knew the last thing he needed to do right now was think.
Hutch snorted. “Guess I have to, don’t I?”
“No…” Starsky began to explain again.
“Yeah, save it,” Hutch said dismissively, pushing open the car door with a bit more force than necessary and climbing out of the car.
Starsky leaned over the seat. “Hutch,” he called.
Hutch paused and turned back around.
“Don’t think,” Starsky advised. “Sometimes, ya just gotta gut it out.”
Hutch’s stony expression did not change, but he blinked several times and closed the door much more gently than he had opened it. There was a beat or two, then his face reappeared at the Torino’s window.
“I’ll be…”
“I’ll be right here,” Starsky assured him.
Hutch nodded, then took a deep breath, gathered himself, and turned away from the car.
Still watching out the window, Starsky saw him straighten his shoulders and walk resolutely into the building.
Chapter 7
“Mr… Hutchinson?” Donald Greene said, glancing at Hutch over the top of a manila folder. He was a middle-aged gentleman, perhaps ten years older than Hutch, with a thick head of greying hair and a pair of half-moon reading glasses. He was dressed casually in beige slacks, jacketless, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up just past his elbows. The office was equally casual, the walls covered with bookshelves and the furniture elegantly shabby. Hutch had noticed a number of small sculptures scattered around the room, wood pieces that lent an air of warmth and earthiness to the small room.
“Right,” Hutch replied briefly. He sat in a conventional chair to the psychologist’s right, his posture stiff, hands clasped in his lap. He was completely uncomfortable; he sensed his defenses were inadequate to this challenge, and even less so given the lack of sleep and emotional bombardment he’d experienced in the last week.
“How do you prefer to be addressed?” Dr. Greene asked. “Ken, Mr. Hutchinson…?“
“It’s usually Hutch,” Hutch replied, again briefly. “But that or Ken is fine.”
“Do you have a preference?” the doctor repeated patiently, pressing the point gently,
“Ken,” Hutch said finally. Maybe that would separate this from who he was as a cop.
“All right, Ken,” the doctor continued. “I usually encourage my clients to just call me Don.” Closing the folder and laying it aside, he flipped open a fresh stenographic pad, and turned his full attention to his new client. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”
Hutch took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and looked down at his hands. To his annoyance, they were trembling. He stopped, further annoyed: his voice was trembling too. With a tremendous effort, he steadied it and did his best to sound casual, normal. “I’ve been having some problems, and it’s starting to get in the way of my job.”
“What kind of problems?” Greene asked. His voice was somehow warm and interested without being overly intrusive or condescending.
Nevertheless, Hutch was guarded. “Uh…?” He searched his mind, trying to prioritize the myriad of “problems” he was experiencing by virtue of their benignity. “Well, I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” he said at last, feeling somewhat triumphant. Lots of people have insomnia, he reasoned; nothing too crazy about that.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Excuse me?”
“What kind of trouble sleeping?” the doctor repeated. “Falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up and not being able to go back to sleep?”
“Yeah,” Hutch admitted before he realized it. He pursed his lips and fell silent, but Greene merely nodded, and continued.
“What else?”
Hutch cast about again for something relatively safe. “Uh, I don’t seem to be too interested in food.”
“Have you lost any weight recently?”
Hutch shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Any idea how much?”
“I don’t know…ten, maybe fifteen pounds.”
“Over what period of time?”
Hutch shrugged. “Maybe the last two months.”
“The idea of food doesn’t appeal to you, or you’re hungry but then when there’s food in front of you, you can’t eat it?”
“Both,” Hutch said, again before he could stop himself. Dammit. He unclasped his hands and clenched both fists, reminding himself not to reveal too much.
The doctor’s grey eyes flicked down unobtrusively, noted the gesture, then returned to Hutch’s face. Without a discernible change in expression, he took in the circles under Hutch’s eyes; the overall drawn and weary look.
“Have you felt particularly fatigued lately?”
“Right,” Hutch agreed. He attempted a smile but it was clearly mirthless. “I guess because I haven’t been sleeping.”
“What’s been keeping you awake, Ken?”
Hutch pursed his lips again and looked past the psychologist for several seconds, gazing at a seascape painting hanging behind the cluttered desk. It was a soothing image, depicting warm sunshine on a crystal blue ocean, birds wheeling lazily in the sky, and children playing on the white sands. For a moment, he allowed himself to get lost in it, in the beloved beach he was too frightened to retreat to in real life.
“Ken?”
With a start, Hutch realized he had never answered Greene’s question. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I lost track of the question.”
The doctor’s eyebrow flicked up. “I asked what was keeping you awake.”
“Oh, you know,” Hutch said evasively, gesturing vaguely. “Stuff.”
The doctor waited. It was a move Hutch knew only too well, having used it himself when interviewing witnesses and interrogating perpetrators. He shifted in his chair again, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the line of questioning. “I… guess I’ve been worried about some things,” he admitted finally, having considered and rejected dozens of other answers. “This…doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
“This?” the doctor echoed.
“The… insomnia, not eating… I don’t seem to want to do things I used to like doing,” Hutch said, hoping that with this burst of words, he would appease this—psychologist and distract him from the question he was dreading most.
“When did all this start, Ken?”
“Uh…about two months ago, I guess.”
“And did something in particular happen at about that time?””
This was the one for which Hutch had been steeling himself, the one whose answer he had to choose carefully and slowly, as if walking barefoot across a beach littered with sharp rocks.
He remained silent, rehearsing answers in his mind and rejecting them one after the other. Finally, sensing Greene was about to repeat the question, he parried with one of his own: “You have to keep this confidential, don’t you?”
“Pardon?” the doctor said, mildly surprised.
“This,” Hutch repeated, waving a hand around the office. “What’s your policy on that, on privacy, on keeping what I say here”—a finger jabbed toward the floor—”in here.”
“Well, Ken, whatever you say here is protected information,” Greene said matter-of-factly. “I can’t release anything without your written permission. The only exceptions are if I think you are in immediate danger of harming yourself or someone else.”
Hutch examined Greene closely for several seconds with a level gaze that had unnerved and even intimidated countless suspects. He didn’t really think the man was lying—he had no reason to—but part of Hutch wanted to measure the man’s mettle; see how much Hutch could trust him, and how much he would let Hutch escape with.
The grey eyes returned his look steadily; the eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. It was Hutch’s eyes that dropped first as he shifted in his chair, crossed one leg across the other at the knee, and became engrossed in a seam of his jeans.
“About two months ago,” he repeated, choosing his words very carefully, “something happened at work. This—has been happening ever since.”
The doctor waited, but Hutch offered nothing more. “‘Something?” he repeated.
Hutch refused to be baited this time. He merely nodded and said nothing more.
Greene switched tacks. “What kind of work do you do, Ken?”
“I’m a police detective,” Hutch said, without looking up.
“Ah.” Greene appeared to ponder this for a moment. “So… would it be safe to assume that this… something that occurred at work was something dangerous?”
“If you like,” Hutch said to his jeans.
Greene examined his client closely. Hutch’s shoulders, which seemed painfully thin, were bunched upward under the dark brown leather jacket. A muscle rippled in Hutch’s jaw… once, twice… and his brow was furrowed into a frown that seemed indelible. The psychologist sensed that here was more here, much more; but the man opposite him was not about to divulge what, not today.
Greene dropped the question, and spent the next several minutes asking Hutch about his educational background, his family, and his social life. Seeming relieved at the new direction, Hutch relaxed somewhat and actually responded to the psychologist’s questions with answers of more than one sentence. He talked about going to college and beginning graduate school, then deciding to go into police work. He spoke of getting married while he and his wife were both in college and her subsequent departure after he had graduated from the academy and seemed serious about remaining a cop. He even disclosed a distant relationship with his parents.
“So whom here, in the city, would you consider your closest friend?” the doctor asked at length.
“My partner,” Hutch said instantly. “Starsky—Dave Starsky.”
“And you’ve been working together for how long?”
Hutch squinted at the ceiling. “About four months when we were at the academy,” he calculated. “Then we had different assignments for a year or so, before I went to Metro and they hooked us up again. A little over five years, I guess.”
“So he knows you pretty well,” Greene assumed.
“Probably better than anybody,” Hutch agreed with a somewhat humorless laugh. “If it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t even be here….” He trailed off, and his face closed again.
Greene noted the change, but did not comment; merely filed it away for later.
“What about drugs or alcohol, Ken?” he asked, switching directions again.
There was a suddenly stiff silence. For some reason, Greene suspected his new client yearned to jump to his feet and flee the room. Though Hutch remained in his chair, he telegraphed his tension with virtually every muscle in his body, his posture at odds with his casual, somewhat flippant response:
“What about ’em?”
“Do you use them?” the doctor clarified patiently.
“Oh, I usually have a beer or two when I get home from work,” Hutch said nonchalantly. “Maybe a few more on the weekends.”
“Street drugs?”
Hutch closed his eyes, switched legs, and rubbed a hand across the lower half of his face. “I… no,” he said after a few seconds. “No, I don’t use street drugs.”
Noting the use of the present tense, Greene studied Hutch carefully for a moment. His instincts told him the detective was lying—or at the very least, not telling the entire truth— Was this why Hutch was so anxious about his confidentiality? Watching the other man’s demeanor as he continued to shift in his chair and steal anxious glances at his watch, Greene considered pushing the issue, then decided to wait for another time.
Once again, he changed the subject.
“What made you decide to come into treatment now, Ken, rather than when this… ‘something’ first happened at work?”
“I was fine right after it happened,” Hutch said defensively. “But now it’s starting to affect my job, and it’s not getting any better. I thought I had better take care of it before I… so I could go back to street duty.”
Greene nodded, then was silent for several seconds as he jotted some notes on his pad.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hutch shift in his chair again and take the opportunity to sneak another glance at his watch.
Greene looked up. “Have you had any thoughts about harming yourself or killing yourself, Ken?”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, eh, Hutchinson? Only one way off this horse…
Hutch didn’t answer for several seconds. Suddenly, he was far away from the room, his eyes focused on something only he could see. Deep in his chest, a feeling stirred that was profoundly sad and deeply, wrenchingly hopeless.
“Ken?” Greene inquired, and Hutch started. He blinked, and shook his head, rubbing his hands over his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “What did you ask me, again?”
“Where did you go, just now?” the doctor asked curiously.
Hutch noticed the man’s expression was intense, less relaxed than it had been moments before, and with an inward groan of dismay he wondered what he had just done. But he smiled, shrugged, and attempted to deflect the question. “Nowhere,” he said casually. “I told you, I haven’t had a lot of sleep lately. Sometimes, I seem to kind of space out.” He deliberately uncrossed his legs and stretched the long limbs out in front of him, the picture of studied relaxation. “What was the question again?”
Dr. Greene’s gaze remained on him just long enough to let Hutch know that the psychologist knew he was holding back. The doctor leaned back in his chair and asked him again, “Have you had any thoughts about harming yourself or killing yourself?”‘
The relaxed pose did not cancel out the rush of blood to Hutch’s cheeks, the tightening of his hands until the knuckles whitened, or the words that came jerkily out of his mouth. “I… well… you have to understands… it’s…” He finally gave up. “Not recently, no.”
Thoughts, dreams, he said stubbornly to that shocked little voice that said, ‘You’re lying.’ They’re two different things.
This one Greene did not let go. “‘Not recently’,” he echoed, and Hutch thought briefly that he was getting tired of having his words given back to him. “What does that mean?”
“Not now,” Hutch amended.
Again Greene studied him closely. Hutch crossed one leg over the other and again focused his attention on his blue jeans.
“Do you have access to weapons, Ken?”
Hutch raised an eyebrow and looked at the older man, with an expression that said more clearly than words what a stupid question that was, but said anyway, “Of course.”
“You have your own gun?”
“Yes,” Hutch replied, a hand indicating the Magnum that rarely left his side.
“I suppose it would be impossible for you to lock that away while you’re in treatment.”
“You suppose correctly.”
“All right.” Greene got to his feet and walked around behind his desk, a move so unexpected that Hutch had jerked upright before he could stop himself.
Again, Greene noted the response but did not comment. Instead, he merely fished a piece of paper out of a file folder on his desk, dug a pen out of the same general area, and walked back around the desk, handing both items to Hutch. “Read and sign that, if you please.”
Hutch looked up at him. “And this is?”
“It’s a safety contract, Ken,” Greene explained. “It says you agree that you will contact me—I’ll give you my office and service numbers—if you begin to entertain serious thoughts about harming or killing yourself. I’d like you to sign it.”
“Wait a minute…” Hutch protested, but Greene raised a hand to stop him.
“Ken, look, it’s pretty clear to me that you’re in a certain amount of distress. You’ve considered suicide, though fortunately not today, and you’re not in a position where you can lock up your gun,” he pointed out. “In order for me to continue treating you, I need you to sign this, so we have something to help us if your suicidality becomes worse. You strike me as a man of your word, and I think that if you sign this, you’ll follow through.”
Hutch looked from the piece of paper to the man before him for several seconds, trying to think of an argument… but there really wasn’t one that would serve any purpose, other than making him go through this whole stupid process with someone else. He wasn’t sure he trusted this man, not yet, but he didn’t completely distrust him, and that was saying something. He shrugged, rested the paper on his thigh, and signed it.
“Thank you,” Greene said, taking the contract and handing him a business card in exchange. “Now, we’re at the end of the session for today, so let’s go ahead and find another time when we can meet.”
They scheduled another appointment for the following Friday, after Hutch got off work; during this period of desk duty, he was actually working a predictable nine-to-five shift, though he warned the doctor this would not generally be the case.
As they prepared to leave, Hutch, relieved that the ordeal was over, said glibly, “So, what d’ya think, Doc? Do I have a chance or am I completely crazy?”
To his surprise, the psychologist took his question seriously. “It sounds like the answer to that is very important to you,” he observed soberly, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.
“It is,” Hutch said with equal sobriety, surprising himself by dropping his flippancy. “My job depends on it.”
“In that case, Ken,” the psychologist said, his expression deep with compassion, “I hope you’ll really talk to me next time. Humor and avoidance are useful survival skills when someone is dealing with a trauma, but they won’t help you recover from whatever you came here for.”
Hutch started to protest, then dropped his eyes, blinking rapidly. “Busted,” he said quietly and with a touch of sadness; then he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and wrestled himself back under breezy control. “All right, Doc. I’ll give it my best shot.” He half-smiled, and went out through the door that the doctor held for him.
***
Starsky pulled into the parking lot just as Hutch emerged from the building into the bright sunlight, so he pulled the Torino up to the sidewalk and watched as his partner came slowly to the curb. Hutch was contemplating a business card in his hand; as Starsky pulled up, he tucked it in his wallet. He said nothing as he pulled open the Torino’s door and slid inside.
Starsky looked over at him before putting the car into gear. Hutch’s face held that combination of pensive and aggravated that it took on when something was puzzling him and he couldn’t get his hands on it. Such moments were generally not conducive to small talk, so Starsky merely depressed the clutch, slid the gearshift into first, and pulled the big car away from the curb.
At the mouth of the parking lot, however, he had to decide which way to turn and risked a quick question to his thoughtful partner.
“Dinner?”
Hutch glanced over at him. “What?” he said, as if Starsky had spoken some foreign language to him.
“Dinner,” Starsky repeated. “You know… food… wine… maybe a little music?”
“Oh. No,” Hutch declined, his voice distant and somewhat mechanical. “Just, uh, drop me off at the cottage… then you can go grab something if you want.”
“Aw, c’mon, Hutch,” Starsky said persuasively. “You haven’t eaten much all week, and therefore, neither have I. Let’s go get something decent for a change, whadya say?”
Hutch rubbed his forehead. “All right, all right,” he said, giving in. “But let’s make it an early night, huh? I’m beat.”
“Deal,” Starsky said with a grin. “And I got just the place… it’s this little club not too far from your place… got great jazz and killer burgers…”
Far from responding with his usual groans and lectures about the evils of fried meat and greasy bar food, Hutch merely nodded, and Starsky noticed his friend seemed distracted. This was not, he guessed, unexpected given the circumstances. He let his chatter run down and merely headed the car and his companion toward, at last, something besides takeout food and dubious concoctions from Hutch’s refrigerator.
Chapter 8
That night, lulled by the wine and relief that the first step had finally been taken, Starsky fell asleep quickly and slept deeply and soundly.
Around 2 a.m., Hutch rose from the bed where he had been tossing restlessly for several hours. He did his usual rounds of the cottage, checking the locks and the windows, then paused at the entrance to the alcove. Starsky was out like a light, sprawled on his back, one arm flung over his head, his face turned toward the moonlight that streamed in the window. Hutch gave a rueful half smile and shook his head. Part of him wished fervently that his partner would go home and stop hovering… but another part, equally heartfelt, was grateful for his company. Though he couldn’t stop the fear, he could logically argue that with Starsky armed and within earshot, very little could happen… at the hands of either other people or Hutch himself. He turned and crossed into the kitchen.
Moving quietly around the small space, taking down a kettle and a box of tea, running about a cup of water into the small receptacle, and pinching some of the leaves into a well-used tea ball. Waiting for the water to boil, he took a cup from one of his cabinets and rinsed it in the sink, then set it on the counter as he gazed out the window at the deep night.
The teakettle began to shoot forth steam, and he shifted it to a cool burner, then turned off the heat. Savoring the rising aroma of the herbal mixture, he poured water over the tea ball and into the cup, then looped the chain around the cup’s handle and set it aside to steep for a few minutes. He was opening the cabinets in search of his honey when there was a bright flash of light, probably from a car that had gotten lost and was making a U-turn at the canal. At the same time, something scraped against the window.
He had no idea what happened next; only knew that when he was aware of his surroundings again, the cup was on the floor in pieces, the sleeve of his robe was dripping wet, and his hand was stinging from the boiling hot liquid. He slumped against the kitchen counter, sure that only seconds had passed, but growing more and more afraid of these sudden lapses, wandering when they would come next and where he would find himself the next time he “came to.”
“Hutch?”
He whirled, heart jump-starting with a leap that was actually painful, breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t until he actually saw Starsky that he even allowed himself to relax from the fight-or-flight position his body had assumed without even consulting him.
“Dammit, Starsky,” he hissed. “Don’t do that to me!”
“Sorry,” Starsky said, sounding genuinely apologetic. Clearly, he had thought he would avoid startling Hutch by speaking before he approached, but Hutch knew that was impossible.
Unless I see you coming from a mile away, pal, you’re gonna be peeling me off the wall like paint.
“What’re you doin’ up?” Starsky asked, pushing himself from the door jamb.
“Nothing,” Hutch said, kneeling to pick up the pieces of his tea cup. “Thought I’d get some tea but the wind intervened.”
Draped in his blanket, Starsky yawned hugely, scratched the back of his head, and dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. “What’s the matter,” he said. It wasn’t even a question; he knew something was.
“Nothing,” Hutch repeated. “I just couldn’t sleep.”
It saddened Starsky that this was now so commonplace that Hutch dismissed it as inconsequential. He was silent for a moment, then asked cautiously, “How’d it go this afternoon?”
“How’d what go?” Hutch asked, rising from the floor with china fragments in his palm, his expression puzzled. Comprehension came only a beat later, and he turned away to drop the pieces into the trash can under his sink. “Oh. Fine.”
“‘Fine?'” Starsky echoed. “What does that mean? Is the guy okay? What does he think is going on?”
“The guy is fine,” Hutch said levelly, taking far more time than necessary dusting the dirt from his hands and finding a cloth to wipe up the tea that had spilled on the floor.
“C’mon, Hutch,” Starsky said. “What does he think?”
Hutch mopped up the spill, then straightened, throwing the towel into the sink. “He thinks I didn’t tell him jack today,” he said tightly. “He thinks I use… how did he put it? Oh, right… ‘humor and avoidance'”—his hands sketched quotes in the air—”‘to deal with the trauma,’ end quote.” He snorted as he retrieved the towel and yanked at one of the faucets to rinse it out. “Ridiculous.”
Starsky said nothing. Eventually Hutch draped the towel over his faucet and turned back toward the room and his partner’s steady gaze.
“What did you tell him?” Starsky asked.
Hutch picked the towel up again and began to twist it in his hands, wrapping it around one tightly clenched fist. He started to answer, paused, looked down at his hands, and then inclined his head in a brief concession.
“Nothing,” he confessed. “Every time he asked, I just… didn’t tell him anything.”
“What good does that do?” Starsky asked him, genuinely perplexed. “Why go if you’re not gonna tell him anything?”
“My sentiments exactly,” Hutch shot at him.
Starsky didn’t respond, knew that Hutch was upset about something that had nothing to do with him. He just held Hutch’s eyes with his own.
“Starsk, I can’t… I can’t tell him what happened or what I’ve been thinking and feeling… it’s… I just can’t do it.”
“You told me,” Starsky pointed out.
“That’s different,” Hutch argued. “You already knew what happened. You didn’t think I was trying to explain away a heroin craving with some fantastical story.”
“What makes you think this guy’s gonna do that either?” Starsky asked.
“I don’t know,” Hutch said; suddenly he looked exhausted, tired of fighting this battle and every other one that had been foisted on him in the last three months. “Look, I don’t want to talk about this now, all right? I’m not gonna come back from every therapy session and rehash it with you.”
“Wanna tell me something?” Starsky asked him. “If you won’t talk to him and you won’t talk to me, how’re you gettin’ past this?”
“You know, if all of you would just leave me alone and let me handle it my own way, I’ll manage,” Hutch told him hotly.
“Y’know, we tried that for three months, Hutch,” Starsky stated flatly. “Lookit, if you can convince me that you really think that was better than this, I’ll be more than glad to go home and let you handle this however you want.”
Hutch glared at him for a moment or two, then threw the towel back into the sink. “Dammit, Starsk,” he grumbled. “I’m gonna thank you for this someday, aren’t I?”
“Bet your ass,” Starsky said with a grin.
Grinning back, and thinking how good it felt, Hutch shook his head and began the tea preparations again. Waving the package at Starsky he asked, “Want some?”
“Think you can make it without dumpin’ it all over the floor this time?” Starsky teased.
“Yeah, very funny.” Hutch took two cups down from the cabinet and set the water to boil again. In a few minutes, the kettle was whistling merrily, and he had prepared a cup for each of them.
Starsky tasted his and made an exaggerated frown, then got up and began digging through the cabinet under Hutch’s sink.
“What’re you doing?” Hutch asked, leaning back in his chair to observe his partner’s busy activity.
“It’s missin’ something,” Starsky said over his shoulder. “Somethin’ like that fine whiskey you drag out for special occasions.” He removed three pans and a salad colander from the cabinet, then shoved aside a number of odd bowls and old plant pots. “Jesus Christ, Hutch… don’t you ever throw anything away?”
“I use those for cuttings…” Hutch began.
Starsky waved a hand back at him. “Don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know. Ah-ha!” He emerged from the back of the cabinet with a slightly dusty bottle. Hutch had left a great deal of his parent’s snobbery behind when he’d moved to California; however, though he wouldn’t pass up the regular bar beer, he had retained a preference for good wine and liquor.
A habit for which Starsky was often grateful.
He dusted off the bottle with a corner of the blanket and plunked it in the middle of the table. “All right, pal,” he announced. “Let’s drag out the cards. I’ll beat you at poker and drink you under the table.”
Hutch snorted. “That’ll be the day,” he retorted, but he was smiling as he got up to see which of his stuffed kitchen drawers held his pack of playing cards. “Penny ante?”
“You kidding?” Starsky said, removing the top from the whiskey bottle and pouring a generous dollop into each cup. “No way, blondie. It’s all or nothing. We keep track of points and the loser buys dinner.”
“You’re on.”
***
Three hours later, dawn was beginning to light the sky and both men were pleasantly smashed. The card game they were playing bore only a passing resemblance to poker, primarily because they continued, very seriously, to place bets.
“Your deal,” Starsky said, enunciating his words very carefully and placing the deck in front of his partner with great precision and respect.
“O-kay.” Hutch shuffled the cards, cut the deck in half, then set one stack aside. “Five cards?”
“Fine by me.”
Hutch dealt each of them five cards, and put the kitty in the middle of the table. Both he and Starsky fanned their cards out inches from their eyes and peered at them. Several seconds went by, then Hutch looked up from his.
“What game’re we playing again?”
“Poker,” Starsky reminded him. “I think you’ve had to drink too much.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Hutch snorted. “Look who’s talking.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Starsky slurred. He slumped in his chair until his chin was resting on the table, his arms propped up and the cards practically touching his nose. “Sober as a judge.”
“Oh, yeah, his Honor Jim Beam,” Hutch muttered. “Okay. Whattayawant?”
Starsky drew himself up with great dignity, then flipped the cards down for Hutch to peruse. “What do you think?”
Hutch examined them with a serious frown, pursing his lips, looking from them to his own hand. “Sorry to tell you this, buddy, but you got nothin’. Whereas I…” he extended his cards for Starsky to see—”am sittin’ pretty on a—” He pulled the cards back to his view, “A—royal flush.”
“Thas not a royal flush,” Starsky said indignantly. “There’s not a bit of royalty in that hand… Look.” He grabbed the cards from Hutch and laid each one out on the table. “Ten, seven, five, seven, ten.”
“Hey, two pair!” Hutch snatched the cards back up with a smile of intoxicated delight. “Still beats your—what do you call this, anyway?”
“A tomato supreme,” Starsky pronounced grandly, laying his own cards out. “See? Heart, heart, diamond, diamond, and—heart.” He very carefully sat back in his chair, and folded his hands in his lap.
Hutch frowned again, trying to search his memory. “I don’t remember, Starsk,” he said contemplatively. “Does two pair beat a tomato supreme, or only a pizza with anchovies?”
“Both,” Starsky advised him. “But never an inside the park home run.”
“Oh, right.” Hutch reached for the all but illegible score sheet and pulled it toward him. “Okay then… that gives you… fifty-seven, and me… ninety-eight.” He scrawled some numbers, adding to the chaos on the sheet of paper. “And the grand total is, two hundred and twelve for you, and three hundred and fifty-nine for me.” He smiled beatifically at his partner. “Guess you owe me dinner, pal.”
“Gimme that.” Starsky snatched the piece of paper from the table and examined it closely, turning it this way and that. Finally, he tossed it back onto the table with a snort. “All right, you win… but only because I cann’ follow your logic… or read that chicken scratch you call writing.”
“So what else is new?” Hutch said with a self-satisfied smile. He gathered the cards together, spent the next few minutes stacking them, aligning them very neatly, and placing them tidily in the box… then tossed them onto the kitchen counter, paying no attention when they slid across the wood and landed with a sodden plop in the sink. “Y’know what?” he sighed, with an enormous yawn.
“What,” Starsky said. He had rested his chin atop his folded arms, which were enveloped in a blanket against the early morning chill.
“This was fun,” Hutch said, and though his voice was thick from the liquor, his tone was sincere. “Thanks, buddy.”
“No sweat,” Starsky returned, attempting to wave away the thanks, but unable to disentangle his arm from the blanket. “Hey, Hutch?”
“Yeah?” Hutch was carefully making his way to the bathroom; he had a feeling they should both down a large glass of water and a couple of aspirins before they went to bed.
“Yknow somethin’?”
Hutch rolled his eyes as he stepped carefully around his bed. “What, Starsk?”
“I think ya gotta lotta guts.”
Struck into momentary sobriety by the statement, Hutch stopped trying to navigate the living room and turned back to look at Starsky. “What’re you talkin’ about?” he said, unable to keep the fondness from either his smile or his voice.
“Tough thing… to go in and face this shit,” Starsky mumbled. “Takes courage.” He managed to extricate his hand and give Hutch a decidedly non-military salute with his glass. “You’re a brave man, Ken Hutchinson.”
Hutch chuckled and shook his head. “Thanks, partner,” he responded warmly. “So’re you, to hang in there with me.”
“‘S’what friends are for,” Starsky instructed him.
“Right… and now, I think it’s time for the heroes to go to bed,” Hutch declared, He turned back toward the bathroom, then stood there swaying for a moment, trying to recall his original errand. “Oh yeah,” he remembered, snapping his fingers. He continued into the bathroom, managed to shake four aspirin into his hand without incident, and returned to the kitchen, dropping the tablets on the kitchen table. He moved to the sink, where he ran two glasses of water, and turned to hand one to Starsky—
Who was sound asleep, head cradled on his crossed and blanketed arms. Hutch blinked, gave a half smile, and set down the two glasses of water, then circled the table to crouch down beside his partner. “Hey… Starsk.”
Starsky only mumbled something incoherent. Hutch shook him gently.
“Come on, pal,” he coaxed. “You can’t sleep there… you’ll have the world’s most painful crick in your neck.” He loosened the blanket from Starsky’s shoulders and reached around his friend’s waist, then hoisted both of them to their feet. But Starsky was sound asleep and thus dead weight, and Hutch was fairly well gone himself. He only reached the bed before his own legs started to buckle, and he collapsed onto the mattress with Starsky half-sprawled across him.
“Oh, well,” he sighed. He untangled himself from his partner and carefully pulled him up further onto the bed until his head was resting on the pillows, then adjusted the blanket until Starsky was fully covered.
“Night, partner,” Hutch murmured. “Thanks for puttin’ up with me and makin’ me laugh in the process.”
He turned out the light and drew the curtains in the cottage, thinking how good it had felt to laugh and play cards and get just plowed enough with his best friend… to forget the whole nightmare had ever happened, if only for a little while.
He couldn’t forget completely, however; before he settled himself onto the couch, he went around the cottage twice, checking the doors and assuring himself that all the windows were tightly closed.
I still have a long way to go, he remembered thinking as he lay back on the pillows with an enormous yawn and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders. But at least it’s a start.
Chapter 9
The three weeks Dobey had originally approved passed. Somehow the captain coaxed another two from Hutch’s colleagues and managed to sidestep questions from IA and his higher-ups. Hutch dutifully… almost rotely… let Starsky drop him off at Dr. Greene’s once a week, and found himself more tired and confused with every session. He knew just going to see the psychologist was working on him in some way, but it wasn’t a very pleasant one. The therapy was keeping everything closer to the surface, so the memories were harder to push away, the nightmares more vivid, and the sleep was even longer and rarer in coming.
But he had to admit, Dr. Greene was good. He was biding his time, coaxing a little out of Hutch here and there. Hutch still hadn’t told him precisely what “the trauma” was, but Greene was letting him wander through it, lobbing Hutch’s words and actions back to him, gauging when to push and when to pull back. Since Hutch had to function reasonably well the other 167 hours of his week, he was grateful for the doctor’s delicacy.
The disorienting episodes unresolved, Hutch was still stuck at his desk, but the most recent case they were working required a lot of legwork and phone calls. For the first time in weeks, he was back to doing real detective work; as a result, he had lost track of the time and missed the regularly scheduled appointment. He called, expecting to be rescheduled, but to his surprise Greene agreed to see him.
It was well past eight by the time Hutch left the station. Starsky had had dinner plans with his aunt and thus had been unable to wait and drive him, which left Hutch with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he loved Starsky but the hovering got on his nerves sometimes. But on the other, he had come to depend on having Starsky around afterward to “bring him down” after a session. He wasn’t sure how he would deal with the post-game by himself. But he shook himself as he rounded his battered brown car, unlocked the door, and slid inside. You gotta do this on your own some day, he thought. No time like the present.
As he pulled away from the curb, rain begin to spit on the windshield, and his hands grew suddenly damp on the steering wheel as he peered at the dark sky and rolled the window down slightly. With a sigh, he noted tendrils of lightning arcing across the sky ahead and the faint growl of thunder echoing amongst the buildings.
For a moment, he considered canceling the appointment, but that seemed rude under the circumstances. He gripped the steering wheel and set his jaw. He was sick of being at the mercy of the weather; if something hit him during the thunderstorm, then so be it. Maybe he’d get lucky and take the car over the side of the road. As long as no one else got hurt…
He sighed and pushed that idea out of his head. By now he knew those thoughts had less to do with wanting to die than just wanting the pain and the unpredictability to end. If he could get past this, if he could just drop the barrier and let the doctor in, then there was hope of his regaining something like a normal life.
For a moment, he let himself remember that… a normal life. Going to bed, sometimes to sleep, sometimes to… not, and taking sleep’s refuge for granted. Walking or jogging along the beach for miles in the early morning, not worrying about who was following… not thinking about anything at all, really… just enjoying the damp newness of the dawn and the fresh smell of the waves. Laughing over some stupid joke with Starsky, not having to plan where he sat in a public place, working… hell, he even missed riding in that stupid striped tomato. He thought about it, he envisioned it, and he felt that glimmer of hope that was starting to come more and more, despite his feeling stuck in the therapy sessions.
What if…
He didn’t let himself think further as he pulled into the parking lot of Dr. Greene’s building.
***
Donald Greene was completing a progress note in his inner office when the first clap of thunder struck. Seconds later, rain began to sheet across the parking lot. As a second bolt of lightning split the sky, and thunder rattled the window, he heard the door to his outer office open. A moment later, Ken appeared in his doorway, drenched and out of breath.
“Sorry I forgot,” Ken apologized, shaking some of the moisture from his hands as he sank down into his usual chair. He swiped damp hair off his forehead.
“I’d rather we didn’t make a habit of this,” Greene said honestly, “but it’s all right on occasion.”
There was a flash of lightning outside the window and a somewhat louder clap of thunder. Surreptitiously, Ken’s fingers curled around the arm of the chair, hanging on as if to avoid launching himself with the next strike.
Greene nodded toward his client’s hands as he took his own seat. “What’s that, Ken?”
With an obvious effort, Ken released the chair and moved his hands to rest on his thighs.
“You were holding on pretty close to the chair,” Greene persisted. “What was that about?”‘
He watched as the expression on his client’s face moved from caution, to a flicker of fear, to stoic resignation. Eventually, Ken took in a breath, and spoke, his voice barely audible. “Thunderstorms,” he said. “Sometimes they… affect me.”
By now, Greene had grown accustomed to the idea that therapy with Ken was something like that magician’s trick, where the scarves come out of a pocket one at a time but all somehow linked together. He had to keep pulling, but there was almost always a series of revelations that led to something important for his client. He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands, and asked, “How?”
In a weird way, Ken was spared—and yet not—having to answer. There was an enormous crash, a tremendous flash of light, and the room was suddenly plunged into darkness.
“Well, drat,” the doctor said with a sigh. “Hold that thought, Ken, I’ll see if I can’t find a light.” He rose, felt his way around his desk, and fished around in the drawers. “Ah.” Pleased, he pulled a flashlight from the bottom drawer. “Seems like we lose the power here at least once a month, so I finally got this so I could do sessions and my notes.” He returned to his chair and flicked on the light.
Ken’s response was immediate and violent; he was on his feet in a heartbeat, the chair toppling over behind him with a crash. Before Greene could move, Ken had turned and was groping around the room. His breathing was ragged, rapid, and shallow as he spun around, searching desperately for an exit.
Greene instantly turned off the light, but it was too late to stop the process. His client was a hundred miles away, with no apparent awareness of his surroundings. Greene rose to his feet and approached the agitated man very slowly, speaking gently but distinctly as he went.
“Ken… Ken… It’s Dr. Greene. Ken… you’re in a safe place. Ken… can you hear me?”
At first, there was no response. In the next flash of lightning, Greene glimpsed Ken’s face and could see the wild terror in his eyes.
“I don’t,” he whispered pitiably. “I don’t know… where she is… please, just give me some help.”
“Ken?” Greene continued to speak firmly and very clearly, trying to reach through the memory to bring him back to the present. “Ken… you’re not there anymore. You’re in my office. That’s just a thunderstorm… You’re safe.”
Ken either didn’t hear him or didn’t believe him, because the next flash of lightning revealed him on the floor beside the door, knees pulled to his chest protectively, hands rubbing his arms frantically, eyes darting back and forth. “I don’t know where she is… please… some help… give me some help…”
Greene began to approach him slowly and cautiously. Normally, he wouldn’t do this—touching or getting too close to a patient in the throes of a flashback was sometimes a good way to get punched or kicked—but he was concerned that his client would go out the door in his confused state. The last place the detective needed to be was out in the office building with the night shift of the neighboring data entry company watching him curiously. He moved smoothly, not too quickly, and positioned himself between Ken and the door.
Hands clutched the doctor’s arm. “You got help,” he whispered. “Don’t go, you got help, you gotta give me some help.”
The doctor gently extricated his arm from the grasping hands, and looked around for something to give the distraught man that would not fit in with the flashback, all the while repeating, “It’s Dr. Greene, Ken,” like a mantra. “You’re in a safe place; there’s no one here to harm you. Can you hear me?” He spied one of the wood sculptures on a table next to the door and guided it into Ken’s space, letting the grasping hands curl around it.
“This is one of the art pieces in my office, Ken,” he said firmly. “Look at it, Ken… it’s in the here and now… Open your eyes and look at it… that’s the way…”
Finally, the doctor’s voice penetrated the movie playing in Hutch’s head. Though part of him remained in the confrontation with Forest, he could hear the command, and slowly, he was able to focus on the object in his hands. The sight and feel of the wood registered, and the haze began to clear, as Greene’s voice became more solid and nearby, instead of sounding as if it were coming from the end of a tunnel. Gradually, the memory faded, and he became aware of the office around him.
“Can you hear me?” Greene asked urgently. Answer me… Tell me if you can hear me.”
“Yeah,” Hutch said hoarsely. “Yeah, I hear you.”
He looked up from the sculpture, then around at the door, and recognized that he was across the room. His face crumpled, and he pressed his lips together tightly as he rubbed a hand across his aching forehead. “Aw, shit…” he groaned. “Goddamn fucking thunderstorms…”
“Ken… it wasn’t the thunderstorm,” Greene pointed out. “It was the flashlight that triggered you, not the lightning. What was happening?”
“I was… back there,” Hutch said, unaware that he was stating the obvious.
“Where?” Greene asked, his voice still soothing and supportive, but also insistent.
“Forest…” Hutch said, his gaze now somewhere off in the middle distance,
“Ken, tell me what happened.”
Automatically, Hutch hesitated… but he no longer had the strength to hold this thing back.
“They took me right out of my house,” he said numbly, staring down at his hands and arms as if he could still see and feel the ropes around his wrists. “Beat me up… shot me up… then withheld it until I told them where they could find her… and I told them…” He stopped, and his throat worked as the memory bubbled up and he tried to contain the choking, overwhelming emotion. “They were gonna kill me… somehow I got the strength… kicked the crap out of one of them and just ran like hell.” He folded his shuddering hands into fists and tucked them under his arms, shivering. “Next thing I knew. Starsky was there… and then it gets to be a blur…”
“You were kidnaped,” Greene said. “And they assaulted you and then… injected you? With what? For how long?”
“Heroin,” Hutch whispered. “I have no idea how long… I just know it hurt like hell coming off.”
“I’m sure it did,” Greene said, with great sympathy. “Did your partner take you to a hospital?”
“No,” Hutch said. He looked around, realized he was on the floor, and got shakily to his feet, feeling foolish. “Sorry… didn’t mean to flip out on you like that.”
“‘Flip out’?” Greene echoed. “Ken, do you know the technical term for what you just experienced?”
Hutch sighed. “No,” he admitted. “Not what they’re called or where they come from or why they’re here.”
“It’s what we call a flashback,” Greene supplied.
“Flashback,” Hutch echoed ironically, dropping back into his chair. “Flashback. It sounds so pretty when you say it…”
“How often do you normally have those?”
“It varies.” Hutch wrapped his arms more tightly around his middle; he was so cold. “Sometimes I go a week without one… sometimes I have them almost every day.”
“Have you identified the triggers?”
“Sometimes. Thunderstorms. Flashlights.”
“Why flashlights?”
“They… had me blindfolded at first,” Hutch related, staring down at the floor. “But after they’d shot me up a few times, they figured I was less dangerous. So they took it off and just flashed a light in my eyes… I guess to disorient me, or to make sure I couldn’t identify any of them.” He pressed the palms of his hands to his forehead. “Damn… my head is splitting.”
“Flashbacks are pretty powerful neurological events,” Greene said, also returning to his chair. “It’s not unusual for someone with a post-trauma reaction to have headaches afterward.”
“Is that what you call all this?” Hutch waved one hand to encompass everything they’d been discussing.
“Yep.”
Hutch gave a short, humorless laugh deep in his throat. “Well, score one for the home team,” he muttered. “At least now it’s all got a name.”
“How long do these normally last, Ken?”
“Oh, I don’t know… usually no more than a minute or two.”
“And are you always completely unaware of your surroundings?”
“Usually,” Hutch admitted. “That’s why I’m not on the streets anymore. I had one during a stakeout… that’s when Starsky insisted that I get some help.” His lips twitched. “Real help, I mean.”
“David sounds like a good friend who understands what’s going on,” Greene observed. “Do you and he talk about what happened, and your reactions to it?”
“Sometimes…” Hutch said. “Yeah… he is a good friend. The best I’ve ever had.” Foolishly, he thought, his eyes were beginning to well up with tears.
“What are the tears about?” Greene asked very gently.
“I…” Hutch blinked, swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat. “I have to get past this. I have to. If I don’t, they’ll never let me back out there…” He shook his head. “I can’t face that.” He looked down at his trembling hands and felt the tears spill over; he was too tired, too overwhelmed to restrain them any longer.
He sat there for several moments, the tears running silently down his cheeks, hands shaking in his lap. As Starsky had done, Greene merely sat in his own chair, giving Hutch the support of his presence but not stopping the release by either speaking to him or touching him.
Eventually, as before, the trembling stopped. Hutch swiped a hand across his face to clear away some of the moisture, and raised his head slightly, but did not look at the doctor. “Do you, uh, have a tissue?”
Greene extended the box without a word. Hutch took it, dried his eyes, and blew his nose, then took an extra few just in case. He crumpled the wet tissues in one hand, and fired them into a nearby wastebasket, then glanced at his watch.
To his surprise, and his dismay, it was only thirty minutes into the session. The thought that he had another twenty to go was unbearable; his shoulders slumped as he sagged back in the chair.
Greene watched him carefully.
“Look,” Hutch said, to the ball of tissues that was rapidly becoming unusable in his damp palm. “Do you mind if we stop early, just this once? I… think I’m done for tonight.”
Greene sat back for a moment and considered. It was clear that Hutch was drained, and he had been careful all along to help the detective proceed in a modulated fashion. The work needed to be done, but Greene preferred to do it without overwhelming him completely, which would make the thought of returning intolerable and just encourage avoidance. He glanced at his watch and scratched the side of his head.
“I have mixed feelings about that,” he said candidly at last. “I think we need to take this at an appropriate pace, but I also think you need to process what just happened.”
Hutch sighed deeply.
“I’m also concerned about your leaving in this condition,” Greene went on. “Is there any way that your partner could stop by and give you a lift home? Between how you feel and the rain outside, I’m worried about your safety.”
Hutch nodded.
“How about this, then,” Greene proposed. “Why don’t you call Dave and ask him if he can pick you up… and while he’s on his way, we can talk just a little bit, just enough to patch you up so you can function again tomorrow.”
Hutch pondered for a moment, then nodded again. “All right.”
***
Starsky was just getting ready to leave his aunt’s when Hutch called. He wasn’t spending every night at Hutch’s anymore, but he still came by after work if he thought Hutch was having a particularly difficult day, and would generally hang around for a while after bringing his partner home from the therapy sessions. Not surprisingly, he immediately told Hutch he’d come.
Hutch couldn’t help the sense of relief he felt as he ended the call; he had to admit he hadn’t been looking forward to driving home—or spending the evening—alone.
There was a moment of silence after he hung up the phone, then Greene moved to open the door to the waiting room so they would hear Starsky come in. Hutch started toward his chair, then steered away from it to pace around the room and peer out the window. He wasn’t quite ready to sit down.
“Ken?” Greene said inquiringly.
Hutch didn’t respond at first, still staring out the window into the darkness. The thunder and lightning were beginning to recede, but the rain was still falling in heavy, drenching sheets. He could almost lose himself in the pitch blackness and the soothing, sweeping rush of the water… but Greene’s voice was gently insistent.
“Ken… why don’t you sit back down, so we can talk.”
Reluctantly, Hutch left the window and sank down into the chair across from the doctor. Somehow he couldn’t quite meet the man’s eyes, and stared down at his hands.
“Ken, how much do you know about what you’ve been experiencing these last months?” Greene asked, again gently.
Hutch shrugged. “I know what’s been happening,” he began. “And I know’ it’s related to the kidnaping.” He passed a hand across his forehead, still trying to erase the dull pounding. “What I don’t know is how to make it stop.” He looked up at Greene. “Is my coming here going to accomplish that?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a quick answer for that,” Greene admitted. “We don’t know as much about this type of thing as we’d like to. We know it occurs in combat veterans, and we’ve seen an increasing amount of it in the men returning from Vietnam, but we’re just starting to learn what the symptoms are… sleep difficulties, increased arousal and alertness, nightmares, these episodes where you re-experience what happened… and we are still working on how best to treat it.”
“Great,” Hutch said glumly, resting his head on the back of the chair and closing his eyes. “So what you’re saying is you only sort of know what’s wrong with me and you don’t have any idea how to fix it.”
“Well, you know we really don’t know how to ‘fix’ anything psychologically, Ken,” Greene pointed out. “Therapy is a lot like detective work… you look for clues and follow the most promising leads. Sometimes they pay off, and sometimes you hit a dead end.”
“Let me ask you this,” Hutch said, lowering his head to face the doctor again. “How long do you think it’ll be before I can go back on the street?”
“I don’t know,” Greene replied; and Hutch had to admit to himself that he had known that would be the answer. “I wish I had a magic pill, or some book where I could look up an answer for you, Ken, but I don’t.” He paused, steepling his fingers, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “What would need to happen for you to feel ready to go back?”
Hutch raised an eyebrow; he hadn’t really thought about it that way. He had just assumed that, eventually, the doctor would give him a clean bill of health and send him on his way. He had never considered that it might be up to him. He leaned his head back again and frowned. “Well… I guess the biggest thing would be getting rid of the flashbacks,” he said slowly. “Those seem to be interfering the most.” He chuckled somewhat wryly. “It would also be nice to get more than a few hours of sleep at night, so I could actually think straight.”
“All right, then,” Greene said briskly, taking a pad and pen from the sea of folders on his desk. “Let’s set those as goals, then… that way we’ll be able to tell when we’re making progress.” He wrote on the pad for a few moments, then looked back up at Hutch. “You said you were having the flashbacks about twice a week?”
“On average, about,” Hutch agreed.
“All right, so we want to reduce those to… what?”
“Never,” Hutch said with an ironic smile.
“Of course, but realistically…”
“Realistically, they have to be gone before I can go back on the street,” Hutch insisted. “I have to be sure I’m not going to blip out like that and leave someone else in danger.”
“Very well, then… how long would you have to go without one before you would feel safe going back on patrol?”
Hutch stared at the ceiling for several seconds and considered that one. He knew what he wanted to say… but he also knew the truth, which meant spending even more time behind the loathsome desk. Pretty soon, the detectives covering his workload would begin, if not to complain, then to question just how much longer they would be doing his job. And the more inquiries there were, the greater the chance that IA would become curious.
“I’m not sure,” he said cautiously, “I’d like to be back there now… but I know that’s ridiculous. Maybe… two weeks?”
“All right.” Greene made a note on the pad. “What I suggest you do is begin to pay attention to precursors to the flashbacks, and try to find ways to prevent them. In addition, you might think in advance about something… some item, or a particular phrase… that you or others can use to help you reorient yourself.”
Hutch’s gaze snapped back from the ceiling to the doctor with such alacrity that Greene was startled; as he watched Hutch’s face, he realized how devastating the flashbacks had been, and how desperately Hutch wanted to gain control over them. This was a man who, until the kidnaping, had spent most of his waking hours restoring order and understanding to impossibly complex and dangerous situations. Greene guessed that being at the mercy of outside forces, and never knowing what he would do when certain circumstances struck, had probably preyed on Hutch’s mind more than the rest of the symptoms put together.
“That’s possible?” Hutch asked, with just a hint of pleading in his voice. Give me something, he seemed to be saying. Something that will give me a foothold on this nightmare.
“Probably,” Greene said. He didn’t want to make promises he could not keep, but the possibility did exist. “However, it will mean your doing something you have so far refused to do.”
Hutch’s eyes narrowed warily, “What do you mean?”
“I’d like to talk with Dave,” Greene said bluntly. “Let him know what’s happening, find out his perspective… and enlist his help.”
Hutch’s eyes dropped, and the mask dropped instantly over his face. Internally, the debate commenced over the pros and cons of bringing Starsky into this arena. On the plus side, this was the man who knew him better than anyone. There was no way Hutch could lie to him or conceal anything from him. As a result, he wouldn’t try, and things might proceed more quickly than they would otherwise.
On the other hand, ironically, was the fact that Hutch didn’t want his best friend and partner to know he needed his help. Starsky had put up with a lot over the last few months, and Hutch wasn’t sure he wanted to increase the burden.
“I… don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “That seems like a lot to ask. I’m not sure I want to ask Starsky to…”
“Ask Starsky to what?”
Of course, Starsky appeared in the doorway just as Hutch had started to speak. It was inevitable; it was just the way his luck had run lately. Hutch looked at Dr. Greene who, damn him, simply gazed back implacably. The message was clear: This ball was in Hutch’s court.
“The doc thinks there might be a way to reduce the flashbacks,” Hutch finally said, somewhat reluctantly. “But it means… if… he’d want to talk with you about what’s been going on.”
Starsky’s eyes never left his friend’s face. “Sure,” he said without hesitation. “Whatever it takes, I’m in.”
What it took first was for Hutch to sign a consent form, giving the doctor permission to tell Starsky about Hutch’s symptoms and the treatment they had been following, and to find out what Starsky himself had seen regarding Hutch’s condition. As he typically did, the doctor asked Hutch to step out into the waiting room, so he could talk with Starsky privately; he suspected the process would be quicker and easier if Starsky did not have to choose his words for his partner’s sake.
Looking as if he would rather rescind his consent, Hutch nevertheless left the room, closing the door behind him.
Starsky watched him go, knowing his friend would probably be pacing the waiting room during the entire conversation.
“Now, Dave, first I’d like to hear what you’ve been seeing in terms of Ken’s behavior,” Dr. Greene said. His tone was matter-of-fact, and Starsky couldn’t restrain a slight smile; it was the manner he had been adopting for weeks, to help the other officers, and Hutch himself, accept the increasingly unusual situation.
“A lol of weird stuff,” he admitted. “Hutch is usually pretty open with me, but he’s been real tight the last few months… though it’s gotten better since he started comin’ here.”
“What have you seen him doing at work, or out in the field, that’s different from how he was before?”
Starsky didn’t even have to think about that one; it was a list he had been compiling since the kidnaping. “Well, there’re the flashbacks… you probably knew about those…”
“Actually, I didn’t,” Greene said thoughtfully. “Until he had one in the session tonight, he hadn’t mentioned them.”
The left side of Starsky’s mouth quirked up further. “Yeah, that’s Hutch,” he said. “Tight as a clam.”
“What else?” Greene urged.
“Well, for a while I was spendin’ the night at his place,” Starsky related. “And it’s like he was on some internal watch system… every coupla hours he’d wake up and go around the house checkin’ all the doors and windows.”
Greene shook his head with an expression that was half-amused and half-concerned.
Watching the doctor closely, Starsky discerned the meaning of the man’s look. “There’s a lot he hasn’t told you, right?” he guessed.
“So it appears,” Greene agreed. “He’s talked about difficulty sleeping, but not about checking the locks; about nightmares, but not about their content. For a long time, he described the kidnaping only as something that happened on the job. No details until tonight.”
Starsky frowned. Three weeks Hutch had been coming to see this guy, and he had told him so little? Despite himself, Starsky was somewhat annoyed; it seemed Hutch was evading the issue once again and if so, what was the point of this whole exercise… and where were they going to end up?
“Avoidance is an extremely common reaction for someone who’s been through a trauma like Ken experienced,” Greene said reassuringly, in response to Starsky’s scowl. “Especially under these circumstances, where he’s concerned that someone from his department is going to find out what he’s going through. He seems very worried about losing his job… Is that a possibility?”
“Yeah,” Starsky confirmed. “The department has strict policies around officers with drug problems, and they’d kick him out… no matter what the reason is.”
“Unfortunate,” Greene murmured regretfully. “So that’s a real fear we’ll need to deal with.” He jotted a quick note on his pad and then glanced back up at Starsky. “What else?”
Starsky shrugged. “He’s kinda jumpy in the squad room, he doesn’t like sittin’ with his back to a room or a door, he’s touchier than usual…. Mostly, though, I think…” Starsky groped for words to describe his friend’s mood, then sighed. “See, Hutch likes to think he can handle everything on his own, and I think it bugs the hell out of him that he can’t do that with this.”
He didn’t feel comfortable talking about the cravings, since Hutch hadn’t mentioned them for a while. It was possible they had dissipated; Starsky fervently hoped so.
Greene nodded. “That’s my impression as well,” he said. “Well, let me tell you what we’ve been doing, and where Ken needs your help.” He laid his pad and pen on the desk and folded his hands in his lap. “What most people who’ve had a trauma do is try to avoid it… thinking about it, feeling the related emotions, talking about it, etc. Unfortunately, this means that the thing never gets processed; essentially, it gets stored in a temporary spot with all of the original emotions intact. Since the victim won’t acknowledge it voluntarily, it pops back out on its own, and each time it does, it comes back with all the emotional intensity of the original experience. The only treatment that we’ve come up with so far is one similar to what they did in Vietnam, which was to send the soldier back to the front as quickly as possible, so they couldn’t avoid.”
He paused to take a sip from the cup of coffee that rested on his desk. “Now, obviously, we can’t and won’t send someone like Ken, who’s had what we call a ‘single incident trauma,’ back into the experience. So what we do instead is try to fight the avoidance by gearing the therapy around talking about what happened and its impact on the individual.”
Starsky had been following the doctor’s explanation with interest, and was glad to hear that his instincts on how to handle this thing with Hutch had been accurate. “So what you’re sayin’ is, when he says he doesn’t want to talk about it, that’s the worst thing he can do?”
“Well, there’s a time and place for it, but essentially, yes,” Greene agreed. “Now, it’s obviously taken him a long time to trust me, but that’s also not unusual. Tonight, a very large door got opened… though unfortunately, he had to have a flashback to do it… and he told me what happened. I want to make sure that door stays open.”
Starsky’s eyes met the doctor’s. In the other man’s gaze, he saw a strong commitment to helping Hutch work through this, and an acknowledgment of the challenges inherent in the task. Hutch was stubborn, and “control” was like an eleventh commandment for him. Intuitively, Starsky knew this was why the doctor wanted his help: Hutch could easily tell Greene to go fuck himself, leave treatment, and come back to work and fake it nicely for several days. But while he would snarl and snap at Starsky, he had more invested in the friendship, and the odds were that Hutch would choose even this kind of ordeal over ending their relationship. In addition, Hutch could fool a lot of people, but Starsky could read him like a book. He may not always know what was wrong, but he could always tell when something was on his friend’s mind.
“Okay,” he said, inclining his head in accordance with the doctor’s conclusion. “What do you want me to do?”
“Keep him honest,” was the doctor’s immediate response. “Don’t let him pretend things are getting better if they’re not. If he has a flashback, try to get him to talk about what happened. Since you’re on the outside, you might see signs of it before it hits, both in the environment and his behavior. Get him to talk about what he’s feeling afterward, and what he’s thinking. Encourage him to bring what happens… all of it… in here.”
He paused, and regarded Starsky with a grave expression. “He probably won’t like it, and I expect you’ll feel that irritability you were alluding to earlier, so I urge you to remember… the ultimate responsibility for his treatment lies with him.”
Starsky shrugged, with a casualness he did not feel. “It won’t be the first time he’s gotten irked with me, and I bet it won’t be the last,” he stated. “I think we can handle it.” Greene nodded approvingly. “What else?”
“Well, this may be the hardest part for you…”
“You want me to keep you posted on how he’s doin’.”
Greene nodded. “Since he knows I’m talking to you, it may prove unnecessary. He may decide he might as well tell me himself.” He leaned forward, his gaze intent and his tone persuasive. “I know it will seem like you’re reporting on him, but I can’t emphasize enough how important your perspective will be. If he’s not doing well, or he’s declining, then we need to step in before he does something drastic.”
Starsky was still skeptical.
“If it helps, look at it from the other direction, too,” Greene went on. “You and I both know how hard Ken is on himself. It’s highly likely that someone else will see the progress he’s making well before he acknowledges it. So there’s opportunity for reinforcement, as well as intervention.”
“Okay,” Starsky agreed, still somewhat reluctant but unable to dispute the doctor’s point. He had to admit, in a short period of time the psychologist had pegged Hutch pretty well. “But he’s gotta be told… I won’t do this behind his back.”
“Absolutely,” Greene concurred. “My objective here is to gain his trust, not violate it.” He glanced down at his watch and rose to his feet. “Let’s talk with him about this, and then we should all go home.”
As Greene had predicted, Hutch had not bargained for more than one conversation between the doctor and his partner. He was clearly displeased with the arrangement, and Starsky was sure the “fuck off” moment was imminent. But he had to hand it to Greene. The man knew how to handle Hutch, and he did it by just giving it to him straight—the benefits of the plan, the importance of Starsky’s involvement, and the possible long-term consequences of going off half-cocked and trying to manage this on his own.
Eventually, Hutch stopped ranting about being treated like a five-year-old and acquiesced. Naturally, however, he was still glowering when they left the professional building.
Both men were silent as Starsky steered through the pouring rain toward Venice. From the drawn tension on his face and his stiff posture, Starsky suspected Hutch was still mentally arguing with Greene, so vehemently that Starsky could practically hear the words spitting in his head. He briefly considered getting Hutch to talk about it, but decided he didn’t feel like dealing with the Hutchinson temper in addition to a torrential downpour.
When they arrived at the cottage, Hutch remained silent, though he unbent enough to get both of them towels so they could blot some of the rain from their hair and clothes. After handing Starsky his, he draped his own around his neck and turned, heading for the kitchen to grab a beer.
“Hutch…” Starsky began, from inside the terrycloth depths.
“Not now, Starsky,” Hutch cut him off without even turning around.
Starsky weighed his options. Greene had said not to let Hutch avoid talking about things. On the other hand, it was clear that Hutch was mad as hell. Starsky knew when he was in this stage of his anger there was really no talking to him, and frankly, Starsky was too beat to make the effort. He would bide his time, wait until Hutch had finished his internal tirade with the doctor and Starsky himself, and then broach the subject when both he and his friend were in more reasonable states of mind.
Hutch remained sullen for most of the evening, though he was attentive enough to Starsky’s needs to replenish his beer as necessary. By the time they were both ready to go to bed, he was obviously feeling calmer, but characteristically didn’t apologize to his partner. Instead, he tried to make amends by doing, making the couch up with the usual clean sheets and fresh, crisp pillowcase, and laying out something for Starsky to sleep in.
Despite… or perhaps because of… the turbulent evening, Hutch had fallen asleep by the time Starsky completed his nighttime routine and exited the bathroom. Before he turned out the light, Starsky paused, reflecting on his friend as he slept, half-turned on his side, one hand curled under his chin and his hair tossed across his forehead. Relaxed for once, the characteristic furrow between his brows gone, he looked like a sleeping child, and Starsky felt his gut wrench, knowing the possibilities the night might bring for him.
Surprisingly, however, Hutch slept deeply and soundly for most of the night. He got up twice to do his rounds of the doors and windows, but stumbled immediately back to bed and was quickly asleep again.
It was Starsky who tossed and turned, though he lay as still as he could and feigned sleep when Hutch woke, not wanting to invite his partner’s attention. Eventually, after Hutch’s breathing had returned to a steady deep rhythm, he gave up, and stealthily crept out of the makeshift bed. Wrapping the quilt around his shoulders, he moved to the chair beside the living room window… the chair he had found Hutch in countless times since the start of this mess… and gazed out at the night.
Even in his rumpled state of mind, he could see why Hutch kept the cottage, even though it was tiny and meant a considerable drive to work. Set off slightly from the other dwellings in the area, with its front porch barely a hundred feet from the canal, the house’s windows offered a view of tranquil waters and moonlight, a setting that suited both his partner’s romantic nature and his solitary side. Occasionally, Starsky thought it might be nice to have something like this himself, but his years in New York had ingrained in him a love for the constant hum of the city. He liked visiting Hutch’s home, but sensed he would go stir crazy if he were to settle in the area permanently.
He pulled the quilt more snugly around his shoulders and tried to figure out what among all the possibilities, was keeping him awake.
Chapter 10
A few hours later, Starsky saw Hutch wake with a start. He didn’t move, watching as Hutch lay still for a moment, then somehow managing to yawn and sigh at the same time, sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, then stopped.
“Starsk?” He spoke softly.
Starsky stopped pretending to be asleep and turned slightly toward him, but did not speak.
Hutch’s silhouette reached for the robe at the foot of his bed and got up, pushing his arms through the sleeves and tying the belt around his waist. He didn’t turn on the light, simply edged past the end of the bed to where Starsky sat, and crouched down beside the chair.
“You okay, buddy?” he asked quietly, laying a hand on his friend’s arm.
“Not completely,” Starsky replied with typical candor. “Hutch… we gotta talk.”
“Okay.” Hutch hoisted himself into the chair at the other side of the window. “What’s on your mind?”
“You… me… all of this,” Starsky said, for once having trouble articulating precisely what he wanted to say.
Of the two of them, Hutch was the toucher and the doer, more apt to show his concern and feelings through a touch or a squeeze or an offer of something to drink or eat. Starsky was somewhat more comfortable expressing himself verbally, but he tended to speak in metaphors and statements that said what he wanted to say without his spelling it out verbatim. He had been sitting in the dark for hours, trying to figure out how to tell Hutch what he was thinking and feeling, and for once was at a loss for words.
As his partner fell silent and then hunched his shoulders under the thin quilt, Hutch got up, pulled his own blanket from the bed, and wrapped it solicitously around Starsky, his touch gentle as he tucked it inside the chair arms to keep out the chill from the drafty cottage. “Are you still cold?” he asked with concern. “Want me to make you a cup of tea?”
“Maybe in a minute,” Starsky responded. “C’mon, Hutch, sit down… This isn’t something you can fix by fussin’ over me… Not this time.”
Hutch returned to the chair and tucked his long legs underneath him, wrapping the robe more securely over his bare chest. Starsky could feel his partner studying him in the in the dim light.
“What is it, Starsk?” Hutch coaxed. “Come on, pal… It’s not like you to beat around the bush.”
“What I got to say is a little tough,” Starsky warned him, throat working. “Sure you’re up for it?”
“You know the answer to that question,” Hutch said. “We’ve always had a two-way street here, partner.”
Starsky look a deep breath then and spoke, though his gaze remained on the canal outside the window, “Okay, here goes,” he said, his voice level and calm. “I gotta tell ya. Hutch, I’m… angry. With you.”
“Yeah, I know,” Hutch said, looking down at his hands with a sheepish look on his face. “And you have every right to be. I, uh… well, I wasn’t very… gracious tonight, after you had gone to all that trouble to come out and everything.”
“That’s not what I’m talkin’ about.” Starsky’s eyes swung back to Hutch, and suddenly all the emotions began to stir in him… anger, but also worry, and weariness, and something else even he couldn’t identify. “When I was talking to the doc, it seemed like you’d told him as little as possible about what happened with Forest. He wouldn’t’ve known about the flashbacks if you hadn’t had one right in front of him… and you haven’t told him about the hourly strolls you take around here when y’think nobody’s lookin’, either.” He leaned forward intently, every muscle in his body taut, not allowing Hutch to avoid his scrutiny. “Have you even told him about the cravings?”
Hutch froze; then, slowly, he shook his head.
Starsky was not surprised; what he was, was scared. His fear broke the verbal logjam, and the words swept out of him in a rush. “What’re ya doin’. Hutch, huh? If you don’t talk to him, how do you think you’re ever gonna get over this? And if you don’t get over it, how’re ya ever comin’ back to work? How’d’ya think I feel, watchin’ you give up a little more each day, wondering if I’m ever gonna get my partner back again?”
He watched Hutch close his eyes and wince, and knew the impact his words were having. But he had been wrestling with this for weeks, and he knew he couldn’t keep it inside any longer. If Hutch thought he was helpless, then Starsky had felt that a thousand times over, because he had even fewer choices than his partner. Hutch had to decide whether or not to go to the therapist; Hutch had to decide what to tell him and how much, and Hutch had to decide just what steps he was willing to take to get himself back on the street. But he got to make those choices, while Starsky could only sit back and offer support and his best sheepdog impression, trying to nudge his friend in the right direction and curb his own frustration when Hutch stubbornly insisted on taking the long way home.
After weeks of watching the effect of all of this on Hutch, tonight’s insomnia had brought home to Starsky the impact on him. He had been half-crazed, half-furious when Hutch had disappeared, not knowing if his partner were just stretching his time off to be with the lovely Jeannie, or if something were really very wrong. Then, when he had found Hutch and learned the latter was true, he had berated himself for his momentary lapse of faith in his friend’s judgment… and had immediately turned every bit of his attention to getting Hutch past the withdrawal… and then, to keeping the secrets Ben Forest, in his vindictive and lethal possessiveness, had managed to spawn and which seemed to multiply on their own every time they turned around.
In taking care of Hutch, he had neglected himself, had never acknowledged the aftermath of nearly losing his best friend and partner, followed by weeks of watching Hutch struggle and knowing his hands were tied in a thousand knots.
He was tired. And he was lonely. Though Hutch had just said the street went two ways, it had been running in one direction for far too long, and Starsky was just realizing how much he had missed being able to tell his friend everything that was on his mind, and to lean on him for a change.
“Starsk…” Hutch began in a tight voice,
“Hutch… I miss you,” Starsky finally managed to say. “I feel like I’ve been alone for the last month, like you’re a thousand miles away on some ocean and you’re just sittin’ there, refusin’ to do what you need to do to make it back home. And there I am, on the shore… and I can’t do anything to make you start paddlin’.”
Hutch ducked his head, blinking rapidly.
“You can’t do this anymore, Hutch,” Starsky said urgently. “It’d kill me, but I can’t go down with you… if we’re gonna keep… this…” he waved a hand back and forth between himself and Hutch, unable to find the proper word to describe the relationship they had that transcended friendship and even partnership, “you’ve gotta start fighting this, and doin’ what you know you gotta do.”
“Starsk, I’m…” Hutch began, but Starsky cut him off by grabbing his arms again and shaking him, just once, fixing him with a ferocious gaze.
“Don’t apologize,” he ordered. “I know you’re sorry, and I know you’d take a bullet before you’d hurt me or let anyone else do it. That all goes without sayin’. I’m asking you to do something a helluva lot tougher. Let. Go.”
To his astonishment, Hutch took him at his word, and broke down completely. Starsky pulled him close, and as their arms closed around each other, he surprised himself even more by joining him, their tears intermingling as they found each other again at last.
Chapter 11
Some time later. Hutch awoke.
Not with a start.
Not with that hand that yanked him brutally out of his sleep.
No, this time he gained consciousness slowly and somehow naturally… a sensation he had all but forgotten.
However, his position was anything but natural, as he was sprawled over the chair by his living room window. He pulled his limbs back in to a more comfortable position, wincing as his muscles let him know what they thought of the movement. Then he pushed himself upright, passed one hand over his face with an enormous yawn, and squinted at the room around him. His eyes felt raw and swollen, and his face became somber as he remembered how he had come to fall asleep in his chair rather than his bed.
Did Starsk…?
He looked at the chair across from him, and sure enough… there was his partner, sprawled in the same ungodly position Hutch had just levered himself out of, but with his head thrown back at an angle that made Hutch wince just to look at.
He can’t stay like that… He’ll be sore as hell in the morning.
Hunching his shoulders. Hutch got stiffly to his feet and went to his partner. He moved the edges of the blanket and the quilt onto Starsky’s sleeping form, so they wouldn’t trip either of them, and then hoisted Starsky to his feet. Slowly, so as not to wake his friend, Hutch made his way to the bed and gently lowered Starsky to the mattress, then maneuvered him as he had the night of their sodden poker game, until his head was resting comfortably on the pillow.
He adjusted and fussed with the blanket and the quilt until Starsky was completely covered. As he watched his partner sleep, he couldn’t restrain a fond smile and the thought that Starsky slept with the same wholehearted abandon with which he approached everything in his life. He dropped off like a rock, and a freight train couldn’t wake him before he was darned good and ready. Affectionately, Hutch passed a hand over the dark curls, then stepped away from the bed.
He was thirsty, and his eyes were burning from the hours of unaccustomed tears. Surefooted in the dark, he crossed to the kitchen, ran himself a glass of cold water, and then grabbed a small towel from a drawer by the sink. He ran the water until it was soothingly cold, soaked the towel, and wrung out the excess moisture, Taking the glass of water and the damp towel, he returned to the chair and laid the cloth over his eyes.
It was blissfully cool on his swollen eyes, and he leaned back with a sigh of contentment. Despite everything, despite the night that had been full of struggle and painful revelations, he felt more at peace than he had in weeks… maybe even months.
Eventually, the cloth warmed to room temperature; feeling better, Hutch lifted his head and let the material drop to his lap.
The deep night was beginning to lift, to yield to the first pink rays of the day, and in the just barely-there light, Hutch could see that Starsky had sprawled across the entire bed, limbs flung to all sides. As Hutch watched, his partner’s face tightened in some dream or nocturnal thought, then relaxed into somnolent repose once again. Hutch felt his throat hitch, as he recalled what Starsky had told him the night before.
Like you’re a thousand miles away on some ocean and you’re just sittin’ there, refusin’ to do what you need to do to make it back home.
Starsky’s words had hit home in more ways than one, and Hutch knew his friend had pegged him as accurately as if Hutch had given him a blow-by-blow account of what he had been thinking and feeling since the kidnapping.
Lost.
He had been completely and utterly lost… every part of him, every piece that had been familiar and served as his foundation, had been dashed away and dropped before him in shards so jumbled he hadn’t known how to put them back together. At first, he had tried, but the effort of sorting through everything had been too enormous. He became more and more foreign to himself and stopped recognizing the man who looked back in the mirror each morning.
Eventually, he gave up… just as Starsky had known, he had dropped the pieces and withdrawn, too tired, too heartsick to try anymore.
Now, with the clarity that hindsight brings, Hutch understood that he had been moving through the world as if his pain wore a physical thing, a wall of glass too thick to see through clearly, and too impenetrable for anyone to reach him. Smells, sights, sounds… all had been muffled… and worst of all, he had been unable to reach out and touch the people he wanted to help, and who wanted to help him. Before Starsky had clutched him last night, it seemed it had been an age since anyone had laid hands on him… and the last time someone had, other than Jeannie, it had been to cause pain or threaten death.
He had yearned for that touch, so much… and yet felt that he was somehow dirty and unworthy of it.
But last night, he thought, shifting in the chair as the sunlight began to trickle into the room, Starsky had pulled him to him and held him… and he hadn’t pulled away. Why?
Because… because it was Starsky, he realized. Starsky who knew him better than anyone else on the planet, better than his own family. Starsky who knew his weird little quirks, put up with his brooding, cajoled him out of his moods… and waited. Waited until he got over his fits of temper. Waited until he lifted his head from thinking something out. And waited until he opened the door and let his partner into those convoluted places in his head that sometimes, somehow, managed to magically unravel after a single conversation with his closest friend. Starsky, who cared about him completely, despite knowing him so well.
And this time, Starsky had done more than wait. He had pounded on the glass and the door and Hutch’s own hard head, and forced him to look beyond himself and his own pain. And somehow, he had managed to do it with such honesty and tenderness, that Hutch didn’t feel chided or accused, even when he had to face the fact that he had lost months and had neglected the one person in this world he would literally die for.
Instead, he felt cared about.
And if the glass was not gone completely, it had somehow thinned, making his vision clearer… his hearing keener… and giving him the hope that someday soon, it could be gone completely.
Suddenly, he was exhausted, but he didn’t want to fall asleep in the chair again and exacerbate the stiffness in his neck and back. With effort, he pushed himself to his feet, stumbled to the couch in the alcove, and settled himself under the sheets.
The sun was beginning to filter into the cottage now. Like the moonlight before, the rays lit his hair into a golden halo… but where the moonlight had only illuminated madness, the infant light of the dawn simply touched his raw face with gentle fingers, and warmth that continued the healing his partner and the psychologist had started. He yawned, and closed his eyes for just a moment, letting the sun linger soothingly on his lids.
In seconds, he had fallen sound asleep.
And before he did, it never even occurred to him to check the windows or the doors.
Chapter 12
Starsky’s nose twitched.
Something smelled… heavenly.
He blinked his eyes open, frowned momentarily at the surroundings that were familiar, yet not his own… then his face cleared. Hutch’s. He was at Hutch’s.
Then he frowned again as the identity of the wonderful, ambrosial smell struck him…
Bacon.
Wait.
Bacon? He couldn’t be at Hutch’s.
But he was… and as he sat up, he could see Hutch, still wrapped in his bathrobe, moving around the kitchen. Starsky rubbed at his face with both hands, then threw off the quilt and swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose with a stretch of his arms and torso. Yawning, he traversed the short distance from the bed to Hutch’s dining room table and pulled out a chair, then plopped his tired self into it.
Hutch apparently sensed his presence and glanced over his shoulder. “Mornin,” he said through the doorway, then turned back to his activities at the stove. “Coffee’s all ready.” He nodded toward the battered metal percolator that rested on a potholder on the table.
Starsky took in another deep, appreciate lungful of the decidedly unhealthy smells wafting from the kitchen, and dragged the coffee pot over to the cup that was waiting for him. He added the rich scent of the coffee to his moment of olfactory bliss, then sat back in the chair. One sip of the dark and fragrant brew told him Hutch had prepared the top-notch blend he saved for special occasions.
He had a feeling of enormous well-being. As if the talk he and Hutch had had last night, and the subsequent draining of emotions from both of them, had finally dropped that wall that had been there between him and Hutch for months. True, they had enacted this same scenario—one of them busy with breakfast preparations and the other savoring the first, fresh coffee of the morning—a dozen times after the kidnaping.
But something had been wrong, something that interfered and dampened that essential feeling and comfort that had been an inherent part of their time together since they had begun working together at Metro. There had been a barrier, something that had blocked the natural flow of the energy between them… a barrier that now was gone. He felt as content and relaxed in Hutch’s house as he ever had, and suddenly tears stung his eyes as he realized just how much he had missed that feeling over the last months.
At that moment, Hutch came through the doorway with two full plates in his hands. As if catching the telltale brightness in Starsky’s eyes, the left side of his mouth twisted upward in a somewhat sheepish half-grin, while his own eyes got suspiciously damp. He said nothing, however, just set the plates down on the table, then returned to the kitchen to turn off burners and run water and soap into the skillets he had been using.
Starsky blinked down at the plate in front of him, eyebrows raised, “Bacon?” he said incredulously. “And eggs? Real scrambled eggs, made with real milk?” he added hopefully, somewhat nostalgically.
“Yep.” Hutch turned off the faucets, then came out of the kitchen again, drying his hands on a dishtowel and seating himself at the table. He reached across for the coffee pot and poured himself a cup, then leaned back with a satisfied smile as Starsky dug into his plate of breakfast with appropriately appreciative noises and eye rolls. When his partner had finished the first serving, Hutch nudged the other one across the table. It, too, disappeared in record time.
“Hungry?” he teased, as Starsky pushed away the second plate and leaned back with a satisfied sigh.
“Not anymore,” Starsky replied, wiping his mouth with his napkin and placing it almost reverently over the clean plate. He refilled his coffee cup and took a long pull from it, sighing again as the exquisite flavor hit his tongue. “You keep making stuff like that and I’ll come for breakfast more often.”
“Well, that settles that,” Hutch said with mock seriousness, punctuating the jibe with a quick pop of his eyebrows. “If you were here any more I’d have to add an extra room.”
“Then you’d have non-stop entertainment,” Starsky predicted with a beatific smile and a wave of his cup.
“Or aggravation,” Hutch snorted as he rose to his feet, plates in hand. “Hope you aren’t completely stuffed,” he called from the kitchen, where he started running a sinkful of soapy water.
“Not completely,” Starsky said with interest, lifting his nose out of the cup, where it was again savoring the coffee’s marvelous aroma.
“Good.” Hutch turned off the water, grabbed a couple of potholders from the top of the counter, and opened his oven door.
Starsky had not believed his palate could get any more delighted, but at the scent that emanated from the oven his nose twitched and his mouth literally began to water. “I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he moaned, “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yep.” Hutch carefully pulled something from the oven and, nudging the door closed with his foot, brought a long pan to the table, and set it in front of Starsky with a grin.
“You’ve been on the phone to my mother again, haven’t you?” Starsky accused as he leaned close to examine the pan’s contents.
“Guilty as charged,” Hutch admitted, not sounding the least bit guilty as he returned from the kitchen again, this time with a small plate and a fresh knife.
Starsky cut himself a slice of the coffee cake and transferred it to his plate.
As Hutch poured himself another cup of coffee, he watched with amusement as Starsky barely restrained himself from biting into the piping hot pastry. Like a kid at Christmas, he thought fondly, as Starsky refilled his own cup and sipped it somewhat absently, eyes on the plate in front of him. Or, more likely, like himself.
Finally, the coffee cake stopped steaming, and Starsky decorously raised a forkful of it to his lips, whereupon his expression became positively rapturous. In the last few months, he hadn’t tasted a mouthful of Hutch’s cooking, and he had forgotten what his partner could do when he was truly inspired… as he had obviously been this morning. His plate was clean in less than a minute and he was reaching for another slice when his hand, knife poised, stilled.
“You all right?” he asked Hutch somewhat suspiciously.
Surprised, Hutch nearly spat out the mouthful of coffee he had just taken. “Yeah,” he choked. “Why?”
“Bacon… real eggs… premium coffee,” Starsky tabulated with a wave of the knife. “And now this… uh-oh.” He set down the knife. “You’re havin’ an attack of the guilts, aren’t you?”
Hutch said nothing, but his eyes dropped to the table and he suddenly became very preoccupied with an itch just in front of his ear.
“Hutch?”
Hutch’s attention now turned to a spot that had probably been affixed to his kitchen table for as long as he, and the previous five owners, had had it.
Starsky just waited, eyebrow’s raised expectantly.
Eventually, Hutch gave something that might have been a nod, though to someone who didn’t know him it bore a closer resemblance to a tic. “Yeah, I guess,” he confessed, finally leaving the spot to continue its reign.
“Over what?” Starsky leaned forward, elbows on his knees, to fix his eyes on his friend’s face.
“Last night,” Hutch said, then added with a sharp chuckle and another quick lift of his brows. “Hell, the last three months.”
“Try four,” Starsky corrected wryly. He wasn’t really surprised; the particularly spectacular nature of this breakfast, topped off by a concoction that normally would have sent Hutch into apoplexy, could only have sprung from an equally spectacular Hutchinson guilt trip.
“Yeah,” Hutch said, his voice low. “Look, I know I’ve put you through a lot lately…”
“Wasn’t you, Hutch,” Starsky reminded him gently. “Try givin’ some of that to Forest.”
Hutch allowed himself a small, rueful smile. “Yeah,” he repeated. “But… look…” He took a deep breath and met Starsky’s eyes. “I… what I’m tryin’ to say is…”
“I told you last night, I know,” Starsky said. “And if you don’t stop apologizing, you’re gonna owe me more than a coffee cake and a pot of Jamaican Blue.” He picked up the knife again and sliced himself a generous slab of pastry. “Now go hit the shower and get dressed. You’re takin’ me out to Oceanside.”
Hutch’s eyebrows rose again as the smile widened and became genuine. “I am?”
“You is,” Starsky said, popping a bite of coffee cake into his mouth. “First I’m gonna beatcha at mini-golf, and then you’re buyin’ me lunch.” He chewed and swallowed with a sigh of ecstasy. “And I promise you, I’m gonna be very, very hungry.”
Hutch rose from his chair. As he passed Starsky, he paused and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder.
Starsky reached up with his own, delivered a quick but heartfelt squeeze, then nudged his partner away. “Scram.”
Hutch squeezed back, then, the smile becoming a grin, headed for the bathroom.
Chapter 13
Though the next two weeks went by fairly quickly, they were increasingly difficult for Hutch. Every day, he had to face the officers who were working with Starsky and covering his cases for him, and he could imagine what they were thinking: He looks fine… why is he still riding the desk? Like a child who is beginning to recover from a bout with the flu, he was becoming restless and edgy. He was smart enough to know that he was not quite ready to return to his beat; yet he was completely fed up with sitting at his desk, writing reports, making phone calls, and looking through endless files and printouts. He was so utterly bored that he had cleaned out the coffee pot and all the cups, and had begun to toy with different blends in the squad room coffee.
The Friday of the second week, he was erasing the ninth mistake on a two-page report with a fretful sigh, when he became aware of a slender, blue-clad figure standing next to him. He glanced up, and saw Minnie standing there, with a coffee cup in one hand, the other hand perched on her hip, one foot tapping impertinently.
He raised a questioning eyebrow. “Yes, Minnie?”
“Hutch, honey… this coffee,” She gestured at him with the cup, and he anxiously watched the liquid inside slosh just to the rim of the cup and then safely back.
“What?” He took a sip from his own cup, worried that this batch had somehow turned out badly… but it was actually pretty good. “Tastes fine to me; what’s the problem?”
“It tastes more than fine,” Minnie said through gritted teeth. “It’s the best damned coffee I ever had.”
“So?” Hutch’s other brow joined the first as he repeated, “What’s the problem?”
“Look, handsome,” she said patiently, hiking one hip on the table as she prepared to explain the world to this clueless man. “Eventually, you plan to get back out on the streets with Starsky, don’t you?”
“As soon as possible.” Hutch sighed, the eyebrows now dropping into a somewhat petulant frown.
“And is it safe to assume that, when you do, you’ll go back to your old patterns of coffee preparation?”
The frown deepened. “Minnie… I never made the coffee before…”
She cocked an expressive eyebrow, clearly wailing for the dim bulb to get the point.
“Oh.”
“Right, ‘oh’. Now, I’m gonna have to make this stuff when you get back in that flashy car again, and I don’t feel like explainin’ to these boys why my brew doesn’t measure up to yours.” She wagged the cup at him again; the coffee again rose perilously close to the cup’s lip, then descended. “So unless you want to stay here and make coffee while I join hips with that pretty partner of yours, cool it, huh?”
Hutch fell his lips twitch, but somehow he managed to restrain even his grin as he replied meekly, “Oh, yes, ma’am.”
“Good boy.” She drained the cup and prepared to take her leave. Then her eye fell on the report Hutch had been struggling with. “Hate to tell you this, honey, but…”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hutch waved her away and ripped the report from the typewriter, crumpling it into a ball and resigning himself to starting the whole thing over.
Minnie shrugged and swaggered, as only a ninety-eight pound woman with ninety-six pounds of attitude can, out of the squad room.
As he watched her go, then rolled another blank report sheet into his typewriter, Hutch shook his head. It was a true sign of how bad things were when a visit from Minnie constituted the high point of his week.
Moments later, Starsky returned from a stakeout on the docks… and his arrival held no promise of improvement. His appearance was heralded for several feet by the unmistakably damp odor of fish, and his mood was no more bearable than his aroma. On the way to Dr. Greene’s office, he regaled Hutch with the tale of how he had dove headfirst into a bin of fish while attempting to apprehend the perpetrators. Though he was sympathetic to his friend’s plight. Hutch was also overwhelmed by his pungency, and was grateful when they pulled up in front of Greene’s building.
“Thanks for the lift, pal,” he said, climbing out of the car. “Now go somewhere and shower off, huh? Otherwise we’ll have every cat in the neighborhood sniffin’ around the cottage.”
“Screw you,” Starsky said affably, clearly feeling better after recounting his tale. “See you in an hour.”
***
“You look amused about something,” Greene observed as they settled into their respective chairs.
“It’s nothing,” Hutch said dismissively. “Just something that happened at work.”
The doctor flipped open Hutch’s chart but did not glance at it. “So, Ken?” he began. “How has this week been?”
“Better,” Hutch replied, grateful he could say this and mean it.
“How so?”
“Well, I only had one flashback this week,” Hutch said, absurdly proud, as if it were something over which he had the least bit of control. “And it was very short… just before I went to sleep the other night.”
“Same content?” Greene asked, jotting a note on his ubiquitous yellow pad.
“Uh, no,” Hutch answered, forehead puckering in thought. “The flashlight was the same, and I remember Forest asking me where Jeannie was…”
Greene looked up with obvious interest. “And Jeannie is…?” he inquired.
“Oh…” Hutch said, realizing he hadn’t mentioned her before, then half-smiled dryly. “She’s… well, I guess you’d say she was the reason Forest and his crowd were so interested in talking to me.”
“‘Talking?'” Greene echoed. “Ken… maybe we should review some of those defense mechanisms we’ve been discussing.”
“Minimizing again, huh?” Hutch’s lips twisted downward; he just wasn’t in the mood to talk about the kidnaping today.
“Exactly.”
***
And that was how the session went. Greene had expected Ken to regress slightly after the dramatic events of two weeks ago, and he had. Though he was more willing to talk about all the symptoms, he seemed to focus on the ones that were diminishing. He was still having nightmares, but less frequently, and though he continued to check his doors and windows at least three or four times a night, he felt more at ease in the squad room.
But every time he referred to the kidnaping, Greene had to stop him, and try to persuade him to abandon his practice of handling it with euphemisms.
“What are you afraid of, Ken?” he said at last, placing pad and pen on his desk. “Why are you so hesitant to describe this as what it was… a kidnaping? This was a brutal invasion of your person, your home, and your safety, and you came very close to being killed. You were forcibly addicted to heroin, and because of that, you could lose your job and a partnership that means a great deal to you. So I have to tell you, I’m confused: Why won’t you acknowledge that what these men did to you has had a devastating effect on you?”
Speechless, Hutch blinked at the man, looked down, then back up, waving his hands as if to sketch the words he couldn’t say. “Well… uh… guess I don’t know.”
Greene shook his head, just once. “I have to be honest with you, Ken,” he said, his eyes concerned, his voice kind but not letting Hutch off the hook. “I think you do.”
“I…” Hutch’s eyebrows rose then lowered again into an expression that, given the rein it wanted, could have been anguish… but he closed his eyes as if to check it and gather himself together. “I… guess maybe I might.”
“And I think this is why you’re stuck today,” Greene went on. “Look, Ken… this kind of thing is not unusual after what happened two weeks ago. A flashback like that is a painful experience, and it’s natural that you’d want to avoid something like that again.” He leaned forward. “But you can’t. If you do that, you’ll be right back where you started… and I don’t think either one of us wants to see that happen.” Unblinking, he searched Hutch’s face. “Am I right?”
Hutch did not speak; he merely nodded, his expressed resigned.
“All right, let’s try one more time,” Greene suggested. “You said you’re still up every few hours checking the windows and doors. What’s that about?”
“I… I guess… I’m afraid,” Hutch admitted, speaking to the hands that were clasped, knuckles white, in his lap.
“Of what?” Greene urged gently.
“That…” He stopped, looked off to one side, blinking rapidly, then tried again. “That this…” He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said simply. “Every time I try, it just gets caught in my throat.”
Greene examined him steadily for several seconds, then leaned back in his chair with a look of tremendous compassion. “Ken, I know it’s hard,” he said. “And you have come a very long way. But this is… very, very important.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s stop for today, but I have something I want you to do over the coming week.”
“What?” Hutch eyed the doctor warily.
“Every day this week, I want you to somehow… communicate about the kidnaping,” Greene said. “You can write about it, tape record it, or talk to your partner or someone else who already knows. The important thing is for you to spend some time thinking about it, and when you do, to call it what it was… a kidnaping.”
Hutch sat back in his chair and eyed the doctor narrowly. Again, he opened his mouth… then closed it, as if deciding that if he couldn’t marshal the words to argue, he might as well acquiesce.
“All right… I’ll see you next week, same time.”
***
During the drive back to Venice, neither Hutch nor Starsky spoke. Starsky had noticed the frown on Hutch’s face the minute Hutch had slid into the passenger seat, and he knew its quality was different from the one he had seen earlier that day. But Starsky was still unsettled about his own day, so though he stole occasional glances at Hutch, to see if the frown were lessening, he kept his peace.
Finally, as Starsky swung into Venice, Hutch broke the silence.
“Starsky,” he said thoughtfully.
“Hmm?” The reply was absent; Starsky’s attention was focused on the road.
“When your dad died…”
Attention caught, Starsky glanced over at Hutch, saw the deep concentration and the incredible pain on his friend’s face, and yielded. The stiffness of the day forgotten, he said softly, “Yeah.”
“Did…” Hutch took a deep breath and sat back in the seat, his gaze now outside the window. “Did your family talk about that?”
“Yeah, sure,” Starsky said, puzzled at this apparently obvious question. “Lotta things to figure out… stuff for me and Nicky to do… Mom had to go back to work… where were we gonna live…”
“No, that’s not what I’m talkin’ about,” Hutch interrupted. He turned to face Starsky, and his face in the skipping illumination of the street lights was earnest, and still… full of pain. “Did you… did you talk about… what you felt, what it was like to not have your dad there, what you all were going to do without him… how your life would be… different?”
“Yeah,” Starsky repeated, his voice softer and now husky with tears that still welled up when he thought of his father. “Sure we did. We had to… Doesn’t everybody?”
Hutch shook his head, partially in the negative and partially in wonder. “No,” he said quietly, his own voice hoarse. “No.”
“Hutch… what happened in there tonight?” Starsky asked gently.
“Starsk… do you ever think about… this?”
“What? The kidnaping?”
Hutch said nothing. From the corner of his eye, Starsky saw Hutch’s shoulders slump. Then, shaking his head again, he passed a hand over his eyes, then ran it down his face to rest over his mouth. Through his fingers, he emitted a short, sharp laugh.
Deciding he wasn’t going to get an answer, Starsky went on, “Yeah, sure I think about it. Why d’ya think I spent two months sleepin’ on that stupid couch of yours? It sure wasn’t ’cause I liked your company better than some other blonde I could’ve been with.”
“Then why?”
Starsky ducked his head, concentrating on a turn, as he tried to figure out the right way to phrase his response. They were getting close to Hutch’s, and he wished his partner would wait to finish this discussion until he wasn’t behind the wheel of the car. But Hutch’s eyes were on him, looking for an answer, and he knew that somehow, this was very, very important to him.
“I dunno,” he confessed, one-handing the Torino around another curve. “I guess… there was a part of me that wondered what else would happen if I left you alone.” He shrugged. “Maybe, somehow, I felt responsible.” He sighed, glancing in the rearview mirror. “I thought if I stayed, I could keep you outta trouble.”
The left side of Hutch’s mouth quirked up, as that short laugh escaped again from his throat. “You did a great job, pal,” he said, and his tone was only half-teasing.
Both men were silent as Starsky turned a final corner and headed down the short road that dead-ended by Hutch’s cottage. He doused the headlights and turned the car off, pulling the keys out of the ignition. Then he swiveled in his seat to face his partner. “You wanna tell me what happened?”
For several seconds, Hutch did not reply. His gaze returned to the windshield; his eyes fixed on some point only he could see in the moonlight that flickered off the canal. “Greene says I’m stalled,” he said at last. “Says I can’t seem to call it what it was.”
Starsky inclined his head. “He’s right,” he pointed out.
“I know he is,” Hutch conceded. “Doesn’t change it.”
“I know,” Starsky said gently, then his voice strengthened. “Try harder,” he urged.
“You think I haven’t?” Hutch’s eyes swung to his partner’s, vacillating between pain and complete frustration. “I do… but every time I say it, it… just…”
“Makes it real,” Starsky filled in the blank. “Makes it so you gotta look at it, insteada stuffin’ it in that drawer where you keep everything else.”
“Yeah.” The word like an exhaled breath, Hutch looked back down at his hands, which were now trembling.
They sat there in silence, the car’s engine ticking as it cooled, the sound of the lapping canal water drifting in the half-open windows. Eventually, without raising his head, Hutch spoke.
“Starsk,” he said, his voice barely audible.
“Right here, buddy,” Starsky assured him, laying one hand on his friend’s leg. “Right here.”
“I’m scared,” Hutch whispered. “Scared that if I look at this thing, I’m just gonna go nuts. I’ve already lost Jeannie…. What if I… what if I…” He blinked, and Starsky saw his throat hitching in the moonlight. “What if I can’t ever go back on the streets… and I lose… this…” He waved a hand back and forth between the two of them.
Starsky knew he was unable, as they both often were, to articulate the exact nature of their relationship.
“What if lose you too?”
“No chance,” Starsky said firmly. Of this, he was certain. “Whatever we’re doin’, partner, we’re doin’ it together.”
Hutch was still for several seconds, and then he nodded, once shakily, then a second time, stronger. He sat back and tipped his head up, blinking rapidly, then nodded again. “Right,” he breathed. “Right.”
“Lookit, Hatch,” Starsky said gently. “I know this has been rough, and I know I haven’t exactly been patient all the time. But you just gotta keep chippin’ away at it, y’know? Things’re gettin’ better… It’s just takin’ time.”
“Boy, isn’t it,” Hutch said with a snort. “Seems like forever, sometimes.”
“I know.” Starsky squeezed Hutch’s leg encouragingly, then followed the affectionate gesture with a swat as he opened the car door. “Cmon, Blondie… I’ll buy ya a drink.”
“Yeah, easy to say when it’s my bar,” Hutch scoffed, nevertheless swinging out of the car on the opposite side.
“Hey, I’ve bought you plenty of beers in my day,” Starsky said, his tone exuding mock hurt as he waited for Hutch to circle the car. As they moved up the path to the front porch, he threw an arm around his friend’s shoulders, and gave him a quick hug. “But I think that a friend as loyal and dedicated as I am, one that would spend no less than sixty nights cramped on that little bitty couch of yours, deserves a swig of Hutchinson’s finest, don’t you?”
“Fifty-eight,” Hutch corrected, as he unlocked the door of the cottage.
“What?”
“Fifty-eight.” Hutch flipped on the lights, shrugged out of his jacket, and tossed it on the bed as he crossed to the kitchen. “Two nights I took the couch and gave you the bed.”
“Don’t bore me with details,” Starsky ordered, following Hutch into the kitchen and ensuring that Hutch was going into his under-the-counter stash. “Just pour that and join me on the veranda.”
“‘Veranda’?” Hutch echoed in disbelief, pausing in the act of rooting out his best bottle of Scotch. He shook his head, pulled out the bottle, and grabbed two glasses from the drainboard. “Don’t tell me… Reader’s Digest in the john again, right? Increasing your word power?”
“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it,” Starsky said with a grin.
Grinning in response, Hutch followed him out to the front porch, where they set up shop with the bottle of Scotch between them. Bare feet propped up on the railing, chairs tipped back, they steadily lowered the level in the bottle as they joked and teased and tried to top each other’s respective stories from the street and the squad room.
Hutch had just reduced Starsky to rib-clutching laughter over his encounter with Minnie that day, and was chuckling along with him… when he suddenly stopped.
Starsky stopped, too, as he realized that Hutch was outside. At night. And not once, in the two hours they had been out here, had he glanced up and down the beach to make sure the coast was clear.
He watched as Hutch got to his feet, wavering slightly from the alcohol he had imbibed, and stepped over Starsky’s legs.
“Where’re ya goin?” Starsky asked.
“Walk,” Hutch said succinctly, navigating his steps with the care that any wise individual who was half-toasted would display.
Starsky sobered. “But…”
At the gate, Hutch turned back to him. “You comin’?” he asked.
Starsky knew that Hutch knew exactly what he was doing and just how big a step it was. And he knew, without a doubt, that the last thing Hutch wanted was for him to make a big fuss over it.
So he didn’t.
He merely thumped his chair back to its four legs, set down his glass, and joined his friend for a walk along the beach in the moonlight.
Chapter 14
Hutch was sound asleep when the knocking on the door began.
He woke almost immediately, rolled over onto his back, and lay there, wondering if he had imagined or dreamed the sound.
Nothing.
He shrugged, yawned, and buried his head back in his pillow… and had just begun to drift back off to sleep when the knocking started again.
“All right, all right, all right,” he muttered, throwing back the covers and getting to his feet. He threw a glance at the clock. 7 a.m. Who the hell was this?
The knocking sounded again, taking on a definite note of impatience.
All right, all right,” he said loudly, stumbling around the foot of the bed, making his way toward the front door, and yanking it open. “Starsk, you better have a damn good reason for waking me up at this hour of the…”
He stopped dead.
The person at the door was the last person in the world he would have expected… or wanted… to see standing on his front porch.
His father.
“Good morning, Ken.” Standing ramrod straight at his front door, James Hutchinson greeted him formally, with a smile that seemed somewhat stiff and rusty from disuse.
Hutch blinked, shook his head, and blinked again..
Nope. Still there.
He suddenly realized he was bare-chested, and turned back toward the cottage’s interior to find his robe.
“Ken?” his father’s voice inquired behind his back, “May I come in?”
“Sure,” Hutch muttered, finally locating the robe in his bathroom and hurriedly thrusting his arms through the sleeves. “Place is a mess… sorry… wasn’t up yet.”
“So I see.” James entered the small cottage and placed a briefcase on the floor by the door. As he straightened, he took in his surroundings appraisingly, eyeing the eclectic mix of second-hand furniture, the scattered artwork, and the multiple plants. Then his eyes returned to the still half-asleep man in front of him, who was rubbing his eyes and trying desperately to wake up.
“What’re you doing here?” Hutch asked, hiding a yawn behind his hand. This really wasn’t fair, he thought. It had been past three by the time Starsky left. He’d been sound asleep in the first solid sleep he’d had all week, he didn’t have to go to work, and he had hoped that today, he might finally get back to his early morning jog.
“It happens I have a conference in LA this week,” James said, still eyeing the tiny dwelling with obvious disapproval. “This is where you’ve been living, Ken?”
“Yeah,” Hutch said defensively. “Why?”
His father turned back to him with a shrug and an eyebrow tilt that Hutch knew all too well. “It just seems… you’d have found something better by now.”
Hutch sighed. Jesus, this isn’t fair! He’d had less than five hours sleep; he hadn’t had a drop of coffee… and he’d been ambushed.
It was hard enough to deal with his father when he knew he was coming.
James was watching his son closely. Clearly he had some expectation that Hutch had thus far failed to fulfill, some social grace he had forgotten to extend. As usual when he was around his father, Hutch felt prickles of irritation begin somewhere around the back of his neck and move up and forward to his eyes. Hitching his shoulders to shake the sensation, he abruptly turned his back on his father and headed toward the kitchen.
“Want some coffee?” Whether he did or not, Hutch sure as hell needed it. About a pot of it.
James closed the front door of the cottage firmly and picked his way through the cluttered living room with obvious disdain. “Ridiculous,” Hutch heard him sniff under his breath. “Ken… how on God’s green earth do you live like this?”
Percolator in one hand, lid in the other, Hutch turned from the sink, brows knit, eyes hard, mouth a thin line of barely-controlled anger. “You’re the one who kicked me out and cut me off, Dad,” he pointed out tightly. “Didn’t have a whole lot of choice, did I?”
“I neither ‘kicked you out’ nor ‘cut you off,’ Ken,” his father said with an overly patient sigh. “You made a conscious choice to leave Duluth, and you knew the consequences of that decision when you made it.”
“Right, Dad.” Hutch slammed on the kitchen faucet and waited for the coffee pot to fill, counting to himself as he did so, trying to cool his boiling temper. This is your father, he reminded himself. This is how he’s always been… Why did you expect anything different?
He scooped extra coffee into the basket… straight out of the Folgers can, none of the special stuff this morning… slipped the lid on, and placed the pot on the stove. As usual in times of crisis, the burner failed to fire, and he had to re-light the pilot, a process that took him three tries under his father’s displeased scrutiny.
At last, the burner was lit and the coffee started on its percolation. Running out of things to keep him in the kitchen, Hutch turned to find his father still standing in the area vaguely known as the “dining room”… or at least that area occupied by the ancient dining room table. Standing with his expensive Burberry trench coat in his hands, gazing around the cottage as if he could not believe the squalor in which he found himself.
As Hutch watched, James placed the coat on the piano, the one piece of furniture he recognized and apparently deemed appropriate for the expensive garment.
“Here.” Eyes narrowed, Hutch reached the piano in two long strides, took the coat from it, and crossed the front room to his closet. “Sit down. Dad,” he suggested, pulling open the door and digging through his clothes for an empty coat hanger.
When he turned back, he saw his father’s eyes on the gun in its shoulder holster, swinging gently back and forth from the hook on the door. Deliberately, he closed the closet door.
“You keep that in the house?” James queried.
“Where do you suggest? Out on the porch where anyone can pick it up and play with it?” Hutch snapped before he could stop himself. “Dad, you’ve got a dozen hunting guns in your den, hung up like fucking artwork with display lights, for Christ’s sake. I hardly think you’re in a position to lecture me on this point.”
“Well, that’s different,” James began, then halted. “I don’t believe I need to explain myself to you… and I don’t believe there’s any need for that kind of language.”
Hutch restrained himself from retorting that this was his home, he was nearly thirty-years-old, and he could talk anyway he damned well pleased. Instead, he said nothing at all, letting his silence speak for him.
Then he headed back toward the kitchen, gesturing toward the table as he went. “This is all there is, Dad. Have a seat.”
James pulled out a chair, examining the seat and the table top, and seemed relieved to see that these pieces of furniture seemed to at least be clean, if old and battered. He seated himself stiffly, hands folded on the table surface, continuing his inspection of his only son’s home.
Busying himself in the kitchen, Hutch pictured his apartment through his father’s eyes. The piano he would know, since it had belonged to Hutch’s grandfather and had been left to him in Robert Hutchinson’s will. So had the maple bed that stood, rumpled and unmade, in the middle of the front room. There were small bits of classic statuary that had come from the house, mixed in with the more modern wooden and clay sculptures Hutch had acquired during his time in California. Other than that, Hutch knew the furniture looked like he had picked it up on a whim here and there and arranged it in the same careless fashion… which, of course, he had.
Vowing not to lose his temper again, Hutch took his time with the coffee, digging out a cream pitcher and a sugar bowl he hadn’t used since Vanessa had left. He filled both receptacles with exaggerated care and precision, took them to the table and set them down, and retreated to the kitchen so he would not have to face his father without caffeine in his system. Then he rolled up the sleeves of his robe, ran some soapy water and, with meticulous attention, washed the small collection of dishes that had been gathering in his sink over the last week.
He timed it perfectly. Just as he was drying the last plate, the bubbling sounds subsided in the dented metal pot. He turned the burner down to a simmering flame and filled the two waiting cups. Then, with a deep breath, he approached his dining room as if it held a firing squad, and set the cups on the table.
Father and son busied themselves for several seconds, adding sugar and milk to the coffee, tasting, and refining their respective concoctions. Finally, having brought the pot to the table and fortified himself with a second cup, Hutch ventured to ask his father the burning question.
“All right, Dad. Why are you really here?”
“I told you, Ken,” James said levelly. “I have a conference in LA.”
“You’ve had a dozen conferences in L.A. since I’ve been here, and you’ve never found your way to Venice before,” Hutch reminded him. “What’s different about this time?”
Pursing his lips, James refilled his cup and stirred in a spoonful of sugar, staring into the liquid with an expression that was completely unreadable.
Unbidden, the contrasting image of Starsky, his nose buried in the cup of Jamaican Blue, eyes closed in delight, rose to the back of Hutch’s mind. He shook it away.
“You always were very astute, Ken,” James said to his cup, his lips twitching ever so slightly in a humorless smile. “I concede… you’re right. I do have an additional reason for dropping in on you like this.”
“Which is?” Hutch said, one eyebrow raised questioningly.
James took a sip of the coffee, set the cup down very deliberately, then looked his son straight in the eye. “To ask you to come home.”
For several seconds, Hutch could not speak. He did not know which amazed him more, the request itself, or his father’s assumption that he could waltz in and make it, with the clear expectation that Hutch would agree. He half-laughed in disbelief, began to speak, then shook his head. “You gotta be kidding.”
“I assure you, I am not,” James said, clearly miffed. “A colleague has… suggested… that I might want to rethink earlier changes that I made to my will.”
“Changes you made after I left,” Hutch guessed.
“That’s right.”
Restraining a smile, because he knew uncontrollable laughter rode on its heels, Hutch leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head, and waited for his father to explain.
When his son did not speak, James rose to his feet and began to pace around the apartment and sounding somewhat apprehensive for the first time in Hutch’s memory. “Ken, surely you’ve had enough of this by now,” he said, stopping at the cluttered end table beneath the living room’s bay window. “You’re my only son; I want to leave you the family business, and it’s your birthright. Come home, go back to graduate school, and let’s put this behind us, once and for all.”
The grin and the impulse to laugh faded as a hundred emotions fought inside Hutch for attention. He had come out here with nothing but his admission letter to the academy, a suitcase, and a protesting, flabbergasted Vanessa. In the intervening years, he had paid a heavy price for his choice, in the loss of his wife and his family… but he had built a career, a reputation, and a home, all on his own.
The idea that his father would just dismiss it, as if it were nothing more than the remnants of a diverting and amusing little party, angered him beyond words.
But at the same time, a younger Hutch… the one who had been stunned and deeply wounded when James had ordered him to leave… was feeling something akin to sorrow about the rift, affection for his father, and an old, almost-forgotten eagerness to please him.
No.
He shook his head again. That was what his father wanted; for Hutch to slide back into that time when he obeyed him without question, whether it was what he really wanted to do or not. Those times were past, and he was not about to return to them.
However, his father had made an effort, so he quelled his anger and softened his voice in an attempt to return the gesture and perhaps reach a compromise.
“Dad…” he said at last… then stopped.
James’ expression had changed completely. Eyes narrow, brows drawn into a dangerous scowl that stirred a whole set of childhood memories, his gaze was fixed on something he had picked up from the end table.
“What is this?” he almost hissed, his voice horrified.
“What is what?” Hutch said with a puzzled frown.
James spun, strode back to the table, and threw a small white object on the table in front of his son.
“That,” he spat, harshly.
Hutch glanced at the card, then closed his eyes for a moment, sighing wearily. It was the business card Donald Greene had given him after his initial appointment. He reached out to pick the card up, but his father’s hand shot out and stopped the gesture.
Dad…” Hutch tried, unsuccessfully, to wrest his wrist from his father’s grip. “Dad… let go of me.” His own voice had become hard and low, the cop’s voice, and his father released his arm. He pocketed the card, mouth tight, not saying a word.
“I asked you a question.”
Hutch refused to reply, not when his father was speaking in that authoritative tone.
“Kenneth James…”
Hutch’s eyes shot to his father. “Don’t you talk to me like that,” he said in that same low voice. “This is my house. I’m an adult. I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
“Explain!'” his father echoed on a high note. “Don’t you think I have a right to know why you’re seeing a… a… psychologist?”
“For therapy, Dad,” Hutch said sarcastically. “Isn’t that why most people go to see a psychologist?”
“‘Therapy’?” James Hutchinson’s voice was both incredulous and contemptuous. “What kind of problem could you possibly have that you can’t work out on your own?”
Suddenly, Hutch laughed, unable to resist the delicious irony of the moment. Score one for Dr. Greene, he thought, Never in a million years did I think this was how I’d complete my assignment for the day.
He folded his arms across his chest, steeled himself with a deep breath, then looked straight into his father’s eyes. “I was kidnaped, Dad,” he explained, amazed at how readily the word came out of his mouth. “By a high-powered drug lord who wanted some information. He hooked me on heroin so I would give it to him.”
The expression on his father’s face was terrible, but indecipherable.
“That was four months ago,” Hutch went on hurriedly. “I got off it, cold turkey, and I’ve been clean ever since. But I’m still working through the rest of the shit that got left behind.”
The frozen look on James’ face thawed not a degree. Through stiff tight lips, he pronounced, “That settles it. You absolutely cannot stay here another day.”
As if finally finding the wherewithal to move, he glanced at his watch, then rose from the chair. “I have to get to L.A.,” he said briskly. “I’ll be back here to pick you up about six,” he went on, crossing to the closet and rummaging inside for his coat. He paused with a slight shudder at the sight of the gun, then turned his back on it and shut the closet door. “I flew in on the private plane, so there’ll be no problem getting you back to Duluth. We’ll miss dinner, but I’ll call your mother so she can wait up for you… maybe she can ask the cook to hold something…”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Hutch interrupted, astounded. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Saving you from yourself,” James snapped at him as he thrust his arms into his coat “Trust me, Ken, you will be much better off in Duluth. And if you’re so bent on remaining in police work, I’m sure they can find something for you in the local department.”
Hutch snorted at the thought of patrolling a beat in Duluth after five years on the streets of Bay City.
James picked up his briefcase with a jerk and yanked open the cottage door. “I’ll be back around six,” he repeated. “Please be ready. I believe the pilot has filed a flight plan for seven on the nose.”
Hutch found his voice again. “No way, Dad,” he refused. “No fucking way.”
“Now you listen to me, Kenneth James.” All pretense at elegance and sophistication gone, James strode over to his son, face livid with anger. “You’re not staying in this godforsaken city another minute. You’re coming home to your responsibilities if I have to have a dozen psychiatrists testify to your incompetence to live independently, do you understand me?”
If his father had hauled off and hit him, Hutch could not have been more flabbergasted or more incensed. He clenched his fists at his side as the blood pounded in his head and a red haze rose over his eyes, and wrestled fiercely to pull himself under control. He closed his eyes and commanded himself to take deep breaths and CALM DOWN.
He knew if he didn’t, he might kill his father with his bare hands.
“Mr. H,” a new voice entered the conversation. “What brings you into town?”
Never, not in a hundred close situations, not when he’d had a gun to his head, not even when he’d been in that long-ago alley, had Hutch been so glad to see Starsky as he was at that particular moment.
Caught off-guard, James Hutchinson swung around to face this attack from the rear. Seeing Starsky, he settled the collar of his coat with a sniff. “Ah, yes, Mr. Starsky,” he said contemptuously. “I should have known I couldn’t have a conversation with my son without your eventual presence.” He stalked belligerently over to the door where Starsky stood, blocking the exit.
As Hutch watched, Starsky gazed calmly at him and did not move an inch.
“Well, as long as you’re here, Mr. Starsky, I guess I’d like to ask you a question,” James said coldly. “Just where were you when these… hoodlums had my son and were… addicting him to… heroin?”
“Turnin’ every stone in the street to find him,” Starsky replied without hesitation, his eyes cobra-like and his voice deadly. “Along with every cop in the city who cared more about him than his own father did… which means every single one.”
James stared at him, and his eyes held something close to hatred.
Watching, Hutch took a step forward. He had never seen his father this enraged, and he didn’t know what James would do, but he was damned if he was going to do it to Starsky. But James and Starsky merely locked eyes for a moment; then Starsky stepped aside so the older man could pass.
“Have a nice trip, Mr. H,” he called pleasantly after James. He slammed the door, then stood there, both hands braced against the door as if he expected the elder Hutchinson to try to charge back inside. For a moment, neither he nor Hutch spoke, then Starsky took a deep breath. Turning away from the door, he flashed a grin at his partner, saying, “Well… that was fun.”
Hutch opened his mouth as if to reply… but did not speak.
Starsky realized he was trembling furiously with residual rage. Dropping his flippancy, he moved quickly to Hutch’s side and steered him to the bed.
“Hey,” he said soothingly. “You okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” Hutch said sarcastically. “Fine… just fine… How about you?”
“Yeah. Terrific,” Starsky agreed. He went to the bathroom, soaked a washcloth with cool water, and wrung out the excess. Returning to Hutch, he handed him the cloth. “Here. Put this over your face… It’ll help calm you down.”
Hutch buried his face in the damp cloth and stayed there for several moments.
Rubbing his back solicitously, Starsky felt the shudders slow and still, and felt his breathing return to a normal pace.
Eventually, his head lifted, and Hutch looked over at his partner with a somewhat shaky smile. “Thanks, buddy,” he said sincerely.
“Any time,” Starsky responded automatically, then checked himself. “Wait, strike that. If you don’t mind, Hutch… never again, huh?”
“Not if I can help it,” Hutch assured him fervently. “Not if I can help it.” He got up from the bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. “What’re you doin’ here, anyway?” he called to Starsky, water running as he rewet the washcloth.
“Dunno.” Thoughtfully, Starsky turned to face his partner as Hutch leaned against the bathroom door jamb and pressed the damp washcloth to his face. “Just had a feeling that it might be a good idea.”
Hutch gave a short, sharp laugh. “That it was, partner,” he agreed with feeling, “Well.” He shrugged and shook himself, nudging his shoulder away from the door frame. “C’mon,” he said, in a decidedly lighter tone. “I’ll treat you to breakfast at O’Toole’s.”
“Uh… Hutch.”
“What?”
Starsky said nothing, merely let his eyes flick up and down Hutch’s frame, brows raised quizzically.
Hutch looked down.
“Oh. Right.” He tossed the washcloth into the bathroom and started toward his bedroom, stripping off the robe as he went. “Be right back.”
Starsky watched, as his brows lowered and then drew in.
He had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last he’d hear of the incident.
Chapter 15
give me something give me some help you got help don’t go
there’s only one way you get off this horse
i told him if I ever thought you were going to try that junk again
a dozen psychiatrists testify to your incompetence to live independently
one beautiful pop and all your troubles will be over
Everybody? Say hello to crazy Kenny.
***
“Then what happened?”
“What?”
“After your father left… what happened?”
Hutch leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. His eyebrows rose then lowered; he opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. Finally, he shrugged, shaking his head.
“Nothin’, really,” he said casually, “We had breakfast, went to the beach for a while… the usual stuff we do on a Saturday. Then Starsk had a date, so he went home.”
“And?”
“And… and… nothing,” Hutch repeated, with another shrug.
Greene rested his chin on his cupped hand and examined his client with only the smallest change in his expression. Something about Hutch was different, and yet familiar, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Finally, he decided to articulate his bemusement.
“Ken, I have to tell you I’m puzzled.”
Hutch, preoccupied with a spot on his jeans that only he could see, raised his eyebrows but didn’t look up. “About what?”
Greene’s expression cleared as he realized when they had played this kind of scene before.
“Does this feel… familiar to you at all?”
Hutch looked up; it was his turn to look bewildered. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
“The atmosphere right now,” Greene said, extending his hands, palms up, to encompass the forced relaxation of Hutch’s posture and tone. “Does it remind you of anything?”
Hutch paused for a moment and gazed around the room. Then, ducking his head, he shrugged again, looking suddenly much younger—and yet much older—than his years. “Kind of feels like the first time I was here,” he admitted to the hands in his lap.
“Yes, to me, too,” Greene agreed candidly. “And I guess I wonder… what you make of that?”
Hutch finally raised his head, but did not meet the psychologist’s eyes. Unseeing, he gazed past the man to the painting on the wall. “I guess,” he said slowly, “it means I don’t have much to talk about this week.”
Greene allowed himself one skeptically-raised eyebrow. “Frankly, I find that somewhat surprising,” he said, but gently. “Your father… from whom you’ve been estranged for several years… comes to your home without warning, expects you to come home with him, and then, when you refuse, essentially threatens to have you declared non compos mentis.”
Hutch’s lips tightened.
“It seems there’d be a great deal to talk about.”
“Well, there isn’t,” Hutch declared. He finally shifted his gaze back to the doctor, but his eyes were carefully neutral, void of any expression of any valence. “Look, Starsky and I got scarce for the rest of the day, then I saw a couple of movies that night. He never came back, and I haven’t heard from him all week. As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing is over.” He waved a hand dismissively, shooting a quick glance at his watch as he did so.
Rarely had Donald Greene been so thoroughly convinced that a client was lying to him.
He pursed his lips and tilted his head ever so slightly to one side, eyes narrowing infinitesimally. Then he just sat, and watched, and listened.
After a few moments, Hutch flicked a glance at him, and saw the patient, waiting look on Greene’s face. His eyes met the doctor’s, then shifted away very deliberately, to examine the painting over Greene’s desk. As the silence continued, he gave a soft sigh of exasperation, tapped his hands on his thighs for a moment, then fired another glance at his watch. When this got him no reaction, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
“Well,” he said, with the barest hint of a tremor in his voice. “I guess that’s all we have time for today. I’ll see ya next week.”
He started to rise to his feet, but the doctor’s quiet, compassionate voice stopped him.
“Just a second, Ken.”
Hutch dropped back into the chair and willed himself to remain calm. Just a few more minutes, he assured himself. Then you’re home free for another week.
He knew the doctor was contemplating him, sensing there was something significant Hutch was not telling him. He felt he was nearing that final step to disclosure, and he longed to take it… but he also had a powerful urge to run out the door and never return. The silence lengthened as Hutch rocked between the two options… and then Greene spoke.
“I just want to check in with you about something, Ken,” he said steadily. “You’ve been through some fairly intense experiences in the last few weeks… and I’d just like to know if you’ve had any thoughts about harming yourself or killing yourself.”
Hutch’s eyebrows shot up. “Over my father?” he said incredulously. “No, I most definitely am not thinking about killing myself.” His lips twitched. “Him, maybe… but not myself.” He grinned at the doctor then, his mouth at odds with his eyes. “That’s a joke, of course.”
“Of course,” Greene agreed. “But if it weren’t, you’d know what to do.”
“Yeah… right.” Hutch waited for a moment. “Is that it?”
“Yes, Ken,” Greene said, then abruptly changed his tone. “On second thought, no. There’s one more thing.”
Hutch raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“I sense there’s something you’re very hesitant to discuss,” Greene said. His tone was incredibly gentle, as if he knew what a minefield he was treading here. “I just want to remind you that this is a safe place… to talk about anything.”
Hutch began to speak, then stopped himself and nodded, once, pushing himself to his feet. “Thanks, Doc,” he said evenly. “I’ll see you next week.”
And he was gone.
***
The following Wednesday, he sat at his desk, staring at his calendar.
He counted the days, flipped the pages back and counted again, then frowned, taking out his log book.
Ignoring the normal squad room hubbub, he examined the book’s contents, and then sat back.
Ten days, he thought, reviewing each day’s activities in his head. Ten days, and he hadn’t had a single flashback.
Scarcely daring to breathe, he leafed through the calendar a final time.
Yep. Ten days. Four more and I can go back to work.
Finally.
Without further hesitation, he pushed his chair back from the table, knocked on the captain’s door, and told Dobey that after weeks of desk work, he was ready to go back on the street.
“When?” Dobey snapped out, eying him suspiciously. “You’re not thinking today?”
“Monday,” Hutch replied firmly, willing to give his captain a few days to observe him, but refusing to compromise beyond that.
Dobey’s eyes narrowed further.
Hutch met his gaze. He knew he could do this. What happened at night was just that: what happened at night.
“All right,” Dobey conceded at last, and Hutch barely restrained a soft, whistling sigh of relief. “But I think you should ride with Starsky for a couple of days this week, to get your feet wet again. Let him cover the calls; you get backup if you have to do something, but your butt stays parked in the car, understood?”
“Understood,” Hutch agreed, feeling suddenly pounds lighter.
“All right,” Dobey repeated. He eyed Hutch for a few more seconds, then the barest ghost of a smile teased around the edges of his lips. “Good to have you back, Hutchinson.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
PROGRESS NOTE
Clinician: Donald Greene, Ph.D.
Client: Kenneth J. Hutchinson
Session: 10
CLIENT REPORTS: Mr. Hutchinson reported that, as he has not experienced any flashbacks in the last two weeks, he is planning to return to his regular duties on Monday. He stated he had been riding with his partner for the last two days, to help ease the transition from his desk work, and that he had found this “exhilarating” after being “cooped up in that office” for the last two months. When asked how Mr. Starsky had responded to his return, he became somewhat subdued, then stated that he thought his partner was “glad to have [him] back.” He stated that he continues to experience nightmares, but was hesitant to discuss the content; he said only that they were “different” than the ones he had been having before.
In response to inquiry, he reported he has not heard from his father since the confrontation last week, and did not believe there was anything further to discuss. He did ask whether I thought his father would be able to follow through on his threat if he chose to do so. I advised him that, given there was no evidence that he was either severely mentally ill or incapable of caring for himself independently, the odds were probably fairly slim, and that even if his father decided to pursue the matter, it probably would not get past a judge. He appeared relieved by this. However, he continued to deny any aftereffects of his father’s visit: “He’s gone back to Duluth and taken his nasty ideas with him. That’s good enough for me.”
THERAPIST’S IMPRESSIONS: Despite some disclosure in this session and the last, it appears that Mr. Hutchinson’s avoidance is in fact increasing, particularly around some topic of which he has not yet spoken. Based on our conversation today, it is possible Mr. Starsky is aware of this matter, and thus has some reservations about Mr. Hutchinson’s returning to duty. It is also possible that the confrontation with his father is somehow related. In any case, Mr. Hutchinson seems to find this particular, undiscussed matter to be especially threatening with regard to his job. As a result, he is not only avoiding the topic, but making a strong effort to appear as ”well” as possible.
Based on this, I believed this would be an optimal time to bring in Mr. Starsky for a joint session with his partner, as I doubt Mr. Hutchinson will be more forthcoming without some measure of confrontation. This was addressed with Mr. Hutchinson near the end of the current session; not surprisingly, he was strongly opposed to the idea. I suspect his resistance is directly related to his desire to continue avoiding the issue since his symptoms are dissipating; however, the frequency and intensity of his nightmares suggest it is important for this matter to be dealt with, with all expediency. Mr. Hutchinson agreed to “think about it,” and call me with his answer early next week.
PLAN FOR CONTINUED CARE: If client agrees to joint session, address avoidance, and discuss its impact on both individuals and their relationships (working and otherwise). If client does not agree, discuss resistance and possible immediate and long-term impact on his treatment and eventual recovery.
Donald Greene, Ph.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Chapter 16
onebeautifulpopandallyourtroubleswillbeover
JESUS CHRIST I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE.
***
“Starsk? Starsk?”
Someone shook his shoulder.
Whozzat?
Some part of Starsky registered sound and touch, rose briefly to the surface for a semiconscious “huh?” then sank back into sleep.
“Starsk… wake up, huh?”
…s’again. Ke’p quiet, maybe’t’ll go ‘way.
“Starsk. Cmon, will ya?”
Shake. Shake.
A’right, a’right, I’m comin’…
One disgruntled eye opened, to find Hutch standing beside his bed.
For a moment part of his brain went into weekday mode, thinking he had slept through his alarm and was now late for work. He jerked up so quickly that Hutch stumbled back a step, and threw his legs over the side of the bed.
Then he caught a glimpse of his clock.
“Hutch,” he said blearily, looking at his partner but not really seeing him. “Why’re y’ in my bedroom at three in the mornin’, onna Sunday?”
“It’s Monday,” Hutch said inanely.
Starsky blinked, gave an enormous yawn, and squinted at the man standing a few paces from his bed.
Shivering.
“What the hell…?” A lance of fear sliced through Starsky as he came abruptly, completely, wide awake. He stood up, grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed, and dragged it to where his friend stood. Wrapping the covering around Hutch’s trembling shoulders, he steered him to the bed and sat him down, then crouched down in front of him. Eyes narrowed, he examined Hutch’s face closely, looking for evidence that his worst nightmare had not come true, that he hadn’t just gotten Hutch back only to lose him completely.
Hating himself, he realized that he wanted more than anything to shove aside the blanket and take a good long look at his partner’s arms.
“It’s all right, Starsk,” Hutch said softly. “There’s nothing there.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Starsky said urgently. “What’re you doin’ here? You been weird all week, is that what this is about?”
Hutch nodded.
“What?”
Hutch started to speak, then stopped.
“I don’t wanna talk about it, Starsk,” he said at last. “I just need to stay here, just for tonight.”
Starsky was getting frustrated, and not for the first time. This was beginning to be a habit—some dramatic move on Hutch’s part, something that looked like a step forward… and then the abrupt pulling back, the withdrawal. He paused a moment, then set his jaw. “Not this time,” he refused. “You wanna play, you gotta pay. Spill it.”
He knew, he knew exactly what Hutch was going to tell him. But he also knew, from his first conversation with Dr. Greene, and what Hutch had told him about his “assignment” for the previous week, that Hutch needed to talk about it, not have Starsky fill in the blanks for him as he had so many times before.
And of course the big blond dope got defensive.
Hutch’s eyes flashed and he got to his feet, pulling the blanket off his shoulders and tossing it back onto the bed. “Never mind,'” he snapped. “I’ll see you tomorrow… thanks a lot, buddy.”
“Aw, c mon, Hutch,” Starsky said, catching him easily before he’d taken three steps toward the door. “Don’t be like that, huh?” His eyes met Hutch’s and refused to let go. “Y’know y’need this, pal… and more’n just somewhere to crash. Now c’mon.” He nudged his partner, and Hutch sank back down onto the bed. “Give.”
“Starsk, I…” Hutch stopped. “Starsk… tonight I…” He reached one hand up to swipe the hair off his forehead, then dropped it again, and shoved it under the blanket.
Starsky saw the tremble and placed one hand on his friend’s knee, but said nothing.
“I… I’ve been driving around for the last two hours,” Hutch said at last, his voice somehow simultaneously flat and bursting with pain. “Downtown… down by the docks… you know…”
Starsky knew. Places they’d busted a dozen times.
“…last two weeks. I’ve been… worse off than before, than ever, it seems like,” Hutch whispered, his chin tucked into his chest, throat so tight with tears and shame that his words kept getting caught and choked back down, “…ever since Dad… can’t seem to help it, soon as it gets dark. I just keep thinkin’…”
Hutch’s hand groped out, found Starsky’s, and clutched it in a grip of despair and desperation. “Look, I know you’re pissed, I know you’re sick of this, and I know you think I need to just spit this out and get it over with. But I swear to you, Starsk, I’ve been tryin’, and I can’t. I came here because I knew if you were around, at least I wouldn’t… act on….” He looked up. “Starsk, please. just this once.”
Starsky met his gaze, heart seared by the anguish in Hutch’s eyes. Part of him wanted to step back further and further as Hutch reached out, make him work for it, make him tell Starsky exactly what he was talking about and earn the solace for which he was begging. Another part wanted to bundle his friend up in the blanket and tell him it was all right, that Starsky would help him fight it again, make sure he didn’t go out in the street and blow the last four months away, literally in one shot.
And yet another part, a part he knew was talking out of plain exhaustion, wished briefly that he’d never given Hutch the key to his front door.
“Okay,” he said softly, shoving the irritation away, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “You can stay.” He saw Hutch’s shoulders sag. “On one condition.”
Hutch took a deep breath; though he clearly sensed Starsky’s exasperation, he managed to meet and keep his partner’s eyes. “Name it,” he said, and he meant it.
“You call Greene’s service first thing in the morning and tell them you want the earliest possible emergency appointment.”
Starsky said this very, very fast, ripping off the bandage as quick as possible. He couldn’t do anything about the depth of the hurt, but he could at least control how long it lasted.
Hutch dropped his head and laughed, a short, humorless chuckle from deep in his throat. “Sure,” he agreed, his voice tinged with irony. “You got it.”
“Okay,” Starsky said again, satisfied for the moment. He unfolded himself from his crouched position, wincing as his knees commented on the movement, and grabbed a pillow from the head of the bed.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he told Hutch. “I’ll just be out here on the couch… and no arguin’,” he ordered, as Hutch prepared to do just that. “C’mon.”
Shoulders slumping suddenly, as if he were too tired to protest, Hutch nodded. He pulled off his boots and stretched out on the bed, pulling the covers up to his chin. His eyes drooped, struggled open for a second, then dropped again. “Thanks, Starss,” he muttered drowsily.
Starsky sighed, as he gathered the extra blanket in his arms. “You’re welcome, partner,” he said, his voice gravelly with equal parts exasperation and affection. “Get some rest… You got some serious work to do.”
It was not an hour later when he awoke again, to the sound of Hutch talking wildly in his sleep. Scarcely opening his eyes, he stumbled into the bedroom, catching snatches of the dream dialogue as he went. Without pausing, he climbed onto the bed and walked on his knees to the head of it, where Hutch tossed and turned. He grasped his partner’s shoulders and pulled him close, arranging the pillow so Hutch’s head rested in his lap, Starsky’s arm wrapped protectively around his shoulders.
Hutch struggled with his nightmare a few seconds longer, then relaxed.
Starsky closed his eyes as vivid memories rushed in of the last time he had held Hutch this way. Seventy-two hours, he had thought then. Seventy-two hours and all the poison will be outta Hutch’s system. A week or two to recover, and he’ll be back on his feet and chasin’ the bad guys. A month or two, and he’ll be back to normal, sweet-talkin’ the next blonde that catches his eye at Huggy’s or the health food store. A year or two, and we’ll have forgotten that Ben Forest and Jeannie Walden ever existed.
He allowed himself a bitter chuckle as Hutch shifted in his arms and muttered something that sounded like, “…gimme some help…”
Just as he had then.
And just as he had then, Starsky tightened his grip and rubbed one hand up and down Hutch’s arm, as if to wipe away the memory of the needle and the flashlight, the terror and the pain. “It’s all right, buddy,” he murmured, “You’re gonna be okay ”
Hutch relaxed again, and Starsky wearily leaned back against the headboard, practically dizzy from worry and lack of sleep, and somehow managed to sigh without moving a muscle. He swallowed, blinking back tears.
Somehow, he fell asleep.
Chapter 17
The next morning, Donald Greene arrived at his office early, hoping to catch up on several billing matters before his first session of the day. Shrugging out of his trench coat and hanging it on the back of the office door, he set his briefcase on the desk and opened it, digging through its contents for the folders he had taken home the night before.
The phone rang. Absently, he lifted the receiver.
“Greene.” He began sorting the folders into different piles on his desk.
“Mornin’, Dr. Greene, it’s Mary,” the New Orleans drawl of his answering service greeted him. “What’re you doin’ in so early?”
“Paperwork, Mary, tons of paperwork,” Greene sighed, sinking down onto his chair and flipping open the first folder. “What do you have for me today?”
“Well, there’s a coupla messages from last night, but someone called early this morning and said he needed to speak to you as soon as possible.”
“Oh?” Greene set down the folder and gave her his total attention. “Who was that?”
“Mr. Hutchinson,” Mary replied. “He left a number; said he was at a friend’s and asked for you to call him right away. Said it was an emergency.”
Interesting.
“Thank you, Mary,” Greene said, leaning back in his chair with a thoughtful frown. “I’ll get the other messages in a bit. For now, just give me the number Mr. Hutchinson left.”
Mary read him the number and said, “Hope it’s nothin’ serious, Dr. Greene. Should I call you back in about an hour with the other messages or wait for your call?”
“Ah… why don’t you let me call you,” Greene suggested. “Thanks, Mary… I’ll be back in touch.” He depressed the switch hook, and punched in the numbers Mary had read to him. “Yes, hello… I’m returning a call from Ken Hutchinson. Oh, good morning, Mr. Starsky… Dave, yes, of course…. Yes. All right. Let me speak with him… Ken? How can I help you?”
He listened for several seconds to the tired, halting voice at the other end of the line, and his thoughtful frown returned and grew deeper.
“Very well, Ken… No, I think it’s best that you did call… I can fit you into the schedule this evening.” He paused, and took a deep breath. “I’d like you to bring Dave along.”
The voice at the other end gained some strength as it protested.
“Yes. Yes, I know how you feel about it, but I think he should be here.”
With the eraser end of his pencil, he flipped the page in his calendar to that evening and scribbled in the appointment.
“Yes. Yes, it’s that important. Yes. Yes, Ken, I’m afraid I must.”
Another pause, matched by silence on the other end, then one short, resigned sound.
“Very well. I’ll see you both at six.”
***
Dr. Greene thought men who faced execution could not have looked more unhappy than the two detectives who arrived in his office that evening. He ushered them in and directed them to the chairs he had set up, then dismissed his secretary for the evening and closed the door. Moving to his own chair, he felt the tension welling up in waves as he passed the silent pair.
Hutch, he imagined, was sure he had died and gone to hell. He had told Greene several times how difficult it was to come here in the first place, and their sessions often resembled a game of tug-of-war. In the last few meetings, Hutch had figured out a way to keep some control… but Greene knew he had to suspect those days were over.
Starsky, on the other hand, didn’t appear uncomfortable, so much as angry. It was as if his frustration and annoyance had begun to surface, as if in this place, he had permission to feel the full extent of all his emotions too.
“Well,” Greene said, gently, hoping to let the tension out slowly rather than having it erupt all over his office. “Why don’t I start by telling you, Ken… well, both of you, in fact… why I wanted to have Dave here.”
Immobile, the two men looked at him expressionlessly.
“I think you would agree, Ken, that we seem to have reached an impasse over the last few weeks,” Greene went on, unperturbed. He had faced such stony gazes before; it was the look of two people who had reached a limit with one another, and were afraid to go further, for fear of rupturing the relationship by saying things both would regret. “And I think you also would agree that Dave knows you better than anyone else, and has a certain… ability… to bring things out of you that you would trust with no one else.”
Almost imperceptibly, Hutch’s eyes softened. He nodded, once.
“When there is someone in your life who is as close to you as Dave is, there are a number of reasons for bringing them into this kind of setting,” Greene continued, encouraged—but not entirely surprised—by Hutch’s response. “First, you and Dave have a unique and honest relationship that permits, perhaps even compels, you to be totally open with him. By coming here, you can do this in a place that relieves him of the responsibility of playing therapist… because I imagine there are things he’s felt and thought about all of this too, that he might have kept back from both of you, for your sake.” He allowed himself a small smile. “And I suspect you have a much finer tuned ‘bullshit meter’ for each other than I do.”
A smile twitched Starsky’s lips, briefly.
Greene took a sip from his coffee cup and leaned back in his chair, while his voice and face grew sober once more.
“Second, there’s clearly some issue you’ve avoided discussing because you’re worried. I’m not sure precisely what you’re worried about, though I have my hypotheses. At any rate, telling Dave and me, under these circumstances, may be the first step toward ending that avoidance so you can deal with the fear in a more productive way.” He took another sip from the cup and then returned it to his desk. “Whatever it is that seems so horrible, Ken, may not be so shocking as you think… but until you tell someone, you’ll never find that out.”
There was a long, long moment of silence.
Greene was comfortable with it; he knew the value of silence, especially with this particular client. Hutch excelled at answering just what was asked of him, but a silence gave him no cues and made him very uneasy. As a result, he often said very interesting things at the end of a prolonged pause.
As he did this time, after unfolding the barrier of his crossed arms and legs and leaning forward, elbows on knees, chin on folded hands, eyes on the floor.
“He knows,” he said simply.
“Dave knows?” Greene said mildly. “And how did he react?”
Hutch stammered, “Well, he… he…” He stopped and laughed shortly, then said slowly and very deliberately, “I guess that depends on which time it came up.”
Greene frowned in confusion. “I’m afraid I’m lost, Ken.”
“Well, the first time, I think he was… surprised, but he didn’t run off screaming,” Hutch said, with a wry twist to his lips. “The second time, I think he wanted to.”
Starsky had been watching his friend, unblinking, “Y’know, Hutch,” he said levelly but not unkindly. “I think he’d do a helluva lot better if he knew what you were talkin’ about.”
Hutch opened his hands and buried his face in them, taking a deep breath to try to still his panic. He had known this was coming; he had felt it. Starsky had nudged from one side and Greene from the other, again and again and again. Despite his best efforts, he had been neatly, albeit with the greatest concern and compassion, backed into the corner. He had tried everything to make it out… but there was no way he could escape now, not without destroying a number of things that were very, very important to him.
Heart pounding, mouth dry, he raised his head, licked his lips, and tried.
“I…” He stopped, blinking, then started again. “At night, it’s…”
It was no use. The words were caught in his throat, caught behind a lump the size of a baseball.
“Hutch…” Starsky began.
“Just a second, Dave,” Greene interrupted quietly. “Let’s back it up a little.” He leaned forward toward Hutch’s bent figure. “Ken… you said on Friday that the nightmares were getting worse.”
Where is she, there’s Jeannie Walden
Hutch flinched as the image of the flashlight’s glare flooded his memory.
In a couple hours, you’re gonna be banging your head against the wall
He clutched his midsection and folded into himself, as if someone had delivered a punch to his solar plexus, as if the cramps of withdrawal had returned and were ripping through his guts. Mental and physical exhaustion began to twitch the muscles around his eyes, and his forehead pulled into a frown so tight a headache leapt into life. His throat closed as the room began to quiver and fade around him.
“Ken?” Greene’s voice came instantly, his tone urgent. “Ken, don’t do that… stay with us, now. It’s been two weeks… let’s don’t go back there, all right?”
Fingers snapped. Voices whispered. A coffee cup was pressed into his hand.
Give me some help!
Immediately, Hutch knocked it away. “No,” he muttered and he began to shudder…
Starsky watched, not daring to blink, as if his gaze could will his partner to stay in the here and now.
“Something else,” Greene commanded. “The sculpture… It worked before…hurry!”
He wasn’t even aware where or how he moved. He just knew the wooden piece was in Greene’s hands and then, in the time it took to breathe, in Hutch’s. His trembling hands grasped it, ran over it like those of a blind man, frenetically and then, more slowly, as his fingers registered the texture, the out-of-placeness of it. Gradually, his breathing slowed, the tremors eased, and he began to relax.
As his body released itself, Hutch blinked, and his eyes cleared as he became aware once again of his surroundings. He glanced down at his body, which was hunched into a protective half ball, then dropped the sculpture and brought his hands to his head. “Aw, no,” he whispered, in a voice that bled pain and disappointment. “Not again… aw, shit.”
“It’s all right, Ken,” Greene said soothingly. “You didn’t go completely. We got you back before you did.”
“Close enough,” Hutch said hoarsely. “Goddammit… this is why I didn’t want to… I thought these things were gone?”
“Clearly they’re not,” Greene agreed gently. “And that tells me even more that there’s still something there, Ken… Something you’re avoiding because it’s frightening you. And something that’s not going to just go away.”
Hutch rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if he could scrub out the memories and all they kicked into motion. “I can’t,” he whispered miserably. “There’s just too much at stake.”
Greene sat back in his chair and blew out a deeply-held breath. His eyes narrowed slightly as he examined Hutch.
Breath held, Starsky watched the interplay between them. He had no idea what the doc had in mind, but he wasn’t about to interrupt.
“Why don’t we try this from another angle?” Greene suggested at last.
Hutch nodded, the movement barely perceptible.
“The dreams you said you’ve been having,” Greene began. “Have they been similar to this flashback?”
A pause; then again. Hutch nodded.
“And the content… is related to something you haven’t told me. And Dave knows about it, you think, but you haven’t been able to verbalize it to him lately,” Greene continued, his words careful, eyes watching Hutch closely.
“Right.”
“Do you have any ideas about why that is?”
Hutch was silent for several seconds, then he looked up… not to meet either Starsky’s or Greene’s eyes, but to stare off into the distance, eyes liquid with pain. “I… I thought things were getting better,” he said at last. “I hoped… they would just go away.”
“And were they?”
“For a while,” Hutch declared with weak stubbornness.
“C’mon, Hutch…” Starsky couldn’t stop himself from interjecting.
“They were,” Hutch insisted, looking over at him. “You know they were.”
“Yeah, and they were getting worse, too,” Starsky pointed out. “And I know that, because you wouldn’t tell this guy—” he jerked a thumb at the doctor, “what was going on at night.”
“I sense you have some things to say about that, Dave,” Greene observed,
“Yeah, I guess I do,” Starsky said, with some heat.
And then the words just tumbled out.
“Lookit, I don’t want you to misunderstand, Doc. Hutch and me’ve always been tight, but there’s no law says we gotta tell each other every dirty detail of what’s going on in our lives. But when I see somethin goin’ down that I know is causin’ him pain, and I see him not doin’ anything about it…” He paused, unable for the moment to describe how that made him feel, then gave it up for the moment. “And he’ll tell me somethin’, enough that I can piece it together, but he won’t say the words to me, y’know? Like last night.” He turned to Hutch. “You couldn’t say it. All you could tell me was that you’d been drivin’ around for two hours and you wanted somewhere to stay.” He paused, his eyes so intent on his partner that Hutch could practically feel them boring into him. “Why can’t you talk about this, Hutch?”
“How can you ask that?” Hutch flared, meeting fire with fire. “You know what’ll happen if I do…”
“Tell me or not, Hutch… I know what’s goin’ on. So you might as well spill it and get it over with.”
“How can you ask that?” Hutch repeated, his voice going up a notch. “I tell you, I tell him… Why don’t I just walk into IA and say, Hi, I’m a problem cop, here’s my badge and my gun? And then what? Huh?”
“Where you goin now?” Starsky shot back. “This keeps up, you think they’re not all gonna know anyhow?”
“No,” Hutch insisted, gritting his teeth. “No, because I’ve got it under control! It’s only at night when…”
“When what?” Greene jumped in.
Starsky didn’t so much as glance at him.
“Never mind, never mind,” Hutch said, leaning back in the chair, extending his hands in front of him, with a visible attempt at steadying them. “It’s not a problem. I can handle it.”
“Will you cut it out?” Starsky ordered. “That’s bullshit, Hutch, and you know it. You can handle it, you’re not in my bedroom at three in the morning, you’re not trollin’ the drug district for two hours, you’re not even thinkin’ about stuff like that…”
“Okay, okay!” Hutch slashed his hands down like the conductor sounding the final, crashing chord. “So I can’t. I wake up at night, and it’s all I think about. I’m sitting there in the dark, half outta my mind, and all I can remember is how that stuff made it all go away. Even in the middle of… all of that… I had some peace.” He laughed, a harsh, bitter sound that made Starsky wince. “So what does that say for me, huh? Some cop, right? Just another fucking Hutchinson failure.”
“That’s your old man talkin’,” Starsky told him bluntly. “I know you know better than that, Hutch, and you gotta start givin me some signs of it.” Before he could stop himself, he had moved over beside Hutch’s chair and crouched next to it. His eyes searched for his partner’s, trying desperately to penetrate the enormous pain and self-deprecation in which Hutch was enveloped.
“Listen to me, buddy,” he said, his voice electric with intensity, every muscle in his body rigid as he leaned toward his partner. “You were so hot about your dad when he came and expected you to just go home to Duluth, remember? You were mad as hell because he thought you could give up everything just like that. But the way I see it, that’s what you’ve been doin’. Givin’ up. Lyin’ to yourself and everyone else about what this’s done to you, or tellin’ half the truth and then backin’ off. Thinkin’ you gotta go this alone and not lettin’ anybody near enough to help. It’s like…” He groped for the words. “Like you think he’s right, like all you got left is goin’ back there in defeat. Like you don’t think you deserve any better than the way he treats you… or Forest did.”
“What have you been thinking about when you wake up at night, Ken?” Greene asked, right on Starsky’s heels.
“Starsk…I…” Hutch’s face was grey, his eyes gone from harsh to pleading, darting, looking for a way out.
“C’mon, babe, tell him,” Starsky urged, not relenting for an instant. “Do it.”
“The heroin.”
In a way, it was almost anticlimactic.
Nothing happened. The walls didn’t fall in, the world wasn’t plunged into darkness, Starsky didn’t get up and stride out and Greene didn’t pick up the nearest phone and order him into a psych ward. Yet as the seconds ticked by, Hutch felt his heart pounding madly, breath whooshing in and out of his chest, waiting for the inevitable aftermath to his disclosure.
Starsky rocked back on his heels. “I know, Hutch,” he said quietly. “I’ve known for weeks, and he probably has too.” He waved a hand at Greene, who was, in fact, not surprised. “What’d ya think was going to happen if you said it out loud?”
“I don’t know,” Hutch admitted. “I guess I thought… no, I knew, that you’d feel like you had to follow through on your promise to Bernie. And that’s what I’d expect you to do,” he added, as Starsky started to speak. “And then… I guess I didn’t know what would happen then.”
“What’s the worst-case scenario, Ken?” Greene asked.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Hutch…”
“With all due respect, Ken, I believe you do.”
DAMMIT
“All right, all right. They fire me.” He leveled a finger at Greene. “That’s not drama, that’s reality. If they know what happened, I’m out.”
Greene nodded; this was one point he knew quite well. “And then… and then…”
His voice faltered as his eyes grew damp. “I… can’t even imagine a then. This… this is what I’ve done for the last six years. I’m good at this, and it’s the one thing… I gave up everything for this, do you understand? I can’t go back to Duluth… It would kill me.”
“Who says you’d have to?” Starsky interjected.
“What else is there?” Hutch shot at him. “Who’s gonna hire a former drug addict?”
“Are you an addict, Ken?”
Greene’s question stopped Hutch short. His brow wrinkled into a ferocious frown, and he turned to the doctor. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
“Are you an addict?” Greene repeated, “You keep using that word, and you’re a man of education… so I believe you think you are. But technically, you’re not.”
Hutch’s frown deepened. “You wanna run that one by me again?”
“Based on the commonly-accepted criteria, you are not dependent on heroin, nor are you even an abuser of it,” Greene explained. “In order to meet that condition, you would have to have continued to use the drug, despite the negative effect on your health, your job, and your relationships.”
Hutch raised his eyebrows. The meaning was clear: all of those things were pretty damned “affected” right now.
“That’s not the heroin, Hutch,” Starsky interjected. “That’s gettin’ grabbed by Forest. It’s not like you tried it and liked it, so you went out after it on your own. If what happened hadn’t happened, you’d never even be thinkin’ about this… so it’s not the heroin.”
Greene blinked, his expression somewhat confused.
Predictably, Hutch understood him perfectly.
“Look, what you’re sayin’ makes sense,” he conceded to both Starsky and Greene. “But…”
“Ken, there’s something I think you need to keep in mind… something I don’t think you’ve considered,” Greene interrupted. “You were kidnaped and beaten, by people whom you knew were very dangerous and who probably intended to kill you. In essence, you lived for days in a psychological torture chamber. And despite the avenue, those moments when you were drugged were the few moments of respite and solace you had during the entire ordeal. If you look at it that way, in the midst of all this re-experiencing, it makes a certain amount of sense that you would remember that peace and have some desire to seek it out again.”
“Yeah, I see that, but it doesn’t change things,” Hutch argued. “I didn’t have a choice then. I do now, and I still don’t know what I’m gonna do. I was close last night… this close…” He held up a thumb and forefinger, barely an inch apart.
“But you didn’t,” Starsky reminded him, “You came and got me the hell outta bed instead.”
Hutch began to speak, then found he couldn’t. The frown returned, as he tried to process his own shifting feelings and Starsky’s noticeably lighter tone.
“What about that, Ken?” Greene asked, interested. “He’s right. You could have gone somewhere and gotten a fix—you certainly knew where to find it—but you chose not to. What does that say to you?”
The frown grew more thoughtful, and there was silence for several seconds. Hutch examined the carpet as if memorizing it for a later report.
“I guess…” he said at last, very slowly. “I guess…” He shook his head. “There must have been some reason for it… There must have been some part of me that felt like fighting back, like things weren’t totally hopeless.”
“I think your father came at the worst possible time,” Greene said gently. “Your sense of yourself was tenuous enough at that point, and he shook you up very badly… Enough that you really began to question who you were. In essence, his visit brought you right to the edge of the cliff.”
A snort from Starsky, and Hutch felt the left side of his mouth twitched upward ever so slightly.
“Yeah,” he conceded. “Yeah, well, he’s good at that.”
“But still,” Greene went on, “you made a conscious choice not to take that last step. Instead, as Dave said, you went to him.” He paused, then said again, “What does that mean to you, Ken7“‘
Hutch had the weirdest feeling of things swinging into place like pieces of a mental telescope… as if somehow, everything that Starsky and Greene had been telling him for the last two months had now, at last, brought some of the elements of his life back into alignment. Not everything, but enough to make a difference, enough for him to start seeing things, including himself, with a greater clarity.
“I guess…” he repeated, looking now at his hands, which were clasping and unclasping as if this helped him produce the words. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s some essential part of me that… doesn’t want to take that last step.”
After several seconds, he felt Starsky’s hand on his arm; without hesitation, he reached down and covered it with his own. They remained there for a moment or two, then separated as Starsky hauled himself to his feet and returned to his chair.
At length, Hutch spoke, still staring at his clasped hands. “Doc,” he said, his voice wavering only slightly. “There’s just… there’s something that bothers me.”
“What’s that, Ken?”
“I’ve felt like this before,” Hutch said, and despite his best efforts, the tremor in his voice grew more pronounced. “Twice, maybe three times… and every time, they… the cravings’ve come back.” He raised his head, and his eyes sought Greene’s in an almost physical reach for reassurance. “How do I know they won’t this time?”
“I guess we don’t,” Greene said, his tone kind but matter-of-fact. “Unfortunately, this isn’t a field of miracle cures, and the dramatic breakthroughs you see in film are usually only the start of the story.”
“So we’re not finished yet,” Hutch assumed, now rubbing damp palms up and down his thighs.
“No,” Greene agreed. “Eventually, Ken, you have to come to understand that there are some things over which you have no control. It’s possible the cravings will never go away completely… nor the nightmares, nor even the flashbacks. But what you and I can do is help you find ways to accept that fact as a part of what happened to you, and not an element of your character… and then find ways to minimize its impact on your life.”
“Yeah,” Starsky put in, apparently unable to resist jumping in any longer. “Listen to what the man says, Hutch. It makes sense… and y’know it.”
Hutch took in a deep breath and sighed it out. The sound was as exhausted and raw as he was, even to his own ears, but another part of him heard the lightening, the renewed affection in his partner’s voice, and responded to it with gratitude and his own sense of hope.
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay.” Suddenly, surprising himself as much as anyone, he turned his head and grinned at his partner.
It was brief, and it was still somewhat tremulous. But it was something.
Starsky grinned back.
Greene noted with interest how the room’s atmosphere had changed, as if an unseen hand had twisted a giant kaleidoscope. First there had been three separate entities… then Starsky and Greene had joined in an alliance with Hutch the separate one… And now, though the two detectives had in fact moved farther apart, their bond, and their separateness from him, was as clear to Greene as if it had been spelled out in words.
He became aware again of the environment around them… the fading light, the sounds of voices and slamming car doors in the parking lot below. For the first time in the session, he glanced at the clock that sat on his desk, and noted with surprise that over an hour had passed. “Well,” he said, rising to his feet, “shall we call it a night, gentlemen?”
Starsky and Hutch glanced at their watches and also got up from their chairs,
“Thanks for coming, Dave,” Greene said, shaking Starsky’s hand firmly.
Their eyes met and held, in acknowledgment of a job well-done.
“And Ken, I’ll see you Friday, at the regular time.”
It was not a question, and Hutch did not disagree. Instead, he reached out and shook the psychologist’s hand.
“Thanks, Dr. Greene.” He headed toward the door, then paused and turned back for a moment. “But do me a favor, huh? Call me Hutch.”
The two detectives preceded him out of the office, and Greene felt that eerie sense of the kaleidoscope shifting again when Dave spoke, as if resuming a conversation they had begun just moments before.
“C’mon, Blondie, I’ll buy ya dinner.”
There was a pause, then Ken’s voice responded, with a thread of genuine humor that broadened into what sounded like an enjoyably familiar refrain.
“Yeah? Do I get to pick the place?”
“Only if there’s nothin’ on the menu that contains the words ‘healthy,’ ‘natural,’ or ‘organic.'”
“Oh, I get it, just grease, flour, and sugar, is that it? Starsk, you are a heart attack waiting to happen.”
“But I’m goin’ with a grin, Hutch… whereas you? Hey, I don’t know what they’re gonna say when they find your perfectly preserved remains, but it ain’t gonna be ‘He died happy.'”
“Yeah, well, it also won’t be ‘He died young,”‘ Hutch retorted.
“Nope, too late for that,” Starsky shot back immediately, and that was the last Greene heard as the door closed behind them.
Chapter 18
Dreamland, pally, dreamland, I got the ticket for you right here.
He woke briefly, mumbled, “G’t’hell,” then turned over and went back to sleep.
***
“Central, this is Zebra Three. Log us on the street and rolling at… 0758.”
“Roger, Zebra Three.”
“Thanks, Central. Zebra Three out.”
“Welcome back, Hutch.”
***
“All units in the vicinity, 211 in progress at the All-Rite Liquor Store, 12th and Pine. Witness reports shots fired, proceed with extreme caution.”
“This is Zebra Three. We are in the area and responding.”
***
“Starsk, are you sure you want onions on this thing? First thing in the morning? I mean, do you have any idea what’s in this that’s gonna eat your guts alive?”
“Hey, don’t start. Sheesh. Haven’t even been back a week and you’re startin’ with the food thing already… Give it a rest, huh?”
“All right, all right. It’s your funeral.”
“That’s right, babe, and I told ya… I’m gonna die a very happy man.”
***
“Hutch, m’man. Boy, am I glad to see you. Gettin’ sick of seein’ this sorry face all by its lonesome for the last two months.”
***
“Cover me…”
***
“Starsky, Hutchinson, I wanna talk to you about these reports… Now, listen, and don’t tell me you haven’t heard this before: Daily is daily and weekly is weekly. It does not mean waiting until the week is over and then submitting all your daily reports in lieu of the weekly one. Starsky… that belongs in the wastepaper basket, not on my floor…”
***
“Hey, Hutch. Wanna grab a bite before we head home?”
***
PROGRESS NOTE
Clinician: Donald Greene, Ph.D.
Client: Kenneth J. Hutchinson
Session: 15
CLIENT REPORTS: Things continue to go “reasonably well.” Mr. Hutchinson stated that he believes he is readjusting well to being “back on the street” with Mr. Starsky. Response from colleagues and other friends continues to be positive.
As reported in the last session, he was somewhat apprehensive about a Narcotics stakeout to which he and Mr. Starsky were assigned last night, but this apparently went smoothly and without incident. He reported experiencing some anxiety at the beginning of the evening, but was successful in managing this through relaxation and talking about it with Mr. Starsky. He was particularly relieved to note that he could tolerate flashlights being used by other officers, though it was easier if he had some warning that they were going to be turned on. In general, he noted, this event “will go a long way” toward helping him re-establish his confidence.
He continues to experience nightmares approximately once a week, but is able to tolerate the subsequent anxiety and return to sleep quickly. His sense of increased alertness in the squad room appears to have dissipated, unless he is particularly tired or anxious. He does still check the windows and locks on his doors at least twice a night, but is working toward eliminating this.
He reported that he has only experienced one other flashback since the brief one in our session last month. It occurred after the stakeout, but not until he had returned home and was preparing to go to bed, and he was able to reorient himself relatively quickly. He noted that this episode was very short, and the content was typical, related to the period when he was beginning withdrawal and his captors were asking him about Ms. Walden’s whereabouts. He stated that he believes this one keeps returning to him because he feels guilty about revealing her location; he is still “working through” this, and understands it may take him some time to resolve it to his satisfaction. He noted a somewhat “peculiar” feeling prior to the episode, and is hoping he can use that to predict them in the future.
THERAPIST’S IMPRESSIONS: Mr. Hutchinson continues to improve in a number of areas. Though he occasionally slips back into habitual avoidance techniques, he is more likely to recognize them independently or with minimal prompting. He continues to experience symptoms, and still finds them distressing, but the level of his concern is more realistic, and thus he is more apt to acknowledge and discuss them, in sessions and with Mr. Starsky. He is still concerned about the department learning of his heroin addiction, but understands that this fear may only fade with time. Issues surrounding his father and his self-esteem are becoming somewhat more central to our discussions, as they play a role in his recovery.
PLANS FOR CONTINUED CARE: Given his improvement and the increasing pressure of his schedule, move to biweekly sessions, following the next meeting. After two months, re-evaluate his progress, then move toward monthly sessions and termination. Continue to monitor symptoms.
Donald Greene, Ph.D.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Chapter 19
Could this day get any better?
The Narcotics stakeout had gone exceptionally well. Not only had they made a clean and successful bust, but Hutch had survived his first stakeout since starting therapy. Starsky had seen the look on his friend’s face when the flashlights had come out; had watched that twitch just under his right eye, and felt the answering tension in his own limbs.
But the lights had flicked on… and nothing had happened. He had sensed the wave of victory and relief that washed over Hutch… but his partner had shown no reaction, not even a grimly satisfied smile. He simply had attended to business, reviewing the details the Narco cops had come to discuss, engaging in the usual boredom-breaking banter, then ordering them both to “get outta here before you scare off the bad guys.”
Blake and the other detective had disappeared back into the night, with no recognition that anything important had occurred. Only then had Hutch’s shoulders dropped slightly as he indulged himself in a sigh of heartfelt relief.
But that was last night.
This was Friday. He had just brought Hutch home after his session with Dr. Greene. Hutch had invited him into the house, tossed him a bottle from the fridge and, with a jerk of his head, indicated the beach.
It could have been one of a hundred Fridays when they started the weekend together with a cold beer and a walk along the waterfront.
They had walked for a while in silence, and now sat about a mile from Hutch’s cottage, watching the sinking sun set the sky and the water ablaze.
In the slanting rays of the rich, soft light, he examined his partner and couldn’t restrain his own smile. Hutch had finally begun to regain the weight he had lost, and his skin had lost that pallor that spoke of sleepless nights and consuming worry. The haunted look was mostly gone from his eyes, though it returned every once in a while for a second or two. He had become more relaxed, less fidgety, and not so short-tempered. The banter that was as natural to their relationship as breathing had returned. The wall was gone.
Squinting at the vivid colors, Hutch swallowed the last of his beer, sank the bottle into the sand beside him, and rested his chin on his knees. A deep, contented sigh escaped him as he drank in the normalcy of the moment, of the security, and of the companionship he had been certain was lost forever.
He closed his eyes and just…basked.
And then someone approached them.
Despite himself, Hutch jumped and looked over his shoulder. Seeing it was only a child running toward the water, he relaxed, grinning somewhat sheepishly at his partner.
“Sorry,” he said. “That still happens sometimes.”
“Prob’ly always will,” Starsky said gently. “Some things’ll never be the same, Hutch.”
“Yeah,” Hutch said, and for a moment his voice and eyes were profoundly sad. “Yeah.”
Starsky nudged him. “On the other hand,” he continued playfully, as if to recapture the spirit of the day, “a lot of things’ll stay the same.”
“Yeah?” Hutch said getting to his feet and dusting the sand off the seat of his jeans. “Like what?” He started back down the beach toward home, returning confidence apparent in his easy, ranging stride.
“Like you buyin’ your best pal a giant steak dinner.” Starsky also got up and ducked in front of his friend, grinning in the ebullient way that only Starsky could, not bothering to clear the sand from his own seat.
“Steak dinner?” Hutch echoed. “When did I ever do that?” Feigning innocence, he abruptly switched directions.
Starsky darted in front of him again. “Well, okay… some things’ll be a little different… but in a good way, Hutch. I mean it.”
“Oh, they will, huh?” Hutch turned again, so Starsky had to scramble to catch up again, walking madly backwards to keep ahead of Hutch’s long legs. “And what does that have to do with my feeding you that lump of charcoal you call steak?”
“I’m tellin’ ya, Hutch, you taste this beef and you will think you have died and gone to heaven…”
“Well, you’re half right anyway.” Hutch did a final one-eighty and then stopped dead in his tracks.
His timing was perfect.
Intent on extolling the virtues of his last gastronomic delight, Starsky had failed to keep track of Hutch’s twists and turns. The last switch and the abrupt halt left Hutch safe at the water’s edge, while his partner hurtled forward obliviously—right into a small wave that knocked him off his feet.
Starsky’s head disappeared under the wave as Hutch collapsed in helpless laughter on the sand. In a second, Starsky surfaced. From his position on the beach, Hutch saw him spewing water in all directions, glaring furiously at the sprawled, shaking figure of his partner.
“Very funny!” he shouted over the noise of the water. “Now c’mon and help me outta here, you big dummy.”
Hutch rolled over and squinted at him, eyes glistening with tears of mirth. It wasn’t often he got the better of his partner, and he was enjoying this moment mightily. “Whaddya think I am, a rube?” he retorted. “The whole point to this exercise was for me to stay dry.”
“Terrific,” Starsky muttered, struggling to his feet and making a great show of slogging through the water and sand toward the shore. “Wet sand in my shoes… my socks… my britches…”
This only served to set Hutch off again; he flopped onto his back and gave himself up to the laughter.
Starsky stopped short.
“Hey, Hutch,” he called, his face suddenly sober. “I’m stuck.”
Hutch pushed himself to a sitting position and began brushing sand from the front of his shirt. “Nice try, Starsk,” he replied, not even looking up. “But you better try some other sucker.” He peered down the beach. “There’s one… See that guy with the loud plaid shorts?” He whistled. “Oughtta give him a ticket for pollutin’ the beach.”
“Hutch,” Starsky called again. “I mean it, this sand’s got hold of my shoe and I can’t get it out.”
“So leave it,” Hutch advised him unperturbedly, dusting off his hands. “And hurry up, huh? I’m ready to get some dinner.”
“Aw, c’mon, Hutch,” Starsky said persuasively, with just a hint of a whine. “Y’know I hate bein’ in the water… and I just got these shoes last month. C’mon, be a pal and give me a hand.”
“All right, all right.” Hutch hoisted himself to his feet and started down the beach. He had barely reached the edge of the water when Starsky took two quick steps forward, grabbed his partner’s extended arm, and yanked him into the water… then made his own way back onto dry land.
Hutch surfaced with a grin, not really surprised by his friend’s move, and floated on his back for a moment, gazing up and appreciating that special light a sky only gets at dusk.
“Hutch,” he heard Starsky’s voice from the beach. “Hutch, c’mon, it’s freezin’ out here!”
“It’s eighty-five in the shade,” Hutch pointed out mildly, but he got to his feet and waded back to the shore.
“You know I hate the water,” Starsky grumbled as they turned their damp selves back toward the cottage. “Can’t believe you’d play a trick like that on the man who has stuck with you through thick and thin…”
Again, Hutch stopped abruptly… but this time, his intent was very different.
He knew Starsky’s complaints were made jokingly. He knew they were part and parcel of both his friend and their relationship, and he knew that the day Starsky didn’t gripe about something was the day Hutch really needed to worry.
But he knew something else… and suddenly, it was very important that Starsky know it, too.
“I never would’ve made it if you hadn’t, Starsk,” he said simply. “Thanks.”
Surprise replaced the grumpy expression on Starsky’s face, and he threw an arm around Hutch’s shoulders. “Yeah, well, remember that in about an hour, when we’re huntin’ up the grub.”
Hutch slung an answering arm around his partner as they continued down the beach, their shadows stretching long in the fading light. “Y’know something?” he said. “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
“You better believe it, shweetheart,” Starsky shot back.
For a moment, they just grinned foolishly at each other, and then Starsky dropped his arm… for apparently, the enthusiastic gestures that accompanied his rhapsodic restaurant review required both hands.
“Seriously, though,” he began in his most earnest voice, urging Hutch toward home, oblivious to the water draining from his dark curls, the sand spotting his right cheek, and the large strand of water vegetation draped over his shoulder, “You’re gonna love this place. They’ve got steak this thick and not an ounce of fat. I’m tellin’ ya, Hutch, my Uncle Ernie swears by it, and the vino! Best grape this side of Napoli, and not a drop of vinegar in the batch…”
Hutch’s grin widened.
He didn’t know if he’d ever sleep through the night without double-checking the locks, or if he’d go a month without waking up in a cold sweat, with Forrest’s mocking face looming over him. He didn’t even know if he’d ever feel really safe in his cottage again.
But he did know the man before him had had the guts to stand up and stand down in the face of the unimaginable… and tell the truth.
And he knew he had the loyalty, and the utter belief of one man in another’s courage and essential ability to make the right choice, do the right thing.
And he knew that this friendship, growing stronger and ever more solid, was unmistakable and unshakable.
Sure, some things had changed. Forever. Irrevocably. Irreversibly.
But some things never would.
***the end***
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So real, so thorough, so full of love