Electric Dreams

168

An unusual event leads to a disturbing new prescience for one of our boys. Could this mean disaster for the safety of the other?

 

Originally published in the zine Venice Place Press Presents Stories by Sue David, an S&H Gen Zine, published in 2012.

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Starsky leaned against the side of the warehouse, heart still pounding from chasing two armed robbers this far. He and Hutch had cornered them; a dead-end alley and the loading dock their only avenues of escape. Hutch had taken the older one into custody and had him cuffed to the car. He was waiting there with him for the uniforms to come and take him away.

Starsky was waiting for the young skinny one to reappear.

He couldn’t have gone far. The alley was maybe half a block long before it dead-ended into the brick wall of the warehouse. A forklift was parked next to a big stack of empty pallets, and an industrial-sized dumpster, mostly full of construction waste, was set against the other side of the alley. Their perp had to be behind one or the other. There was no access into the warehouse itself; Starsky could see the outer doors were padlocked shut.

The radio crackled. “Starsk? You okay?”

“Fine. Still waiting for the yo-yo to swing back this way.”

Hutch chuckled. “Don’t be a hero. Just keep him pinned.”

“Billy, don’t be a hero, don’t be a fool with your li-i-ife,” Starsky sang back, grinning. “Don’t worry so much. I got a gun. In fact, I got two. Mine and his.”

In running from the liquor store robbery that had led to this situation, the younger of the two dropped his gun on the sidewalk. Starsky had smoothly grabbed it on the run, stuck it in his jacket pocket, and kept running without missing a beat.

“Maybe that wasn’t his only gun. buddy.”

“Aw, come on, Hutch. Punk like that? It’s only in movies that bad guys have sixteen weapons concealed on their persons.”

“Sometimes movies are based on true stories,” Hutch said darkly. “Just stand there, will you? Baker Six is supposed to be here any minute, and then I’ll come help you flush him out. Oh, and Starsk? Don’t sing.”

Starsky cheerfully made a suggestion he knew Hutch couldn’t have carried out even if he were inclined to do so, and continued his watch.

There was no sound and no sign of movement. Starsky was getting mighty bored and wondering what the hell was keeping Baker Six. He glanced at his watch. It had only been about ten minutes after all. Time was only dragging because he had nothing to do but watch an empty alley.

But then he heard the sound of the forklift starting. “Hutch!” he yelled into the radio, but loudly enough that Hutch, only about a hundred yards away with the car, should have heard him without it. “Asshole’s started the forklift!”

The cab of the forklift had been concealed from Starsky by the pile of empty pallets, and now he could see the skinny young one had gotten in and hot-wired it, or otherwise managed to start it and was coming toward him full tilt, with the front mechanism engaged and moving up. Starsky had no idea what the kid thought he was going to do—and in the moment that he caught a glimpse of the kid’s face, he figured he didn’t know that either—but the time of watching and waiting was obviously over.

“Stop!” Starsky roared over the sound of the machine. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

The kid kept coming and now Starsky couldn’t see his face. The forklift was roaring right at Starsky and he could either shoot, get out of the way, or get squashed. He chose the first two, throwing himself to one side and squeezing off several quick shots in the hope of wounding, not killing, the kid. He was only a boy, maybe fifteen at the most, and Starsky had killed one kid in his life. He didn’t want to repeat the experience.

But the forklift kept coming. Starsky had heard a couple of the bullets ping off the body of the machine and he didn’t know where the others had gone. He was a good shot, but it was hard to be accurate when you were also dodging heavy machinery.

Then the kid lost control and the mechanism snagged the power line leading from the building up to the main line stretched overhead. The force of the forklift’s movement dragged the building line so hard against the main line that it pulled both loose, and the live wire started flipping back and forth, spraying sparks everywhere. Starsky froze in horror.

As yet, the live wire hadn’t connected with the forklift, but if it kept flying around like that, it would. Or it would touch Starsky, who was only a few feet away and trapped in the alley, with the wire between him and safety.

Somewhere long ago he had read that if you were in a vehicle with rubber tires and a live wire was in contact with the vehicle, you’d be safe as long as you stayed inside. One foot on the ground and you’d be history. Starsky eyed the wire, squirming and twisting like a living thing, and the distance between him and the forklift. In two long running jumps, he made it to the side of the machine, and in another, he was on it. The kid was staring at the wire until Starsky jumped on the forklift, then he turned to him, clearly terrified.

“Don’t move,” Starsky said. “We’re safe in here, and my partner will get the power company to cut the juice to that so we can get out. But we gotta stay in here until then.” He reached for his radio, but he could already see Hutch, standing past the mouth of the alley, eyes wide and face as pale as death.

“I’m okay,” Starsky said into the radio, because the crackling of the wire and the distance between them would have drowned him out had he tried to call to Hutch without it. “Call and get somebody to kill that thing, will you?”

Hutch started to say something then the expression on his face showed he obviously realized what Starsky had—the radio was the only way they could communicate. He lifted it to his mouth. “How the hell did you get into this mess?”

“I’m talented,” Starsky said. “Call!”

Hutch nodded and Starsky watched for a minute as Hutch keyed the frequency into the radio that would contact him with headquarters.

Starsky turned back to the boy. “What’s your name, kid?”

“T-T-Tommy.”

“I’m Starsky. You’re in a lotta trouble, Tommy, but we’ll both get outta this with all our body parts if you just sit tight and face up to it, okay?”

Tommy stared at the wire and beyond it, to Hutch, who said into the radio, “They’re coming. Don’t move.”

“I know that,” Starsky said impatiently.

He may have known it, but the boy apparently didn’t. When Starsky looked away from him to glance at Hutch, the kid scrambled out the other side of the forklift and tried to escape. But just at that moment, the snapping wire flew into their direction and touched the forklift Starsky had to look away, though he couldn’t help hearing and smelling the sound of searing flesh as the kid’s foot made contact with the ground. He couldn’t help him. Touching Tommy would have killed him, too. Instantly.

“Jesus,” Hutch’s voice said weakly through the radio.

Starsky swallowed the bile in his throat as he glanced, finally, at Tommy. Smoke wafted gently from his shirt collar. “Ain’t pretty from here, either.”

“Don’t look,” Hutch said. “And get your ass into the seat. I don’t like the sight of you perched on the side like that.”

Starsky obeyed and now he couldn’t see Hutch. He said as much into the radio.

“Never mind. I’d rather you had a solid footing, buddy.”

“How long d’you think it’ll take?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s the other bad guy?”

“Baker Six had just arrived when you bellowed,” Hutch said. “They put him in their car. Waverly’s directing traffic now, to keep people away from here, and Dunlap’s guarding the bad guy.”

“Maybe you oughta call the meat wagon to give you something to do.”

“I’ve got something to do. I’m watching you to keep you in that forklift.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Starsky assured him. “I had a real good front-row seat for what happens to people who try that, remember?”

“So did I,” Hutch said, and there was a note in his voice that told Starsky just how upset he was. “One showing was enough. Don’t move.”

“I won’t,” Starsky said, though he had no intention of doing so in any case. But he knew the sound of his voice was what Hutch needed right now. He wished he could see his partner, but to do that he’d have to get back on the side of the forklift and Hutch would shit if he did that. So he stayed put. “What’s going on out there?”

“Zebra Nine has arrived and those guys are helping with traffic,” Hutch reported after a few moments, during which, Starsky assumed, he’d been in touch with the other officers over a different frequency. “Meat wagon’s on its way but it can’t retrieve the kid until after the power company does its thing.”

“And when will they get here?”

“They’ve been notified and they’re coming,” Hutch said. “You must leam patience, Grasshopper.”

Starsky chuckled. But just then the whipping power line took another arc toward him and he dove for the floor.

“Starsky!”

“I’m okay,” Starsky said, but his voice shook a bit. “Spooked me is all.”

“Shit,” Hutch said. “That’s gotta come to a stop. Hang on.” There were a few minutes of silence, then Hutch came back on. “They’re working on it now. Another few minutes, buddy.”

It was more than a few minutes. It was close to half an hour, but finally the wire went dead and still on the ground. Starsky was still afraid to move until he saw the power company truck arrive and men get out of it to repair the wire. When the first of them walked straight over to him, stepping over the wire now lying on the ground, Starsky felt safe getting out of the forklift.

“Pretty scary, huh?” the electrician asked, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the wire.

“I’ll say.”

“It’s okay now. You can tell your people to come and collect this poor kid.” The electrician peered through the cab of the forklift and shook his head at the sight of Tommy’s body. “Didn’t know enough to stay put?”

“We’d been chasing him for armed robbery,” Starsky said. “All he knew was he wanted to get away.” He turned toward the mouth of the alley, where Hutch was, and even though all they did right now was exchange a look, the profound relief on his partner’s face was almost physical in its intensity.

“I want you to get checked out by the paramedics,” Hutch said, grabbing his arm in a painfully tight grip.

“I’m fine. Didn’t even get a bump.”

“I’d feel better if you did.”

“I feel perfectly all right now,” Starsky said. “I’m okay. Really.”

Hutch turned to face him, holding on to both of his arms now, and peered into his eyes intently for several moments. Finally, he said, “You’re pale.”

“You’d be pale, too,” Starsky retorted.

“I suppose I would.”

“Come on,” Starsky said, pulling his arms free. “We got a ton of paperwork to do.”

The paperwork kept them busy late into the night, as well as an interrogation session with the surviving suspect and an extra load of paperwork they had to turn into IA over Tommy’s death. The coroner had already examined the boy and signed a death certificate listing “accidental electrocution” as the cause of death. But IA wouldn’t be satisfied until Starsky testified in a hearing. Procedures had to be followed.

Now both Starsky and Hutch were on a ten-day paid suspension while the investigation into Tommy’s death took place and the hearing was scheduled. But even Simonetti, as much as he disliked Starsky, had admitted that the hearing was only a formality. He wouldn’t have accepted Hutch’s word alone to support Starsky’s story, but Waverly had been within sight of the mouth of the alley, and he’d seen it, too.

“So we get a vacation,” Hutch said, forced cheerfulness in his tone, while they waited for their takeout Chinese on the way home about eleven that night.

“We get a vacation and Tommy gets a slab in the meat locker,” Starsky said.

Hutch wordlessly squeezed his shoulder. Their number was finally called and they picked up the sacks and started back out to the car. Once they were rolling. Hutch said, “C’mon, buddy. You couldn’t have done anything. The kid was spooked, and he’s the one who shot at the clerk in the liquor store. He was no angel.”

“I know, but it’s not up to us to decide who gets to live or die, no matter who they shot at or what they’ve done.”

“No, but you didn’t make him die. He jumped. It was his own doing.”

“Yeah.” Starsky felt Hutch’s eyes on him as he drove, but he deliberately didn’t make eye contact. Once they were home, he did his best to keep up some conversation over the dinner and movie they shared, but knew it wasn’t enough to satisfy his partner. Finally, the evening came to an end and Starsky shut Hutch down when he wanted to stay.

“You go home and get some real sleep, Hutch,” Starsky said. “Neither of us wants to sleep on that lumpy couch, and I’m not a baby. I’ll be okay. Really.”

Hutch leaned against the doorway, and even in the dim light Starsky could see the concern darkening his eyes, and it was another few moments before he sighed and said, “Okay. All right. I’ll go home. But if you need me, you call, and I don’t care what time it is. Got that?”

Starsky smiled weakly. “Got it. ‘Night, buddy.”

“‘Night.” Hutch shook his head as he went down the stairs to his own car, which he’d left at Starsky’s that morning when they went to work. Starsky knew what he was thinking as clearly as if Hutch had spoken aloud. His partner was worried that Starsky was taking the boy’s death too hard and wondering how long he’d linger in the sorrow of another lost young life. Starsky couldn’t help it. No matter how much evidence there was to the contrary, he believed that youth meant there was a chance of redemption. But it didn’t. Not always.

Starsky brushed his teeth and showered in brooding silence, not even in the mood for the radio or TV for background noise as he usually was. He crawled into bed and, feeling foolish, left the bathroom light on. Now that Hutch was gone, even though he had insisted he go, Starsky was wishing he’d let him stay. It would be nice to have another person nearby. Anything to distract him from the memory of Tommy’s death, which rose before his mind’s eye and refused to be banished.

It took a long time for Starsky to fall asleep, and when he did, his sleep was restless and disturbed. He woke several times, sweating, from dreams he couldn’t remember but which left him trembling and frightened for reasons he couldn’t have named.

He had finally fallen into a sound sleep when the phone awakened him. Groggy, he rolled over and answered it with an unintelligible grunt.

“Starsky.” It was Dobey. And he didn’t sound happy.

Wide-awake now, Starsky sat up, his heart thudding against his ribs. “Yeah, Cap?”

“I’ve got bad news, son.”

Something inside Starsky’s chest leaped and left him breathless and it was a moment before he could speak. Dobey only called him or Hutch “son” when it was very, very bad. “Yeah, Cap?”

There was a long silence. Finally, Dobey’s voice, quiet now, said, “There’s been an accident. Meet me at Memorial’s ER as quick as you can get here.”

“Hutch?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, my God.” Starsky was up and reaching for his jeans even before Dobey answered. “How bad is it, Cap?”

“Just hurry, Starsky.”

Starsky threw the phone toward the cradle without bothering to be sure it hung up and raced toward the door, pausing only to grab a shirt out of the closet and pull his Adidas on. He used both light and siren across town and squealed to a stop in front of the hospital in less than ten minutes. Leaving the light twirling on the roof, he ran inside and almost knocked Dobey over in his haste.

Dobey caught him by the arms and the look in his eyes terrified Starsky. “A semi ran a red light,” Dobey said softly. “He T-boned Hutch on the driver’s side. They did everything they could but, Starsky,” he paused and shook his head, “they don’t think he’s going to make it.”

Starsky’s eyes filled and he couldn’t speak.

“He… he doesn’t look good,” Dobey said sorrowfully.

“I don’t care! I want to see him!” Starsky found his voice and struggled to make Dobey release him.

“Okay, okay. Come on. They’re expecting you.” Dobey kept hold of Starsky’s arm and led him toward an examination room.

When they reached the door, Starsky hesitated before going inside. “Is he conscious?”

Dobey nodded. “Barely.”

“Coherent?”

“I think so.”

“Does he know?”

Dobey nodded again. “Yeah. He knows.”

Starsky straightened his shoulders, swiped at his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve, and went in.

Hutch was lying on an examining table, his face so bruised and battered that Starsky barely recognized him. A large white bandage was wound around his head and even from the doorway, Starsky could see that his skull had been horribly damaged on one side. Another bandage was around his chest, with a large bloody spot in front, where Hutch must have been thrown into the steering wheel. Starsky went to him and very gently picked up his hand.

“Hutch?”

Hutch’s eyes drifted open and though they were foggy with whatever pain medication they’d given him, the corners lifted ever so slightly. “S… Starsk.”

“I shoulda let ya stay.”

“I should’ve…looked.”

“Aw, Hutch.” Starsky’s eyes filled again and he couldn’t stop the tears this time.

“Hey.”

Starsky bit his lip and looked at Hutch again.

“Not… your fault. Love ya.”

“No, Hutch, don’t!”

But the eyes had closed and they stayed closed. Starsky sank to his knees and closed his eyes.

A ringing noise made him open them again and when he did, he was completely disoriented. He was lying down and sunshine was slanting through the window across the bed.

Did I pass out? Did they put me in a bed?

Starsky sat up and looked around. He was in his own bed, in his apartment. The ringing was the alarm clock. Dazed, he turned it off. And suddenly memory hit with the force of a blow.

Hutch!

Fresh tears stung his eyes, and he dropped his head in his hands, but when the phone rang, he pulled himself together, swallowed, and answered. Probably Dobey checking up on him. If he didn’t remember getting home, he’d probably scared his poor captain to death last night in the hospital.

“Yeah?”

“How ya doin’?”

“HUTCH?”

“Who were you expecting, Daffy Duck?”

“But…” Starsky batted his eyes and looked around his room again. “Oh, shit.”

“What? Are you all right?”

“I had the most vivid dream,” Starsky said. “Holy shit. You wouldn’t believe how vivid.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Hell, no. I’d rather pretend it never happened. But man, it was real.”

“When you get your act together, meet me at Memorial, will you? The PM on Tommy turned up something interesting that Dobey wants us to check out.”

“Mem-Memorial?”

“You know, the hospital downtown?”

“I know.” Starsky shook his head. He had to come back to real life. “Sure, okay, but we’re on suspension.”

“I know that. Dobey knows that. However, this could give us some ammo for that hearing, buddy. He had PCP in his system.”

Starsky whistled. “Shit. No wonder he was acting nuts.”

“Yeah. So get up, get dressed, and get your ass down there. We’re supposed to meet the M.E. at nine a.m.”

Starsky hung up and threw the covers back. And froze. He was fully dressed, in the clothes he’d been wearing in his dream.

“What the hell?” He reached back toward the phone, his hand trembling. He was so disoriented he had no idea if the phone call from Hutch was real or if he’d imagined it. “Please be there,” he muttered as he tried to dial Hutch’s number. Three times he had to hang up and start again. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he dialed one more time. The phone rang and rang, with no answer. Starsky hung up again, unsure what to think. He‘s on his way down there. He has to be.

Three steps from the bed. Starsky realized he was wearing his shoes. He hadn’t gone to bed with them on, but he was wearing them now. He shivered from the chill running up his back. “This is crazy,” he said out loud. “I’m going down there and he’ll be there.” He paused at the top of his stairs, closed the door, and leaned up against it. “I’m talking to myself now. Great.”

One of his neighbors was standing on the sidewalk beneath him. She looked up at him, turning her attention away from the tiny puff of white dog she had out on a leash. “Did you say something?” she asked.

Starsky smiled at her. “No, not really.”

He turned and darted down the stairs for the Torino. When he opened the door, he was surprised to see the Mars light on the front seat. The only reason it would be there was if Starsky had rushed to some location without Hutch in the shotgun seat to put it away when the call was finished. That hadn’t happened in a while, except in that vivid dream. Whatever was happening to him, he didn’t like it. As he pulled out onto the street, he flipped on the police radio, thinking he would call and ask dispatch to connect him with his partner. He went so far as to pushing the button on the mic before changing his mind. No. He ‘ll be there.

He made good time to the hospital, resisting the urge to put on the light and siren. Reasoning with himself the entire way, he still had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. He pulled into a parking space and headed for the emergency room entrance at a near trot. Construction around the emergency room meant Starsky had been forced to park around the corner in an auxiliary lot. He was so focused on getting inside that he wasn’t paying attention when he got out onto the side street. A horn blast snapped him back to the here and now with a start as he turned toward a rapidly approaching light-colored car and he put his hands out to shield himself. The car screeched to a halt inches from his legs and his hands slapped roughly down on the hood.

The driver’s eyes were as big as saucers and Starsky’s knees turned to rubber as he realized it was his partner. He opened his mouth to say something, but the trembling in his legs got the better of him and he dropped to the ground, landing hard on his seat. Hutch bolted out of the car.

“Starsky! Holy shit, are you okay?”

“Huh… Huh… Hutch?”

One of the men working on the end of the street saw and hollered to ask if they needed help. Starsky was shaking badly, but not really hurt. Hutch gave him a hand to his feet, and Starsky grabbed him tightly by the arms, allowing the solidness of his living partner to steady him and keep him upright.

“Are you hurt?” Hutch asked, looking at Starsky with a mixture of concern and confusion.

Starsky shook his head. He didn’t take his eyes off his partner. It wasn‘t real. Thank God, it wasn’t real. He stood there, hanging onto Hutch as if letting go would mean a drop into a bottomless pit. “You’re really okay.” Not a question. A statement.

“I’m okay? Dammit, Starsk. I could have killed you. Where was your head?”

Suddenly, Starsky felt foolish. He’d let a simple nightmare get the better of him. He shook off the fear, but he couldn’t quite shake the adrenaline. His heart was racing, his face had broken out in a cold sweat. A self-deprecating smile accompanied his reply. “Apparently up my ass. Sorry, Hutch.”

That at least got a laugh that wasn’t enough to completely dissipate the tension.

“I think he’s okay,” Hutch answered the man who had asked if they needed assistance. Hutch helped Starsky over to sit on the curb. “I’m going to park the car. See if you can’t just sit there and stay out of trouble for a minute, okay?”

“Yeah,” Starsky replied, and felt his face turn red in a burning blush.

Starsky had himself under control by the time Hutch plopped down next to him and put a hand on his knee. “You sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m sure. Man, what a stupid thing to do. I’m really sorry, Hutch.”

“Good thing I have those cat-like reflexes, huh?”

Starsky elbowed him in the ribs, unashamedly glad that his worst nightmare had been just that. His best friend was fine. Right beside him. Solid. “Good thing you drive such a pile.”

“That pile could have done some serious damage, buddy.”

“She is heavy. Not sleek like that pretty red car back there.”

“Uh-huh. Think you’re ready to get in there and meet with the M.E.?”

“Ready as I’m going to be.”

Hutch stood, turned around to face him, and put his hand out to help Starsky to his feet. “Let’s be sure we look both ways before we cross, now, sonny.”

Starsky slugged him on the arm and they started across to the hospital. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted to go first.

“I think you just took ten years off my life with that stunt,” Hutch said behind him. “At least I can keep an eye on you if you take point.”

“Don’t make me slug you for real.” Starsky said, still feeling shaken and allowing their familiar banter to help him start to feel normal again “At least you’re still alive to want to paste me.”

“I’m really okay, partner, and it isn’t your fault I was being stupid and careless.”

“No, but if you were hurt by me and my ‘pile’ your carelessness wouldn’t have done much to help me forgive myself.”

Trying to dissipate the remaining tension, Starsky said, “Ah, you just didn’t want me to bleed on the squash.”

Their conversation continued that way and a few minutes later they were in the hospital, being shown back to the morgue. The M.E.’s office had been using Memorial’s morgue for autopsies when they needed space and this was one of those times. The county morgue and his regular office were undergoing a long overdue renovation.

“Detectives,” he greeted them as they walked into the colder-than-most-people-could-tolerate room. They’d worked with Stewart Sharp many times.

“Doc. What do you have for us?”

Thankfully, the body was covered with a sheet. Starsky knew Hutch didn’t want to see the kid’s face again, and as for himself, he’d had enough of a view while it was happening. Standing next to it, he imagined he could smell the boy’s burning flesh like he had at the scene. He shivered visibly, drawing a concerned look from Hutch. He nodded to answer the silent question. Can you handle this?

Hutch turned back toward the doctor, and Starsky gave himself another mental shake as he tried to focus on what the doctor was saying.

“Test results. I already discussed this with Dobey, but I wanted to go over them with you and give you a copy of my report.” He gathered some papers and led them to a back table to review them.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Starsky. This poor kid was so hyped on PCP, you couldn’t have reasoned with him. Just dumb luck it went down that way.”

Starsky looked at the test results he was pointing to and replied, “Bad dumb luck. Those numbers on the right—”

“Those are his levels.” He pointed out several things. Starsky’s mouth dropped open and Hutch whistled softly.

“You think he’d been at it a while?” Hutch asked.

“I’ll know more in a few days, but I’m guessing no. I wonder if he got hold of something laced with something he wasn’t expecting.”

“Maybe,” Starsky said. “Maybe not. He might have done it on purpose. Sure paints a different picture if he didn’t know. Poor kid. He wasn’t acting crazy enough for me to think PCP.”

Sharp handed Starsky an envelope. “Prelim is in there. He didn’t have enough in his system to cause his behavior to be completely erratic, but it certainly impaired his judgment and made him jumpy.”

Starsky closed his eyes briefly and said, “I told him to stay put.”

“There was nothing you could have done, buddy. Nothing. Let it go.”

Starsky shot Hutch a look, and Hutch nodded back. “I know that’s easier said than done.”

“He’s right, Starsky. Dobey told me what happened. I know it doesn’t help, but try not to take it too hard.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

The doctor’s words helped a little, but Starsky wasn’t convinced yet. He would have to come to that in his own time, in his own way. They accepted the report and the doctor’s assurance that the inquest would be smooth sailing for them.

Starsky kept his silence all the way back to the parking lot. As they approached the Torino, Hutch reached into his pocket, pulled out a penny, and flipped it at his partner. Without an upward glance, Starsky snagged the penny from the air and started absently tossing it as they approached the Torino.

“You ever wonder what it would be like if our dreams became our reality and reality was really just dreams?”

Hutch chuckled. “I knew you were a million miles away. No, I don’t. Gimme my penny back, I’m not sure that was worth it.”

Starsky started to ramble. “No, really. What if we couldn’t tell the difference, which one was real? Or, what if making a decision to go this way,” he pointed down the street first in one direction, then the other, “or that way made all the difference to our reality? Shit, it probably does.” He knew he wasn’t making sense.

Both men leaned against the back of the Torino. “Must have been a pretty bad dream.”

Starsky tossed back the penny. “You Hutchinsons have a gift for understatement.” He was still disturbed by his dream and he knew Hutch could tell that it was where his mind was when he’d gotten into the LTD’s path. They knew each other so well, he was also sure Hutch could guess that dream was a nightmare about something horrible happening to him.

“We’re on administrative leave at least ’til tomorrow after the hearing. At least we’ll probably be out of the line of fire ’til then. How about we grab some breakfast, go see a movie maybe? Take your mind off that understated dream.”

“Sounds good. How about Goldstein’s Deli?”

“In the mood for latkes?”

“Yep. His aren’t as good as Ma’s, but they’re close.”

“Close, but a… potato?”

Starsky groaned. “Don’t give up your detective gig. Sammy Grovenor would be ashamed of that joke.”

“And I don’t even own a pornograph.”

***

Goldstein’s also had the advantage of being the opposite direction from anywhere Hutch might have had his car wreck if it had been real. Starsky’s superstitious nature wanted him far from the area, where he could still keep an eye on him. Hutch had offered to drive, but Starsky revealed more about the nature of his nightmare when he responded to that suggestion with a resounding, “NO!”

As the day passed, the anxiety-producing dream faded from Starsky’s thoughts. The black cloud around him was mostly for Tommy now, not the nightmare. A hard game of one-on-one basketball before they headed to Hutch’s apartment for dinner left Starsky both tired and in a much better mood. He stretched out on the couch while Hutch cooked. His partner’s alternating humming and soft singing while working on their meal lulled him to sleep before he knew what was happening. The smell of fire and someone shaking his shoulder woke him.

“Wake up, we have to go now!” the voice called.

He was so tired and everything hurt. Feverish and covered with sweat, he opened his eyes to see that he was in Hell. Vietnam. He was sick and wounded, but still mobile, and the medic hovering over him was trying to haul him to his feet. He’d been there before, in that field. Two helicopters were taking soldiers on board to evacuate them from the burning section of jungle, but their unit’s covering fire would hold the enemy off for only so long. Starsky came to enough to head toward the slightly closer helicopter on the left.

Even through his pain, Starsky realized this was a memory. He’d gotten on that helicopter and been taken to a MASH unit. Just before they reached it, something happened. Something that wasn’t a part of the memory. They were waved onto the other helicopter. The one on the left was full.

“This isn’t right,” Starsky muttered to his companion.

“Take it easy, soldier. We’ll get on the other chopper.”

“No!”

The medic was easily able to steer him to the other helicopter. Starsky was wounded and wasn’t able to offer any real resistance. That chopper was also almost full, but they squeezed on board.

“Hang on!” the medic ordered. A barely conscious Starsky watched as the medic tried to secure him, but their options in the full chopper were limited. When the helicopter came under heavy fire and started to tip wildly, the result was predictable. Black smoke poured in over the men, but it cleared enough for Starsky to see the ground rushing up to meet them. He felt a sharp piece of metal digging into his hand and he had enough time to scream before he died.

***

Hutch glanced over to the couch from time-to-time to check on Starsky. That he was dreaming was apparent, but the restlessness that seemed to be overtaking him made it increasingly obvious that it wasn’t a pleasant dream. The decision to wake him came just before he cried out, gasped as if in terrible pain, and then went completely silent. In all the years he’d known Starsky, Hutch had shaken him out of more than a few nightmares, most of which Starsky wouldn’t discuss. Somehow, this was different. This was downright frightening. He dropped the towel he was using to dry his hands and quickly crossed to the couch.

“Starsky!” he called. His friend’s skin was clammy and his face was beaded with sweat. Hutch gently shook his shoulder. “Hey, wake up, buddy.”

Starsky didn’t stir. He was so still, for one terrifying moment Hutch feared he wasn’t breathing. A quick check revealed he was breathing and he had a pulse. Hutch felt a little silly, but he was afraid whatever that dream was could have caused his friend to have a heart attack. His color was a bit ashen.

Hutch patted Starsky on the check first, then picked up his cold hand and tried to rub some warmth into his forearm in an effort to get his blood flowing. “You’re scaring me, Starsk. Please wake up.”

***

The first thing Starsky became aware of was blackness. A void. A buzzing sound started in his ears as he marveled at the thought that this was what dead felt like. He lay still for a long time before he realized two other things. Something damp was on his forehead and he heard a voice calling him. The voice sounded like it was far away, but it was definitely talking to him.

“Come on, babe. Come on back.”

Hutch. Hutch’s voice, calling him. What was Hutch doing in Vietnam? No, what was Hutch doing with him when he was in the void of death. The voice was calm, but edginess floated on the words.

***

Signs that Starsky might be waking encouraged Hutch. He kept talking to him and coaxing him.

“You don’t want me to have to call an ambulance, do you?”

Hutch had seen his share of unconscious people. Unfortunately, he’d seen his partner in that state on more occasions than he cared to recall. Starsky didn’t appear to be unconscious, but he was also not awake. The damp cloth seemed to be helping. Starsky stirred a little and reached up to bat Hutch’s hand away just before his eyes opened.

“You okay?”

Starsky stared at Hutch for several moments before answering, long enough that Hutch snapped his fingers at him to see if he’d blink. He did, and drew a long, shuddering breath. “Wow.”

“What?”

“I was back in ‘Nam,” Starsky said, swinging his legs around and sitting up. “Wounded. The medic was dragging me onto a chopper and we got shot down. Cut my hand…” He gestured with it and froze. There was a long red cut on his palm, already scabbing, but deep.

Hutch stared, too. “How’d you do that?”

“On the edge of the chopper—” Starsky slopped and raised widened eyes to Hutch. “That’s not possible.”

Hutch sank down on the throw rug and took Starsky’s hand in his to look at it. It was definitely a fresh wound. Without consulting each other, the two men then examined the sofa to see if there was a loose tack or anything that would explain the wound. There was nothing. “Got your pocket knife?” Hutch asked.

Starsky reached into his pocket and produced the penknife, closed, from deep within the pocket. He held it out wordlessly before replacing it.

Hutch rubbed his eyes. “Okay, this is weird.”

“No shit.”

Hutch sat there for another moment or two, and rose. “Come on. We have to take care of that.”

Starsky followed him to the bathroom, where Hutch cleaned and bandaged the palm. “I wonder if we ought to call Trev and have him stitch that up,” Hutch said.

“Nah. It’s not that bad. Besides, he’d ask me how I did it, and—” Starsky shrugged and met Hutch’s eyes.

“You have a point.” Hutch finished the job. “Let’s eat.” They ate in almost total silence, but when they were pouring themselves coffee, Hutch said, “What about that other dream?”

“What other dream?”

“Don’t give me that. You know damned well what other dream. What was it?”

Starsky sighed. “I’d rather not—”

“Tell me.”

Starsky sighed again, and told him. Hutch listened without comment, though his eyes widened a time or two, and at the end, he put his hand on Starsky’s shoulder and squeezed. “And I was wearing my shoes and the shirt from the dream when I woke up,” Starsky finished. “I didn’t go to bed like that. The shirt I had been wearing before I went to bed was hanging on a chair in the living room.”

“Sleepwalking?” Hutch suggested, but without much conviction.

“That could explain the shirt and shoes,” Starsky agreed, “even though I never sleepwalked before in my life. Nicky used to, sometimes. Doesn’t that run in families?”

Hutch nodded. “It’s odd for it to suddenly appear at your age, though. Usually it’s kids. And that wouldn’t explain your hand. I was right here all the time. You never moved.”

“So… what now?” Starsky said.

Hutch shrugged. “Beats me.”

“Me, too.”

“Was this dream something that really happened? Or was it like the other one, just something your fevered brain coughed up?” Hutch asked because Starsky never talked about ‘Nam much, other than occasional funny stories about the guys he’d served with there, or things they’d done on liberty. He didn’t talk about the fighting at all.

Starsky made a face at him. “I really did get wounded,” he said reluctantly. “And a medic did haul me onto a chopper. But we didn’t get shot down. That was different in the dream. Everything else was the same.”

“But you were worried about getting shot down? I mean, when it really happened?”

Starsky nodded. “Of course. The place was lousy with Viet Cong and we were under fire.”

“Maybe…” Hutch began, and then hesitated.

“What?”

“Well, these dreams you’ve had, you’re kind of, well, working out your fears, maybe,” Hutch said slowly, knowing Starsky would probably scoff at his psychobabble. “I mean, you worry about me, about something happening to me when you’re not around to help. I have the same worry about you. And then this one, you were in a bad spot and under fire and wounded, and in reality you got out okay, but you were afraid you wouldn’t, so in your dream you didn’t.” He paused and waited for Starsky’s eye roll. When it came, Hutch gave a weak grin. “I know what you’re thinking. But maybe your close call with the power line, and watching that kid die,” he shrugged, “sort of triggered all this.”

“Maybe,” Starsky said skeptically. “It’s not like I never had a close call before.”

Hutch sighed. “I’m just trying to figure this out. Trying to help.”

“I know,” Starsky said. “Sorry. But none of that explains this,” and he held up his bandaged hand.

“So we’re right back where we started.”

“Looks that way.”

***

In light of the dream and Starsky’s subsequent injury, Hutch insisted they spend the night under the same roof. That way, Hutch said, he’d be nearby if Starsky had another of the strange dreams and he could awaken him—or keep him safe if he started sleepwalking.

But the night passed uneventfully, and Starsky could recall no dreams when he woke up to Hutch’s alarm clock.

“I don’t get this,” Starsky said as he started coffee. He glanced at Hutch peering into his fridge and finding nothing for breakfast that they both liked.

“Maybe it was just a couple of bad dreams and that’s it,” Hutch said.

Starsky held up his hand with a quirked eyebrow.

“Okay, okay, you made your point,” Hutch said irritably. “Look, I gotta run down to the 7-Eleven and get some eggs and stuff or we won’t have any breakfast. Can you stay out of trouble for fifteen minutes?”

Starsky sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

Hutch reached for his jacket and felt his pocket, probably making sure his wallet was there. Just before he closed the door behind him, he turned back. “Starsk.”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry. I’m just… this is just….”

“Weird,” Starsky supplied. “I know. Go on.”

Hutch nodded and left.

Something was nagging at Starsky and he used the time alone while Hutch was at the store to try to figure out what it was. It was the same kind of feeling he got when he thought he’d forgotten to lock his door or turn off the stove. He sat down in the greenhouse with his coffee and tried to bring the thing to the surface of his thoughts.

Finally, just as he heard Hutch outside the door, it hit him. The medic. The medic in his dream. It hadn’t been the man from ‘Nam. The medic had been an officer in vice, Cal Perkins. Starsky and Hutch had worked with him briefly on a case a couple of months ago, a large drug buy gone bad in which two of the bad guys had been killed.

It probably doesn‘t mean anything. But what if it does?

***

By the time the ten-day suspension passed and the hearing was over—Starsky had been cleared of any wrongdoing, as they had known he would—both men were going a little stir-crazy. Starsky hadn’t had any more strange dreams, but the fear that he would was keeping him from sleeping well. He hoped that getting back to the job would alleviate that by making him tired enough to go to sleep and stay there.

“Zebra Three, detail to 2015 North Lexington on an armed robbery, man down.”

“10-4, control,” Hutch answered as Starsky hit the siren and aimed the Torino that way.

“Ambulance on the way?”

“Roger, Zebra Three. Complainant is Dan Wilkinson, owner.”

When they pulled up in front of the address—a small corner market—a crowd had already gathered. Wilkinson proved to be an overweight man with a beer belly and a two-day stubble, so upset he could barely be coherent.

The man down was a customer, and the ambulance wasn’t going to be necessary.

“Do you know him?” Hutch asked, indicating the dead man, who was face down with a bullet hole in the back of his head and lying in a puddle of blood.

Wilkinson shook his head. “No, not his name,” he said, his voice shaking. “He comes in here a lot. I think he must live or work in the neighborhood.”

Starsky had gone to the dead man and found a wallet in his hip pocket. Using a handkerchief, he gently eased it out of the man’s pocket and opened it. He stared in dismay at the license. “Hutch.”

Hutch turned at the tense note in his voice and in two strides, was beside him. “What?”

Starsky tipped the license to show him.

“Oh, damn,” Hutch said in a low voice. It was Cal Perkins. Hutch gripped Starsky’s shoulder for a moment, gently touched Perkins’ shoulder, and rose. “I need for you to calm down and tell me everything that happened,” he said to Wilkinson. “This man is a police officer, and it’s possible this wasn’t random.”

Wilkinson told Hutch that he always had a lot of business first thing in the morning with people going to work, coming in to buy newspapers or breakfast. The store had been as busy as always, and Perkins had come in. as he often did, to get a doughnut and coffee.

“Then these two guys came in,” Wilkinson said. “I’ve seen ’em once or twice, but they aren’t regulars. And they marched right up here to the counter and stuck a gun in my face and demanded my till. So I gave it to ’em, but that fella,” he glanced toward Perkins, “he yelled ‘freeze’ and reached under his jacket and this other fella I hadn’t even noticed, who was back there by the soda cooler, shot him, right in the back of the head.”

The ambulance had arrived and the attendants came in, but stopped when they realized the victim was dead. Starsky rose—he’d been squatting next to Perkins while Hutch interviewed Wilkinson—and pulled one aside to talk to him.

Hutch turned back to Wilkinson. “Can you describe these guys? Think you’d be able to pick them out of a mug book?”

“Maybe,” Wilkinson said uncertainly. “I didn’t get a good look at the one what shot that fella. I could maybe pick out the other two.”

“If you can identify any of them, we’ll do the rest,” Hutch said. “Can you come with us down to the station now? While it’s fresh in your mind?”

“What about my store?”

“It’s a crime scene, mister,” Starsky snarled from his position a few feet away. “You can’t just keep selling cigarettes!”

“Starsk,” Hutch said in a low voice. To Wilkinson, he said, “I am sorry, sir, but you’d have to be closed today anyway.”

Wilkinson went through the mug books and it took him all morning, but he finally spotted one of the robbers. It was Joe Mangan, a small-timer who’d already been busted and done stints in the joint half a dozen times for the same thing.

“Why don’t they keep these guys inside?‘ Starsky demanded bitterly.

“Easy, bud,” Hutch said, picking up the phone to call Records.

Mangan’s only known associates since his most recent release were his brother, Michael, and a former fellow inmate, Luis Mendez. Mendez was half Anglo, and looked it. Michael Mangan didn’t have a mug shot on file, and when Hutch located one for Mendez and showed it to Wilkinson, he nodded.

“That’s the other fellow that was up front at the counter,” he said.

They thanked Wilkinson and sent him home with a uniform and hit the streets to look for the Mangans. They couldn’t find any connection between them and Perkins, so they began to think he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Starsky was very pale and quiet, and at first Hutch put that down to seeing a brother officer shot dead. But when it had gone on for an hour, Hutch finally said, “Hey, Starsk. It’s part of the risk, part of the job.”

“It’s not that,” Starsky said. Hutch was glad he understood what he was getting at without an explanation, as always. “It’s that dream.”

“What dream?”

“The chopper,” Starsky said. He glanced at Hutch and gave a wan grin. “I know, you’re gonna think I’ve really lost it, but I realized that morning that the medic in the dream wasn’t the guy who hauled my ass outta the jungle in ‘Nam. It was Perkins.”

Hutch stared at him for several moments in silence. “It was?” he said at last, eyebrows on the rise.

Starsky nodded and turned back to the road. “Yeah. And we got shot down. And then Perkins really got shot down.”

“Coincidence,” Hutch said.

“Maybe.”

Hutch thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. “I think you’re just reacting to Perkins dying like that. Maybe the medic just reminded you of Perkins.”

“No,” Starsky said. “I’m telling you that it was Perkins. No doubt. I didn’t say anything about it then because I was already feeling weird enough.”

“That’s weird all right.”

***

As they drove on in silence, Starsky thought about the dreams he’d had lately, wondering what else they might predict. The first one had Hutch in a terrible accident, but it hadn’t come true. Now, he was worried about that again.

“Hey,” Hutch said, “it’s not going to happen.”

“What’s not?”

“Me. Dying in the horrible way I did in your dream.”

Starsky pulled over to the side of the road and parked. “Hutch, you don’t know that. What if my dreams are coming true?”

“You had the dream about ‘Nam after the one about me. I’m sure it was just anxiety.”

“Maybe I’m some kind of Uri Geller now.”

“Doesn’t he bend keys and fix watches and such?”

“Ha-ha. You know he’s a psychic. Maybe I should go talk to Joe.”

“Collandra?”

“No, Namath. Of course Collandra, dummy.”

Hutch started to chuckle. “I’m sure it’s nothing, buddy.”

Starsky decided right then that he would do exactly that. As soon as their shift was over, he’d swing by Joe’s diner and see what he had to say about it. Hutch had a date, so he’d have no trouble getting over there without his partner knowing. He also had another idea.

“Your car still missing?” he asked, a little too casually, as he pulled back into traffic.

“Starsky, let it rest.”

“No, really. Maybe we should drop it off at Merle’s. We can keep driving mine ’til you get it back.”

“Starsky, I’m not going to take my car to the shop because you think you might have had a premonition. What happened in that nightmare is not going to happen to me.”

“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

“I am. I’m also a detective and even if I wasn’t, I can read you like a book.”

Starsky smiled at him. He had a good point. “And what kind of book, huh? Something by Ian Fleming, maybe?”

“Mickey Spillane. Definitely.”

***

True to his plan, Starsky headed straight for the diner after work. Joe had his back to the door when he walked in, so he quietly walked toward the counter without saying anything.

As soon as the door opened, Joe froze. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said without turning to look at his customer. “I hope you’re just here for dinner. I’m retired. I told you that.”

Starsky smiled. “I just need some coffee. Cream and double sweet.”

Joe picked up the coffee pot and turned toward Starsky. He nodded toward a seat at the counter and Starsky took it. “1 should have just called you. Saved you the trip.”

Starsky knew better than to extend his hand to Joe. The man didn’t like to shake hands. He said it was an occupational hazard among psychics. Starsky nodded at him and smiled. “It’s been too long, Joe,” he said. “I don’t need anything important. Just an opinion.”

Joe kept his gaze on the dark coffee as he poured it into a chipped cup. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Did your partner ever find his varsity jacket?”

Starsky stared at him. “I won’t bother to ask you how you knew it was missing. Yes, he found it.”

The psychic poured himself a cup of coffee and came around the counter, motioning for Starsky to join him at a table. “Good.”

“Something important about that jacket?”

“Not yet.”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“I know.” Joe laughed. “That’s why I do it. A psychic’s gotta have some fun once in a while.” He gestured around their surroundings. “It’s not all fame and fortune, you know.”

Starsky was conflicted. Despite his determination to seek some sort of explanation for what was happening to him, he felt foolish. This is ridiculous, but I might as well ask him.

Joe remained quiet, while Starsky worked up enough nerve to begin. Since the two detectives met Joe on a kidnapping case, he had become a semi-regular stop on their rounds through their beat. They didn’t ask him to help them with their work, and they knew he appreciated that. They kept an eye on his place and their presence there afforded him a bit of safety he didn’t have before they’d met. Once in a while, he offered them a little unsolicited advice, and Starsky was sure he could tell that kind of thing wasn’t what was on his mind today.

“In case you were wondering,” Starsky started, unsure as to whether Joe ever really “wondered” about much, “Hutch doesn’t know I’m here.”

Joe nodded. “I know. I also know whatever it is you want is about you as much as it’s about him, but I don’t know exactly what it is.”

“Fine. I really don’t know where to start.”

“The beginning is usually a good spot.”

Without missing a beat, Starsky said, “I was born a middle-class Jewish child in New York.”

“Maybe a little more recent than that. I don’t have all night, you know. I’m closing early.”

Starsky drank a little more coffee, and then took a deep breath. “Something weird is happening to me. The short version is that I was in a strange situation on a case a while back and I got trapped by a live electrical wire for a while. I know this is gonna sound stupid, but… ever since I’ve been having dreams.”

Joe interrupted. “The precognitive type?”

“If that’s the kind where it comes true later, yeah. That kind.”

Joe whistled. “Hm. Ever have any like that before?”

“No… well, sometimes. Nothing like this, though. Nothing at all. These dreams aren’t exactly what happens, just kind of like what happens. 1 mean, the people in the dreams have things happen to them, and then they do. Not exactly, but sort of.”

“Helpful,” Joe chided. “You mean you dream about things that happen to real people you know, and then something does happen, only it’s not the same as in the dream.”

“Exactly. That ever happen to you?”

“You’re kidding, right? Don’t answer that, I can see that you are being serious. Like I told you a long time ago, for me it’s like a TV set inside my head and there’s no channel selector. Even in my dreams. Sometimes they do come true, but I can rarely tell which ones will and which ones won’t.”

Starsky frowned. “That’s not very helpful.”

“What do you want from me?” Joe asked. “I’m not some psychic psychiatrist.”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re not. I just… some of these things have been bad dreams about Hutch. Not all of them, but one was really bad. He died, Joe. Then, I had another one where this cop we know was in it, and he died. He did.”

“And you feel guilty because you didn’t do anything to stop it.”

“Yeah. But, it’s not like I really could have stopped it. The dream was way back in ‘Nam. Not now. I died in the dream, too. Guess it’s not true that if you die in your dreams you never wake up. I just didn’t make a connection to here and now. 1 still feel bad. Maybe I should have told him to watch it. I guess I just want to know if you think it could have anything to do with that electricity thing and if it’s ever going to go away.”

“And if I think anything bad is really going to happen to Hutch?”

“Yeah. That, too.”

Starsky reached into his pocket and pulled out a bandana that belonged to Hutch. His partner had left it in the Torino and Starsky hoped it would help prompt some answers from Joe.

“Please, Joe. I know it’s a lot to ask, but… please?”

Joe sighed. Starsky knew he hated doing things like this, but he prayed the hopeful look in his eyes would convince him. They had been good friends to him, keeping their word to protect his identity. He reached for the bandana. When he took it from Starsky, their hands briefly touched and he physically reacted as if flashes from that touch and the object he now held were flooding him with images. He closed his eyes and his eyebrows drew in toward each other. He put his head down and when he picked it up again, Starsky was concerned to see his pupils dilated and his face broken out in sweat. He wasn’t speaking, and that also worried Starsky. After a few moments staring up toward the ceiling, he dropped the bandana and put his head down again.

“Joe?” Starsky asked.

Collandra put his hand up for him to wait and took several deep breaths. He reached for some napkins, and turned the napkin dispenser over on the table because his hands were shaking so badly. Starsky forgot himself and reached across to squeeze his shoulder and Joe batted his hand away.

“Don’t touch me!” he growled.

Starsky put his hands up in surrender and apologized. “I forgot; I’m sorry. Please, Joe… what did you see?”

“Sorry. 1 just can’t. Sometimes—” Joe stopped speaking. His false starts and stops were obviously getting to him, and they were making Starsky anxious. He started again. “Look. You and your partner are intense. Many people are vacuous to a psychic, especially this one. But not you and Hutch. The two of you are too interconnected and it’s like you share the same space in my head. I can’t describe it better than that.”

“I think I get it. Just tell me if it’s bad, huh? Can you do that?”

“It’s jumbled, Starsky. You, him. that big red tomato. Between the gunfire and the car chases and the constant danger, there’s just too much to know. Some of it could even be just possibilities, or have nothing to do with you. I did get flashes of crunching metal and shattering glass. I just don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Crunching metal associated with his car or mine?”

“Both. I’m sorry I can’t give you anything more. If you’re asking me if he’s going to die, of course he is.”

“What!”

“Not today. I can’t tell you for sure how or when. My sense is it’s not any time soon. I didn’t pick up on that for either of you. Just lots of danger. Everyone dies; you know that. I can’t always tell.”

“Sorry. I guess seeing the future isn’t an exact science, is it?”

“Not by a long shot. I wish I could give you more, but that’s it.”

“Thanks. What about my dreams? Do you think it will ever go away?”

“Who knows? If you never really had many dreams like that before, maybe it will. Sometimes people are more in tune than other times. Even psychics. You must know that you and your partner have a psychic connection. That probably won’t ever stop, but the dreams? I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to wait and see. Do you pray?”

That took Starsky back a step. “Do I pray?”

“Yeah, do you pray?”

“Not as much as I should, I’ll bet, but sometimes.”

“I pray. Every day. I’ve prayed for the dreams and the visions to go away for most of my life. So far, no luck. I guess it just is what it is.”

That gave Starsky something to think about. He wasn’t looking at this new development as a gift and he began to see why Joe so obviously believed that his abilities were no prize from heaven. Knowing what was going to happen in the future was a burden. Starsky had always thought it would be good to know, but he didn’t like it. The uncertainty of whether a particular dream would hold out in fact was too stressful. Even if it had never worked for Joe, he would pray for it to stop.

“I guess it’s a little like knowing the end to a novel before you get through the first chapter, isn’t it?”

“Kind of. Not much fun at times. Maybe it’ll stop. Just be patient.”

Starsky thanked him and shared another cup of coffee with him talking about other things. He appreciated the time and didn’t want to rush off as soon as Joe had given him what he wanted, but his thoughts were on Hutch. When he left, Joe called to him as he reached the door.

“Hey, Starsky. Be careful, huh? You can get yourself in trouble trying to second-guess the future. Understand?”

“Yeah.” Starsky didn’t know what else to say. He walked out into the darkness.

***

Starsky knew Joe was right. He wondered if he could make things worse by trying to protect Hutch from what should be an unknown future. Doing that might make him overprotective and it could rob him of his edge. He was driving along, lost in thoughts of trying to talk himself into a place where he could back off a bit when the radio sounded.

“Come in, Zebra Three.”

Starsky often left the police radio on even when he was off duty. The background chatter sometimes yielded something he or Hutch needed. He picked up the mic.

“This is Zebra Three,” he answered.

“I have Captain Dobey on Tac-Two for you, Starsky.”

Starsky’s heart rate sped up immediately and his foot went down a little harder on the accelerator as he started to head toward Memorial Hospital, hoping he was wrong about why his boss was trying to reach him, but wanting to be on the way just in case.

“Starsky, where are you?”

“Out and about, Cap, what’s wrong?”

Dobey started, “I need you down at Memorial—”

“I’m on my way. Is it Hutch?”

“Yes, but he’s all right.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Starsky out.”

“Starsky?” Dobey’s voice called back through the radio. “Don’t come in hot. Everything’s fine.”

Starsky turned off the radio. He didn’t want to hear it. He was too busy navigating through traffic while reaching under Hutch’s seat for the light. He slapped it on the roof and switched on the siren. He’d cut it before he reached the hospital, but he wasn’t about to just drift in casually. What if Dobey wasn’t being honest with him? In that awful dream he had only gotten to spend a few moments with his best friend before death took him.

Dobey was waiting for him at the emergency room entrance, doing nothing to calm his fears.

“Where is he?” he demanded.

“He’s in x-ray, but he’s fine.”

“If he’s fine, what’s he doing in x-ray?”

Dobey steered Starsky out of the doorway to some chairs in the waiting room. He ordered him to sit, which did no good. Starsky was in more of a pacing than a sitting mood.

“He had an accident and the doc just wants a look at his hard head to be sure he’s really all right. Just a precaution.”

Starsky stopped pacing and said, “You swear he’s okay?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you about a thing like that. They let me see him for a few minutes. He told me to tell you to ‘cool it’ and he’d see you when they got done with him. He wasn’t too thrilled that he had to come in here, but he came. When he got here, he asked the staff to try reaching you on the radio, but you didn’t answer so they called me.”

Starsky sighed, seeing the truth in Dobey’s eyes. He sat down and threw his head back in relief. He was afraid to ask if the accident was similar to his dream, but he couldn’t help it.

“Did a semi run a red light by any chance?”

Dobey’s face showed both acceptance and incredulity. “Yeah. How?”

“Just tell me about it. Please, Cap.”

Dobey explained to him that Hutch was driving north on Juniper when a westbound truck ran the light at Playa Mar. The setting sun was in his face and he couldn’t see that the light was red. Fortunately, Hutch saw it coming and he floored it before the crash. The truck hit the back quarter panel and spun the heavy Ford through the intersection and into a light pole on the opposite side. The car was banged up and Hutch was knocked out, but only long enough to cause the witnesses to call for an ambulance. He was awake and coherent shortly after the paramedics and the fire department arrived.

“Hutch had a date tonight. What about Kathy? Was she with him?”

“No. He told me she’d called to say her flight was changed and he was on his way out to the airport to have dinner with her when it happened.”

“Damn,” Starsky said. He hadn’t told anyone about his dreams other than Hutch. He wasn’t about to tell Dobey, even though he could see that his boss was curious about his reaction, and apparent knowledge of details he should not have known.

“Are they going to let him go home?”

“I think so. Like I said, just a precaution.”

“Thanks, Cap. Why don’t you go on, I’m sure Edith and the kids are waiting for you.”

“That’s okay. I called Edith. She went ahead with dinner without me.”

“Really, I’ve got it. It’s dark already. You must have been here a while. I’ll take him home and make sure he’s okay.”

After several more rounds of “please go/I shouldn’t,” Dobey finally agreed. He told Starsky to call if he needed him and left him to wait. Starsky was grateful that he made no further attempts to find out what was bothering him. He needed to sort it out alone.

An hour after Dobey left, Starsky was asked to come back to the examining room where his partner was being treated. He took a deep breath before he walked in, and did his best to take the freaked out look off of his face first. When he walked in and found Hutch sitting up on the examining table, looking pretty good except for a rapidly blackening eye, and a bruise on the side of his head, he couldn’t help sighing with relief. During the hour he’d been waiting, he had noticed he was wearing the same clothes he had on that day that he and Hutch were here last. The day he was convinced by the realism of his dream that he’d lost his partner forever.

“Hey, buddy, you really okay?” he asked, almost shyly.

Hutch smiled at him. “Yeah, I’m fine. They’re out signing my forms. Can I hitch a ride?”

Starsky gave him a hug and stood back to really look at his face.

“You gotta ask? Dobey told me what happened.”

“And I can see from the freaked look on your face that this is a little too close to your dream for comfort.”

“You always were the master of understatement, partner.”

Hutch laughed at him. “I’m fine. I swear. The paramedics said it was just a precaution because I was out for a few minutes. I’m okay. Just scrambled my brains for a little while and gave me a big knock on my head.”

“You look terrific.” Hutch couldn’t know how terrible he had looked in the nightmare or that by comparison, he really looked great.

“To quote my best friend, “I bet I do.'”

The nurse came in carrying a clipboard and smiled reassuringly at Starsky. “See? He really is all right.” She handed the clipboard to Hutch. “Sign here,” she said, indicating the spot with the pen before handing it to him. “Your instructions are underneath. He doesn’t have a concussion,” she added to Starsky. “Doctor checked.”

Starsky was staring at her.

“I told her a curly-topped worrywart would be here to pick me up,” Hutch explained with a wicked grin as he signed the forms and took the instructions, folding them up and starting to put them in his pocket. But Starsky mutely held out his hand, and Hutch sighed and gave the papers to him.

“If you have a headache, take Tylenol, not aspirin,” she went on, “and Doctor would prefer you stay home from work tomorrow, but he won’t order you to.”

“He’ll stay home,” Starsky said firmly.

“Starsk—”

Starsky gave him a look and he sighed again but kept his mouth shut.

The nurse grinned. “You’ll probably want ice for that eye, too,” she said. “If I were you, I’d tell people they ought to see the other guy.”

Hutch chuckled. “I’ll do that.”

“You can have him back now,” she said to Starsky, which made Hutch laugh out loud, but Starsky never relaxed.

“Thanks,” was all he said, as he took Hutch by the arm to support him as they walked.

“Starsky, I can walk on my own.”

“Of course you can,” Starsky said, but he didn’t let go.

Starsky was glad Hutch allowed it, realizing his best friend could probably tell exactly how frightened he was by the trembling of his hand on his arm. Starsky steered him out to the Torino, loaded him in as carefully as if he were an expectant mother with pains a minute apart, and got in on the driver’s side.

“You haven’t eaten yet,” Starsky said. “I’m going to fix us both a steak.”

Hutch merely nodded.

“At my place,” Starsky added. “But you’re gonna take the bed.”

Hutch nodded again, and kept a straight face, despite how earnest Starsky was being.

“I know you think I’m a worrywart,” Starsky said, finally grinning. “Humor me.”

“Sure,” Hutch said. “I won’t turn down a steak dinner, especially cooked by somebody else.”

Starsky cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re laughing at me.”

“Not really… well,” Hutch amended when the right eyebrow joined the left, “maybe just a little bit.”

“It’s okay,” Starsky said, very carefully pulling out into the street after looking both ways several times. “I would be, too. Don’t mean I’m letting you off the hook, buddy boy.”

“I didn’t figure it did.”

After a big meal of steak, baked potatoes, and a salad Starsky let Hutch toss—after a lot of teasing that he didn’t want his partner to get dizzy pitching lettuce around—the two men settled down to watch some TV. Not much was on except a baseball game and the Dodgers were soon so far ahead that Hutch dozed off in his chair; less than an inning later Starsky started snoring on the couch.

Starsky crept up the alley behind the houses, and even from this distance, he could hear the crying and screaming coming from inside. Something large fell with a crash, and he winced at the sound. Hutch was out of sight on the other side of the house, covering the front and waiting for backup, but Starsky had run this way in hopes of finding a way in unnoticed by the occupants.

He saw the back door was open, only the screen door was closed, and he ran bent over until he was flattened against the back of the house. He heard the distinct and sickening sound of fist hitting flesh and another convulsive cry from the woman within. In one smooth movement, he yanked the screen open and threw himself into the house, landing on one knee, gun pointed directly at the back of the muscled man who had a much-younger woman by her long hair. He still had his hand drawn back in a fist.

“Freeze! Police! ” Starsky bellowed, praying that Hutch would hear THAT and come in. Hutch did, bursting through the front door a heartbeat later, his gun also trained on the couple, but the woman was between Hutch and the man and he wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot.

“Let her go. Now,” Hutch ordered in that low, deadly tone he used when he had reached the very end of his patience with a suspect.

“Fuck you,” the man snarled, and hit her again, so hard that blood sprayed from her nose and splattered on the tile floor between the couple and Starsky.

Starsky, so angry he could hear his own heartbeat, cocked his gun. “Do as my partner says,” he hissed, “and do it NOW.”

“This ain’t none of your business, asshole,” the man said. “‘s between me and this two-timing cunt.”

Starsky saw the shudder that ran over his partner as the ugly word pushed Hutch beyond his endurance, and braced himself.

Hutch launched himself toward the man, who shoved his wife between them. She fell, her head hitting the edge of the butcher-block table on the way down and opening another wound in the back of her head. Starsky threw himself into the fray but somehow the man got Hutch‘s gun, and it went off.

“Hutch!” Starsky cried out a warning and fired at the man, point-blank, dropping him in his tracks. Hutch rolled away, unharmed, and came to his hands and knees next to the woman.

“Starsk.”

That one word was all Starsky needed to hear. She was dead.

***

Hutch groaned as he awoke, his back and neck complaining about the cramped position he’d been in. A sound from Starsky made him look that way and he realized his partner was having another frightening dream. Starsky’s face was crumpled into a look of pain and anguish, and he thrashed in his sleep, his arms flailing, as he mumbled something unintelligible. Hutch forgot his aching back and scooted out of his chair onto his knees next to the couch. Gently stroking Starsky’s shoulder, he said, “Starsk. Buddy. Wake up. C’mon, babe, wake up now.”

It took a few moments, but finally Starsky’s eyes opened and he blinked blearily at Hutch. “Huh?”

“You were having a bad dream.”

“Jeez, I’ll say,” Starsky said, rubbing his eyes and struggling to a sitting position.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Starsky gave a one-shouldered shrug and sighed. “Domestic gone bad. We got there just about in time to push the guy over the edge and he killed her. ‘Stead of waiting for backup, I went charging in and you did, too, to help me, and in the scuffle, she hit her head on a table and died.”

“But it wasn’t real, Starsk.”

“I know,” Starsky said. “But you know I dreamed you’d have a car wreck and you did.”

Hutch didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“Want some coffee?” Starsky said, to break the silence.

“Sure. I’ll make it. Your coffee’s awful,” Hutch said, standing up.

“You ought to take it easy—”

“I’m fine,” Hutch insisted. “Find something more interesting than that,” he nodded toward the TV, “and I’ll be right back.”

Starsky flipped through the channels and finally landed on a local station showing an Elvis movie. Hutch loved Elvis, so Starsky left it there.

In the kitchen, Hutch heard the music and, true to form, recognized song and movie all at once. “Blue Hawaii?” he called.

“I guess,” Starsky said with a laugh. “It’s one of the Hawaii ones, anyway.”

“Terrific. Tell the King to hold on ’til I can get there.”

Starsky laughed again and dutifully said to the TV, “Hold it right there, E. Hutch is comin’ right back.”

Hutch came in and made himself comfortable. “This is my favorite,” he said.

“You say that about all of ’em,” Starsky snorted. “Even that one really bad one… um…”

“Kissin’ Cousins?”

Starsky shook his head.

“Speedway?”

“Huh-uh.”

“Girls, Girls, Girls?”

Starsky snickered. “Face it, buddy. They only had one script. They just changed the locations and wrote sort-of new songs.”

“Starsky,” Hutch said very earnestly, though his eyes danced, “what you see here is real American culture. I think you fail to appreciate its significance.”

“I think you’re right.” It was an old and joking argument, because Starsky liked Elvis movies, too. It was just so much fun to tease Hutch about it—Hutch, who knew about ballet and classical music and art, but loved the schmaltz of an Elvis movie even more.

***

Things were so quiet for the next two weeks that both men began to think the worst was over. Starsky had no more dreams, or at least no bad ones, and for a change nothing big was happening on their beat. Other than keeping an ear to the ground with their usual informants, and breaking up the occasional bar fight or answering a couple of robbery calls, they spent a lot of time just cruising.

“All the crooks go on holiday and forgot to invite us?” Starsky finally said one day when they’d been on the street for three hours without a call.

“Must have,” Hutch said. “Frankly, I’m bored. Maybe we could go encourage somebody to commit a crime so we’d have something to do.”

Starsky grinned. “We could look at it this way: we’re such terrific cops that the bad guys have concluded it just ain’t worth it.”

“Yeah!” Hutch exclaimed in mock excitement. “And Dobey will give us a huge raise and an extra week of vacation as a reward.”

“That’ll be the day,” Starsky said, rolling his eyes. “What say we stop for lunch? It’s almost time anyway.”

“Sure,” Hutch agreed. “Huggy’s? Joe’s? Where?”

Starsky opened his mouth to answer just as the radio beeped. “Zebra Three, report of a disturbance at 456 East Miller, respond code three.”

“Must be a hell of a disturbance,” Hutch remarked as he hit the siren and reached for the light.

“Domestic,” Starsky said, checking over his shoulder before making a U-turn.

“This is Zebra Three, we are responding,” Hutch said into the microphone.

The residential area was on the very edge of their beat, rundown houses that had seen better days years and years before. The house in question boasted a worn-out mattress half in the yard and half in the driveway, along with three rusted and obviously junk motorcycles and a pickup truck with a flat tire. Starsky stopped in the street and when he turned off the car, they could hear screaming from inside—at least two people.

The men glanced at each other and without exchanging a word, Hutch picked up the microphone again. “Control, we’re going to need backup.”

“Roger, Zebra Three,” the dispatcher replied. They could hear her calling Baker Six requesting assistance.

Starsky started to get out of the car.

“Hang on,” Hutch said. “Baker can’t be more than a couple of blocks away.”

“Somebody might be getting killed in there,” Starsky said. “Let’s at least get the lay of the land.”

Hutch sighed, but followed him. He snagged his sleeve as Starsky went past. “Approach with caution for a change, huh?”

“Sure,” Starsky said, checking his weapon. “You take the front. I’ll go around back.”

“Don’t go in,” Hutch insisted.

“I won’t. Not ’til Baker gets here,” Starsky said. He slithered around the overgrown side yard to the back porch while Hutch tried vainly to see into the front of the house. But the shades were drawn.

Starsky flattened himself against the side of the house and listened. He only heard two voices, a man shouting angrily and a woman crying and screaming. He couldn’t see in from his vantage point, either, because there were no windows on the back and a curtain covered the glass in the back door. He carefully moved forward a step or two and then heard the sound of something breaking. The woman’s screaming abruptly stopped.

“Police!” Starsky bellowed, afraid for her life. “Open up!”

“Fuck you!” the man bellowed back and just then the woman’s voice, broken now with gasping sobs, reached Starsky’s ears again.

Hoping desperately Baker Six would show up within a few seconds, Starsky shouted as loud as he could, “Come out or I’m cornin’ in!”

“I said fuck you!” the man yelled, and Starsky heard another crash and a strangled cry of pain from the woman.

“Hutch!” Starsky yelled. “NOW!”

He kicked in the door, which wasn’t very substantial, and threw himself to one side, knocking over a high chair and scattering baby food everywhere. Fortunately, the baby was nowhere to be seen. He landed in a crouch, gun pointed at the couple.

The man, a big, hairy specimen with an incongruous tattoo on his left bicep made up of a heart and entwined roses, had the woman’s long hair tangled around his hand so tightly that her head was thrown back at an unnatural and uncomfortable angle. Her mouth was swollen and bleeding and a healing black eye proved that this wasn’t the first time they’d fought.

“Let. Her. Go.” Starsky slowly stood, keeping his gun trained on the man.

“Ain’t none o’ your bidness,” the man growled, giving her hair a yank and a twist that made her cry out again.

“I’m a cop,” Starsky said levelly. “This is an assault. Let her go. NOW.”

Hutch appeared at the doorway leading into the living area, his gun also drawn and trained on the couple, but the woman was between him and the man and he wouldn’t be able to get off a clear shot. His eyes met Starsky’s just long enough for them to exchange a mutual warning to be careful. Hutch took a careful step forward.

The man drew the woman against him and put his free hand around her throat. “I’ll kill her. Take one more step, asshole.”

Hutch stopped, but he kept his gun in position. “I don’t think so, pal,” he said, his voice even colder and angrier than Starsky’s. “If you let go and come quietly, we might be able to call this an assault. You hurt her more, it’s aggravated assault and that’s a lot more years in the clink. Asshole.”

“My wife. My bidness,” the man growled again, this time kicking the woman with his knee in the kidney. Her knees buckled and she would have slid to the floor but for his grip on her hair. “This lyin’ cunt cheated on me.”

She didn’t look like she had enough spirit to cheat at Monopoly, Starsky thought, but at the sound of that word, Hutch’s face rapidly reddened and then paled and he launched himself at the couple. Starsky instantly followed and in the melee, he wasn’t sure which one of them hit the man with the butt of his gun, but it worked. The man howled and fell backward, hitting his head against the butcher block table and sliding to a seated position, stunned.

He took his wife down with him, but as soon as his grip relaxed, she scrambled free and half-crawled, half slid across the room to the hallway. “Don’t hurt him!” she begged, as Starsky grabbed one of the man’s arms and flipped him over onto his stomach. Hutch held him down with a knee on the back of his neck as Starsky slapped the cuffs on, a bit tighter than was strictly necessary.

Gasping for air, Starsky finally turned to the woman. “Don’t hurt him?” he demanded disbelievingly. “Are you outta your mind? Look what he did to you!”

“It’s just a fight,” she said sullenly, shoving her hair away from her face.

Starsky looked at Hutch, who sighed and shook his head. It was the same story they’d both heard many times before in similar situations. The woman never seemed to want to press charges and often even fought the police over arresting the man.

But this time both of them had witnessed the assault. It wouldn’t depend on her pressing charges. They could. And since he’d resisted arrest, they could tack that on, too.

Between them, Starsky and Hutch hauled the man to his feet just as they heard Baker Six’s siren outside.

“You missed it,” Hutch told the two officers as they entered, guns drawn. “But you can take this son-of-a-bitch down and book him for assault for us. We’ll be in later to do the paperwork. And call for a social worker to come take the pictures for us, will you?”

The officers nodded and took control of the man. After they left, Hutch got out his notebook. “Are you going to give us a statement?” he asked her, despite the fact that she wouldn’t.

By now, she’d gotten to her feet and was sitting at the table, dabbing at her bloody mouth with a paper towel Starsky had given her. She wouldn’t meet his eyes or answer him.

“At least your name?” Starsky sat across from her. “You can’t live like this, lady. Someday he’s gonna kill ya.”

She kept her head down and kept her silence.

The men exchanged another look. Hutch reached down and set the high chair back upright. “Where’s the baby?”

“At my mom’s,” the woman said, finally looking up. “She’s okay.”

“You want her to live like this, too?” Hutch demanded. “He’ll start in on her someday. And she’ll grow up thinking a man beating the hell out of his wife all the time is normal. So when she gets married, she’ll be in the very same boat you are.”

“We ain’t married,” she said. “Does that shock you. Officer?”

Hutch opened his mouth to answer, but stopped at the look on Starsky’s face. Now that she had started talking and looking at them, Starsky had finally gotten a good look at her face, or what was left of it. He was staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Starsk?” Hutch frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Huh?” Starsky seemed to shake off whatever it was and gave a shrug. “Nothin’.” He could see that Hutch didn’t believe it and he fully expected his partner to try to get it out of him later, but he let it pass, turning back toward the woman. “He called you his wife.”

She lifted one shoulder. “So? It ain’t legal. Baby’s not his, either.”

“So why do you stay?” Hutch asked, almost plaintively.

She lifted the shoulder again and went back to staring at the surface of the table. She refused to speak again.

The social worker arrived a half-hour later and Starsky and Hutch left. As soon as they were in the car and out of hearing, Hutch demanded to know why Starsky had been looking at the woman with that expression.

“That was her,” Starsky said. “From my last dream. Only this time she didn’t die.”

“You sure?”

Starsky nodded, and pulled out into the street. “Yeah. And I never saw her in person before today. So how’d I dream about her? Even the table was the same.”

“The table?”

“In the dream, she smacked her head against the table and died,” Starsky said. “It was the same table. Even including that ketchup stain on top.”

Hutch hadn’t noticed a stain, but he believed him. “Shit.”

“Really.”

“But this time, we were in time,” Hutch said.

“I didn’t know what was going on or recognize her until it was all over,” Starsky said. “Dreamin’ about her didn’t help me save her.”

“Maybe it did, on some level,” Hutch said. “You went in, didn’t you? Though you shouldn’t have until backup arrived. You know domestics can get ugly.”

Starsky gave a little shrug. “I s’pose. But it sounded like he was killing her. He might have, if we hadn’t gone in. If I hadn’t and you hadn’t followed me,” he amended.

“That’s what I mean. Something told you to go in anyway, and because you did, you kept him from killing her,” Hutch said.

Starsky glanced at him. “I guess you could look at it that way.”

Starsky didn’t have another dream that night, but that weekend he had a doozy. He dreamed of Tommy again, only this time he’d reached out and caught his hand as the boy left the forklift, and both of them had died. It was so vivid that Starsky’s hand still tingled when he awoke.

***

Hutch knew he was still having dreams by his dark-circled eyes, but any time he tried to talk to him about it, Starsky clammed up. He didn’t want to talk about it, even though Hutch was sure he thought of little else. Finally, Hutch had had enough.

“Look, buddy, this is eating you up,” Hutch said over grilled hamburgers one Saturday night. He had a date for later, but Starsky didn’t, and Hutch was seriously considering canceling his. Starsky looked awful, had for days, and always had an air of nervous anticipation that was clearly wearing on his health. “You gotta see somebody.”

“Not goin’ to a shrink,” Starsky muttered, giving his salad a nasty stab with his fork.

“No shrink,” Hutch said. “I was thinking of, well… Sulindi.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me.”

Sulindi worked with one of Huggy’s endless cousins, and had helped them out once before, much against her will. Hutch had had a mysterious illness that wouldn’t go away and stumped every doctor he and Starsky had consulted, but Sulindi had been persuaded—with great difficulty—to perform a healing ritual from her native land, and that had finally done the trick.

She was from Africa—no one had ever told Starsky and Hutch exactly where in Africa—and had learned and observed a lot of magic rituals growing up. While neither man liked to admit it, both felt she really did know something of what is unseen.

“Maybe she could advise you,” Hutch said lamely.

“And maybe she’d call the men with the butterfly nets.”

“Oh, come on, Starsk. She’s a nice lady. What would it hurt?”

Starsky sighed, gave up on his salad, and tossed his fork down on the table. “Okay. Okay. If Huggy will call her for me.”

Huggy would and did, and Sulindi met them at the Pits a few nights later. It was a slow night, and they had a whole corner of the place to themselves so no one could overhear them. Starsky told Sulindi his story, including the death of Tommy, and waited to hear what she had to say.

Sulindi leaned back and considered carefully. Her English was getting much better, but she often liked to pause before speaking to be sure she expressed what she really wanted to say. Her dark eyes rested on Starsky thoughtfully for so long he began to squirm.

“Strange,” she said at last. “I have heard of people who have prophetic dreams. Perhaps the experience of watching that boy die awakened some sixth sense you did not know you had?”

“I don’t want a sixth sense,” Starsky said plaintively.

She smiled. “It is both a curse and a blessing.”

“So what do I do with this?”

She shook her head. “I do not know. Perhaps you have served the purpose by saving that woman’s life, and soon you do not need the dreams any longer.” She reached over and patted his hand. “You save many lives in the course of your work, David. You should be proud.”

“That was no help at all,” Starsky complained to Hutch after Sulindi had left.

“Sorry,” Hutch said. “I thought it was worth a try.”

“Hey, Detectives!” Huggy called from across the bar. “Either of you know anything about lamps?”

They looked at each other blankly, and Hutch called back, “What the hell are you talking about, Hug?”

“Aw, this damned light back here over the register. Quit working. It was fine this afternoon. I can’t see to count out the drawer.”

Starsky got out of the booth. “I used to tinker around with that stuff,” he said, sliding behind the bar and peering over Huggy’s shoulder. “Light bulb burnt out?”

“I checked that,” Huggy said with barely concealed impatience.

Starsky grinned. “Okay, okay. Here, get outta the way, will ya?”

Huggy backed off and Starsky reached out to pick up the lamp. As he touched it, he got a nasty shock, enough to make his whole arm shriek in pain. He yelped and let go.

“Are you all right?” Huggy and Hutch asked in unison.

Starsky shook his arm with a grimace. “Yeah. Shocked me is all. Hug, I think it’s got a short. Pitch it and get a new one.”

“Thanks loads,” Huggy said sarcastically. “I coulda figured that out myself.”

“You asked for help,” Starsky said, rolling his eyes at Hutch, who grinned and didn’t even try to hide it.

Huggy finally took his drawer over to the pool table and counted it out by the Budweiser light. When he was finished preparing his deposit, he glanced over at the two men. “Well? Do I gotta throw your asses out?”

“We’re waiting to escort you and your take safely to your car,” Hutch said solemnly.

“I see,” Huggy zipped up the bag. “Then let’s go, huh? I don’t wanna spend the night here even if you do. Don’t y’all have to work in the mornin’?”

They did, but they were due to testify in court. They walked Huggy to his car and waved as he drove away before going their separate ways.

“Starsk?” Hutch said as he was unlocking his car. “Don’t have any dreams tonight, okay?”

“Sure,” Starsky said with what he hoped was a careless wave. “Unless they’re about me and Cheryl Tiegs. We were meant to be, if she’d only see it my way.”

Hutch chuckled. Somehow, bantering with Huggy had lifted Starsky’s spirits, at least.

And Starsky didn’t have any dreams that night, at least none that he remembered. Or the next night. Or the next. When two weeks had passed with nothing but pleasant or insignificant dreams, the dark circles finally faded and his energy level returned. Hutch spent a couple of days trying to figure out a way to broach the subject without setting his partner off—Starsky had been on a hair trigger for so long—and at last, he just said, “Had any dreams lately?”

“Yeah,” Starsky said. “Last night. Cheryl met me at the door after work wearing cellophane. That was a little weird, but I’m an easygoing guy, so I went along.”

Hutch laughed and almost choked on his bagel. “I meant,” he gasped, after Starsky pounded him on the back, “if you’d had any bad dreams. Buddy.”

“Oh,” Starsky said with feigned innocence. “Those. Nope. Not since, uh, let’s see, I think the last one was two or three weeks ago.” He was lying. He could pinpoint the exact day of the last dream.

Hutch knew his partner wasn’t letting on how deeply the dreams affected him so he wouldn’t worry. He narrowed his eyes. “When? And what was it?”

Starsky hesitated, but Hutch wasn’t going to let it go, so he caved. “The night before we met up with Sulindi at Huggy’s. It was Tommy again. But I haven’t had one since then.”

“The night you got shocked by the lamp.”

Starsky nodded and frowned at the speculative look in Hutch’s eyes. “So? What’s the lamp got to do with it?”

“Maybe nothing,” Hutch said. “Maybe a lot. The dreams started after all that electricity sparking around you when Tommy died. They stopped after you got shocked by Huggy’s lamp.”

“You think the electricity caused ’em?” Starsky shook his head. “Since when does electricity give a guy precognition?”

“I don’t know. But it’s the only common denominator.”

Hutch had a point. It was a weird point, but it was the only thing either of them had thought of to attempt an explanation. “Maybe you’re right,” Starsky said. As long as they don’t come back, I don’t really care why they left.”

“I still can’t figure how you wound up wearing those clothes after the first dream,” Hutch said. He frowned and was silent for several moments. “You say Nick sleepwalked?”

“Still does,” Starsky said. “Not too often, but every now and then. Ma told me he did it again last month when he lost his job and damned near knocked his fool head off falling down the stairs outside his apartment. Stress seems to bring it on—” He stopped and looked at Hutch.

“So, maybe stress brought it on in you,” Hutch said. “You could have been sleepwalking and put on those clothes and even gotten the Mars light out if you made it as far as your car. I’ve even heard of people cooking meals when they’re sleepwalking.”

Starsky chewed on his lower lip and finally nodded. “1 guess that could explain it. It sure was a vivid dream.”

“Maybe there wasn’t anything weird after all,” Hutch said. “An overactive imagination, a load of stress, and a family history of sleepwalking.”

“I guess.”

Hutch could tell that Starsky suddenly felt better. Nothing strange after all. Just sleepwalking. He grinned at Hutch and gathered up the garbage from their hurried breakfast. He wadded it up and aimed for the trash and when he tossed it, Hutch’s eye fell on the faint scar on the palm of his hand from the cut he’d had after the Vietnam dream. He glanced at Starsky who nodded slightly.

He’d seen it, too.