Hair-raising Day at the Office

Written for a twenty minute fic challenge: Starsky and Hutch interrogate a reprehensible suspect.

“Why did you hit your wife, Mr. Carpenter?” Hutch asked, eyeing the suspect, a skinny, punk kid of about twenty with a permanent sneer and slightly crossed eyes. Not anyone he’d ever assumed with find a wife in the first place, but there you are. Married, and an abuser–what a dandy combination.

“I wanted what a man wants, y’know?” He grimaced, glancing at Stansky across the interview table as if appealing for help from that corner.

Starsky was wearing his “convince me” face, intense blue eyes and hard mouth. Why Carpenter thoughtStarsky was the good cop this round was beyond Hutch.

“What does a man want?” Starsky repeated.

“Action, am I right?” Carpenter tried to raise his hands, apparently forgetting he was cuffed. Instead, he folded down three fingers, middle finger extended and fucked his left fist crudely. “What a wife is s’pposed to give her man, any time, any place.”

“Is that a law, Jimbo?” Starsky cocked his head.

Hutch would have laughed if they were anywhere else than the white walled interrogation room with Dobey listening in behind the two-way mirror.

“O’course! What, you some kind of commie, don’t read the Bible? You ignorant?” Carpenter taunted.

“Sergeant Starsky is neither ignorant nor a communist,” Hutch snapped. “I have read the Bible, and that’s not a law. You did break the law when you slammed her head into a wall and knocked her out. I’m asking you what provoked your rage?”

Starsky glanced at him as if applauding without a single change of expression. Hutch felt the praise down to his toes.

“Fucking bitch cut her hair.”

“That’s your excuse for beating her senseless?” Starsky asked incredulously.

“I grabbed her, t’pull her to bed,” Carpenter continued, clearly still sure he’d been in his rights to demand sex. “And she was wearin’ one of them wigs that’s only in the back, y’know? I seen her short hair, like some fucking lesbo.”

“You mean a fall?” Hutch raised his eyes to the ceiling. So many times, he wished he didn’t have to talk to the abusers. He’d have preferred to toss men like James Carpenter into a cell and throw away the key.

“She sure did fall, right on her ass,” he confirmed, with a snort of a laugh. “I tol’ her more than once that if she cut off all her hair, she leaves. I ain’t about t’have no girl on girl action in my house.”

“You think short hair turns her into a lesbian?” Hutch forced a calm on himself that he didn’t feel and exhaled. “James Carpenter, you are charged with felony assault, battery with a weapon and assorted more that your lawyer will discuss with you.”

He beckoned the impossibly young looking uniformed officer over. “Take him to his cell.”

“I ain’t done more than my congu-tu-tional rights as a husband!” Carpenter yelled as he was escorted out.

“How’d you know?” Starsky poked the button on the tape recorder to end the session.

“Know what?” Hutch needed goodness, cleansing just then. Unfortunate that Dobey could still be watching. He could read in Starsky’s eyes that they were biding their time until they got to Venice Place and could rip off their clothes. Probably a toss-up as to who took whom against the wall of the apartment first. Their favorite ritual after a rough day.

“About the wig thing. The name of it.” Starsky mimed pulling hair off the back of his head.

“A fall. Van did the same thing once,” Hutch explained. “Cut off all her hair, then wore a long fall with a headband. I liked her hair short. She didn’t. Told me never again.”

“That before or after the separation?”

“The day after we graduated from the Academy.” Hutch let his arm brush Starsky’s as they walked out together. “The day I chose you.”

FIN