It’s 1984, and Hutch is in Virginia, working as a consultant for the FBI’s Investigative Science Unit as a profiler. While he and Starsky had become lovers while Starsky recovered from Gunther’s hit and had been happy for a while, it all fell apart when Starsky decided to quit the force and move back to New York. In spite of Hutch’s heartache, they’ve managed to keep up a long-distance “friendship.” When Starsky calls to tell Hutch one of the children at the school he’s working at has been horribly murdered, there’s little Hutch can say to console him. But when a second child is killed in the same way and Starsky becomes a suspect, Hutch starts packing for New York.
Originally published in the zine When Lightning Strikes, published by Idiot Triplets Press in 2002.
The sequel to this story is Planes, Trains, & Torinos.
Archivist Note: Originally published in the zine When Lightning Strikes, This story was inspired by the classic SH VCR vid, I Remember LA by Tolbran, made sometime in the 1990’s. The vid, an example of constructed reality, portrays Hutch as having a different career in a different place. This required extra source material beyond the S&H TV show. The extra clips came from the TV show UNSUB, which aired on NBC from February 3 to April 14, 1989, starring David Soul. UNSUB (which stood for UNknown SUBject) focused on serial killers and the people who hunted them, but networks thought it was too dark a subject matter. Only 8 episodes ever aired. UNSUB is available as part of Prime Time Crime: The Stephen J. Cannell Collection available through Amazon.
At the time it was made, Tolbran’s vid was one of the few sad SH vids that depicted the partnership ending. At this time (August 2015) the vid is not available online.
Flamingo
I remember L.A….
Ken Hutchinson stared out of his window into the early morning mist that was blanketing Stafford, Virginia. His coffee mug was one of the old ones, a chipped, battered reminder of his days in L.A., the police department logo emblazoned on the side, but the Columbian inside it tasted much better than the swill he’d swallowed then.
He stared at it for a moment, remembering those days and how good they had felt. And then he looked up to see himself as he was now, five years later. It was 1984, and the world seemed to have changed a great deal, as had he. The mustache he had sported was gone, and there was even less of the blond hair that Starsk always used to tease him about.
‘Blondie’. He smiled; the pain of it still resounded, but dimmer, less of a knife wound and more like a broken bone. If he was thinner, it was only due to the fact that he rarely took the time to eat, and the gym wasn’t something he had to go to religiously anyway. No more being on the streets, chasing crooks, for Hutch.
If only my father could see me now, he thought, dressed in a navy Brooks Brothers suit, tie, white shirt, French cuffs. He was one of the better dressed members of the Investigative Science Unit, and it irked the FBI guys there. After all, Hutch was only a consultant, not really one of them. Though they had tried, really they had. He just wasn’t prepared to go there yet, to become one of the Establishment that he and Starsky had fought for so long.
Glancing at his watch, he dumped his coffee mug in the sink and went for his raincoat, a serviceable black London Fog. The only other affectation he seemed to have developed in the sometimes frigid climes of the eastern seaboard was a hat — a fedora, in a soft, black felt.
He still didn’t waste any money on cars, but Howard had convinced him that breaking down in Virginia or Washington was too expensive a proposition to even consider, accompanying that with enough suitable horror stories that Hutch finally acquiesced and bought a late model LTD. He liked big cars, liked the roominess of them, even though he didn’t have to worry about fitting his tall frame into the back seat anymore. Or Starsky’s.
He shook his head, willing himself to forget, at least for the next five minutes, that he had ever had a life before this apartment and his work with the ISU.
His current offices were located at the National Academy of the FBI, in the basement sixty feet below ground level. ‘We’re ten times lower than dead people,’ his boss, Howard Tarsa, had told him when Hutch had been given the tour.
When the former L.A. cop had been invited to work with them on a consultant basis, he’d been drawn to the new and intriguing work that Tarsa had been pioneering in the Behavioral Sciences Unit. At first, Hutch was just a speaker and counselor for the 110th National Academy Session. It was a tough program: 11 weeks for senior and accomplished law enforcement officials from around the nation and the world to learn the latest investigative techniques. They trained alongside the actual FBI students: agents wore blue shirts, while the National Academy guys wore red.
Howard, who had been the head of the Behavioral Science Unit then, was impressed by Hutch and had asked him if he wanted to be a part of his team. Unwilling to become an agent, but longing to leave the pain of being on the streets without his partner, the blond had joined, but again, only as a consultant. J. Edgar Hoover was long gone, and the idea of a consultant wasn’t as frowned upon as it had been during his long and tyrannical reign.
At first it was lots of hostage negotiations, something that Hutch had had success with in the past. But it wasn’t what he wanted to do. Soon after, the BSU became the Investigative Science Unit and fell under the jurisdiction of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. A more psychological aspect was being placed on the concept of crime and, especially, serial killers. And then, it got interesting.
At one time, at his father’s urging, Hutch had studied in college with the idea of going to medical school. He was less than interested in the biology and chemistry required, but the psychology had fascinated him, and he finally graduated with a degree, focusing specifically on Abnormal Psychology. It had come in remarkably handy chasing down the more wild criminals that he and Starsk had brought down. Too damn many to count and he didn’t want to remember any of them.
It wasn’t a long drive and he was at Quantico fairly quickly, his wipers doing little to move away the incessant mist that was falling, giving everything a gray, dull cast on this autumn morning. He had a teaching session to give this morning, and he found his way past the gates after showing his I.D., signed in, took the elevator down, dropped his coat and, nodding at some of the guys, went back upstairs to the auditorium where he’d be speaking.
In the next half hour about a hundred men rolled in, some agents, some academy. Hutch’s lecture had become mandatory soon after Howard had changed the focus of what the group was doing. Hutch took pride in the fact that it was one of the most popular and that guys came back to sit in again.
The only problem with that was that Ken Hutchinson hated speaking in public. The first time he’d told Starsky, his partner had laughed and laughed, the sound coming through loud and clear over the phone.
“Aw, c’mon, Hutch. It’s nothing. You’ll be so smooth and slick they won’t know what hit ’em.”
With those words still in his ears, the former detective cleared his throat, moved up to the microphone at the front of the auditorium and started to speak.
“When I first started at the FBI, I was interviewing incarcerated killers for an in-depth study that was currently going on. I’d sit in a circle of violent offenders in the Maryland State Pen in Baltimore and talk about what they did, why, how. I’d gotten to speak with a cop-killer, a child killer, drug dealers, and enforcers, but I really wanted to interview a rapist-murderer about his m.o. So I asked the guys if they knew of one I’d want to talk to. They suggested Charlie Davis.”
The room was silent, listening intently.
“One of the guys went and asked him if he wanted to join the circle, and he did. Great, I’m thinking. But then I realize that I don’t have any prior information on this Davis. Usually, when we do these interviews, we pull every piece of paper there is: police files, crime scene photos, autopsy protocols, trial transcripts — anything that might shed a little light on what makes the guy tick. I realize I’m going to have to use what he tells me to figure him out.
“Davis was huge, a big, hulking guy, about 6’5”, in his early thirties, clean-shaven, well-groomed. The last guy you’d want to meet at the end of a dark alley. I said, ‘You have me at a disadvantage, Charlie. I don’t know what you did to get here.’
“He said, ‘I killed five people.'”
Hutch let that settle into the minds of the people around him before continuing.
“I asked him to describe the crime scenes and what he did with his victims. It turns out that Davis had been a part-time ambulance driver. He’d strangle the woman, place her body by the side of a highway in his territory, make an anonymous call, then respond to the call and pick up the body. No one knew that when he was putting the victim on the stretcher, the killer was right there. The control and orchestration was what really turned him on and gave him his biggest thrill.
“The strangling told me he was a spur-of-the-moment killer, that the primary thing on his mind had not been rape and murder, but was in essence thumbing his nose at the police.”
The heads around Hutch nodded in agreement.
“I said, ‘You’re a real police buff. You’d love to be a cop yourself, to be in a position of power.’ He laughed, and said his father had been a police lieutenant.
“I asked him about his m.o. He would follow a good-looking young woman, see her pull into the parking lot of a restaurant or store. Through his father’s police contacts, he’d be able to run a license plate check on the car. Then, when he had the owner’s name, he’d call the restaurant, shop, theater, whatever… and have her paged, that she’d left her lights on. When she’d come outside, he’d abduct her, push her into his car or hers, handcuff her, then drive off.”
Hutch cleared his throat and went on. He had loathed Davis with a passion when the interview was finally over.
“He described each of his five kills in order. When he got to the last one, he mentioned that he covered her over in the front seat of the car, a detail he remembered for the first time.”
Hutch started to move across the auditorium, the rapt faces before him telling him he had woven the opening of his lecture well.
“I decided to turn this around a little. ‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘let me tell you a little about yourself. You had problems with women. You were in a rut, no real money coming in when you did your first kill. You were in your late twenties, and sure that you were smarter, more capable, than what you were doing. Everything in your life was frustrating, out of your control.’
“He nodded at me.
“‘You were drinking a lot,’ I continued. ‘You owed money. Probably having fights with the woman you lived with.’ He hadn’t said anything about living with anyone, but I felt pretty sure about that. ‘And the nights when the fights were the worst, you’d go out and hunt. You couldn’t go after the woman you wanted to hit, so you hit somebody else.'”
The group in front of Hutch seemed to be barely breathing. There was no rustling of paper, no bored shifting of legs or arms.
“Davis’ body language is starting to loosen up, which tells me I’m on the right track. ‘But this last one, she was different. You let her get dressed again after you raped her. You covered her up. You didn’t do that with the previous four. You didn’t feel good about this one. Why?’
“Suddenly, he gets red as a beet. In his mind, he’s back at the scene. He told me that the woman had said her husband was sick, very ill, maybe dying.” Hutch shrugged. “It could have been quick thinking on her part, but there’s no way to know that at the moment. Clearly, it had bothered Davis.
“He hadn’t disguised himself, so he had to kill her.
“I waited a few minutes and then asked, ‘You took something from her, didn’t you?’
“He nodded again and admitted he went into her wallet. He took out a photograph of her and her husband and child and kept it.”
Hutch let that sink in for a while, letting the image he was painting become clearer in his listeners’ minds.
“I’d never met this guy before, but I was getting the picture. ‘You went to the grave site, Charlie. You went because you didn’t feel good about this one. And you brought something to the cemetery and you put it right there on the grave.’
“The other prisoners were completely silent, listening as quietly as you are now. ‘You brought that picture, didn’t you?’ I asked.
“He nodded again and hung his head.”
Hutch kept walking, shaking his head at the admiring smiles he received and the smattering of applause. “It wasn’t witchcraft. Most of it was educated guesses, based on a lot of background and research and experience.” And then he started the real lecture.
“Behavior reflects personality.
“One of the reasons our work is even necessary has to do with the changing nature of violent crime itself.” He waved his hand toward the group. “We all know about the drug-related murders, the gun crimes that have become everyday occurrences. It used to be that most crime, particularly most violent crime, happened between people who in some way knew each other.
“We’re not seeing that as much any more, are we?”
Heads nodded, a number of older faces showing disgust and irritation at the fact.
“A new type of violent criminal has surfaced in recent years, the serial offender, who often doesn’t stop until he is caught or killed, who learns by experience and who tends to get better and better at what he does, constantly perfecting his scenario from one crime to the next.
“Serial killers and rapists also tend to be the most bewildering, personally disturbing, and most difficult to catch of all violent criminals. This is, in part, because they tend to be motivated by far more complex factors than the basic ones I’ve discussed. This, in turn, makes their patterns more confusing and distances them from such other normal feelings as compassion, guilt or remorse.”
He waited a moment before he hit them with his own first rule of serial criminals.
“Sometimes, the only way to catch them is to learn how to think like they do….”
It had been a good lecture and he’d had a number of interesting questions at the end, which had extended the class another hour; afterwards, Hutch went back to his office. He’d been given the space just recently, another attempt by Howard to coerce him into becoming an agent. His persistence made the younger man smile.
Hutch slipped off his suit jacket, slightly loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. While he had to dress this way, he didn’t like it much. The suit was far too confining for his taste.
Then again, he wouldn’t be chasing anybody, so it hardly mattered.
He was also the only consultant who was allowed to carry a weapon. It hadn’t always been that way; one night, after a particularly bad hostage negotiation, he and Howard had vented steam at the range. Hutch had easily outshot the 25-year FBI vet.
The older man had narrowed his pewter eyes, his brow collapsing in irritation. “Well, hell, Hutchinson, if you can shoot that well, the damn thing shouldn’t be in a drawer!”
Hutch had tried to protest, but Howard was adamant. Which was okay; he’d felt naked and oddly unsure without the Magnum’s heavy weight resting against his side. It also meant his suits needed to be re-tailored, but that was a small price to pay for the comfort of having it back again.
The blond had made the mistake of relating the story to Starsky. He knew the minute the words were out of his mouth that he’d screwed up.
“Wait a minute,” the dark, slow tones replied, and then flattened out into a sibilant whisper, “Are you telling me you haven’t been wearing a gun?”
“I’m more likely to die from a paper cut, Starsky,” Hutch had told him, chuckling in an attempt to defuse the anger coming across the phone line. “I don’t go in the field except to check out a homicide.”
He’d been treated to almost fifteen minutes of abuse for his stupidity, and his former partner was still huffing about it a week later, he remembered as he left his office to get some coffee.
“Well, do you wear a gun?” Hutch had finally snapped.
“Sure; just so the kids can play with it and blow their heads off! I’m not working for the FBI, blondie, remember? I’m not hunting serial killers!”
He’d endured another Starsky lecture silently; in his heart it felt good to know that he mattered so much, after everything that had happened between them.
The memory broke apart when Bob Rice stuck his auburn head into Hutch’s field of vision. “Hey, you in there? You’ve been staring at that coffee like it’s got the answer to life.”
The consultant smiled. “Sorry, Bob. Just thinking.”
“Guess so; I can smell the smoke.”
Hutch shook his head, jostled the other man’s arm as he reached for the pot of coffee, and headed back to his office. He had at least a dozen cases to work on.
That night, Howard tapped on his door, jerking Hutch’s attention away from the rape-murder he’d been working on. Photos were strewn across his desk, along with files and more paper.
Howard Tarsa was in his late fifties. He wasn’t a big man, standing at about 5’7″, but his former life in the military definitely had stuck. He still wore his hair in a crew cut, and his face was worn, shot through with worry and laugh lines around his forehead and mouth. He was a judo master, something that had surprised Hutch when he’d learned of it. There was no giveaway in his body; though strong, he didn’t look all that threatening.
That was, until you looked at his eyes. They were a translucent pewter, and could be as hard as a snake’s when you pissed it off. There was a former killer inside those eyes, a Marine who may have left the service, but it had never left him.
“Call it a night, kid,” Howard urged, pulling on his coat. “We’ll go get some dinner.”
Hutch glanced at his watch and was startled when it registered nine p.m. His stomach chose that moment to gurgle complainingly at him and he frowned. He was sure if he just stared at these picture a while longer, he’d have it, that elusive key to this particular perp’s motivation. Without that, there was no way he could profile this crime, and perhaps, prevent another woman from dying.
“Now, Hutchinson,” Tarsa growled.
Sighing, he obeyed. “You were a drill instructor once, weren’t you?”
Howard just flashed teeth at him in a wolf’s head grin. “Trying to profile me now, kid?”
Hutch hated ‘kid’. And he’d made the mistake of letting it show. Now he was stuck with it. Starsky had nearly fallen off his chair laughing when he’d heard that, if the thud on the other end of the phone could be believed. He shook his head. “I’m going to break you out of that one of these days, Howard.”
“Sure, kid, sure,” the older man replied, and Hutch ground his teeth and let it go. Closing the files and locking the photos up in his desk, he grabbed his jacket and coat.
He wondered if Tarsa knew why his consultant chose to keep to himself for the most part and decided that he must have gone through his police history with a fine-tooth comb before bringing him on. He’d talked to Dobey; that much his former Captain had told him. With a pang, he realized he hadn’t called Dobey in a while. Too long a while. He’d do that tomorrow, he promised himself, and trotted to catch up to Howard.
~*~*~*~
Seems a lifetime ago….
The nights were the worst.
Hutch leaned back against the arm of the couch in his apartment and sipped his drink. Attachment to alcohol was rife within the unit; controlled, for the most part, but it was there. He was no exception.
Unable to sleep, his mind still whirring with the events of the day, and the other, unspoken pain, he found some solace in the amber depths, but not much. It could only deaden some of it; the incessant shrieking of his brain while it attempted to piece together the assorted bits of information to give a picture, a face, to the latest case that was sitting on his chest.
And then, even worse, were the memories that would ambush him if he drank too much. It was a fine line: enough to let him sleep, or too much, which could keep him awake all night.
Starsky’s face was often with him during the long nights. His partner’s smile, the way he could move, touch….
Soon after Starsky’s shooting and near death, they had become lovers. For his part, he had been desperate to know that his best friend, the man he loved, was well and with him. Not the best motives, but they had been in love for so long and hadn’t acted on it; there was no reason, no sense, to wait any more. There was too good a chance that the future that Hutch dreamt of wouldn’t happen.
And it hadn’t, though not quite the way he’d thought.
Through his partner’s recuperation, they’d been happy, or at least, Hutch had thought so. Neither of them had ever been with another man, so it was a laughing, searingly hot learning process. Every day, Starsky grew stronger, the wan look to his face, the hospital thinness, starting to give way to health.
Six months to capture a lifetime of happiness.
It wasn’t until Starsky had returned to duty on a limited basis that their lives started to fall apart, the pieces separating from one another as though there was no glue on the planet that could keep them together.
Even love.
While the doctors said that Starsky might never recapture his former physical strength, Hutch refused to believe that. But more importantly, even on limited duty, it soon became apparent that Starsky didn’t want to be on the streets any more. He was impatient and uncaring, in turns, irritable and sarcastic, harsh and difficult for anyone, even Hutch, to deal with.
Hutch didn’t care about that; he thought it was to be expected. Starsky had nearly died; the blond thought he needed to get it out, the anger, the pain, the rage, and more importantly, the fear. The dark haired man refused. They fought about it. In the beginning, Hutch won, winning little concessions, probably because Starsky wanted him to win.
And then, abruptly, he’d stopped fighting.
Out of the blue one day, he said he was going back to New York to visit his mother. Hutch had grinned; it would be a good vacation for them, he had thought.
But Starsky didn’t want him to go, said he needed some time to think. Hurt, Hutch tried to understand and to give his lover the space he seemed to need. With a dull and worried heart, Hutch had taken him to the airport.
Three weeks passed; phone calls lessened, trickled and then stopped.
Dobey’s grim face was all that Hutch could remember of that period. He couldn’t even remember what cases he had worked — it was all a dull blur, capped by Starsky’s written resignation sitting on his Captain’s desk.
‘He called me,’ Dobey had said, as grim and unhappy as Hutch could ever remember seeing him. ‘Told me to expect it, that he couldn’t do it anymore, didn’t want to do it anymore.’
Hutch’s response had been furious and hard. His right hand was still in a cast when he’d flown out to New York later that day.
At first, Starsky had told him that his mom was getting older and needed one of her sons there with her. After all, it wasn’t like Nicky was dependable. Considering she was out playing Bingo at the moment, Hutch wasn’t too sure how much he believed that.
And then Starsk had said that he didn’t want it anymore. Any of it. That after nearly dying, he wanted more than the probability of dying on the streets one day. And that had hurt. At first, he hadn’t believed it and tried to cajole Starsky into changing his mind. But the cold, hard man that responded was not his lover, or even his partner.
They fought… and fought again, but Starsky would not change his mind. He adamantly refused to go back to L.A. and just as staunchly insisted that Hutch couldn’t stay with him. They had to make do with what they had now, after Gunther had done his best to destroy them.
It was a shrunken, broken man who got back on the plane to L.A. three days later.
Alone.
The profiler loosened his grip on the empty glass in his hand before it fractured, and got up to take a shower, hoping it would loosen both the headache and the knot around his heart.
~*~*~*~
It’s too easy.
It was so simple to lure the boy from the street near his apartment to the van with the promise of a puppy. And for the truly curious, there really was a puppy inside a cage at the back of the truck, which made it so much easier to get him inside. A simple slam of the side door and the trap was sprung.
It isn’t as though anyone really cares what happens to these rejects, anyway.
Except him.
You can see it, the way he fawns over them, giving so generously of himself.
It wasn’t even difficult to bring the child into the darkening park; so trusting, so stupid. Still, there was no reason to cause him unnecessary pain. It wasn’t his pain that would be important.
Staring down at the confused, perplexed expression, the killer waited until the oddly-gold eyes clouded in death before leaving the scene and strolling through the park, much like any of the many others that were enjoying the way the multicolored leaves were falling in piles around them.
~*~*~*~
One night, a week later, the phone rang. Used to being woken in the middle of the night for one reason or another, Hutch took a moment to wake up then reached for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Hutch.”
There was a dead tone to his partner’s voice that immediately made him sit up. “Starsky. What’s the matter? What time is it?”
“About 2:30. Just needed to talk to you.”
“What’s wrong?”
The blond reached for the bedside light. The room was cool, and he wished he’d gotten out of the habit of sleeping in only shorts.
“One of my kids was murdered today.”
Hutch took another moment to rub the blurriness out of his eyes, then reached for the pen and pad nearby, his brain working again. “What happened?”
“The nearest we can figure is that somebody picked him up between the pet shop and his apartment. They took him into Central Park and slit his throat.”
He knew that Starsky’s ‘kids’ had various developmental or physical issues. He’d been working at The Rainbow School for almost five years now as a phys-ed teacher. It was interesting that his partner was living Terry’s dream, not his own. He waited for Starsky to talk, to get the words out that he needed to.
There was a disgusted sigh on the other end, and then, “He was only fifteen, babe. Just a kid. Just learned what all those hormones were for, you know? He had a girlfriend… he wanted a dog… he wanted to graduate.”
Hutch could almost hear the tears that dripped down the handsome face.
“Charlie was a sweet kid; he’d do anything for you. His parents, it nearly killed them. Jonathan had to be taken to the hospital, and Abby wasn’t much better. Even Kirsten was in shock.”
Remembering that Kirsten Morgen was the owner and principal of The Rainbow School, he asked, “What do the locals say?”
“Other than I’m a suspect, not much.”
The consultant gave an irritated snort.
“He was killed in the park, where we found him, his throat cut. I only found out because I was looking for him there. The NYPD had already taped it off, but I got a good look. By the way the leaves were all messed up, the poor kid must have staggered around a bit before he fell. It was pretty quick.”
“That’s something, I guess,” Hutch sighed. “You want me to come up?”
He closed his eyes and begged God for his partner to say yes. He so wanted to see him, to be near him… even for a little while. He knew it wouldn’t help anything in the long run; it would just make what they’d lost even more obvious. But it didn’t matter — he needed now.
“Not yet.”
Hutch was quiet, his own disappointment obvious even over a phone line. “Okay. Want me to check with the locals, get them off your back?”
“Nah. Wouldn’t want to take all of Lt. Powers’ fun away. Besides, while they’re questioning me, I can get them to talk.”
Reminded of how charming and underhanded Starsky could be when he put his mind to it, Hutch chuckled. “You would, too.”
Silence stretched again.
“I miss you,” Hutch finally murmured.
“You haven’t called,” Starsky replied, sounding irritated.
Refusing to rise to the bait, he mildly said, “The phone works both ways, buddy.”
“Yeah, well…. You’re so busy and all….”
“Not that busy,” the blond refuted. “I’ll call you tomorrow; you can let me know how it’s going, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Get some sleep.”
“Yeah. Sorry to wake you up.”
“Go to sleep, Starsk. You’re getting dopey. Night.”
“Night.”
He hung up the phone, feeling alternately better and worse. He wasn’t sure which emotion had finally won out when he fell back to sleep.
~*~*~*~
The next night, Hutch was there for his partner.
Though he couldn’t be there to help him sit ‘shiva‘ or for the funeral, he was home and would be every night if needed, for the eleven p.m. call.
The consultant noted the slick and glossy media coverage of the child’s murder, which gave him more facts than Starsky’s stilted conversations had. That was followed by an in-depth interview with some psychologist, who talked about what Down’s Syndrome was, and what Charlie couldn’t do…. He was ready to throw up when it was over.
Hutch thought that Charlie Friedman must have been lured into a vehicle of some sort before anyone noticed. He couldn’t have been frightened by his killer — Down’s kids could be quite loud when upset and someone would have noticed. But why kill him?
What had he done? What had he seen?
Hutch doodled some notes after the news was over. Starsky was late calling tonight, and he was about to pick up the phone himself, when it rang.
“Hello.”
“Hi, yourself, babe,” Starsky’s gravelly tones came through. He sounded tired, not just in body, but in spirit.
“So, how’d it go?”
“The school was a ghost town; only a few kids even showed up. Most of the parents are probably at home, hugging the stuffing out of them.”
“I would.”
“Yeah. I still don’t get it, Hutch. Why Charlie? He knew better than to go with people he didn’t know; it had been hammered into his head since he’d been little. He wouldn’t have done it.”
Hutch was thinking the same thing, and deep inside, he felt a thrill that he and Starsky were still so in tune that their thoughts ran along the same tracks even after five years. “Something got him to go with this person. A struggle would have been noticed on the street. Somewhere between the pet store and his apartment, he deviated from his normal routine. Why?”
“I don’t know. The NYPD came to the school to interview all the teachers, including yours truly. After that fun, I hung around, listening in, trying to see if they had any more information than I have. Nada.”
“What does Powers say?” He’d seen the detective who had been heading the investigation on the news — a balding, short, irritable-looking guy, whose attitude said he had seen it all and nothing fazed him.
Starsky sighed. “Nobody saw nothing. And if they saw it, they don’t know it’s important. He checked me out, though.”
I bet he did, Hutch thought to himself. I would. “What did he say?”
“He doesn’t need a ‘hero’ horning in on his investigation. And he’s glad I don’t work for him.”
That comment made Hutch laugh out loud. The homicide Lieutenant had no idea of how true that was. The consultant could imagine just how much Starsky was getting under Powers’ skin. It was a true talent he had for being irritating.
And Hutch missed the hell out of him.
“Doesn’t sound like they’ve got much,”
“Just another ‘unsolved homicide’ they can stick into a dead file somewhere,” the deep voice growled. “And if I get too close, Powers will toss me in the can for obstruction.”
The blond frowned. “He said that?”
“Just about. I told him he was making my knees knock and to cut it out.”
Hutch had to laugh and it took a while for his smile to fade. “Between the two of us we could really make his life difficult. You want some company?”
The thick silence that followed made the smile crash.
“Stop asking, would you? It’s not making it any easier.”
Hutch sighed. “So shoot me for wanting to be there with you when you’re hurting, all right?” he said softly, and then his anger, his pain burst out of his mouth in sharp, staccato bits of hurt sound. “What did you expect? That this would be easy? This was your decision, partner, not mine. You were the one who hared off to New York and left me behind, remember?”
“Oh, geez, Hutch, can’t we talk without this always coming up? I got enough on my plate right now.”
Biting his lip to dam the words that were just roiling inside him, he muttered, “Right. So what do you want to do next… on the case?”
Another silence followed, and then, “It’s not really a case. Forensics didn’t find anything at the scene. There’s no witnesses, no evidence. I canvassed the park the night of the murder, when I was looking for Charlie, but I didn’t find anything then, either. We put out a reward for information this morning, and I tacked up some posters, but it’s a waiting game now.”
Hutch gave a quiet groan. Of the two of them, he had more patience, but when your heart was involved, every day that passed seemed to take twice as long to get through.
“The funeral’s tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Hopefully, the cops will keep the press from making some kind of zoo out of it.”
“Sometimes, these guys show up at the funeral. Keep your eyes open.”
“Yeah, I will. I want to get to sleep, babe. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
The blond would be surprised if Starsky did call, after the way he’d flown off the handle, but he would be here, waiting. “Good night, partner.”
Starsky didn’t reply and the dull click echoed something tight inside Hutch’s chest. He stood up and looked around his small apartment. It seemed odd not to find plants there, their multiple emerald hues ready made to soothe his troubled soul. But the greenery and his music were things he had given up when he’d moved east. In many ways, he had recreated himself, sans Starsky. It had been a very painful process and he knew that the man he was today was lessened by a large magnitude in comparison to the detective he had been.
Oh, he was still fighting the good fight — that much was true. But his heart, his soul, was resting somewhere in New York, and it always would.
He sighed and tossed his beer in the sink. He needed something a little harder to get through tonight.
And when he finally had gotten to sleep, his dreams only reminded him of what he had lost and missed.
~*~*~*~
We were stars on Sunset Boulevard….
As Hutch had feared, Starsky’s phone calls trickled and then stopped. There was no further news coverage on the murder, which only meant that there were no other leads and obviously, no suspects.
He tried to retain what little contact they still had, but Starsky continued to push him away with both hands, and he finally had to let go, two weeks after Charlie Friedman’s death.
All the while he kept asking himself whether the few conversations were enough to keep what little hope he still had in his heart burning. He loved Starsky and he knew, knew, that Starsky loved him. He just couldn’t understand why they couldn’t be together, why the man he loved didn’t want to be with him.
Hutch knew he wasn’t the easiest man in the world to deal with, but Starsky had managed it for a lot of years. Even the fiasco with Kira, while painful and revealing, hadn’t been enough to destroy who they intrinsically were to each other. Gunther couldn’t either.
Or had he?
Hutch privately had to wonder whether Starsky had lost the will to fight after Gunther’s attack. Oh, he had fought to survive and to go back to the streets, but once there… once there, the fight seemed to leave him, and Hutch had to wonder why.
His lover had nearly died… had died actually; his heart had stopped. But once Starsky had realized that, he seemed at first to embrace life, to enjoy it to its fullest potential. He’d loved Hutch to exhaustion and beyond, showing his joy in life in so many little ways that it only made his withdrawal even harder to deal with.
So now, Hutch spent more time in the office, arriving early and leaving late. He was always home in time for the news at eleven, hoping, praying that his partner would call.
But he didn’t, and time dragged on.
~*~*~*~
One morning, Tarsa caught him arriving at Quantico at seven a.m. The salt and pepper brows rose. “What the hell are you doing here?” he barked. “You didn’t leave until 10:30 last night.”
Hutch grinned. “Glad you’re not paying me by the hour, aren’t you?”
Howard smiled. “Damn right. So, what’re you doing?”
“Same thing you are. Working.”
“Working out, you mean?” The former Marine hefted a small gym bag that he carried in his left hand.
Hutch hadn’t spent a lot of time in the gym; he hadn’t been running either. Too many memories…. “Afraid not.”
Tarsa put out a beefy hand to stop the younger man as he moved forward. “Hutchinson, this won’t help.”
The blond just looked at him and shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Working yourself to death won’t make the pain go away.”
Thunderstruck, Hutch just stared at him, knowing his face showed his surprise and unable to prevent it.
“Your Captain mentioned that your partner had walked away from the force after a bad shooting. And besides that, you were dealing with a busted relationship.” Howard shrugged. “When you lose a woman, it can break you up. But this won’t help.”
Beginning to breathe again after ‘woman’, Hutch shook his head. “I like working.”
“Yeah, so did I. Then my wife filed for separation and I got smart very fast.”
“Listen, Howard, I don’t think you get it. I’m fine; this is just the way I operate.”
“Bullshit, Hutchinson. Don’t try that on me. I’m a detective, remember?” His voice deepened and his face and voice took on a hard edge. “So you listen up. Hit the gym here at least three times a week and cut down on the booze. The next time I ask you the last movie you saw, it better not be something on the boob tube at three a.m. Am I making myself clear here, kid?”
Hutch nodded, both alarmed that his pain was that obvious, and warmed by Howard’s concern. “You got it, Sarge.”
It had taken a bit of digging, but he’d finally learned that Tarsa had been a D.I. with a recon platoon. The older man smiled and gave him a hard whack on the back. “Clever, kid.”
“Thanks, Sarge. See you later.”
~*~*~*~
Oh, he suffers so beautifully.
And he was just starting to heal from the death of that little freak. This one would hurt so much more.
The killer looked down at the little black girl that lay in the grass. This one had fought the final sleep, had resisted and even bit. She hadn’t wanted to go to the park; she just wanted to take the puppy home.
Even an impromptu walk so the dog would pee wasn’t enough to prevent the girl from realizing that she was in danger. She twisted just as the knife struck, which made the incision deeper than planned.
Still, it was done. She was dead, and his pain was just beginning.
The blade was wiped off on the pink dress, before the killer left.
~*~*~*~
Hutch was working on another lecture series, sweating silently at the memory of some of these guys he had interviewed, when Howard knocked on his door and entered.
His face had that certain look that said, ‘You’re not going to like this.’
“What?” he asked, rising.
“Remember the murder of that boy in New York? Charles Friedman? The one you said your partner had been working with in that school?”
Hutch nodded, mute with dread.
“The NYPD has asked for a profile. There’s been another one, a twelve-year-old girl, Monica Everson. I think you and I should take a trip to the Big Apple.”
There was nothing he could say to that, except, “I’ll go pack.”
By the time he’d gotten back to Quantico, Howard was ready to go. Hutch had tried to call Starsky, but there was no answer. Worried that Powers was interrogating his partner even now, Hutch was more than ready to get out and push the plane that slowly taxied off the runway.
It was a short flight to LaGuardia Airport, and they took a taxi to the precinct.
“Now listen, Hutchinson. Lt. Powers has a bug up his ass that your partner is involved with this somehow. Ignore his bullshit and let’s focus on the case, okay? It’s bad enough when somebody starts killing kids, but retarded kids are even worse. The press will climb all over us, and the pressure from the Mayor will get intense. I was around during Atlanta and let me tell you, it was ugly.”
“Starsky has nothing to do with this, Howard. I’d stake my life on it,” Hutch swore, catching his boss’ eyes and holding them.
“I believe you believe that, Hutchinson. But let’s look at the facts — of which there are precious few — before we make any judgments. Everyone’s a suspect, right?”
“Not Starsky.” Hutch would not be moved on this point.
“The facts, kid,” Tarsa repeated, his eyes sharp and warning. “If he did it, we’ll know it. And if he didn’t, then there’s nothing to worry about.”
The blond nodded, but every muscle in his body was tense as he followed Tarsa inside the precinct. It was an old building, built around the turn of the century.
The familiar sights and smells struck him with a wave of homesickness so fierce, he felt dizzy for a moment. The paint on the walls was the dingy tan that could be found in police departments the world over. The chairs and benches were wood, the pressure of thousands of backsides wearing them to a dark polished sheen that could never be achieved by anything but time and age. There were people of every type and race imaginable, rich, middle-income and poor being jostled and pushed by others, their faces wearing either worry, boredom, or the blankness of those who had already given up.
Tarsa stopped by the desk sergeant and flashed his badge. “Where would I find Lt. Powers?”
The heavyset man behind the desk directed them to Homicide. This department was larger than Hutch had expected. Maybe ten desks were haphazardly lined up in the center of the room, their phones jangling discordantly, many voices speaking at once. It was alive, abuzz, very unlike the ISU, which thrived on quiet.
One cop pointed toward Powers’ office, which was empty.
Another cop noticed them looking for him, and pointed towards the interrogation room at the other end of the large room.
Hutch’s heart swanned into his stomach, but he obeyed Tarsa’s hand signal to stay where he was, while the older agent knocked and entered the room.
A moment later Powers exited, a dry cigar held between his teeth. “That was quick. I only called you this morning.” He eyed Hutch. “Who’re you?”
“Ken Hutchinson,” he replied, not liking the little man on sight. He looked burnt-out.
“He’s one of mine,” Howard snapped. “I want to go to the scene, Lieutenant, then go to the morgue and take a look at the body.”
“Sure. Just let me finish here.”
“A suspect?” Hutch asked softly, praying that it wasn’t Starsky in there, and equally wanting to see him so badly he was sweating.
“Not really. One of the teachers at the kid’s school.”
“The school’s the only similarity?” Howard asked, shifting his briefcase to his other hand.
“Pretty much. Both Friedman and Everson had developmental problems, they went to the same school, had the same teachers. No one saw them with their killer.”
“Finish up. You can fill us in on the way.”
Powers grunted and turned back into the room. A few minutes later, a young man came out, looking harassed and relieved at the same time.
The lieutenant moved into his office, grabbed his coat and led them out of the building to a late-model LTD. Hutch was slightly mollified by the man’s choice of car and willingly got into the back seat, pleased that there was some leg room.
“So here’s what we got. Monica Everson was a young black girl, twelve-years-old. She had Down’s, just like the Friedman kid, but she was a more aggressive behavioral problem, I gather. Yesterday afternoon, she was outside of her house in the Bronx, riding her bike. When she didn’t come to her mother’s calls, Antonia Everson went looking for her and found the bike at the end of the block, but not the girl. She called the police.”
He cursed at a taxi that cut him off but didn’t slow down.
“Six hours later, a jogger found her body in Pelham Bay Park. Her throat was cut, like Charlie’s, but this one was a lot deeper, sharper. ME’s going to check whether it was the same blade, and how much deeper it went.”
“She fought,” Hutch muttered, surprised when the detective used the boy’s first name.
“Yeah, I’d agree with that, by the amount of crushed grass and the way the mud is strewn all over the place.”
“Mud?” Howard murmured. “Enough for prints?”
“Forensics is working on that now. We’ve had a lot of rain, and it rained last night, too. Don’t know how much they’ll be able to get.”
Hutch groaned silently. Rain was a real problem when it came to forensic evidence. It washed everything away.
“Why just Down’s kids?” he wondered aloud. “And why would they go with this person, without a struggle?”
“Someone they knew,” Howard offered. “Someone they wanted to know.”
“Someone who had something they wanted?” Hutch added. “Ice cream man?”
“It’s October, Hutchinson, a little cool for ice cream,” Powers reminded. “Most kids just go to Carvel instead. They’re all over the borough.”
Hutch accepted the sarcasm in silence, too busy thinking to acknowledge it. He was alternately relieved and disappointed that Starsky had not been at the precinct. It was just as well. Their reunion was not something that needed the prying eyes of a dozen cops or someone as sharp as Howard Tarsa.
He looked out the window at the slow-moving water that flowed on the east side. He’d only been to New York once or twice in his entire life, and the last time had made him never want to see it again. The traffic was slow, but it wasn’t L.A. traffic, and so, it wasn’t that bad. They were moving at least.
Finally, Powers drew up to a park with a statue of some sort. There were cops all over, even in the late afternoon, and yellow tape marked off the area. The ground underfoot felt squishy with water, the grass drowning slightly with the excess.
“We’re not going to get anything here,” Hutch murmured to his boss. “The dirt won’t hold any prints.”
“I know. Let’s take a look anyway, get the feel of the place.”
There was little to see. To the left and right of the extremely large stone World War II memorial there were bushes and trees that faced directly onto a side road. Anyone driving by should have seen something, he realized, even if it was just the killer taking the child here.
Underneath the bushes was where Monica Everson’s body had been found. The ground was churned up more than was usual. There were small sneaker imprints that were welling up with water and sloughing away, as well as a larger size shoe or sneaker, but that was so wet and so disturbed that there wasn’t anything they’d get from it.
Sighing, Hutch looked around at the location, trying to imagine why the killer would have picked this place. Why would the girl have walked in here? Was there a gun on her? Or did he hold the knife close to her? Either way, she would have been crying, someone would have noticed that. If she went willingly, there would have to be a reason. A game, maybe? But why would she play a game with someone she didn’t know?
His head spun with the possibilities. He needed some facts to put some focus on the story that was running in circles in his mind. And he remembered one of Tarsa’s favorite maxims. To know the offender, you have to look at the crime.
“Seen enough?” Powers growled, and Hutch started to revise him in his estimation. The homicide detective was just as bothered by this set of deaths as they were.
As they went back to the car, Tarsa asked, “Tell me about your suspects.”
“What suspects?” the detective growled irritably. “The two guys on staff can pretty much account for their whereabouts, though one of them, a former California cop, is a real smart-ass. I wouldn’t mind finding that he isn’t as innocent as he appears, but he was too torn up by Friedman’s death, and when he found out about Everson, he just about needed to be sedated, he was so angry. He peeled off in that Mustang of his last night and nobody’s seen him since.”
Which explains why he wasn’t answering the phone, Hutch told himself with a pang. Poor Starsky; he must be just out of his mind.
Howard caught Hutch’s eye in the car’s side-view mirror and winked at him. The younger man found himself smiling in response. So, Starsky had been pretty much removed as a suspect, thank God.
For a moment, he wondered where Starsky would have gone. Blowing off in a temper wouldn’t last long; the former cop would start thinking soon after, and investigating five minutes after that. He was surprised that Starsky wasn’t at the scene and then he realized his partner would check it out, either before or after Powers.
Hutch’s bet was before; he only hoped that Starsky hadn’t left any Adidas prints in the mud while he was at it.
“Where to now?” Tarsa asked, noticing that they weren’t getting on the highway to go back to Manhattan.
“Thought you’d want to interview the family, see the scene,” the detective told them around his cigar. He drove badly, and Hutch was constantly gripping the leather seats, wondering if they were going to plow into the car in front of them. It was a side road and they were doing fifty-five.
Pulling his attention away from the road and the likely accident they’d be in, Hutch shrugged. He doubted that there was anything the grieving family would be able to tell them, other than they hadn’t seen anything.
“Yes,” Howard agreed, to Hutch’s surprise. “We should see the area. What about a door-to-door? Did it come up with anything?”
“No. At the end of the block is an apartment house, a church across the street from that. No one saw anything.”
“Don’t people look at kids anymore?” Hutch muttered.
“Most people don’t want to see retarded kids, Hutchinson,” Howard murmured back. “Like they’re invisible or they have something communicable.”
The blond let out an exasperated sigh. He guessed that he had been around ‘special’ children too long. After Terry’s death, Starsky and he had made a real effort to not lose touch with the center and would stop by when time permitted just to talk, to play a game — something to let the kids know that they hadn’t been forgotten. As much as it hurt, they did it. In his own way, Hutch hoped that it would heal them a little, too, of the wounds of her loss.
Ollie was a staple of Hutch’s household. When he moved, he’d gone with him, and now rested by a windowsill, looking out onto the street. Hutch didn’t worry about what it looked like, a grown man with a teddy bear. She had given both Ollie and Starsky over to his care —
And he’d only been able to hold on to one of them.
The house was well maintained, with a grassy front plot and cemented back yard. Monica’s bicycle was sitting forlornly in the alleyway, just waiting for her return. While Howard went inside to speak with the family, Hutch looked over the bike.
There weren’t any obvious signs of a fight here, no scratch marks, no wrenched handlebars or flat tires. It was a clean, pink-colored aluminum frame bike with a banana seat and fringes hanging from the handlebars. The tires showed wear; she must have liked to ride a lot.
He moved down the block, trying to think like her killer. It was fairly obvious that this man was deliberately picking out the children at the school, the ones it would be easy to snatch. He made himself familiar with their home territory and knew their routine, which meant he either had access to them himself or followed them, which led him to a vehicle, a car or truck. While a motorcycle was exciting to a kid, it would be too obvious to just ride off with one. That someone would have noticed.
Something did lure them close, drew them near enough that they could be pulled inside.
He stopped at the end of the block, looking up at the apartment building and the way the windows looked down onto the street. They needed to double-check that no one had seen the girl; when he looked up, at least five heads popped back into their windows.
He also knew he was being watched. Well aware, after a few years of doing this job, that a killer sometimes returned to the scene of the crime to watch the police, he nonchalantly kept walking, casting his eyes around casually.
What a movie we made….
From across the street a familiar dark head and profile caught his eye and caused him to stop dead in his tracks. He stared, his heart hammering in his chest, when Starsky opened the door of a midnight-blue Mustang and stepped out. They stared at each other from their positions and Hutch could only smile.
They hadn’t seen each other in five years, but the way Starsky moved hadn’t changed. The sinuous, almost slinky walk had not left him, and his hips still led the rest of his body, riveting the blond’s gaze to the jeans he wore before dragging his eyes up.
Starsky’s face was thinner, more angular, and his hair was short, cropped close to his head. He wore a navy tee shirt and suede jacket, the expected Adidas on his feet.
He could only wonder what Starsky saw in him to make him smile so.
“You just couldn’t stay away, could you?” he said, as he crossed the street and Hutch’s eyes were once more drawn to his hips.
Hutch had to grin. “Well, you know how it is. A friend gets into trouble and I just have to come to the rescue.”
Their hug was a simple thing and yet it spoke volumes of how much they had missed each other. It took a while before they let go, neither one seeming to want to pull back first. Starsky was so warm, so good in his arms. He felt the separation when they finally let go.
“You’re too skinny. Not eating enough sprouts,” his partner told him, pointing a finger into his chest.
Hutch flushed. He was lucky if he ate a burger these days and grilled cheese had become both a filling and fast food to prepare. “You’re looking good,” he replied, loving the way Starsky’s eyes sparked at the compliment.
“Running around with kids will do that to you,” his companion replied, his smile abruptly sagging. “Heard the FBI was called in.”
“Howard’s with Monica’s parents now. I could ask what you’re doing here, but I think I already know.”
“Same thing you’re doing, Blondie,” Starsky told him, jabbing him in the ribs. “Checking out the scene.”
“Not much here. She was probably picked up by a car or van. Door-to-door came up with zip. You knew her, Starsk. What would draw her in?”
The dark head shook slightly. “Not a damn thing. She was tough, wouldn’t take any crap off of anybody. She bit when she thought you were going to hurt her. My assistant Donna’s sporting more than a few of them herself. She’s gone head to head with Monica before.”
“Maybe she was chloroformed,” Hutch thought out loud.
“Show up in the autopsy?”
“Haven’t seen the results yet. We’re on our way now.” A loud whistle split the air and Hutch turned his head to see Howard at the corner, along with Powers.
“Uh-oh,” Starsky muttered.
“What?” Hutch asked, not liking the sudden belligerent stance his partner’s body had taken. It always meant that he needed to be ready to fight, and he straightened himself in response.
“Starsky, I told you before,” Powers yelled as he walked up to them, his face turning red, “if I catch you nosing around my investigation, I’ll toss you in the can for obstruction, cop or no cop!”
The years between L.A. and Virginia slipped effortlessly away, like a veil lifting, and rage took the place of the empty spot in his soul.
“Whoa,” Hutch snapped. “Detective Sergeant Starsky was my partner for ten years. He sure as hell is not a child killer and you’ve already ruled him out as a suspect. As far as I’m concerned, anything or anyone who can help prevent this from happening again is on our side. And let me tell you, Starsky would be very useful on the case, which you would have known if you’d bothered to work with him, rather than be intimidated by his record!”
By the time he was finished, he was leaning over the much shorter Powers, the cop’s cigar snatched from his mouth and thrown to the ground, and Hutch’s finger stabbing into his face. “Are we clear on this, Lieutenant?”
“Easy, kid,” Howard murmured, pulling back on Hutch’s arm, but he wouldn’t budge until Starsky patted him on the back.
“Down, babe,” he chuckled. “I think he got the point.”
“Nobody’s ruled out,” Powers snapped back, “until I have the killer behind bars, Hutchinson. As far as I’m concerned, he’s not a viable suspect at the moment, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a part in it. I’ve been fooled before, and so have you.” With that, Powers turned his back on them and walked back to his car.
Tarsa shook his head. “You sure do know how to make friends, kid.”
“He’s a burn-out, Howard. This investigation has its collective head up its ass.”
Starsky stuck out his hand. “Dave Starsky. You must be Tarsa, right? Blondie there has talked about you once or twice.”
A grizzled brow rose as he returned the handshake. “I’m sure it wasn’t complimentary.” He glanced over at Hutch, who was just starting to feel slightly embarrassed that he’d lost his temper so quickly. “We’ve got to get to the morgue. Maybe we can talk later.”
“Sure,” Starsky smoothly replied, but Hutch knew he was grinding his teeth at being left out.
“How about dinner?” Hutch asked. “We’re at the Marriott on 45th and Broadway.”
“Nothing like the theater district,” Starsky smiled. “Sure. Seven?”
“Great. I’ll meet you in the restaurant. See you later. And Starsk?”
“Yeah?”
“You think I can fit in your car?”
That made the hard mask crack a little and another smile break through. “Don’t worry about it, blondie. You look good as a pretzel.”
Hutch grinned and waved as his partner jogged across the street and back into the Mustang. He smiled wider when Starsky peeled out and headed off down the street.
Then he turned to face the music, but Howard didn’t say anything other than a mild, “Ready? Good. The parents didn’t have anything useful….”
Hutch listened to the rest of what his boss had to say, but his mind was locked on his former partner, his friend, his lover. The memory of sapphire blue eyes could not match the actual spark within their depths and for once he didn’t berate himself for remembering just how good they had been together.
He found himself counting the minutes to dinner.
~*~*~*~
The morgue was never a good place to visit, but over the years Hutch had inured himself to the smell and tangible sensation of death that wafted through the place. It was spotless, ready and waiting for flesh and bone to give up their precious secrets before tile and chrome, saw and probe.
Monica Everson lay underneath a sheet on the metal table, covered up to her chest. She was short and stocky, as was characteristic of those with Down’s Syndrome. The dry slash across her throat was much deeper on one side than the other.
“Rage display?” Howard murmured, but Hutch disagreed.
“There’s no obvious emotional content to these murders. They’re cold. No displays of power, no obvious need to frighten… just to kill, quickly and efficiently. What direction was the slash?” he asked the M.E., an older man with white hair and even whiter skin. He looked like he never left his office.
“Right to left. Left is deeper. She must have struggled,” he told them quietly, making notes onto his clipboard, but not looking at either of them.
“A lefty,” Howard added.
“Or someone who’s ambidextrous.”
“Doubtful,” Howard told him. “Even for those people who are truly ambidextrous, they always have a side that they prefer.”
“She was a biter,” Hutch told the M.E.
“Hmm, was she?” He dropped his clipboard and moved closer. “I’ll take a swab and see what we get.”
While he busied himself doing that, Hutch asked, “Anything else? Anything on the tox screen?”
“Clean as a whistle. No drugs, other than the ones the parents had advised us she was on.”
“What about Friedman? Had he been drugged?”
“No.”
“Large amounts of adrenaline in his system?” Howard murmured, his eyes dark and distant.
“No.”
“So he wasn’t running away or terrified of his killer. Which leads us once more to someone that he knows,” Hutch added.
“Which still makes everyone in that school a suspect,” Howard reminded, raising his hand when Hutch opened his mouth to refute that comment. “Everyone. Even your friend.”
“He’s been ruled out, Howard. He wasn’t anywhere near the Bronx when Everson was killed.”
“We’ll confirm that,” Tarsa told his consultant, and turned away.
The happy feeling that Hutch had managed to nurture throughout this grisly afternoon faded.
Howard really did think that Starsky was still a suspect. Why? Just because he was a lefty?
Ridiculous, he told himself. I’m just going to have to prove my partner is innocent. He straightened up and followed his boss out of the room and back to the precinct.
They pored over case files for the next few hours.
Charlie Friedman had a regular routine: at five p.m. the youngster was picked up at school and taken to his door by the bus; he usually arrived sometime around five-thirty, depending on the traffic. His parents lived on West 57th, and were fairly well-to-do. Charlie was their only child, and had been born with Down’s Syndrome. He was fifteen-years-old.
From the NYPD interview reports, Charlie was one of the kids that Starsky spent a lot of time with. All of the teachers and assistants mentioned that a teenager’s advent into puberty was difficult enough, but with Down’s, it was even more traumatic. Just the understanding of what was happening to their bodies was tough to get across. Apparently, Starsky had bonded with the kid in a diner, slowly explaining the birds and the bees in a far less esoteric manner than the boy’s parents had used.
The night of the murder Starsky had been called by Kirsten Morgen from the Friedman’s apartment on West 57th St. Abby and Jonathan Friedman were an older couple: she was about fifty-five and he approximately sixty-five. Jonathan had subsequently been hospitalized with a heart attack when he learned of his son’s death.
Before dinner, around six p.m., Charlie was allowed to go to the Winkel Pet Shop on Seventh Avenue. He liked to look in the window, and apparently Mr. Winkel would let him play with the puppies. He usually returned by seven, the closing time of the pet shop.
The police were called, and before they arrived, Starsky and Kirsten had gone out to look for the boy, believing him to be missing, carrying pictures that they had gotten from the parents.
Starsky headed for Central Park, while Dr. Morgen went past the doorman and back and forth from the path he would have taken home.
The doorman, Freddie Morgenthal, hadn’t seen Charlie come back; an older man, about seventy, his eyes were still good, and the boy hadn’t passed him on foot.
Around eleven-thirty, from Starsky’s statement, he began to head back towards 57th. He hadn’t found Charlie or anyone who had even seen him.
A squad of black and whites had caught his attention and he’d wandered over, curious. And then he caught a look at the black station wagon that had ‘OCME’ written on the sides in bold lettering. He was questioned by Powers and freely gave whatever information he had about the boy.
In the scene photos, Charlie was wearing a pair of blue Adidas, similar to Starsky’s. Hutch believed that it wasn’t so much that he loved the sneakers, but more that the boy wanted to emulate his partner in some small way.
The golden eyes had still been open, and Starsky had taken a moment to close them before being questioned by Powers.
The coroner’s report again stated a right to left slashing motion, from the rear.
Hutch was sure that his partner had memorized the crime scene on the way. He was less than an easy interview, from Powers’ report. He admitted that he had been looking for Charlie at the parents’ request, that he was a phys-ed teacher at Charlie’s school and had been for four years, and added that he had been a cop in California.
His alibis completely checked out and his coworkers were furious at the idea that Starsky was a suspect. Even when it was relayed to them that ‘everyone’ was a suspect, it didn’t lessen their ire one bit and from then on they had been suspicious that the police were just looking for a patsy rather than really looking for the murderer.
After that they swapped files, Howard reviewing Friedman’s, while Hutch did Everson’s. On a blackboard in the corner of the conference room, they wrote out the similarities and anything that struck their attention.
Similarities:
Weapon type (filleting knife)
* Charlie was passive, while Monica was not
School (The Rainbow School)
* Monica might have bitten her attacker (defense mechanism)
Mental disability (Down’s)
* Male teachers, assistants, janitors suspected
Snatched from home (Mnhtn/Bronx)
* Car or truck used in kidnapping
Location of murders (Parks)
*? Who or what lured them into the vehicle
*? Knew their attacker
* No drugs used
* No sexual assault, nonviolent murder (death is the desired result — method is of secondary importance)
Rubbing the back of his neck, Hutch brushed chalk dust off his fingers and glanced at his watch. “Got to go,” he told Howard.
The older man didn’t even lift his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
Hutch continued putting on his suit jacket and hesitated at his coat. “What? I’ve got to meet Starsky for dinner.”
“You can’t have dinner with a suspect, Hutchinson.”
“Howard, for the last time: Starsky is not a suspect in my book.”
“He is in mine.”
Hutch sighed softly. He was getting irritated, which would not work with Tarsa. “So I’ll treat him as a suspect and try to divine his motives by making him talk. Either way, I am going, Howard.”
The FBI agent looked at him then, his pewter eyes stormy. “Listen, kid, I never should have put you on this case. I realize now that you are far too close to your friend to remain even remotely objective. It would be real easy for me to put you back on a plane to Quantico, so don’t push me.”
Hutch dropped his coat over a chair, but he was far from beaten. “You brought me out here to find this guy, right? To worm my way so far into his brain that I know what he had for breakfast. So leave me alone and let me do my job. I know that Starsky would not hurt a kid, just as I know that you wouldn’t. Because you couldn’t. Neither could he. Neither could I.”
He waited a few minutes, the tension between them ebbing slowly. “Are we done here?”
“For now. But I’m not letting go of this, Ken. Be warned.”
With the words ringing in his head, Hutch slowly picked up his coat and left the conference room. There was something more than just the case that was going on with Howard, he realized, but he didn’t have a clue what it might be. Hailing a taxi, he thought about it on the way to the hotel, but didn’t come up with anything helpful.
Dropping his coat and bags in the hotel room he would be sharing with Tarsa, he checked his appearance in the mirror.
Older, was the first thing he noticed. Tired-looking, was the second. But what he had felt when Starsky had held him made him feel young and alive again, an ember that had faded but not yet died, revived in that moment of connection. A quick shave and he looked a little more presentable.
Smiling, he straightened his tie and looked down at the charcoal suit he was wearing. After being on the plane and working the afternoon it needed a pressing, but he doubted that Starsky would notice. Hopefully, the state of his suit would not be paramount on his partner’s mind.
He hoped what was inside the suit would be.
Aware that he was nervous, Hutch smoothed his hair and left the room to head up to the restaurant. He was early, but it didn’t matter. It would give him time to get a drink that would hopefully calm the butterflies in his gut that were causing his hands to shake.
The restaurant was one of those revolving types: the inner circle of the room remained stationary, which included the bar, thankfully, and the exterior circle rotated slowly, giving a bird’s-eye aerial view of the entire city through floor-to-ceiling windows.
He made his way to the bar and ordered a double Scotch, angling himself so that he would see Starsky when he arrived. The drink took away some of the nervousness, which quickly returned when he glanced at his watch and saw that it was 7:05. While his partner was not the most punctual person on the face of the planet, Hutch hadn’t expected that he would be late for this meeting. It deflated his excitement somewhat.
Until he saw Starsky in the doorway.
It was obvious that he had been jogging from the elevator, and the dark blue eyes scanned the room quickly, while Hutch admired what he saw. The blue jeans had been traded for slacks in brown and a herringbone sports jacket with suede patches on the elbows, which made him look more professor-ish than sporty. A slightly askew tie completed the ensemble, and Hutch had to smile.
Starsky had dressed up for him.
And when their eyes met, the smile that lit up the indigo depths was so well-remembered, so real, that Hutch could not understand how he ever could have let this man get away from him.
“Hey, blondie, there you are. Sorry I’m late… line out the wazoo for parking around here.” Starsky clapped him on the shoulder and his hand stayed there, warm, comfortable while he ordered a beer. “So, where’s Howard?”
“He’s still back at the precinct. Doesn’t like the idea of fraternizing with suspects,” Hutch told him, irritable at even the thought that his partner could be considered a ‘suspect’. He took a largish sip of his Scotch and ordered another.
“He’s just doing his job,” Starsky murmured.
“Yeah, and I’m just doing mine.” For a moment Hutch panicked, not being able to think of one thing to say to his friend that didn’t consist of the case. And then, he mumbled, “How’s Cathy?”
“For an ex-wife, she’s not too bad. Doesn’t want alimony, no child support involved…. I don’t see her too much.”
“It was too soon,” Hutch soothed, still and forever not understanding how Starsky could have married anyone after leaving California. It had only been four months and then they were married… and divorced soon after. ‘Irreconcilable differences’.
He only heard from Starsky after it was over. He didn’t want to think about the why of that. There was so much that they hadn’t said. Sometimes phones could be bridges and sometimes walls.
“What about you, anyone special in your life?”
Hutch refused to look at his partner and ignored the question. “I’m busy. Howard got on my back the other day for spending too much time at the office.”
“You look tired, babe,” Starsky whispered and Hutch had to look at him, had to see what emotion he would find on his friend’s face.
Worry, plain and simple. He was still so easy to read after all these years.
“I’m all right,” he replied, finishing his drink
“You usually go through two double Scotches in less than fifteen minutes?”
For a moment Hutch was pissed, and then he let the emotion slide. “Drinking’s a part of the job, Starsk. We all do it.”
“We didn’t.”
“Different days, partner. Different lives. Come on, let’s eat.”
Starsky allowed the change of subject with a shrug, but Hutch knew he wouldn’t get off that lightly. His friend was persistent, like a pit bull, and he’d never let go when he thought he had a bite.
The conversation was oddly stilted for a few minutes after that, but it started to smooth out over their appetizers.
“What’s it like? Working at the school?”
A shy smile slipped over Starsky’s lips. “It’s great, I love the kids. Mercy Johnson, the school nurse, and I have breakfast every morning while we complain about what’s going on in the city. She’s usually got the Daily News open in front of her when I bring the doughnuts, and we have a half hour before the kids pour in. And my guys are great. Pete Foster is really good with them, and Donna is too, though she needs to find a little more patience.”
“Donna — that’s the one that Monica kept biting, isn’t it?”
Starsky shook his head. “Yeah. And that every guy between the age of four and forty drooled after, including Charlie.” He shrugged. “Mo didn’t like to take showers after P.E. It was a constant battle with her and she took it out on Donna. I finally told Kirsten I was going to tape her mouth shut if she kept doing it. Mo heard me say it, and she’d been better about it ever since.”
Hutch chuckled. “Sounds lively.”
“It’s never dull, babe. What about the wonderful world of the FBI?”
“Howard keeps pushing me to take a badge, but I don’t know…. The Feds were never our best friend, that’s for sure.”
“It’s a different world now, blintz,” Starsky reminded softly, moving his lettuce absently around on his plate. “You’ve got to fight the good fight any way you can.”
“I liked the way we had been fighting it just fine, partner,” Hutch replied, wanting another drink but not liking Starsky’s comment before and not wanting a lecture.
Starsky sat back and nursed his beer, not taking up that battle again.
“Have you heard from Dobey?” Hutch asked. “I called a few weeks ago, but I got Edith.”
“Yeah, I caught up with him day before yesterday. He heard about the kids… and called me first. He’s doing well. Said Powers had called him to check me out.”
Hutch chuckled. “That must have been a fun conversation. He would have been deaf when it was over.”
That dry comment made his friend laugh out loud. “Good.” Then Starsky looked harder at him. “You blew up on the guy today, babe.”
“Nobody threatens you, Starsk,” Hutch growled, and sat back as the waiter brought his steak. For the first time in a long while he actually had an appetite and wolfed it down.
“Would you like a plate with that, sir?” Starsky muttered, staring at the empty expanse of porcelain in front of the blond.
Hutch laughed and self-consciously wiped his mouth. “Guess I was hungry.”
“Guess so.”
Hutch spied a plump cherry tomato on Starsky’s plate. He’d inhaled his so rapidly he hadn’t even tasted it, and it looked good….
“Go on. You know you want it,” his partner whispered, and the conversation took a completely different twist in Hutch’s mind. He knew that the sensual sub-text of Starsky’s voice was unplanned, as it always had been, but he hardened in his pants nonetheless.
“The tomato,” Starsky snapped, eyes shining, grinning widely. “Don’t go getting any ideas.”
Hutch had to smile and he managed to spear the tomato on the first try, popping it into his mouth and chewing gently.
He watched Starsky surreptitiously shift in his seat, and grinned even wider. “Problem there, partner?” he asked, as he made a show of eating a French fry, licking his lips and then his fingertips.
“No… no problem,” Starsky breezily replied, but he drank his beer just a little faster than usual.
The blond sat back in his chair, smiling softly. “Good.” It was good to know that he still had the power to turn Starsky on, to make him want, just as surely as Hutch did.
The coffee arrived soon after and they sat quietly, just relaxing in each other’s company, pleased to be together though they tried hard not to show it.
“How’s the case going?” Starsky finally asked.
Hutch bit the inside of his lip, remembering Howard’s words and hard tone. But if he couldn’t trust Starsky then there was just no reason to go on.
“There’s something missing,” he murmured softly, his tone confused. “Something I’m not seeing. I don’t know why this is happening. They’re not lust murders, not violent murders, there’s no acting out, no displays of power or aggression.”
“Maybe somebody thinks that putting these kids down is doing them a favor,” Starsky whispered, his eyes haunted and hurt, his hands pulling at his napkin.
“I thought of that,” Hutch admitted. “But if that’s the case, why just Downs’s kids? Are they easier to coerce?”
“No,” Starsky refuted. “If anything, they’re harder to deal with, if they don’t know you.”
“So that still leads me to the idea that the killer is someone they know and know well enough to either trust or at least not be frightened of.”
“What do you think so far?”
“It feels cold, Starsk. Like there’s a meaning behind this that we’re just not seeing, a reason that I can’t find yet.”
“And it’s driving you nuts.”
“That’s not a leap at this point,” Hutch told him with a smile, but it was truer than he wanted it to be.
“You think there’ll be another one?”
Hutch closed his eyes against the hope in the man he loved. “Yes.”
“Damn it,” Starsky hissed. “I do, too. Kirsten’s sent out a letter to the parents. She’ll lose a lot of kids over this.”
“It’s probably too late, Starsk. He’s been around the ones he wants; maybe he’s picked them out already, learned their routine.”
“So how do we prevent it from happening again?” Starsky asked, his face sad and hurt.
“You know the answer to that already, Starsk.”
“We find him first,” they replied together, smiling.
~*~*~*~
There were days in the sun….
After paying the check, they moved back to the bar. Hutch desperately wanted to invite Starsky up to his room, though he knew it would be a mistake on too many fronts. While they’d probably be able to talk more easily there, the proximity of a bed would make any discussion fraught with too much tension, of the emotional and sexual kind. And Howard was probably asleep already. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate Hutch bringing a ‘suspect’ to their room.
He ordered another Scotch and drank this one more slowly. He knew that Starsky disapproved; it radiated from his skin.
“That’s become a habit, huh?”
Hutch released a silent laugh. “Mother’s milk for FBI agents. A guaranteed sedative.”
“Until you wake up at three a.m. and can’t get back to sleep.”
The blond shrugged. “It keeps some of the bad stuff away.”
“Only sometimes, babe. It’s still there in the morning.”
“Let’s change the subject, okay?”
“Sure. What do you want to talk about?”
He had just enough Dutch courage to say, “Let’s talk about why you really ran off to New York.”
Starsky’s face shut down, and he turned away. “You know why. I was tired of it. I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
Hutch nodded. “You know, partner, I just don’t believe that. And I didn’t believe it then. If anything, this case reminds me of just how much you loved it.”
“I didn’t love getting shot, taking months to get back on my feet. And I don’t want to talk about it. It’s time I got going anyway.”
Immediately guilty for pushing, Hutch stood up. “I’ll walk you to the garage.”
Starsky didn’t argue, but just by the set of his shoulders Hutch knew that he was annoyed.
“And you always said I didn’t let anything go,” Starsky muttered, when they’d gotten down to the street.
It was a cool October evening, and Hutch was just ‘happy’ enough not to feel it. “I just don’t understand, Starsky. We were together. We loved each other. And then, one day, you let go and take off. Sure, you had all these reasons — you didn’t want the violence anymore, you were tired of the hand-to-mouth life of a cop, always being on guard, the pain of the shooting… but I didn’t feel any of them. I couldn’t point to one and say, ‘Yeah, that was it, that was the final straw.'”
He stopped and grasped Starsky’s arm. There weren’t many people on this street; most were still in the theaters. An idea had struck him and he had to voice it. “I couldn’t… because you never really told me why. You never said what it was that you couldn’t do any more.”
Starsky turned his head, escaping from Hutch’s questioning gaze. Then he pulled away and kept walking.
And Hutch let him go. In one moment of blinding clarity he knew what had happened then, and what was happening now.
His partner, his friend, could not deal with the fact that he was involved with a man.
He was sure that that was it. Not the job, not the violence or the pain…. It was Hutch and it had been all along. He’d never gone back to police work because it would always remind him of the partnership they had once had, and lost, because Ken Hutchinson couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
But he’d been so sure… so sure that Starsky had wanted it too.
A tear slipped out from one eye and then another. Irritably, he brushed them away and slowly made his way back to the hotel. He was glad that Howard was asleep when he slipped inside.
Calmly, he took a shower and then crawled into bed, where he let the tears flow until he fell asleep.
And sometime between that night and the next morning, something in him died.
~*~*~*~
“Eat, Hutchinson,” Howard growled. “You’re pale as snow.”
Hutch nodded and picked at his eggs, nibbling on some toast. He felt cold and tired; exhausted actually. It was about eight a.m. and the two men were breakfasting in their room.
“So, how did your ‘interview’ go last night?”
“He doesn’t know anything more than we thought he did, Howard,” Hutch wearily replied. “I think we should go to the school this morning. I want to see these people, meet them.”
“Okay.” Howard sat back and reached into his pocket. He tossed something across the table and Hutch automatically caught it. He knew what it was the moment his hand closed on the leather case. The badge inside was bright and new, his ‘Special Agent’ ID already there.
“I filled out all the paperwork for you, from your consultancy stuff. It’s now or never, kid. I’ve got a job for you, but only if you’re committed to it. It’s shit or get off the pot time.”
Howard’s voice was soft, but there was an underlying tension to it that warned Hutch he meant every word.
Hutch raised his eyes to stare into the pewter ones across the table. “This isn’t a badge, Howard. It’s a leash.”
The older man smiled. “You can see it that way, I guess. You’re damn good, Hutchinson, but you’re walking around like you’ve already died and are just waiting for the mortuary van to pick up the body.” He leaned forward. “Let go of the past and grab your future with both hands. I’m offering you a hell of a lot, here. There are guys who would give their left nut to be on my team, never mind the FBI. What the hell is holding you back? Starsky?”
The blond stiffened. “Leave him out of this, Howard.”
That was the absolute wrong thing to say and he knew it the moment it came out of his mouth.
“He walked out, couldn’t take it, and left you behind to pick up the pieces, but still you’re as loyal as a coon hound.” Shaking his head, Tarsa stood up and moved over to the windows, twitching the drapes open. “You know, before I hired you, after we did our background investigation, I knew what they’d found in L.A.”
Hutch barely breathed. “And what was that?”
“That you and your partner were joined at the hip. And I don’t mean just friendly, kid,” the gravelly tones replied. “And no one could seem to remember who this woman was that had broken your heart for you. They all said that you were devastated by Starsky’s moving away and breaking up the partnership. I may not have a doctorate in psychology, but I understood what that meant.”
Stunned, feeling all the blood drain away from his head, he blurted out, “Then why did you hire me?”
Tarsa turned and his face was hard as granite. “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you fucked, Hutchinson. You won’t do it on my watch. I get the slightest inkling that you’re tripping the light fantastic with some guy and I’ll bounce you so hard your butt will have the imprint of my shoe for a month.”
He digested that. Homosexuality was so far outside of what the FBI would tolerate in its members that Hutch was shocked that Howard would go out on a limb this dangerous for him. It was part of the ‘Gospel of St. Edgar,’ though there were more than a few that thought he might have been a little bent himself. “Why?” he finally had to ask.
The granite face softened. “I’m not going to live forever, kid. And when I move on, you’re going to take over.”
Hutch sat there for a long while, just thinking through the ramifications of what Tarsa had just told him. There were a lot of men who had more experience than he did, who had been agents for years. But with a little pride he knew that none of them were better profilers than he was.
“This is a lot to handle, Howard. I need some time to think it through.”
“You’ve got until tonight. After that, I ship your ass back to Quantico and terminate your consultancy.”
Hutch’s mouth dropped open. He couldn’t just leave Starsky with these kids dying all around him, and Howard knew that and was testing him, too. Momentarily defeated, he dropped his head. “You’re a bastard, Howard.”
Tarsa didn’t bother to deny the truth. “Yup. Well, come on, we’ve got a school to look over.”
~*~*~*~
As always, when his life fell apart Hutch sunk himself into his work. The pain of loss was a knife wound once more, and he truly believed that whatever he and Starsky had shared, as far as being lovers, was dead, destroyed by time, distance and fear.
In hindsight, he realized he never should have let the man he loved out of his life. He should have fought, resisted, denied, demanded… maybe then, this half-life wouldn’t have been necessary.
But now, with the truth well in sight, he had nothing else to hold onto. He loved Starsky. He would always love him and miss him. He understood ‘severed limb’ syndrome far better than anyone could possibly imagine, because that was what it had felt like these past five years.
He would let Starsky go, because it was what he really seemed to want. And if it destroyed him in the process… then that was the price he paid for daring to love at all.
In the taxi, on the way to The Rainbow School of Child Development on West 14th Street, he came to a conclusion.
These murders have nothing to do with the children.
He said so to Howard and wasn’t surprised when he received a skeptical glance in reply.
“There’s an underlying reason for the murders. Some other cause.”
“Okay, prove it to me.”
“I don’t know if I can yet, Howard. But my profile is leading towards murder as something cold, maybe for revenge or payback of some sort.”
“There are no connections between the Friedmans and the Eversons, kid. You couldn’t get more disparate people if you tried,” Tarsa protested.
“Maybe we just haven’t looked deep enough,” Hutch insisted and then turned to look at his boss. “You’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have. What do you think?”
The older man grinned. “I think you’re right on the money.”
Hutch shook his head, and looked out the window into the early morning traffic, smiling against his will.
On the way, he reviewed what he knew about the school.
The Rainbow School was the brainchild of Kirsten Morgen, a blond, vivacious teacher, who felt that special ed. kids needed more than just a place to go during the day. She believed they needed to be challenged, to excel, to learn what they could to make their way in the world. And besides all that, they needed to interact with their environment, the society that they would be dealing with for the rest of their lives. Kirsten had actually been friends with Starsky’s ex-wife, Cathy, and that was how he had gotten the job.
He’d been the director of phys-ed for the kids since he’d started, with two other young people and a handful of volunteers to help. Their job was to make sure that the students got the exercise they needed and had fun while they did it.
Reaching into his briefcase, he reviewed the employment files of the other men working there. Herbie Johnson was 6’5″ and close to three hundred pounds. He was the maintenance manager at the school, and had been since its inception. Every day after work, he took the train to his neighborhood bar for a beer or two, a game of pool, and then walked the two blocks home. His schedule never varied and he had solid alibis for the murders.
Starsky’s assistant, Pete Foster, was a young brunet doing his thesis on child development and working at the school while he finished grad school. Tall and well-built, he had clear green eyes and an athlete’s physique. He also had rock-solid alibis, though his male lover hadn’t appreciated being used in quite that way.
There were two other male teachers, but both were no longer suspects, as they hadn’t even been in town during the murders.
Sighing, Hutch left the taxi with little more information than when he’d gotten in. He took a moment to look at the large concrete building in front of him. It had once belonged to the Salvation Army, Howard had told him, and then they had given up the lease. Dr. Morgen had taken it on and turned it into her school.
She met them at the door, her platinum blonde hair pulled back, but it did nothing to detract from a lovely face. She had dark circles under her green eyes and it was obvious that she had done a lot of crying.
They introduced themselves, and Howard asked for a tour and an explanation of how the kids spent their day.
“The school works much like any grammar school,” she told them, as they moved down the main hall. “The teachers break up the kids’ day, so that they receive the physical education, exercise and therapy required, and don’t become too restless with their school work. Most of the teachers here are women, but there are a few men, and I understand they are the only ones you are interested in?”
Howard nodded, and she continued.
“Dave Starsky handles the exercises, while Pete Foster and Donna Turicella do the therapy.” She glanced back at them, indicating a gymnasium off to their left, resounding with the squeaks of sneakers and laughter. “Dave takes the more advanced kids and works at team sports with them.” She grimaced gently. “Team is a difficult concept for lots of kids and for our kids, even more so.”
Hutch looked in through the small windows. Starsky was in the center of the room, wearing a tee shirt covered by a zippered sweatshirt with the school’s logo on it, and his jeans were worn and comfortable, though not as tight as they had been in years gone by.
His kids raced towards him at various speeds, and he grinned and hugged each of the dozen. “Morning, guys,” he said, receiving lots of “Hi’s” back. These were his kids, and it was obvious he loved them, all of them. It didn’t matter that some of them had too-round faces or odd-shaped eyes, or that some weren’t really even here, but lost in their own world, or that they tried so hard but didn’t quite understand a lot of the world around them.
None of it mattered; it was obvious he loved them, showering it upon them with hugs and smiles and teasing. And they gave it back, honestly, unselfconsciously. To Hutch’s eyes, he seemed to absorb it like a sponge that’d been kept away from the sink too long.
“It’s not unusual for the kids to show up at Dave’s apartment on 23rd St. Sometimes the parents have to be somewhere and need a sitter. He doesn’t mind. They have pajama parties and Halloween movie night and lots of trips. Pete usually goes, too.”
Hutch couldn’t pull himself away from the little window, though he had a slightly jealous twinge when he heard about ‘Pete’.
“H’okay, guys. How about soccer?” Starsky asked.
A chorus of cheers responded and they started jumping up and down, ready to go. Grinning, he split them into teams, and grabbed the ball from a bag in the corner. This one was Day-Glo orange. “Now, remember. You’re a team; you work together, right?”
Bobbing heads replied. “Yes, Davey.”
“‘Davey’.” Hutch snickered.
“He hates ‘Davey’,” Kirsten told him, a smile finally lighting up her somber face, “but Monica christened him with it a few years ago, and it stuck.”
The smile slipped off the profiler’s face; no doubt the young girl had been special to him.
Starsky more or less shifted the kids where they should be and held the whistle to his lips. “Okay. You want to kick the ball, not each other. You kick each other and what am I going to say?”
“Nice bruise you got there,” they responded, but it was sort of garbled and giggled
“You got it. Okay, ready?” He blew on the whistle and dropped the ball at the same time.
He didn’t just referee; he was also the outside goal tender for when the ball was kicked inadvertently offside, or when one team was getting shellacked by the other. They had fun, which was what it was all about.
They were hot and sweaty when it was over, and he made them walk around for a while, checking for any lumps and bumps that had suddenly appeared. He had just put a band-aid on one minor scrape when a young woman slid past Hutch and entered.
“Donna Turicella,” Dr. Morgen told them. She was pretty, strikingly so, with long black hair and dark brown eyes, an olive complexion only adding a little something to the mix. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she wore a tee shirt and shorts, not seeming to notice the cooler weather.
“Hi, Dave.”
“Hey, Donna, how’s it going?”
“Can’t complain, boss.” Her long fingers ruffled one boy’s hair. He grinned up at her, obviously in love.
Starsky clapped his hands and the kids ran over to him. “You did good, guys. I’m proud of you. Work hard in school today, okay?”
He was squashed under a group hug and then the kids drifted off. “Pete and Donna will shepherd them into showers and then to their next class,” the principal advised softly.
Another group raced in. ‘Davey’ grinned and went back to work, and Hutch turned away, his heart aching for no real reason he could fathom.
Dr. Morgen took them to her office next. In order to complete his profile, Hutch wanted to meet the people who worked here, to try and determine if any of them might have some inkling as to the identity of their ‘unsub’.
She didn’t leave immediately and there was obviously something on her mind.
Hutch sat down in front of her desk and waited for her to blurt out whatever it was that was bothering her, while Howard browsed the room, noting book titles, diplomas, even the kinds of plants she had on the shelves.
“Why my kids?” she finally snapped. “What is it that’s drawing this man to do this to them?”
Prepared to launch into his usual lecture on child-related crimes, he hesitated, and then softened his tone. She was in a great deal of pain and giving her too much information wouldn’t help that. “Some of these offenders may be acting out aggressions they are only able to express against the most vulnerable of victims. They tend to pick lonely, poorly supervised kids.”
“That’s why it happens when they’re not here, right?”
“Right,” he replied with a smile and gestured her to sit down. “In profiling a child killer, it’s critical to analyze the crime scene, which in many cases is the body dump site. Where we find the body, and how quickly it’s found, tells us a lot about the killer. Organized killers tend to transport the victims, alive or dead, over distance. They dispose of bodies in places that take longer to find and where conditions may help destroy evidence — in a rainy area, for example, like for Monica. Or they go for drama or shock value, placing the body where it will be found, in a place or condition that will create outrage in the community, like Charlie.”
She was still listening intently, and Howard nodded for him to continue. “These guys are of average or above-average intelligence and do have social skills. They plan their crimes, target their victims, and kill to avoid detection, for the thrill, to fulfill their urges or for other reasons. With the exception of cases where children are killed by their parents, or where women acted as accomplices to strong, dominating males, all the suspects of child murder that we have documented have been men.”
Howard moved closer and took the other chair. “There is something that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children put together, a guide of the rules of safety that every child should know, no matter how old they are.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out three pages, stapled together. “It goes over the ‘NO-GO-TELL’ rules, as well as prevention tips, detecting sexual exploitation and the basic rules of safety, including an age-skills chart. I think it might be helpful for you, as well as your parents.”
“Thank you,” she replied, though her voice was tight. Her green eyes were damp with unshed tears. “Many parents are taking their children out of school, as a preventative measure.”
“I understand their fears,” Tarsa told her calmly, “but that won’t necessarily make them safe, unless they lock them in the basement. A killer like this is intelligent, and unless he is caught, he won’t stop.”
“Do you have any leads so far?” she asked.
“Not as many as I’d like,” Hutch murmured softly. “But we are working on it.”
“We do need to speak with all the men on your staff,” Howard reminded her.
Her face fell. “The police have already disrupted the school so much….” She sighed. “I’ll work out a schedule and send them in to you. There’s a small office next to mine, will that do?”
“That’ll be fine,” Howard promised. “We’ll wait there.”
The two men moved into the office and sat down.
Howard cleared his throat. “Let’s make sure we’re on the same page here, Ken. I’ll interview Starsky. Alone. You can go get a cup of coffee or whatever, but don’t be here. Clear?”
Rather than get excited about it, Hutch decided that since he knew Starsky wasn’t even remotely involved in this that it wouldn’t matter what Howard did. “Sure.”
Tarsa’s eyes narrowed. “That was too easy.”
“He didn’t do it,” he repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. “And no matter what you ask him, you won’t get anything. Even if, by the remotest possible hellish chance, he was involved, Starsky’s too smart, too experienced to ever give anything up, Howard. Come on, the man was a cop for as long as I was. Besides, he’s broken up over these kids.”
The older man nodded. “Seems to be.”
“You’re just doing this to irritate me, aren’t you?” Hutch challenged.
“Better than throwing darts,” Tarsa grinned.
The blond had a succinct and sharp reply to that, which had to be stifled when Herbie Johnson arrived. As was the routine when he and Howard interviewed together, Hutch hefted himself up onto some piece of furniture, and allowed the other man to be the primary. Only when he felt the direction of the interview was heading somewhere odd did he intervene and refocus it.
Mr. Johnson was huge, but his smile was honest and original and his handshake held nothing back. “I want to help you find who did this to our kids,” he told them in a deep, Boris Karloff-type voice. “My Mercy’s doing nothing but cry these days.”
“Your wife, right?” Howard began. “She’s the nurse here….”
An hour later, Johnson was released.
“What do you think?”
“Nope,” Hutch replied. “Doesn’t register on the meter at all.”
“Right. Alibis are locked in tight. Seems if he wasn’t in his bar that night somebody’d notice, since he’s such a regular.”
A familiar face stood outside the glass-plated window and then entered. Dutifully, Hutch got up to go when Starsky sat down.
His partner just grinned up at him and said, “Coffee, hot, light…”
“…And sweet. Like you. Yeah, I got it already,” Hutch completed, smiling in spite of himself.
He looked at Howard once more, subtly reminding him that this was a waste of time before he closed the door behind him.
~*~*~*~
Howard Tarsa had been an FBI agent since he’d left the service. That was twenty-five years and in that time, he had seen it all.
The man in front of him, though, made his blood boil.
“Your friend there is certain you’re innocent, Starsky.”
Casually, the younger man put his feet up on the desk, crossed them at the ankles and completely relaxed. “Because I am,” he replied softly. “The idea of hurting a kid makes me sick.”
“You don’t fit the profile anyway. Former cop, former military, you’ve already lived the life that most of these guys want to have. You live alone, enjoy your work… but no love affairs, huh? Nobody who makes your heart beat faster?”
“Interesting angle,” Starsky replied, his eyes dark and filled with laughter.
Ken was right; he was too clever to catch outright, even if he had been involved, which Howard also didn’t believe was possible. But he had to test Hutchinson’s loyalty, and this would be a test of fire.
“Listen, Starsky, I know all about you and ‘Hutch’,” he told him bluntly. “I know you were partners, I know you were involved. I know it all.” He let that register. “What I don’t know is why he’s still so loyal to you, even after you dumped him like last week’s meat loaf. I don’t know why he still holds on. And more importantly, I don’t know how to make him let go, to move on.”
There, Howard thought, there was a sincere emotion flashing through those brilliant eyes and across that angular face. Pain. Real and honest pain before it was covered up.
“Me neither.”
“Oh, I think you do. I think you know how to make him live. Not just this ‘holding pattern’ sort of thing he’s been doing for the past five years. I swear some days that the man is just a ghost, only half-alive, waiting for something. And that something never happens.”
“Sounds like you’ve been thinking about him a lot.”
Tarsa chuckled. “Yeah. He’s good, damn good. Too good to waste on you.” That remark made the younger man sit up, a spark of true irritation on his face. “You’d like him to waste a little bit on you?”
The agent laughed out loud, surprised to find that the teacher was jealous. It didn’t fit what he thought of as a ‘love-’em and leave-’em’ type of man. “My wife would love that. No, that’s not what I meant. But if you’re not going to give him what he needs, then someone should. And he won’t let anyone do that until you’re completely out of the picture.”
The other man didn’t reply, but his mouth tightened fractionally.
“He’s not living now. He has no friends, no family, no outside interests. I have to order him to leave the office, just to eat. He hasn’t watched a game in forever, doesn’t exercise unless he’s ordered to….” He waited, let that sink in. “I think you see the difference between the man he was and the man he is today far better than I can. Ken lives only for his work, and that is deadly. He won’t last ten years like this. He’ll explode, blow his brains out, drown himself in booze, dive into an even deeper depression than he’s already in. Is that what you want? Is that the price he has to pay for wanting you?”
Starsky stood up. “If you have any other questions about the case, I’ll be around.”
“Just like I thought. Gutless. What Hutchinson ever thought he saw in you — ”
Howard was shocked when he was suddenly lifted off his feet and slammed against the wall behind him. One heavy hand was resting on his chest, while Starsky’s face was right next to his. “Don’t pretend that you know anything about Hutch and me. You don’t have the faintest clue what makes either one of us tick, Howard.”
Surprised that Starsky had reacted to that and not the ‘gutless’ remark, he didn’t move, not at all intimidated by the other man. Understanding unwillingly smacked him between the eyes. “You still love him.”
“He’s my best friend,” Starsky growled, not seeming to even be winded by holding the much heavier man up against the wall while they talked.
“Then act like it. Do the right thing. Let him go.”
Starsky dropped him then. “You leave Hutch to me. You worry about who’s killing kids, all right?” Gently, he dusted off Howard’s suit and turned away.
“Leave him to you? I don’t think so. Not when you’ve done such a good job of destroying him already.”
Ken opened the door at that moment, interrupting the fierce ‘interview’. The agent was sure that Starsky was going to go for him again at any moment. The blond calmly handed Starsky his coffee and another one to Tarsa.
“We done here?” the teacher growled.
“Yep. For the moment. But we’re not done by a long shot, teach.”
“He’s a real charmer, babe,” Starsky murmured to his former partner. “What does he do for an encore, vivisect bunny rabbits?”
Hutch frowned sharply as Starsky made his way past him, their shoulders casually brushing. It was their body language that gave them away, Tarsa thought. The way that they seemed to need to touch each other, even when there was no particular reason to do so.
“Sounds like an interesting interview,” Ken began, his eyes hard, body tense and irritated.
“Oh, he’s a barrel of laughs,” Howard replied caustically. “Who’s next?”
~*~*~*~
After completing the school interviews, it was time to branch the investigation out a little. “What about delivery supply vendors, the occasional medical professional, anyone like that?”
Kirsten shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll give you a list of our vendors if that might be helpful.”
“What about volunteers?” Hutch added. “I thought you had a large group of them.”
“We do,” she replied. “I’ll give you their names and addresses. The police already have it, and I think they’re talking to them.”
Hutch nodded. Maybe Powers wasn’t such a jackass after all.
Howard stood up and picked up his briefcase. “Time to go, Ken. Let’s get back to the precinct and see if there’s anything else they’ve come up with.”
When they arrived there they sat down in the conference room and went over what Powers’ guys had picked up.
The lieutenant sat down on Howard’s side of the table and spoke only to him, a childishness that Hutch ignored.
“We did as you asked and re-questioned the people in the apartment building. One old lady said she saw someone talking to Monica, but she turned away when her phone rang.”
“Description?” Hutch asked, idly nibbling on a danish that Howard had tossed at him.
“You know that isn’t going to eat itself, kid,” Tarsa growled softly.
“Shut up, Howard. Did you get a description?” Hutch repeated.
“Not much of one. Maybe 5’7, slim, wearing a hat. The kid seemed not to like him, but they were still talking when the old lady went inside.”
“Why did she say Monica didn’t like him?”
“Body language. She said the kid leaned her bike away from the guy. When she went back to the window, the kid was gone, but her bike was still there.”
A thought struck him. “How did they find the bike? Was it lying on its side, wheels spinning? Or was it upright, with the kickstand locked down?”
Powers glared. “Don’t know; I didn’t ask. Why?”
“If the bike was down, wheels spinning, she was snatched and pulled physically away,” Howard replied. “If the kickstand was up, she expected to come back to it.”
Biting the inside of his lip, the detective didn’t ask any more questions, but moved to the side of the room and picked up the phone.
“Antonia Everson says the bike was upright. The seat was still warm when she found it.”
Hutch dropped his head. “Damn it.”
“Did your witness say anything about cars or trucks that had moved?” Howard asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t ask her,” Hutch said, eyeing Powers like something he’d found under his shoe.
“No, the officers didn’t. They don’t know what weird angle you’re going to veer off onto next, Hutchinson, and neither do I. I do know that you had dinner with Starsky last night. What was that, some new method of interrogation?”
He was tired of being hassled about Starsky. He might have to take it from Tarsa, but not this guy. “Fuck you, Powers,” he snarled and stood up. “What’s the name of the witness?”
Unfazed, the cop responded, “Myra Vincent. Apartment 3D. Take Flanders with you, he did the follow-up.”
Hutch turned away and tossed his uneaten danish into the garbage. “Howard?”
“I’ll stay here, Ken, and see what comes up on the volunteers. Don’t scare the natives, okay?”
With a less than sweet smile for his boss, he headed out, calling for Flanders as he did so.
Flanders turned out to be a very tall black man, who looked like he had once played professional football. He dwarfed his car, but managed to curl himself up into the gold Charger well enough.
“So, where to?” he asked.
“I need to talk to Myra Vincent.”
“Sure. Any new leads?”
“She’s our best bet so far,” Hutch replied breezily.
“She’s an old lady, man. Her eyesight isn’t that good even with her glasses.”
“Let’s see what we can come up with anyway, alright, Flanders?”
“It’s Bill,” the cop clarified. “Okay by me. Powers don’t like you none,” he said, turning out of the garage and into traffic.
“He’ll get over it.”
The other man chuckled. “You’re the guy that helped the Seattle P.D. find that ‘Ripper’ killer, right? The one who was imitating Jack the Ripper?”
Hutch settled himself back into the seat once more. “I was on the case.”
“I read all about it in the papers. You even brought the guy down.”
“It was an accident. I went to interview his mother. He was in the house.”
“You nearly got your arm taken off. What was he, some sort of wrestling fan?”
Hutch smiled, but it barely moved his lips. It had taken almost two months for the ligaments in his left arm to heal and after that, Howard wouldn’t let him go on a case by himself. He had been glad that Tarsa had insisted he carry the Magnum, or else he wouldn’t be sitting here today.
“Carlos Alvarez was 6’8″ and weighed almost four hundred pounds. The idea that even hookers didn’t want to sleep with him set him off, gave the rage impulses he’d had for years an outlet.”
“But why? Did his father beat him or something’?”
The traffic was light today and the sun was shining. Hutch slipped on his sunglasses. “His mother was a true harpy. She did nothing but berate him most of his life. And when he got too big to hit, she used words to destroy his self-esteem. He was killing his mother, over and over again.”
Flanders shook his head. “Pathetic. You think this one’s like that?”
“No, there’s no fetishistic or rage impulses going on here,” he replied, and put his head back against the headrest.
Flanders shut up for the remainder of the trip and Hutch tried to rest his eyes. He was tired, not just physically — he was always wired when working on location for a case — but emotionally drained. The one thing he had always counted on had been pulled out from under his feet, and now he was walking on constantly shifting sand.
Mrs. Vincent was eighty-three, but she sure didn’t look it, and her astringent tone definitely warned Hutch that she wouldn’t tolerate anything from him.
Her hair was completely white and even her dark skin was pale and grey, rather than black. But her eyes, even though they were a watery hazel, were sharp and aware.
“I already talked to this policeman, here,” she told him, settling herself in a rocking chair by the window and gesturing at Flanders. She wore a flowered print dress and knee-length stockings, her hair pulled up into a neat bun. The apartment was spotless, and if the furniture was old, it was well-maintained and glowed with polish.
“I know you spoke with Detective Flanders,” Hutch told her, after he had introduced himself. “But there are a few questions that might really help us out. Do you mind?”
She looked at him searchingly for a few moments and then sighed. “That poor little thing. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”
He took that as tacit permission and set up his tape recorder. “You mentioned that when you saw Monica and the man together, she didn’t like him. Why was that?”
“Well, like I told her teacher this morning — ”
“Her teacher?” Hutch interrupted.
She looked at him, surprised. “That nice Mr. Starsky. Antonia Everson told me it was all right to talk with him, that he’d been a cop once.”
Hutch had to smile — Starsk was already ahead of him. “Yes, he was. So tell me too.”
“She stopped when she saw this man, and she didn’t get off her bike at first. They talked, too low for me to hear. Monica was a loud little thing, but she didn’t yell or nothing. He seemed to coax her, like. And then my phone rang and I went to get it.”
“That’s great, Mrs. Vincent, great. Now tell me about him. What were your first impressions when you saw him?”
“He was young… and short. Thin, but I’m not sure about that because of the long jacket he wore. His clothes seemed too big for him. There was a cap on his head, and I think he had long hair, because he kept tucking strands of it up inside the cap.” She closed her eyes. “He had small hands and feet, and he wore white, kind of beaten-up sneakers.”
“Do you remember what the cap said? Were there any words on it?”
“I couldn’t see it too good.”
“That’s okay. Keep your eyes closed. Remember what the street looked like, the cars, the people.” He gave her a minute or so to do that. “Was there an unusual car on the street? Something you hadn’t seen before?”
“Only his car.”
Flanders shuffled his feet, frowning.
“Tell me about his car, Mrs. Vincent,” Hutch urged, waving the big cop to silence.
“It was an old white van. I only noticed because I saw him get out of it.”
Hutch nodded, pleased. “Go on.”
“It reminded me of those trucks that painters use.”
Gotcha. “Did it have a ladder on the side?”
“No. But the holder for it was still there — on the top, not the side. It had side doors, you know, the kind that you have to pull the handle to open.”
“Any dents, rust, odd colors, anything like that?”
“It was white, but it was sort of grey, too. It was across the street. I couldn’t see anything more than that. Oh, the back door was dented in, hard. I don’t think you could open that door.”
Hutch closed his eyes, relieved. Now they had something to start with. “Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything at all?”
She opened her eyes, and looked sad. “I shouldn’t have gone to get the phone. That little girl…. I should have yelled or something.”
“There was no way for you to know, Mrs. Vincent,” Hutch soothed. “Monica wasn’t alarmed by this person; she didn’t ride past him. I can’t thank you enough for your help.”
Her eyes were wet when he left her, rocking in her chair, gazing out onto the street.
Flanders looked chagrined when he got back into his car. “I didn’t ask her about cars.”
“Think about it,” Hutch told him gently. “How did he get her away from her home so fast? He had to transport her, maybe using something in the truck as a lure.”
The big black man nodded and stayed quiet on the way back. Hutch glanced at his watch as they went over the Triborough Bridge. “Drop me at The Rainbow School, okay? I’ll get a taxi back.”
Flanders nodded. “Call me if you need a ride.”
The blond looked at the big cop for a moment. “You want in on this case?”
“Damned right. Powers is letting his grudge with the Feds get in the way.”
Hutch considered that. “I don’t think he is, but I’ll talk to Agent Tarsa.”
“Thanks.”
~*~*~*~
That have stayed forever young….
He waited outside of the gymnasium for Starsky.
When he appeared, he jerked a thumb at him. “Lunch?”
Starsky smiled softly, the smile that made his stomach flip-flop. “Sure. There’s a pizza joint around the corner.”
“Sounds good,” he murmured back and followed his friend out the fire doors of the school and onto the street.
They sat down to eat before Hutch asked, “So you saw Mrs. Vincent this morning?”
True to form, Starsky didn’t react at all at first. And then he shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah. That a problem?”
“Not for me,” Hutch replied. “But if we’re going to do it this way, it makes more sense to do it together.”
“Powers won’t like that.”
“Powers can kiss my ass,” Hutch replied softly, biting into his pizza, and trying hard not to look into Starsky’s eyes, the ones he wanted to fall into and drown in.
“You giving out invitations now?” he replied, silky-smooth.
“Don’t,” Hutch rapped out. “Let’s just keep it professional, okay?”
Starsky looked at him, his expression surprised. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Hutch said. “Nothing. So, a white van, sort of grayish, rear doors dented so badly they won’t open. A small-framed man with long hair, oversized clothes and a cap.”
“Could be any one of a million people,” Starsky groused.
“Yeah, but the truck has to belong to somebody. We’ll start from there. You got anything else?”
“Not so far.”
“All right,” Hutch replied, wiping his face off with a napkin. Great thing about not having a mustache any more — no tomato sauce or cheese to worry about. “What time do you get off work?”
“Five. Why?”
“What, you think you’re off the hook that easy? We’ve got work to do, partner. Need to help the NYPD check out all these white vans.”
“That’s just great. Grunt work,” Starsky growled, but Hutch knew his heart wasn’t in it and he had to grin back.
Howard was waiting when he arrived back at the precinct. He listened closely and took notes while Hutch relayed the conversation with Myra Vincent and the new information.
Tarsa nodded. “That’s great, Ken. Good work.” Then he sat back in his chair and loosened his tie slightly. “Flanders said he dropped you off at the school.”
Hutch had no intention of being cowed by the older man. “That’s right. Starsky’s investigating the murders, too. Did you expect that he wouldn’t?”
“I would expect that he would have the sense and experience to leave that to us.”
“We can find him, Howard. We can make this stop. Just give us a chance”
“Powers will hang you both up to dry, kid.”
“Oh, come off it. Powers doesn’t like either one of us and he just about hates Starsky. What, does he think we’re going to walk away with his investigation?”
“Probably,” Tarsa admitted. “It wasn’t his call to bring us in, and he wants to believe that your buddy is involved in this somehow.”
“He doesn’t fit the profile and you know it. Besides, he has solid alibis and I’m sick to death of this investigation going off track. You don’t like Starsky because… of my past with him. He doesn’t like him because he was a damn good cop and has already asked more intelligent questions than Powers has. This is stupid, Howard; whatever helps us in getting the job done is what we should be doing!”
“The investigation is the only reason why you’re pulling Starsky in on this?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” Hutch adamantly replied.
“Prove it to me.”
Howard pulled a sheet of paper out from his jacket pocket, unfolded it, and slid it across to Hutch. “Prove it to me,” he repeated.
Dry-mouthed, the blond looked down, seeing the final signature page of the FBI offer and application. Once he signed that, they owned him.
He looked up, out the window, trying to gather his suddenly straying thoughts. He and Starsky were over. They’d be friends until they died, but his partner couldn’t, wouldn’t, ever be his lover again.
Knowing that, there was nothing else for him but the job, now.
And this was a test of loyalty. He could sense Howard’s trepidation at keeping him on the case, given what he and Starsky had been to each other before. He was taking a risk, as well.
He bent over and, taking one of the pens strewn across the conference table, signed the innocuous piece of paper, thrusting it back across to Tarsa.
Howard smiled softly, and nodded, but even Hutch could feel the waves of satisfaction coming off the other man. He got up and shook his new agent’s hand. “It’s time to let go of the past, Ken. You have a future, now, and I’ll be damned if I’ll see you waste it.”
Hutch dropped his head and licked his lips. “I’ll do the job, Howard.”
“I don’t want you to just do the job, kid,” Tarsa told him seriously. “I want you to live. Losing someone you love doesn’t mean it’s not worth living.”
The blond didn’t know what to say to that. He was too confused by his own riot of conflicting emotions to respond with any sense or reason.
“It’ll take time, but you’ll see that I’m right.”
Hutch had the sinking feeling that nothing would ever be ‘right’ again, but he didn’t say it. Howard thought he was helping with his gruff, irritating manner, and in many aspects he had saved Hutch from just slowly dying of boredom.
If nothing else in this job, he was never bored. Frustrated, worried, nervous… but never bored.
“Sure, Howard, sure. Now what do you say we go see Powers and break the bad news to him?”
The older man laughed. “Nothing like ruining another man’s day to make you feel great, huh, Ken?”
“You’re a real sweetheart, Howard, you know that?”
Tarsa preceded him out the door, and Hutch took a moment to stare at his hand, the hand with which he had signed his future away. It didn’t look any different, didn’t feel any different. But it was. It was the hand of a Special Agent of the FBI, now, and it was completely alien to him.
~*~*~*~
They updated Powers, who looked remarkably sour about the whole thing, but he didn’t argue. Then they discussed the white van and the Lieutenant yelled to one of his men to check with the DMV.
“I’d also like to work with Flanders on this; he has a feel for the case already and wants in,” Hutch told Powers, seeing the tired expression on the other man’s face. They may not ever like each other, but the cop was trying hard and was just as frustrated as they were by the lack of progress.
“Yeah, whatever,” he growled. “Just keep your other ‘partner’ under wraps, okay? I don’t need him saying something to the wrong people and getting news coverage we don’t need.”
Hutch bit his lip and didn’t explode, refusing to rise to the bait. “Right,” he drawled instead.
“Mrs. Vincent’s description is too loose to send a sketch artist over,” Tarsa added, rubbing his face. “But we might get a hit on the truck.”
“We’ll start on that tonight and cross-reference any of the employees, vendors or volunteers,” Powers reminded. “Are we anywhere on a profile of this guy?”
It wasn’t a jab, or Hutch would have cheerfully pushed the guy out his office window. “The profile is that these crimes don’t match with a serial offender. This is a revenge motivation or something similar to that. The deaths of the kids are the means to an end, not the end itself.”
“And how do you get that?” Powers snapped.
“Voodoo,” Howard calmly replied. “Lay off. We want this guy as badly as you do. Hutchinson is going in the right direction, so let him help you and we’ll be out of your hair once you arrest him. Okay?”
Somewhat mollified, Powers replied, “Yeah. Just keep me in the loop.”
“Will do,” Hutch promised.
“Good,” Tarsa growled and stood up, hanging his trench coat over one arm and his briefcase in the other. “Now that you’re playing like good boys, I have to head back to Quantico.”
The blond just stared at his boss. He didn’t want to whine in front of Powers, so he headed back to the hotel with Tarsa.
He finally vented his shock in the relative privacy of the cab. “What do you mean, you’re going back to Quantico?”
“The unit’s stretched a little thin, kid, you know that. Besides, I have meetings with the brass that I can’t put off. And guys need to go on vacation, and off-site, and somebody has to be there to hold up the building.”
Hutch rubbed one hand across his face. “You’re testing me.”
“Yep.”
“Have I mentioned how tired I am of that?”
The older man laughed and patted him on the thigh. “You’ll get used to it. Ask Bob Ricky: to this day, he starts to shudder if I even say the word to him.”
“So you’re leaving me alone to work this case.”
“As well as the other profiles that need to get done, kid; don’t forget them. Besides, you won’t be alone. Powers won’t let you sneeze without Flanders, and there’s Starsky, too.”
I must be tired, Hutch thought to himself, not to have caught that one.
“Starsky. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
Hutch sighed. “In case I haven’t mentioned this since this morning…. You’re a bastard, Howard.”
“Yep.”
~*~*~*~
He waited for his friend outside of the school that night. A cool October breeze was doing its best to chill his ears, and his hat wasn’t helping much. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, reminded that he had other cases he needed to complete the profiles on. Most of them weren’t as difficult as this case, but they still needed his guidance. If he had one fault, he tended to mainline one hot case at a time, and it drove Howard crazy. He had at least a dozen others that he needed to work on, too.
Time enough for that tonight, when sleep was as elusive as it usually was.
“A little chilly tonight, huh, blondie?”
The familiar voice pulled him out of his introspection.
A leather bomber jacket in dark brown covered the broad shoulders before him and he stopped to admire it before replying. “Yeah. Let’s get to the precinct and see what they’ve come up with.”
Starsky didn’t move and his face was pale in the streetlights around them. “What about dinner — food? I need energy if I’m going be running around with you, blintz.”
“Is that all you can think about, your stomach?” Hutch snapped, but he wasn’t angry and his partner knew it. It was one of their favorite things to argue about, or it had been.
“Hey, my body is a fine-tuned machine. It needs calories to make it go.”
“Your car is a machine, Starsk. Your body is just… well….” Realizing he’d set himself up, he shut his mouth.
Starsky just laughed.
Sighing softly, Hutch followed the trim form in front of him to the blue Mustang parked in the schoolyard. Starsky’s walk hadn’t changed: he still seemed to have springs in his legs.
The Mustang was as lovingly maintained as the Torino had been, the cool leather interior soft and welcoming to his touch. The car warmed up quickly and they headed off, into the jungle of the New York City streets.
Starsky pointed out the interesting sights until he finally muttered, “Little Italy,” and parked in a lot near a place called Rao’s. It was small, but Hutch noticed a number of celebrities and well-known faces, including the anchorman for the local news channel in one of the booths.
A little old man came out to greet them as they entered. He was thin and small, hands gnarled from long years of kitchen work. “David,” he cried, and then murmured a stream of Italian while he kissed Starsky’s face.
A younger woman, but still older than either of them, followed him. She was dark haired and dark eyed, and she had a smile that would stop traffic. “David!” she added. “We haven’t seen you in weeks. Momma was starting to think you didn’t like us anymore.”
Starsky grinned. “Are you kidding? I was gaining weight from all her food!”
“Not surprising, considering how you eat,” Hutch muttered softly.
The grin died and Starsky elbowed him hard. “This is a friend of mine, Ken Hutchinson. He’s been eating hotel food,” he told them, like it was some sort of fatal disease he’d contracted.
“Oh, you poor boy,” the older man cried and all but dragged him to a table. “Ava! David’s brought a friend!”
Hutch flushed; at the moment they were the main attraction, it seemed, of this little restaurant, and the other diners grinned or laughed behind their hands or napkins. Starsky lapped it up, loving to be the center of attention.
They were fussed over a while longer, and then left to their own devices, with a bowl of warm bread and soft butter as well as a tray of antipasto, a Scotch for Hutch and a beer for his companion.
“So, where’s your boss?”
Hutch chewed his bread, swallowed and then replied, “On a plane home by now.”
The crystalline blue gaze bored into his own. “He left you alone?”
“I don’t need any handholding, Starsky,” Hutch replied, irritated. “Besides, it’s a test of sorts. To see if I can handle it.”
The teacher’s strong fingers shredded the bread in front of him, and Hutch had to push away how those hands had felt on his body, so many times.
“Handle what, babe? This is a rough case. He’s dropping you into the tender mercies of Powers and his crew?”
“They’re not so bad. Besides, I’m a full-fledged FBI man now.”
The man in front of him stopped moving and Hutch swore if Starsky had been eating, he would have choked.
The sharp, hurt, gaze locked onto him. “Why’d you do that, Hutch? What for?”
He shrugged, attempting to ignore the sudden sense of intimacy between them. “Why not? There’s nothing else to do. I’m a cop — federal or local, it doesn’t matter. The job does.”
“And that’s all that matters?”
He started to get irritated. “Where is all this concern coming from, partner? If I didn’t call you on the first Tuesday of every fucking month, I wouldn’t have known whether you were dead or alive. You certainly didn’t call me.”
“I didn’t think holding on would help.”
“Holding on? You’re my best friend, Starsky, even now. No matter how badly we screwed up, and we did, I admit it, that hasn’t changed.”
“Me ‘n’ thee, huh?”
The blond’s voice locked up in his throat, but he finally croaked, “Always.”
Their entrees interrupted the moment, but it was just as well they did. For Hutch knew he was being drawn back into the sense of one-ness that had always existed between them, that had made their partnership such a success. He wanted it desperately, but feared it at the same time. It had very nearly destroyed him.
“I’m surprised that Powers agreed to my hanging around,” Starsky muttered, dividing his attention between his parmesagne and Hutch.
“Howard had crossed you off the suspect list, finally, so he didn’t have any reason not to do it, especially since we sort of ganged up on him and presented it as a done deal,” Hutch reminded. “I don’t care if I have to pull in the ghost of Harry Houdini to find this guy.”
Starsky grinned. “That’d be interesting. A ghost detective. Maybe I could write that one up for a TV show.”
“Sure. With you as the ghost.”
“Not me, blondie. You’re the pale one of this partnership.”
Once again, Hutch had an appetite and he devoured his meal quickly and efficiently. Starsky just shook his head.
“I’d hate to be your stomach.”
Hutch absently wiped his mouth and sipped his Scotch, accepting a second one when the waitress brought it. “Ha ha.”
“I mean it. You’re thin, babe. And your eyes have bags, and I mean, Gucci, under ’em.”
“All part of the job, Starsk.” He looked around the restaurant. “Nice place. Great food.”
Starsky let himself be taken off-track. “The best restaurant in Manhattan. You know, people have to wait years for a reservation.”
“Years?” Hutch parroted. “It’s good, but… that’s ridiculous.”
“It’s the truth,” his partner confirmed.
“So, how’d you get in so good with the family?”
“Well, um… I sorta… broke up a robbery one night.”
Hutch just stared at him. “You WHAT?”
“Take it easy, blintz. It wasn’t a big deal. Two guys came in around eleven-thirty and I was still here. The last customers left right after they arrived and they pulled a gun on Pauli…. There were only two of them,” he replied, defensively.
“Only two of them, and you forget what happened the last time there was an incident with you and an Italian restaurant?”
Starsky’s frown abruptly disappeared and he looked sheepish. “No. But….”
“No ‘buts’, you idiot. You’re not a cop any more, you aren’t carrying a gun and they could have killed you!” Hutch snapped.
“Oh, for the love of Mike, I’m still a big boy and I can wipe my butt all by myself!”
“You can, can you?” he whispered. “And who do you think would have gotten the phone call? Hmm? Dobey? Your mom? Me?”
The other man shifted in his chair. “Can’t we do anything but fight any more?”
Hutch downed his Scotch in one gulp. “It doesn’t seem like it, does it?”
“Why do you think that is?”
The blond looked away. “I guess… I guess I’m still mad.”
“I didn’t do it to hurt you, Hutch.”
“No. I get it, now, Starsk, I really do. I should have realized it then, but — ”
The waitress arriving to see if they wanted coffee was a welcome interruption. Hutch had no idea what he would have blurted out. “We’d better get going. I need to see what the DMV reports came back with.”
Starsky stared at him for a moment, his intense eyes sad and guilty. “Yeah.” They paid the bill and left the restaurant, Hutch pulling out a couple of breath mints and sucking them into his mouth.
“Too much booze, blondie, will make your hair fall out.”
“Too late,” the agent replied, settling back into the car. “To the precinct, James, and don’t spare the horses.”
Starsky shook his head and pulled away.
~*~*~*~
Nights when passion was invincible….
“There are about 4,200 of these vans in the city, Agent Hutchinson,” Flanders advised. He appeared tired and his brown eyes squinted as they looked over the yards of computer printouts. “Most of them are used for small commercial companies, deliveries, that sort of thing.”
“Any of them match the volunteers or vendors?” Hutch asked, dropping his coat onto a nearby chair.
“Yeah, one of the companies that sells cleaning supplies to the school.” He rifled amongst even more pages under the printout and handed it over to the blond.
“Dexter’s Supplies,” Hutch read. He glanced at Starsky. “They’re in the Bronx.”
“Lots of people are in the Bronx, blintz,” his partner replied, unzipping his jacket. “But it’s worth checking out.”
“In the morning, Special Agent,” Powers’ voice carried from his office. “I’m not authorizing any clandestine activities, like scaling fences and that sort of bat-shit.”
The blond sighed and ignored Starsky’s eye-rolling. “What else?”
“What else?” Flanders echoed. “Take a page.”
Starsky sniggered and Hutch ignored that too.
“We can ignore the late-models; Mrs. Vincent said it was old,” the teacher added. “And anything that has a color other than grey or white.” Then he grabbed a few pages for himself and settled back in the chair, his sneakers propped onto the polished top of the conference table.
There was silence for a long time, followed only by the scratching of pens against paper as they noted any vans that sounded like the one they were looking for.
“Are we sure there wasn’t any writing on the side?” Flanders asked.
“Probably what the grey paint was used for,” Starsky inserted, “to cover it up.”
A muffled grunt was the cop’s only reply and he went back to his work.
By ten they had gone through the printouts and had a respectable bunch to start out with. Hutch was yawning, and Starsky wasn’t much better. Flanders looked like his eyes didn’t belong to him anymore, bloodshot and glassy.
“All right, boys, time to break this up,” Powers told them, his coat already on. “I’m going home and that means you should too.”
“I’m not arguing,” Flanders replied, standing and stretching.
Starsky blinked; he probably hadn’t realized how big the cop was. “You play any pro ball? Like, maybe, for the Dolphins?”
“Yeah, defensive end,” the black man replied, grinning. “A long time ago. How’d you know?”
Starsky smiled. “I’m good at that sort of thing.”
Meaning I was a detective once, too, Hutch knew. And the worst thing about it was he was a damned good detective. Just having Starsky there gave the blond the sure feeling that they were going to get this guy.
“Come on, blintz, I’ll drive you back to the hotel.”
They tossed ideas back and forth in the car, but neither of them really had any concrete theories why someone would have such a vendetta against developmentally challenged children.
“Anyone whose kid wasn’t allowed in the school, maybe the past six months or so?” Hutch threw out as a last gasp. None of his other ideas had come to anything either.
Starsky grunted as he immediately caught his train of thought. To Hutch’s mind, refusal = disgruntled parent = dead kids to open attendance. “I don’t think so, but I’ll talk to Kirsten. You know, the school’s run at a loss; there’s nothing but red ink on her accountant’s books. The balance is taken up by grants and federal funding.”
“Nothing like working on a shoestring,” Hutch muttered. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at the place.”
Starsky shrugged. “We work hard at it.”
“You never did tell me how you started working there.”
Was it his imagination, or did Starsky flush when he asked the question? Hutch wondered and then listened intently to what his partner wasn’t saying.
“Kirsten was a friend of Cathy’s. And we got along okay. When Cath and I broke up, we stayed friends and she’d come by to say hello. Nothing big.”
“And?” Hutch pursued.
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Reminded that there were different rules to their relationship now, Hutch pulled back, but the question didn’t go away. “Okay. You know, I, um, didn’t hear from you the first year you were gone. I was just trying to fill in the blanks.”
“I know,” his friend replied, but there was a harrowed, hunted look to Starsky’s face that Hutch absolutely didn’t care for.
“You okay?” he asked, laying one hand on Starsky’s thigh, something he never would have thought twice about in days gone by. But the subtle heat and tension made him jerk back, a line of sweat trailing down his spine. Desire, pushed away for too long, exploded in his body, bringing his nipples to rigid points and his cock to attention.
“Yeah. Just don’t want to talk about it.”
Hutch nodded, trying hard to get his recalcitrant body under control. He was terribly glad he was wearing a long coat.
The hotel was a welcome sight, and he breathed a soft sigh of relief. He’d forgotten just how intensely Starsky could affect him, like a sudden flash-point that could incinerate all his logical reasons to avoid the man.
“What about tomorrow?” Hutch asked. “Same time, same place?”
“I’ll meet you here, about nine, okay?” Starsky told him softly, his hands still on the wheel and his eyes ahead.
Hutch regretted probing, but it had been a simple question, he had thought. Nothing too intrusive, but obviously he’d made yet another mistake. And then he realized what Starsky had said. “Nine? Don’t you have kids to teach?”
“Pete’s taking over, for now. We need to nail this son-of-a-bitch.”
The blond nodded. “Okay. Nine. Goodnight, Starsk.”
“Night, blintz. Get some sleep; tomorrow’ll be a busy day.”
They’re all busy, Hutch wanted to reply, but Starsky had already taken off, merging into the heavy traffic with effortless ease.
Feeling tired and wasted, Hutch entered the hotel. He still had a bottle of Scotch in his room, and it was going to be a long night.
~*~*~*~
They spent the next day checking out white vans. None of them had the distinctive coloration or dented rear door panel that they were looking for.
“We’ve gone through the first fives pages of our list,” Hutch groaned, tossing the wadded-up piece of paper into the back seat of Starsky’s car. “Wonder if Flanders had any better luck?”
“Hey! Didn’t the FBI break you outta that?” his partner snapped, reaching around with a squeak of leather to retrieve the innocent paper ball.
“Apparently not,” the blond replied, smiling just to irritate his friend. He glanced at his watch. It was only eight p.m.
“So now what?”
“That’s a good question,” the agent replied. “Isn’t Monica’s wake tonight?”
“Yeah, but it’s the first night,” Starsky told him softly, the pain in his eyes visible once more. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
Reminding himself that this wasn’t just a case, he didn’t say anything else for a while. Starsky just drove, not really aiming in any particular direction.
“Let’s head back to the precinct, see if anything’s turned up.”
With only a nod indicating he’d heard, Starsky turned the car around and headed uptown.
Flanders had crossed off four pages of his own, and he hadn’t come up with anything either. “Maybe it’s not even registered,” he gloomily announced.
“God forbid,” Starsky replied, patting the huge man on the back. “We’d be back to square one.”
“Feels like we still are,” Bill replied, shaking his head.
Starsky grinned. “Don’t lose hope just yet.”
Hutch moved into Powers’ office, but he wasn’t there. “Let him know I checked in. I’ll be at the hotel if he’s looking for me.”
The two men left the building side by side, reminiscent of many other days and nights, and the lump that suddenly arrived in Hutch’s throat had to be forcibly pushed down.
Starsky, if he even noticed, said nothing, and drove to midtown.
“You coming in?” Hutch asked when Starsky stopped outside the entrance.
His friend hesitated for only a moment and then pulled out and went into the hotel parking area.
Five minutes later they were upstairs, in Hutch’s room.
Glad, as he always was, that the agency usually put the profilers up in long-term hotels, he felt new appreciation for the small living room area with a table, and a little kitchenette outside of the bedroom, separated by a door, a door he closed.
“Nice,” Starsky muttered.
Nodding, the blond pulled off his coat, jacket and tie, and loosened his shirt. The room was comfortably warm and he reached for a glass and tipped a little Scotch into it before asking, “Want a beer?”
“Oh, yeah.”
When he returned, his partner was looking over the papers on the small table, which was strewn with Hutch’s other cases. He had managed to write up three profiles last night, but that meant he still had nine to go. Early this morning, he had faxed the pages to the office, where Gina Parks, a secretary for four of the agents, would type them up and give the report to Howard for review before faxing it back to Hutch.
God, he wondered, what did we do before fax machines? And Fed Ex?
Surprisingly, Starsky sat down and started to read the reports.
When he looked up, his face was pale, his eyes dark indigo spots in an otherwise colorless face. “How do you do this?”
The blond shrugged. He knew what Starsky was asking. “How did we do what we used to? You just do it and pray that the next day will be a little bit better. It isn’t, of course, but you still hope.”
“Rapist-murderers, serial murderers, vivisectionists, child murderers…. This one was done by the girl’s own father!”
“That one’s source material for a lecture.” Hutch bit his lip; he knew exactly which case Starsky was talking about and it was a real winner. “What direction I can give the local cops usually makes their job easier and they apprehend the suspect sooner. And if that means I have to sink myself into their minds to do it… then that’s what I’ll do.”
“No wonder you drink,” his partner growled and leaned his face onto his hand. The color had come back to his cheeks, but his eyes were still dark, fierce and predatory. “Why? Why this and not what we used to do?”
“Because we used to do it,” Hutch blurted out. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the couch. He didn’t want to see the flash of hurt on his former partner’s face.
Silence reigned in the small room, made even smaller by Starsky’s presence.
“Is that why you finally accepted the badge?”
A sigh escaped his lips. Bulldog, he thought fondly. “Howard didn’t give me much of a choice. Either I signed on, or he shipped me home and canceled my consultant’s position.” He opened his eyes and locked them onto Starsky. “Now it’s my turn for twenty questions. What did he say during the interview?”
He was surprised that his partner got up to move next to him onto the couch, but tried hard not to show it.
“He said he knew ’bout us.”
“Yeah, he told me that, too.”
There was a long silence, until, “And he still wanted you to be a fed?”
Hutch snorted and sipped his Scotch. “As long as I don’t lapse back into my deviant ways.”
“We’ve been called worse….”
“And by better people,” Hutch added, smiling.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
There was another long pause, and then, “He says you’re gonna blow your top if you keep on the way you are.”
“Howard couldn’t survive without melodrama — it’s the only kind he knows.”
Starsky snorted. “Maybe. But I think he’s got you pegged, babe.”
“Oh, yeah? What’d he have to say about me?” Hutch chuckled as he asked it, but there was an icy film coating his lungs and heart; he felt like he could barely breathe.
“That you ain’t quite living. He says you keep waiting for something that’s never gonna happen.”
The icy coating evaporated into heat and fury. Hutch got up to get another drink. “He’s playing a game with you, Starsk… a psychological game, the kind that Tarsa uses to jerk people around and make them dance to his tune.”
The glass felt cool against his skin.
“Maybe, blintz,” the soft voice replied, and though he was across the room from Starsky, he could feel him so near, his breath almost brushing his cheek. “But I think he’s right.”
His eyes opened and Starsky was in front of him, the indigo orbs, such windows to his soul, shuttered away from him, hiding their secrets.
“I love you,” Hutch said, his voice soft and choked.
Starsky shook his head, sadly, defeatedly. “I know. And that’s what’s making this so hard for you. Let go, babe. Let go.”
Hutch pulled out of the emotional moment, stepping back and away. “Sure. No problem. I fall in and out of love every other day. Just give me a few weeks, there’ll be a redhead to take your place.”
“You’ve had five years.”
“I’ve been busy,” Hutch snapped.
“Running away?”
“Oh, don’t you start on running away, pal of mine,” he growled, his temper finally loosened from its cage. “You ran away from me. You didn’t even have the courage to tell me you were going to resign. You just did it and sent Dobey a letter. And even worse, I had to hear about your marriage from him!”
The Scotch glass shattered against the wall and Hutch had no idea just how that had happened. “What, did you think that after working together, living in each other’s pockets for so long, that it would be easy? That I’d just give up? My heart doesn’t work that way, partner! I dream about you, I pray for you to call, I whisper to you in my head where no one can hear.” Hutch shook his head, the anger white-hot and blinding, slowly leeching away his strength until he felt weak and empty. “You should have told me the truth, Starsk,” he whispered. “It took meeting you again to finally understand. I get it now.”
There was long silence between them, then finally, “And you’ll let go? Let us go back to the way we were? Friends?”
Hutch leaned against the wall, needing its solidity to hold him upright. “Friends? We’ll always be that. But I’m never going to stop loving you.”
“Huuttcch!” Starsky’s voice was an exasperated growl. “You’re so damned stubborn.”
He opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed. “Yep.” He turned and slid back to the kitchen for another drink, reminded that this empty feeling was going to be permanent. He’d fooled himself long enough.
“What about tomorrow? Any ideas?” he asked, returning to safe subjects, things he could talk about without getting choked up.
His friend stared at him, and shook his head once more. “Yeah. I’ve got an idea. Get some sleep, that’s my idea.”
The agent chuckled. “Sure. I’ll do that.”
It was a lie and they both knew it.
“He’s right, babe; you’ll burn out.”
The voice he loved so, with its rough consonants and tender vowels, shot right through him. Starsky was worried, but it wasn’t enough.
“Better a blaze of glory,” Hutch replied, sipping his drink. “I’m kidding, Starsk. Just a few hours’ paperwork and I’ll go to bed, okay? See you in the morning.”
“I’ll meet you here, about nine.”
“Sure. Right,” Hutch replied, but he felt hollow and completely empty, as only a straw man could. Sooner or later, the straw would unbundle and fall away, skittering off in the afternoon breeze.
He was ready for that and hoped it wouldn’t be a long time coming.
~*~*~*~
A week later, the investigation still hadn’t gotten anywhere.
Hutch had straightened up, but it was for show, a surface change. The last thing he wanted was Starsky’s pity.
Every day he received a package from Quantico — more cases. After doing what little they could on the child-murder case, Hutch would work on profiles of other cases, other children, other women. Howard would call every night, just to ‘check in,’ he said, but Hutch knew that he was passing his test with flying colors.
He put on a mask, one to hide the pain, and kept on working.
A week later and they were completely stalled. Starsky was irritable and Hutch knew, with a feeling of dread, that they wouldn’t have anything until the next child was killed.
And there would be a next one. There was no evidence that their killer had gotten bored with his pastime just yet.
He kept his hands off of Starsky, schooled himself to be cool and relaxed, though his stomach was giving him grief and his back ached like it hadn’t in years. He ended up sleeping with a pillow tucked between his knees like some pregnant woman, but it eased the knots some, and he was able to walk, though he resembled a geriatric when he first got up in the morning.
It had been so long since he’d even stretched that all his joints popped when he began again. It felt awful at first, but then, slowly, it started to feel better. He knew what was wrong with him — too much time sitting on his spine and not enough using it.
It wasn’t until he started to cut down on his evening Scotch that he realized he’d gotten dependent. And for someone who had known the depths of heroin addiction, that was not welcome knowledge. He immediately started weaning himself. It was difficult, but he knew it was the best way to go.
Tarsa had started making noises about bringing him back to Quantico, complaining about budget cuts and heavier workloads and anything that he thought would get Hutch’s attention.
He argued as best he could, but in the end it would be a losing battle.
~*~*~*~
We thought love would never die….
Starsky had gone back to work; it was his job, after all, and since they didn’t have any further leads, it was the only thing to do. They still managed to meet for breakfast or dinner, or if Hutch was free, like today, lunch.
After lunch, he watched his former partner as he swam around a small swimming pool with a few kids, Pete and Donna. There was one adult in the pool for each child, and these kids were more physically handicapped than mentally. Their challenges were different: how to cope with life in the mainstream while living in a wheelchair or on crutches.
Hutch learned that adaptation was the key. They could do almost anything other kids could do, just in a different way.
Swimming was never going to be easy for the boy, Pablo Benitez, that Starsky was working with. Cerebral Palsy had affected his legs and arms, causing various muscles to tighten and lock, scissoring his legs… but he had a mind like a steel trap. He’d trounced Hutch twice in chess, with a grin on his face that spread from ear to ear, his braces shiny and bright. He’d had to laugh.
He and Starsky were supposed to take some of the kids bowling tonight. Actually, Pete and Starsky were taking them; Hutch was just going along for company. He waved good-bye to them all and headed back to the precinct.
It was a dull, useless afternoon, and he was just as glad to be going out that night. The bowling alley was in the Village and it had an elevator that went up to the third floor, which made it a hit for the kids in wheelchairs. The building was old and seemingly decrepit, but the place was large and very well cared for. The alleys gleamed and shone, and it wasn’t all that full for a Tuesday night.
The kids were already there, maybe a dozen of them, taking over two lanes near the far wall. Pete had one group and Starsky had another.
“Good, you’re here,” Starsky chuckled and grinned. “And you’re not wearing a Fed suit, even better.” He thrust a pen and score sheet into his hand and pushed him over to the next lane. “Gina, Kevin, Pablo, and Sharon, over here!”
About to protest, Hutch shut his mouth when the giggling, smiling faces made their way over to them. Braces, wheelchairs, crutches… but such happy kids, such heart in them, such happiness, that his argument died in his throat.
“This is Ken. Say hi.”
“Hi, Ken,” the group chorused excitedly.
“All right now. Ken, here, is a lousy bowler, so you have to help him out, all right? He’ll keep score, but it’s up to you to explain to him how to really bowl well. Got it?”
“Got it,” the group replied, and he had to smile back.
He had to admit at the end of the night that it was the most fun he’d had in years. They were good kids, and he was a lousy bowler, when he wanted to be. Gutter balls were easy, and if it gave them confidence to teach him a new, old skill, then hell, why not?
Two games later, they were done, tired and flagging. Parents started to arrive to take their kids home, and the kids traipsed or wheeled off, with a hug for Ken and Dave and Pete.
He had often wondered why Starsky had chosen this as a profession, but now, he thought he understood. It was healing in some odd way. These kids loved him, and he obviously loved them back. He gave himself over to them, willing them to learn, to work, to grow, and lavished his care and attention until like buds stretching toward the sun, they warmed and grew into the precious flowers they would become.
Finally, with all the kids taken away, Pete left too, claiming he had a paper to write. He and Starsky stayed to play a few games of their own, comfortable in their friendship, teasing each other unmercifully about their missed shots, until the alley closed.
~*~*~*~
Howard lowered the boom the next day.
“Time to head back, Ken. I need you here.”
Hutch groaned. “Howard, you know he’s going to strike again.”
“Yes, I do know that. I also know that waiting there for it to happen doesn’t get the rest of our caseload completed. So get your butt back here tomorrow and that, my former consultant, is an order.”
The agent groaned softly. “Yes, Sarge,” he replied, his heart in his shoes.
As he hung up he realized that this time he would be leaving Starsky and the idea created such a pain in his chest that he had to sit down.
They would still be friends, he reminded himself, probably better friends, now that Hutch knew what Starsky couldn’t handle about their previous relationship. And that friendship was the most important thing in his life. If necessary, he would consider transferring to the New York office, just so that he could stay close. He’d have to think about that, though. Crowding Starsky would just recreate the problems that had caused him to escape before.
He was at the hotel that Friday afternoon, waiting for his partner and piling through paperwork, when the phone rang.
“Hutch?”
His heart rattled. There was that horrified tone again.
“Starsk, what’s wrong?”
“Pablo’s missing. His mother found his wheelchair in the playground next door to the house, but he’s gone. She’d checked on him a half hour before.”
Oh, shit, was his first thought. He’s getting bolder. And then his next, Not Pablo! He’d enjoyed that kid’s sarcastic fire so much.
“Where are you?”
“At the school; she just called me.”
Hutch wrote down the address. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where’s the nearest park?”
“About four blocks away; I’m heading there now.”
“Be careful, Starsk,” he whispered.
“Always, babe.”
He grabbed his coat and called Powers.
By the time he had gotten to the ground level, a black and white had arrived in front of the hotel.
“Hutchinson,” he snapped to the officer that was pacing in front, and with a nod, he got behind the wheel and took off, sirens blaring, traffic not moving any too quickly out of their way.
It was almost thirty-five minutes later by the time they arrived at the nearby park. A number of other cruisers were already there, Powers’ and Flanders’ cars too.
Bill was just coming out of the heavy thicket of bushes to the right of the concrete path. His face was pale and angry, his hands tightly clenched into fists. Hutch’s heart sank. They were too late.
Again, damn it.
When he saw Hutch he just pointed back the way he had come.
He sighed, and moved past the bushes and deeper still, until he came upon a clearing. Powers had his back to him, and his cigar was lit this time.
Bad news.
He knelt down to look over the scene. When Hutch finally stood up, he could see Starsky with the boy’s head in his lap. His gentle hands were covered in blood, a sopping handkerchief held in one, and tears streaking down his face. Pablo’s face was smooth and relaxed in death, the gaping wound in his neck painting his throat and checked shirt red with his own blood.
“Starsky and Flanders got here at the same time,” Powers murmured, not seeing Hutch, but hearing his arrival. “The kid’s back was against the tree, his legs spread out in front of him. His throat had been cut, but not enough to kill him quickly. I don’t know whether they startled the killer and the slash wasn’t as deep… or whether he just couldn’t cut as well with the kid looking at him. We found a knife next to the body.”
Hutch knelt closer to Starsky and gently closed the boy’s open eyes. Slowly, he carefully moved his partner away from the body. His friend was in shock, his face ashen his perpetually warm skin cool and clammy. The blood on his hands was still wet, drying slowly in the cool October air.
“Come on, Starsk. Let go.” His partner did as he was told and stood up, swaying slightly. His face was contorted with grief.
Emotion vied with duty. As much as he wanted to go with Starsky, he had a job to do. Gesturing to Powers, he watched while the older man took Starsky’s arm and led him out of the clearing, away from the smell of death that lingered, even through the cigar scent.
Flanders returned shortly after and hunkered down on his heels, away from the scene. He didn’t look much better than Starsky.
“He was still alive when we got here,” Bill muttered hoarsely, and cleared his throat. “We tried to use my handkerchief to stem the bleeding, but it was too late. He could barely breathe….”
“Did he say anything to you?” Hutch asked softly, looking for clues around the body. The area was so disturbed by this point that there was little he expected to find.
But something crackled underneath his foot and he looked down, expecting it to be a leaf or some garbage.
It was a picture, a newspaper photo.
Carefully, he picked it up with a pair of tweezers taken from his pocket, and felt his heart stop dead in his chest before it galloped into an explosive pace.
Starsky’s face stared out at him, smiling. It was a faded press release photo from when they’d both made Sergeant. Starsky was in uniform, something that had rarely happened, only when he’d been forced into it for days like that. His cap rested uncertainly on his curls and the collar looked like it was going to strangle him at any minute.
His mind started moving fast then, collating all the half-formed ideas and thoughts that had been chasing through it for weeks.
It is revenge. But against a person, someone who’d be hurt by their deaths. Cold, dark, hateful… lots of pain, but squeamish too. He didn’t care to kill with the children facing him… he preferred their back to be to him before he cut them. This one was harder; Pablo couldn’t stand on his own and had to sit up with a tree at his back. The killer would have had to squat down… the angle awkward and difficult… the brown eyes staring up into his face….
Son of a bitch! he snarled silently.
Starsky was the key to this and had been all along. Powers had been right about that, but not in the way he’d thought. He hadn’t committed them, but they had been committed to harm him, to hurt him, to cause the pain of loss.
“What is it?” Flanders asked, and hesitating for only a moment, Hutch handed over the small piece of evidence.
“Oh my god,” the big cop groaned.
“Did he say anything to you?” Hutch repeated. And then when there was again no answer, “Flanders! Did the boy say anything?”
The man blinked. “Something in Spanish….”
“What?”
“Um, dog, I think No… puppy!”
The bulb finally lit and he cursed himself for being so slow. “That’s the lure,” Hutch whispered. “That’s how he gets them close — he uses an animal. Maybe saying that it’s lost and needs a good home, something like that.”
“But why aren’t they hesitant?” Bill snapped. “Especially when other kids have died? This kid wasn’t retarded! The guy would have had to carry him to the truck.”
“No, he was pretty sharp,” the agent replied, remembering the caustic taunts that Pablo had sent his way while they were bowling. “Which still points us toward someone he knew, trusted.”
“We’re just running in fucking circles,” the cop snarled.
“No, now we know who the rage is focused at,” Hutch growled. “They want to hurt Starsky, like they’ve been hurt.”
“Who? Who could do something like this?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Hutch replied softly. “That’s what we need to find out.”
The forensics team showed up a few minutes later and the agent stood back and let them do their job. He handed over the clipping; he didn’t need it — the photo was burned into his memory.
The group searched a little longer after the boy’s body had been taken away, but there was nothing else to be found under the leaves. For a moment Hutch wished he hadn’t found the photo; this would hurt Starsky worse than anything else that had been done to him. Knowing that he was the cause would rip him up inside.
Finally Hutch dragged himself out of the lonely little clearing. Full dark had fallen, though the lights of the cruisers kept everything pretty bright still. The coroner’s van was just pulling away, and the man that Hutch was looking for was sitting forlornly on Powers’ car, sipping a cup of coffee, a blanket tossed around his shoulders.
He still looked pale, and his hands shook.
The agent looked at the Lieutenant, whose belligerent attitude had shrunken now to a more communal concern for a former cop. He stayed close to Starsky, not saying anything, just being there.
Hutch nodded. “Thanks. I’ll take him home; we can start new on this tomorrow.”
The cop agreed. “I’ll take you to his car.”
With monosyllabic directions from his partner, Hutch managed to drive from Brooklyn back to Manhattan. He parked the car and they went up to Starsky’s apartment.
With gentle hands, he stripped his friend of his bloody clothes and with some manhandling, managed to get him into a shower. He had to take his own jacket, shirt and pants off in order to wash Starsky, but that was okay. He’d done it before and he could do it again. Soon, he’d bundled the other man up in briefs and a tee shirt and under a blanket in bed.
He redressed himself and moved back into the darkened bedroom, grabbing a chair and pulling it close to the bed. He held Starsky’s hand, tacitly telling him to rest, that he was safe, that there was nothing to fear.
“Please.” A whisper arose from the tired, drawn features. “Please,” he repeated, opening his arms and moving aside, inviting him with an expanse of open bed.
Hesitating for no more than a minute, Hutch slid between the sheets, pulling the warm, strong body closely into his own, his fingers sliding gently into the shortened curls. Tears slid down the skin of his throat as Starsky let go, the reality of all this more than even his brave heart could stand alone.
“That’s it, babe,” Hutch urged, his own throat tight. “Let it go. I’m here, you’re not alone.”
It took a long time and soon enough, the blond realized that it wasn’t just the murders that his partner was mourning for.
There was little that he could do, other than to just be there, and so he relaxed and let Starsky curl around him, warm and heavy, falling into a troubled sleep, while Hutch guarded him. His arms somehow felt satisfied, as though this was where they had always belonged. He sighed and closed his eyes, willing sleep to come quickly and without dreams.
~*~*~*~
There were moments in that lifetime
That my heart still replays….
Sometime around dawn Hutch left the bed and showered, then moved into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. While it perked, he took a look around the apartment.
The first thing that struck him as odd were the plants. Starsky had never had a green thumb, had often complained about Hutch’s attention to his leafy friends, but here he was with at least a dozen potted wonders scattered around his home. They were thriving too, their few needs obviously carefully met. He shook his head, confused.
And then he saw the guitar sitting casually against one of the easy chairs, waiting for its owner’s hand to coax music from it.
Only it was Hutch’s guitar, a spare he had left hanging around Starsky’s apartment.
The apartment itself was comfortable and relaxed, its small but cluttered rooms reflecting the varied interests of the man who lived here. There were small bookcases alongside a large stereo system. The TV didn’t take up much room, and the remote was on top of it; he got the feeling Starsky didn’t watch much.
On impulse he opened a closet door, not surprised to see one of his old jackets, the cream one, resting on a hanger, next to Starsky’s bullet-riddled leather one. Just the sight of it was enough to cause a shiver to run down his spine. He had no idea why Starsky had kept it.
All in all, it starkly reminded him of his partner’s apartment in L.A. when Hutch had moved in with him after his return from the hospital. It felt like it was waiting for his lover to come home… and that, more than anything else that he had seen and felt in these past days, shook him right to the core.
Starsky pushed him away… but his heart was here and it seemed to be waiting for him to come back.
He didn’t understand it.
Bare feet slipping across the wooden floor warned him moments before the object of his thoughts appeared. His robe was haphazardly thrown across his broad shoulders and even though he had slept well and soundly the night before, his eyes had dark rings underneath them, dulling the lovely blue orbs.
“Hey,” Hutch muttered, closing the closet.
“Hey, yourself,” Starsky mumbled, and shambled over to the kitchen table, plopping himself into a chair. “You made coffee?”
Moving closer, the agent squeezed his shoulder and then moved to the counter to pour out another cup and refill his own.
He sat down at the table and waited for Starsky to speak
It took a while.
“I saw the picture.”
The agent digested that; he’d sort of figured that when the former cop had fallen apart so completely at the scene.
“In the back of my mind, I had to wonder if I had anything to do with this. I guess I don’t need to wonder anymore.”
“It’s not your fault,” Hutch replied, soft but strongly. “It’s not your fault that some nut wants to hurt you.”
“It was my knife, babe,” Starsky murmured. “From the set near the sink.”
Hutch spun quickly and stared. Sure enough, one of the wooden-handled knives was missing. “Are you sure?”
“It was there yesterday.”
The blond sat back, his mind whirring around as it often did. “Our killer wants to point the finger at you.” He sipped his coffee and went searching for something to eat. His stomach was growling painfully. “And it would have worked if you hadn’t been at the school when you got the call about Pablo. And if you hadn’t shown up with Flanders.”
“Powers’ll really love this.”
He found waffles in the freezer and stuck a few in the toaster. “Don’t worry about Powers. You were a little too out of it to notice, but it was Powers who took care of you while I was checking out the scene.”
The blue eyes looked up, surprise in their depths. “Yeah?”
The blond nodded. Then he got up and went to the front door. Peering down at the lock mechanism, he noticed heavy gouging scratch marks that looked fresh, brighter against the brass of the rest of the lock.
“Your lock was picked,” Hutch, told him, moving back to the kitchen and pulling out butter and finding the maple syrup without difficulty.
“Great. Any ideas, hotshot?”
“Flanders said that Pablo said something.” He pushed a plate of waffles in front of Starsky. “Eat.”
The other man stared at the food for a moment and then accepted the knife and fork Hutch handed to him. “Yeah, he was asking about a puppy. I didn’t think anything about it at the time.”
“That’s how he’s been luring the kids to his truck, Starsk.”
He talked around bites. “But they wouldn’t go with him, especially now, even for a dog.”
“They would if it was someone they knew, trusted.”
“Hutch, we’ve been over this a dozen times. All the guys came out clean.”
And then it came to him, like lightning through storm-tinged skies. “But we didn’t check the women.”
Silence sat between the two of them as the immensity of what Hutch was suggesting washed over the room.
“That’s sick,” Starsky finally muttered, but the color was starting to return to his cheeks. “You really think that it could be one of the girls?”
The blond shrugged and finished his breakfast, wondering where his waffles had gone. “I’m running out of other ideas, partner. Though it’s extremely rare for a woman to be a serial killer, it seems that this is more of a revenge motivation, and with that, anything’s possible. Even a woman killing children.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“You need to take a shower, friend, and get dressed, that’s what. I’ll call Howard and update him, and make a few other calls.”
Starsky sat for a moment, a soft smile finally reaching his lips. One hand came across the table and unthinkingly, Hutch took it and held on. “Thanks, blondie.”
The agent flushed, but held on, knowing his partner needed him, and wanting that never to stop.
~*~*~*~
The two of them entered the precinct in step, side-by-side, ready to deal with Powers. For himself, Hutch felt energized, ready to deal with the world and whatever horrors that it would throw at him today. Even Starsky looked better, his pallor having given way after a small breakfast and more coffee than anyone should drink.
Surprisingly, the Lieutenant wasn’t inclined to be irritating this morning, and even tossed a donut Starsky’s way when they met in the conference room to ‘discuss’ the case.
Flanders nodded when they entered, but he wore the anger and pain of what he’d witnessed like a coat around his shoulders. The agent patted him on the back, not surprised to feel a lot of rigidity in the hard muscles there. No doubt he’d already been grilled by Powers.
“All right, let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” the cop began, but Starsky waved his hand at him.
“Listen, Lieutenant, it’s real simple. Kirsten got a call at the school from Mrs. Benitez, saying that Pablo was gone, had just ‘vanished’ and asked for me. She’d seen him just a half hour before, and the playground was one that his father had built, designed especially for him and the neighborhood kids to use. I called Hutch, and tore out there.”
“When did you get the call, Agent Hutchinson?”
The blond pulled out his notepad, where he wrote down the phone calls he got, especially if they related to cases. “Um… 4:05 p.m.”
Powers scribbled that on his own pad, and said, “Go ahead, Starsky.”
“I figured that this… suspect… would take Pablo to the park. I didn’t know how much time we’d have, so I went there first, trying to think of which was the most direct path to the park from his house. Bill got there at the same time and we sort of crashed through the path and into the brush that had overgrown it.”
“What made you go through there?” Hutch asked, his voice soft and pitched directly to his partner.
“The grass was flattened with heavy tire tracks,” he replied absently, his mind going back to the scene.
“The mud was all churned up, like someone was in a hurry when he left,” Flanders added, one of his hands closing around a pencil. The muted crack was loud in the room.
“Yeah. I damn near fell on my ass,” Starsky muttered, “when we got to the clear space.” His face went completely white and Hutch inched closer, his knee nudging Starsky’s, letting him know he was there, was as close as his own skin.
A gentle smile briefly graced his carved lips. “Pablo was leaning up against the tree, his hands digging into the grass. His head was lolling to the side, and he tried to look up when I leaned over him. His lips were blue and his shirt was covered in blood.”
There was a silence that was unbroken except for the desperate thumping of Hutch’s heart. “And what did you think when you saw him?”
Powers was about to protest the inanity of the question, but Hutch had a reason for asking it, and raised a hand to silence him.
“That his killer had just been there. I could feel him. Bill handed me his handkerchief and I guess I didn’t think I pulled Pablo into my arms and tried to stop his throat from bleeding. It soaked through so fast….”
The former cop hesitated, swallowed, and started again.
“He looked at me then, so scared, and grabbed onto my jacket. He couldn’t talk much. He said, ‘perrito’. He said it a couple of times. I tried to ask him who hurt him… but it was too late.”
“When did you see the picture?” Hutch asked.
The dark brows crowded together. “I turned my head, and it was there. I think it must have been on his right side, near his hand, when we found him I knew then that this was my fault.”
“This is happening because some whack-job likes to hurt kids, Starsky, and is using you to do it,” Powers snapped, an unlit cigar back between his teeth. “That doesn’t make it your fault.”
“No,” Hutch agreed. “This is definitely some kind of revenge. They lost someone, probably due to our police work in L.A., and now they want to hurt him back, by taking away these kids that idolize him. They also want to direct attention to Starsky. This is an organized killer, but they’re not working in a completely rational manner. They want us to suspect him as the killer, but then leave these little clues around, too.”
“What do you mean, suspect him?” Flanders asked. “Why would we?”
“The knife that was found near Pablo was part of my kitchen set,” Starsky muttered, his head dropping to look at his sneakers. There was blood on them, too. “It was there yesterday morning; Hutch said my apartment lock was picked.”
“It couldn’t have been him,” Powers argued. “He was at the school; Morgen said she talked to him there about the phone call. He couldn’t have been in Brooklyn in time to commit the murder, get back, then head out there again. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless they’re trying to say that I’m the tool, the cause, of the murders,” the teacher murmured. “That I might as well have done it.”
“Bullshit. The coroner said that the knife wasn’t the one that killed him,” Flanders told them, glancing down at the file in front of him. “He said that this one was sloppy, the cut uneven. The others bled out quickly, but Pablo had been there for a while.”
“The killer watched the boy for as long as they could, realized that someone would be searching before he died and took off,” Hutch added. “Any shoe prints, or prints on the newspaper?”
“Too much grass for sneakers and the paper was too old to maintain a print. There was a hair on it, though.”
“What color?” the agent asked, turning his attention to the file and sliding it away from Flanders to read. “Doesn’t say,” he muttered softly, then looked at Powers. “We think that this killer had to be someone the boy knew, someone he wouldn’t mind picking him up and carrying him around. We also think that since all the male suspects don’t pan out, that we should start working on women.”
The lieutenant stared at him, disbelieving, and yelled, “Do you mean to tell me that your precious profile was wrong? That we’ve been out chasing our dicks all this time?”
Hutch wasn’t intimidated. “We suspected a child serial killer, remember? Now we’re dealing with someone who wants revenge and is using these children as a means to an end. It’s not the children they want — it’s the pain that their deaths cause Starsky that’s important.”
“And if I’m not at the school any more?”
It was a haunted whisper that reverberated through the blond’s soul. “It probably wouldn’t stop them, partner,” Hutch told him softly, knowing that it was a painful answer no matter how he said it. “This type of coldness speaks to a severe pathological disturbance, sociopathic tendencies, especially if it is as we suspect and a woman is doing them. If it is a woman, the kids are the easiest targets, too. Their fighting abilities are limited, which is why they’re picking those kids who can’t fight or don’t expect to be harmed by someone they know.”
“This is sick, damn it,” Flanders growled. “What’s our next step?”
“Warn the parents to keep their kids inside. Make it harder for the killer to get to them, frustrate him. In the meanwhile, we go over the women at the school with a fine toothcomb. And we brainstorm a press release that might bring them out into the open.”
“Oh, Tarsa called here this morning, wanting you. He didn’t sound happy,” Powers told him, sneering slightly.
“Howard’s never happy,” Hutch replied, but a chill finger slid down his spine. If he’d tried to reach him at the hotel last night, there would be a problem. He was still on ‘probation’, as it were, and Tarsa was a hard man when he was irritated. “We need to get background information on the teachers and every other woman at the school.”
Bill puffed out a sigh. “That’ll be my job, I guess.”
“And call Forensics and get as much information on that hair as you can,” the agent added.
“I’ll help,” Starsky offered, but Hutch disagreed.
“That’s not a good idea. You need to go back to the school. If there’s any radical change in your behavior, you’re going to tip our killer off.”
The other man nodded, but he wasn’t happy about it and the rounding of his shoulders spoke volumes as to how much this case was taking out of him.
The group broke up and Hutch asked Powers if he could use his office to call Tarsa. Starsky patted him on the back and headed back to the school while Flanders went to his desk and got on the phone.
It didn’t take long for Hutch to bring his boss up to date.
“Sounds like you’re on the right track, Ken, but the political pressure on these murders has stepped up, too. I’ll be coming out to assist in a few days.”
The blond shrugged. It didn’t matter where Howard was; it wouldn’t change how the case was shaping up.
“So I tried to call last night. Powers said you took Starsky home.”
A leading question if ever there was one, Hutch thought. “Yeah, he was pretty shaken up. It’s not every day you find out you’re the precipitating factor to three murders.”
“So what’d you do? Hold his hand?”
“Something like that,” Hutch replied, calmly, coolly. There was nothing he needed to feel guilty or in the wrong about. “Haven’t failed any tests yet.”
“Glad to hear it. Just make sure you’re at the hotel where I can reach you nights. Clear?”
Hutch sighed. “Howard, either you trust me or you don’t. Make up your mind.”
“My mind’s made up, kid. It’s yours I’m still worrying about. See you soon.”
The profiler put down the phone with a bang, rattling it on the receiver and ignoring the questioning glance from Powers.
“I’ll go help Bill with the background information.”
“Yeah, you do that,” the lieutenant agreed. “Try not to break his phone in the process.”
He ignored that too.
~*~*~*~
Eight hours later Hutch had fended off five intrusive phone calls from reporters, eaten a truly bad ham and cheese sandwich, drunk four even worse cups of coffee and reviewed twenty-eight files. And that was just the teachers.
Unfortunately, none of them had a white van registered to them either, but that would just have been too easy. And in this business, nothing came easy.
At five, Flanders dropped him off at The Rainbow School. The corridors were empty when he went inside, and he headed directly for Dr. Morgen’s office, not surprised to find his partner there as well. Both teachers looked like they had had better days. Better lives, even.
The blonde principal glared at him, and Hutch prepared himself for an angry barrage of questions.
“So, Agent Hutchinson, now you want to check out everyone at the school?” she snapped. “Your investigation so far has produced no leads that even remotely point to someone in the school being involved, and yet parents are pulling kids out right and left. The press has nothing good to say about us, only that more interviews with the employees are required.” She tossed a folded up Daily News at him. It hit his chest and bounced off. Hutch didn’t move. He expected her anger, her frustration. He felt it, too.
“Everyone’s a suspect, doctor,” he told her gently. “The only similar factor for any of these children is the school. And given that, we need to interview every teacher, every employee. It’s obvious that our murderer is someone that these children know well enough not to fear. They may not like them overly much, but they’re not actively afraid of them. And that gets them close enough to strike. Apparently our killer uses a puppy to lure the kids close to the van, to get them inside. Once they’re inside, he says that the dog needs a walk and we’ll just take him to the park. And then in the park, he kills them.”
She sat down in her chair and put her head in her hands, sobbing softly. Starsky knelt down by her side, his voice sympathetic, and tried to calm her with whispered words and gentle strokes of her arm. Her head fell to his shoulder and they stayed, locked in some pain that Hutch could not reach, for a long time before separating.
“I told her how hard you and the police were working on this, and that you have some new leads,” Starsky admitted, but just by saying that, he also agreed that Kirsten needed to be considered as much of a suspect as anyone else. The fact that a black hair had been found on the newspaper photo might or might not have any relevance to the killer. Pablo had had black hair as well and it would take days before the test results would come back as to the DNA of the hair. His eyes were warm as they rested on Hutch, and Hutch felt a white-hot response race from his toes to his head, lighting up all areas in between.
He cleared his throat and turned away. “Did you hand out the letter from the police department, warning the parents to keep their kids inside until this person is apprehended?”
“Of course I did,” she replied, just as caustically as she had before she’d broken down. The green eyes were red and wet, but there was no fool hiding behind them. “Do you think that will help? And how long is this going to take? They can’t keep them locked up forever, you know.”
“If it’s a choice between a live or dead child, Dr. Morgen, I think that they can,” Hutch replied, some of his earlier professionalism giving way to irritation. “We’ll begin the interviews tomorrow. At the moment we are working on background investigations, and I would prefer it if you didn’t mention our meetings with the employees until we begin them tomorrow.”
“You really do think it’s one of my people,” she said, somewhat dazed. “I can’t believe it.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Starsky replied, “given the evidence. I’m sorry, Kirsten, but whatever we need to do to make this stop, we’re going to do — with or without your cooperation.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “All right, Dave. If you think this is the best way to find him.”
He kissed her cheek and then stood up. “Don’t stay here much longer. Go home, try to get some sleep, okay?”
“What about you?” she asked, clutching his hand. “You shouldn’t be alone either.”
The blue gaze that scorched Hutch once more only underlined his soft reply.
“I won’t be.”
~*~*~*~
There were minutes– There were hours– There were days….
Though Starsky’s reply unnerved him, Hutch tried not to show it on the drive back to his hotel. His skin tingled and his palms were sweaty and he had the most irritating need to babble…. He did his best to ignore it. The agent doubted that Starsky realized the effect his soft-spoken words would have. If he had, Hutch was certain he wouldn’t be going up to his room with him.
“How did the background searches go?”
“Nothing came through so far, but I sent a request by fax to Quantico for more in-depth reports, then we can correlate it to our old cases. We might need to call Dobey on this, too.”
Starsky nodded. “That’ll make his day. What else did Howard have to say?”
Hutch looked over at his friend, trying to decipher his tone, disliking the tension rolling off of him. He sat hunched over the steering wheel, a dark frown on his face. Even his clothes were dark, a deep navy sweater so blue it seemed black. “He’ll be here in a few days.”
“And?”
“He wanted to know where I was last night.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. I haven’t done anything wrong.” Yet.
Their eyes met when Starsky stopped at a light. “I never said you had, babe,” his partner murmured. “He doesn’t understand about us.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” the agent growled. When Starsky dropped his voice like that, it was all the blond could do not to rip his clothes off right there in the car.
Starsky didn’t argue, but the injured silence that followed said more than any words would.
They went upstairs together, Hutch doing his best to rein in the desire to apologize, to comfort, well aware that his favorite form of comfort was now forbidden to him.
Starsky collapsed onto the couch, while Hutch checked his messages. They included three increasingly more irritated ones from Howard telling him he’d left his pager at the office, probably from last night, five regarding other cases and two others from the office. He took off his jacket and tie, then decided on a shower and stripped in the bathroom.
He yelled through the door, “You want to order dinner?”
“Sure,” Starsky yelled back, and he could hear him scrounging around for the menu, followed by a “Gotcha!”
The hot water felt good against his skin, and he let it help him push away the anger, the frustration, but it couldn’t do anything about the arousal that refused to die down. His cock lay quiescently at half-mast, ever hopeful. “Forget it, bud,” he murmured softly as he dried himself with a towel. “We’re both out of luck.”
It ignored him.
He dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, walking back into the main room in bare feet, his hair still wet. Leaning over the built-in fridge, he reached in and tossed Starsky a beer, grinning when he yelped at how cold it was.
Taking one for himself, he ambled over and turned on the TV, deliberately avoiding the news channels.
“Hey, look, it’s a Godzilla marathon!”
Hutch groaned, then settled himself on the couch, not surprised when a pair of socked feet landed on his lap as Starsky took up as much space as he could. The agent glared and moved to push them off, but they just came back, his partner’s gaze riveted to the screen.
They ate that way, and while Starsky settled in for what appeared to be the night, Hutch moved to the table and started to go through the FedEx envelope he received daily, stuffed full with more work, more requests for assistance from police departments across the world.
It was still early when he started work, speaking softly into the phone, ignoring the comments and gleeful cries from his friend as he watched the big lizard trample Tokyo one more time. Interesting that even the Japanese film makers had him destroy their home country in a radioactive frenzy; you’d think they’d sic him on the American coastline instead.
It was almost eleven when the phone rang. Godzilla was going to town on Mega-Godzilla and Starsky was chortling along, throwing popcorn from the vending machine at the screen. “Hutchinson,” he answered absently, reviewing pictures from a gruesome rape-murder.
“Tarsa. How’s it going, kid?”
They started talking cases, and an hour later, when King Kong had suddenly appeared, Howard asked, “How’s Starsky?”
“Shaken up.” He turned to look at his friend, the indigo eyes washed with the light from the screen. He smiled back, comfortably stretched across the couch, head resting on a pillow he’d taken from the bedroom.
“He’s there?”
Hutch sighed and turned away. “He’s my friend, Howard. Would you want to be alone, in the same circumstances?”
“Don’t get invested here, Ken. Remember who walked out on whom.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t need you to remind me, Sarge, thanks all the same. He’ll always be my partner.”
“Hey, kid, remember that I’m a profiler, too. I can just as easily get into your head as I can anyone else’s. How do you think this is going to end? You’re going to find this guy and then go home. Period. How long will he stay your partner then?”
“Good night, Howard,” the agent murmured, refusing to be drawn into the same argument yet again. Tarsa was starting to sound like a broken record.
“Night, kid. Don’t forget the ‘hands off’ policy.”
Irritated and for the second time that day feeling like a child being scolded by a parent, the blond hung up with a slight crash. A moment later two strong hands gripped and massaged his tight shoulders.
“You’re tight, blintz.”
With a soft groan he dropped his head, pleading silently for those probing fingers to inch up to his neck. He gave a sigh when it happened, smiling at Starsky’s chuckle.
“You done for the night?”
“Not quite. And if you don’t stop, I won’t get it done.”
“It’s almost midnight, blondie,” Starsky complained, fingers finding a particularly nasty knot in his right shoulder, making him purr in appreciation as it was massaged away.
“Just another hour or so,” he mumbled. “By the time the movie’s over, I’ll be finished.” But not if you don’t stop touching me.
“I’ll give you a back rub then.”
Oh, god. As much as he wanted Starsky’s hands on him, it would only add fuel to a fire that he was already losing control of. Still, he couldn’t say no. “Sure, sounds great.”
Part of him prayed that Starsky would fall asleep before he could act on his promise.
And the other part wanted those hands on his body so desperately he’d walk through fire for it.
By the time he was finished for the night, it was two hours later and Starsky was indeed asleep, snoring softly to the sounds of the ongoing marathon. Not sure whether he was disappointed or relieved, he gently got his friend upright and into the bedroom before pressing him into one of the double beds. He managed to get off his shirt and pants without mishap, though he was glad the room was dark while he did it.
He itched to crawl in beside his sleeping companion, to take what he so fiercely needed, but managed to veer away at the last moment and slip between the cool sheets of his own bed, his dreams the only thing that would keep him company that night.
~*~*~*~
If Starsky wondered the next morning why his former lover hadn’t gotten into his bed, he didn’t ask. And even though five years had lapsed between them, they fell into their normal morning routine without needing to speak much.
Hutch made coffee, ordered breakfast and got into the shower while Starsky was still waking up. They faced each other over pancakes and eggs, orange juice and more coffee.
Before Starsky could ask, Hutch said, “I’m going to the precinct first, see if Flanders came up with anyone, and then I’ll head over to the school to start the interviews. We’re leaving your part in this out of the press information, but I need you to casually chat with people.”
“Hutch,” his partner growled, “teach your grandma to suck eggs, would you?”
The agent tried to hide his smile and failed. “Sorry.”
“Forget it. What time did you close shop?” He gestured at the closed briefcase that sat on the floor.
“Late.”
“How late?”
“Around two.”
“Two. Four hours sleep ain’t enough, babe.”
“Slept twelve hours the night before last, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. I remember a lot more than that.”
It was enigmatic enough that he could misconstrue the meaning, but he didn’t. He knew that Starsky meant the way Hutch had clung to him all night, even in his sleep. He wisely remained silent. Holding his former lover in his arms that night had reminded him of everything that he loved about Starsky, including the way their bodies used to melt and merge together.
The teacher stood up and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’ve got to go, need to change clothes before I get to work.”
Hutch nodded. “You’d better bring a bag tonight.”
That brought a smile to the handsome face. “What’s the matter, don’t like sharing your toothbrush, blondie?”
The agent shook his head, stifling a smile. “Not with your idea of dental hygiene, gordo.”
“You wish, blintz,” Starsky’s voice floated back before the door closed behind him, and Hutch had to smile. Oh, how he’d missed this. Even as bad as things were, he felt good — complete somehow once more.
And with each day that passed he hated the idea that he would lose it.
~*~*~*~
Though Hutch was surprised to see Howard Tarsa in Kirsten Morgen’s office at ten that morning, he didn’t show it with anything but a smile.
The older man smiled back and shook his hand. “Good to see you, Ken.”
“Yeah, Howard, it’s been ages,” he replied. “Same office?”
The principal nodded and the two men moved into the same spare office they’d used for the other interviews.
“NYPD come up with anything?”
“Nope,” the blond sighed. “Not a damn thing. No white vans, no history of much more than misdemeanors and/or parking tickets.” He tossed the file down on the desk.
It took the entire day to interview all the women, with a few of the men put in just to make sure nobody got any ideas about the focus of the investigation now. The last three were Pete, Donna, and one of the volunteers who worked with the kids in the gym. Howard had just finished up with Pete and Donna. Brenda Jamieson was waiting outside.
She entered the room with a smile that Hutch found odd, considering the circumstances, but he put it off to nervousness.
The interview progressed well enough, her concern about the children’s deaths seeming real enough, but there was something else, something that made the hair on Hutch’s neck stand up.
“Tell me a little about yourself, Brenda,” he said with a smile of his own.
“Why, you want a date?” she teased. “You’re a little old for me, Agent Hutchinson.”
Her blue eyes were sharp and clear, and the smile she gave him was forced. She didn’t like him much, and while that wasn’t unusual given his work and nothing he hadn’t seen with the other women they’d talked to, this was different. He just couldn’t put his finger on why.
“Doesn’t keep him from trying,” Tarsa told her. “But I’m definitely too old for you, so just answer the question.”
She lapsed back into her chair, her smile dropping from her face. “I work, I have friends, I go to movies, bowling, dancing… I’m young; I live life.”
“Where were you the day Monica Everson was murdered? You weren’t at the school.”
“I don’t volunteer on Tuesdays. Ever. There’s nothing suspicious in that. I got my hair cut, had a manicure and pedicure and went out with some friends for the evening. You can call them.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Rosie O’Grady’s. It’s a nice place over on the West Side. I had steak, mashed potatoes, and a vodka tonic. Ask Benny the waiter there — he knows me. He’s constantly hitting on me.”
He didn’t like this woman. And he didn’t have the faintest idea why.
“How do you like your work? Your colleagues?”
“Oh, it’s great. The kids are sweet, usually, even if they’re… well, not too bright.”
His dislike became stronger.
“You like working with Donna, Dave, and Pete?”
She shrugged. “What’s not to like? Oh, Dave wanted to go out with me, but he’s too old, too. He doesn’t know how to deal with ‘no’ very well,” she admitted sorrowfully, “but, what guy does?”
There went that alarm bell in Hutch’s mind. While Brenda was a very pretty redhead, she had an overweening belief in her own beauty and that no one could resist it. Hutch seriously doubted that Starsky had hit on her; after Meredith, he had learned that falling in love with someone you work with was not a good idea.
Never mind Hutch himself and how that had turned out.
“And Pete?” Howard asked.
She frowned and whispered. “He’s a homo. I have to work with him, but we don’t socialize.” Her distaste was obvious.
“I see. Does everyone know about Pete?”
“I doubt it,” she replied, glancing around at the room. “He tries to keep it quiet. Doesn’t want to lose his job.”
“But you don’t mind telling us?” Hutch asked, while thinking, What a bitch!
“I have to tell you the truth, don’t I?” she replied, her eyes wide, innocent, but if Pete had gotten fired over his orientation, she certainly wouldn’t shed any tears.
Howard’s eyes narrowed. “Who do you think is doing the murders?”
She looked down at her shoes for a moment and then looked up. “Well, you know… the only people who work with all those kids on a regular basis are Dave and Pete and, well, me and Donna, but I wouldn’t hurt anybody. Pete’s always at school, but Dave… he doesn’t seem to have anything else. I wouldn’t want to point any fingers or anything, but I have to wonder sometimes if he could have done these horrible things.”
Hutch was about to ask another question when Howard interrupted. “Well, thank you, Ms. Jamieson. I appreciate your taking the time to talk with us.”
“Oh, of course, Agent Tarsa. I always like to help the authorities.” Her voice went flat on the last word and the blond’s nasty feeling became stronger.
Howard closed the door behind her. “What do you think?”
“I think we need to look into Ms. Jamieson. A much deeper look.”
“Why, other than the fact that she is an unmitigated bitch with a goddess complex?”
The younger man chuckled. “Because she makes my alarms go off. Why would someone who obviously doesn’t like kids work here?”
“Hmm. Mine, too. I agree; she’s odd. Let’s go back to the precinct. I have some calls to make and we need to talk to Powers.”
Hutch picked up Starsky on the way out and if Howard wanted to say something about it, he didn’t. Starsky drove them to the precinct while Hutch updated him on their interviews.
“You ever ask Brenda for a date?” Tarsa asked when they were almost at the precinct.
“No, but she asked me, more than once,” he answered, glancing at Hutch before putting his eyes back on the road. “She’s too young for me, and besides, we work together.”
“How’d she take it?”
Starsky shrugged. “She didn’t like it, made a few cracks about me and Pete, and then, the next day, it was like nothing had ever happened.”
“What kind of evaluation does Kirsten do before she hires people?” the blond asked.
Another shrug. “You’d have to ask her, guys. I don’t work on the administration side at all.”
When they entered Powers’ office, he looked up and frowned. “The name John Carlisle ring any bells for you?”
“Carlisle, Carlisle… wasn’t that the hit man you impersonated?” Starsky asked.
Hutch’s memory cleared. “Yeah, I remember him. Why?”
Bill Flanders leaned against the doorframe. “One of Dr. Morgen’s employees is his daughter.”
Starsky went pale. “Who?”
“Donna Turicella. Only that’s her mother’s maiden name. She’s really Donna Carlisle. And get this: her father got out of the pen about a year ago, after he was shanked in a prison fight. He had to have surgery and had a stroke on the table. He was pretty much a vegetable. His wife died while he was in the pen, and he went to live with his daughter.”
“I don’t believe it. Donna?”
Hutch had to ignore his partner’s shock for the moment. “What about Brenda Jamieson?”
“Oh, she’s a real winner, too. D & D — bar fights, mostly. Her father was a cop; he was arrested for child molestation when she was twelve. Killed himself in prison. No obvious connection to you guys, though.”
Hutch shook his head and mentally moved her further down his list. “Where does Donna live?”
“138th Street. An apartment house, first floor,” Bill replied.
“Can you get a warrant?”
The cop waved a piece of paper in the air. “Already done.”
“Shall we go, gentlemen?” Powers muttered, tossing on his raincoat. “I’ve got a date tonight and I don’t want to be late.”
“Who’d go out with you?” Starsky asked as they made their way downstairs. He was still pale, but moving.
“My daughter, bozo,” he snapped back.
“Oh.”
They took two cars, Starsky’s and Bill’s, and got uptown in about thirty minutes. It was starting to get dark, dusk falling heavily.
It was an old apartment building, but kept in good repair. A couple of kids played outside and scattered when the five men came towards them.
“Do we look that intimidating?” Hutch asked nobody in particular.
“These kids know a cop from a block off,” Flanders replied. “It’s something they learn at an early age. There are more than a few drug dealers in this building.”
“Oh, great,” Howard muttered. The door they were looking for was at the end of the hallway.
There was the smell of something nasty, probably old food, the blond thought. They banged on the faded black door, and when no one answered, they broke it down. Actually, Bill put his shoulder to it, and the lock burst open.
“Remind me never to get you mad,” Starsky muttered, and the big cop grinned back at him. The bad smell was stronger, and the odor was one that all the cops in the room were familiar with.
Someone had died here.
The apartment was neat, clean. The furniture was old, but it didn’t seem to matter. There was a sense of emptiness to it, more than just not having anyone there…. He couldn’t explain it and didn’t try.
They moved into the back bedroom and the reason for the smell became apparent.
There was a corpse in a bed by the window, which was open. The men immediately clapped sleeves or handkerchiefs to their mouths and moved forward.
“Carlisle,” Hutch muttered, though it was really only a guess. This emaciated bundle of bones and skin didn’t look much like the man he had put behind bars for attempted murder. His illness had wasted him away. Various medical equipment was strewn around the bed.
“He’s been dead for some time, as much as a month, perhaps,” Tarsa told them. “No signs of foul play.”
“Someone’s been living here,” Flanders told them from the kitchen. “The food in the fridge is fresh.”
“You think she’ll come back?” Howard asked Hutch.
“If we don’t disturb anything, and fix the door,” he said, moving closer to the window.
He looked up, wondering what that light was across the street, in the opposite building. Just as he turned away the window shattered and he felt a sharp impact in his left arm. Starsky pulled him down as the others hit the floor.
“Son of a bitch,” Powers snapped, using his radio to call for backup.
Ignoring the pain, Hutch raced out of the building with Starsky and Bill. By the time they got across the street and up the opposite staircase, only Bill was with him. Hutch looked back and could see Starsky stop, breathing hard, and bent over to catch his breath. Howard stopped next to him, waving Hutch on.
Knowing that Starsky was protected he raced up the stairs, but it was too late. Bill was on his way down already. “She’s gone. Down the fire escape and into the back alley.” Then he looked at the agent. “Shit, you’re bleeding!”
Hutch looked down, and sure enough, his hand was coated with blood, and his upper arm was starting to sting. He put his hand over it and walked down the stairs to the little group at the base.
His partner started swearing when he saw the blood and used his handkerchief to stem the flow. “It’s only a scratch,” Hutch soothed, seeing the sweat of terror on his friend’s face as he sat down on the bottom step.
He kept talking, knowing that if he closed his eyes he’d want to go to sleep, and that would not be good. Other handkerchiefs followed his partner’s and then suddenly Starsky pulled off his sweatshirt and ripped off the sleeve to use that as a makeshift bandage.
“Maybe hit an artery,” Hutch mumbled, aware that the room was getting smaller in an odd sort of way, and he felt cold.
“No, looks like it went right through, you lucky guy,” Starsky told him. “You’ll be in a sling for a few days.”
“Nah… hate those things.”
Starsky went in the ambulance with him and held his hand on the way to the hospital. He was far more scared than Hutch was, and Hutch felt badly that that was the case. He kept trying to say that he was all right, but the oxygen mask over his face kind of prevented it from making any sense.
The doctors wanted to keep him overnight, but they had to be satisfied with the fact that they gave him blood and antibiotics and kept him until around midnight. Howard was pacing in the hallway by then, but Starsky wouldn’t leave his side, making inane jokes and teasing the nurses and commenting on the not-too-bad-looking female doctor that came his way.
He was glad to get out of there. His arm hurt, but ever since Gunther’s attack he got nauseous when he smelled that particular hospital scent, which only made him feel worse. The fresh air was cool and though it made him ache it was good for all that.
Starsky drove them to his apartment and if Howard was surprised at that, he made no comment. He went upstairs with them, and while Starsky headed for the shower to wash off the blood that had gotten all over his clothes and skin, Hutch went straight for the couch. It was long and comfortable, just cushiony enough to nap on, and not too soft, so his back wouldn’t ache.
“It’s under the sink,” he told Howard when he opened one eye and found the other man roaming around with his tongue half out of his mouth.
A quiet “Aha” said he’d found the Scotch under there. Some things didn’t change; the way Starsky organized his house was one of them. There was the soft gurgle and tinkle as he poured himself a drink.
He was half-asleep when he heard Howard and Starsky talking. The sound of water banging down on the tub said that his partner was still in the shower, but their voices were clear enough. Guess the bathroom’s got good acoustics, he thought fuzzily.
“So what happened to you out there today, Starsky? I think your friend expected you to back him up when he went after that girl.”
Howard, you are such a bastard.
“Where’s Hutch?”
“Asleep, on the couch.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Stop dancing, teach. You let him down again.”
“He had Flanders with him, and he had a gun, Howie. And in case you didn’t notice, I can’t run more than a block without falling over.”
What?
“Didn’t think you’d let yourself get that out of shape.”
Starsky’s chuckle wasn’t a pleasant thing. “You get cut in half with three bullets and see how well you’re able to breathe after they take out three-quarters of your lung.” A deep sigh followed. “The doctors weren’t sure whether I’d ever really make it back, but they were willing to give me the chance. At the time I didn’t think it would matter all that much, even on limited duty. But it did. I couldn’t run a block as fast as I used to, couldn’t chase anybody like I used to. Kind of hard to be a real cop that way. And they said it was only going to get worse the older I got.”
Howard was finally quiet, silenced by the bitter honesty in Starsky’s words.
But it was more truth than Hutch had heard from his partner in quite a long time.
“I couldn’t back him up, then or today, Tarsa. Which is why I let Flanders go with him. And if you think that’s the way I want it, you’ve got rocks in your head.”
The shower turned off and Hutch did his best to feign sleep, though his mind was whirring with frantic thought.
How could I not see that? How could I not know?
Why didn’t he tell me?
“Hutch was born to be a great cop, Howie. It’s his life,” the dark, angry voice continued; he could barely recognize it as Starsky’s.
No, babe. You’re my life. This is just a job.
“But I couldn’t do it with him anymore. Sure, I can kick anybody’s ass just as well as I used to, but… I was never sure whether… whether the one time I didn’t feel like hopping over that fence would be the time I absolutely needed to. And if something happened to him because I couldn’t… it would have killed me too.”
There was a long silence, and then, “So, I walked. Thought it was the right thing to do, at the time. And what you think about it, I don’t give a rat’s ass. But you can climb down off my back anytime now, pal, or believe me, I’ll be more than happy to explain to you why you should.”
The tone of menace, of implacability, was one that Hutch knew well, and he prayed that Howard had enough sense to back off. Starsky’s emotions were seesawing wildly and he was at his most unpredictable and dangerous then.
“And if you’d told him, he would have gone with you anywhere, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah. He’s like that,” Starsky snapped, and the sounds of a towel moving over skin could be heard.
Too surprised to say anything and thinking them both better off if he thought this through before he acted, Hutch turned his back and courted sleep as best he could.
But before it caught him, his mind shouted out: He still loves me. And he really believed that this was the best way to show it.
A soft smile slipped over his lips. Gordo.
This wasn’t the end. They weren’t over, not by a long shot, and the traces of their life together he’d found in Starsky’s apartment made more sense now. He was waiting for Hutch to come home.
He wouldn’t have long to wait.
~*~*~*~
There were moments I still love you
That same way….
His arm hurt like hell the next morning, and he felt hung over. In the back of his mind, he wondered if he had been dreaming.
But the surge of happiness that waited inside his soul told him it wasn’t any dream. Starsky had been doing his best to do what was right for his friend, his partner. And he was right; Hutch would have given it all up, walked away without a backward glance.
He remembered back to that time. They were both so confused, so angry, so hurt, he shouldn’t have been surprised that they’d fallen apart. Neither of them had really healed from Gunther’s murderous rage, and he knew that Starsky was only trying to do the best he could in a bad situation.
Unfortunately, it had only made the bad worse.
He sat up and Howard handed him a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, it was his kind of coffee, thick and black enough to coat a road with. He drank it anyway, needing the kick of caffeine to break through the foggy clouds in his mind.
“Last night… you were set up, Ken. She wanted you there. The rifle that they found on the roof had a scope that would have made it child’s play for her to kill you, but I don’t think she wanted to.”
“Not yet,” Hutch muttered. “She’s still getting off on hurting Starsky.”
“If you’d turned even a little bit, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. That bullet would have gone through your arm and into your chest. That would have hurt Starsky. And he wouldn’t be the only one.”
The blond grinned. “Oh, Howard, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Shut the fuck up, kid,” the former Marine snapped, but he was smiling all the same. “What’s that odd brain of yours telling you about her?”
The smile fell off his face. “She’s unraveling. Most of the murders were organized, but the last one shook her up. I wonder if he said something to her that made her hesitate at the last minute.” He shrugged and then winced. “If she can’t get to me, then she’ll take another kid. And soon.”
“There’s a white van registered to John Carlisle. The NYPD has an APB out on it and her.”
He stood up and swayed slightly before finding his balance. “She didn’t make my radar go off when we interviewed her, Howard. Did you get any blips?”
The senior agent shook his head. “Not a one, kid. But I did notice something odd. The nails on one hand were bitten to the quick, while the other was manicured perfectly. I thought it strange when I saw it, but we talked to Jamieson right after and I put it aside, thinking she was a more likely suspect.”
“Why would she keep her father’s body? That’s the part I can’t figure out.”
“I think all of this must have started when he died. All along she’s been blaming you both for his going to prison and then getting hurt, but Starsky was the only one she could get close to while her father was alive. So she did, probably hoping she could get involved with him, hurt him that way, but he wouldn’t play. When her father died something snapped and she went after the only other things she knew he loved that she could get her hands on — the children.”
“Did you call Morgen?”
“Last night. She’s warning the parents that the kids should avoid Donna if they see her on the street.”
“How’d she take it?” Starsky asked, dressed and ready for the day in a pair of jeans and a navy zippered sweatshirt. He looked beautiful, even with the lines of worry and strain under his eyes and the shock still leaving his skin paler than usual.
“Madder than hell, once she got over the immediate surprise. No one expects Donna to show up at the school today, but Powers put officers on the place anyway.”
“What about her? Any leads?”
Tarsa flipped open his notebook. “No other contacts. Her mother died of cirrhosis about two years after her father went into prison. No other brothers or sister, no other family.”
Hutch glanced at his watch. It was almost one p.m. “No wonder I’m hungry.”
Starsky smiled fondly at him. “How about lunch, blintz? Go shower and I’ll put some sandwiches together. And don’t get that bandage wet. Wait, I’ll get the plastic wrap and some tape….” He followed Hutch into the bathroom, leaving Howard to fend for himself.
Hutch was happy to take off yesterday’s bloodstained clothes, and even happier that Starsky was there to help. The bandage around his upper arm was thick and unwieldy, but it could have been worse, so he didn’t complain. When he was naked, he allowed Starsky to tape the plastic around the bandage and then got under the blissfully hot water, scrubbing away the pain and fear of yesterday and all the yesterdays that they’d been apart.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked his partner a little later, aware that Starsky was sitting on the closed toilet, his mind far away.
“I’m thinking we should have shot Carlisle when we had the chance.”
Hutch nodded. He understood the sentiment, though at the time, neither one of them would have thought that way.
“You’re not much of a runner anymore, huh?” he ventured, deciding to be daring. “Thought you’d have followed me up the stairs.” He had nothing to lose. “The kids don’t give you enough practice?”
“Nah, they don’t move that fast and I don’t have a jogging partner anymore,” Starsky replied quickly enough, but his voice was raspy. He coughed as if to clear it.
“You’re such a bullshitter,” he told his friend when he got out and took the towel from his open hand. Starsky shrugged, but his eyes looked worried. Hutch shaved and brushed his teeth.
He bent down to put on his briefs and on the way up, kissed Starsky gently on the mouth. His lips were as soft and sweet as he remembered, clinging to his own with tenacious hunger before slipping away.
Starsky flushed. “Hey. That sort of stuff’ll get you fired.”
“Good.”
Starsky closed his eyes and shook his head. “You heard us last night.”
Still quick, babe. “Yep.”
The other man stood up and tried to walk in circles, but the room was too small. Then he tried to shrug it off. “It was a long time ago, partner, in a land far, far away. Things have changed.”
“We haven’t,” Hutch refuted calmly. There was no need for anger, for yelling; those days were past. “I love you and you, partner, love me. You were just waiting for me to come home. That’s why the plants, the guitar, even my jacket in your closet.”
He didn’t refute that, Hutch noticed. “You’ve got a damn good job — shit, Hutch, you were born to be a cop.”
“You said something like that last night, too, that being a cop was my life.” He leaned closer, and realized he had Starsky pinned against the towel rack on the wall. His head dipped to beside his lover’s ear, and his voice dropped. “But you got it wrong, Starsk. You’re my life — this is just a job. And nothing, nothing, is better than us.” He used his lips to punctuate the statement, kissing gently across the pulse that was bounding wildly in Starsky’s throat, then pulled back.
“You think Tars a hasn’t noticed the change? That I look better, that I’m eating, that I’m involved in life again? Of course he has and that’s why he’s here. His team is losing badly and unless he can pull out all the stops, he’s going to lose his prime quarterback.”
Starsky banged his head against the wall. “I’ve got nothing to offer you, babe,” he whispered. “I’m a broken down former cop who teaches gym, for god’s sake. A killer has been working with me for the past three weeks and I never noticed. I’m no good for you.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, and I know you have, I’m happy when I’m with you, Starsky. Happy. And there’s no price I can put on that. No job, no success can measure up to that. Don’t you get it? It’s not about being cops; it’s about being us. Me ‘n’ thee. Always.”
“You’ve lost your marbles, blintz,” he said, but the tears in his eyes said more than any of his words could. He didn’t fight when Hutch pulled him against him and held on tight.
He hugged back, his grip strong and fierce.
“God, you’re stupid,” Hutch growled, kissing his temple. “I never noticed just how nuts you are.”
“Hmmph. Good thing you weren’t around the first year. By the time Kirsten got to me I needed drugs just to get out of bed.”
The blond closed his eyes and held on. “I’m glad she was there for you.”
“Howard was there for you, too, blintz. It’s going to kill him to lose you.”
“Nah,” Hutch replied, pulling back. “He’ll just find some other depressed, obsessive, anal type with a savior complex and too few hobbies to do the job.”
“Sure, those kind of guys grow on trees.”
The banging on the door broke up the emotional moment. “Hey. I need food, remember? We mortals don’t live on love alone.”
They had to laugh. “Okay, Howard. Be right out.”
~*~*~*~
I’m going to make him pay for this, for my pain, for what Momma went through, she thought, clutching the child close for a moment.
First, kill another of his precious children.
Then I’ll kill his partner.
And that bitch Morgen.
Only then will it be his turn.
~*~*~*~
Flanders’ arrival at Starsky’s door later that night interrupted their dinner. They’d been resting; it was a waiting game now.
His face was wet with sweat, like he’d run up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. “Just heard from Powers. Another kid’s missing — Mindy Parker?” he said to Starsky.
“Oh, god,” he groaned. “She’s deaf and mute. She and Donna worked together a lot.”
The ringing phone made them all jump and Starsky grabbed it.
“Yeah,” he said, shouldering into his jacket and then stopped moving, his face taking on that hard, heavy look that warned of danger.
Hutch realized immediately that she was on the line with him and picked up the extension in the bedroom.
“Donna?”
“You want her back, tough guy?”
Hutch tried to write down everything she said and gestured for Starsky to keep her talking. Flanders raced away, probably to try and get a trace on the line. They wouldn’t have enough time for that.
“You know I do. Where are you?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because you want me there to watch, don’t you, Donna?”
She laughed. “That’s right, Davey. I want you to watch as I slit her throat, the little waste of life. But you know, if you bring your cop friends, I’ll only kill them too. Like I nearly did your buddy, Hutchinson.”
Starsky swallowed, but he didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t want to kill him yet, Davey. Too soon. I still want to play the game with you.”
“So let’s play, Donna. Where are you?”
“Look out your window, Davey,” she sing-songed and hung up.
He hung up the phone and turned. “She’s downstairs, Madison Square Park!”
The group tore out of the apartment and into the elevator.
“Isn’t that park being renovated or something?” Howard asked, checking his weapon while Hutch did the same.
“Yeah, they’re rebuilding it,” Starsky muttered, tapping his foot impatiently. “Most of the lights in it aren’t even on. Lots of big trees. It’ll be pretty dark.”
“No bystanders,” Hutch muttered.
“No.”
“Good,” Howard replied.
They met Bill at the entrance and ran across Madison Avenue, dodging cars and taxis to cross the street. Each one took a separate entrance, but Hutch stayed with Starsky.
The sound of an air gun mixed with an arrow flying got both their attentions. It sounded like the muffling of a silencer that wasn’t fitted correctly. Cautiously they moved to the center of the park, behind huge bolsters of concrete bags and around bulldozers that seemed strange and threatening in the darkness.
They neared the center of the park now and crept closer, following the sounds. There was a full October moon out tonight and it gave some light, enough for Hutch to see the crumpled form of Bill Flanders at his feet. He bent down to check and heard the click of a gun being cocked.
He froze, but slowly turned his head.
Donna stood there, a girl of about eight in front of her like a shield. One arm was crooked around her neck with a knife in it, while the other held a gun with a silencer that looked like it had seen better days. The girl was terrified and her face was wet with tears, her mouth open but no sound coming out.
Starsky moved forward, only to stop when the weapon turned toward him.
Hutch stood up and the weapon rang out in that odd whine, a warning shot that caught his right arm this time He cried out and hit the ground, gritting his teeth against the pain. But this time he knew it was only a graze, not the deep, penetrating shot the other had been.
Starsky went to him, leaning over his body, cursing softly.
“Oh, I’m enjoying myself, Davey. Two cops for the price of one. I thought I told you to come alone.”
“I’m not good at following directions,” he growled out at her and turned to look at her. “Why, Donna? Your father was a hit man — he killed people for money.”
She shook her head, her long hair moving in the breeze. “I didn’t care about him. He was never home, didn’t want anything to do with me. But when he went to jail my mother started drinking. She was the sweetest person in the world and what you did made her want to die.” Her face contorted. “She couldn’t live without him, don’t you see? She didn’t want to live. And that’s what you’re going to feel like, Davey. After I kill him, and all your other friends.”
Starsky turned back to him, Hutch’s hand vainly feeling for the Magnum that was loose in its holster. His fingers didn’t seem to want to obey his orders.
The sound of a scuffle caught their attention, and the shine of the sharp knife against the girl’s throat.
In the space of a moment, their minds reached the same conclusion. With his left hand out of action and the right one’s nerves in shock, Hutch couldn’t lift his right arm to lift his gun. Starsky would have to shoot, would have to kill her. It would be a tricky shot with an unfamiliar weapon, but they had little choice.
Their eyes met.
“Don’t you want to see it, Davey?” her voice crept into the still air around them.
Starsky closed his eyes, took a deep breath and turned. He fired so quickly that Hutch barely could see the movement and for a horrific moment, he thought he’d missed. Then he heard the thud of her body hitting the ground, and the girl’s frantic struggle to escape her death-grip.
Starsky scrambled over to grab the girl and lift her into his arms just as Powers and Tarsa arrived at a run. Suddenly there were lights all over and Hutch let out a sighing breath. “Get an ambulance,” he yelled, crawling over to Flanders, able to feel a pulse. The shot had caught Bill high in the chest, but on the right side, so he might still make it after all. He was unconscious, but breathing regularly.
Sitting up, Hutch let himself be brushed aside by Powers, who put pressure on Bill’s wound while Howard handed his profiler another handkerchief to do the same for his own.
“Damn it,” Hutch growled, annoyed that in the space of two days he’d been shot twice. “Where the hell were you? Didn’t you hear that silencer?”
“If you could hear it, it wasn’t much of a silencer, was it?” Howard snapped back. “If you must know, I fell in a construction pit on the other side of the park. If Powers and his men hadn’t shown up, I’d still be there.”
Hutch had to smile at the consternation on his boss’ face. Having to owe anything to Powers must go against the grain for the FBI man.
“Blondie, you’re going to look like Swiss cheese if you keep this up,” a familiar voice murmured, and then Starsky appeared at his side. With gentle hands he looked at the wound. “Aw, it’s only a flesh wound.”
“Then why does it hurt more than the other one?”
“Because you’re a wimp?” Starsky asked, giving him a one-armed hug before whispering, “But you’re my wimp.”
“Damned right,” Hutch told him.
“Come on, kid, we’ve got reports to write,” Howard told him, heading him towards the ambulance.
“Uh, Howard,” he said, “I don’t think I’ll be able to write, you know, with my wounds and all….”
Starsky snickered. “Fat chance, Blondie. Don’t think you’re getting out of that.”
“Well, you’re such a pal, Starsky,” Howard reminded, “you can write them up for him.”
The former cop stopped to stare at the two of them as they laughed on their way to the bright lights, leaving the sad, pathetic form of Donna Turicella to the dark, loamy earth where she had fallen.
~*~*~*~
Howard Tarsa was no fool.
He knew when he’d lost.
He watched the two men in the ambulance as Ken was cleaned up and bandaged. For the first time since they had met, the blond-was happy. There was a light to his face, an energy in his eyes that had never been there for as long as Howard had known him.
And he had no doubt why that was the case.
The man at his side, for all his faults and foibles, loved him. Deeply and without hesitation. And as much as he had tried to hide it, it wasn’t something that could be truly hidden, unless one could watch every movement, every thought. It just wasn’t possible.
Their heads were close together now and they were talking, so softly Tarsa doubted even the paramedic by their side could hear them. They touched, knee to knee, so deeply in each other’s space it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended.
Hmm… maybe Starsky would like Virginia, he thought before smiling and walking towards Powers to bum a cigar.
~*~*~*~
When I remember L.A….
It was late by the time all the report writing was done, the case wrapped up.
The three men stood outside the precinct on the sidewalk, not speaking, just not wanting to separate just yet.
“In case I didn’t say so before, Starsk… that was one hell of a shot.”
Starsky nodded. “Lucky. I haven’t picked up a gun in four years.”
Hutch shook his head. “You’re a natural. Always were.”
The teacher shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the subject.
“Well, I think I’ll say goodnight, gentlemen. Ken, I shouldn’t expect to be seeing you in Quantico anytime soon, should I?”
Hutch straightened up. “I didn’t break the rules, Howard.”
A gentle hand rested on his shoulder. “I know you didn’t, kid. But you really don’t want to be there, and I finally realized that. Unless you can… um… coerce somebody else to move there with you?”
Starsky flushed and stared down at his feet. The blond cleared his throat. “I’ll work on it, Howard.”
“You do that, kid. I’m not giving up on you just yet. And hold on to the badge for a while. You just might have some use for it.”
Stunned by that announcement, Hutch could only silently watch as his boss hailed a taxi and climbed in. Tarsa waved and then was gone, leaving just the two of them in the rapidly cooling night.
“Guess that means you’re coming home with me, huh, sailor?”
The blond smiled. “Guess I am. Going home, I mean.”
Starsky grinned and the two men made their way to his car and then to his apartment. They didn’t need to speak; this was the kind of closeness that didn’t need words to validate it.
By the time they got there Hutch was tired, more from the emotions of the day than anything else.
“Don’t get any brilliant ideas about sleeping on the couch, blintz,” Starsky warned softly as they entered the darkened apartment.
“I wasn’t,” Hutch answered. “I’ve wanted to sleep with you for five years.”
Another shy smile replied and they shucked off their clothes quickly and climbed in together. Both of them were too tired for anything other than sleep, but even that would be so much better together.
They settled in the middle of the big bed, a tangle of arms and legs, Starsky being careful of Hutch’s wounds. Sleep caught them both before they could even start to talk about everything that had happened that day.
~*~*~*~
The following day was a Saturday, and neither of them had to be anywhere.
It was early and, out of habit, Hutch was awake. He turned and looked down at the man he loved, spread out all over the bed in that way he had, one arm thrown over his face to hide from the light of morning.
His left arm was useless, but his right seemed to be willing to work well enough. Gently, he inched the blankets down. He wanted to reacquaint himself with the body he’d dreamt about for so long. He stared for a long time, not at all disappointed. Starsky may have lost weight, but he was well built, solid and strong. He kept himself in shape, abs still so well defined it was easy to delineate each and every muscle of his stomach.
With a careful hand, Hutch outlined his abdomen, his ribs, moving up to tenderly trace the scars that would always be there, a haunting reminder of just how easy it could be to lose the ones you loved, and the strength of the heart beneath his hand.
Starsky had let Hutch go because he believed it to be the best, most right, decision he could make, not realizing it was a decision he didn’t have the right to make. They’d have to talk about that.
But not now, not when his lover’s cock was starting to awaken, growing heavy and long under his shorts. Hutch could smell the musk of it, the heat and hardness of it making his mouth water. It had been so long, too long; he couldn’t bear waiting one more moment.
His lips brushed over the muscled shoulder next to him, then further, his nose sliding against the silky hair that covered Starsky’s chest until he found the nub of his nipple. His tongue tip encircled it, dabbing wetly, his own breath adding sensitivity until it peaked on his tongue.
Starsky groaned and his arm fell away from his face.
He looked down and smiled, his navy eyes deep and hungry. He gasped as Hutch moved one hand over his pants, brushing his erect cock through the tented fabric.
“Ohh, babe,” he moaned, his back arching slightly into the pressure of hand and mouth. Hutch smiled; he loved it when Starsky let go, when he let the need he held inside loose. Glad that it was his right arm that was free, he reached beneath the elastic band and cupped the heat of him in one hand, idly stroking the tip, pleased when it leaked in response. With Starsky’s cooperation, he slid the shorts off.
His lover’s cries became louder, his fingers grasping the pillow as Hutch’s lips finally left his nipples and hovered down, down, down, turning awkwardly until he was directly over the red, leaking organ in his hand.
When he and Starsky had first gotten together, it was Hutch and not his more irrepressible partner who led the way. He had needed it, desperately, and Starsky, smiling, had at first just lay back and let him take, willingly, until he could relax enough to give.
He’d lead again this time, but more because he wanted to than out of any hesitancy on his lover’s part.
His tongue flicked out, and Starsky’s thighs jumped, the lean muscles tense and tight, his hips wanting to move but being restrained by Hutch’s will.
“Please, babe,” the deep voice muttered above him, and with a nod, Hutch obeyed. This wasn’t a time for tentative touch — they’d been apart too long for that. Hunger roared deep and strong in his own body and he knew that Starsky felt the same way. They needed completion, the connection between them that much deeper every time they shared their bodies.
His mouth rounded and sank down onto the reddened length, his throat remembering tricks from long ago and slowly relaxing. With a little more moving and shifting, he finally found himself between Starsky’s spread thighs, one hand wrapped around his ass, fondling the tense, tight globes that he loved to watch under a pair of jeans.
It was even better nude, he thought, his mouth stretching wide as he attempted to make himself a willing tunnel for Starsky to drive into. And he was beginning to pump now, his hips thrusting, fingers attempting to lock into Hutch’s hair, but with little success.
Hutch’s own cock was moving against the sheets, the friction there only adding to the intensity of the wild writhing that was making his neck ache. Finally he used his right hand to press down on Starsky’s hips, afraid he’d choke, but it was already too late.
Burningly hot fluid burst out, along with a moan of deepest pleasure, and he fought to swallow, but it had been too long and he was out of practice. Most of it dripped out of the sides of his mouth onto the sheets as he attempted to breathe through the onslaught. Starsky’s cries nearly made him lose it himself, but he didn’t, not wanting to come that way.
He didn’t expect the strong arms that hauled him up the bed a few minutes later, but he enjoyed the hot, deep kiss that pinned him to the pillow. How he’d missed Starsky’s kisses, the deep, raging intensity of them, the way that he could just taste him forever and know he’d had everything life could give him.
Finally, Starsky pulled back, his face serious. “Be sure, Hutch. Be sure.”
Brushing away a drop of sweat that had collected on Starsky’s cheek, he replied, “Never been more sure, babe. Of anything. I love you.”
Starsky’s lips were a soft, gentle affirmation of that love, and he accepted it.
One of his partner’s hands stretched down and cradled his cock, stroking it just the way Hutch loved. A quiet groan escaped him and he closed his eyes.
“I want to watch,” Starsky murmured in his ear. “Want to see it hit you.”
Starsky had always loved to watch him lose it, and Hutch had no idea why. He didn’t know what it was that his lover saw when he climaxed, but it was something he wanted and needed and it was more than Hutch could do to deny him anything, especially in their bed, so he opened his eyes.
He started to move with that hand, letting it guide him, lead him, the strong steady stroke reading his heart and knowing exactly what he wanted: the pressure, the heat, just the right pull…. He tried to fight it, wanted it to last, but Starsky knew too much, read his body as he had so often his mind, and brought him to a shuddering, shaking climax that was so intimate just because they were looking into each other’s eyes when it happened.
They collapsed against each other in a bundle of arms and legs, kissing when the mood struck them but otherwise just soaking in each other’s presence and letting their breathing come back to normal.
“I want to go home, Starsk.”
There was silence next to him, then, “I’ve never been to Virginia.”
He rose up on an elbow and winced when both his arms ached at the movement. “That’s not home, babe. Home.”
The blue eyes widened and Starsky’s mouth opened in surprise. “Home? You mean, the other coast, home? Three thousand miles away, home?”
“Yeah. That’s what I mean.”
They looked at each other for a long time and then Hutch added, “It’s where we belong.”
The deep voice softened. “Blintz, that life… we can’t get it back.”
The blond sighed softly. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying that I want to go, to be there, to learn who we’re going to be. Together.”
The two of them sat up. This wasn’t a lying-down kind of discussion, Hutch thought, and his timing sucked, too.
“That’s a big decision,” Starsky mumbled, his fingers picking at the sheet around his waist.
He grabbed the nervous twitching of his partner’s hands, soothing them between his own. “We don’t have to do it tomorrow, Starsk. But I think it’s where we should find out what we’re going to do. While I’m on sick leave, though I think Howard has other ideas about that. I don’t know whether you want to go back to the school after everything that’s happened. Think of it as a vacation, maybe. Let’s just go somewhere, the two of us. There’s so much we need to learn, all the stuff that’s happened in the past few years, the stuff that you can’t really talk about on the phone.”
Starsky leaned over and kissed him quiet. “Easy, babe, easy. I get it. Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. What did you expect me to say? No? Did you hit your head last night, too?”
“No, I mean, that’s great. I didn’t expect you to agree so fast.”
“New York never really had any hold on me, other than wanting to be near Ma. But now that she and Mr. Hagen are so chummy, I think I’m crimping her style a little. At the time, New York was as far away as I could get and still be in the same country. And then you showed up.”
Hutch chuckled at the aggrieved tone. “Sorry about that. But Quantico was a second-best choice. I wanted to be here.”
“I know. I just couldn’t let you do that. Not then. It was bad enough that I had to give it up, but to know that you had to do it too…. I just couldn’t get my head to deal with that.”
“You said the first year was bad. Tell me about it.”
Starsky bit his lip. “Cathy and I fell apart pretty quickly. It wasn’t her fault; I was grabbing onto anyone who could keep me afloat. After she left, I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, didn’t want to eat, look for a job, nothing. I can’t explain how I felt — it was just so bad. There was nothing to look forward to. I was a failure at the only thing I ever wanted to do, ever felt that I should have been doing. And oh, I missed you. So badly. I was living with Mom then, you know, and she was getting really worried.” He sighed and Hutch decided they needed to be more comfortable for this conversation. He settled back against the headboard and coaxed Starsky to join him, his dark head resting on his lap.
“Go on,” he urged.
“Kirsten came by to visit one day. Mom let her in — she was just leaving to go shopping. I’d been cleaning my gun… I guess Kirsten didn’t care for the way I was looking at it.”
Hutch stifled the gasp that wanted to leap out of his chest. And I left Starsky alone to face this? Oh, god, we’ve made mistakes all right and we’ve been damn lucky.
“She took it away from me that day, brought me to a doctor friend of hers who gave me antidepressants that I tossed, and gave me a job at the school. At first, I was just surviving, you know?”
Hutch nodded and buried his fingers in the tousled curls, his heart aching in his chest. He knew.
“Then, day by day, I started to see that these kids had a hell of a lot harder road than I ever did, and they still smiled. It wasn’t fair to them not to give everything I had left. So I did. It made it better somehow, to know that I could do something to help somebody.”
He shifted and turned over, looking up into Hutch’s eyes.
“And I missed you so bad it scared me. I dreamt about us, about the old days… and I’d wake up with tears in my eyes. But every time you called, it was all I could do to stay here and not jump in the car and find you.”
“Me, too. Listen, Starsk, I know you thought you had done the best thing you could, and that you were confused by everything that had happened: the shooting, us, even finding out you couldn’t do the job anymore — at least not the way you wanted to… but, babe, you didn’t talk to me. You didn’t tell me the truth.” He held Starsky’s head and looked into his face. “You can’t ever do that again. I won’t let you do that again, you hear me?”
“Yeah, blondie, I hear you. Guess we both made some mistakes, huh?”
“The only mistake I ever made was letting you push me out the door. That’s never going to happen again, Starsk. No matter what.”
Starsky sat up and kissed him, deeply and with all the emotion that he needed to show. “Love you, blintz.”
“Yeah, gordo, I figured that out. Love me enough to feed me?” Hutch asked, grinning around the lewd smile he received from his partner. “Food, Starsk. Food.”
“Well, I heard there’s a lot of protein in it, anyway,” his lover told him before pulling him flat onto the bed. “And I didn’t get any this morning.”
Hutch fell back against the pillows as Starsky moved down his body, focusing on his cock, his hand stroking him once more, fondling his balls, his ass. He bit his lip to stifle the sounds that desperately wanted to escape his mouth.
His lover chuckled softly, his lips nuzzling Hutch’s belly, his thighs, before brushing his lips against his cock, which had quickly gotten back into the act.
He had no idea just why Starsky’s blow jobs had this effect on him. He was a grown man, had been between the sheets with many a woman who used their mouths on him, but for some reason, some indefinable reason, Starsky was so good at it that Hutch could never remember any of the others.
He never rushed, and this was no exception. His tongue painted rivers around Hutch’s cock, teasing it, demanding it lengthen, grow longer, wider with each rough caress. Hutch’s back arched against it and his legs moved restlessly, but this was all Starsky’s play and he was completely in control.
Hutch moaned as the strong fingers caressed his ass, the fingers massaging hard, forcing the muscles there to clench tightly, and Starsky’s tongue gave way to his entire mouth on Hutch’s cock. He tried hard to thrust but once again he had no maneuverability. He was completely in thrall to the hard mouth that was reminding him what it felt like to be truly owned.
He knew he babbled when this happened, but he never remembered afterwards just what it was he said. His hand clutched the curly hair, not to lead, merely to have another point of connection, some sense of touch other than the one that was driving him completely mad. He couldn’t stay still any longer; he had to move, and as if Starsky had read his mind, he let him thrust, his hands remaining on his body, stroking his hips, his thighs, while he devoured his cock with tongue, teeth and palate, not letting him rush to climax too soon.
Oh, no, this was a slow and steady torment, a sweetness that he had never known with anyone else, a rise to the top, like bubbles in champagne. And when they exploded, he could feel himself fall, down, down, down…. Limp and shaking, he lay there, still hungry, still wanting.
He rolled over onto his stomach and spread his legs.
He heard Starsky’s hiccup of air as the realization hit him.
“Hutch?”
The blond settled deeper into the bed. “Come on, babe. I know you want it. I do too.”
There was a quiet stillness behind him and then he felt Starsky blanket his back for a moment as he reached into the bedside table drawer. A whisper of air against his ear. “Hutch?”
He smiled. “Yeah, I’m here.” With the last of his strength he pulled a pillow under his hips, lifting himself up a little higher, willingly helping in his own penetration. He took the tube from Starsky’s hand and used his right hand to reach behind and smooth some of it around. His arm ached, but he ignored it.
Moments later other fingers slid around his shrinking aperture. He dropped his hand and relaxed against that touch. Soon one slipped inside of him, gently, carefully, the digit coating the inner tunnel with slick warmth. Then another joined it, pushed, probing, and finally, a third. Even then he was too relaxed to notice anything but the warm pleasure of it.
Starsky wasn’t a small man, in stature or in heart, and his cock mirrored that. Hutch had learned to relax with it, but it was always a stretch, one he enjoyed and courted. It usually took a little coaxing; his partner was always loath to hurt him.
The head of his cock pierced through the outer ring with a slight physical pop, and hesitated there. Starsky wouldn’t move until Hutch urged him on, inch by inch, his body slowly giving way to the blunt probe that entered him, deeper and deeper.
He thrust his hips back slightly, a silent urging, a plea for his lover to continue. Slowly but surely he was filled until he felt there was no more room at all, but still more came. He came shakily to his knees, only able to use one arm for balance, feeling the crowding there as an inability to breathe, and Starsky stilled, reading his body as surely as he did his own.
With flexibility that Hutch was certain he had lost, Starsky rotated him on his cock until Hutch was facing him, his back on the bed, his legs resting on his lover’s shoulders.
“Want to see you,” he whispered as he thrust for the first time.
Hutch grasped the sheets and tucked his knees in, barely able to hold on against the gentle push. He had no idea what he’d do when Starsky began pounding in earnest.
It was a slow, even rise this time, and they roused together to a fever pitch. Thankfully Starsky held his hips, pulling him back every time Hutch felt his body slide away against the rhythm that was being forced into his too-willing flesh. His cock banged gently against his belly, hot, hard, but not yet ready to release its load.
His partner started to lose it, his hips pistoning now, pinning him tightly, landing a hard shot to his prostate with each stroke. He could feel Starsky’s balls flattening against his ass, pulling up, but fighting it, too, wanting it to last for a long, long time.
But some things just can’t be stopped, and this tsunami that had them both in its grasp was one of them. Hutch pulled his cock hard, his hand moving faster and faster, mimicking the pressure and pounding stroke that was tearing him apart….
With a cry like nothing he’d ever heard before, Starsky climaxed and Hutch went with him, over the edge for a long, long, sweet moment, until the hard body landed on his own with a thump and the thick length slid out. His lover took a moment to discard the condom and then he was a near-unconscious body for a while.
Hutch tried to get his breath back, but it took a long time.
And it wasn’t until Starsky leaned up and kissed him that he realized he was crying. Wet, warm lips wiped the tears away and they lay down again.
Even with both arms as sore as they were, they were locked around his lover, his partner, his best friend.
And they slept.
Together.
As it should be.
The End
Author’s Notes:
The Blame Section:
This is all Linda’s fault for encouraging me and sending me tapes of season 4!
Actually, this story began at SHareCon 2000, so we can also blame Flamingo. She brought out the song-vid that bears the same title, and this poor little Sentinel writer didn’t stand a chance. One moment I was happily enjoying the vid and the next I was pestering people for pen and paper and a few minutes later, an outline was born.
Thanks also to Gloria for her insight and patient editing on this story, without which it never would have been finished. (So now I only have 88 stories to write!)
Notes: Hutch’s speech about his meeting with Charlie Davis is taken from John Douglas’ conversation with Charlie Davis, excerpted and adapted (for Hutch’s speech patterns) from, “Mind Hunter.” Also the information on protecting children, including the No-Go-Tell rules, are real, quoted from “Journey into Darkness.”
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