Retribution

On the one year anniversary of Simon Marcus’ sentencing, his followers decide to exact their own twisted brand of justice.

It had been a long, unseasonably hot day. The only thing on Detective Sergeant David Starsky’s mind was a cold brew and his couch. The Torino door felt much heavier than usual as his cramped muscles pushed it open. He rolled out with a groan, then used the last of his strength to slam the door shut.

Prickles of perspiration trickled down his back as he trudged toward the stairs that led to his apartment. An unpleasant memory had been playing through his mind all day. For the most part, he’d been able to bury it down deep, unwilling or unable to share it with his partner. Now, the memory and the heat conspired to zap what was left of his reserves. He paused at the foot of the steps to wipe the sweat from his upper lip. As he lowered his left arm to reach for the railing, a thumping pain under his left shoulder blade made him grunt and pitch forward.

His left hand reflexively reached for the Baretta holstered under his right arm. He spun 180 degrees and brought the gun to bear on a blurry figure standing at the curb. A sudden dizziness assaulted him and he squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, he found himself sitting on the last step, the gun in his hand getting heavier by the minute. He watched, confused, as the weight of it pulled his arm down. His fingers opened. The gun dropped to the pavement. He dropped next to it.

* * * *

“Damn,” Ken Hutchinson muttered as he peeled the shirt from his sweat-drenched skin. He plodded down the hallway, undressing along the way. He dropped his damp clothes in a heap next to the open bathroom door while he took a cool shower. All he could think about was lying naked on the bed with the fan on high.

He showered quickly, too weary to really enjoy it, then headed for the bedroom. He switched on the fan, then sat on the edge of the bed to towel dry his hair. He sighed, feeling cool for the first time that day. His eyelids drooped as he gave his hair a few more quick rubs. Satisfied, he tossed the towel to the floor and scooted back onto the bed, his eyes already shut when he hit the pillow.

Every muscle relaxed into the bed, making him feel like Jell-O poured into a mold. He was about to embrace the sweetness of sleep when the phone rang. The shrill ring instantly set all of his nerves on edge. He rolled toward the night stand on his right and snatched the receiver off the hook.

“Hello?” he snapped.

For a heartbeat, all he heard was silence. Then a female’s voice told him, “Happy anniversary.”

The connection was cut and dial tone droned in his ear. Hutch cradled the receiver and fell back onto the bed as a few select expletives tumbled from his lips. Stupid prank caller, he thought. Just as I was about to drift off!

He took a deep breath, whooshed out the air, then turned onto his left side. Try as he might, he was unable to stop the woman’s voice from echoing in his head. Each time his mind repeated her message, the muscles in his stomach knotted more. Finally, his eyes opened wide and he sat up. He reached for the phone.

Seventeen rings later, the knot in his stomach had grown to the size of a baseball. Sure, Starsky could be sleeping, could be in the shower, could be doing a million things. One thing he wasn’t doing was answering the phone. Distractedly, the blond cradled the receiver and headed for the closet to get some clean clothes. His mind was focused on an apartment building several miles away.

Miraculously, the engine of his brownish-greyish, rusty LTD turned over on the first try. The dented heap had refused to start just that morning, so they’d driven to the station in Starsky’s Torino. This morning. Seems like days ago. As he pulled out into traffic, his mind got to work. Happy anniversary. Who’s anniversary… of what?

* * * *

Starsky’s eyes had already been open for a few minutes, but the outside world just wasn’t registering. The first thing he became aware of was a spinning white blur directly in front of him. It reminded him of when he was a kid and his mom would buy him a pinwheel from old man Lacy’s store in the summer. Only this one was all white, no colors. And big. At least four feet across. It made a nice breeze, though, and he felt cool for the first time all day.

All day?

“What day is it?” he slurred to the pinwheel. It didn’t answer, and he began to feel agitated. “An’ where am I?” He tried to tilt his head to look up, but found that something hard against the back of his skull prevented that particular angle. He turned his head from side to side, careful not to agitate the dizziness he could feel lingering on the edges of his brain. After a few seconds, he pieced together that he was lying on a beige-carpeted floor in a small, empty room with white walls and a matching white ceiling fan. No windows. One door about three feet away. A cheesy lamp with a dim bulb was hung on the wall behind him.

After a few minutes of coaxing, he managed to convince his body that sitting up would be a good idea. He tried to push off the floor with his hands, but found that they were handcuffed together in front of him. Instantly, the scene on his apartment stairway flooded back to him and his whole body tensed. Now he could feel the dull throbbing in his left shoulder through the buzz of whatever drug had been used to knock him out. He rolled to the right, got his legs under him, and managed to kneel.

Nausea and dizziness threatened to put him right back on the floor. Moaning, he hunkered down with his head on his knees and concentrated on breathing. After a few minutes, the queasiness abated and he struggled to his feet. It was just in time to greet a visitor at the door.

“Nice nap?” The sarcastic voice was female, young, possibly late twenties. It came from within the cowl of a black robe.

Starsky took an involuntary step backwards. The memory that had taunted him all day hit full force. One year ago today, it mocked. Almost chopped to pieces by Simon Marcus’s followers at that abandoned zoo. He held his handcuffed hands up in front of him defensively as he backed further away.

“There ain’t nowhere to run,” the woman taunted, stepping into the room. “No one to help you this time.” She gestured with her right hand and three others crowded into the small room with her. She tossed back the hood of her robe to reveal short, dark, drab hair. Wild, brown eyes pierced him with a hard stare that held him to the wall as the others gathered around.

Starsky defensively wedged himself tightly into the corner. He sized up each of the cult members as they arranged themselves in a semi-circle in front of him. The apparent leader, the one with the greasy dark hair and manic statement, was the tallest and thinnest and stood dead center. She was downright scrawny, but her attitude easily commanded the respect of the others. The inverted cross etched into her forehead removed any doubt that she was one of Marcus’s followers. The other three were formless black shapes, all distinguishable traits hidden beneath their robes. Each of them held an object, and as they began to sway and chant, they held them up for the detective to see. The one on his far left had a length of thick, black electrical cord. The leader had a three-foot section of broom handle. The short, squat figure to the right of the leader was holding something that looked like a bicycle chain, and the last cultist was holding a thick rope.

Starsky’s heart began to beat in time with the chanting of Simon’s name. “Please,” he said under his breath. “Not again.”

* * * *

Hutch drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Since leaving his apartment, the cryptic message had been replaying itself in his head. As he pulled to a stop for a traffic light, a buried memory surfaced from within the muck in his overworked mind. Oh no. His face paled to match his silken hair. It couldn’t be that. It was almost unthinkable that the call could have anything to do with one of the worst waking nightmares he’d ever experienced: Simon Marcus. Sentenced one year ago today, the same day he’d found his partner beaten and poisoned by Marcus’s goons at the old zoo.

His foot found the accelerator and the LTD lurched past the car in front of him and through the red light. He never heard the screeching tires of the vehicle that almost broadsided him. All he could see was his partner, battered and bruised in a long black robe. He shook his head slowly from side to side. Not again. Please, God, not again.

Hutch’s battered car skidded to a halt just short of the Torino’s bumper and jumped the curb. Hutch was out of the car and running before the engine stopped shuddering. He was about to place his foot on the bottom tread of the stairs leading to Starsky’s apartment when something on the third step made him stop short. He reached down to retrieve the leather case that he instantly recognized as his friend’s badge. There was a greeting card shoved between the case’s folds. A picture of doves adorned the front cover with gold letters reading, “Happy Anniversary.” Inside, a scribbled message: “Our gift is pain.” He felt an invisible hand reach inside his chest and squeeze his heart.

He knew Starsky wouldn’t be upstairs in his apartment. He closed his eyes and labored to breathe through the tightness in his chest. There was no sign of a struggle, no blood, but there was no question in his mind who was responsible. Swallowing hard, he ran back to his car to radio in.

* * * *

A black and white and the forensics team arrived twelve long minutes later. He wrenched Starsky’s extra apartment key off his key chain, then handed it and the card to Hendricks on the way to his car. “I’ll be at the station,” he mumbled. “Let me know.”

Dazed, Hutch pushed through the doors leading into the squad room. He went to his desk and carefully placed his partner’s badge on the blotter in front of him. I should have given this to forensics, he thought, sinking down into his chair. I should take it there now. Instead, he propped his elbows on the desk top and held his head in his hands. He just couldn’t give it up yet, this one thing that linked him to his kidnapped partner. A sense of hopelessness pervaded every one of his nerve endings. He was sure that this time, he’d never get him back.

Captain Harold Dobey burst through the squad room doors a minute later. “Hutchinson! What the hell’s going on?” he bellowed. He’d just sat down to one of his wife Edith’s wonderful meatloafs when there was a phone call informing him of the missing detective. He snatched the hat from his head as he blustered the rest of the way into the squad room.

Hutch didn’t flinch, didn’t move, couldn’t respond. He sat very still and stared at the badge.

“Dammit, Hutch! I’m talking to you!” Dobey hollered, striding up to the desk. He looked down at the badge, then up at the blond head mostly hidden by large, calloused hands. “Hutch?” he said more quietly.

“They took him,” the blond detective answered quietly. “Again.”

* * * *

“Take him,” the leader said in a toneless voice.

The cultist on the far left lashed out with the electrical cord. It looped over Starsky’s head, around his neck, and one firm tug sent him sprawling to the floor. The other three were on him then, each brandishing their weapon of choice. Eyes squeezed shut, he tried to protect his head with his handcuffed hands, but his body was being abused in so many different places that the pain made it impossible to keep his hands in any one spot.

His head was filled with sounds; the harshness of his own breathing and grunts of pain, the electrical cord slicing through the air on its way to his flesh, the chinking of the chain as it crashed down onto his legs, and the hollow thumping of the broomstick against his torso.

The brutal beating lasted only a few minutes. He ended up on his back in the center of the room, barely conscious. One of his attackers straddled his chest, and he could see into the shadows of the hood. Another girl. This one with long brown hair. He couldn’t see much else except the whites of her wide-open, frenzied eyes. She grabbed a fistful of his hair, lifted his head off the floor, then placed the rope around his neck. The handful of hair was released and his head thumped onto the carpeted floor, now speckled with his blood. She twisted the rope, tightened it, cut off his air. His hands scrabbled weakly at the hemp as he felt his mind slipping into the void. Above him, the ceiling fan continued to spin slowly, its gentle whoosh the only sound in the room.

Sometime later, as consciousness slowly returned him to the waking world but before he opened his eyes, his first thought was that he was cold. Then the pain hit. His eyes fluttered open and he gasped. For a few seconds, the only thing he could see was red pain. As he became fully aware, he found himself naked and bound spread-eagle on a large wooden table. The ceiling, about four feet above him, consisted of plywood and wooden support beams, intersected by piping and wires. The dank air and musty smelled confirmed his suspicion that he was in a basement.

The cultists were gathered around him, staring at his nakedness. They all had their hoods down now. Not a good sign. If he could see them all, then they must have no intentions of letting him live to later identify them. They were all females, all in their early to mid-twenties. One of them was strikingly pretty, with blonde hair and high cheek bones. She had a haunted, trapped look in her deep green eyes. The other two were brunettes, one with shoulder length hair and the other with long hair. Those two looked like they hadn’t seen soap and water in some time, like their leader. The one closest to him leaned over to whisper through crooked teeth, “Pain is your gift from Simon. Happy anniversary, pig.”

His mind flashed back to what Gail, the cultist whom had helped him at the zoo, had said at the start of that ceremony. “I only have to make the first cut. The first of hundreds, thousands, millions….” He closed his mind to the memory and tried to gather his wits. “You’re making a mistake,” he said lamely. “Killing a cop….”

“Don’t worry,” the leader cut in. “We ain’t gonna kill you. Not for a long, long time.” She smiled and her subordinates chuckled at her joke. Then the four of them walked out of the room and left him alone with his misery.

Starsky immediately began to struggle against the thick ropes that bound his wrists and ankles. He tried to escape methodically at first, tried to free one wrist and then the other, but soon claustrophobic panic overtook him and he thrashed about. When he tired and was finally still, his wrists and ankles were raw and bleeding, but the ropes still help him in a firm grip. Memories of crime scenes where some of Simon Marcus’ victims had been found flashed vividly through his mind. The victims had been sadistically tortured and mutilated. He could still smell the blood. If he didn’t escape, he knew he’d soon be one of them.

Upstairs, the cultists gathered in the farmhouse kitchen.

Allison, the leader, stepped over to the wall phone. “It’s time to call the other one.”

Loretta pulled her long, stringy hair into a ponytail with a rubberband and strolled over next to her. Her eyes still held the crazed look she’d had when she’d strangle the cop unconscious with her rope. “Are we going to do him, too?”

“Don’t you get it?” Kelly, the blonde, asked. “Letting Hutchinson know what’s happening to his partner is doing him.”

Loretta pouted, preferring a more “hands on” approach.

Sheila pushed nervous fingers through her shoulder-length brown hair and sat down at the kitchen table. She fished out a pack of cigarettes from within the folds of her robe. As soon as Kelly saw the cigarettes, she pulled out a chair for herself and bummed one from Sheila.

“Keep quiet, girls. I’m calling him,” Allison instructed, picking up the handset. She shooed Loretta away from the phone and sent her to join the others at the table. The clock above the refrigerator read 9:27 PM. She fingered a white business card that she’d extracted from the brunette cop’s pocket and consulted the embossed print. She punched in Starsky’s number at the Bay City Police Department.

* * * *

The phone rang twice. It took the blond detective that long for his mind to register that his partner’s phone was ringing and for his body to react. He grabbed the receiver and placed it to his ear so quickly it bruised his earlobe. He didn’t notice.

“Hutchinson.”

“How’re you liking your anniversary so far?” a snide, feminine voice asked.

“Where’s my partner?” Hutch asked in a no-nonsense tone.

“He’s having lots of fun at the anniversary party we’re throwing for him,” she cooed. “I’d let you talk at him, but he’s tied up right now.”

Hutch ran a hand over his face. “Look, what do you want?”

“To see you suffer.” There was a pause. “Both of you.”

“Why?” The detective breathed the word into the mouthpiece.

“You took Simon from us. He’s suffering in prison without us, and we’re suffering without him. Now you’ll suffer without each other. Stick around. You’ll hear from me again.” The connection was cut, and the dial tone filled the void.

He slammed down the phone and immediately began pacing in front of the desk. Dobey stuck his head out of the office, and his face said it all.

“Yeah, I know,” Hutch said, waving him off. “Not enough time for a trace.”

Hutch stopped his pacing in front of the wall clock. It was 9:30. He should be on the couch with a tall glass of iced tea, reading a few more chapters of “Jaws” until he was tired enough to fall asleep. Instead, he was staring at the clock, again, wondering how much time he had left to find his partner before it was too late. Anger boiled to the surface and his foot connected loudly with the filing cabinet, causing the late shift officers to jump in their seats.

“Hutchinson!” Dobey snapped. “Get in here!”

Hutch stamped into his superior’s office and slammed the door.

“Sit,” Dobey instructed, not unkindly. When Hutch had settled himself on the edge of a chair, he asked, “What’s your plan?”

Hutch looked up at his captain with a mixture of disbelief and anger on his face. “Plan? I don’t have a goddam plan.” He propped his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands.

Dobey took a deep breath and exhaled before he continued. “You want me to get you in to see Marcus?”

Hutch straightened up, then leaned back in the chair. “That slimeball won’t tell me anything. Not after we figured out his little riddle the last time.”

“Maybe not.”

“Besides, I’ve got to be here when they call back.” He stood up to leave. “I’ll call Huggy, get him to work the streets. Maybe someone’s heard something,” he trailed off hopelessly.

Dobey felt a pang of empathy for his man when he heard the pain in his voice. “We have an APB out on Starsky. Every available man is out looking.”

Hutch nodded slightly without turning and left the room.

* * * *

The parade of fatal females filed down the basement steps twenty minutes after they’d left. To Starsky, it felt like an hour. The dampness of the cellar had quickly assaulted his naked body and crept into his bones. Soon the shivers gave way to small tremors. His whole body throbbed with pain, especially his now raw wrists and ankles. Claustrophobia sat on his chest like a lead vest.

Allison stepped up beside him and ran her hand lightly over his hairy chest. “Goosebumps. For me?” she chortled. She took a sip from a tall, metallic-blue cup she’d brought with her. “Mmm.” She smacked her lips. “Don’t suppose you want a cold drink then, huh?” An evil smile split her face as she extended her arm to poise the cup above her captive’s chest. Slowly, she tipped the edge. Cold water dribbled down onto his bare flesh.

Despite his resolve not to, Starsky gasped when the cold water drizzled onto his already chilled skin. Soon the drizzle became a steady stream, and then the remaining half a cup was dumped. The sudden cold and the sting of the water in open cuts took his breath away.

Allison snapped her fingers and Kelly brought over a small black box, six inches square. A ripple of sexual excitement coursed through her as she caressed the smooth, lacquered lid. “We got a anniversary gift for you, pig.”

“You sh…shouldn’t have,” Starsky stammered.

“Oh yeah we should. Look how pretty.” She opened the lid and tilted the box so that he could see inside. When her captive didn’t raise his head to look, she nodded for Loretta to snatch up a handful of his thick curls and pull. “See?”

“Yeah,” Starsky grunted. “I’ll be sure to send a thank you card.” The contents puzzled him. There were a dozen or more silver balls, each about the size of a pea. They were arranged neatly in rows on top of a white, cottony material. “For whatever the hell it is.”

Eyes glistening with anticipation, Allison grasped one of the balls between her index finger and thumb and pulled. The silver ball was attached to a four-inch needle, which she slowly extracted in front of the detective’s widening eyes. His quickening breath excited her more. “I made them just for you,” she breathed.

“What, couldn’t ya afford to buy me somethin’?” Starsky wheezed. His parched mouth and throat wouldn’t allow much else. His claustrophobia took a momentary backseat to the dread of what his captor intended to do with those needles.

“Well, I didn’t really make the hat pins,” she admitted, “but I did collect the venom that coats them.”

God, not more poison, Starsky thought, trying not to squirm.

With a curt nod, she signaled for Loretta to drop his head. It landed with a satisfying thud on the table. “I went to lots of trouble for you, sweetie,” she continued. “The, uh, donors were none too happy to give up their poison.”

“Wha… what kind of poison?” he croaked.

“That ain’t important,” she explained. “What’s important is what it does. Wanna hear what it does?”

“Not really.”

“Sure you do.” She got closer and held the point of the needle just inches above his left eye while she talked. “At first, you only feel when the pin goes in. A few seconds later, the venom kicks in and you feel the most awesome pain.” She smiled dreamily.

“T’riffic.”

“Ain’t it?” Allison agreed gleefully. “Each pin only has a little bit on it, but by the time we stick you with all twenty, you should be pretty far gone. Hopefully you’ll still have a little life left in you for the grand finale.” She stood up and placed the pin back into its venom-saturated cushion within the black box. “Now, where should we start?” She strolled around the table, caressing his body lightly with her hand.

“This isn’t gonna get Marcus out of prison, y’know. They’ll never let him out,” Starsky said firmly.

“We ain’t asking nobody to spring him,” Allison replied.

Starsky’s brow furrowed with confusion. “Then what do you want?”

Allison stopped by the right hand corner of the table and handed the box to Kelly. Then she used her left hand to unfurl the detective’s fingers and hold his hand open. Her right hand extracted the first pin from the box. “What I want,” she said icily as she pushed the sharp point into his palm, “is this.” She kept steady pressure on the pin, driving it slowly into the fleshy part of his palm and up inside his wrist.

As soon as he felt the prick of the pin, Starsky closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. The last thing he wanted to do was to give this flake the satisfaction of crying out in pain. He clenched his teeth as the four-inch pin inched his way mercilessly through his hand and up his arm.

Allison bent over him. Her hot breath panted into his ear, “You ain’t seen nothing, hon. Just wait.” She straightened to get a better view.

Seconds later, Starsky’s eyes flew open and he sucked in air. A sudden fire blossomed in his right wrist and traveled up his arm. When the fire changed into sharp, stabbing pains, he couldn’t help but cry out.

“Pay close attention, cop,” Allison spat at him. “The first one’s important.”

…the first of hundreds, thousands, millions….

“Don’t do this,” Starsky begged. Then he set his jaw and tried again. “You’ll end up in prison, too.” A searing pain in his hand made him pause. “Is that what you want? Kill a cop, and they’ll put you away… uhn! F…for a long time.”

“Gotta catch us first,” Kelly laughed.

Allison allowed five minutes to pass before inserting the next pin in her prisoner’s left palm. At five minute intervals, she shoved pins in each of his heels, up into his ankles. By that time, a scintillating symphony of grunts and whimpers were escaping the tortured man’s lips.

“Are we having fun yet?” she chided him as he writhed in pain.

“Go… to… hell.”

She snorted. “I was born there.” She directed her attention across the room to where Sheila stood. “Plug it in. This is gonna be sweet.”

Sheila placed the telephone on a card table next to the wall and stretched the wire to the jack. She’d grabbed the extension from the livingroom on her way downstairs. “Ready.”

“And now,” Allison said theatrically, “we’ll go for double the fun.” She drew out two pins, one in each hand. She held them above his face first so that he could see them, then slowly traveled down, past his neck, down his chest. She made sure the sleeves of her robe trailed along his flesh on the way so he would know where she was at all times. When her path took her further south than his belly button, his head sprang up.

“No! Don’t,” he panted. “Please!”

Loretta stepped up beside Allison. “Let me do it! C’mon!”

“Back off, bitch,” Allison said menacingly. Then sweetly, “You’ll get a turn. You all will.”

No longer able to hold his head up, Starsky let it fall back onto the table. The pain in his limbs was unbearable. But the thought of her sticking needles there caused him to moan with despair. “Please, please, please,” he droned deliriously, tossing his head from side to side.

“You don’t got to beg,” Allison said in her best sultry voice. She placed a pin in each crease where his legs met his torso and pushed them up into his abdomen.

The pain was so intense, Starsky was sure she had stuck him in his privates. He started to scream.

Allison hurried over to the phone and dialed the number she’d already memorized. It was answered on the first ring.

“Hutchinson.”

“I feel bad you ain’t at the party, so’s I thought I’d call and let you listen to the fun.” She held the receiver toward the wooden table, where her victim was screaming in pain.

“Starsky!” Hutch yelled into the phone. “What the fuck are you doing to him?” There was no response. He wasn’t even sure she’d heard him. All he could hear was his best friend crying out in agony. “Stop it! Do you hear me? Stop hurting him, you bitch!”

She evidently did hear the last bit. “We’ve only just started.” She gently placed the receiver in its cradle, knowing that the length of the call was nowhere near long enough to trace. The thought of the blond cop’s agony for his partner coupled with the sights and sounds in front of her caused an almost orgasmic pleasure. She walked over to the table and slowly circled it, savoring Simon’s revenge.

Her pleasure was short lived. Unable to bear the pain, the cop passed out. The basement was now unacceptably silent. “Shit! Wake him up!”

Kelly tried slapping his face, but got no response. Sheila cowered into a corner of the room. She’d had enough. Loretta, ever helpful in these situations, searched around for her own cup of water that she’d placed on the workbench untouched. She retrieved it, then threw its contents in the tortured man’s face.

Coughing and sputtering, Starsky awakened to a blanket of pain. Hoarse from screaming, mostly high-pitched, strangled sounds came from his opened mouth.

“Good girl, Loretta,” Allison praised. “You get to go next.” She held the black box up toward the fanatical girl. “Anywhere you want. Just nowhere lethal. Not yet.”

Her fingers trembling with excitement, Loretta extracted a pin. She licked her lips as she stepped up to the table.

Sheila sidled over near the card table. Her stomach was churning, and she placed a hand on the damp wall to steady herself. This was her first time doing someone, and in her wildest dreams, she never thought it would be like this. When they’d chosen her, she’d felt honored. It made her feel special. Like a real part of the “family.” That was why she’d joined the following in the first place. But this….

Loretta placed her pin an inch above the cop’s navel and plunged it in, laughing.

Sheila closed her eyes and held her hands to her ears. The horrible sound the guy was making was worse than when he was screaming. Kelly reached into the box. Soon it would be Sheila’s turn, and she didn’t have the stomach for it. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape from the nightmare in which she’d allowed herself to take part. Her eyes fell upon the telephone.

The others were so intent on their fun, they didn’t notice Sheila hanging back. The sound of her lifting the receiver off the hook was masked by the laughter of the others mixed with the thrashing of the cop. She quickly punched in the seven digits from the card next to the phone, then placed the handset slightly off the cradle.

Hutch’s stomach cramped into a tight knot when his partner’s phone rang. He hesitantly picked it up and brought it slowly to his ear, afraid of what he might hear. Since the last call, he’d heard nothing but his best friend’s screams reverberating in his head.

“Hutchinson,” he said dejectedly.

Instead of a response, he heard laughter and voices in the background. One of the voices was easily recognizable.

“Give ‘m a drink so’s he can scream like a man!”

He pressed the phone to his ear. It was quiet, then he heard someone choking and gagging.

“Hello?” he tried tentatively, quietly, into the phone. He heard whimpering in the distance. Covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he whispered loudly, “Is somebody tracing this?”

Dobey answered from behind him in sotto voce. “Of course we are.”

“Huuutch!”

That single word snapped the blond detective’s attention back to the world within the phone line. It was said with such agony and desperation, Hutch felt as if someone had wrenched his own heart out of his chest. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered.

Sheila crept forward to join the others. She didn’t want to bring any attention to the phone. When she reached the table, Kelly offered her the box.

“Your turn!” the blonde said happily.

Sheila forced a smile and selected a pin, careful to keep her hand steady. She walked up to the right side of the table and tried to block the horrible thing she was doing from her mind. For an instant, her eyes locked with those of the man on the table. His watery blue eyes pleaded with her silently before he had to squeeze them shut against the pain.

“Nowhere lethal,” Loretta reminded her, afraid she might not get another turn.

Sheila nodded. Then she placed the pin on his right shoulder, just above the collar bone, and pushed it in. She did it with one fluid motion and lingered for a few seconds to make it appear as if she was enjoying herself. She used those few seconds to try and keep down the bile rising in her throat. She was very careful to avoid looking the cop in the eyes again as she backed away from the table.

“Ah, shit!” Loretta exclaimed.

Sheila froze, convinced the phone had been found off the hook.

“He’s out again,” Loretta whined. “Pussy cop!” She stalked over to him and slapped his cheeks, but he didn’t respond. Loretta sighed theatrically, then stomped to the stairs on her way to get another glass of cold water.

Kelly nudged Sheila. “Ciggie break.”

Sheila gladly pulled out her pack of cigarettes and passed one out to each of the remaining girls. They all lit up, filling the basement with a fog of smoke.

When Loretta returned a minute later, she took the cigarette out of Sheila’s mouth and took a long drag. “Thanks.” She turned toward the table and threw the water into the unconscious man’s face. Nothing happened.

“Shit and two is ten!” Loretta exclaimed. “He’s way out of it. This sucks!”

Allison consulted her watch. It was 11:15. She sighed. “Let’s take a break. I’m hungry.”

“Yeah,” Sheila chimed in. “I’m starving.”

“We’ll let him recover a bit, then start again. We’ve got all night, and plenty of pins left,” Allison said over her shoulder as she made her way to the stairs. The others followed obediently behind.

* * * *

Allison was three bites into her tuna fish sandwich when the back door was kicked in.

“Police! Don’t move!” Shouted a tall, blond-haired officer.

The cult leader choked on her sandwich when she saw Hutchinson standing before her, gun drawn. Her head whipped around toward the living room when four more officers rushed in from the front. Another three uniforms came in behind Hutchinson.

Hutch grabbed the girl closest to him and pinned her against the wall. It was Loretta. “Spread them!” he said, roughly kicking her legs apart. The other officers handcuffed the remaining women. “Where is my partner?” he asked the girl, carefully pronouncing each of the words.

“Go fuck yourself,” Loretta laughed.

Hutch shoved her roughly into the arms of a waiting officer. “Get her the hell out of here.” He was about to begin his search of the house, starting with the upstairs and working his way down, when he heard a distant groan from an open door in the kitchen. Closer inspection revealed that it was a basement door. He took the steps two at a time.

“Get those paramedics down here, now!” he called from the foot of the stairs. When the call had finally been traced and they’d learned the location of his partner’s kidnappers, Hutch had ordered an ambulance to go to the scene with them, sirens and lights off. The screams he’d heard in the phone had left little question that his best friend would be needing medical attention. He approached the table with his partner’s naked body on it, afraid of what he would find.

“Ah, Starsk,” he said when he saw the damage.

Starsky, thinking the women had come back, whimpered, “No more,” and tossed his head from side to side.

“Shhh.” Hutch caught his partner’s head between his hands and stopped its motion. “It’s okay, you’re safe now,” he said with a quiver in his voice. “I’m here, Starsk. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

Starsky’s eyes tried to focus through the pain on the source of the soothing voice and finally succeeded. His vision cleared long enough to recognize his best friend, then clouded again with tears.

“It’s okay, buddy. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

The End

Chapter End Notes: THIS ONE HAS A PART 2. FLAMINGO IS TRYING TO FIND IT.